Long gone are the days where Google’s search results were just a long list of blue hyperlinks. At this point there are more than 10 different types of results that pull up, from images, to ads, to local listings. Some listings are beneficial for your firm, but some might lose traffic. Here are some of the most common search results you may see for legal queries, and how you can optimize for them.

Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are text blurbs pulled from the body of a piece of content and placed at the very top of search results (but still below ads). Here’s an example of a personal injury rich snippet:

A rich snippet tries to answer the question a user searched. Is this good for your firm? Definitely. A worry was that rich snippets would lead to less click-throughs, but the opposite is actually true.

To optimize for rich snippets, you’ll want to focus on answering users’ questions, not just choosing keywords to include in content.

Tweets/YouTube Videos

Tweets and YouTube videos show up frequently, especially as Google owns YouTube. These results can be beneficial if you put a focus on any social media campaigns or upload legal aid videos.

How can you optimize for Google’s search results? A lot of video and tweet results have to do with relevance. Upload videos when changes come out to Social Security, or tweet about a personal injury case that’s popular in the news.

People Also Ask

“People Also Ask” is a form of endless scroll that suggests similar results a user may be interested in depending on what he just searched. Here are some People Also Ask results for our first search:

These are great results to rank for! It helps attracts potential claimants who didn’t find what they were looking for initially. Because People Also Ask is and endless scroll, there’s a lot of chance to show up on the first page of Google. This is great for attorneys in saturated areas of law like personal injury.

To optimize for People Also Ask, you’ll also want to word your content in a way to address questions your target audience may have on upcoming legal proceedings or why they should work with an attorney.

Ads

Everyone’s familiar with PPC ads. These are often the most common way for small or mid-sized firms to generate leads and get traffic to their sites.

Using PPC ads are great because depending on how much you spend, you can ensure you’re one of the first results a user sees. The cons? PPC ads are expensive, difficult to maintain, and users are pretty good at weeding out the ads and clicking on one of the aforementioned organic results.

How Can You Find More Traffic?

A great way to show up for a lot of organic search results is by rethinking the way a user interacts with Google. Voice search is used more and more, meaning questions are far more important than keywords.

The problem is that many other firms have already geared their content towards answering questions as well. Completely revamping your content campaign may not be profitable if your competitors are already ranking #1 in Google. Alternative marketing sources – like lead generation – may be an inexpensive and easy way to supplement your current caseload.