Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Rankings
Studies have proven that web users do not look past three pages of results when trying to find a relevant site. If your web site is not within the top 30 results, your firm will not be found. This article details how to improve your web site's rankings through four basic techniques: having reciprocal links, adding relevant content, editing your meta tags, and registering your web site with search engines.

1. Reciprocal Links
As stated by Google, which provides over 80% of search results, the best way to ensure a top listing is for your web site to be linked to a lot of other web sites. This is known as link popularity. Google's automated search robots jump from page to page on the Internet via hyperlinks. The more sites that link to your firm, the more likely it is that Google will list the firm's web site. To raise your web site's link popularity, your firm needs to contact other legal web sites, search engines, and web portals and ask for reciprocal links. With each new relevant link, your web site increases its rank.

2. Relevant Content
Most potential clients will not search for your firm by name. Rather, potential clients will search for a law firm by typing in "attorney florida workers' compensation" or "how do I implement a labor law plan?" Search engines rank web sites higher if they offer relevant content that contains such words or subjects. For your law firm to be found, your site needs to offer authoritative information on your practice areas through articles, newsletters, bulletin alerts, links, statistics, and more. By offering this information, the search engines will associate your web site with key words that will allow potential clients to find your site.

3. Edit your Meta Tags
Meta tags are HTML-coded information that search engines look at when crawling on your web site for information. In the simplest form, meta tags consist of a title, a description, and relevant key words. To optimize the web site, your firm should decide on the most important words to place in title, keyword, and description meta tags. In addition, your firm should create different meta tags for each page of the web site. This will allow each page to be indexed differently by the search engine, thus creating several mini-web sites.

4. Register your Web Site
To capitalize on your firm's link popularity, meta tags, and content, your web site needs be registered with the top search engines and as many other web sites as possible. Your firm's web site registration process should include:

A. Submission to free search engines, including Google, Open Directory Project, other major search engines/portals, and other community and local search engines
B. Submission to paid search engine, including Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, Inktomi, FAST, Overture, Looksmart, Google AdWords
C. Registration at Findlaw.com, Law.com, Martindale.com, and other legal sites.
D. Exchanging reciprocal links with professional organizations, clients, trade groups, consultants, publishers, educational institutions, and other relevant organizations.

Now that your web site is optimized for search engine placement, your web site is complete. To read an overview of this whole process please click here.