Skip to main content

Search engine optimization for legal help pages

Search engine optimization (SEO) means persuading search engines that your web page has the best answer to a given search query.

Search engines are answer machines. For each search query, they provide possible answers. SEO is a collection of strategies and tactics for persuading search engines that your web page is the best answer to a given query and should therefore be the top search result.

It isn't enough to just publish a web page, even if it has great information (including a prominent link to your online guided interview!) on it. If it isn't well optimized, nobody will find it.

This page outlines some essential SEO strategies and tactics for improving the search performance of legal help pages.

Content is the foundation of effective SEO​

There are SEO tricks for getting a weak page to rank well. Some of these tricks even work—at least for a while. But the same tricks that work for a weak page work better for a strong page. Plus, weak content doesn't help anybody.

That's why the best strategy for improving your website's search performance is to make sure each page on your website is the best answer on the internet for someone with a particular legal problem. Your website's content is your best SEO asset.

To evaluate a page, ask yourself a few questions:

  1. Who is the page for?
  2. What is that person likely to enter into a search engine?
  3. Is your page better than the top 10 search results for that search query?

Until you can answer yes to number 3, focus on improving your content.

tip

If you want to know how a computer understands your web page, ask one! Save your web page as HTML, upload it to ChatGPT, and use a prompt similar to this one:

This is the content of a web page. Tell me:

1. Who do you think this page is for?
2. What problem do you think that person has?
3. What search query do you think that person is most likely to use to look for a solution to their problem?
4. What specific tips do you have for improving this page so it is more likely to be the top result for that search query?

Be concise.

Types of search engine optimization​

The various types of SEO include:

  • Technical SEO
  • On-page SEO
  • Off-page SEO (linkbuilding)

Technical SEO means helping search engines understand your website content and ensuring your website is fast, secure, accessible, and provides a good user experience. Technical SEO is fundamental and essential.

On-page SEO is probably what most people think of when they think of SEO. On-page SEO involves optimizing the content of your website, including keywords. It takes time to go through your website page-by-page, and you'll want to re-optimize each page whenever you make changes to it.

Off-page SEO is everything that happens off of your website, especially linkbuilding, or getting other websites to link to yours. Linkbuilding is time consuming, but your link profile is probably the most important search ranking factor.

For more information about SEO types and best practices, the Google Search Central documentation website is invaluable.

Technical SEO checklist​

Technical SEO involves structuring your website and pages so they are easy to understand, as well as things that affect the user experience, like page speed and broken links.

  1. Structure your website hierarchy to show the relationship between pages (Search Console)
  2. Use an accessibility tool, which will also identify many SEO issues (WAVE)
  3. Identify and fix broken links (broken link checker, redirection tool)
  4. Identify and fix incoming 404s (Search Console)
  5. Find and fix duplicate content (Search Console)
  6. Optimize page speed (Page Speed Insights)
tip

If you aren't sure how to do any of the things on these checklists, just ask a search engine or AI chatbot.

Once you have addressed the basics you shouldn't need to spend a lot of time on technical SEO, just check Search Console regularly to monitor your website for technical SEO issues, and keep an eye out for broken links and 404s.

On-page SEO checklist​

Optimizing your website's on-page SEO means going through your website one page at a time and optimizing each one. Use an SEO tool to cover the basics. For each page:

  1. Optimize for your target keywords (SEO tool)
  2. Check it's search appearance (SEO tool)
  3. Link to other, relevant pages on your website (SEO tool)
  4. Link to other, relevant websites (SEO tool)
  5. Look for pages that are doing well in search (Search Console) and consider optimizing them further for search features like sitelinks and AI overviews

Off-page SEO checklist​

The core of off-page SEO is linkbuilding because the number and quality of links to a page are at the core of modern search algorithms, based on the original PageRank research paper by Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Search algorithms are much more complex now, but links are still one of the most important SEO factors. So one of the most effective SEO strategies is to increase the number and quality of links to your pages.

  1. Share pages widely when you publish them or make a significant update (social networks, email, and word of mouth)
  2. When you give a presentation, include URLs of key pages in your slides and handouts
  3. If you speak with a journalist, give them the link you would like them to include in their article, podcast, video, etc.
  4. In fact, whenever you have an opportunity to share a link to your page, do it!
  5. Consider who in your network controls a website on a relevant and ask for a link
  6. Check the top results for your target search query and see consider asking for a link
tip

Contacting a stranger out of the blue to ask for a link is spam. Asking for links from irrelevant pages is also spam (and doesn't do much for your SEO). Contacting someone you know with a specific request is not—as long as you don't do it too much.

If you share your pages, some people will link to them organically, especially if they really are the best page on the internet. But if you really want to build links, you'll have to ask.

Essential SEO tools​

These free tools will help with search engine optimization:

AI. An AI chatbot can be helpful for drafting, editing, and understanding the pages on your website, as well as for SEO tips.

Search Console from Google gives you information about how your website is indexed by Google and how it performs in search results. Search Console also highlights technical SEO issues, like duplicate content and 404s.

An SEO tool. A good SEO tool analyzes the content of your pages and makes recommendations that can improve their search performance. There are many good options, like the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress. The Real-Time SEO module for Drupal seems to have similar features.

WAVE is a tool for checking web page accessibility against established standards. While accessibility is important on its own, many accessibility problems are also SEO problems.

A broken link checker. Broken links are bad for SEO and make for a poor user experience. A tool like Broken Link Checker for WordPress or the Link Checker module for Drupal monitors your pages for broken links and makes it easy to fix them.

A redirection tool. 404s are bad for SEO and missed opportunities to help someone. Whenever you change a page URL you should redirect the old URL to the new one. Redirection for WordPress or Redirect for Drupal simplify this.

Page Speed Insights is another free tool from Google. Slow pages make for a poor user experience and negatively impact search performance. Use Page Speed Insights to check your pages for problems. GTMetrix is another helpful tool for finding and fixing page speed problems.