Law Firm Search Engine Optimization or law firm SEO is one of the most effective, economical and proven methods of web site promotion on the Internet.   The bad news is there are a lot of unscrupulous “law firm seo experts” out there including some of the well known brands who will take you on a very expensive ride. We recently picked up a law firm client who used a very well known company (L.N.) to design there website and perform search engine optimization on the website to generate new business.

When we looked over the code we found that they had completely forgotten to add the Meta Description tags to the web pages. How important is it you say? Well, when you run a search on Google you will see two pieces of information. #1 – the title of the website and #2 the web page Meta Description tag.  So this was a very big mistake. The website was not even finished and had lots of those nifty “Coming soon…” web pages which is another big favorite of the search engines.

I also noticed in the Title tags had just a bunch of keywords randomly placed as a page title. Title tags are probably the most important part of the website SEO need to have specific keywords especially ones that people actually search for instead of just adding a few random keywords.

This raises an important question for lawyers, who can I trust to perform our law firm website SEO?  We all know that an attractive website plus excellent SEO delivers an enormous amount of high quality clients and cases.  But after you have been burned a few times, it seems like real high results oriented law firm SEO is just an urban legend.

Almost all webmasters and law firm owners with a successful SEO strategy consider SEO as their prime tool for business promotion. Unfortunately since most lawyers possess very little SEO knowledge and that’s the main reason why they fail to select right SEO Company to optimize their websites. They are either trapped by Black hat SEO companies who attract them by attractive slogans like “Guaranteed 1st position on Google” or “Guaranteed top ten rankings in Google and Yahoo”.

These statements are attractive and lawyers will then outsource their SEO tasks to these companies. These SEO companies (not all) use black hat/ spam SEO techniques to generate quick results, get payment and run away, leaving law firm website owner with black listed website on Google and other Search Engine as a result of using spam SEO techniques.  This costs the law firm a lot of wasted time, expense in having to change their marketing collateral to reflect a new domain name, and lost revenues because they are no longer in the search engines for referrals searching their law firm name or new clients to finding them by keyword searches.

Another attraction for law firm website owners is the SEO price; some law firm SEO freelancers offer their services at an unbeatable price. These so called law firm SEO experts know very little about SEO for lawyers and either fail to produce to desired results or they do something unethical which is picked up by the search engines as spam and end up in getting attorney’s website  penalized for 6 months or so, banned or even in some cases the websites are black listed by search engines permanently.

Experience law firm search engine optimization experts like us will personally experienced this many times while quoting SEO price to law firms. Many times we couldn’t get many projects due to a price difference between our law firm website SEO quote and other SEO freelancers as our SEO price is based on result oriented SEO not just out of the box SEO package which normally includes certain number of optimized web pages and submissions etc.

A recent survey of law firm and non-law firm SEO companies offering their SEO service through their websites and marketing their SEO service on the Internet and able to categorize SEO companies as under:

1-Big and trusted law firm SEO Companies: These SEO companies normally based in the United States and offer their SEO service worldwide. They are hardly affordable by small to medium sized law firms as their law firm SEO price is usually out of marketing budget of a small or medium size business. These law firm SEO companies normally offer fixed SEO packages and customized SEO service/ package. They never use black hat or Spam SEO techniques.  They offer very little one-on-one with the customer. Only the biggest law firm clients get the most attention.

2-Small to Medium Size law firm SEO companies: These types of legal SEO companies are based here in U.S. and are also reliable but have limited capacity. They usually work on static websites and can handle limited number of clients. They also avoid spam SEO techniques and they are affordable for small to medium size businesses.  They typically work a lot more closely with each customer to ensure their client is satisfied.

3. Freelance or Cheap Law Firm SEO companies or individuals – These firms usually get most of the business because of their low cost. However, buyer beware as these shops usually cut a lot of corners in their SEO techniques. They also do not provide a lot of support and they end up ruining your domain name with the search engines because they either lack the experience or simply do not care.

Now it is important that being a law firm owner that you understand the factors you should consider while selecting a law firm SEO company for your law firm’s website optimization needs. You should consider following factors:

1- Your Industry – Does the SEO company or your friend have a working knowledge of the law and lawyer advertising rules? Do they specialize in the legal industry or do they work with other businesses as well? Working with a specialist in law firm SEO will produce far better results because they understand your business and the client you are trying to retain.
2- Do they have examples of their law firm SEO successes?
3- Do they have other lawyer/client references?
4- Do they work within your budget?
5- Do they stress the importance of building web content as part of the strategy?
6- Do they have attorney writers on staff to help write content for the website?
7- How long have their references been using their service?

After this simple analysis, you can decide what type of law firm SEO Company you need. If you would like to speak with an experienced and expert law firm SEO consultant, please call: 7 SEO MY SITE or (773) 669-7483 today.

Are your readers yawning as they browse your legal website, clicking away quickly to another website after lingering only seconds on yours, or, if they stay at all are they obliged to read through your copy more than once in order for it to make sense?  Any or all of these are distinct warning signs, along with some other signs that should let you know beyond a doubt that your copy is……well, boring. Since the last thing you want to do to potential clients is make them wish they had gone ahead and scheduled that root canal they’ve been putting off, it is critical that you read your website’s content  not as the attorney you are, but as a potential client.  To be sure, quality writing is subjective by its very nature, and what I like to read you just might despise, however I think we can all agree in theory on what grabs us and holds our attention as we click from one website to the next.  Legal SEO content can be particularly tricky, but the payoff—brand new clients for your law firm—are certainly worth the effort.

How Do You Know For Sure?

What are some sure signs your content is just not getting the job done? While there is no one way to know for absolute certain if your law firm’s potential clients are stopping to thoroughly read your articles, there are a few things you can do in order to make sure your legal website content is both readable and perfectly optimized for the various search engines. Consider the following:

1. If you haven’t already, install Google Analytics and take a look at the average amount of time your potential clients are staying on your legal website. Anything less than two minutes is very bad! If your visitors are staying less than one minute you have a major problem.
2. Read your legal website’s content as a potential client, then rate it on a scale of 1-10. If you rated the copy as anything less than a seven, your website could be in trouble. If you don’t find it interesting enough to hold your attention and make you want to read more, then your clients won’t either.  Just as the legal services you offer are certainly not merely “good enough,” neither do you want your website copy to be only “good enough”—you want it to be attention-grabbing.
3. Consider a blog for your website; comments are one of the best ways to measure whether or not your potential clients are engaged by your legal copy. Although writing great legal copy that is also search engine optimized to the maximum can seem like an overwhelming task, the results are worth it when your clients give glowing feedback.
4. Don’t save your best ideas for later. If you are trying your hardest to get your legal website up and running with great legal SEO content, it can seem awfully tempting to put “good enough” copy out there until later—when you have more time. Don’t do it! Later may never come, so spend the time necessary and only put fantastic, highly readable legal SEO content on your firm’s website.

You can achieve greatness on your legal website if you’re willing to work hard in the beginning and reap the rewards later with new clients and a fabulous website. It’s tough, but it’s worth it!