Top Five Search Engine Optimization (SEO) rules for law firms.

About 12 years ago when Business Edge first began working with law firm's web sites, the managing partner of one of New England largest law firms turned to me during a meeting. He was smiling and was perhaps just a little full of himself as he exclaimed, "we'll never get a new client as a result of our web site." I knew he was wrong, even in that primitive Internet era, but in 1996 I couldn't prove it. This was a corporate law firm with over 200 attorneys, and although a firm like that may still not be using advanced SEO techniques to improve their web site results in 2008, there is no doubt in my mind that they absolutely have to be. As firm's traditional "word of mouth" and referral business slows and Internet marketing becomes responsible for a higher percentage of their new accounts, the performance of a law firm's web site in search engines will have a market value not just in the thousands, but in the millions!

Now that I have your attention - your law firm losing millions of dollars hopefully kept you reading - I will try to put SEO for law firms in non-technical jargon so you don't have to forward this to your IT person and say "you figure this out". SEO, like the quality and reach and breadth of your web site, is becoming one of the most critical tools available to your law firm marketing team.

I will begin by pointing out the five most important rules in law firm search engine marketing. Feel free to print this out and post it on your work station!

Rule 1 - The best content usually wins

Well-written original content is still the most important practice for a firm trying to improve their marketing results. Much of the writing should be initiated by attorneys at your firm, with marketing support if it is available. But a good SEO specialist will often tweak the content to perform even better in search engines. This is not a task to be taken lightly - your content in the hands of a non-savvy SEO person who is not familiar with legal industry jargon could be a disaster. The last thing you want are tons of hits to a web page that contains gibberish!

Rule 2 - "Good" sites linking to you demonstrates the importance of your.

This rule is something that Google invented and all the other major search engines emulated, and with good reason. The more respectable sites that link to you, the higher your sites "relative worth" becomes, according to the search engines. Therefore, it makes sense to be linked to from as many good online sources as possible (not just one large site, like Findlaw and other sites sometimes claim). Developing these sites takes time, and should be done by a respectable, knowledgeable SEO professional, who will know not only where to find sites to link to you, but also which ones are "respectable" and which ones to avoid.

Rule 3 - Don't promote "bad" incoming links while trying to follow Rule #2

One of the most disastrous things you can do to your domain property is to hire someone who inadvertently creates links from "bad" sites to your site. This can cause extreme damage to your domain's search engine visibility - we have seen this happen time and time again. Currently we spend a lot of our time trying to help clients fix these problems and removing bad incoming links that a previous SEO person had generated. Sites like Google can tell the difference between a valuable site linking to you, and a "link farm" linking to you. "Link Farms" are set up for no other reason than to create links to sites like yours, and there are few if any professional SEO consultants who use paid links or link farms anymore. Our philosophy is to remain within the published guidelines of Yahoo, Google, and other sites so you will slowly increase your search results while not being penalized.

Rule 4 - You don't need $10K a month for an effective Pay Per Click campaigns

More and more law firms are throwing their hats into the Pay Per Click (PPC) ring, and for good reason - it works. Right now the majority of PPC ads you'll see in legal search results are for Personal Injury (PI), but that is not because PI firms are the only ones who will benefit from an intelligent PPC campaign. We'll work with you to create an effective campaign no matter what your practice specializes in, and no matter what your budget. A good SEO professional will help research specific keywords, suggest additional words and phrases, adjust them based on results, and provide detailed reports showing results.

Rule 5 - Develop an effective vehicle for clients to contact you, then e-track

This is a no-brainer, but so often we see marketing campaigns hit dead-ends when a potential client can't find a good contact form or an easy phone number to call. It might go without saying that once you present your services to a potential client, you should not only make it easy to contact you and give you their contact details, but you should also be able to track how they found your site in the first place. E-tracking of new clients can give us a better idea, over a long-term basis, on what ideas are working and which ideas are not.

Any SEO project requires a detailed evaluation of your web site, including competitor analysis (see what the bad guys are doing right), keyword research (see what, if anything, your site is currently doing right), and a code/design evaluation (what your old web developer did or did not do right).

No matter how bad your site's search engine relevance is, we can make it better.

No matter how few clients your Internet marketing is bringing in, we can bring you new clients.