It can be frustrating when competing law firms are frequently outranking your firm in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). But why does it matter if a firm is ranking higher than yours on SERPs? Firms at higher positions on the SERPs may be generating more organic leads, making your firm miss out on potential cases.

Fortunately, the SERPs are ever-changing. With some research and a little bit of elbow grease, your firm may be able to climb up the search results, potentially increasing leads and cases. But first, you need to figure out why your firm is being outranked by others.

Google Algorithm Updates

Your firm’s website may have found itself hit by a Google algorithm update while a competitor’s site was not. Compare your search volume in Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. If you have a drop in traffic from Google, but no changes in other search engine traffic, then you may have been penalized from an update. Different SEO and marketing news sites (like Search Engine Roundtable or Search Engine Journal) will quickly report suspected updates. Doing some research on a suspected update can help pinpoint why your firm’s site was affected and what you can do to reverse affects.

Compare Content

If there are specific keywords your firm is looking to rank for, analyze those SERPs to see what content is already ranking in the top results. Is there anything that those pages are doing differently than your firm? Is the content longer? Is it more descriptive? Does it feature different aspects of a claim you don’t mention in your content? Though you don’t want to copy the content, getting an idea of what is outranking you can help understand what a search engine finds to be a better fit for a search.

Consider Search Intent

Google Search Console can give some great insight on search intent as well as how your firm’s content preforms on different searches. Within Search Console, you can analyze your site as a whole or specific URLs, comparing search volume to impressions (number of people that see your firm’s site for that particular query) to the number for people that actually click your content. If you have high impressions but low clicks, then you know people are seeing your firm’s site, but aren’t actually clicking the search result. This can help you identify which pieces of content you should work on first. If you have pages with high impressions and low clicks, try optimizing those first. Again, you can look at the SERPs for those search terms to see what content is actually getting clicks to figure out how you can improve.

Start with Basics

Still not sure why you’re being outranked or don’t know where to start on your optimizations? Start with some basic optimizations and see what you find. Try doing some technical SEO updates. Put your research to use and update you title tags, meta description, image alt text, etc. to better match the search intent behind the keywords. Read through your content and edit any necessary changes, making sure everything is up to date. You may find areas for improvement within your content or even see some changes in your SERPs rankings just from these changes. Once you’ve made changes, make sure you update the publish date to show search engines that the content is new and updated.

Be Patient

SEO is a slow process. It can take time to see changes in the SERPs. When you optimize and refresh old content, it can take weeks or even months to see results. Continue to monitor the updated content to see if and when any changes in the SERPs occur. While you monitor your changes, if you’re looking to supplement leads, try lead generation. We currently offer exclusive employment law, personal injury, Social Security disability, and workers’ compensation leads. Contact us today for more information about our leads!