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Search engine optimization, better known as SEO, is a term for various tools and actions to improve a website’s ranking in Google results and other search engines. Ultimately, ranking better leads to more website visibility and, as a result, more clients.

There are multiple different types of SEO strategies a law firm can utilize to improve its reach. To learn more about SEO and other ways to enhance your success, reach out to Small Firm Legal Marketing today.

White Hat Vs. Black Hat SEO

There is a big difference between white hat and black hat SEO. White hat means that you are doing everything lawfully and within Google’s internal regulations for how you should do SEO Marketing. White hat is more difficult to do because you are not taking any shortcuts by breaking the rules.

Blackhat SEO is doing things that violate Google’s terms and conditions for what is acceptable SEO development. For example, a Blackhat technique would be paying websites in China to link to your website, even though those websites have nothing to do with your law firms. They do not care about your law firm, and if someone were to look at those pages that are linking to your site, they would look like spam. They are typically just a bunch of characters and links to all these other different websites.

This is considered Blackhat SEO because it is not real, quality backlinking. Quality backlinks are when a website says, “Hey, check out this other website; I want to be affiliated with this. This is someone who does good work, and you can check out this link.” Another Blackhat SEO trick would be just copying the same content for multiple pages or copying content from other websites and using that as your own and pretending you wrote it. If Google discovers that you are outside their terms of service by doing Blackhat SEO, they can penalize your website.

On-Page Vs. Off-Page Technical Vs. Technical SEO

On-page SEO are the things you do within your website’s content and pages to improve your overall ranking. On-page SEO includes creating good quality, informative content, having good menus that link to your most important pages, linking within your copy to other content on your site that might be relevant, and so on.

Off-page SEO is SEO work that is done on other websites, specifically backlinks. As touched on above, when other websites link to your website, it boosts your credibility in the eyes of Google. However, these backlinks must be legitimate and relevant.

Technical SEO refers to structuring your website on the backend to make it easy for Google to read. When you have appropriate “parent and child pages,” and your site is not completely disorganized from a technical aspect, this ensures Google’s web crawler can look at your website and immediately understand where things are and what they do.

SEO Vs. Traditional Marketing Strategies

There are many reasons why a law firm should invest in SEO instead of traditional marketing strategies, such as billboards and TV. The main one being that the results are long-lasting. If your website increases its authority and dominance in the digital marketplace, it will likely maintain that dominance over a long period.

Traditional marketing strategies, such as TV commercials, those marketing runs are costly and, unfortunately, not very long-lasting. While people might remember a commercial, for the most part, after it is finished running, your law firm might not continue to receive the benefits of people calling in. However, the foundation you build in SEO will last a long time, even if you stop working with your SEO company.

Let’s say you only hire an SEO company for one or two years. The work they did, the hours they put into optimizing your website, and the benefits of that hard work remain yours.

Reach Out To Learn More About the Different Types of SEO

At Small Firm Legal Marketing, our team can help you take steps to craft a digital content strategy that utilizes a variety of different types of SEO and other marketing concepts to grow your client base and boost your law firm’s success. Contact us today to get started.