If your firm wants more local personal injury clients, then your website needs to let search engines know it has the best content matches for relevant searches within that area.
Incorporating geographic and other local references into local personal injury lawyer SEO content increases its relevance in local searches, which improves ranking results and generates more clients. But, as with all search engine optimization techniques, there are best practices to observe and some pitfalls to avoid.
If you want to make sure your law firm website content is properly optimized to succeed in local searches, read on.
- What is Local SEO for Personal Injury Law Firms?
- How Personal Injury Law Firms Can Use Local SEO to Attract More Clients
- Writing Tips to Help Personal Injury SEO Content Rank Higher in Local Searches
- Get More Local Clients with Personal Injury SEO Content Created by Blue Seven Content
What is Local SEO for Personal Injury Law Firms?
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing website content to improve its ranking in searches done by people within a localized area. Local SEO helps law firms increase brand awareness among people within the targeted area.
Google evaluates three primary factors when ranking local search results.
- Relevance – How well a law firm’s local business profile and website content match a search query
- Distance – The proximity of a search result to the location term used in the search or to the location of the searcher
- Prominence – Prominence is how famous a law firm is as determined by information available across the web
The relevance of a search result is enhanced when keywords used by local audiences (car accident attorney) are incorporated into a law firm’s business profile, practice area pages, and blog content.
Proximity is determined first by results that match the specific location used in the search query (Dallas personal injury lawyer). If a non-specific location is requested (work injury attorney near me), proximity is determined based on a result’s physical distance from the searcher (as long as they’re not in incognito mode).
Prominence is how well a law firm is known. Google equates prominence with credibility and evaluates a law firm’s prominence from various sources such as news articles, backlinks, reviews, and ratings.
How Personal Injury Law Firms Can Use Local SEO to Attract More Clients
Optimizing content for local searches increases a law firm’s visibility within the local area, building brand awareness and establishing trust within the community. However, to attract more clients with local SEO, a personal injury law firm must first publish content that search engines are looking for.
Establish Topic Authority
In response to any search query, Google is trying to find content that is both helpful and reliable. Authoritative sources of information are considered the most credible and rank higher than non-authoritative sources. Authority is the level of expertise a site has regarding a topic.
Building topical authority in each area of practice should be the goal of law firm content. A content strategy should be built around each practice area to establish a law firm as the local authority on that topic.
Create Content to Match Local Searches
Optimizing for local searches enables Google to narrow search results to more closely match the query. For instance, if a person searches for a ‘personal injury lawyer in Nashville,’ a local law firm with a practice page entitled ‘Nashville Personal Injury Lawyer’ is more relevant than a local law firm with a practice page entitled ‘Personal Injury Lawyer.’
Location-specific landing pages can be done for each city or area where a law firm wants to capture location-specific keyword searches. For instance, a personal injury law firm in Raleigh might have separate pages for different local keyword searches:
- Personal Injury Lawyer in Raleigh
- Raleigh Car Accident Attorney
- Spinal Cord Injury Lawyer Raleigh
Or a personal injury law firm practicing in the Atlanta area might want to target various suburbs where people may search for legal help:
- Marietta Personal Injury Attorney
- Roswell Personal Injury Lawyer
- Personal Injury Attorney Alpharetta
Practical tip: Which keywords a law firm decides to target within a particular geographic area will depend on the results of keyword research for that specific area. In some areas, ‘lawyer’ may be preferred over ‘attorney,’ and vice versa.
Law firm blog content can further support local SEO efforts by incorporating local references and linking to appropriate local pages.
Writing Tips to Help Personal Injury SEO Content Rank Higher in Local Searches
The goal of optimizing content is to get a law firm’s message to as many people as possible who need to see it. When optimizing content for local searches, the following tips can help law firms achieve better ranking performance.
1. Avoid Keyword Cannibalism
Keyword cannibalism can happen when more than one piece of content on a website ranks for similar search terms. This can happen when two pieces of content cover a similar topic or are optimized for the same keywords.
What happens is that similar pieces of content end up competing against each other, and Google is not certain which should rank higher. Often, both pieces end up ranking lower.
2. Use Internal Links
Internal linking can direct search engines toward content that can help improve ranking. Google uses links to traverse the content on a website and links can transfer authority from a higher ranking page to a lower ranking page. Internal links also enable searchers to easily access other relevant information which keeps them on a law firm’s website longer.
Be careful when creating the ‘anchor text’ for an internal link. Do not use the same wording when linking to different pages. For instance, don’t use ‘car accident’ to link to both the ‘Denver Car Accident Attorney’ and the ‘Boulder Car Accident Attorney’ pages. Google may not be able to distinguish the difference between the pages, which could ultimately hurt your ranking.
3. Create Separate Pages for Each Location Keyword
Creating separate location pages for each location keyword improves a law firm’s ranking for each local search and increases the opportunities for internal linking, which can help drive more traffic to a law firm’s website and increase the site’s overall ranking.
Get More Local Clients with Personal Injury SEO Content Created by Blue Seven Content
Close to 50% of all Google searches are looking for local information. Law firms that are not optimizing content for local searches are missing opportunities to serve local clients. A content marketing strategy that includes local SEO will ensure a law firm’s content is seen by searchers looking for information from a local source.
Optimizing content for local searches is part of our service at Blue Seven Content when we create original content for personal injury law firms. Whether we are creating practice area pages, landing pages, or blogs, our content is always optimized to achieve the maximum advantage for our customers. If you are interested in content that gets consistent local results, contact Blue Seven Content.
Written by Mari Gaines, JD – Legal Content Writer




