Archive for the ‘Lawyer Website Design’ Category

The Best SEO Strategies for New Websites

Tuesday, March 20th, 2012

Those who are new to the SEO game may find it entirely overwhelming, and are not even sure what a search-engine friendly website consists of. It can feel like too much information crowding into your brain, and you may even start to wonder if it’s worth it to have a website for your business. Believe me—it is. And not only is it well-worth it, but as you learn the tips and techniques for creating a website which is so well-optimized that not only are you bringing in highly targeted traffic but are also climbing steadily up the rankings, you will actually find yourself enjoying the process. You will learn how to tweak your website on a regular basis to continue to rack up conversions and bring new readers to your site the longer your website is up.

Your Website’s Design
First of all you need to ensure your overall design is SEO-friendly, especially your navigation. You want each and every page of your site to be able to be found easily and indexed quickly through Google and other search engines. If you are unsure whether your current links are all fully accessible from your homepage, use a tool such as the SEO Chat Link Analyzer Tool which can show you how your site is crawled by spiders. Any problems with internal linking or navigation on your site can hurt your overall search engine optimization, not to mention cut down on your readers. Don’t use JavaScript navigation as search engines may be prevented from indexing the entire content of your site because of it.

Target Your Website Content
Because a spider takes mere milliseconds when determining what a given page on your website is all about, every single page must have a phenomenal HTML title, which is a maximum of 66 characters. Granted, that’s not much space to pack a punch in, but your meta description gives you 250 characters to play with. Both of these should concisely identify what your site is all about, must read well, and must use your highly targeted keywords all wrapped up in a grammatically correct, highly readable sentence.

Your content is hugely important, and the more original and useful your content is, the higher you will climb in Google’s rankings. Your goal is to attract readers, not just insert your keywords here and there in an attempt to fool Google. One of the criteria of Google in assessing your website is to determine how long your visitors spend on your website after they chose it from a list of results. What this means is that your keywords must be exceptional, and must match what people will type in to find a business such as yours. High-quality content also attracts organic links from other websites, which will also boost your visibility and your traffic.

Implement a Sitemap on your Website
You will need to include a sitemap on your site which uses hyperlinks to link to your other pages. The sitemap will contain a categorized list of all the pages which are a part of your website and the anchor text which is used for each link must reflect the content of the page through the use of one or two highly targeted and highly relevant keywords. Always avoid duplicate content on your site as it will get you penalized by Google, and be sure to take the time to read Google’s guidelines. The more you adhere to the stated guidelines the better chance you will have to make your website a glowing success, and the less chance you will get a reprimand by Google for violating rules.

Optimization to Decrease Bounce Rate

Wednesday, March 7th, 2012

Bounce rate refers to those people who visit a single page of your web site, quickly “bouncing” away without further exploration. If your site suffers from a high bounce rate, it means you are not grabbing your visitor’s attention, and offering something which entices them to stay. The “average” bounce rate is from 40-60%, although these numbers change according to the type of website. Informational websites have an average bounce rate of 35-55%, while blogs typically have a much higher bounce rate between 55-75%. Whatever type of website you currently have, if your bounce rate is over 60% you should definitely be concerned, and if it’s over 80%, you have a serious problem. You can easily check your bounce rate through the use of Google Analytics or a similar program.

Causes of a High Bounce Rate

There are a wide variety of reasons your users may be bouncing away from your site, and most all of them can be fixed with a little elbow grease and ingenuity.

• Slow loading pages may be a primary cause of website bounce. Our increasingly busy world dictates that users want the website they click on to load almost instantaneously, and if it doesn’t, they rarely wait around, clicking away to a site which will load quickly. Make sure your site isn’t so plastered with photos and other bells and whistles that it loads slowly on lower speed Internet connections. Also, you will need to determine whether the person who built your site might have worked in Google Chrome, failing to check the site’s performance in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. Quite often a site which loads perfectly in one browser may struggle in another.

• A confusing site design can also leave your visitors frustrated and, well, gone. Your website should immediately convey trust as well as your core message and should be clearly organized, making it easy for your readers to navigate. While there are many ways to lay out your landing page, the right creative layout can be critical, and will take into account your specific product or service, your sales pitch and any additional information you feel is critical to your overall business theme. Depending on your specific product or service, you may need more text content or more visual content to build your credibility. Whatever your needs and the needs of your customer, keep your design simple, and don’t force your visitors to spend their valuable time searching for what they need. Put yourself in their place, and determine how you would want to find what you needed in the most expedient manner possible. Don’t lose traffic and revenue from a poor website design and eliminate distractions so your visitors can focus on your primary message.

• Make sure you are clear about your target customer—your goal is to target those people who are most likely to convert. Many websites unwittingly attract the wrong prospects, meaning the bounce rate goes up exponentially. You will use your keywords, content writing and landing page headlines to attract your ideal prospect, and when you have done that, there will be far fewer bounces away from your site. Once you’ve clearly identified your target customer, make sure you don’t unwittingly interrupt their experience on your site, which goes back to a clear, easy to use website design.

• Ensure there is a clear call to action on your site, and that you have provided the necessary path which leads to that action. Your landing page requires a concise next step, and informational sites will have a call to action on the home page. Make sure you are using your chosen keywords in the best way possible. Many times a search for a specific term leads the user to a site which is note even remotely what they had in mind. Highly searched, generic keywords are useless in the end if you are not providing what those people are searching for, and can be a significant cause of a high bounce rate.

Lowering your bounce rate may take some hard work, but the results are well worth it. Start small, expanding bit by bit, and reviewing your results along the way.

How Your Users Will Judge Your Business by Your Website

Thursday, February 16th, 2012

Most all of us tend to judge others, at least in part, by our first impression of how they appear or present themselves. We judge businesses in much the same way. And guess what—we also judge businesses by how we perceive their website. In fact, the Stanford Web Credibility Project states that at least seventy-five percent of us freely admit to making judgments about a business’s credibility based solely on the website design and presentation. After reading that sentence you may be frantically wondering just how many times your site has been judged, whether that judgment was positive or negative and if it has hurt your rankings and conversions.

What is Credibility?

Of course credibility is important in your virtual business, but it can be just as much, if not more, credible in your online business. You may be wondering just what credibility really is. It its most concise form, credibility encompasses both expertise in your field and a solid feeling of trustworthiness. If your website visitors perceive your site as truthful and unbiased they will view you—the person behind the website—as experienced and knowledgeable. Add all these qualities together, and you have credibility.  Consider the truly massive amount of information on the web, and you will see why it is more important than ever to stand out from all the rest, but only in the best kind of way. People find credible websites appealing, and the most highly credible websites are able to actually change the attitudes and behavior of their users.

Design Mistakes Which Can Damage Your Site’s Credibility

Elements of your design, including photos, graphics, dominant colors and your company logo all mix together to provide credibility. Research has shown, for instance, that when websites use a dominant red background in their design, users perceive the site as evil or dangerous. Very dark colors were found to give a sense of foreboding, and all in all there were few positive reactions to extreme colors of any type. Pictures and logos are harder to get a handle on, as the reactions to both were mostly based on personal preference. All of those questioned during the research on website design agreed that a website needed, first and foremost, to appear professional.

Positive Design Aspects Which Increase Credibility and Conversions

Keep your site professional, and make it extremely easy to verify the accuracy of all information on your site. You can do this through third party citations or links to your source data. Make a point of playing up the expertise behind the products, content and services you provide. It should be apparent that there is organization behind your site, and it should be very easy to find contact information for you.

Be sure to add your physical address and phone number as this is one of the primary ways you will build trust among your users. You want users to have no doubt that your organization is real, so provide evidence that you have a real business in the real world. You can show photos of your office, or list your membership with your local Chamber. Your site should be useful, but should also be easy to use. Update content often to give your users the sense that you are reviewing your site often. Don’t go crazy with advertisements or offers—users find it distracting and a little tacky. Avoid errors of any kind—even the smallest error in spelling, grammar, sentence structure or information can damage your overall credibility. Take the extra time and proofread not once, but several times.

If you have followed standard website design guidelines, then you should begin to see the fruits of your efforts very soon through increased traffic and a boost in your rankings. Building trust takes time, whether in real life or online, but the reward is worth the time.

Building Links for Your Legal Firm’s Website without Anchor Text

Friday, February 10th, 2012

Anchor text references the words which make up a link on your law firm’s website—for example if you have the sentence “If you have been in a car accident, call a personal injury attorney,” the words “personal injury attorney” are your anchor text which links back to your legal website and the name of your firm. Anchor text is used when you want your website to rank for a specific keyword, however it’s easy to go overboard with anchor text when optimizing your law firm’s website; too much and you will end up accomplishing the exact opposite of what you intended, as Google will penalize your site.  When you are clear on which keyword you want to target, and are getting links on your website with the desired keyword, that’s all well and good, but you must be careful about having too many links which look exactly the same. If 99% of the links which point to your law firm’s website pages are “personal injury attorney,” a red flag goes up to Google that these may not be “normal” links. Because people have exploited anchor text in the past, everyone must now be more careful about how they use it.

Build Your Legal Website’s Links for Branding and Alternative Keyword Phrases

Your goal is to build links to your business/brand name so the brand becomes much more authoritative in Google’s search results. This goes back to Google Instant results in that if someone only “sort of” remembers the name of your law firm and begins typing in hopeful letters in the search bar, you really want your name to pop up under Richardson Law Firm once the potential client has typed in “Ric.”  On the flip side, if your potential client is not really sure of what they are looking for, Google’s suggestions may send them off in a direction that is, unfortunately, not toward your law firm.  Make a list of the keywords your legal website uses, then start typing each one of them into Google’s search bar and see what suggestions come up. This little exercise may send you in another direction when you are considering anchor text. Other major search engines–such as Bing–offer keyword alternatives, so take advantage of that when considering alternative keywords and anchor text.

Why Anchor Text is Important

It is actually possible to achieve top ranking for extremely competitive keywords even though you may have not even a hint of on-page legal SEO elements.  Consider that Monster.com consistently sits in the number one spot when one types in “jobs” in the search bar but that the word “jobs” does not appear on the page in actual text form. By the same token, if you type in “computers” on the Google search bar, six of the top ten pages don’t even contain the word “computers” in the copy, meaning the search results are due solely to the anchor text of inbound links. Therefore it is impossible to say that anchor text is not important, but your firm needs to learn how to use it wisely when building links.

Using Anchor Text Wisely

Anchor text must be used judiciously when building your firm’s legal SEO as using the wrong words can take you even further away from the links you need. It is advisable to avoid using the anchor text “click here,” as the phrase is not specifically related to the content on your legal website—when the crawler examines the “click here” anchor text it may not see any relevant keyword even if that particular link points to a relevant part of your legal website. When considering legal SEO and your law firm’s web design, you should try to use as many keywords as possible from the list you developed during the planning process. Then determine what anchor text is absolutely essential to your firm’s site, and use only the most critically important.

Building Your Links Through Images

Monday, January 9th, 2012

Image optimization can be a time-honored way to a successful link-building strategy throughout your website when used judiciously . You may have twenty or fifty images which each reside on their own page of your website and have a separate page ranking from one another. If your entire purpose is to give these images away to anyone who wants them in exchange for a valuable link, you will probably use a type of contact form or else put the linking code on the page itself with accompanying simple instructions. By setting your photos up in this manner you have effectively created a relatively low maintenance link building method.

How to Implement This Method of Link Building

Some website owners hire a professional photographer, however this can be incredibly expensive plus adds copyright issues to the mix. A much better idea is to hire an aspiring photographer who is just looking to get his or her photographs out there, seen by others, or, as an alternative you can take the photographs yourself. Today’s easy-to-use, high resolution digital cameras lend themselves to amateur photographer use so long as your photos are high quality. If you simply don’t have any sort of talent in the photography realm, or don’t have a moment of spare time in your already-busy life, then you may have a friend who takes photos as a hobby or a relative who aspires to be a professional photographer.

Why Use Images?

As the old saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. In fact, photos tell stories and trigger emotions—both worthy goals for your website. Adding high quality images to your website makes it more successful, then when you swap some of your photos in return for a high-quality link, not only are people looking at your photo, you are helping your website climb up in rankings and garner more traffic in the process. While many websites attempt to halt theft of their photos by others, the advent of copy and paste has made this practically impossible. So, rather than spending your precious time attempting to stop photo theft, how about altering the way you are thinking about your images, and using them to your advantage?

Finding the Lifted Images

If you choose not to simply offer the photos free of charge in exchange for a link, then consider this method for finding photos others have “lifted” form your site. You will need to use a reverse search engine to do this which will search for a similar image within the web database. Tineye is a good one to try when you are looking for your photographs among billions on the web. Once you find your photographs on other people’s websites, simply contact the webmaster and ask that they link back to your original photo since they obviously liked your image.

Make Your Images Free—in Exchange for a Link

While some dedicated image thieves will not bother to respond, you will gain a certain amount of valuable links using this method, not to mention a potentially new relationship. Once you’ve gained links from those who were already using your image, you might as well get rid of any anti-copy protection on your site, and make the photos free to anyone who will link back to your site. Anyone who is bound and determined to use your images will find a way, so it’s much better to approach the process with the idea of giving the photos away rather than having to track down image-thieves. The more quality links you gain to your site, the better for your rankings, so don’t be shy about allowing others to “steal” your photographs.

Creating a Website which is SEO-Friendly

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Simply put, a website which is search engine-friendly is one which can be easily and quickly crawled and indexed. It is definitely to your advantage to make sure your website meets these criteria, as the payoff can be huge. In order for your targeted user to find your site—then love it so much they not only want to stay and read, but will tell all their friends about it—as well as climb the search engine ranking systems, your site must be SEO-friendly.

Keywords Matter

The first step in creating a site which is SEO-friendly is to identify your most valuable keywords. Your keywords are the backbone of your site, and choosing them quickly, or without putting enough thought into the matter will almost certainly come back to haunt you down the road. Take the time now, to thoroughly research your keywords and come up with the most specific, targeted, relevant keywords that could possibly exist for your particular website, product and service.

Use you keywords within your page URLs, and in your title tag for openers; the title tag is the very most valuable meta tag as it is “visible” text, so make sure your title tag has unique qualities on each and every page, while incorporating your best keywords. The text which comprises each of your pages must also have your keywords sprinkled throughout, but in a completely natural manner—sometimes easier said than done. The keywords need to be in your paragraph headers as well as the first sentence of your article, then need to appear with a 3-5% concentration throughout the article, with more of them appearing above the fold than below. Keeping your page text to approximately 400-600 words is considered ideal, making sure to have short, easily scannable paragraphs and plenty of bulleted or numbered lists.

Adding a blog to your website is an excellent way to attract the Google spiders. Make sure you not only offer your reader exceptionally high quality material which both engages their interest and teaches them something as well, but that each post is keyword-enriched, with words which are relevant to your topic.

Other Factors in Making Your Website SEO-Friendly

First, ensure your site is totally compatible with all major browsers, as sometimes they aren’t. Give every page a unique title and description, and always place the site’s menu in a place at the top which is visually easy to spot. Do your level best to avoid using Flash as well as frames. The reasoning behind this tip is that search engine spiders don’t index flash, meaning all the content you are expecting people to find and read is virtually worthless when it exists in a Flash file. If your entire site has been built around Flash, it is known in the industry as SEO suicide—avoid it at all costs.  Spiders also have difficulty crawling through your website if it makes use of frames. Just like Flash, none of the content inside your frames will be able to be indexed, rather the spider will receive an error message and move on to a site they can index.

Finally, work with your site designer to ensure you are using a CSS navigational menu, making your navigational text able to be easily crawled and indexed. Even better, include a multi-level CSS drop down menu which will allow you to incorporate every page on your site into your menu. The makes it much easier for users, in that they have fewer clicks to get to a desired website, as well as giving them instant sitemaps. Keep your site SEO-friendly, and you will be richly rewarded in the not-too-distant future.

Any Way You Slice It, Links Matter

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

Most of us who are relatively new to search engine optimization have some idea that links are important, but only in a vague, fuzzy way. We may understand that linking will help our site climb the rankings, but don’t have a good handle on how to use that information to our advantage. Without a solid understanding of linking and its importance it can be difficult to build a sound link strategy, so some basics about how great links build great websites can be helpful.

A Roadmap to Great Content

Just as you wouldn’t set out in a large city you’ve never visited before without a map, so you shouldn’t throw your website out into the Internet world without links which allow others to find you quickly and easily. Back in the 1990’s, the notion of hyperlinks evolved, allowing users a quick and easy way to jump quickly from one spot to another—whether within a document itself or from one page to another. In the initial days of the web there were no search engines, meaning links were the only way to successfully navigate and end up where you wanted to be.

People were responsible for making notes of sites they felt others would benefit from, then adding links to their own site. Once the first main search engine climbed on board with spiders and crawlers in 1994, the programmers for the search engines recognized that tracking links was an especially useful way to discover and index new sites. The end result is that if you want to find a specific place on the web, following links—just like following a roadmap—can be the best way to get where you want to go. Our modern day search engines efficiently locate and index all pages on your site, however without any links your site becomes virtually invisible in the eyes of organic search results.

How a Search Engine is Different than a Human

Apart from the obvious differences, search engines are not adept at actual thinking, therefore are unable to find a website by typing in a URL or running a Google search of whatever pops into their heads. Search engine spiders do what they are programmed to do, and that programming relies heavily on links which send the spider jumping from one place to another. Spider-based searches only find the newest sites and index them by following links. If you want the spiders to visit and index your site—and that is the goal, after all—then you must build links from your site to other spider-indexed sites. The faster you gain high-quality links, the faster you will be indexed, and the higher number of links you gain, the more Google and other search engines will recognize you as an expert in your area.

Incoming Links Help Search Engines Understand Your Site

Because spiders are not humans, they have difficulty understanding what your site is about, or how others view your site. What spiders do excel at is understanding links; if the majority of the links to your site include the phrase cat toys, then it’s a pretty sure bet that your site either talks about, sells or is in some way related to cat toys. Search engines are progressing, and getting smarter every day. They have reached the point where they understand that an automobile and a car are essentially the same thing, or that a Toyota, Ford and Chevy are all types of cars. What this means in terms of building links is that the spider can look at the incoming links text, then be able to categorize your website under a specific theme. Remember that in the same manner, your internal linking structure tells the search engine how you see your own site, so it’s an important point to remember when working on your internal linking strategy.  As you can see, links are critical to the ultimate success of your website, therefore spending the time to truly understand how you can get the best links on your site is worth the effort.

Truly Engaged Employees Lead to Highly Successful Law Firms

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Janet Ellen Raasch
Janet Ellen Raasch is a writer, ghostwriter and blogger (www.constantcontentblog.com) who works closely with professional services providers – especially lawyers, law firms, legal consultants and legal organizations – to help them achieve name recognition and new business through publication of keyword-rich content for the web and social media sites as well as articles and books for print. She can be reached at (303) 399-5041 or [email protected].

A truly engaged employee is one who believes so strongly in an organization that he or she invests discretionary effort in its success. In other words, a truly engaged employee is someone who regularly goes above and beyond his or her job description.

What does this mean in a law firm? While equity partners (and those on the track to become equity partners) are best thought of as owners rather than employees, everyone else should be considered an employee.

The engaged non-equity track associate involved in document review will notice and point out an interesting new detail. The non-engaged counterpart could ignore this detail, because it might make the job more difficult.

The engaged paralegal or legal assistant will cheerfully work evenings and weekends as a courtroom date draws near. The non-engaged employee will complain and sulk.

The engaged mail room person will deliver a registered letter to a lawyer as soon as it arrives, allowing for timely consideration and response. The non-engaged employee will wait until the next scheduled delivery cycle.

And finally, the engaged marketing director/manager/support person will devote extra time and effort to creating a truly customized client proposal, rather than simply answering RFP questions with the usual non-specific content.

In addition, employee engagement is not limited to the workplace. An engaged employee will rave about his or her law firm outside the office as well — whether to neighbors on the sidewalk, fellow parents at a soccer game, or someone they meet at book club or a cocktail party.

When you consider these examples, it is easy to see how truly engaged employees can propel law firms from run-of-the-mill to highly successful. “Defining and communicating the unique story or message at the heart of your law firm is essential to employee engagement,” said Laura Wegscheid.

Wegscheid discussed why law firms should enhance employee engagement in order to improve morale, operations and the bottom line. This presentation to the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Legal Marketing Association (www.legalmarketing.org/rockymountain) took place Sept. 13 at Fogo de Chao Restaurant in Lower Downtown Denver.

Wegscheid is a senior consultant with Cast Communication Design (www.castcommunicationdesign.com), an internal communications consulting firm focused on helping businesses engage and align their employees.

The value of engaged employees

Modern research organizations use rigorous science to assess levels of employee engagement and link engagement to performance.

In 2009, Hewitt discovered that businesses with highly engaged employees have total shareholder return 19 percent higher than firms with average engagement.

According to a study of a large professional services firm by the Hay Group, the firm’s five most-engaged regional offices generated 43 percent more revenue per consultant (think lawyer) than the firm’s five least-engaged offices.

“According to Colorado Bar Association statistics,” said Wegscheid, “the average attorney has $446,500 in billable per year. A 43 percent increase adds an additional $191,995 to this amount, for a total of $638,495 per lawyer. That translates into $1.9 million extra for a firm of 10 attorneys, $3.8 million for 20 attorneys and $5.8 million for 30 attorneys. This is a lot of money.”

Research clearly demonstrates that the more engaged your employees, the better your revenue, productivity, earnings, shareholder returns, employee retention and customer loyalty.

According to Gallup, about 16 percent of employees at any business are actively disengaged. “Some call these people ‘CAVE dwellers,’ for ‘consistently against virtually everything,’” said Wegscheid. “They will actively try to destroy your organization.

“An additional 29 percent truly believe in your business and are actively engaged in making it succeed,” said Wegscheid. “That leaves the majority of your employees — approximately 55 percent — who are neither disengaged nor engaged. Smart businesses focus on transforming these ‘neutrals’ into highly engaged employees.”

How to encourage employee engagement

Good internal communication is one of the best ways to move employees out of the middle and into the “high engagement” zone.

“Internal communication is evolving,” said Wegscheid, “with the balance shifting from a model weighted by formality and control towards a model that facilitates employee engagement. Few organizations fall squarely into one of these four models.”

The inner circle model has the highest level of formality/control and the lowest level of employee engagement. Executives confer behind closed doors with no employee input. Information travels through formal channels from the top down to managers, who tell employees what to do – but not why. “Most, but not all, organizations have moved beyond this model,” said Wegscheid.

The cascade model is still quite controlled, but has a little more employment engagement. Decisions are made at the top and information flows from the top down, but managers are expected to share some information with their teams.

In the dialogue model, decisions and information still flow from the top – but are often accompanied by an invitation to ask questions. Feedback is limited to topics raised by leadership. The process is formal, but two-way, with the goal of making sure employees understand the information that was communicated.

“Most organizations, including law firms, currently operate at the cascade level and perhaps at the dialogue level,” said Wegscheid.

The community model combines the highest levels of employee engagement with informality and freedom of expression. “This model shares a mindset with social media,” said Wegscheid. “Knowledge is not controlled at the top, but contributed by and commented on by all participants in a network. Everyone has something to contribute.”

In the community model, leadership is still needed but messages can be initiated by anyone, encouraging the free flow of information throughout an organization. In this model, individuals feel comfortable sharing expertise and learning from each other, which results in spontaneous collaboration by employees at all levels to solve a problem, rather than formal teams composed only of executives. Employees as well as owners feel invested in the results.

“Because of sensitive information, proprietary relationships and a billable hour model that does not reward efficiency, the community model can be challenging for law firms,” said Wegscheid. “However, there are elements of this model that can be incorporated.

Engaged employees are those who understand and believe in a law firm’s message. This message can be created at the top and then delivered formally to employees (a low-engagement model). Conversely, it can be created collaboratively (with facilitation by firm leaders) and made part of an ongoing conversation among employees (a high-engagement model). Or it can be somewhere in between.

“The important thing,” said Wegscheid, “is to understand the value of employee engagement and actively consider which steps your firm can take to improve it – and consequently improve the firm’s bottom line.”

SEO Strategies to Boost Your Legal Website’s Organic Rankings

Tuesday, September 27th, 2011

By now most of us are at least somewhat familiar with the SEO strategies used to boost our legal website up into the much-coveted first page place of honor. Because Google gets smarter almost by the hour, it continuously comes up with more advanced algorithms which strive to halt the use of so-called “black hat” SEO tactics, while encouraging the use of organic SEO. While the term “organic search” sounds a bit like something you might find at the Whole Foods market, it is simply the latest buzzword for a search which returns a ranking result based on keyword relevancy and overall content. This is in direct contrast to the listings which are based solely on who dug the deepest into their pockets to appear at the top. The idea of organic search rankings is to quickly return to the user the most relevant results based on the page’s content, the relevant links which point to the page and a smattering of other so-called “objective” criteria.

Advantages of Organic Law Firm SEO

The primary advantage of organic SEO is that we tend to trust the results more, and they are often much more relevant than sponsored results.  Organic searches typically will produce higher click-through rates for your legal website (all other things being equal) thereby maximizing traffic to your web pages. If there is a downside to organic SEO, it is simply one of time. Organic results rarely come quickly, rather build slowly but surely.

Of huge importance in legal web pages and legal web blogs is promoting your brand, and putting your resources into organic search results can give you a decided marketing edge in this area.  Most of us are skeptics when we see a television commercial, an ad on the Web or a sponsored ad on a search engine because we are fully aware that the ads are commercially motivated and may not yield us the results we are after.  Another high-ranking advantage of organic SEO is that it’s free! Google has remained adamant about not charging for inclusion in their index of billions of pages, therefore organic SEO is one of the few things which you really don’t have to pay for.

How to Boost Organic Search Engine Rankings

In order to fine-tune your legal web pages to the preferences of the major search engines, you must first know what each search engine is looking for, and why the law firm at the top of the page is able to hold that position week after week.  Some search engines tend to index more of your pages than others, meaning no two search engines will be analyzing exactly the same pages.

Location is Key, Keywords are Critical

Most search engines first consider the same aspect of those who sell real estate—location, location, location. In this instance location refers to where your keywords appear as well as how often your keywords appear in relation to other words on your legal web page. The assumption is that any page which is relevant to your overall topic will, of course, mention your keywords near the top of the page, in the headline and in the first few paragraphs of text. While your keywords are critical, if a search engine discovers you have repeated keywords hundreds of time in an effort to climb up the search engine ladder, it will judge your entire site to be spam. Such a slap on the wrist can be extremely hard to recover from, so use your keywords judiciously.

Other Important Considerations

Make sure your legal website is clean and easy to navigate—not only will your potential clients thank you, but the search engines will have a much easier time locating your legal web pages as well as all the sub-pages.  Take great pains to link each of your legal website or legal blog pages to other pages within your website if you don’t want your rankings to go down. High quality links which are directly relevant to your legal sites can strategically boost ratings; if you include relevant links from government or education sites, you will see a much quicker upswing. Finally, if you have a clear theme which runs through each page of your site, you stand a better chance of a good ranking.

Headlines and Copy

And, of course, nobody reaches the ranks of the privileged few at the top without clear, keyword rich headlines in strategic locations, and high-quality content which boasts keywords scattered naturally throughout the pages rather than appearing as though they have been artificially added. Your copy must be enticing, unique, and optimized all at once. The longer your site has been around, the more authoritative it is judged to be, at least by the search engines, so make sure you are abiding by the basic rules of organic SEO, and be patient. Soon, you will be rewarded by your law firm’s site popping up on the very first page of the search, and you will be out of the choppy waters and into smooth sailing.

Call us today for a free discuss about your law firm website at (769) 218-6099.

Managing Keywords on Your Law Firm Website to Eliminate Unwanted Clicks

Saturday, September 24th, 2011

If you are fortunate enough to have reached and maintained your legal web page ranking goal, the next step is to commit to a certain level of maintenance to keep them at their present coveted position.   It can be said with reasonable assurance that throughout your attorney SEO campaign you will notice three stages, or three critical areas of importance as they relate to keywords. Occasionally you may see an initial surge or spike soon after your legal pages are published, crawled, indexed and scored. If your pages demonstrate an authority in your particular niche (and they certainly should) they may well remain buoyant, however if your legal site’s keywords have millions of competing sites with the same keywords, that initial spike can spiral downward quickly.

Managing the Rollover Effect

Following the initial spike of your legal pages ranking, you could also see something known as the roll-over effect. This is relatively common especially in legal blog sites in which there are a set number of posts on a page, then the results roll off the page into an archive, or into pages further down the line. The problem lies in those important links on your legal site; when the page rolls into an archive or a page 2, 3 or 4, the links roll over as well, causing your pages to take a significant dip in search engine ratings.

And Finally—the Comeback

Once your legal website has firmly established trust, stability, quality and relevancy, that roll-over dip which likely filled you with dismay will be relegated to only a dim memory. When you are considered an authority on your subject, and those who are searching for answers to critical questions find them in spades on your legal sites, you have likely passed the search engine algorithm litmus test.

Your Ultimate Goal

The goal you should be shooting for is to naturally attract more of the quality potential clients you want, and less traffic you don’t want, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to consistently focus on keyword selection on an ongoing basis. Keyword management is fast becoming critical to your overall bottom line, therefore each and every keyword in your arsenal must deliver maximum bang for the buck. Be ruthless when you find under-performing keywords which are not delivering conversions. Add new keywords, but only after you have done some in-depth keyword research. Raw query logs and reports are helpful in showing you which terms your potential clients are actually searching for, so take advantage of them. Refine any broad-match keywords or phrases with exact matches; you will see your traffic refined, your conversion rates increased, and your search engine ranking climbing quickly.

Don’t Forget Negative Keywords

Many people are unfamiliar with negative keywords, which are essentially keywords that you don’t want to be found under. Again, check the raw query logs and reports, but look for queries which are really irrelevant to your legal website or legal blog, and add the terms to your negative keyword list. It’s extremely important that you monitor your keywords on a regular basis in order to gauge their continued effectiveness.

Check Out Your Competition

Just as you need to monitor your keywords, you also need to continuously monitor your closest competitors. Although you may be king of the mountain today, other law firms can gain dominance through SEO as well, toppling you from your throne without warning. Because 42% of all searchers click on the top search engine result, it is certainly a position worth fighting for and constant tending to. In the end, just as anything worthwhile requires ongoing attention, so will your legal website and legal blog. Monitor your keywords, add quality content often, strive to include quality links, and soon you will have achieved organic search engine nirvana.