Research has indicated that the number of people evaluating local businesses using the internet stood at 98% in 2022, a rise from 90% in 2019. This cuts across all industries, including the legal industry. Today, we have many law firms competing for the same customers. Most of these customers rely on Google to search for local lawyers who meet their requirements, making law-focused SEO very important for lawyers. This brings us to Google’s 3-Pack. What is it, and what can we learn from law-focused SEO?
What Is Google’s 3-Pack?
Google’s 3-Pack can be defined as a technique that Google uses to display top results for local business searches. This includes up to three local businesses that Google feels are close, prominent, and relevant to the person doing the search. In the results, customers (or the person doing the search) get a map showing the three businesses and their Google Business Profile. From here, they are able to get the details of the business they are interested in.
Why Do Law Firms Need Law-Focused SEO?
SEO for attorneys plays an essential role in ensuring that users can see the types of services a legal firm or lawyer offers at the top of search results instead of showing those of their competitors. This is something that every lawyer needs for them to remain competitive in the market.
To get started with SEO for lawyers as well as local SEO, lawyers need to ensure that they have followed the best SEO practices. This helps them to attract organic traffic from users in close proximity to their law firms.
Some of the things to look at with SEO for lawyers and local SEO include;
- Creating content relevant to your business and the locals.
- Remaining consistent with the law firm profile, address, and name.
- Getting citations and links.
If you use these strategies when optimizing your law firm for SEO, your law firm and the services you offer will get a higher ranking for local search results compared to those of your competitors. So, what can we learn from law-focused SEO in relation to Google’s 3-Pack?
1. Law Firms Should Adjust Their Marketing Objectives for Local Search
Every law firm wants to compete for the top three spots in Google’s 3-Pack. However, this is not the right thing they should be doing. This is because the top three positions depending on the location of the person doing the search. The results are provided according to how close a person is to the law firms. It is also important to note that apart from the top three search results, a user can expand the results to see more law firms near them.
This tells you that users do not necessarily choose the first three options that they get after a search. They can expand the results and choose a law firm in the sixth position, depending on the law firm’s marketing objectives for local search and the information provided.
2. Law Firms Should Focus on Information
Law firms should not focus on ensuring they are placed in the top three positions of Google’s 3-Pack. Instead, they need to ensure that they have provided customers with all the information that they might need. When doing a search, customers expect to get all the information from Google. This means that instead of focusing on getting into the top three positions, you should focus on information.
It also explains the reason why some people will go for a law firm way below the top three positions. They get all the information that they need and are able to understand what the law firms have to offer.
Here are a few things you should work on to ensure that customers have all the information that they need;
- Make local reviews visible.
- Ensure that you have a listing on Google Maps.
- Your website’s content should be clear, concise, and straight to the point.
- Create local backlinks.
- Your offline marketing should be on point.
3. Website Content is Very Important
Everyone can create content for their websites. However, not everyone can create content that stands out. Law firms need to be careful with their website’s content. They need to ensure that the content is optimized for local search. When Google is crawling your law firm’s website, it should find out about your physical location easily. If you have different branches, ensure that you have created a page for each of the branches. In addition, do not use the same copy for all these locations. The content should be unique for your law firm’s branches to rank on Google search. You should also ensure that you have embedded schema markup and Google maps on each of the pages.
Law-Focused SEO & Google 3-Pack – Final Point
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is very important for lawyers and law firms. They, however, need to understand Google’s 3-Pack and its impact on their ranking on Google’s search engine.