This guide is all about SEO for Law Firms in Malaysia to beginners and lawyers with actionable tips and insights.
Ever wonder why some law firms show up first on Google when you search for legal stuff, but yours doesn’t?
It’s because they hired SEO agency to help them rank on search engines. If law firms keep optimizing their websites and sharing valuable content online, they’ll keep showing up everywhere on Google.
What is SEO for Law Firm
In short, search engine optimization for attorneys is one of the strategic processes that helps solicitors and advocates optimize their content and individual website structure to bring MORE leads, cases, or clients to their law firms without paying for ads.
From the Ahrefs pool research, SEO specialists voted that usually takes 3-6 months of consistent work to start seeing results.
If your website and Google Business Profile appear higher on Google than other lawyers when people search for certain words – “personal injury lawyer near me”, you’ll probably get more clients.
Why SEO is Important for Law Firms?
SEO is really important for lawyers because they have restrictions on marketing themselves.
To get more clients, the smart way is to work on SEO to attract target clients from search engines organically instead of just relying on referrals or word-of-mouth
Since 2015, legal services have started getting more attention and become super competitive.
Looking at the graph for “law firm near me“, we can see more and more people have been searching for this and gone up by 4000%
I picked “law firm near me” because it’s a type of search that can help your law firm get more cases, especially if your website and Google Business Profile show up higher than others.
Remember, people are always using Google to find and hire lawyers. If you’re not showing up, you’re missing out on cases.
That’s why having a good website and doing local SEO is key for law firms.
Understanding Keywords for Law Firms
Firstly, you’ve to identify and find the right keywords to attract relevant traffic to your website and engage with your services.
In other words, I called it the “people’s search intent”
So, how do you identify the right keywords for your legal firm?
Let’s say, a man wants to find a lawyer and divorce his wife, what keyword or search intent do you think he will type into the Google search box to find legal advice?
The keywords perhaps you can target are:
- Divorce lawyer
- Divorce lawyer Petaling Jaya
- Divorce lawyer in Malaysia
- Divorce lawyer near me
- Divorce lawyer Kuala Lumpur
Here is only a small part of the targeting keywords from Google auto suggestion.
You may need Ahrefs, Ubersuggest, Keywords Everywhere, and SEMrush as your keyword research tools to find more in-depth keywords.
For the free tool, you can use Google keyword planner.
All these tools can provide insights into the search volume and competition for specific search terms. So, you won’t be like shooting in the dark.
If you are a boutique law firm, I would suggest you focus on long-tail keywords. Which are more specific phrases with less competition.
It can be effective in targeting the audience because you’re speaking to their specific problem.
For example, instead of “Law Firm”, the long-tail keywords you can target could be:
[Keyword] / [Keyword + City Name]
- Family law attorney in PJ
- Lawyers will and trust near me
- Lawyer wills and estate planning
- Personal injury law firm in Kuala Lumpur
Here are some key considerations for keyword research:
Relevance
Pick the keywords that match your legal expertise and services. Example: If you specialize in immigration law, use specific terms like “immigration lawyer” or “lawyer for visa application”
Search Volume and Competition
Choose keywords that are popular but not too general. Think of finding a balance of words that are searched often but not overly competitive.
In my case, I’m using Ahrefs as the keyword research tool. I will look at the keyword difficult (KD) from 0 – 30, monthly traffic volume from 10 – 1000, and the Cost Per Click (CPC) the higher the better.
I will never look at “lawyer” or “law firm” as these short-tail keywords should not be used to target at the beginning due to the high competition and other important variations.
Opt for a more specific yet less contested term like “estate planning attorney near me.”
We pick those low-hanging fruit and build content starting from here.
Keyword Intent
Know the goal: Understand what searchers want and what you want.
Example: Someone typing “how to file for bankruptcy” might be looking for information. While “bankruptcy attorney near me” shows an intention to hire a lawyer for advice and solutions.
Once you researched all the keywords, you need to start planning to put those into your meta title, descriptions, URL, and website’s contents.
This will help search engines understand what your website is about and match your pages with relevant searchers.
On-Page SEO for Law Firms Websites
On-page SEO for Law Firms is where you can make changes to the legal content on your page to help it rank higher on SERP.
It’s important because on-page SEO is one of the main ranking factors no matter how many times Google has its core updates.
The study in BrightLocal shows that on-page signals for traditional organic search take up 36% of the ranking factors. On-page in local map pack ranking takes up 19%.
What Does On-Page Mean, How It Looks Like?
On-page means working “On the Page”.
It helps communicate to the search engines the subject matter of your content and services, including:
- Title tags
- Meta descriptions
- URL slug
- Content optimization
- User experience and mobile-friendliness
Title Tags
This helps search engines to determine what a page is about. They also appear as the high-converting clickable headline for a given result on the SERP.
A good title tag should be [concise + focus on primary keywords + aligned with the topic you want to talk about.]
For example:
Title: “ABC Law Group: What Does a Personal Injury Lawyer Do?”
What Done Right?
✅ Concise: the title is 53 Characters; max is 60 characters
✅ Primary Keywords: Personal Injury Lawyer (is in the title)
Meta Description
The description provides a summary to the users on what to expect if they read this content.
While meta descriptions don’t directly influence rankings, they can improve click-through rates (CTR) if it’s compelling.
For example: “Personal injury lawyers can investigate your case and help you fight for maximum compensation. Contact an injury attorney at ABC Law Group.”
What Done Right?
✅ Fight for maximum compensation – Engage what the audience wants.
✅ Contact an injury attorney – Call to action, after the summary
✅ Personal Injury Lawyers, Injury Attorney, ABC LAW Group – Keywords
URL Slug
URL is one of the ranking factors, but URL length is not.
Concise URLs can increase the user experience (UX) because it is easy to remember.
Also, including the primary keyword in the URL slug can help search engines understand the content of the page.
Let’s take a look at these two examples:
- https://www.abclaw.com/blog/what-does-a-personal-injury-lawyer-do ✅
- https://www.abclaw.com/blog/82379-78u8 ❌
Assume that, these 2 blog post URLs can go to the same destination.
The first one is contributing to Google’s easy crawling and indexing of the content and improving the click-through rate.
The second is just a chain of numbers, it lacks clarity and does not indicate the page’s content, which is less effective for SEO and user navigation
Content Optimization
Content is written with expertise, experience, authority, and trust (E.E.A.T) and with a good headers (h1, h2, h3…) structure that can easily understood by search engines and rank better.
Remember just now I said that, once you completed the keyword research, you have to integrate into the content naturally. Keywords and the valuable insights you share are very important for the readers.
User Experience and Mobile-Friendliness
Google started focusing on user experience (UX) in February 2011 and website mobile-friendly in April 2015 as ranking factors.
This means your law firm’s website needs to be;
- Responsive
- Easy to navigate
- and fast-loading page speed
As you can see, the desktop VS mobile market share worldwide in 2023, mobile users show 56.28%, while desktop users are 43.72%.
This means, there are a significant portion of traffic comes from mobile devices.
If your legal firm website hasn’t optimized this, you’re hard to provide a seamless experience to retain your visitors and convert them into clients.
Local SEO for Law Firms
Local SEO is about optimizing your attorney’s website and Google Business Profile to attract more cases from relevant local searchers.
Many prospects prefer to look for legal advice within their geographic area. Here is why I use the keyword “law firms near me” at the beginning.
If your law firm hasn’t optimized local SEO in 2024. You need to start now!
2 things you need to prepare before starting local SEO optimization:
- Website with local business structure layout
- Register, verify, and claim your Google Business Profile
A Google Business Profile (GBP) is a primary factor for local SEO, it allows your attorney firm to appear in local searches and Google Maps
The next things you need to do are:
- Ensure your law firm’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) are consistent across the web.
- Fill in all the relevant details in GBP with target keywords. Don’t be lazy.
- Upload logo, banner, and photos of your firm and friendly staff.
- Encourage satisfied clients to leave positive reviews
Building Law Firm’s Local Citation
After completing your GBP, you need to start building your law firm’s local citations.
These citations are an online reference to your law firm’s NAP. They can come from various directories like Yelp, Yellow Pages, or any legal directories.
Make sure the NAP is the same as your website and GBP when you fill in the directories, if not you will have to do the citation cleaning later and it will affect your local ranking based on accuracy and consistency.
On-Page Local SEO Optimization
If you are just serving 1 location, make sure you insert the location into your on-page local metadata and content whenever appropriate.
Create location-specific pages if you serve multiple areas. Do not put all the branches into one page just for the sake of saving time. Local on-page SEO is about organizing and structuring your service locations and contents well.
You can create specific pages to talk about your service, integrate testimonials from GBP, and even case studies.
Leveraging Client Reviews
Client reviews are very important because they take up 8.9% of the overall rankings factors in local SEO.
Besides that, it is also a trust signal for your potential clients. From the survey, 71% of people are more likely to use a business with more reviews.
Side Note: Do not use fake accounts to spam up your positive reviews or try to game the system unless you’re enjoying Google penalties.
Content Marketing for Law Firms
Content marketing is important when only you produce quality content.
Your goal is to build a good online presence that your readers like from your perspective.
I think every business deserves permission to share great content on its medium like website, YouTube, etc…
Especially, when you market your own experiences, people trust you and are willing to give you the cases to solve.
Google recently has their core updates on content and they focus on E.E.A.T terms, which are Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust.
To grow your law firm’s SEO sustainably, this is inevitable.
My advice for small law firms is that you can leverage the keyword research tools to find the very targeted keywords with less traffic and less SEO competition but high-paid competition.
The reason is that the content you integrate with these keyword conditions I mentioned can help you easily rank and, after that improve the content and add CTA to convert it into cases.
You see, as a law firm website that just started its search engine optimization, you hardly rank the competitive keywords due to your domain is not trusted enough to provide good value and good quality backlinks under Google’s radar.
That’s why the first step is to produce low-hanging fruit content to start gaining traction.
Once the momentum is up, you will see the traffic growth in your Google analytics-4 and Google search console.
4 Content Types That Attract Clients
Here are the 5 types of content I would suggest for your law firm to get started.
The writing style has to be informative, concise, and 5th-grade English or whatever language you feel comfortable with.
You can use AI writing tools or ChatGPT to accelerate the process.
1. Blog Post
Share insights on legal trends, case studies, and law changes.
Helps readers understand complex legal issues in simple terms.
You can cover topics like:
- How To Prepare for a Legal Consultation in Malaysia
- Understanding Your Rights In a Car Accident.
2. Client Case Studies
Showcase the success stories and reviews from past clients.
This builds trust with potential clients by showing real before and after examples of how your firm has helped others.
3. Legal Guides
Offer detailed guides on specific legal processes.
Guide clients along their legal journeys even if they haven’t met you in person yet.
You can cover topics like:
- The X Steps to Take After a Workplace Injury.
- X Actionable Steps on How to File for Bankruptcy with Ease.
4. Interviews or Livestream
Record and publish it in video or podcast format to explain legal concepts.
This makes legal advice more personal and easier to understand and allows you to build a personal brand organic way.
You can cover topics like:
- What to expect in Family Court? What is the checklist?
- The importance of Wills and Trusts that people are afraid to talk about.
- Interviews Between Lawyers and Marketers to talk about boutique firms set up and how data marketing can help to grow.
What Are Backlinks / Link Building
Quality link building or backlinks is getting other relevant niche websites to link back to your law firm’s website.
Another metaphor: Is like the votes from other websites, telling search engines: “Hey, my site is valuable and trustworthy.”
This can help you to increase your visibility and ranking on the internet.
Do not spam your website with low-quality backlinks.
It never works, no matter how many shitty links you get. Google’s algorithm is smarter than you think.
The foundation of getting quality backlinks is to have content that is informative, engaging, and creates value for the readers.
How Can Your Law Firm’s Website Acquire Backlinks?
There are tons of ways to generate website backlinks. I list out 13 of them as below:
- Guest blogging
- Leverage social media or blogging platform
- Broken link building
- Directory submission
- Outreach to other similar niche websites
- Charity events
- Education Sponsorship
- Press Release
- Radio stations
- Podcast
- HARO
- Forums
- Etc…
I suggest that you start the goal to get 3-5 ethical backlinks per month to build slowly to promote your website or blog posts.
At the same time, you’ll be able to build relationships with all these platforms you connect.
To simplify the process of acquiring backlinks for a beginner, I choose 5 out of 11 ways to help you get started.
Legal Relevant Niche Guest Blogging
As an attorney, you can offer to write articles for other websites in your industry.
We call it guest blogging.
This is a win-win situation where they get free content and you get the backlinks.
Side note: make sure the sites you choose have good reputations and are relevant to the legal niche.
Do the Guest Posting Research with 12 Search Queries:
- “Legal Malaysia” + submit a guest post”
- “Malaysian legal blogs” + “guest post submission”
- “Kuala Lumpur legal blog” + “write for us”
- “Malaysia law site” + “guest post guidelines”
- “Penang legal advice” + “guest blogger”
- “Malaysian legal expert” + “contribute to our site”
- “Selangor law firm” + “submit an article”
- “Johor Bahru legal consultant” + “guest column”
- “Malaysia legal news” + “accepting guest posts”
- “Ipoh lawyer blog” + “become a contributor”
- “Malaysian legal analysis” + “submit your content”
- “Legal services in Malaysia” + “guest post opportunities”
There are more, of course. These examples are good enough for you to play around and get started to do in-depth research for legal firm guest posting.
Effective Email Template to Reach Out to Guest Blogging
This email template can help you reach out to the website owners if you’re just getting started.
You may adjust the email template based on the situation you encounter to fit your pitch.
Leverage Social Media & Blogging platform
You can curate and summarize your piece of content into short copywriting to talk about your website and post on social media and blogging platforms.
The platforms that I recommend focus on in 2024 to build the Law Firm’s brand and the reasons:
Leading Professional Network – Ideal for a law firm and attorney to establish credibility and authority in its field. Able to share industry insights, firm updates, and professional achievements with peers, potential clients, and industry leaders.
Content Diversity – Able to publish articles with your perspective to showcase your leader’s thoughts and engage with a professional audience.
X (Formerly Twitter)
Real-time Engagement – Allow law firms to engage in real-time discussions, share quick legal insights, and participate in trending conversions relevant to their practice areas.
Brand Personality – Lawyers can showcase the brand’s voice and personality and make legal advice more accessible.
Youtube
Video Content – YouTube provides a stage for law firms and attorneys to create informative ideas, such as legal advice for subscribers, case studies explanations, and law firm introductions
SEO Benefits – With the second largest search engine, well-performing video content will be promoted by the YouTube algorithm organically. It indirectly increases visibility and drives more cases to your law firm’s websites.
Medium
Thought Leadership – Full of highly engaging readers where law firms can share detailed analysis, opinion pieces, and thought leadership articles
Audience Expansion – Unlike your firm’s blog, which may just rely on local community and direct searches. The medium can expose your content to a broader audience through its recommendation just like YouTube.
Charity Events
Find out the local charity community that you are willing to spend your time for their event. you can sponsor monetary, materials, or free work on their events. Next, ask for a shoutout post and link back to your law firm’s website.
This link-building method works for the website’s local SEO ranking positions, it shows you’re actively participating in social service and got featured. This increases the brand’s social signals and the backlink is valuable.
Radio Stations and Press Release
Media companies always love professionals to contribute their expertise and leadership thoughts by doing interviews to share insights.
In reciprocating wise, you can ask the host and journalist to link your law firm website on their website from the featured post.
Setup Basic SEO Analytics Tools for the Website
You need SEO tools to help with your research and analytics to get accurate insights.
Following my recommendation can help you save tons of time in tracking your website performance and know what metrics to check out.
Below are the marketing tools to use:
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a great SEO tool for tracking your site overview performance, giving you accurate keyword research, and helping you see why your legal service competitors rank so high and what you need to do to outrank them. The features to utilize are:
Referral Domains:
Track which websites are linking to you and how these links are impacting your site’s authority and rankings.
Keyword Rankings:
Track where your pages rank on search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords.
Keyword Research
Identify targeting keywords in the matching terms and phrases to understand how your target audience searches for information and services that relate to legal firms.
This process is necessary to tailor your next content strategy that match user intent.
Competitor Research
Insert your competitor domains to reverse engineer why they’re ranking higher than your attorney firm website in particular topics.
After that, you’d be able to identify the websites linking to your competitors, and you can do the outreach to acquire backlinks from those domains.
Google Analytics 4
Google Analytics (GA4) helps to track your law firm’s website insights and tell you who’s visiting your website, how they got there, and what they’ve done.
The screenshot shows that this data is under the User Acquisition tab > choose “First User Source / Medium” (in the red column) to check how many people visit this website, from which medium, and how long they stay on your website.
After that, think about what next action you need to take based on the data.
To understand more, you need to be hands-on and play around.
Google Tag Manager
Setup Google Tag Manager (GTM) lets you manage and deploy marketing tags like tracking pixels on your website without having to modify the code.
Once you set up the tracking, you can verify it by using the Google Tag Assistant Extension like the below image:
GTM setup is important because when you want to run a paid ads campaign, you can extract this data to target the better group of audience
After you set and publish content consistently you can start to check what keywords that people search are driving results to your law firm’s website.
Just go to the Performance tab > scroll down until after the performance dashboard, and you will see the top queries, top pages, etc…
Hotjar
Hotjar is a user behavior decoder.
It provides visual insights into how users perform on your law firm site’s pages.
You can check the metrics through:
Heatmaps:
Check where users click, move, and scroll on your site.
It helps you to identify what areas attract the most attention.
Session Recordings:
It shows via saved recordings how real users navigate to your site and spot usability issues.
Surveys:
Direct user feedback on what they link or dislike about your site and also the frustration.
Click here to get your 14-day trial.
Now It’s Your Turn
I spent 27 hours writing this “SEO for Law Firms Malaysia guide”.
I hope you get benefit from it.
If you want to know more or are interested in hiring me to do the SEO service, feel free to contact me here.
Now, I’d like to pass this to you:
After reading this guide,
Which steps from this guide do you want to try for your law firm first?
Are you going to find targeting keywords from my suggestion?
Or perhaps you prefer to acquire backlinks.
Either way, let me know by leaving a comment below right now.