As a rule of thumb, digital marketing specialists will tell you what needs to be done for your law firm website SEO. But it is also important to know what kind of SEO mistakes you must avoid. This is most important when we tell you that we need to make some changes to your site.
No doubt that you did your best to create a law firm website that incorporates your key branding element. Maybe you followed the best practices applicable at the time when the site was created. However, many things that counted as best practices are now SEO mistakes.
Why Are SEO Rules Changing So Frequently?
One of the key reasons why Google is changing its ranking algorithms is that many unethical sites try to abuse the rules. Using so-called black hat SEO techniques, these sites managed to appear at the top of the search results for specific terms without offering any kind of useful content.
They were usually full of viruses, which would infect the devices of unsuspecting users, stealing their valuable data. And this is why Google keeps making these rules stricter so that only genuine websites appear in search results.
As a result, what counted as SEO rules years ago now is regarded as SEO mistakes. Google is now penalizing practices that were considered legitimate before they were used in unfair ways.
These Are the SEO Mistakes With the Biggest Negative Impact on Your Site
When digital marketing specialists need to make changes to your law firm website to correct SEO mistakes, these are some of the most important issues that need addressing.
1. Poor Navigational Structure
A website menu must be easy to navigate both by human users and Google spiders. The latter are AI entities that crawl a site and index it. They go from page to page following the menu hierarchy.
If this structure is unclear or too complex, Google may not index all the pages of your law firm’s website. As for users, they may get lost among pages without reaching what they were looking for. As a result, they will leave your page and look for another law firm’s website.
Both these issues have a negative impact on your site and law firm operations. And this is why poor navigation is one of the most serious SEO mistakes to avoid.
2. Trying to Rank for the Wrong Keywords
The wrong keywords will bring the wrong users to your site. Instead of potential clients, you may get:
- Law students preparing for their exams
- Content writers looking for article ideas
- People living in a different US state or even a different country
- People who are searching for various terms out of sheer curiosity.
Digital marketing specialists know how to analyze keywords and select the most relevant ones. They will also specify negative keywords – those terms for which you do not want your law firm website to show in search results.
Remember, website traffic is valuable as long as it can be turned into profit. Otherwise, it is just a number without practical value.
3. Creating Content for Its Sake
You may have heard things such as content is king and that you need to update your site constantly with fresh content. However, not any kind of content is good and useful. SEO specialists know another important saying: write for readers, not for search engines.
The content you publish on your site must be:
- Relevant to your practice areas
- Useful for a potential client
- Unique
- Well researched and accurate.
Thus, poor quality or irrelevant content is one of the biggest SEO mistakes. Google may believe that you are only after promoting a keyword and will penalize your site.
4. Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of the SEO mistakes that attract the biggest penalties. Google does not like pages where the keyword appears too frequently. The rule of thumb is that the main keyword should represent 1% of the total number of words.
Thus, in a 1,000-word blog post, the keyword must not appear more than 10 times. Also, keyword stuffing generates pages that do not read well. Any person would become annoyed if they see the same word (or words) appearing in every other sentence.
5. Not Optimizing Images on the Website
Photos on websites do not have a purely decorative role. They also play an important role in SEO. All the SEO-friendly content management systems, such as WordPress, have designated text boxes for photos representing:
- The title – usually the file name for the photo
- ALT text – a description of the photo which appears on the screen when the photo cannot load
- Caption – a short descriptive text appearing on the site under the photo.
At the very, website photos must have the relevant keyword in the title and ALT text. Why? Because image search is just as likely to bring potential clients to your website as a regular Google search. Nothing must be left to chance.
6. Allowing Duplicate Content on Your Website (and Elsewhere)
Duplicate content is one of the very serious SEO mistakes for any business in any field of activity. First of all, duplicate content equals plagiarism, especially if it appears on two different sites – your law firm website and a guest blogging site, for example.
Secondly, Google does not consider it useful and relevant for readers. Every page must have unique content which matches the purpose of the page. It is true, duplicate content may appear by mistake.
This is why it is important to perform website audits on a regular basis. The purpose of the audit is to solve any problems such as eliminating duplicate content, broken links, or obsolete pages (for example the bio page for a lawyer no longer working for your law firm).
7. Not Optimizing Your Website for Mobile Browsing
Mobile first is one of the biggest rules for ranking, and it is here to stay. The global mobile internet traffic far exceeds the traffic from desktop or laptop computers. This means that mobile phones are the primary device used by people to browse the internet.
As a result, Google has changed its entire indexing system. At the present, it indexes the mobile version of websites. Thus, not having a mobile-ready website is not just one of the biggest SEO mistakes. It is one of the ways of preventing any SEO strategy from working properly.
Avoid These SEO Mistakes and More, Let Our Specialists Update Your Site!
If you wonder – how can we avoid these SEO mistakes? – the answer is simple. Let the team of SEO and digital marketing specialists at EverConvert audit, update, and maintain your law firm website.
We know the best practices in SEO and the pitfalls we must avoid. Our goal is to bring relevant traffic to your website – potential clients who will schedule an initial appointment with one of your lawyers. There is no room for guesswork in SEO, just like in law.
So, you should focus on providing legal advice, while we take care of your law firm SEO strategy!
