SEO case study

Technical SEO: Higher DR and 17% More Traffic for Law Firm

This case study explores how we achieved a 2-point DR (domain rating) increase and a 17% traffic boost for an employment law firm through managed SEO and a technical audit. 

Legal websites fall under the YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) category on Google, meaning they apply stricter standards for quality and accuracy. 

As such, law firm websites must have extra trustworthy domain ratings in order to receive top rankings and better visibility on search engines like Google. 

Part of establishing an authoritative domain is improving technical factors like site speed and performance, crawlability, schema markup, and site architecture. 

These are the core tenets of technical SEO, which is all about optimizing behind-the-scenes aspects of your website like JavaScript, loading speed, and meta tags. 

Without flawless technical SEO, legal websites will struggle to achieve the trust levels necessary to rank higher on Google, which means handing business over to your competitors. 

This was what happened to today’s client until they started working with our team. 

After working with us, they achieved higher trust with Google, more traffic, and higher search rankings. 

Stay tuned to learn how we used technical SEO to achieve these impressive results! 

The Client: An Expert Employment Law Firm in California 

This particular law firm boasts 250 years of combined experience among its partners, and they’ve helped workers receive over $1 billion in settlements. 

They specialize in everything related to employment law, including payment disputes, wrongful termination cases, and sexual harassment. 

As you can imagine, they need to rank well for localized versions of these legal terms to remain competitive in their space. 

For instance, local keywords like ‘bereavement pay in California’ are central to their business. Users looking up these types of key phrases on search engines are clearly looking for employment attorneys, which is why it’s crucial to rank for them. 

As stated before, legal websites fall under the YMYL category, meaning they receive extra scrutiny from search engine algorithms.  

Thus, SEO is both more challenging and more important for legal websites than traditional B2C and B2B businesses. 

Our client knew better SEO was mandatory to improve their online visibility, so they got in touch with our team. 

We decided that a managed SEO campaign (through HOTH X) and a technical audit would help the client achieve their goals. 

The Strategy: A Technical SEO Audit Early in the Campaign 

It’s difficult for Google to trust YMYL domains that don’t have flawless technical SEO. 

After all, if you can’t nail the behind-the-scenes factors on your website, how likely is it that you’ll provide trustworthy information?

This means every legal website needs the following:

  • A Stellar site speed and performance 
  • Optimized meta tags and schema markup 
  • Logical site architecture and internal linking structure 
  • Optimal crawlability and indexability (both are necessary for appearing in Google’s search results to begin with)
  • A backlink profile free of broken links 

These are the factors that we analyze during our technical SEO audits. 

In this scenario, the client received a technical audit during the very first month of their managed SEO campaign, which is what we recommend. 

Here’s a glimpse into what we uncovered:

    • The site’s loading speed and performance were held back by things like excessive JavaScript and large file sizes. Improving these factors boosted the client’s user experience, paving the way for more traffic and longer dwell times. 
  • Crawlability issues were stopping key SEO pages from ranking, so resolving them was a high priority (and led to better online visibility). 
  • Broken links were affecting traffic generation and domain authority (since pages containing authority-boosting backlinks were broken). 

An early technical audit gives us a chance to catch and resolve these types of pressing errors.

Once we identified and resolved the client’s major technical SEO issues, it only took a few months to start seeing an ROI. 

The Results: A 2-Point DR Increase, 17% More Traffic, and Keyword Improvements 

It only took 3 months after we implemented the technical fixes to see a 2-point rise in the client’s Domain Rating, meaning they achieved stronger trust levels with Google (which, once again, is extremely important for YMYL sites). 

This is partially due to the fact that we restored all the client’s backlinks, as their profile now contains no broken links:

Technical SEO improvements also enhance your website’s user experience, which can pave the way for more traffic. 

That’s what happened for our client, as they saw a noticeable uptick in keyword rankings and traffic generation:

They’re also ranking for money-making keywords related to their legal business. 

Remember the keyword ‘bereavement pay in California’?

The client now ranks in the #1 organic spot, which was a 21-position increase:

As a bonus, our schema optimization got them to appear in several AI Overviews, as noted by the symbol. 

Google’s AI Overviews are now crucial for online visibility, which is yet another reason why technical audits are valuable (i.e., proper schema markup is crucial for appearing in Overviews, which is part of what we address in our audits). 

Do you want to achieve results like this for your legal website?

All it takes is one of our expert technical SEO audits, so don’t wait to sign up now!