Law Firm Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a common term being thrown around a lot.  Many companies have fancy names for it, but the service goal boils down to the same thing: increasing your law firm’s website rankings in the natural (aka organic) listings of the search engines.

What are the natural/organic listings?  If you go to www.google.com and type in a phrase, such as bakery, you will get approximately 29,700,000 listings.  Why are there so many?  This word is very generic and is going to show you results for all websites that mention that word.  But, let’s say you are looking for a bakery in Seattle.  Type in Seattle bakery and you are down to 2,000,000 listings.  While that is still a lot, you’ve all ready narrowed down the focus immensely and can continue to do so – maybe you want a wedding cake baker or a cookie bakery or a dessert place.  The more targeted your keyword search is, the more likely you are to find the most relevant search results.

Now, as an attorney, you may be asking yourself how you get to the top of the millions of listings that you find when you type in a keyword that someone may use to find you.  Well, unfortunately, I could write for days about all the ways that you could do this and, even if you followed every one of them exactly, there are still no guarantees.  But here are a few:

  1. Narrow your focus.  Come up with a list of keywords that is specific to where you are located and what practice areas you focus on.  Think about how a general consumer would search for you.  Based on our historical data, the general public does not type in the term “wrongful death” very often; instead, when looking for a wrongful death attorney, the consumer will be more specific, such as medical malpractice or negligence, amusement park injury, etc.  Your website can’t be all things to all people, so be as focused as you can.
  2. Timely, relevant content.  The search engines are looking for websites that regularly update their content.  Why?  The logic basically goes that if you are updating your site regularly, it must be keeping up with recent news.  For example, our immigration attorneys have had a whole flurry of updates to make due to new laws (or lack thereof).  This is a good thing.  The second part of the equation is that the search engines want the content to be relevant to the keyword.  Sure, it is great that you talk about your dog Chula on your site (or maybe that is just me), but what does that have to do with your practice?  It’s great to add these tidbits, but they should be minor in comparison to the information you give about your practice areas.
  3. Behind the scenes programming.  The search engines don’t just read the content on your site.  They are also interested in the Meta Title (if you open up an Internet window, it is the very, very top bar – if you look at the top of this blog site, our title is Law Firm Marketing BLOG – Attorneys Online, Inc.), Meta Keywords (the specific keywords that you are trying to target on each page – max is about 10 words total), Meta description (the phrase about what your web page is about), and a few other things.  This isn’t rocket science; it’s a matter of showing the search engines what you are targeting and hope that they agree.
  4. Linking campaigns.  The more websites that link to you, the better.  The reason is basically because if a website thinks that you are good enough to “endorse”, that should be a sign that your site is good enough to notice.  Now, here’s the catch – these sites need to be good on their own.  If you have your website listed on a Japanese porn site, you may not like the kinds of endorsement and inquiries you are going to get.  But a link from your local bar association can really help.

There are a million more things that you can do for your law firm SEO.  But, just remember, no company can ever guarantee placement (and I would run as quickly as possible from anyone that says otherwise).  How do I know?  Because the search engines (namely Google) are smarter than all of us and you can’t beat their system.  We can follow all of their guidelines and then they may come out with something new tomorrow.  Once we “crack their code”, they will beat us back.  That said, over time, you can prove to Google that you have a good site, but it is up to Google as to where your site remains.

If you would like to discuss how to start the process on your law firm website, please call today for a free consultation.