Website Optimization For Lawyers

Website optimization for lawyers is the same as it is for everyone else. The term website optimization refers to doing certain things that may cause a website to rank higher in search engine results. There are two parts to website optimization. The first part is referred to as on-page optimization because these are techniques used on a website page. The second part is called off- page optimization because these are techniques used away from a website. AttyClicks provides initial and ongoing on-page and off-page website optimization for lawyers.

On-Page Website Optimization

There are several factors that can help a webpage rank better in the search engine result listings. The application of techniques to improve these factors is called optimization. Following are some of the factors. These factors are not listed in any particular order and I am not suggesting that any particular factor is more or less important than any other factor.

First, one factor in website optimization for lawyers is that each page should have original content focused on one to four keywords. It is best to focus each webpage on a single keyword, but with a website's main page, focusing on one to four keywords is acceptable as long as they are related. For example, using lawyer, lawyers, attorney, and attorneys on the same page is OK. However, it is difficult to rank well using personal injury, real estate, and bankruptcy on the same page. It would be better to have one page focused on personal injury, one on real estate, and one on bankruptcy.

Second, another factor that search engines look at is meta tags. Webpages are written in html code which is then interpreted by a web browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) to display the webpage as you see it. Meta tags are lines of html code at the top of a webpage's code and are not visible when a webpage is displayed. These meta tags tell search engines information about the webpage. While some meta tags are not important, the title and description meta tags are important and the search engines use them.

Third, a big factor with on-page website optimization is the use of keywords. The keywords meta tag is not very effective with some search engines such as Google. However, keywords are important. Basic website optimization for lawyers requires that keywords such as lawyer, attorney, etc., be in certain places on a webpage. Your main keywords need to be in the title meta tag, the description meta tag, the webpage title that is displayed by the browser, the H1 tag (if it is different from the webpage title), and about 3% to 7% of the time in the webpage's content. It is also a good idea to put your keywords in bold one time within the webpage's content and to restate the keywords at the very bottom of the webpage.

Off-Page Website Optimization

Basically, off-page website optimization is obtaining backlinks from other sites. Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Google views backlinks as votes for your website. The more votes that you have, the more popular your website is and the higher your website will be in the search engine results.

However, not every backlink is equal. Google developed a concept referred to as "page rank" where some webpages have more value or rank than other pages. Every webpage has a "page rank" even if the rank is "0". When a webpage links to your website, it sends some of its page rank. A higher page rank webpage that links to your website will send you more page rank than a lower page rank webpage. The more page rank one of your pages has, the more likely it will be ranked higher in search engine results. However, Google does not use page rank alone. Because of other factors, it is common for a webpage with a lower page rank to be listed higher in search engine results that a webpage with a lower page rank.

With backlinks, the bottom line is that you really need a combination of more backlinks and links from higher page ranking webpages.

There are hundreds of ways to obtain backlinks. You can swap links with other websites, you can sign up for directories and search engines, you can write articles and post them on article directories, you can sign up on social networks, etc.

Word Of Caution

Here are two works of caution:

First, it is very common for a new website to be ranked in Google search results in a good position for a short time and then to drop to where almost no one will see the website. Google wants to give people good, reliable search results. As part of that effort, Google will initially index a website and then apply a factor to a new website for a period of time to see how the website develops and how viewers react to it. Some people call this the Google "sandbox", but Google denies that they deliberately keep new websites low in the search results. When this happens, the only thing to do is to keep building backlinks and to wait. In most cases, the website will come back and rank higher in the search results.

Second, be careful of which website you link to. Google will not penalize your website for websites that link to you. But Google will penalize your website in the search results if you link to a "bad" website. How Google determines what is a "bad" website is really not known. What we do know is that Google will remove a "bad" website from its index. Therefore, if you can find a website in Google's index, it is probably OK to link to the website. If you cannot find a website in Google's index, do not link to it.

Website optimization for lawyers is a must if you want your lawyer website to be seen by potential clients. If you do not apply techniques that will optimize your website for search engines, your website will most likely be far down in the search engine results and few people will see it.