Why Technical SEO Is a Critical Consideration for Your Law Firm’s Website

Technical SEO is one of the most crucial elements of any law firm’s SEO schematic. Unfortunately, it is often misunderstood, preventing many firms from leveraging their pages to maximum effectiveness. Technical SEO refers to the improvement of a website’s technical aspects to increase its ranking among search engine results pages. It is crucial because Google and other search engines aim to provide their users with the most relevant results for their queries—and to do it, their bots constantly crawl and assess webpages based on a variety of factors that help them discern the content of your page and determine where to place it in search engine rankings. Ensuring your site is technically optimized means making it quicker to load, easier to crawl, and as transparent as possible for search engines.

SEO Strategies Your Law Firm Should Be Using

To ensure the success of your law firm, address the following technical SEO considerations:

1 Improve Page Load Speeds

Today’s internet users are accustomed to fast loading times and will quickly become frustrated and leave your firm’s page if it does not meet their expectations. Recent research shows that 47% of consumers believe a webpage should take no longer than two seconds to load, and 40% will abandon it altogether after waiting more than three seconds. Google understands that slow-loading pages offer a subpar experience for users, so they drive these pages further down on results pages, delivering less traffic.

To combat this effect, you can speed up your website in several ways:

• Use a speedy, reliable web hosting company.
• Secure a fast DNS provider.
• Minimize the use of scripts and plugins to reduce HTTP requests.
• Upload image files that are as small as possible without becoming pixelated.
• Compress your webpages.
• Modify the code of your website to remove unnecessary indents, white spaces, or line breaks.

2 Ensure Search Engines Can Crawl and Index All Key Pages

Search engines assess online content first by crawling, the process of scouting the internet to read the coding and contents of every URL. Then, the search engine indexes this content into a database so it can be retrieved by users. After a search, the search engine ranks the indexed content, ordering results from most to least relevant depending on the query. If your firm’s page is not part of this index, users will not be exposed to it when they make a relevant query. There are several reasons why your page may not appear in search results, including:

• It is a new page and has not yet been crawled.
• Your site content is protected because it requires users to log in, submit forms, or take other steps before they can access it.
• Your URL returns an error code.
• You do not have any external websites linking to your page.
• The navigation of your page is not designed for effective crawling.
• Your URL was penalized for violating search engine guidelines.

To make sure your key pages are being crawled, visit Google and type “site:yourdomain.com” into the search bar to display the results of the index for your specific site. For more comprehensive results, join Google Search Console and monitor the Index Coverage report it provides. This tool allows you to submit sitemaps and keep track of how many of your pages have been added to the index, along with other useful functions.

3 Maximize Your Crawl Budget

Crawl budget refers to the average number of URLs a bot will crawl on your website. It is negatively affected by having many URLs with low added value, such as hacked pages, error pages, and duplicate, low quality, or spam content. When your website contains multiple low-value URLs, the bot wastes time crawling these pages. As a result, it spends less time on important pages with high quality content and is less likely to include them in the index. Crawl budget is also impacted by the number of URLs on your site and the load speed of your pages.

You can maximize crawl budget by blocking crawlers from accessing certain content or allowing them access but instructing them to ignore the content in search results. However, this process is extremely delicate and requires specialized coding knowledge. Even minor errors can result in unintentionally blocking crawlers from accessing important content and codes, so the process is best handled by an experienced web developer.

4 Review Internal Links

Internal link building gives search engine bots the ability to understand the content of your website, index it, and boost your rankings. One of the most useful tools for reviewing internal links is the Screaming Frog SEO Spider, which collects comprehensive data on your site you can use to audit and optimize your pages. This tool monitors several important aspects of your link building, including the operational status of your links, page loading and response speed, link or server errors, blocked URLs, and bad redirects. You can use this information to identify which pages need improvement and strengthen them with internal links to enhance their search engine rankings.

5 Assess the Sitemap for Errors

Your XML sitemap lists all the pages on your website, acting as a search roadmap that allows search engines to effectively navigate your content. Typically, this sitemap is categorized by type and includes useful information for each page, including the level of priority it has on your website, when it was last modified, how frequently it is updated, and the number of pictures it features. You can utilize Screaming Frog to assess your sitemap, confirm the URLs it contains, and discover errors that impact the ability of bots to crawl your pages.

6 Make Your Site Mobile Friendly

More potential clients than ever use their mobile phones to conduct online searches, learn about the organizations and firms they are considering, and make purchases. Creating your website with “responsive” design means it will automatically detect when a user is viewing your site on a mobile device and immediately adjust the format—allowing smooth site navigation and better access to content. Google lists mobile friendliness as one of the most significant factors influencing how it indexes your content, so you should take steps now to make your site mobile friendly. Doing so will help your firm remain relevant and allow you to keep up with the competition.

Improve Your Firm’s Technical SEO Today

Focusing on technical SEO is critical to ensure your target audience can reach your firm’s page and obtain the information they are looking for. Neglecting technical SEO not only hinders the efforts of search engine bots and negatively impacts your rankings, but it also leads to a less enjoyable user experience. Visitors to a page not optimized for technical SEO are less likely to stay engaged and continue through the conversion funnel. At RizeUp Media, our digital marketing team specializes in helping law firms optimize their technical SEO to improve their website, increase search engine rankings, and reach more potential clients. Contact us today to learn more about how we can enhance your digital marketing campaign.