Cyber visibility: Improve your firm's SEO

12 Dec 2011Feature

David Sealey shares his top tips for improving search engine rankings

Several hundred people sat in a conference room.

“Raise your hand if you have ever used a Yellow Pages book to look something up,” requested the presenter.

Nearly everyone in the room raised a hand in the air.

“Keep your hand up if you have used it in the past 12 months.”

Every hand in the room dropped, signifying that the vast majority of us now use the internet as our first source of information.

Operating in an increasingly competitive environment, law firms need to ensure they are visible online and that potential clients can find them easily.

Prerequisites

First, you need to have a website. Beauty is optional, but the following are essential.

Contact details that are easy to find – on every webpage is best. Give a contact name to increase the chances of someone actually calling.
A website built on standard HTML/CSS coding and not Flash.
Content about your firm and the services it offers.

Improving rankings

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the discipline of influencing search engines like Google to refer people to a certain website before others.

Influencing Google is a major undertaking that requires persistence and focus. ‘Camelot’ is a useful mnemonic to help ensure the major SEO bases are covered in your firm’s website.

Content: high-quality content on your website that is relevant to your firm’s services. News and case studies are also valuable content.
Age: the age of your website signifies its credibility in Google’s eyes. Regularly updating content is an indicator that your website is actively maintained and therefore of higher quality.
Metadata: this hidden on-page data has less of an effect these days, but remains important for encouraging searchers to click through to your website.
Easy-to-read URLs: your website address should contain relevant keywords. For example: www.solicitorfirm.com/conveyancing.html
Links: every link to your website is a vote for it. The more links it has, the more authority your website is perceived as having.
Optimised code base: Google expects your site to be fast to load and easy to interpret. Work with your programmers to give the search engines what they want.
Text formatting: ensure titles stand out and that key phrases are emphasised in bold and/or italics.

Tips for medium to large firms

Conduct competitor analysis. Consider using a professional tool like Search Metrics to analyse what competitors are ranking highly for and to identify openings.
Establish an online footprint. Top-50 UK firm Irwin Mitchell has followed a successful strategy of creating micro sites that specialise in areas of personal injury law. Legal services relating to medical malpractice, head injuries and accidents abroad are promoted separately, with each site generating leads for a practice group (for example, see Holidayclaims.com).
Optimise your website. For corporate practice areas, new business is often referred by existing clients. So, the website should be optimised towards the individual names connected with the firm. This should be a quick win for the firm, unless of course its star partners have the misfortune of sharing their names with celebrities.

Tips for small firms

Build credibility. Adding or optimising your firm’s listing on Google Places will build your credibility in Google’s eyes.
Play to strengths. The key is to focus on getting local key phrases in the firm’s Places listing. Aiming big may seem like a good idea, but searchers may be drawn to your competition (which will also be appearing in the search listing) if they find you do little work in a highlighted area.
Build bridges. Create a list of phrases like ‘<town> solicitors’ or ‘conveyancing <town>’ and create corresponding pages on your website that Google can find. It can be a laborious job, but the rewards will be there in the long term.

Measure everything

Capturing data on your website’s usage will provide valuable insights into its performance. If you are investing in SEO, you should see an increase in visitor numbers over time. Modern analytics programs will also indicate the most popular pages on your website and which search phrases people are using to reach your site.

Paid website analytics programs are available from Omniture (now Adobe) and Webtrends. Google Analytics provides a free product for use on websites and is powerful enough for the majority of reporting needs.¹

Screen providers

Keeping track of the firm’s SEO activities and website performance will require a significant amount of time, along with specialist tools and knowledge. If you decide to outsource this function, the following should form part of your screening process.

Use LinkedIn and business networking to get word-of-mouth referrals.
Refer to supplier directories (such as eConsultancy) to check potential SEO suppliers.
Obtain client testimonials on the supplier’s recent work.
Meet the people you’d be working with and ensure you get on well.
Get a thorough explanation of how the supplier approaches SEO.
Ask for details of workflow and how sign-off occurs for any content written in your firm’s name.
Ask for a training session for fee earners to help them to understand SEO.
Check if the supplier has experience in working with legal or professional services firms (not essential).
As SEO can typically take three to 12 months to have the desired effect, ensure your contract would enable you to change suppliers if you don’t get the results expected.

When requesting quotes, provide all potential suppliers with enough information to price their services accurately and appropriately, including the following.

A clear statement of desired outcomes for the firm.
A list of SEO support that your firm can provide (such as writing blog posts).
Any past attempts made to carry out SEO for your firm’s website(s).
Budget expectations (set as an annual amount you’re willing to spend).
List of competitor firms.
List of key phrases you’d like to have associated with your firm.

Ask the agencies to supply you with a written proposal and then invite them in for a presentation/Q&A session.

Making the decision of who to use is somewhat subjective. You’ll need to make a commercial decision based on each supplier’s rate card, proposed approach and contract terms.

SEO is a long-term commitment, so do consider the people you’ll be working with. Ensure that you’re meeting the real account and SEO team. How hungry do they appear for your business? Could you get on with their team? What would happen if it all went wrong? Do they ‘get’ the legal market?

Be wary of any promises or guarantees. The nature of SEO is that Google controls everything in a clandestine way and therefore nothing can be guaranteed.

Also, be cautious around suppliers that claim to have ‘secret’ systems to help your firm to win rankings quickly. Some SEO firms operate on a burn-and-churn model, where they get rapid results for clients at the cost of quality. In the short term, traffic may increase but, in the long run, Google will catch up with (and even penalise) low-quality sites.

SEO purists would argue that firms shouldn’t try to game any search engine but instead focus on producing high-quality websites with excellent content.

If you build these, they will come.

david.sealey@capgemini.com

Endnote

1. See Traffic Management, David Sealey, Managing Partner, Vol. 13 Issue 4