Your attorneys are your practice. With them, you are a firm of trusted, well-intentioned experts with years of experience representing those in need of your help. If that’s the case with your law practice, your website should reflect those values.
Attorney bios are often an overlooked section of personal injury law firms’ sites. Not only are attorney bios important to your law firm’s website, but they also present a great opportunity for search engine optimization (SEO).
Here are four quick ways you can provide more meaningful information and leverage your attorney bios for SEO.
Include the city in the heading or sub-heading of the attorney bios
To rank highly in local search results, especially in competitive markets, you must find natural and honest ways to communicate that you serve a specific community. This will support the other onsite local SEO tactics such as properly listing your office locations on your site, internal linking and using schema markup.
Use your attorney bios to show, truthfully, that you have a presence in any relevant communities. If you have an office in Hartford, Connecticut, for example, and you are trying to improve your rankings in Google for “Hartford injury lawyer,” make sure that each attorney who works in your Hartford office states that in his or her bio.
Make sure to link to that location practice page somewhere in the body of the text as well — doesn’t have to be every time the city is mentioned, but at least one link is recommended!
Include your attorneys’ specific practice areas on the page
Many law firms are willing to spend a lot of money in AdWords to appear high up in search rankings. Location-specific keywords such as “St. Louis accident attorney” or “Fayetteville social security lawyer” can be competitive.
The best way for search engines to register location and practice areas is to include them on your site. Your attorneys are experts in certain practice areas that can be relevant to potential client situations, so highlight that in their bios. Write something like: “John Doe is a personal injury attorney in Colorado Springs who specializes in hit and run accidents and uninsured motorist auto accidents.” This truthful statement can indicate relevant information to search engines and also reinforces the attorney’s specific area of practice. And don’t forget to link to the specific practice area page or subpage when mentioned (again, at least one link is recommended)!
Feature your attorneys’ accomplishments
Your attorneys have worked hard to establish a good name for themselves, and that reflects on your law firm. Include the schools they graduated from, professional and community organizations or associations they are a part of, awards they have won, links to case studies that they were involved in and personal interests, too.
When someone searches for one of your attorneys, his or her name should show up as the first search result, representing both your attorney and your law firm. The attorney’s page on your website is about the attorney, and it should reflect their expertise and accomplishments.
Answer relevant questions in the bio
Answering questions and telling stories within your attorneys’ bio pages is a great way to improve your rankings on long-tail keywords.
Every one of your cases is unique, but many share a common experience. People are looking for someone who can relate to their specific challenges. Ask each attorney about a victory that he or she is proud of, and tell those stories in their bios.
Be careful not to go too deep into a topic in the attorney bio. Keep it focused on the attorney. However, if a helpful topic is alluded to in the bio, keep it brief and then link to a more comprehensive blog post about the subject.
Alt tag and social media
This is an easy but often overlooked element of on-page SEO. Most importantly, the alt tag is used to describe an image for the visually impaired, but it’s also a factor in SEO. Using the attorneys name and title is good for visitors and good for search engines.
Another quick win: Don’t forget to have your attorneys link to their web pages from their social media accounts! This is a good factor for SEO and a great way to increase web traffic.
Now, we’re not saying you should go fill your bios with long tail keywords and obvious SEO intended content. There are many creative ways to execute good and ethical SEO on your law firm’s website — but many of these strategies take a lot of planning and time. Save your resources by simply telling your attorneys’ stories! More potential clients will find your website, and they’ll appreciate the authentic story-telling through your attorneys’ bios. Boom, you have started the content marketing / digital marketing process!
Don’t forget: Good marketing means writing for people first, not the search engines! It also means writing ethically: check out our post on the blogging practice that kills law firms.