One Click SEO Consultant for Law Firm Websites
Erik Mazzone | Thursday, January 28, 2010 at 3:51PM To begin, a small confession.
My job is to spend my days helping lawyers with technology and other aspects of starting and building a law firm. Two of the frequent topics I discuss with lawyers are building websites and the importance of those websites being visible to search engines.
Search engine optimization is impenetrable alchemy to me, like quantum physics or BCS rankings. I don't get it and it hurts my head to think about it too long. My strategy has been to make friends with SEO genius types like Steve Matthews of Stem Legal and pester them for information in return for the promise of free beer at TECHSHOW.
Since I work mostly with lawyers in solo practices and small firms, I am acutely aware that most of them can't afford to pay SEO geniuses like Steve. At least not at the outset. Yet, search engine optimization is no less important to a brand new lawyer than it is to established, ongoing firms.
That's why I was so excited when I read about WooRank on TechCrunch the other day. WooRank is a new service that lets web publishers perform a quick SEO-friendliness check of their website. For free. All you do is enter your domain name and push a button, and WooRank delivers a concise summary of the major SEO factors and a numerical grade of how your site did.
You can also have the report emailed to you as a pdf via an export button.
Receiving this report isn't going to turn you (or me) into an SEO guru overnight. But what it does is give you a nice, short rundown of some of the key variables that affect the SEO performance of your website. If you take the time to read the report and then go back to your website to fix some of the places highlighted where improvements can be made, it provides a nice table of contents for things to learn.
Sort of a syllabus for SEO 101.
Give it a look-see to determine if it can help you. The price is right and Google is watching.
Reader Comments (6)
Some really good points here. But I'm not sure SEO won't be important anymore, maybe it's just that the traditional definition of SEO is changing. Many of the fundamental principles of SEO are still solid and still applicable.
Terence, I completely agree with you.
What I was (inartfully) trying to suggest was not that SEO is unimportant, but rather that for firms and lawyers who don't know anything about it and don't have the financial bandwidth (yet) to hire someone to help them, that the report from WooRank may help them become conversant with some of the basic topics of SEO.
Thanks for stopping by and thanks for adding to the discussion!
Great tool - there is also a great add-on to the Firefox browser from SEO "guru" Aaron Wall. It's free and allows you to look at how your site is doing compared to other sites in some of the key factors. Similar to this but gives a lot more detail - still free though! Here it is: http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/seo-for-firefox.html Keep it up Erik!
Great tip about the Firefox add-on, Damon, thanks!
Oh Erik, if you keep up the 'guru' routine I'm going to be carrying you home from the beer I owe you.
Now, on to low cost or free stuff. Four suggestions:
1) Get to know the Google Keyword Research Tool:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
- It's free, and tells you monthly keyword volume and keyword order. Both are good to know from a content creation standpoint, crafting titles, etc.
2) Title tags: Never ceases to amaze me how few lawyer websites don't embed descriptive terms in their page titles. Also, EVERY page on your site should have a unique page title.
3) Link building: Firms should document their off-line relationships and see if they can digitally replicate them. Think: Associations, Educational Institutions (lawyers who are adjunct faculty?), Charities, Industry groups, Event sponsorship, Author byline credit when you write an article. Get the inbound link credit, and your site rankings will rise.
4) Self-publishing: Never stop writing, and move beyond your own website. Blogs, industry magazine articles, online newsletters... it doesn't matter. If you don't have a body of work (which = your footprint online) you won't generate the links required to have your website found.
Most firms would be well served getting to know the basics & executing on the simple best practices mentioned above. At the very least, they would help themselves to become more sophisticated consumers prior to engaging outside help.
Cheers & thanks again!
Steve, thanks for the great comment! That is an excellent and concise rundown of cost effective SEO for the small law firm or solo practice. (Which means, of course, I will be stealing it!) Thanks for stopping by!