Ongoing SEO Efforts — A Vital Strategy For Your Law Firm’s Website
Is ongoing SEO needed for law firm Web success? I recently heard about a consultant who was recommending a vendor who would work on the firms’ SEO for six months, then walk away. While this seems appealing from a cost standpoint, anyone who is familiar with SEO knows this is as foolhardy as thinking that a football coach could be hired for six months to build a long-term winning program in a competitive conference — or hiring a lawyer for six months to build a law firm that will then run unmonitored for several years.
In our opinion, ongoing SEO success requires ongoing SEO work and expertise. Consider these factors:
Web design, Web marketing and Web technology change rapidly.
Unless your SEO vendor advises and assists you, you will fall behind in changing areas such as mobile websites, more dynamic attorney bios, video, calls-to-action and others. Page metrics need to be continuously analyzed to determine user-friendliness, which influences SEO. Ongoing design and conversion enhancements not only mean more inquiries, but improved rankings. We recently wrote an article entitled, “Why are my law firm phones not ringing,” and discussed numerous improvements that will increase the number of cases a firm can obtain from the Web.
Multi-Pronged Web Approach.
Turning on a website and walking away simply doesn’t work in today’s Internet environment. An ongoing, multi-faceted strategy is required. We advise our lawyer clients on marketing techniques and help them add numerous features to their websites to increase their conversions. Some of these include:
- Ongoing relevent, high-quality, legal content developed at the proper reading level and updated frequently by the firm or knowledgeable professionals is critical;
- Online Press Releases development and distribution to major media channels;
- Online chat services to engage visitors at the time of their entry and interest;
- Lawyer marketing associations to learn and exchange ideas with leading marketing experts and fellow lawyers;
- Blogs to demonstrate expertise and develop a following;
- Free books to show and distribute your expertise to prospective clients in a non-intimidating, cost-free manner;
- Social Media to expand your network, show expertise and develop a community;
- Satellite site(s) development, management and SEO – Satellite sites can show your focus and expertise, helping you achieve top search engine rankings if developed properly.
New Markets & Practice Areas.
Consider what happens when you add a new market location or area of practice. When our clients add new locations, they simply call us and ask us to develop content or an SEO campaign for the new location. If a new practice area opportunity arrives, when applicable we contact our clients to tell them about the opportunity or they call us and ask us to write and SEO the content and tie it into their current Web and SEO campaigns.
A Rapidly Evolving SEO World.
Our SEO manager, Dolores Burks, states, “Search engine changes come at us like ocean waves. If you do nothing and float, you may not drown, but each wave will pull you farther and farther away from the shore. If you are swimming, the waves may crash into you, but you will eventually reach land. Or, you can be prepared when the waves come and surf them straight home.”
Google has reportedly made more than 500 algorithm changes in 2010. Thinking back, how well would you have been positioned for the release of Google Places in the SERPs had your SEO vendor stopped working for you three months prior? Google did not index Flash files a few years ago, but now does. That change required website modifications to take advantage of Flash files for SEO. Apple iPads and iPods do not read Flash. Designers and SEO vendors scrambled to change websites to accommodate these fast-growing Apple devices. Bing is less than three years old, yet it manages Bing and Yahoo’s searches and has approximately 30% of the search market. Law firm Social Media was not an SEO consideration two years ago. Facebook now has more activity than Google. A few months ago, placing your articles on article websites would help your rankings. Today, they do not help and may hurt. Websites that depended on article placement for rankings are not doing well. Another consideration is that some SEO vendors may employ tactics that work in the short term, but will damage your rankings in the long term.
Daily SEO Considerations
Among the important SEO considerations that affect your website’s rankings on a daily basis:
Monitoring Of Website Analytics.
The needs of your visitors are constantly changing. The ways in which they search and find your website also change. Did they find you via Google, Bing, Facebook, Google Places, or did they click on a referral link? What keywords did they search to find you? What content did they read? Did their visit result in a Web form or phone call? What did visitors read last month or the month before? This type of information needs to be constantly monitored and compared to historical data to understand visitor trends on your website. Evaluate this information to make informed decisions about website content and adjustments that need to be made. At Consultwebs.com, we constantly review our Platinum clients’ data and make recommendations or make the changes needed to make their website(s) perform at the optimum level.
The Effect of Website Code on Your Rankings.
Much like fashion and technology, website designs and programming codes go out of style. Imagine trying to work on a four-year-old computer, Windows 98 or a five year-old cell phone. A website that is outdated not only provides a poor user experience, it may also harm your rankings. When search engine spiders visit a website page, they do not view it as a human visitor by taking in the visual elements. The spiders examine the source code to determine whether the page is actually relevant to its declared intent. Your page content may be about car accidents and your page title may say “car accidents,” but what does the rest of code say about the page? What does it say about the website?
Relevant, quality link networking.
What other websites link to yours? Are they authoritative sites with strong page ranks? If you don’t know, you need to find out. Google and Bing are watching. If you are not continuously cultivating new authoritative backlinks to your website, you will be missing out on one of the largest components of the 2011 search algorithms.
Google Places & Bing Business Directories
. Page One of both Google and Bing’s search results is often filled with localized results for businesses listed with Google Places & Bing Business. Sometimes these listings can take up the entire page. Do you own a profile? Are you seeking and managing your client reviews? Is your information current? Are you doing everything to maximize your Internet presence?
Local And Legal Business Directories
. Local and legal directories are almost as important as the Google and Bing directories. These will often not only appear high in the search results, but they can also feed into the Google and Bing directories, giving your listing more authority and a higher ranking. Many directories also provide high quality backlinks to your website. An experienced legal SEO vendor can recommend legal directories that will work for you.
Signaling
. Signaling includes Facebook “Likes,” bookmarks from other sites, online reviews, Google +1’s and other activity indicators that are growing in importance as the search engines look for quality and active websites. They require constant monitoring and adjustments.
A/B testing.
We use Google and CrazyEgg to analyze user behavior on each site and make changes based on the users’ interactions, A/B testing, etc. If Google Analytics or other reports show that a page is being heavily visited, we adjust the content to achieve maximum benefit. That opportunity will be lost without constant monitoring.
Online competition monitoring and analysis and attack response.
Did you know your competitors can actually hire a service to duplicate, scrape or purchase bad links in an effort to damage your rankings? At Consultwebs.com, we watch for that kind of activity and respond to it.
Tracking and active management of both forms submissions and phone conversions
. Continuous tracking and analysis of your forms submissions and phone conversions will tell you if your campaigns are working and where you should apply more or less effort.
Reputation management
. People are talking. Do you know what they are saying about your law firm? Clients are leaving comments about and reviews on your business on sites like Yelp, CitySearch, YellowPages which feed directly into Google Places and Bing Business. Client complaints aren’t just hurting your business reputation, they now hurt your search engine ranking. Don’t forget client posts on the social media giants of Facebook and Twitter. Both Google and Bing are indexing these.
What Type Of SEO Assistance Is Needed?
The rewards for successful SEO are significant. Developing a successful SEO campaign requires professional, focused assistance. Many vendors will use the above phrases and words, but do not have the staffing, expertise or commitment to accomplish the work. Simply tapping your advertising agency to do your law firm’s SEO will typically not work any more than a college asking their football coach to also coach basketball, baseball and track would work. The football coach’s focus, interests, expertise and time are with his first love of football. Having two or three in-house SEO people will typically not work because it requires teams of SEO, content, Social Media and other professionals to compete successfully. Hiring an inexperienced, non-legal SEO firm will typically not work because the company will not have the experience, network and expertise to help you become successful. We developed a blog article and video on how to select or evaluate a law firm SEO vendor that will help you determine factors you should consider.
Numerous Consultwebs lawyer clients have written testimonials that discuss the increased business and experiences they have received by using our SEO and designed services. If you would like additional information on how Consultwebs.com can help you evaluate your Web campaign or design, choose or evaluate an SEO vendor or help you maintain your SEO program or develop one that will deliver cases, please contact us at (800) 872-6590 or marketing@consultwebs.com.
