Achieving law firm SEO results that bring in clients is a Holy Grail for many lawyers’ seeking SEO results that work, but the changing landscape for SEO means the rules are changing and blind spots are occurring.
The report from digital marketers Hennessy Digital identifies what may be costing law firms millions of dollars in missed opportunities as a result of not using proper SEO techniques, surveying 16,000 law firm websites to provide their survey results (as shown in the news release below).
Hennessy identified the top 5 law firm SEO ranking factors, as below –
The top 5 factors affecting a law firm’s search engine rankings, from the data set Hennessey measured, are:
- Number of entities* used on a page
- Entities in the title tag
- Web page user experience and how its design shifts for mobile experience (CLS mobile score, a main performance metric of Google’s Core Web Vitals.)
- Variations in the of number of unique outbound and inbound links for a page
- Variations in the interactive or dynamic capabilities on a web page (script tags)
*An entity on a website is best described by Google as “a thing or concept that is similar, unique, well-defined, and distinguishable.” It can be a word, a concept, a color, etc.
>> Read LawFuel’s Ultimate Guide to Law Firm SEO Here
The news release regarding the law firm SEO report is below –
LawFuel.com – Hennessey Digital, a leading marketing agency specializing in law firm digital marketing, has published its 2022 State of Law Firm Website Rankings, a new study providing technical analysis of the organic search results of 16,000 law firm websites. The report identifies the top factors and trends impacting law firms’ page rank on Google for high-value keywords in the 200 largest US cities.
Insights from this research are the latest from Hennessey Digital, whose award-winning law firm response time study was released last year. The tech-focused agency helps top law firms dominate their markets through organic search, PPC, and other digital marketing strategies.
While data from the study does not suggest a straightforward relationship between page rank and one specific website characteristic, it reveals a combination of factors that affect search performance, including:
- the number of entities on the page
- how responsive the page is to mobile layout
- the number of inbound and outbound links a page has
The research also confirms website attributes measured by Google’s Core Web Vitals also impact ranking on search engine results pages. Other interesting findings include the discovery of technologies used on high-ranking sites, such as commonalities in the content management systems and web hosting providers used by many top law firm websites.
Hennessey Digital’s Founder & CEO Jason Hennessey believes conducting research like this is important in order to help firms and companies stay ahead of dynamics that impact their visibility and success online.
“As digital marketing experts, we have the responsibility to be curious and always looking to learn and discover new information that makes our agency smarter and our clients better positioned for growth. We’ve invested heavily in technology, engineering and analytics so that we can make data-informed decisions, innovate, and provide our clients with confidence they have access to some of the best resources and strategists in the industry,” Hennessey says.
Vice President of Engineering Blin Kazazi notes how findings from this study resulted in developing enhanced processes for Hennessey Digital clients’ websites, a maneuver aligned with the agency’s culture of innovation and transparency.
“This study confirmed our suspicions in some areas about SEO and ranking on the search engine results page, and revealed blind spots in others, such as the importance of JSON-LD schemas.This led to us building an in-house schema developer tool our clients will benefit from to help improve their ranking on the SERP,” says Kazazi.
“You might wonder why we’re so transparent about things that may give us a competitive advantage. We believe that sharing what we know can empower and help make everyone successful, whether it’s our clients, lawyers, web developers and other digital marketers.”
Complete results of the law firm website rankings study, including a list of the top 30 factors that influence how websites perform in search, are available on Hennessey Digital’s website.
