Archive for the ‘Bing SEO’ Category

Optimizing Your Law Firm Website For Top Search Engine Rankings

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

SEO — search engine optimization – is to Google and lawyer websites, what Boolean searches are to Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw. Feeding specific search terms into the search engine quickly produces reliable results consistent with the search terms. SEO relies on keywords and key-phrases (e.g., search terms) that have been narrowed by feeding criteria specific to your practice into the latest web traffic reporting tools.

Lawyer Success, Inc. uses these results to decide to the best and most frequently used keywords and phrases and, more specifically, those likely to generate the highest volume of web traffic to your lawyer website. Google then uses algorithms that interpret the SEO to evaluate your lawyer website and determine your search rankings. When a prospective client uses search terms that contain your keywords and phrases, the SEO elevates your lawyer website search ranking producing consistent search results for both you and the prospective client.

These important tips can complement your SEO campaign:

  • Titles. Your page title is the most important tool you have to attract new clients from Google search listings. Productive titles incorporating SEO increases search engine visibility. SEO is how prospective clients find you on the Web, and factors into their navigation of your lawyer website by guiding them to the specific page that is useful to them.
  • Answers. Clients expect lawyers to answer their questions. Prospective clients searching your lawyer website expect your legal content to answer their questions. Our goal-driven nature sends us to the Web in search of a specific find or to accomplish a particular goal. The next website is just a click-of-the-mouse away, making efficient and relevant legal content interspersed with SEO critical to meeting the needs of prospective clients and keeping them on your lawyer website.
  • Design. Effective lawyer website design complements SEO and promotes the prospective client’s goal-driven search. Remember, you are branding your name and marketing your practice — not advertising. Animation, flashing text, pop-ups, and banners give the appearance of a gaming business, and not a lawyer website. Make your professionalism stand out through tasteful lawyer website design and legal content.
  • Color. Changing the color of visited links guarantees ease-of-navigation for prospective clients visiting your lawyer website. This allows them to exclude pages already visited, and to proceed to pages that spoke to a particular issue or otherwise piqued their interest. Links are generally tied to SEO. For example, links labeled “personal injury” and “product liability” are likely to contain cross-over information; yet, each topic has its own link allowing the prospective client to discern the difference. The changing color link also helps visitors easily identify and recall pages on your lawyer website that were helpful.
  • Format. Your legal content needs to be “scannable” meaning you are writing for an online audience, as opposed to a print media. Prospective clients are drawn to the use of short paragraphs, simple writing style, highlighted keywords, bulleted lists, and subheads. The idea is to draw the visitor’s eye to your page using understated, yet highly-effective formatting.

The SEO experts

At Lawyer Success, Inc., optimizing your lawyer website for great search engine rankings is our biggest goal. We provide that critical keyword research, and guarantee the results. Our consultants are happy to show you how to stay competitive and increase your client-base through no-obligation strategies. Our lawyer website design and 24/7 client-support saves you both time and money! Ask about our Free, No Risk lawyer website design when you call.

Call For Free Advice & Guidance From Experts, Not Sales People! Call 1 (800) 877-2776 Today.

The Debate Continues: Black Hat, White Hat or Just Plain Bad SEO?

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

The goal of Google’s panda update was to ferret out black hat SEO, however in the process it penalized some websites which were not perhaps intentionally duplicitous, but happened to be filled with plain bad SEO. Even if your legal website or blog was not one of the many who were slapped by the new update, it could be time to do another “once-over” to ensure your legal site does not employ any of the tactics which could garner you a penalty.

What is Black Hat SEO?

Sooner or later Google will catch most all black hat tricks, so it’s important that you know exactly what to look for. If you are not clear on what black hat SEO really consists of, it basically refers to search engine optimization “tricks” which are downright underhanded and unethical. Black hat SEO seeks to deceive the search engines, giving your legal site a ranking it may not deserve. The most common ploys used during black hat SEO consist of keyword stuffing, hidden or invisible text, cloaking, content farming or link farms. While these tactics will get your website noticed quickly by the search engines, they fail to provide your potential clients with anything of real value.

Keyword Stuffing, Content Farming and Link Farms

Keyword stuffing consists of filling your legal website with information which is almost unintelligible due to the overuse of keywords. Unethical SEO companies also write keywords in white text onto a white background—you or I are unable to see the keywords with our human eyes, yet search engine spiders can easily see them, bringing about an immediate bump up the search engine ladder, at least until the search engine discovers the ruse. Spinning software takes one article which might have started out as high quality copy, then spins it into hundreds of articles used by many companies as a means to link to their site. Again, most search engines will eventually figure it out if you are using content farming or article spinning techniques. A link farm consists of a website which is set up with no other purpose than increasing the link popularity of other sites by increasing incoming links to those sites. These links are generally totally unrelated, and will be picked up by the search engines.

What is White Hat SEO?

White hat SEO will enhance the quality of your legal website by giving value to your reader, and, although it will take longer than using black hat SEO, you will eventually earn a high website ranking. White hat SEO chooses a solid keyword phrase which accurately represents your legal page, then uses it in the Meta tags. White hat SEO contains content which accurately reflects your business and your website, and gives your reader value and worth. When your legal website garners other high-quality websites linking to a legal blog post or page within your legal website, you have a quality inbound link, further boosting your search engine rankings. This is in sharp contrast to black hat SEO which incorporates a less than stellar link list which is traded simply to boost search results. In short, any SEO tactic which conforms to the stated guidelines of search engines, making no attempt to deceive them, is considered white hat SEO.

What if Your Legal SEO is Just Plain Bad?

Even if you have avoided being penalized for obvious black hat SEO techniques on your site, you still need to be hyper-vigilant about checking your legal sites often to ensure the content is superior, the links are legitimate and of excellent quality, and, while your keywords are used judiciously they are also used in a way that makes sense and doesn’t alienate your reader. Using white hat, organic SEO will get your legal website noticed—in a good way!

Don’t Ignore Attorney Website SEO for Bing Search Engine

Monday, January 17th, 2011

Following the finalized Yahoo-Bing Merger last April, many of us have been carefully watching the Bing search machine to see how it stacks up to Google for our law firm SEO. Predictions are rolling in that Bing will continue to gain popularity over the next few years for a variety of reasons. First of all, Bing is on a long-term strategic plan, meaning they care less about next year than they do about the next five—or ten. Bing is heavily investing in search, and focused on improving relations with in-house SEO teams. Just as Google’s algorithms have improved over time, Bing’s innovations will also bring about positive changes. Because some search engine users are beginning to see Google as a greedy, ever-more commercialized business, Bing may be benefitting from the comparison—and so may your law office websites.

Bing’s Webmaster and Maps

It can be a problem to get new sites indexed, and Bing can be especially slow to index a new site, especially in the beginning. You may see only part of your lawyer website indexed at first, which can be detrimental to any new site’s success. The good news is that the Bing webmaster center has a specific area which allows users to submit their own XML sitemap which in turn lets Bing crawl your attorney website more quickly. Bing has really been “one-upping” Google when it comes to providing an online map service. It is expected that if Google doesn’t get in the game quickly that Bing’s impressive beta map will steal the market share. Make sure your law firm’s physical address is listed on the Bing maps so you can be more readily found.

Target Long Tail Keywords

Bing has a “related searches” feature which assists users in narrowing down their search by (politely) suggesting more specific phrases they might want to try. This makes it easier to be found using long tail keywords. Should you be unfamiliar with the long tail concept, keywords can basically be split into either short tail keywords or long tail keywords, or, more simply, broad keywords or narrow keywords. A long tail keyword tends to target the less-competitive niche markets rather than the immensely competitive broad keywords. A long tail keyword for your law office websites could be “Denver personal injury attorneys” rather than the short tail version of “Denver attorneys.” Understandably, “Denver attorneys” would easily have 30 times as many competitors as “Denver personal injury attorneys,” however the short tail version would get more searches each month. If you wonder why anybody would want to target hundreds of keywords which bring only small traffic, the answer is that there is less competition, which means the long tail keywords can bring you lots of traffic overall, which is why Bing is targeting these keywords.

Outgoing Links

If you use the search operator “linkfromdomain” on Bing, you will be able to see all of the pages that a given site links to; type “linkfromdomain:yourwebsitesname.com” into the search bar on Bing, and you will immediately see the quality and relevancy of the sites you are linking to. If your law firm website is having trouble ranking for a specific subject, you can easily use this tool to ensure the sites your firm is linked to contain the same subject or keyword. Don’t forget that many search engines, in effect, judge your law firm website by who you hang out with, or in the web world, who or what you are linked to.

Social Media and Bing

Bing is rushing to establish itself as the search engine to choose if you want to index social networks like Twitter or Facebook more quickly and, in fact, if you want to get a new attorney website page indexed fast, post a link to it on Twitter. Since Facebook’s deepest desire is to become the next Google, they have structured a deal with Bing which allows Bing to become the first search engine to show U.S. users which sites Facebook friends like. The companies have entered into an alliance arrangement in an attempt to best the giant, Google.  Both Bing and Facebook report they see future opportunities to surface people who are specific-subject experts.

As with Google search, Bing wants quality content, however links and competitive keywords will push your attorney website to the top of Bing’s search. Microsoft has a huge budget to promote Bing, meaning you will likely see at the very least, an early surge of Bing users. Will Bing go the distance? Only time will tell, however for the health of your law firm website, it is well worth your while to learn as much Bing SEO as possible. Bing represents legitimate competition to the best search engine of the day, so jump on the train before it leaves the station!