Like any business in modern times, law firms need to drive web traffic in order to find new business and raise revenue. In the online world, this is done through SEO (search engine optimization), which is constantly evolving. Tactics that drove ROI a year ago and yielded conversions may not prove to be the best strategy this year or down the line. For example, one time it was thought that all any savvy marketer needed to do to drive traffic was stuff content with mass amounts of keywords. Obviously, this isn’t so anymore. But no matter the changes the SEO landscape may see, the fundamentals will never go out of style. With that in mind, here is a playbook detailing the core principals of law firm seo marketing.
Quality
It may seem like a given to make quality content a cornerstone of an SEO strategy, but ignoring this fundamental is what nearly sank SEO in the first place. To have any hope of driving traffic, small business advertisers, such as law firms, now need to ensure all content is relevant, heavy on detail, useful and filled to capacity with substance.
Research
No one likes homework, but even in modern SEO it is mandatory. That means lots and lots of keyword research. It’s only by studying the intended keywords that marketers can gauge how easy it is for folks to actually find the content.
Wording
Including keywords and phrases that are already on the tips of Internet surfers’ tongues is a must.
Ads
Watch the amount of ads. If the area of a webpage “above the fold” is top-heavy with advertisements, it will likely turn an audience off. Moreover, Google is now penalizing those pages with too many distracting ads by downgrading them.
Titles & Tags
Ensure all HTML titles are made up of keywords relevant to the web page. To this end, use relevant keywords in headlines and subheadings. Also, be specific when framing the meta description tags. Make sure they accurately describe the substance of the page.
Structure
Those who don’t understand proper web design will often create pages that are free form in nature. While this certainly makes it easy for humans to read the content of these pages, search engines have a much more difficult time. Marketers need to ask themselves how their pages are structured. There needs to be machine-readable fields in the code as well as page dates in the URL.
Concealment
Oftentimes designers can get so lost in the “pop” of a site that they can overlook whether or not excess colors and graphics are concealing vital keywords. If the site must be a bit more minimal in order to actually be found in a search, then so be it.
Stuffing
The big no-no. Don’t overstuff content with targeted keywords.
Mobile
Is the page in question optimized for mobile? If not, it better be.
Crawl
The foundation of all SEO. Search engines use bots to find and “crawl” websites in order to determine page rankings. To say that it’s crucial to have a webpage that allows for easy crawling is an understatement.
These are just a few principals that even the least tech-savvy businesses and firms out there should know before crafting that SEO strategy. And while the landscape of SEO may be constantly evolving, these fundamentals should remain evergreen far down the road.
