The Five Internet Search Terms Every Web Marketing Lawyer Needs To Know
As the lawyer in charge of your law firm’s Internet marketing, you’ve likely come across arcane terms such as SEO, backlinks and meta tags. Confused by all the jargon? Consultwebs.com deals with these terms every day as we help lawyers and law firms run successful Internet marketing campaigns.
The following are five key terms you need to know— and an explanation of why they are crucial to the success of your law firm’s Web marketing.
1. SEO
SEO is short for “search engine optimization.” For law firm Web marketing, SEO involves the strategy and effort that goes into writing and designing your law firm’s website so it will be easily found on the Internet by potential clients.
In today’s world, the reality is that more and more people go to search engines than the Yellow Pages or other print directories when they want to find goods and services. This includes legal services. That’s why SEO is so important for your law firm.
When a person goes to a search engine, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN or Bing, they will type in a search query. These search engines use programs called “crawlers,” “robots,” or “spiders,” which gather information from websites. This information is used to place each site’s Web pages into an index. The search engine turns to this index and uses its own unique algorithms to search, find and produce results that match the search engine user’s query.
This is where SEO comes into play.
SEO is the process of feeding the search engine crawlers with the information they need to index your pages, and to do so in a way that’s friendly to the search engine’s algorithms. This involves using the right content, design, coding and linking. Because of the constantly changing nature of search engine algorithms, SEO also requires constant attention and effort.
The goal is to make sure your law firm’s website makes it to the top of the search engine results for keywords associated with your focused practice area and geographic market.
For instance, a Pennsylvania resident who has been injured in a tractor trailer accident will want the services of a truck accident lawyer. They may go to a search engine, such as Google, and type in, “Pennsylvania truck accident lawyer.” Using information collected by the crawlers and using its algorithms to sift through that information, Google will turn out a list of Web pages that match that query.
By the way, at the top of the search engine’s results, the user would find www.munley.com – the website for Munley, Munley & Cartwright, P.C., of Scranton, Pennsylvania and one of our longtime Consultwebs.com clients.
2. SERP
SERP, like SEO, is a term commonly used by law firm Web marketing types that may be unfamiliar to others. It stands for “search engine results page,” or the list of results that appear on screen when a person types a query into a search engine.
At Consultwebs.com, the goal for all of our clients’ SEO campaigns is to make sure their law firm’s website appears at the top of the SERP for the practice areas they want to advertise. The results at the top of the search results get more traffic, and more traffic leads to more conversions.
If your website does not appear at the top – or at least on the first SERP – then you may question whether your law firm is getting a quality return on your Internet marketing investment.
Have you ever heard of a “New York minute?” The attention span of most search engine users doesn’t last nearly as long. That’s why your law firm needs to be at the top of the SERP. Rarely will Web users go beyond that first page to find the legal services they need.
Fortunately for Consultwebs.com clients, our SEO strategy and efforts are paying off for them.
Speaking of New York, type in “New York car accident attorney” to a search engine such as Google. One of the first firms you will see on the SERP is www.fightingforyou.com, the site of Consultwebs.com client Schwartzapfel Partners P.C.
3. Keywords
Keywords are the words a search engine user types into a query when looking for a good or service. For example, a Chicago resident who needs a personal injury lawyer will, most likely, type “Chicago personal injury lawyer” into the query bar, or some combination of those words.
SEO involves choosing and optimizing the right keywords. Although you can pay to use certain keywords – called pay-per-click advertising – our focus here is on keywords for organic search engine results, which doesn’t require paying fees for your keywords.
Generally speaking, law firms want to select keywords that specifically describe the practice areas and geographic markets they want to focus on. This means you should avoid broad terms, like “attorney,” and choose more narrow terms, such as “Chicago attorney” or, better yet, “Chicago personal injury attorney.” You can even go narrower and use “Chicago bicycle accident attorney.” (One of our Consultwebs.com clients, Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard P.C., ranks among the top five on Google for that search phrase.)
The more specific your keywords are, the less competition there will be for search engine rankings for those same keywords. Also, you will draw website visitors who are focused on what they need and more likely to become clients. These are sometimes called “long tail” searches.
For instance, if you are a Baltimore law firm that wishes to meet people who have been harmed from wearing toning shoes, you wouldn’t try to optimize “Baltimore law firm.” Instead, you would pick specific, narrow keywords, such as “Baltimore toning shoes injury attorney.”
The result: Type those keywords into a Google query, and you will see Consultwebs.com client Janet, Jenner & Suggs, LLC, as the No. 1 law firm website on the first SERP.
An experienced law firm Web marketing consultant can work with your law firm to pick the keywords that match your advertising goals and provide content for your site that not only boosts your search engine rankings but also keeps your site’s visitors by being compelling and persuasive.
4. Backlinks
Search engines tend to like backlinks as much as they like keywords. Backlinks, which are sometimes called “incoming links” or “inbound links,” are links from other websites to your site. The more backlinks you have, the more popular your site is, and the more popular it is, the higher it will place in search engine results.
An effective SEO campaign will use a variety of ways of to create backlinks to your site, including placing your site in directories and using satellite sites, blogs, press releases and professional Twitter and Facebook accounts.
In addition to backlinks, your website can also reap benefits from “outbounds links,” such as a well-written and researched “Resources” page that contains links to sites of interest.
Good examples of outbound link pages are the “Resources” pages Consultwebs.com recently created for the www.surgicalmeshhelp.com site of the Atlanta law firm of Blasingame, Burch, Garrard, Ashley P.C. and the list of mesothelioma support groups featured on the www.mesotheliomahelp.net site of the New York law firm of Belluck & Fox.
Internal linking can also play an important role by helping a search engine crawler – not to mention human visitors – go from page to page within your site.
5. Meta tags
Meta tags are hidden bits of information about your Web pages. Meta tags normally can’t be seen by your site’s visitors. However, search engine crawlers seek out meta tags for information that will go into search engine indexes. Like keywords and backlinks, meta tags play a key role in your law firm’s SEO strategy, especially your keyword tags and description tags.
Keyword tags describe your Web page, so they should contain your SEO keywords. For instance, go to one of our client’s sites, www.jones-act-maritime-lawyer.com. The site’s keyword tags are “Gulf Coast Jones Act Lawyers” and “Texas Maritime Injury Attorneys,” which describe the practice areas and geographic markets being targeted by the Houston maritime injury law firm of Arnold & Itkin, LLP.
Description tags show up in the search engine results. These tags generally should be fewer than 50 words (or 150 characters), contain relevant keywords and read like advertising copy. The description tag for www.arnolditkin.com, for instance, describes the firm as “smart, experienced attorneys for high stakes cases involving Business Litigation, Serious Personal Injury or Death, Jones Act & Maritime Injury.”
Contact Our Law Firm Web Marketing Specialists Today
To learn how we can help you improve your law firm Web marketing, contact Consultwebs.com today at marketing@consultwebs.com or call our friendly marketing specialists at (800) 872-6590.
