SEO is an ever-evolving science. As time goes by, search engine algorithms become more sophisticated, making it increasingly difficult to keep up with the latest tactics to rank among the top results for the most common queries related to your niche.
Knowing this, it’s no wonder that many of the methods used by experts just a few years ago are now entirely obsolete. Not only are these practices completely ineffective these days, but they could negatively affect the visibility of your law firm’s website.
Here you will learn about 9 outdated SEO practices that your law firm should avoid to rank in the top results of the major search engines.
Writing For Bots
One of the most common malpractices in SEO is falling into the bad habit of writing for bots instead of people.
Writing unnaturally to include keywords or “trick” the algorithm is not worth it. Nowadays, search engines are smart enough to detect that kind of “robotic” content and are quick to disregard it altogether.
Your goal should be to create quality content for humans that provides real value to your visitors.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is one of the oldest tricks in the playbook of old-fashioned SEO agencies. There’s no doubt that keywords are essential to an effective SEO strategy, but that doesn’t mean you should clutter your content with them.
Previously, including many keywords in your content gave you an excellent chance to outrank the competition. However, things have changed significantly since then.
Today, stuffing keywords into your content is a colossal mistake. While it’s important to include your primary keywords in your content, using too many on a page is seen as spam. As you can imagine, Google doesn’t favor spammy sites, so avoid this practice at all costs.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content was an effective strategy prior to 2011 (more than 10 years ago!). The idea was straightforward, you just had to create one piece of high-quality content, and all you would have to do was change the targeted keywords.
For example, if you created an excellent page targeting “Bankruptcy Lawyers in Los Angeles,” you just had to change the keyword to “Bankruptcy Lawyers in Irvine” or any other city. The rest of the content stayed the same. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it, right? Well, that strategy is pretty much broken these days.
Google’s algorithm is trained to detect this type of low-quality content to optimize the user experience and provide valuable answers. Therefore, duplicate content will appear much lower in the results or won’t rank at all.
Thinking SEO Is A One-time Development
Some people believe that designing an effective SEO strategy is a one-time affair. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
In the ever-changing landscape of SEO, you need to constantly monitor shifts in algorithms and user behaviors to adjust your content accordingly.
The methods that work today may not work in a couple of years. You need to keep an eye on the changes and adapt whenever necessary.
Desktop-only Optimization
Disregarding the mobile crowd is a colossal mistake. A long time ago, most people used desktops to surf the web. Hence, optimizing your website only for this type of device made sense, as most of the traffic would come from them. However, this has changed drastically.
Today, the average person spends about 4 hours using their phone. Consequently, the majority of web traffic comes from mobile devices.
Therefore, if your website isn’t mobile-friendly, not only will it be unappealing to your potential customers, but its visibility in search engines will be almost non-existent.
Exact Match Domains
Buying a domain that exactly matches one of the keywords you are looking to target sounds like a good idea at first. In fact, it used to be a common practice a few years ago. However, this is another tactic that Google has recently devalued, mainly to avoid spammy sites.
Instead of buying exact match domains, you should focus on building a solid brand. Buy a domain that is consistent with your brand and apply other good SEO practices to get the results you are looking for.
Separate Pages For Each Keyword
You don’t need to create different pages for each keyword you want to target. In fact, doing so could end up hurting SEO rankings.
Nowadays, Google can understand variations of the same word and interpret synonyms effectively.
Creating Tons Of Low-quality Content
Once upon a time, the quantity of content was more relevant than its quality. Vintage law firm sites were often filled with poor quality content, all in the name of “convincing” the algorithm of the website’s relevance. Fortunately for everyone, those times are over.
As we’ve mentioned before, quality is far more important than quantity in the modern SEO landscape. If you provide the answers your visitors are looking for in just a few articles; you are much more likely to appear at the top of Google. On the other hand, having hundreds of irrelevant articles won’t help you at all.
Working With An Obsolete Law Firm SEO Company
Lastly, a mistake many law firms make is working with outdated SEO companies. At the end of the day, you went to school to be a lawyer. Therefore, you probably want to spend your time on your law practice and not on optimizing your law firm’s SEO strategy. After all, you can always hire an expert to take care of it. However, if you end up hiring an old-fashioned SEO agency, you probably won’t get the results you’re looking for.
If you notice that your SEO “expert” is implementing any of these outdated tactics, you may want to start considering a replacement. After all, these tactics will end up hurting your business in the long run, which is why you should act quickly to protect your law firm.
If you’re looking for an effective, modern, and reliable SEO agency for lawyers, consider working with Legal Facts. Visit their website to learn about their offerings and find out how they can help you boost your law firm.
