[author: Noreen Fishman]
Search engine optimization is incredibly complex and always changing. Just when you think you’ve got ranking figured out, a new algorithm changes things. It doesn’t help that so much of the ranking information is secret, which can make it difficult to direct your efforts. Fortunately, there is no shortage of SEO tools for law firms, designed to make things simpler. Here are some free and paid tools that can help your law firm to expand your keyword research and relevance and improve your search engine rankings.
Free SEO Analysis and Monitoring Tools for Your Law Firm
Here are 10 free SEO tools for law firms:
1. HubSpot Website Grader – You can simply enter the URL of your website to receive a report card that shares insights and tips
for improving SEO efforts. This grader focuses on gauging website performance, improving the user experience, finding and improving specific issues, and optimizing for mobile. This is a great platform for general website improvements that firms of any size can take advantage of.
2. Google Search Console – The Search Console has multiple features that can help firms improve their SEO efforts. You can either conduct an initial analysis or refresh your existing strategy with updated keywords. You can learn to do more with keywords, crawl for errors, see how mobile-friendly your website is, and see how many of your pages are indexing with Google.
3. Internet Marketing Ninjas – This is an SEO-focused company that offers a variety of free tools. Hop on their site and you can take advantage of things like a broken link tool, image metadata information, on-page optimization tips, and page load times. One of their unique offerings is a side-by-side comparison tool where you can measure your website against competitors.
4. Google Analytics – GA does have a paid version, but the free one is pretty robust. Using Google Analytics alongside the Search Console will yield the best results. That way, all of your SEO data will be consolidated and centrally located, providing insights on things like comparing website traffic sources, filtering referral traffic, and using site content reports to understand engagement metrics.
5. Google Trends – Many of the SEO tools for law firms offer similar functionality, but Trends is most helpful for starting new ventures or developing a new content strategy. It’s designed to show marketers what popular industries, topics, and ideas people are exploring. While not a place to get granular data, it’s great for pulling information on current conversations and ideas and tracking them over time.
6. Seolyzer – This free tool helps with site crawling, log analysis, and specific SEO tactics. It’s designed to show marketers how people and search engine crawlers view their websites. It provides information that crawling bots leave in your server’s log files while browsing your site to identify and create your SEO KPIs
7. Bing Webmaster – The tools offered by Webmaster can provide key information on your SEO tactics. Users can see backlink profiles, perform keyword research, and use the site scanning feature to crawl for technical errors. You can also pull an SEO report to review any errors on individual pages in order to correct them.
8. Check My Links – This is a Chrome extension that is used to make sure your links on both internal or external web pages work. With this information, you can make immediate changes to improve linking strategies. One extremely helpful feature is the ability to copy all of your bad links to your clipboard in one click for simple review or exporting.
9. Seobility – SEO algorithms are always changing, so it can be difficult to know how your site is currently stacking up. With Seobility’s free checker tool, marketers can test their website’s level of compliance with today’s SEO guidelines. Just enter your url to get accurate SEO scoring, meta information analysis, link structure suggestions, and more.
10. BROWSEO – When you input your url into this tool, you’ll be able to review your webpage in order to analyze its UX and content as well as gain insight into SEO. The output from the tool focuses on HTML to highlight the page’s structure, optimized search terms, and other SEO-related factors. It’s particularly helpful for reviewing all of the metadata for a page in one place.
Paid SEO Platforms for Your Law Firm
Here are 18 paid SEO tools for law firms:
11. Ahrefs – A more advanced tool, Ahrefs examines your website in order to produce keyword, link, and ranking profiles. Their main features
are a site and content explorer that can show you the performance of each, and a keywords explorer. You can take advantage of a $7 free trial and their tiered plans run from $99 to $999 per month.
12. HubSpot SEO Marketing – The Marketing Hub on HubSpot includes an SEO tool that can support multiple areas of your website efforts. This tool is integrated with HubSpot landing pages, webpages, and blog posts so that you can align opportunities for more traffic and leads. It’s also great for understanding SEO impacts across email, marketing automation, lead management, and analytics. The plans begin at $45 per month and go up to $3,200 for the enterprise level.
13. SEMrush – A well-known tool out of all the SEO tools for law firms, SEMrush offers a robust dashboard that reveals the performance of entire domains or specific pages. They offer a lot of useful resources including an SEO Toolkit. This toolkit allows marketers to track their website’s visibility improvement over time as well as identify which keywords it’s ranking for and more. Plans range from $119.95 to $449.95.
14. KW Finder – For performing simple keyword research, you probably don’t need a comprehensive platform. This software is great for finding keywords that aren’t too challenging to rank for but still have the potential to bring in traffic. It’s popular because it seamlessly shifts between languages and regions so it can be used by almost anyone, anywhere. Take advantage of a free trial or pay $29 per month for ongoing use.
15. SE Ranking – If you’re interested in the overall performance of your website, you can use this platform. It analyzes website health and performance, keyword rankings, and traffic. Like some other tools, it also provides competitive insights. The plans begin at $39 per month and go up to $189 per month.
16. ContentKing – Content certainly is king when it comes to SEO, and this powerful tool works with real-time information to provide key insights. It tracks your website 24/7 to quickly point out any issues, and you’ll get alerts if anything on-page goes wrong with your content. You can also follow the history of your content and perform searches within the history. Prices range from $139 to $1,279 per month.
To learn more about how to create content that will be successful with search engines, check out this complimentary eBook: SEO for Law Firm Websites.
17. Seomater – This SEO auditing and website crawling tool offers a unique pay-as-you-go option along with more structured plans. It focuses on technical SEO analysis and on-page optimization testing. After the tool crawls your site, you’ll get a report that highlights various SEO-related elements including page quality and speed, internal and external link information, overall organic presence, and more. As mentioned, you can pay as you use the tool, or sign up for a plan ranging from $19 – $179.
18. SpyFu – A competitive research tool for Google Ads, SpyFu helps with keyword research as well as competitive research and the creation of custom lists and domains. It’s most useful for marketers who want to drive more traffic to their Google Ads campaigns along with their website. You can even download a competitor’s PPC or SEO keywords. The Basic plan is $39 per month and prices go up to $129 per month for Unlimited.
19. Keyword Hero – Keywords are one of the pillars of effective SEO, so they’re crucial to get right. This tool matches your visitor’s sessions with the keywords they used to land on your page, all while using your Google Analytics account. Leverage it to identify and separate traffic sources and then optimize your position in the SERPs. Try a 14 day trail for any plan, choose the free edition, or invest in a plan for $9 – $149 per month.
20. AnswerThePublic – Search listening is an often-overlooked area of SEO. This tool collects autocomplete data from Google and other search engines to give you access to lists of phrases and questions that people are searching for around your keywords. Marketers can monitor keyword trends, see real-time search information, and get new ideas for their content. Plans are available in monthly or annual versions between $70 and $199.
21. Remove’em – If you’re using a website domain or SEO strategy that isn’t recently built from scratch, you might be dealing with some problematic backlinks. It’s important to address these links as soon as possible, and this tool helps. Scan your backlink profile and export a list of bad backlinks. You can get a lifetime plan for a one-time fee of $249 or get an Agency plan (10+ websites) for $899 a month.
22. Linkody – This is another tool that’s great for learning about off-page SEO through backlink tactics. Linkody allows marketers to discover, track, analyze, and disavow backlinks all from one simple interface. Users also love that they can “spy” on competitor backlinks to point them toward niche-relevant, high-quality backlink opportunities.
23. Moz Pro – The subscription provides an all-in-one tool for improving your firm’s search ranking. There are multiple research options to help users find SEO opportunities, track growth, build reports, and otherwise optimize. Moz Pro offers email reports that provide insight into pages your site links to as well. Use a free 30-day trial or sign up for a plan between $99 and $599 per month.
24. Woorank – This tool is known for in-depth site analyses that can reveal opportunities for digital marketers. Users can take advantage of features like a marketing checklist with tasks to complete as part of SEO execution, and social insights to see the part that those channels play in your SEO goals. It’s also helpful for understanding which optimization tactics to use based on mobile data. Take advantage of a free two-week trial or plans that are $79.99 or $199.99 each month.
25. GrowthBar – This Chrome extension helps with keyword research, competitive analysis, and tracking SEO rankings over time. It’s unique because it allows users to access data points about any website directly from the search engine results pages, which is key for competitive insights. Use this information to understand the growth channels, keywords, backlinks, and advertising that are working for firms like yours. They offer a free trial and their fees range from $29.90 to $79.90.
26. Majestic – Majestic is mainly used for link analysis. It focuses on backlinks and is able to give metrics on quality of links and quantity of links. They offer a number of tools to analyze links, such as a site explorer analysis that gives a high-level overview of a website’s link profile and a unique topics report that determine’s a site’s topic based on backlinks. There are a range of plans and a free trial.
27. Brightedge – Brightedge offers SEO solutions that include a customizable dashboard, forecasting, SEO recommendations, backlink management, and competitive analysis. Brightedge’s products focus on discovering how to best optimize through competitor analysis, targeting high-value topics through built-in recommendations, and reporting on key metrics.
28. Siteimprove – Siteimprove has a range of SEO checks that help ensure your site is at its best. These 70+ unique checks look at items like meta descriptions, spelling mistakes, broken links, outdated files, poor readability, and more. They have 3 different solutions: Inclusivity, which works to protect your brand against compliance lawsuits and fines; Content Experience, which looks for ways to improve content and user experience; and Marketing Performance, which gives insights into how visitors interact with your content.
Takeaway:
These are some of the best SEO tools for law firms, but of course, you won’t need all of them. Review your most important SEO goals and then determine which options can help you to achieve them. You may also want to take advantage of our free SEO Audit. This process will evaluate your law firm’s website and help you identify areas of improvement.
