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One of the things I teach my lawyer students is search engine optimization, and how to increase their position in the search engines. After all, where you show up in Google is a critical element of your online legal marketing efforts. Optimize your website properly and you’re way ahead of the game – focus on the wrong stuff and you’re spinning your wheels.
One of the wrong things that most lawyers focus on is the concept of “keyword metatags.” Those are the words that you stick in the top of the website’s code to (theoretically) let Google and the other players know what the site is all about. Lawyers obsess over the keyword metatags in their law firm websites and blogs, they hire expensive search engine optimization “experts” (and I use the term lightly) for thousands of dollars a month to help in their efforts.
They spin their wheels.
Meanwhile, my websites and blogs contain the most generic keywords. Why? Because I’ve long maintained that Google does not use the “keywords” meta tag in its web search ranking. Red herring, says I.
Now, Google comes out with the truth. And I’m pretty happy to report that I was correct all along. On the Google Webmaster Central Blog, the definitive statement (there’s a video to go with it) is as follows:
Our web search (the well-known search at Google.com that hundreds of millions of people use each day) disregards keyword metatags completely. They simply don’t have any effect in our search ranking at present.
…
About a decade ago, search engines judged pages only on the content of web pages, not any so-called “off-page” factors such as the links pointing to a web page. In those days, keyword meta tags quickly became an area where someone could stuff often-irrelevant keywords without typical visitors ever seeing those keywords. Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag.
So next time some fancy-pants legal search engine optimization “expert” corners you at a convention or bombards you by phone, remember – it ain’t the metatags that do the trick. It’s the content.
Photo courtesy of Danard Vincente.
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This is not new news. Google disclosed this years ago and created “Adwords” as their pay to play substitute.
Absolutely correct, Michael. Problem is that most lawyers are getting scammed by SEO “experts” who claim otherwise, and spend thousands of dollars each month just on keyword metatags.
You are absolutely correct Jay! I think the word is getting out there slowly to attorneys, but there are still so many that are still taken by SEO scammers who are using this as a ploy. Thank you for spreading the word!
You're right, I was a computer geek long before I was an attorney and consequently I don't fall for salesman misdirection in the computer world.
Unfortunately the SEO scams seem to target just about everyone. Google has for years said the best way to get a better rank is to write better content (thus having people want to link to it) — people should really believe them. I've encountered a number of business owners who believe (or want to believe) that there is some magic tag or something that will make their site outrank all of their competitors. What people have to get is that Google is trying to provide the best and most relevant content to the searcher. If you could override that with a tag, Google wouldn't be doing their job. There are a few things you should do to make your site easily searchable, but beyond that, focus on content.
Great comment, Ben – thanks for the insight. Content truly is king, with off-page SEO techniques serving as a means of boosting PageRank and enabling your site or blog to begin attracting viewer attention.
Great comment, Ben – thanks for the insight. Content truly is king, with off-page SEO techniques serving as a means of boosting PageRank and enabling your site or blog to begin attracting viewer attention.
When conducting SEO there are only four things that you need to do well.
Keyword Analysis:
People search for information on Google by typing keywords into Google. The first step in any SEO campaign is to figure out what people search for when they look for the products and/or services that your company is offering. If might sounds simple, but it’s not. To use an example, every day, people end up at Kisscafe.com after typing in move then 1,000 different phrases into Google. Every high traffic website is the same. It’s important to determine the exact phrases that people use. But don’t worry; Google has tools that you can use. Their Adwords tool is among the best. As in the real world, the trick is to find keywords (demand) that few websites are optimized for (little competition).
On Page SEO
Create a high quality website and pay attention to on-page SEO factors. The most important of these on page factors are page titles, meta tags, internal linking, anchor text, and alt tags for images. It important that you go through your site with a fine tooth comb and fix any errors or shortcomings that might be preventing your website form being ranking prominently in the search engines. It is a time consuming task. So, feel free to give us a call and let us help you out.
Writing Good Content for your Website
95% of the time people visit websites, they’re looking for content. Pretty pictures and fancy flash are nice, but at the end of the day, it’s the content on your website that will draw people to in and keep them coming back for more. More then anything else, the success of your website will depend one the quality of your content and the ability of people to find it. Content is crucially important and we strongly urge you to read our content creation best practices document. In this document, we cover all the key things that you need to know to write the kind of high quality, relevant content that websites need to thrive.
Get Lots of backlinks.
If another websites has linked to your website, it must be because someone at that website thinks your website is pretty good. If 1,000 other websites link to you, then there must be 1,000 other people out there that have websites that all think your website is good enough to link to. In other words, if lots of websites link to you, search engines conclude that this is proof that your website is really good.
In Conclusion…
If you’d looking for a good how-to document that describes almost everything you need to know, then check out this PDF.: http://www.bergstrom-seo.com/resources/google-search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf. It’s a pretty long document (22 pages) but it tells you everything that you need to know about SEO. Good luck!