Google Search Essentials: What it means for Law Firms

Have you ever heard about Google’s Webmaster Guidelines? It breaks down the dos and don’ts of Search Engine Optimisation SEO.

This is until now, as Google has decided the guidelines were outdated and replaced it with the new Search Essentials.

Search Essentials gives us a whole new set of requirements – if your law firm wants to do well with SEO.

The new guidelines provide more in-depth information on what they – i.e. Google, like, don’t like and what they do and don’t approve of.

A lot of the information is quite vague with some specifics, so we break them down for you to help you better understand what matters the most.

Here is what you need to know about the new Google Search Essentials.

Automated or AI-generated Law Firm Content

A large part of Search Essentials focuses on automated content. And it makes perfect sense because AI copywriting tools are becoming increasingly popular with many copywriters.

At Intellistart, we have always been critics of using AI-generated content. Mainly because no matter what tool you choose to use and how much you pay for it, none are good enough to replace a human – especially a solicitor with many years of PQE and expertise in their specific area.

Google isn’t exactly saying that you can’t use AI-created content though. Google have an issue with the quality of AI-generated content.

To achieve success, you need a human to modify the content to make it easier to read and to allow you to connect with your reader.

Types of AI-generated content that Google don’t like:

Automatically generated content that Google don’t like includes content:

Stuffed with keywords and that doesn’t make sense to the reader,
Translated by an AI tool without human review or curation before publishing,
Generated through AI processes without any regard for the quality of user experience UX,
Generated using automated synonimising, paraphrasing or obfuscation techniques,
Created from scraping feeds or search results,
Stitching or combining content from different web pages without adding sufficient value.

The above types will get your law firm’s website excluded from search and/or prevent your website from ranking.

Think of it this way – if you were to generate tens or even hundreds of pages featuring AI-written content and don’t have humans editing it, your visitors will not find it useful and will leave your website without submitting their contact details. This in turn will result in poor user metrics (high bounce rate) which all in all means Google won’t rank it well.

What to do to ensure rankings for my law firm?

There are only a few good options for your law firm to ensure rankings.

First, write and publish content yourself (whether with the help of your staff or not).

Second, collaborate with a specialist, for example, an SEO, to create your content. This is the most time-efficient method that will ensure good quality content.

Third, use an AI tool to create content, then modify it heavily yourself. Though, this is an expensive method as you will not only have to pay for a tool of your choice, but also spend your own time expanding and amending the copy to make it more ‘human’ and show your experience.

Follow the Helpful Content Update

Recently, Google has updated its algorithm with the helpful content update which aims to ensure people see more original content written by people, for people.

In other words, if you create content that your visitors find satisfying while meeting their expectations, your website will perform better compared to your competitors who only create content to rank on search engines.

Stick to the people-first approach and you will be rewarded. You are on the right track if:

You have an existing or intended audience for your law firm that find your content useful,
Your content demonstrates that you have first-hand expertise and a depth of knowledge that comes from your legal experience,
The website has a clear primary focus (legal),
After reading your content (landing pages, blogs, or articles), visitors feel they have learned something valuable about a topic to hep achieve their goal (e.g. getting legal help with a claim),
You are keeping in mind Google’s guidance for Core Updates (site speed, good UX).

Local SEO

Search Essentials mentions a few things that affect local SEO.

Google certainly don’t want you to include:

Lists of phone numbers without substantial added value
Blocks of text that list cities/regions that you are trying to rank for
Repeat the same words/phrases so often that it sounds unnatural.

A lot of UK law firms have multiple office locations they want to rank for.

There are also some that have just one office location and end up creating pages for each place that is close (or sometimes far) to get more organic traffic.

What happens is, they tend to use similar if not the same blocks of text with the same keywords on each one of those pages, but they just amend it slightly by adding a new town or city based content.

While it may sound like a good idea and an efficient thing to do because all you need to do is copy your content over and over then slightly amend each page, such pages don’t provide much value to the user.

They are pages created for search engines to generate more traffic from local searchers which we may see Google cracking down on in the near future (!).

While cutting corners might work for now, observing Google’s recent updates (including the helpful content update), it may not be a sustainable strategy.

If you create pages that you want to rank locally, make sure you tailor each of them and make it very specific. Think about the value you can provide and always strive to provide more than your competitors.

Backlinks

Google uses links to determine the relevancy of your law firm’s website. High relevancy usually means higher rankings or better ease of obtaining them.

If you purchase links that are intended to manipulate Google Search rankings, you may find yourself violating the Search Essentials rules.

The following are some examples of link spam:

Exchanging money, goods, services or products for links,
Excessive link exchanges,
Using automated programs/services to create links to your law firm’s website,
Links on low-quality directories or bookmark sites,
Links within forum comments with optimised links.

Buying and selling links is part of running a business online. It is normal and Google does understand that it’s a natural part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes.

It is not a violation of Google’s policies if you have such links as long as they have rel=“nofollow” or rel=“sponsored” attached to them within the code.

Summary

In conclusion, following the recent updates, to future-proof your law firm’s website:

Make sure you create unique, original content that provides value to your visitors. If you want to use AI-generated content, make sure humans adjust it before it gets published on your website.
If you want to target specific locations, make sure your website doesn’t end up falling into the local SEO spam category. Don’t create duplicate pages that don’t change much other than they are targeting new locations.
Don’t pay SEOs who use Black Hat techniques for backlinks on link directories to increase your domain authority.

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