Shotguns Won’t Drive People to Your Website
In November, a 66-year-old man in South Kitsap, Wash., had to be hospitalized after shooting himself in both legs. The cause: the man became excessively agitated with an immovable lug nut on his Lincoln Continental. Instead of reaching for WD-40 or another loosening agent, he loaded, aimed, and fired his 12-guage shot gun at the stubborn hardware as if to teach it a lesson it would never forget. Of course, the buck shot from his weapon merely ricocheted wounding the man in both legs and prompting an emergency trip to the hospital. Perhaps the doctors will throw in a psych evaluation with the necessary leg repair before other unsuspecting car parts find themselves faced with the same fate.
Attorney internet marketing is said to be a hard nut to crack, as well. It can be frustrating and irritating and I have no doubt that many lawyers have considered firearms a reasonable response to the electronic “maze” that some find is associated with law firm website design and attorney advertising. A shot gun blast to a computer may not injure one’s legs but neither will it drive potential clients to one’s website and a psychiatric evaluation will still be a likely outcome.
Attorneys Online, Inc., promises not to use fire arms as a solution to your lawyer internet marketing questions and frustrations. Pay-per-click advertising isn’t as hard a nut to crack as it seems. Even Search Engine Optimization doesn’t have to lead to the use of explosives. Through keyword choices that maximize your greatest strengths and by writing content that includes the phrases on your website that clients type in when they are looking for an experienced attorney with your skills, you will be sure to be seen by the very people that need your help.
Talk to the staff at Attorneys Online, Inc., about how we can help you get the response you’re looking for from your internet marketing without resorting to deadly force.
How do I choose what keywords to optimize my attorney website for?
Any good Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company will tell you that it is not possible to adequately optimize your site for every possible keyword that someone may type into a search engine to find your law firm. However, a good company will help you choose the most effective keywords and focus your optimization around that. While law firm internet marketing may not be an exact science, it sure does help to have a good place to start!
Just to give you an idea: Let’s say you are a Dallas personal injury attorney. Some of the initial, basic words that come to mind are Dallas personal injury attorney, Dallas personal injury attorneys, Dallas personal injury lawyer, Dallas personal injury lawyer, Dallas personal injury law firm, Dallas personal injury law firms, Dallas personal injury lawsuit, lawsuits, Dallas injury attorney, Dallas injury lawyer, Dallas injury law firm, etc. And all of those words don’t even include the specific areas you want to focus on, such as medical malpractice or birth traumas. You add in all of those and you can come up with thousands.
But, the search engines only read about the first 10 meta keywords per page (roughly 3 – 4 keyword phrases). So, “Dallas personal injury lawyer” counts as words; thus, you can see how quickly those 10 words can go! So, it is important to focus on words that are likely to result in business for you. For example, yes, it is great to come up under your firm name; however, why waste keywords on that? If someone already knows your firm name, they are going to call you anyway (and it is likely you come up under your firm name without optimizing specifically for it because your firm name is mentioned so many times on the site).
So, when we research words for our clients, we take into account keyword history (based on our clients past results), niche practice focus (focus on car accidents instead of general PI if that is your focus), geographic location (if your office is in a small town and you wouldn’t be willing to drive 5 hours to a bigger city, why waste words with that city name), area of the country (in some parts of the country “attorney” is searched for more than “lawyer”), and more. All of these things are going to help you choose the right words. Because of this, we recommend going with an SEO company that has a lot of experience with law firm marketing; otherwise, it is going to be a lot of trial and error.
To Flash or Not to Flash? When it comes to your law firm website design – opt for not
Many of our clients are coming to us with questions about how to make their attorney web design more search engine friendly. Then, in the same breath, the client wants to add lots of flash to the site and dozens of pictures. These two requests are not compatible, but they are things that we can work with if we do it right.
First, why do people want flash? It’s glitzy, it looks (more or less nowadays) high-tech, and it’s pretty. Some web users, particularly those that don’t use the Internet often, love to see these flash movies. Admittedly, they do give your site a little pizzazz. However, they also take a long time to load (because the flash movie files are large) and they can be distracting. So, how do we add flash to a search engine friendly site? We make it one small element of the site rather than the whole page. One example of a site that has a smaller flash element is the Gough personal injury law firm in New Jersey.
When it comes to adding pictures, we realize that a picture can speak a thousand words. However, as with Flash, it can also make the page take a long time to load and it can be distracting. You don’t want so many photos that you don’t have room for text. How do we reconcile images with a search engine friendly attorney web design? Choose a few great images that explain your point (less is more) and make sure to explain why they are there. Now, I don’t mean draw a big arrow to the photo. Instead, add a caption or an alt tag (if you scroll over a picture and it has a box of text that comes up to explain what the photo is of, it uses an alt tag). Alt tags are also great for optimization. You want to be descriptive so that, if someone searches for that term and wants a picture of it (from Google Images, for example), it will come up.
Your lawyer web design can be great-looking and provide great information, but it must be search engine friendly. Feel free to contact our law firm marketing consultants for a quick analysis of your site.
