Personal Injury Lawyer SEO – How To Build Your Practice

Digital marketing is still the most effective at capturing more potential clients at the lowest cost of any law firm marketing tactics. And Google is at the top of the list of digital marketing tactics. (related page here on SEO case study results from 39 Celsius).

Ninety-seven percent (97%) of all search traffic goes through Google. So, for example, when someone is in a car accident, one of the first places they go for help is to Google to search for personal injury attorneys. And while Google Ads are also an effective option, the cost-per-click (CPC) can go as high as $900 or more depending on the search term and its economic value. 

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If you want injury case leads, part of your marketing mix must include search engine optimization (SEO) of your law firm’s website. Personal Injury law is a competitive space. But with an effective SEO marketing strategy, you can profitably capture these Google searchers.

Why Does SEO For Personal Injury Lawyers Matter?

What Is Personal Injury SEO?

Personal Injury SEO is a process that involves quality website content prioritized based on injury case value along with technical website expertise skills to rank a law firm’s website for dozens of different personal injury search terms. 

There are the two core areas of SEO that you have to consider:

Let's take a look at each of these areas. 

Local SEO for Personal Injury Lawyers

Ranking in Local SEO results has to do with two core elements: 

Below is an example of Google’s 3-pack of local results, as illustrated in red.

The local SEO process is very different from the Traditional SEO process and requires different strategies to rank. (Read our related post on, what is local SEO?)

Physical Location of Your Office

Google defines cities and towns in its own way. Therefore, if your law office is not physically located within the boundaries that Google has drawn, you have lower chances of ranking in the local 3-pack of results, regardless of the effort.

Here’s an example of how Google defines Temecula - notice the red dotted line. 

Suppose your office is not located within these boundaries. Then, your chances of ranking in the local pack for “Temecula Personal Injury Attorney” are not as high as for a law firm within the boundaries. But this doesn’t mean you won’t rank for anything, but it will be harder for your office to show well for geographic-specific queries like this. 

Proximity To The Searcher

How close your law office is to the searcher is an important factor. The closer your law office is, the higher likelihood that you will rank well for that search phrase. Your proximity is only one factor affecting your law firm rank. And if your marketing agency is ineffective at local SEO, being close to the searcher won’t help you. 

If you’re starting a new office or have the opportunity to move your office, think long and hard about where to locate it, as this will affect the exposure and clicks you receive in local searches and within maps.  

NAP (Name, Address, Phone) and Citations

Consistency in your law firm’s name, address, and phone number throughout the web is a significant component of Google’s local ranking algorithm.

Google uses other sites (aka citations), such as Yelp (related post here on Yelp Ads), Superpages, other legal directories, etc., as third-party validators that you are who you say you are and that your location is accurate.  

Is it consistent when Google visits these other sites and finds information about your law firm? The last thing Google wants to do is serve a result in a local 3-pack that could be potentially incorrect because that would lead to a poor user experience for the searcher. Therefore, building up a solid and accurate citation list is a significant factor in ranking in Google local searches. 

Law Firm Name

Your law firm’s name plays a role in your rankability in local searches and on maps. If your company name has keywords in it, you will have a better chance, with all things being equal, of ranking higher than a competitor that doesn’t have keywords in their name. In addition, geographic terms (i.e., the city or town) or industry category terms (personal injury, attorney, lawyer, law firm) affect your firm’s rank ability. 

Traditional Organic SEO Listings

Ranking here has to do with content and on-page SEO factors primarily. Below is an example highlighting a traditional organic listing. (read our related post on How To Get Your Website On Google’s First Page for more detailed tactics and strategies)

But…

Stay with me here…

The above image paints a simplistic picture of injury law firm SEO.  

What is essential to recognize is that there are more than 12 different places within Google Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) that you can rank your site within (you can read more about these other places here). Each location has a different approach and strategy to rank. Therefore, an SEO strategy should take a holistic approach to maximize your law firm’s presence in these places. The best analogy to ranking in Google is comparing it to the shelf space at a grocery store - the more spots you occupy, the more likely you will win the click and book a new injury client.  

Here’s a list of some of the features you can rank in:

Read this additional post for a deeper dive into the top places you can rank your site in Google. And an additional article on creating an SEO funnel of content where we used personal injury as an example. 

And so, the bottom line is that you need content plus SEO to rank well in the traditional organic search results. Without content, you will have minimal presence in Google. (read our case study on content marketing and SEO and another on why content marketing and SEO are necessary for additional insights).

And content requires a data-driven approach. We can uncover search volume and economic value behind the hundreds of topics and questions people search for. A data-driven plan allows you to create content with a purpose prioritized by economic value - not all search terms or keywords are created equal. 

Next, Content Organization 

 The SEO SILO and Content Hub Strategy are essential in PI. Basically, it just means organizing your content around themes.

Because PI is so competitive, your content should be well organized. And in this case, organized around geographic areas that you want to rank in. For example, if you’re in San Diego, you would first organize content around San Diego since it’s the largest city in the county.

Here's an example: San Diego Personal Injury Attorney, Car Accident Attorney San Diego, Wrongful Death Attorney San Diego, and so on. 

Next, perhaps you optimize around Carlsbad, CA, and those related PI phrases.

Content Hub, Silo Implementation

URL Structure

Use URL structure and selective internal links between related posts to pass internal link equity between similar pages. For example, for the URL structure, you might use:

And if you optimized for Carlsbad, then you create URLs where San Diego is replaced with Carlsbad.

The benefit of this URL structure is that it shows a hierarchy of related content to search engines and users.

URL Structure

In addition, you would also support this site organization with internal links between related geographic pages – so, the San Diego personal injury page would link to the San Diego car accident page, and so on.

Organizing content this way has many SEO benefits. First, it’s organized well for users and search engines, and with the internal links you’re passing link equity between related pages, improving the SEO signals.

Your Next Steps