From law firms to manufacturing companies, SEO is fast becoming a primary marketing tool across a range of industries. According to the most recent HubSpot Research survey, 64% of marketers or global companies now actively invest in SEO.
However, the SEO landscape is continuously evolving, and your lawyer SEO marketing strategies are no exception to this in 2024 and beyond. We are well into 2023, and you may already have created your SEO strategy for the year.
However, it still isn’t too late to take a second look at the SEO trends that are likely to shape the digital marketing landscape this year.
Here is a list of four trends for you:
Direct Marketing Is out and Indirect Is In
One of the most prominent lawyer SEO marketing trends in 2024 is the rapid rise of indirect marketing. Lawyers can no longer market themselves as solicitors or lawyers, particularly when it comes to connecting with millennials and younger generations.
Not only are these generations more tech-savvy, they are also wary of direct advertisements. While nearly 38% of U.S. adults use some type of ad-blocker, 50% claim to avoid advertisements on websites actively.
In other words, your potential customers want to avoid direct (and intrusive) advertising. As a result, you need to start marketing yourself as a legal expert, providing your target audience with valuable legal information.
So, you will need to use content marketing and SEO to build your online presence as an industry expert and establish trust. Apart from running a blog of your own, it will involve guest posting on high-authority sites such as LawFuel, Lawyerist, and Law Technology Today.
You also need to create social media profiles to discuss current legal trends in your niche. With 2.5 million monthly active users as of the third quarter of 2019, Facebook is perhaps the best place to begin establishing your social media presence, followed by Twitter and LinkedIn.
Voice Search Is Taking Over
Voice search is growing fast as the penetration of mobile phones and smart speakers such as Alexa and Google Home increases. According to a recent study, voice search is the second most popular way of finding what you want using a smartphone.
As per another recent survey, 70% of respondents use voice search at least a few times per week, while 27% of respondents use it 1-3 times per day.
Voice search allows users to talk to search engines as if they were conversing with humans. As a result, you need to use natural language on your website, blog, and GMB listing content.
You will also need to start using more longtail keywords in your content as users are highly likely to use them when using voice search. Incorporating an FAQ section on your website or blog or creating FAQ-type blog posts is a great way to do it, among other voice search optimization tactics.
Focus on Big Data Analytics Is Growing
Big Data is the technology that helps you analyze large amounts of data in relatively less time to get relevant and real-time marketing insights. It can help you understand how your audience is behaving on your website, your social media pages, and how they are interacting with your content.
It can also help you push the right content to your target audience. We all have seen advertisements appearing on our phones or computers minutes after we have searched for a product or service. That’s how Big Data analytics is becoming a game-changer for lawyer SEO marketing.
You can use this technology to improve your website’s structure, build content around organic searches, turn your high-performing content into lead generation hubs, and improve your geo-targeting efforts.
Reputation Management Will Be Key
As law firms and lawyers turn into online brands, their focus will shift to reputation management. If your law firm has a positive brand reputation, it will help you build a loyal customer base and also make cross-sales. On the other hand, law firms having reputation management issues will have a tough time getting new leads.
Going forward, you should focus on building your brand credibility and authority using online public relations strategies. You can also collect as many positive customer reviews as you can, as they will help you build your reputation further.
Make sure to respond to the reviews, even the negative ones, as quickly as you can. Also, provide your target audience with the right content at the right time to help solve their problems. That should kickstart your online reputation management.
Keep Your Lawyer SEO Marketing Strategy Fresh
Bearing these trends in mind when treading the SEO landscape in 2024 will help you keep your business growing. If you haven’t started working on them already, now is the time! Of course, you can outsource all your SEO needs to Gorilla Webtactics, a trusted full-service lawyer SEO company. Call us today at (612) 260-1506 or contact us online to know how we can help your law firm.
