Attorney bios are the most visited pages of a website, accounting for about 80% of all legal site traffic. In addition, two-thirds of all website traffic generate from an organic search. With that said, there are many “back-end” components to this page that attorneys overlook, and doing so may deter the viewer from clicking your page and reading more. Here are some tips for optimizing your bio page for search engines.
Meta descriptions
These two lines of text are what viewers see under the page name in their search engine. If you don’t write it, Google will take the first two lines of text on the page. This is your first chance to sell yourself, so avoid filling up this space with redundant information, such as your name and firm name. These should both already be apparent in your title tag. Keep in mind that you are writing for your clients and it is advisable to avoid using too much legal jargon.
Here is an example of a bad meta description as it would appear when someone searches for Jane Smith, the Personal Injury Lawyer at Smith Law Firm. The meta description is the first line of Jane’s bio and tells the user nothing about the services Jane provides. Rather, use these two lines to immediately convey to the user that Jane is the lawyer they are looking for, as shown in the example below.
- Bad: With more than 20 years’ experience handling complex civil litigation matters, Jane Smith is the Founder and Managing Partner at Smith Law Firm…
- Good: Los Angeles-based personal injury lawyer focusing on catastrophic injuries, aviation accidents, trucking accidents and wrongful death matters.
Which one would you want to click?
Title tags
This is the first line in the search result and one of the primary elements that search engine crawlers look at when evaluating the page’s relevance to the search term. Google often displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag, so it is advisable to keep these to a max of 55 characters.
This is where you want to place your name, practice and firm name. A good example would be: Jane Smith – Personal Injury Lawyer | Smith Law Firm.
Often, lawyers and even marketing professionals don’t see the value in updating title tags and meta descriptions. However, they are the first words that users see when they search for any type of professional service. Use them to your advantage by immediately telling users who you are, what you do, and why they should call you.
