Legal SEO trends dominating 2022 so far

A growing number of UK law firms begin to recognise the value of organic top positions in Google search rankings.

If you run a law practice (whether small or medium-sized) and are trying to reach a new audience and promote your legal content, ranking high in the search results is vital to organic success. But competition for those top results can be brutal.

How do you know which SEO trends and techniques are working to even take part in this ferocious competition? There seems to be hundreds of SEO tricks out there and hundreds of SEOs who can tell you all the secrets to climbing rankings 👀.

Google’s algorithm constantly evolves and whatever worked last year may not be working this year, or even this month. Keeping on top of key website metrics is, therefore, extremely important. Without constantly keeping an eye on the changes, it’s almost impossible to figure out what trends are working.

As an agency focusing only on the legal industry, we have our finger on the pulse of the search engines. Our job is to keep an eye on the changes, and implement them on your website. All to help you succeed online and offline.

Read this blog to find out the legal SEO trends we have seen so far in 2022.

Complying with the Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals is at the top of this list for a reason. It has not only been a ranking factor, but it continues to become a stronger one every year.

What is it? Core Web Vitals is a set of ranking factors that Google uses to judge the overall experience of a visitor on your law firm’s website.

You can read a little more about the last Page Experience update here.

Improving your Core Web Vitals, including website speed, how long your site takes to respond to your visitors’ first interaction with it, etc. will have a huge impact on your search engine performance and, therefore, on the rankings.

Obtaining high-quality backlinks from trusted websites

Building domain authority with good-quality backlinks remains a dominating SEO trend for law firms in 2022. We also don’t see it going away anytime soon!

A huge part of increasing your domain’s authority comes from link-building efforts. However, the quality of links matters more than the quantity.

One high quality link (for example, from a popular news site) is worth more than 1000 backlinks from low quality sources. In fact, having too many backlinks from low quality or toxic websites can even harm your website!

Having a number of other highly-rated domains linking to your website will help you climb the Google search results ladder far and fast.

Answering Common Questions

Do you recall ever seeing the ‘People also ask’ feature in Google? It is a smart feature that answers questions related to the user’s search query. Each one comes from a web page and contains a clickable link to the source of the answer.

To rank higher on search results, you need to make sure your website contains answers to commonly asked questions no matter how trivial you think they may be.

Your prospective clients may, for example, be searching for an answer to questions such as what Conditional Fee Agreement or Damage Based Agreement mean. They may not be familiar with the legal phraseology or simply looking to reassure themselves.

Answering simple questions such as ‘what is no win no fee’ may help you climb the rankings and even show in the ‘People also ask’ feature.

Following the EAT principle

When creating content, you should follow the EAT – Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, principle.

Understandably, as Google evolves so does its requirement for good-quality content. Following the principle, will help you achieve better rankings in 2022.

To do that, make sure:

• You create unique content that is easy to read,
• Include biographies that reflect your expertise within the legal area,
• Don’t use auto-generated content or overtly ‘salesy’ language. They can hurt your rankings.

Creating long content

While the length of your content may not be directly affecting your search rankings, we find that longer content mostly ranks better in search results. For SEO purposes, your pages need to be at least 300 word long.

Good quality, long content will tick all of Google’s boxes, including uniqueness, analysis, depth and more.

Using Schema Markup

Without getting into too much detail, Schema Markup is a code that you place on your website to help search engines understand what your pages are about.

Google also uses Schema Markup to create the so-called rich snippets (additional information, such as client ratings, displayed alongside your website’s title, meta description and URL on search results).

Rich snippets make your law firm’s website visually more attractive to searchers.

Use Schema Markup to start ranking better in the SERPs.

Repurposing existing content

This is one of the current SEO trends that a lot of law firms overlook, yet it is the easiest one to implement!

Especially if your website is large, you should occasionally go back and assess your existing content, and add additional details, copy, better images, etc.

Refreshing your content may help you improve your rankings or even get new keywords with minimum effort.

Creating video content

Video platforms, such as TikTok, have become popular over the recent years.

If you don’t feel like creating video content for social platforms (which we completely understand because managing your social media may just end up taking all of your time!), it may be worth considering creating a video or two for your law firm’s website.

It may just be the thing that will persuade your prospects fill in your contact form or call your office to instruct your firm.

Newer websites have a chance

Google continuously becomes better at recognising great content and great user experience (UX). Therefore, newer websites also have a chance to rank higher as long as their content and the UX on them is outstanding.

Redesigning your website to achieve better overall experience may also help you increase your rankings. Just like our recent client, Grieves Solicitors, who following a complete redesign has started ranking better for existing keywords, and reduced the amount of spam enquiries.

Read the case study

Keep up with the Legal SEO trends in 2022 and beyond

These are some of the legal SEO trends we have seen dominate in the first half of 2022. As SEO continues to become more important for law firm websites, you will want to keep up with what is and what isn’t working for your law firm.

If you need help with your SEO, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can do a free SEO audit of your website!