With the increased penetration of smartphones and the internet, voice search is rapidly on the rise. The total voice assistant user base among U.S. adults is 42.7%. In other words, voice search needs to be a part of SEO services for lawyers.
Unfortunately, only approximately 4% of business locations in the US are ready to reach consumers conducting local voice search queries. Unless your law firm belongs to this 4% of the businesses, you need to step up your voice search efforts to get ahead of the curve.
Here are five tips that will help you optimize your local SEO.
1. Use Natural Language
When we talk to each other, we use more informal language. People use similar language when using voice search on their mobile phones and smart speakers.
Natural language is more conversational and contextual. So, voice assistants take two factors, conversation, and context, into account to provide voice searchers with the right results. You need to focus on using longtail keywords in your content.
These keywords often come in the form of natural language search phrases like “best lawyer SEO marketing tools” or questions such as “what are the best lawyer SEO marketing tools?” They are also long (more than four words), like most voice search queries.
If you deliver content that answers these intent-based search queries, you are more likely to get top-listed in local searches. You can also focus on natural language search keywords, which we will talk about in the next point.
2. Create Frequently Asked Questions
Usually, natural language keywords or search phrases are questions like “What is the cost of hiring a divorce lawyer?” or “Who Pays for Legal Expenses in a Divorce?” That’s why you should have a frequently answered questions section on your website and in your Google My Business listing.
Make sure to include the most relevant question keywords in your FAQ content. Update the content regularly to keep it fresh. Mark up all the questions properly in <h2> headers.
The questions and the answers should be compelling enough to drive more traffic to your website. Keep the answers short and to-the-point. Google likes brief and precise answers. So, your content will more likely get a position in the Featured Snippets and ‘People also ask’ sections.
3. Improve Your Local SEO Schema
Schema Markup, also known as Structured Data, helps search engines to crawl and understand your website content. If you are a local business like a law firm, it also tells search engines about what services your law firm offers and displays business details like phone numbers, social media links, and websites.
In other words, with schema markup, you can control how search engines interpret and present your content in search results. You can use the Schema.org vocabulary to implement the correct structured data for your website. You can find different sets of schemas on this vocabulary that will allow you to optimize your website.
4. Make Your Site Faster
As per Google’s speed update, page loading speed is now a ranking factor in all mobile searches, including mobile voice searches. So, your website needs to be super fast.
According to Google, if the page speed goes from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of bounce rate increases by 32%. The same increases by 123% if the loading time goes from 1 to 10 seconds.
Unfortunately, a recent study by Backlinko states that the average page loading speed for a web page is 10.3 seconds on desktop and 27.3 seconds on mobile. On average, pages take 87.84% longer to load on mobile devices than on desktop.
The bottom line is, your web pages should load in less than three seconds on mobile voice searches. Most users won’t come back to your site if they think it’s slow, resulting in lower web traffic from voice searches. Talk to your web developer about the various ways to improve page loading speed.
5. Test Your Voice Search Improvements
Although it is expanding rapidly, voice search is still new, and search engines like Google continue to make modifications in voice search algorithms. As a result, you will need to test your voice search improvements continuously and proactively to be on the same page with the leading search engines.
Make sure to test your improvements on different devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and smart speakers such as Google Home, Amazon Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana. Find out where and for which question keywords and natural language phrases your website ranks higher or lower than your competitor’s.
Compare your voice search improvements with your competitors to find out where you are lacking and put effort accordingly. Test and develop new content strategies to include the most trending and relevant search phrases into your content naturally.
Your Search for a Law Firm Marketing Agency Ends Here
Voice search is the future of SEO. You can better take advantage of voice search with help from a full-service law firm marketing agency like Gorilla Webtactics. With marketers specializing in voice search optimization, we can help improve your firm’s local SEO ranking substantially. Call us today at (612) 470-9877 or contact us online to discuss your voice optimization and other SEO needs with our industry experts.
