One of your biggest allies helping your legal website and blog is SEO.  But what is SEO?  It stands for Search Engine Optimization which is the process of improving the visibility of a website in a search engine’s nature or unpaid search results.  Basically, it is a technique which helps search engines locate then rank your website.  A search engine will rank your website based on a variety of factors and considerations which will strengthen or detract from your website’s rank.  Thus, this helps your website receive more traffic from search engines and more consumers searching.

Sounds simple, but in realty it is not.  There are entire firms that just do SEO work for your website and focus on working with search engines to increase your page’s rank.  This is because SEO is a LOT of work.  Attorneys and law firms simply do not have the time to properly devote to SEO unless they delegate the work to support staff or hire an individual to just do SEO.

However, there are some SEO tips that can still make your website more visible without shelling out lots of money to an SEO firm.

First, your firm’s homepage must have the market area or practice area listed.  Why?  Because this is the essential attractor to your firm–this is what your clients are searching for!  Having these two essential facts on your homepage is what makes your law firm optimized for search engine hits.  Moreover, this information should be up and front to also make it easier for clients to know they are in the right place; do not make them search on your website!  The hardest part is getting them to your website, now that they are there make sure you know have to hook them in!

The second tip deals with your title tag–what your website is called and what it comes up in searches.  This might be one of the most important elements of a webpage that must be optimized for search engine queries.  A bad title would be something like your law firm name, your name with “attorney at law” after it, or even a broad “personal injury lawyer” title.  Why?  Because a prospective client is not searching for you or your firm name, and someone as broad as “personal injury lawyer” is littered across the internet; too much competition!

Instead, think like a prospective client with a legal problem.  Use title tags with your city, area, and name to receive the best benefits from search engine queries.  A title like “Albany Criminal Law Attorney — [name/firm]” will yield more pointed search results then “Albany lawyer” or “criminal law attorney” alone.

The last basic tip deals with something that might be too late if you already have a website.  Your domain name–your web address–should also emulate the title tags with the same kind of descriptors.  For example, ours contains “legal marketing” because that is what we do and what we want internet searchers to find.  A strong web address for a law firm or attorney who is just to begin their website should also have similar keywords like your location and practice area in the address.

Again, SEO takes a lot of time is and is as simple as it might sound.  Here at NAB Legal Marketing we do not do per se pure SEO.  But we do optimize our posts, pages, and website for web searches using SEO methods.  Above all else, one of the main SEO factors to be considered should be the content added to your blog and webpage.  Poor quality will yield poor results.  Period.  Contact us today to learn more about the content services we provide and how we can draft substantial content for your website to help increase your SEO ranking at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com