Blog Posts in the 'Search Engine Optimization' Category

The owners of local business review sites, like Yelp.com and CitySearch.com, aren’t happy with Google. They do not like the way data in “Google Places” is shown above their data in search returns. “Google Places” is Google’s equivalent of a local business directory.

Recently, Google made an adjustment to Google Places. Now it takes up more space than ever on a search engine results page. For example, a search in Google on the phrase “NYC criminal defense attorney” yields a page full of Google content. In the image below, the Google Places results are highlighted in yellow. They are surrounded on the top and side by Google paid ads.

Google stands to gain advertising dollars by featuring local businesses this way. Businesses can buy tags for $25/month in order to gain visibility in Google Places.

Google holds almost 70% of the search engine market. Many companies feel that Google abuses its dominant position in the search engine market. The European Union is currently conducting an antitrust investigation.

Regardless of the outcome, Google currently has a stronghold on local business results that lawyers can’t ignore.  Setting up a profile in Google Places is more important now, than ever.

In order for your law firm website to be found by potential clients it needs to be search engine optimized. In other words, it needs to be set up to properly communicate with Google, and other search engines. This four part series explains how a law office website can be search engine optimized.

Part 1 is about Title Tags, Part 2 is about URLs, and Part 3 is about Page Content. Those are all “on page factors” that affect search engine optimization. Today’s post is about inbound links, which are “off page factors” affecting search engine optimization. An inbound link, or backlink, is a link from another website to your law office website.

Out of all of the search engine optimization strategies, getting inbound links seems to be the most important. This is because search engines can get a good idea of the worth of your website by looking at the number and authority of sites that link to your website.

There are many ways to get backlinks. Most of the ways require time, and some of the ways involve money. Here are some things you can do to get inbound links without spending money.

• Set up a profile (complete with your web address) within Cornell University Law School’s Lawyer II Directory.
• Claim your profile on Avvo, and fill it out completely with your web address.
• Be a guest blogger on a site, like Lawyerist .com, and include a link to your website.
• If you have a Facebook profile, put your web address in your profile. Sometimes links from social media sites are “no follow” but on the current date a link from Facebook counts as a backlink.
• Publish great content on your own website. Be the first to write about new laws in your niche. Other sites will likely link to your valuable content.

You can also spend money to get backlinks.

• You can pay to publish press releases with links to your site, through sites such as PR Web.
• You can pay to be listed in directories, such as FindLaw and HG.org, but return on investment varies widely depending on your target market and geographic region.

If you’d like to track your success with getting backlinks, use LinkPopularity.com. Just go to the site, and enter your website address. It will tell you the number of backlinks you have, as viewed by each of the search engines.

You can also track the effect that getting inbound links is having on your website by looking at your PageRank. PageRank can be seen in a Google Toolbar. It ranges from 1-10 and shows Google’s estimate of your site’s importance. Wikipedia’s page rank is 9 out of 10. See the image below.

In conclusion getting inbound links is a great way to improve your search engine optimization. The more high authority sites that link to your website, the better. You can spend time nurturing inbound links by setting up free profiles and writing great content. You can also pay to receive inbound links. The success of your efforts can be monitored with the link popularity checker and with the Google Page Rank tool.  Of course the ultimate goal of getting inbound links is to get more (qualified) visitors to your website.

In order for your law firm website to be found by potential clients it needs to be search engine optimized. In other words, it needs to be set up to properly communicate with Google, and other search engines. Part 3 of this four part series is about Page Content.

Last week I explained how it is important to include keywords in the title tags and URLs for your web pages. The same holds true for page content. It sends a big message to the search engines when a keyword is contained in the title tag of the page, the URL for the page, the heading on the page, and paragraphs on the page. For example, take a look at Joel Larabee’s page on Discrimination. I have highlighted the word “discrimination” in the title, URL, Heading, and paragraphs.

It is best to limit page content to one practice area at a time so you can drive home the point with search engines and web visitors alike. In describing the practice area, use words that lay people might use in addition to legal terms. Use Google’s keyword tool to find what people are searching for.

When I use the keyword tool to search for “discrimination” I can see that there are 673,000 local monthly searches for the word “discrimination.” It is a great word to use in content because it is highly searched. Keywords with lower search volumes should not be ignored, however. For instance, the phrase “age discrimination in the workplace” has a local monthly search volume of 2,400. While it has a much lower search volume than “discrimination” it is a good phrase to use in content because there is less competition for the words. It is a long tail keyword.

If you have more than one heading on a page, include your most important keywords in the first heading (H1). There should only be one H1 per page.

In addition to including keywords in your page content, write for your audience and write a lot. The quality and the quantity of your website content matters. Look for a way to incrementally add content to your website, whether it is through a blog or by adding articles to your website. Generally the more content, the greater the opportunity to add keywords, and the higher the search engine ranking.

In review, add keywords to your page content. Include them in headings and in paragraphs. Make sure that they match the keywords in the title tag and URL for the page. Focus on a few keywords per page. Include frequently searched keywords and long tail keywords in your content. Above all else, write for your audience and write frequently.

In order for your law firm website to be found by potential clients it needs to be search engine optimized. In other words, it needs to be set up to properly communicate with Google, and other search engines. Part 2 of this four part series is about web page URLs.

A Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is an address of a web page. URLs are “read” by search engines. The URL for Joel Larabee’s home page is highlighted below.

Each page of your website should have a unique URL. The URL should contain keywords relevant to the content and the title tag of the page. For example, look at the page about wrongful termination in the website below. Notice that the highlighted URL contains the words “wrongful termination.”

Inserting keywords into URLs is an often neglected, but easy way to achieve search engine optimization.  Talk to your web developer about customizing your website URLs or get an Impirus website.  It is easy to customize the URL for each web page within an Impirus website.

In order for your law firm website to be found by potential clients it needs to be search engine optimized. In other words, it needs to be set up to properly communicate with Google, and other search engines. Part I of this four part series is about Title tags.

Title tags are “read” by search engines, such as Google. They are very important as they tell the search engines what your site is primarily about, and include keywords for which you want to be known. Here is how to view the title tag for your home page.

1. Go to the home page of your law firm website.

2. Look at the top of the window. In the example below, the title tag is “Law Office of Joel Larabee, Employment Lawyer, Wrongful Termination, Sexual Harassment, Discrimination, Wage and Hour, San Diego, Riverside, Orange County.”

If you would like to see the HTML code for your title tag, follow the instructions below.

1. Go to the home page of your law firm website.

2. Choose View from the Main Menu, and then choose Page Source. See the title tag highlighted below.

In the website shown above, the San Diego employment lawyer included his firm name, practice areas, and geographic service areas in the title tag of his home page. In other words the title tag contains keywords, like “employment lawyer,” for which the lawyer wants to be known. The title tag (along with other information) “tells” search engines  to return his website when someone searches for “employment lawyer San Diego.”

Only about 65 characters of a title tag appear in a search return.  Notice that the home page title tag is cut off after the words wrongful termination (in the image below).  So if there is a word that you really want web surfers to see in the search engine results pages, put it towards the beginning of the title tag.

Each page in your website should have its own title tag. The title tag should be specific to the content on the page. For example, a page about sexual harassment within attorney Larabee’s website is titled “Law Office of Joel Larabee – Sexual Harassment.”

Tip: Place your most important keywords towards the beginning of a title tag. Also, include keywords for which lay people are searching. You can use Google’s free keyword tool to find commonly searched words.

You might hear about other website tags, such as “description tags” and “keyword tags.” While these tags serve other functions, they do not help search engine ranking in Google.

If you need help with editing your title tags talk to your web developer, or get a website through Impirus.  It is easy to edit your own title tags and description tags when you own an Impirus website.