Legal Website: Search Engine Placement Improvement
By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved.
This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.
Good design, proper key word density, intuitive navigation, correct Meta tags and informative content are all important to achieving top search engine placement. Especially when it comes to law firm sites, they are almost devoid of one critical search engine element . . .Quality incoming links!
Google implements a PageRank system from 1 to 10, with the majority of quality sites rankings at 4 or above. Google's system looks at what other sites are linking to you or link popularity. It is no longer about how many words are on the page, in fact, it was not really about that at the start.
The logic is that pages other people think are valuable resources will often get linked by other webmasters, while pages that are of low quality or do not contain any information at all, will not gain many links. Thus, the Top10 places will be filled with sites people regard as useful. It does make sense and it adds another way for SE's to rate your website with minimal effort. Virtually all Webmasters these days are aware of the fact that exchanging linkbacks with other sites is an excellent method for building traffic.
This change poses a problem for new sites to reach the top and at the same time favors those large, high traffic sites. For help in getting quality links, there is software that does it all automatically. Click here to find out more.
More links are not better unless all of them are high-quality links. Numbers aren't as important as context and relevancy. It is better to have a few links from sites that are similar in content and topic to yours, a few links from the portals, and a few links from site reviewers, than to have 1,000 links on Free For All (FFA) links pages. Actually, in practice, non-themed links can actually lower a site’s search engine placement. This is especially true when lazy webmasters join link swapping plans in hopes of having ‘instant’ mega, in-coming links. These services are designed to immediately boost your link popularity. The way they work is simple: Each member of a link-share program places a machine-generated page on his site and links to that page from his front page. The machine-generated page has links to all other sites participating in the program. Each member submits his machine-generated page to all search engines, and the result is that each member has a link to his site from everyone else.
This is what Google says about these programs: “Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that do not affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines. At least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive”. Even though these programs may have been effective in the past, you can see now that many search engines regard them as spam and often ban sites that they find participating in these programs. I strongly advise you no to get involved, no matter the desperation.
The top criteria in selecting a quality linking partner is to simply determine if their site is ranking within the top three pages of search engine returned results for a popular legal key word phrase. If your practice is mainly within a certain geographic area, this should also be considered. For example, lets assume your main practice area is auto accident, and your firm is located in San Diego. A good key word phrase to check on Google would be: San Diego auto accident lawyer or San Diego accident lawyer. Those would be top on my list. Also, more generic phrases like San Diego attorneys, San Diego law, etc. are okay. See who is on page one (exclude the sponsored sites as they usually are only temporary) and contact them via email to see if they would be interested in a link exchange. Unless your site is ranking well for a similar key word phrase, a top ranked site would most likely not be to enthused to accommodate your request. However, it is certainly worth a try! Alternatively, to start your linking campaign, I’d say consider any other sites on Google ranking within the first five pages of results. Also, valuable are any links from other legal related sites. Naturally, start within your own geographic city area, expand to the regional area, state and country.
Exclusively for the legal community, our top rated legal directories have a free reciprocal award linking program with no obligation to join. If your site qualifies, our top rankings will create a valuable link back for your firm. Click here or send an email my way to learn more about the program.
Quality incoming links are critical to improved rankings and therefore, increased business. With a good linking program in place, your firm’s site will soon reap the true potential the Internet offers legal firms.
Located in California, Texas or Las Vegas? If so, CLICK HERE to view our details and entry form for a free basic trial listing in our legal directories!
Copyright 2007 Promotions Unlimited. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited http://www.websitetrafficbuilders.com an Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas ) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst. You can contact Bob via e-mail at bob@websitetrafficbuilders.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at: www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com
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