Our Personal Injury Legal Content Writer Shares the Top Three SEO Tips for Personal Injury Law Firms

It is the goal of very website owner to be on the first page of Google search results.  Or at least that should be the goal.  This is specifically true for personal injury lawyers and law firms.  Our personal injury legal content writer knows that auto accidents, trucking accidents, medical malpractice cases, and other personal injury cases are in high demand.  Websites that are on the top of Google search results are the most likely to get views and clicks.  This increases a law firm’s chances of getting new clients.  The way to get on the first page of Google search engine results is by having great search engine optimization, or SEO.  Our best legal content writer shares the top three SEO tips for personal injury law firms.

By using these top three tips, you could get on the first page of Google through “organic” results.  These organic results are results that mean Google has identified your website as having authoritative and relevant content for users.  While you could purchase ads to pay to be on the top of Google search engine results, having “organic” results through solid SEO is the best practice.  It is also the cheapest way to get on the first page of Google.  

Personal injury lawyers can easily start to implement these top three tips for their law firm websites and law firm blogs.  The top three SEO tips for personal injury law firms include the following:

1) Have Great Content

Google is a search engine.  It is a machine.  The only goal that a machine like a search engine has is connecting people who are searching for something with the information.  This means that a search engine is going to find relevant content to help a searcher get what he or she wants.  That sounds really simple, right?

Well, lawyers seem to mess it up.  And we can say that, our personal injury legal content writer is a lawyer.  (We converted for the jokes).

This is because lawyers tend to use legalese, big words, and complicated sentence structures.  Even looking at this blog post, we can see that it was written by a lawyer as opposed to someone who may be blue collar.  Remember, most people are not lawyers.  Most people are not white collar.  Most people are working-class.  According to statistics, median salary in the United States is about $56,000.  That is definitely a good salary, but that is the median.  This means half of Americans are below that level.

In addition, while 88% of Americans had at least a high school education or GED, only one third of those individuals have a higher education, according to the census.gov statistics.  Thus, you really need to write at a level for people who could understand you.  Many SEO tips and online content writers suggest that you write for an 8th grade reading level.  This means you need to reduce high-level and complicated legal theories, laws, and medical information into simply to digest content.  While forgetting your three years of law school vocabulary building.

This is complicated but not impossible!  First, you can use a personal injury legal content writer such as ourselves to help you.  Or second, you can do it yourself.  This is time-consuming, but you can absolutely do it.  The best content tips are the following:

• Write on topics people are actually searching.  This means drafting law firm blog posts about how to file a no-fault insurance claim or what to do after an auto accident.  Drafting legal posts about who could be at fault for your accident is also important.  Most times potential clients are worried about money, such as how to get lost wages paid or medical bills paid for after a slip and fall.  These types of blog posts may not see very legal in nature, but this is what people are searching for.  So yes, you should absolutely have rear-end auto accidents as traumatic brain injuries after trucking wrecks, but you need to realize you can lure people into your website by just answering questions they may have.
• Write on many different topics.  Cast a wide net within the personal injury realm.  It shouldn’t be hard because there are so many topics to write about, but make sure you do not pigeon hole yourself into one area.  This is because your law firm website is advertised as a personal injury website, but if you only have auto accident cases for blog posts, trucking accident, medical malpractice, or slip and fall clients might walk away thinking you do not handle those types of cases anymore.
• Circle Back to Important Topics.  Okay so the advice above is to spread out your topics, but this advice is to circle back—so which one is it?  BOTH!  That is the balance you need to figure out when handling your SEO.  You should make sure you come back to important topics like trucking accidents or traumatic brain injuries which you really want to focus on.  Hit all the other topics, but come back to those topics every three or four posts.  This helps you cast a wide net but also specialize a little in one topic to build your search engine authority.
• Mix up your post lengths.  Your personal injury law firm should have a mix of short and sweet posts with medium posts, and do a super long post since in awhile.  Generally we recommend for a once-a-day posting law firm to have 3-4 small posts (300-400 words), 2 medium posts (400-600 words), 0-1 longer posts (600-900 words), and at least one super long post (1,000 words or more, preferably above 1,500 or 2,000 words) every week.

2) Regularly Post Content

Part of your search engine optimization (SEO) is just how updated your website is.  If you have a fantastic website and then do not post to it for months or years, Google will think the content is stale and it will not rank very well.  In fact, it may not rank at all.  Even if your content is exactly what someone is searching, Google may say that it is not good anymore.  

For most personal injury law firms, 3-5 blog posts a week is sufficient.  Some less-competitive markets could do 1-3 blog posts a week.  However, generally one blog post a week is not sufficient.  It would be sufficient, however, if the blog post was super longer and informative, like a mini essay.  But generally, 3-5 blog posts a week is sufficient.

However, personal injury law firms that really want to boost their SEO and advance quickly on Google search engine results should post once a day or more.  Very competitive markets and law firms should be posting at a minimum of once a day, and some law firms we have worked with actually had three posts a day just to maintain on the first page of Google.  Interestingly, when that law firm started to pull back on blog posts to just one a day, they quickly slipped off the first page of Google.

Therefore, you need to gauge your market.  But you will definitely need to have law firm blog posts drafted multiple times a week for good results.  This can be difficult, but you can rely on a personal injury legal content writer to help you.  Also using these top three SEO tips for personal injury law firms can help you greatly.

3) Hyperlink Relevant Pages on Your Website and Off of Your Website

So here is an SEO tip that any personal injury lawyer could do.  Hyperlink to a page in your website and to a page outside of your website.  Why?  This type of linking, well back linking to a degree, helps your website GREATLY. Remember, Google’s goal is to look to see if you are providing relevant and authoritative content.  Maybe your new personal injury law firm is not authoritative yet.  But if you write good content, Google will notice you.  If you start to link to other strong websites, Google will notice you faster as an authority.  This is because Google will see that you are putting together mini research articles to help people gather information in their searches.  This is exactly what Google wants to see.

Therefore, you need to link to your own website and to other websites.  For your own website, you should link to other helpful pages.  Never link to your main page—it does nothing!  At a minimum link to your contact page at the bottom of your law firm blog post in the call to action.  Ideally, you will want to have a link to another relevant blog post or practice area page.  For example, if your blog post is about rear end trucking accidents, you should link to 1) your practice are pages for trucking accidents, and 2) a blog post you previously did for topics like negligence per se, falling asleep at the wheel, hours of service violations, or brake failures.  Google will recognize that you are trying to help visitors find other relevant information.  But do not over-link!  Too many links can hurt your website and Google will think you are spamming.  Try to do 1-2 links per 300 words of content.

You should also link to other websites.  This shows Google you are doing your own research.  It also shows Google that you are doing relevant research for the person who is searching.  Thus, when a visitor comes to your website on a relevant page and you have other links that are relevant, authoritative, and helpful, that visitor’s job of searching is much easier!  Google will recognize this and reward your content with higher search engine results.

You Can Do These SEO Tips for Personal Injury Law Firms, But We Can Also Help

These three SEO tips are the simplest content SEO types that any personal injury law firm can do.  These will absolutely help you get better content SEO and improve your Google search page results.  However, this does not guarantee that you will get on the first page of Google search results.  There are other important SEO principles that go behind just content.  These SEO tips fore personal injury law firms will certain help through and can get you new clients.  This is especially true when you are posting all blogs on social media.

It is important to also realize that drafting all of these blog posts can be difficult.  This is particularly true for solo lawyers and small law firms.  Time is money, and drafting blogs does not necessarily result in a quick paycheck.  It can take a lot of time before hits start to roll in.  And they will roll in if you follow even just these three SEO tips.  However, if you need help with better content to free up time, or for someone who can employ other best SEO practices, ask our personal injury legal content writer for help.