Legal websites with little or no fresh, engaging content usually attract limited traffic, and even fewer contact to client conversions. The content on your legal website, in the form of articles, newsletters, blogs, etc., sends a message to potential clients and provides critical information for those searching for an attorney to handle their important legal matters. Even though search engines do not disclose the criteria they use to rank attorney websites, specialists in the field are able to spot trends which turn into hallmarks of effective online legal marketing, and content appears in those trends over and over.
Content = Credibility with Google, Yahoo, Bing and other Search Engines
One reason for the extreme importance of your legal website’s content is that great content increases the credibility of your firm. Content can give you the extra boost your legal firm needs to push you up above the rest of the crowd. Your legal content will serve as a source of education, assuring your future clients that you maintain a website which contains accurate sources of interesting and timely information. If your goal is to give your potential clients confidence in your firm’s capabilities and trustworthiness—and it certainly should be–then content which provides links to other helpful resources and quotes accurate law is essential.
The more useful the content a user can find on your website, the more likely they are to bookmark your firm’s site. Even if they do not need an attorney at this particular point in time, they will remember the information they gleaned from your website and either return, or refer a friend in need.
Content = Search Engine Optimization
Law firm SEO truly starts and ends with the content on your law firm’s website. Your content must be well-written and unique if your goal is to increase search engine optimization.
As search engines crawl through literally billions of web pages per month, they must determine which sites will rank close to the top. While many components factor into this complex decision, content is the most important one. Your precisely targeted content will ensure your website keeps clients coming back time after time.
Tell Google About Your Legal Website’s Content
Google will find your articles based on the written content; therefore you need to tell Google exactly what you are writing about by doing the following:
• Write articles that are at least 300 words, and are extremely topic-focused
• Use your keyword phrase in the title of the post
• Include keyword phrases in your content—but only in context, and don’t over-do it.
While it is not a fact set in stone, it has been observed that if your article consists of more than 5% of your keyword phrases, search engines may penalize you for “keyword stuffing.” Your writing must flow, and although the keywords must be there, they must appear natural and not simply stuck here and there to get them in. Your articles must first appeal to your reader, then to Google.
Once you have informed Google about your legal website, craft your content keeping in mind the fact that web readers don’t read, they scan. Keep your paragraphs and sentences short and concise, and make good use of headlines and bolded items which highlight your most important messages. Next, use bullet points—judiciously—to make the scanned information easier for your reader to process. Remember that people don’t want to see your firm as “faceless,” but rather want to be able to personalize and feel as if they “know” you. You can accomplish this by using attorney biographies, newsletters and blogs, all of which humanize your law firm and make it feel accessible. Never forget that the average person does not have an understanding of “legalese,” and will, therefore, shy away from it. If your prospective client doesn’t have a clue what you are writing about, they will move on to the next legal website. People visit the Internet for information or entertainment, and your potential clients are looking for information. They want their questions answered quickly and concisely, and want to solve their problem in the most expedient manner possible. Keep your content informative, engaging, and update constantly. Soon you will find your firm at the top of the list with happy, repeat customers.
For expert guidance and free advice, call Lawyer Success, Inc to answer all of your questions. Call (769) 218-6099 today.
The parallel question—and equally important one in response to the above title is—“How can I improve my web site’s ranking in search engines?” The number one fact you should keep in mind when considering how to increase traffic to your website—which first requires a high ranking in the search engines—is that study after study has proven that web users almost never look past the first three pages of results when looking for a relevant site. Therefore, if your website is not within the top 30 results, chances are good you will languish in cyberspace.
First, you need to improve your website’s rankings; once you get the click onto your website, it is imperative that you grab them and hold on tight! The very basics to improving the search engine ranking of your law firm’s website include:
Register your website. While this may appear to be a no-brainer, if you want to capitalize on your firm’s popularity, you need to be registered with the top search engines along with as many other high quality websites as possible. You can accomplish this by submission to the free search engines such as Google, submission to the paid search engines such as Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, etc., registration at legal sites such as Findlaw.com. Law.com, Martindale.com, and by exchanging reciprocal links with professional organizations.
Reciprocal Links. The best way, according to Google, to ensure a top listing for your legal website is for it to be linked to other, high-quality websites. This is known as “link popularity,” and is critical to the success of your website. Because Google’s automated search robots jump from page to page via hyperlinks, the more sites that link to your firm—or vice-versa—the more likely Google will list your website. It is important for you to contact other legal websites and ask for reciprocal links.
Relevant content. It cannot be stated often enough that having relevant content on your law firm’s website is critical to your success. The majority of your potential clients have no idea what your law firm’s name is. Therefore, they do not type in “Richardson and Richardson Law Firm,” but rather search by either asking a question—“How do I find a divorce attorney in Austin, Texas?” or they type in a string of words such as “worker’s comp in New Mexico.” For your law firm’s website to respond to search questions like this, you must offer authoritative information on your practice via articles, newsletters, bulletin alerts, links, statistics, etc.
While there are many more ways to increase your search engine rankings, these are the basics of law firm website SEO. So, once you have made it to the top in the major search engine rankings, and potential clients are clicking on your law firm’s website right and left, how do you ensure they stay on your website and don’t move on to the next law firm?
A great legal website will first be visually appealing, using a combination of appropriate color choices, smart page layouts, visually intriguing graphic designs and carefully chosen image selections. When all of these components are taken together–while your visitor may not know why he or she wants to continue clicking on your website’s links, ultimately leading to a phone call to your office– your initial visual presentation keeps your visitor firmly on your website.
Following the ever-important visual presentation, keep the following tips in mind when thinking of how to keep your clients on your page:
Make sure your content is the highest quality, most informative, interesting, factual content around. Professional legal web writers could be essential to the success of your web content, which can include articles, newsletters, blogs, etc.
Make sure your firm’s telephone number is displayed prominently on each page of your website, and offer an e-mail form on each and every page. While you will have certain customers who will pick up the phone, others will prefer to send an e-mail, so cater to both.
Offer a free e-newsletter, which will build your list of engaged readers and market your firm. Be sure you follow up by e-mailing out a newsletter at least once per month to keep your firm in the forefront of your potential client’s minds.
Consider attorney biographies on your website. It has been proven that this is one of the most popular sites of a legal firm’s website. People feel a more personal connection with your firm when they can actually see the faces, and have some relevant information about your individual attorneys.
Increasing website traffic to your legal firm’s website is a constant and ongoing process, not one that you can do and forget about, however the payoffs can be a huge increase in your ideal client base. Call Lawyer Success, Inc. for a free website traffic coaching call by calling (769) 218-6099.
This past Tuesday, Yahoo flipped the switch to their new search engine “back-end” provider of search results. This only effects the U.S. market as the test for better search continues for Yahoo.
The U.S. Department of Justice approved Microsoft’s takeover of Yahoo search engine and the reasoning is that it would combine the resources of both search indexes from both domains and would speed up Bing’s automated learning. Since Bing and Yahoo would have more data to draw upon, Bing and Yahoo have a better chance of finding what the web user is looking for according the the Dept. of Justice.
The presence of Bing is only noticeable at the surface with a small “Powered by Bing” icon on the search results pages. The actual search results themselves seem very similar, and I doubt that there will be many people distinguish one set of results from the other set.
Bing and Google have been in a “who offers the best features” war since last year, and all three search engines have relative strengths and weaknesses. While Google remains the preferred place for search, it’s only slightly ahead of the new Bing and Yahoo partnership according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s most recent study.
Most analysts agree that the purpose of using Bing as the back-end for Yahoo’s search engine and results pages is to allow Yahoo to focus on being a content portal.
Because of this new partnership, Lawyer Success, Inc. has been getting numerous calls from law firms to have their website reviewed against the new Yahoo/Bing algorithm. If you would like this review, simply call (769) 218-6099 for a review of your attorney web site’s SEO for Bing and Yahoo compliance.
Lawyer Success, Inc launched a new free lawyer advertising website a few months ago and it is already having an immediate impact financially for the attorneys that have been submitting law firm articles to the website. The website is called Law Firm Articles (www.lawfirmarticles.com) and it is one of the top ranked law firm article websites on the web.
The benefits are amazing for the small law firm looking for free attorney advertising. The following are just a few of the benefits of writing quality articles and placing them on LawFirmArticles.com.
It is free.
Only attorneys are allowed to post articles.
You are allowed to link to your website.
You are allowed to add you contact information for potential clients to contact you.
There is no advertising or siphoning of leads from your articles.
Every article is reviewed and activated within an hour of submission.
1 articles generates on average 75 page views per month.
The articles you submit stay on the site as long as you want.
The articles increase your credibility.
The articles show up on page 1 in Google increasing your exposure!
and many more positive benefits. Besides its free.
We recommend writing quality articles about the specific legal issues you resolve for legal consumer. Also, it is always a good idea to explain your fee structure to better pre-qualify your leads unless you are flexible. So if you are interested in free legal advertising for your law firm, visit LawFirmArticles.com for the very best in article marketing for lawyers.
How often do you check your law firm’s rankings for your top key phrases?
Are you about to spot positioning issues in real time in order to take action?
Think of your top keyword phrases as stocks that you are invested in. These are your top money makers and should be watched closely like your investments. You should be able to track the positions of your law firm’s keywords and rankings in a simple one page program. Checking your lawyer website rankings the old fashion way by typing them into Google and then Yahoo and then Bing only to repeat the process 20 to 30 times is a complete waste of time.
Other problems are that law firms simply either don’t know what their best key phrases are to target and do not have the ability to watch their rankings in real time to spot any potential problems in advance of becoming a “page 2 website” or worse, becoming de-indexed from Google, Bing or Yahoo.
Another benefit for being able to track your positioning is to see if the search engine optimization techniques are working or ineffective to your legal website’s organic search positions. Maybe you added some content for a specific key phrase and it increased you position for a relevant key word term?
The bottom line is you should be aware of the best keywords to use for your law firm. Then you should track the positions of your website for these key phrases daily. Once you have accomplished these two goals, you will be able to make the right moves on the search engines to generate lots of new clients.
Our company Lawyer Success, Inc. does provide a service where we can 1) perform the keyword research, 2) monitor the keywords and positions for you and 3) provide you with a PDF summary every week, bi-weekly or monthly. Here is a demo of the report we could provide to you. Lawyer Success Ranking Trend Reports
Each day Lawyer Success, Inc. provides a free law firm seo review for law firms all over the United States. One of the main items we review for the law firm is the website’s code. In most cases, we see that each page contains duplicate title tags throughout the website.
Is this beneficial or detrimental to a lawyer website?
Well, according to Google’s Webmaster Tools, using duplicate or non-relevant titles tags is a bad mistake. In fact, Google may remove web pages that use highly duplicated title tags. So is all that hard work invested in writing legal website copy is down the drain?
No. The good news is you can have a law firm seo expert, like Lawyer Success, take corrective action and resubmit your web pages into the search engine servers.
If your law firm seo doesn’t appear to be working for your law firm, call Lawyer Success, Inc. to review your law firm’s website. Our seo experts have been optimizing lawyer websites for search engine rankings for over 10 years. We will also explain what you may do to fix the problems. Call right now for a free law firm seo review – (769) 218-6099.
Attorney Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of programming a law firm’s website and inner web pages in order to increase it’s readability to the search engine robots while also improving the value of the web pages as calculated by the search engine algorithms.
By performing attorney search engine optimization, the volume and quality of traffic to a website from search engines through natural or organic (unpaid) search results. Search engine optimization or SEO, when prepared and maintained by an SEO expert can position a law firm website at or near the top of the search engine results page. The higher a website or web page is positioned or appears in the search results results, the more search engine visitors that website will receive from the search engine.
Attorney search engine optimization experts typically target several different types of search opportunities such as video search, image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. These techniques develop a law firm website’s web presence.
Highly trained legal SEO experts, such as James Greenier of LawyerSuccess.com, consider how search engines rank websites, how the work and what people search for. In order to properly optimize a legal website a SEO will edit the website’s content, HTML and associated coding to increase the website’s key phrase relevance to researched and targeted keywords. Also, an expert SEO will also remove any barriers to the indexing activities of search engines though the use of robot txt files and XML sitemaps.
Lawyer Success, Inc. offers search engine optimization for law firms as either a stand-alone service or as a part of a more comprehensive Internet marketing campaign. For effective and complete SEO our company requires that we work with clients that enable us to alter their current website design in order to make the proper SEO changes to the HTML source code, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, meta data and other elements that have must be optimized for the purpose of greater search engine exposure.
Our firm does not employ black hat SEO or spamdexing as other less experienced or negligent SEO firms that we compete with. Other SEOs may use methods such as link farms, article spinning, blog spamming, and keyword stuffing in order to trick the search engines for short term gains. These tricks degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.
Call Lawyer Success, Inc today at (769) 218-6099 for a free SEO review of your attorney website. For more information about our experience please check out our About Us page.
OK, everyone says you need to use some social networking websites to get your name out there and position yourself for referrals and such. OK, but that is just the tip of the iceberg folks. I have seen and helped law firms actually get indexed for top keyword phrases on Google and other search engines by optimizing a Facebook page for specific target keyphrases.
Are they getting results! You bet! The bottom line is to find the right lawyer keyphrases for search engine optimization and then use different website or social media sites to generate your positioning within those high value search terms.
Call Law Firm Search Engine Marketing Specialist James Greenier at (769) 218-6099 for a Facebook.com SEO consultation today.
I have worked on several of the most popular and most trafficked legal websites on the web. For over 8 years I have worked with or consulted over 3,500 law firms on website development and lead generation via the Internet.
The very best way to generate substantial and sustainable website leads for your legal website is to do the following:
1. Research top key-phrases being used daily by potential clients. There are some paid and free services out there on the Web to help you find the right keywords for your law firm website. A common mistake for lawyers is to assume or guess which keywords people are typing on the Web to find an attorney in their market. At LawyerSuccess we offer legal keyword research to help you target the “high value” keywords for your firm.
2. Develop search engine optimized content around these “high value” lawyer keywords. Simply write articles using one or two of these key-phrases at least 3 times per 400 words of text.
3. Optimize your content pages using one or two key words or key phrases. Include the key phrases in the description tags, title tags, alt tags, H1 and H2 tags and links on the web page.
4. Obtain inbound links to your website using those keyphrases and have the links point to the page dedicated to that 1 or 2 keyphrases.
By using this keyword enriched seo technique, your website traffic will increase with the type of web visitor you desire – a paying client.
For details about this service and others offered by LawyerSuccess.com, please call James at (769) 218-6099 for more information.
Is your law firm website slipping or missing from the 1st page search results on most major search engines? It could be one of three problem areas.
First common issue for poor search engine positioning for most attorney websites is the lack of proper search engine optimization in the code of the website. This is the most important factor because it effects everything else that you do to position your website within Google, Bing, Ask, Yahoo, etc… If the proper meta tags, descriptions, ALT tags, header tags, and keyword placement is not complete, then link building or content development will produce lackluster results.
Second issue to properly rank your law firm’s website within the top search engines is to update the site’s content regularly. We offer lawyer website content writing that is well researched, written by attorneys and is optimized for keyword positioning on all search engines. The fresh content provides excellent internal links to important key web pages as well as encourages search engines to visit your website frequently.
Last and certainly not the least is how well your website is viewed by the Web community. The best way for Google and other search engines to figure out which websites should be at the top of the search engine results page for a particular search phrase is to calculate how many other sites find the information valuable. This calculation is based on how many other related and credible sites link to or refer to your website. Our firm can help you legitimately generate these high valued and rare legal resource links to your website. Click here to read more about SEO Inbound Links For Lawyers.
FOr a free initial consultation about the topics discussed in this blog post, please contact James Greenier at (769) 218-6099.
Every attorney pretty much wants the one of two thing when advertising for new clients. Most practicing attorneys either want better clients or better cases. For the past 9 years and over 3,500 law firm client interviews I am learning more about a new trend emerging within the ranks of the high income demographic online users. The type of clients that business, family, estate and criminal attorneys tend to market toward.
The trend is the general attitude toward law firms and their website search positioning. High search positioning (top 3 search results) on Google, Yahoo or Bing doesn’t just equal more traffic and more client leads. A lawyer website indexed within the top 3 organic search results now means you have credibility with the high level business clientele and elite status consumers.
That’s right. The high dollar clients you are marketing for are trending toward making an informed selection between the top 3 attorneys listed on a search results page. Some speculate this is a trend that carried over from the yellow pages days where only the double truck yellow page ads pulled the most credibility and new client leads.
My opinion is that is that there is a more sophisticated answer than that. I believe that people are relying more heavily on the search credibility of Google to help sort out which companies or service providers they should evaluate when making a short list of attorneys to call.
If you are interested in discussing how to improve your law firm’s website rankings within top search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, please feel free to call James Greenier at (769) 218-6099 for a free consultation.
If so then you should talk to our lead SEO expert James Greenier for a free initial consultation. The reason is simple: No one else has personally worked on as many of the most trafficked legal websites as he has. 7 of the 10 he has worked on are producing 250,000 to 4 million unique visitors on average per month.
He has consulted with over 3,500 law firms through his 8 year career. He has numerous clients that are #1 on all major search engines in their city or state and provides exclusive services in many cases.
SEO for law firms is a tricky business because there are so many different providers out there who claim to be the best. One conversation with James Greenier and you will know he is the best. Fortunately, our pricing is better than the top competitors in this industry.
To reach our SEO Expert James Greenier, simply call him direct at (769) 218-6099. We have offices in San Francisco, California; Tampa, Florida; Jackson, Mississippi and the New England area to better serve you.
The number one way strategy to improve your traffic and search engine rankings is to write fresh, topic relevant content such as articles. This is also the best remedy for launching a new law related website and the Google Sandbox.
What is the Google sandbox? Typically Google indexes A LOT of web pages every single day. In the millions for sure. The worse thing Google could do is to immediate start positioning these new web pages. The Google sandbox, in my opinion, is to evaluate just how serious and useful a new website is prior to releasing the content within the search engine results pages.
With articles, even a brand new domain, some call this the “Google sandbox hell” can get updated into the search index quickly. Typically new websitesare spidered or crawled, but not indexed right away, a major problem for new sites. By consistently adding fresh, unique content with some strategic search engine optimization, a lawyer website can get ranked within 30-60 days well ahead of the typical 3-6 months.
Call us if you need assistance with SEO, Internet marketing or Web design needs. For a free consultation call (769) 218-6099. We also offer Lawyer Website consultation.
Select a domain with a clean website history
There is no doubt that the age of your domain name and that domains registry history effects its ability to acheive high rankings with Google and other top search engines. It is also believed Google may give extra value to your domain/website if the domain is registered for five or more years as opposed to the standard one or two years.
Keep in mind that if your domain name has once been used by spammers, you may suffer the consequences.
Tip: Avoid tricks to fool Google and other search engines.
Search engines have 1 purpose that is to return the most relevant web pages for the end user. When you try and manipulate the search engine alogythms you run the risk of losing your rankings. Make sure that your web pages will answer the questions of people who search for your keyword. The better your web pages match the interest of the web searchers the better rankings you will get.
Keep in mind that Google and other top search engines now use human editors to monitor and review websites!!!
Tip: Keep your site is relevant
Your website should be relevant to its keywords.Google wants to know if your web page is relevant for the keywords. You have to optimize your web pages in a way that Google can easily index and find out what your website is about. Consider the following elements when optimizing your web pages:
The URL structure
The title tag
meta description tag
meta keywords tag
The body text
H1 tag
H2 tag
Image alt attributes
Internal linking structure of your site
The outbound links
Many other factors in the HTML code of your web pages
Each element should contain keywords or keyword phrases that show Google that your website is relevant for that keyword. Rookies at seo make the mistake of overstuffing keywords and that could get your website banned from Google’s search results or put on the Google suppliment list. It’s important that you optimize the right elements and that you insert your keywords in the right frequency.
Call LawyerSuccess today for a Free consultation at (769) 218-6099 concerning your law firm’s search engine optimization goals and needs. With over 3,200 consultations and experience in developing 8 of the 10 most trafficked legal websites on the Web, we can rocket your site to the top of all major search engines. Lawyer SEO consultations are free.
Many of our lawyer seo clients ask us how long they can expect to remain at the top of the natural search results. Their fear is losing this positioning after having us work very hard to get them placed so well.
The answer is simple. As long as you stick to these basic rules, you will continue to enjoy the high profits that come along with top positioning on all major search engines.
Update existing content.Search engine robots are looking for content that is fresh. Update your inner pages every few months with new content, meta descriptions and header tags.
Add more content.It is always a good idea to make sure all of your pages have at least 400 words of content. Review your old pages and add content as needed.
Add new pages.Content is still king. By adding landing pages, news, faqs, articles, a blog, newsletter archives, and site maps you will attract more traffic and search engine robot visits.
Rename pages.Add keywords into your page names. Don’t just call your contact page “Contact.html”. Call it Contact_a_dallas_lawyer.htm.
Rename images.Rename images to include your keywords. For example, don’t name an image gavel.jpg; instead, name it dallas_lawyer.jpg.
Update alt tags. Add alt tags to your images. Make sure your keywords are included as part of the tag.
Update meta tags.Replace irrelevant keywords in your description tag with target meta tag keywords used on the page. Refresh your description meta tags often.
Update the page title. Update the title every few weeks or every other month. If you add another page by copying an existing page, make sure your page title and keywords coincide with the page content.
Create Unique page titles. Using the same page titles throughout your website will hurt your rankings.
Lawyer Search engine optimization is an ongoing and tedious process that takes time, skill and patience. As long as you regularly update your website meta data and draft unique content, you should be able to hang on to your top position. If you’re having problems, consider contact us to be your SEO coach or SEO copywriter. We can be reached at (769) 218-6099
