Houston Texas lawyers - attorneys directory
Search Engine Placement Improvement: Legal Website’s Most Overlooked Key
By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2003 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.
Webmasters often link to pages that other people find are valuable resources, logically these pages are ranked much higher than those pages that are of low quality. Essentially all Webmasters these days are aware of the benefits that quality incoming links have on building traffic.
For small or new websites this change is a big obstacle, while the high-traffic sites are heavily favored. Three are software programs that does all of this automatically and would help tremendously. For more information, click here.
Unless all of your links are from high-quality links, more is not better. The key is to have quality over quantity. Having just a few links from sites with related content can get you higher rankings than having 1,000 links from Free For All (FFA) links pages. It is true that placing non-themed links on your site can actually lower your search engine placement. Webmasters often get lackadaisical and join link swapping plans to have instant success. Services like these are to boost your link popularity immediately. Simply, each member of a link-share program has a machine-generated page linked to their front page and this page has links to all the other sites in the program. The result is that each members site has a link from everyone else.
These programs have produced some positive effects in years past, but many search engines now regard them as spam and often ban sites that they find participating in these programs. Don't even try them, even if you are really desperate. Here is what Google has to say about this practice: “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”.
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 2003 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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