From word of mouth to the Internet

Traditionally, lawyers have developed their market through networking and word of mouth.  In recent times, more and more have embarked on the Internet fast-paced wagon.  Many have expressed to Koneka their interest in increasing their online presence.  They asked: “How can my Website rank well on Google?”  But before answering that question, let’ see why it’s a good publicity to appear early in search results.

Why should you appear in top 3 results of search engines

Many research document where people click on Google. They conclude that 85% of the visitors will click on one of the first 3 organic results. Google is extremely good at putting meaningful links in there.

Another way to look at is by looking at the eye-pattern heat-map below.  You will notice that people gaze significantly more at the first 3 results.  Their interest is rapidly declining as we go down the list.

In short: you must strive to reach this search podium!

Google Eye Gaze Heat-Map

Search Engine Optimization for dummies

In this section, I will summarize 4 elements I welcome you to consider when building up your website.  If you work with web design firms, make sure they are aware of those elements, because you may otherwise end-up in the abyss of Google’s result.  It can be frustrating after having spent thousands revamping your Website look.

1. Identify Keywords

Before writing your first line, consider what are the best keywords describing what it is you want to say.  It will be very hard to score well on too many queries, so focus on 20-30 key concepts.  Also, think hard about what differentiate your offer from your competitor. For instance, it will be hard to rank well on “business attorneys”.  By adding distinguishing elements in your keyword list, like geographic locations “business attorneys Ottawa”, you have a better shot at the first 3 spots!

2. Place those keyword appropriately

Without going too much into technical detail, you can hint Google about what are the most important sentences on your page.  Let’s take this blog post as an example.

The top title is very important. This text is used by Google to present your page to searchers.  The keywords you use in there (<title> tag) have more weight than anything else on your page.  The second most significant identifier is your main title (<h1> tag).  Finally, Google makes its mind on the overall keyword distribution, so be careful to spread your top 20 keywords several times throughout the article.

As a side note, be aware that Google won’t see the keywords in rich media files like Flash movies.  Lawyers are incredible scribes, so it would be unfortunate that your content remains hidden to the world.   Again, make sure you web developers restrain themselves from going down the flashy road.

3. Appeal your target audience

If you optimized your site for “business attorneys in Ottawa”, make sure your content is meaningful to people searching those terms.  Google is pretty smart.  It knows how long visitors stay on your Website.  If it finds out that people spent an average of 5 seconds on your page, it will conclude that your content is finally not worthy of ranking well for those terms.  Google Analytics refers to this measure as “bounce rate”.

4. Build incoming links

This is the bread-and-butter of search engine optimization. Each incoming link to your site cast a vote to Google’s PageRank algorithm.  PageRank, by the way, is the technology developed by Google’s founder Larry Page during his studies at Stanford.  The more votes you have, the better your rank.  The higher you rank, the more voting power your Website has.  Furthermore, PageRank analyses the correlation between your Website content and the referring page.  If the Department of Justice of Canada refers to your site “Ottawa’s business attorneys .com”, be assured is will be taken into consideration.  You can always do strategic link exchange with partners in a similar field.

Conclusion

In conclusion, throughout the entire Web design process, always keep in mind that you want to be found by Google’ spiders.  Also, make sure that your Web designer has some basic knowledge of search-engine optimization.  Feel free to contact us to obtain more information!

Interesting links:

A company doing SEO for lawyers: http://www.stemlegal.com/
SEO gurus (for tech savvy): http://www.seomoz.com