I am not the most technologically savvy person in the world, but I consider myself to be pretty well-informed.  And, while I may not understand exactly how the search engine spiders work, I know that Meta tags play a key role in that.  Meta tags are full of things that are not overly important to a general web user, but some of parts of it are important in law firm search engine optimization.

These are the “key” points of the Meta tags:

  • Title
  • Keywords
  • Description

Every page of your website should have a different title, set of keywords, and description.

If you go to any website, there is a title bar across the top of it.  For example, at our law firm marketing website, there is a bar across the top of the page (the very, very top – above the Internet window’s navigation bars) that says “Lawyer Marketing and Attorney Marketing – Attorneys Online, Inc.”  That is our Title that is used in the Meta Tags.  Not only is this the name of our page, it is one of the first things that the search engine reads to get an idea of what our website is about.

The description aspect of Meta Tags gives a quick overview of what each page is about.  You want to keep it around 150 characters, so it must be short and sweet.  Again, the search engines read this to get an idea of what the page is about.  It is always, always, always better to take an exact line from your page and use that as a description.  The search engines like that.

And, as for keywords, this is the hardest one to master.  Each of your pages can have a few keyword phrases (that make up to about 10 words) to describe what is mentioned on your site.  For example, “law firm marketing” counts as three words, so I have to be creative in selecting my next 7.  You want to select keywords that are relevant to the content and you want to choose keywords that people will search for in the search engines.  While it is great to come up under your name, I wouldn’t waste keywords on it.  First, you probably mention your name enough in the text as it is (and there is not likely to be a lot of competition on your name unless you are a celebrity).  Second, you are very limited on how many words you can use, so don’t you want to attract someone who doesn’t already know you by name?

This may not have answered all of your questions, but it gives you an idea of what we are referring to when we mention these words.  These are things that your search engine optimization team should be willing to discuss with you.  If you have more questions, feel free to drop me a comment.