Illinois Lawyer On Site Search Engine Optimization
March 20th, 2012 by adminWhen you run an Illinois law firm and are wanting to increase the amount of targeted traffic to your law firm’s website, hiring a law firm internet marketing company with in-depth understanding of the most effective on-site search engine optimization tactics will help you experience much greater success online.
With the huge growth of the internet in recent years, it is essential that you have a legal website that ranks highly, so that potential clients find you and the services you offer. To achieve this, it is necessary that you implement a lawyer search engine optimization campaign, both on-site and external, that is powerful and effective. Below, we reveal some of the most effective tactics you can use to achieve higher rankings for your targeted keyword terms and phrases.
On-Site Optimization
The fundamentals of on-site optimization are simple, however many website owners make the mistake of ignoring simple tasks that take just minutes to do. By properly optimizing your website, you will notice that your website ranks better almost instantly. Here are some of the tactics you should be utilizing:
Website Title Tags – It is essential that title tags are keyword rich. Your primary practice location, top niche practice areas (personal injury lawyer, personal injury attorney, for example) and additional practice areas should be included in your title tags. In addition, it is CRITICAL that the key terms you want to emphasize most are included within the first 65 characters of the page title.
A good example of an effective title tag is: Chicago injury lawyers, Naperville wrongful death attorneys | Smith Law (70 characters)
Your title tags can contain more than 65 characters, however Google typically only displays 65, so always assume that value is only placed on those first 65.
Website Meta Tags – The keyword tag is no longer valued within the major search engines, however you will not be penalized if you use it. The most important of your meta tags is the “meta description” tag.
Website Meta Description Tags – Search engines still value the meta description tag, and it’s important that you use it. Frequently, the description placed in this tag will display in the search results, depending on the search query that was used in the search. Google also pulls the description found in search results from page content on occasion, or from an inbound link that is relevant to the website content.
Website Content – In the design of your law firm website, it is important that the content is high quality and “search friendly.” All too often, content is “stuffed” with keywords in order to attract the search engines, while the needs of humans go ignored. This is a huge mistake, as search engines like Google now have a way of determining if your content offers value to your visitor, through analytics you may not see that reveal the time a visitor spends on your site to the search engine, and other factors you are likely unaware of. Another reason that quality content is so important is that actual users will find your website helpful and insightful, which increases the odds that a visitor will be converted to a lead or client.
The content of your website should be rich with keywords, however not to the point that your content seems to “spam” with keywords or becomes unreadable to your visitors. Generally speaking, your home page will include major keywords that are the focus of other “internal” pages on your website. So, for example, say that you are a Chicago injury attorney. Your home page will discuss the various areas of injury law you offer, and also entice your visitor to use your service by including content regarding the reasons a potential client should choose your services. Your sub pages should focus on your niche practice areas (such as slip and fall accidents, car accidents, wrongful death, defective products, etc.), generally one page for each of these practice areas. The content of these sub pages should not only mention the cities you offer service in several times, but include terms that a searcher may use to find you such as lawyer(s), attorney(s), and any relevant phrases that may relate to that specific practice area that searchers may use to find you.
Choosing a Domain Name for Your Website – Search engine rankings can greatly benefit by using a keyword rich domain, however it can be difficult to do and still maintain your brand and trustworthiness with clients. For instance, if you are a Chicago personal injury attorney, a domain name such as Chicagopersonalinjurylaw.com or Chicago-Personal-Injury-Law.com would make it a simple matter to rank for key phrases such as Chicago personal injury lawyer. As much as possible, try to include your city/primary area of practice in your domain name.
Choosing Website Sub Page Names - Naming your sub pages is just as important as naming your home page so that your sub pages are found in searches. Use keywords that are relevant to the keywords the sub page is optimized for. For example, a page on your site focuses on wrongful death lawyers in Naperville, Illinois. You would not want to name this page Chicagopersonalinjurylaw.com/wrongful.html. Instead, a page name that would achieve a better ranking would appear as:
Chicagopersonalinjurylaw.com/wrongful-death-lawyers-Naperville.html. Use keywords in any situation when it is possible, including in page titles, domain names, descriptions and content, as Google places a tremendous amount of value on keywords.
Link Building
Link building is another essential component of effective search engine optimization; a high quality link building campaign is a must, which we will discuss in a future post. Creating a Google Local Business Center listing so that you can be found in local results is also important. Dataflurry is a leading Illinois lawyer search engine marketing firm with a team of professionals dedicated to ensuring online businesses succeed.
Learn more about exceptional attorney website marketing services online by visiting Dataflurry’s website today.
Dataflurry has worked with several companies in states like Illinois, we actually currently work with a