I work at a web startup called TeachStreet.com, and a good part of my job as an SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is to make sure that when people are searching for yoga classes or piano lessons, links to our site show up in the first results page, preferably among the top three results.
If you’re a lawyer, especially if you’re running your own firm, it’s important that you rank for certain terms as well. When people Google your name, for example, you want the website for your firm to be the first result on the page. Also, if your website shows up for “Estate Planning Lawyer in Albuquerque,” imagine all the free leads you’d get! Since you only need to rank high for a few search terms on Google, you probably won’t need to do all the SEO work that I do on a daily basis (for our 900+ categories). Still, it does require a bit of a time investment. The return you get in free web advertising, however, can be well worth all the work.
So how do you do all this magic SEO work? Here are some suggestions:
1. Start a blog or claim an Avvo profile – Since you’re marketing yourself on the web it’s important to have a “base of operations.” After all, there’s no point in doing SEO if you don’t have a place on the web for people to go and to learn what you’re all about. If you have the time, starting a self-hosted WordPress Blog is your best bet. Blogs index very nicely on Google and often take care of all the on-page SEO work behind the scenes so you don’t have to. The more content you create on your blog, the more people will link to that content, which means your blog (and thus your firm!) will start to do very well in the rankings.
Although a previous article on Lawyerist has already talked about the importance of claiming an avvo profile, I’d like to stress it again. If you don’t have the time to put together a website or blog, claiming an Avvo profile is a good alternative as it provides a way for you to showcase your areas of expertise as well as the endorsements you might get from fellow lawyers and clients.
2. Link to your website or Avvo profile with specific anchor text – I did a Google Search on a somewhat common name and I got back a guitar repair expert, a translator living in the Netherlands, a Surgeon, and a Tennis Pro all on the first page. The guitar expert was number one because he had five links (just five!) pointing to back his site. Two of the links had the text “John Doe’s Guitar and Violin Repair,” one of them had no text at all, and two more of them had a link with the domain name “www.hisfullname.com” as the link text.
We all know that Google likes links, and Google especially likes links with specific anchor text (link text) going back to your site. So, if you had a somewhat common name, you may want to register something similar like “yourfullname.com” or “yournametheestatelawyer.com” and encourage people to link to you with your name in the anchor text. If you get enough links, you should be able to rank #1 for your name, which can be a big help if people are using Google to look specifically for you.
Finally, If you are an Estate Planning Lawyer in Albuqurque, you may want to have links back to your site or Avvo page with anchor text like “Estate Planning Lawyer,” “Albuquerque Attorney,” or “Albuqurque Estate Planning Lawyer.” Be sure not to overuse any single key phrase, as Google tends to like variety.
3. Get links through guest posting – One of the best ways to get high quality links is to write for a blog like lawyerist.com. Just one link is usually good enough. You can easily put one in just before or after your guest post in a byline. An example byline might be “John Doe is an Albuqurque Estate Planning Lawyer who also works in foreclosure law.” In this example “Albuqueque Estate Planning Lawyer” would be the anchor text linking back to your personal blog or Avvo page.
4. Put your street address on your site and claim your local google profile – If you want to rank high for “Albuqurque Attorney” it’s not enough for you to get tons of links back to your site. You want to prove to Google that you have an actual street address there. To do this, it’s a good idea to claim your Google places profile and register your address. Also, be sure to put that address on your website if you have one.
5. Get cited – When promoting your firm online, links can get you most if not all of the way, but sometimes it can get competitive–especially in larger cities. That’s when citations come into the picture. Be sure you can get your firm’s name (and street address if you’re lucky) on every possible website out there. These citations don’t have to link back to your site, but they should at least have your firm’s name included. For techniques on how to get cited I recommend this guide as a good starting point.
What about you. What have you done to promote your firm online?