Keywords. The starting point for any search engine optimization project is keyword research and development. Keywords are the words or phrases that a searcher types into the search engine to look for sites. The search engine returns what it believes to be the most relevant SEA and organic results for these words. In order for your site to be displayed, it must contain these keywords. Often what you believe to be the best keywords for your site are not the words that searchers are looking for. Keyword research will disclose what searchers are actually looking for. For example, you may believe that the best description of your site is “divorce lawyer” when in fact searchers are actual looking for “divorce attorney.” The actual keywords and phrases that searchers are using is what you need to optimize your site for. Typically many keywords and phrases are applicable to your site and it should be optimized for as many applicable keywords and phrases as possible. However, too many keywords is a bad thing for two reasons. First, it makes the page look bad and hard to read. You need to get people to your site, but you also need to get them to contact you. A junky looking site, a site that is difficult to read, or site that is difficult to navigate is not conducive to getting a call or an email from the prospective client. Worse, loading pages with keywords can be viewed as “keyword stuffing” by the search engines and rather than help you, result in your site being penalized or banned by the search engine.
Content. Many SEO specialists believe that “content is king.” Content is very important, but content alone will not win the day for typical law firm websites. The search engines will index your content and this is what they use to make the decision on whether your website is relevant to the search keywords. The search engines are getting good at determining whether your content is relevant or whether the content is irrelevant, and only laced with keywords. Remember, your content should be keyword rich, but not keyword stuffed. Lastly, your website needs to not only provide relevant content, but that content should be unique. The search engines will penalize or even ban websites that contain “duplicate content.” If your website was built by a web design company, make sure that they have not used the exact content of your site for other clients. Content should be constantly added or updated to prevent your site from being considered a “dead site.”
Site Structure and Format. There is no magical format or structure that needs to be used. However, for your site to be indexed, the search engines must be able to review the content. Certain types of formatting make it difficult or impossible for the content to be indexed. Broken links within your site can also result in search engines missing valuable content. It is highly recommended to create a “sitemap” for your site. This sitemap tells the search engines which pages you want indexed. If applicable, a robot.txt file can also be used to tell the search engine to ignore certain pages or take certain actions.
Links. There are two types of links that are important to SEO:
- Inbound. These are links from other sites to your site.
- Outbound. These are links from your site to other sites.
Inbound Links. The search engines view links to your site as essentially “votes” of relevance. If someone links to your site, then the search engines presume that they think your site contains valuable and relevant information. Not all inbound links are viewed equally. Links from higher ranked sites are more valuable. Links from what the search engines view as “link farms” can actually result in penalty or banning of your site. Additionally links from web sites that contain the same type of content as your site are viewed as more valuable. Lastly, the actual words used in the link are very important. These words are called “anchor text.” Ideally you would like the anchor text to be your keywords or keyword phrases. For example “Click Here” is way less valuable than “Seattle Tax Attorney.”
Outbound Links. Your site should have outbound links. Ideally you want to link to keyword and content rich relevant sites. Be careful not to link to a banned site or link farm, as this can result in penalization or banning of your site. Do not have too many outbound links to prevent your site from being viewed as a link farm.
Link development is one of hardest and most time consuming aspects of SEO. However, it is one of the most important aspects of getting your site to highly ranked. Inbound links should be constantly added and outbound links should be monitored to avoid broken links or links to banned sites. The development and maintenance of linking strategies for law firms is a specialty of PageOneNow.
Overall, it may take several months to a year or more for a web site to be fully optimized and land on the first page the Big 3 search engines. The timing is dependent on a number of factors, including the quality of competitor SEO, the age and quality of your site at the time SEO is initiated, and number and quality of existing inbound links. PageOneNow has some proprietary techniques that it uses to attempt to speed up the process, but the bottom line is that you should view SEO as a long-term and continuous process.
