The Top 5 Legal Website SEO Mistakes

1. Targeting the wrong keywords - When you write your website content, remember how people search. Legalese is the language of lawyers, not of the people who need them. No one gets online and searches "plaintiff's claim for damages against a tortfeasor". "Car accident injury attorney" is probably a more realistic search string, and that is what you should concentrate on including in your web content.

2. Ignoring Title Tags - Title tags are the titles that appear at the top of an internet browser. Most attorneys just label their titles "Home" or "About Us" or "Contact Us" or just leave them empty. Title tags (believe it or not) are one of the most important parts of your search engine optimization. Title tags on legal websites should include some of your most important keywords. For example - Change "Home" to "Car Accident Attorney Sommer Stephens Luther's Homepage" and "About" to "About Car Accident Attorney Sommer Stephens Luther". Getting the hang of it? Title tags should be no more than 11 words. They should be grammatically correct. They should not say "Car accident attorney lawyer injury auto sue".

3. Having a Flash Website without HTML - Websites designed in Flash are nice and some Flash applications are really neat BUT they are not really that great for attorneys hoping to use their legal websites to attract new clients. Search engines catalog websites based on their content and that content is discovered and collected through the text that appears in a websites HTML. If a legal website is designed in Flash, with very little HTML available to search engines, it is not going to be ranked very high in search returns. This is because search engines just don't have a very good idea of what is contained in a Flash website. If you are using Flash, make sure it is not the bulk of your design. Include as much HTML as possible and make sure that HTML is appropriately filled with relevant keywords and search strings.

4. JavaScript Menus - Using JavaScript for navigation is fine as long as you understand that search engines do not read JavaScript. You need to build your web pages accordingly. If you have JavaScript menus make sure you also have html links within the body of your index.html text AND a HTML and XML sitemap.

5. Lack of Dynamic Content - "Dynamic" means changing. Search engines rate your website based on its relevance. If it is not being updated, chances are it is not relevant. Have there been no changes in the law over the last 5 years? Are you practicing in any new areas? One way to keep content dynamic and fresh is to attach a law blog (now referred to as a blawg) to your website. Update the blawg once or twice a month. Do this by posting information about a case you recently settled or comment on a news story related to the areas of your practice.

Jurors using Google to find you too!

If you thought search engine optimization was just about appealing to potential clients you are wrong. Jurors are using Google and other search engines to learn about attorneys during a trial. More and more curious jurors are admitting to lawyers that they searched for their names and their firms on Google in juror interviews after trial. With this in mind jury consultants recommend having positive and helpful information on your website that can be used by the public and that can be easily spotted on your website. This and other improvements to your website can not only help your Search Engine Optimization, but can also improve a juror’s emotional connection to you and your firm.

Law Father can create a website that not only drives new cases to your firm through the internet, but that also provides a positive impression for jurors potentially searching for your website. Please contact Law Father to improve your legal website now at http://www.lawfather.net.

Give Potential Clients a Reason to Stay on Your Legal Website

The New York Times and Advertising Age both reported this month that Nielsen/Net Ratings has added another metric to evaluating website rankings – the total number of minutes a web viewer spends on your site. One positive of this kind of measurement system is that it would help weed out “spam” websites from getting high search engine return rankings. Have you ever done a Google search for basketball tickets or car model information? Have you clicked on a Google returned link only to find it was just a pay-per-click-through page (a page where the owner gets paid a few cents for every ad you click on) and a bunch of garbage advertisements? I’ll bet you get off those pages pretty fast and return to searching for the information you were really after. If you found a legitimate site you would probably spend a little time on it looking for the tickets or car you were after. This is why the idea of incorporating minutes viewed to web rankings could be beneficial to consumers; it helps weed out the spam webpages.

Law Father builds websites that victims looking for an attorney will spend time on. That is because Law Father builds client generating websites that search engines and potential clients recognize as legitimate and significant online legal resources. Visit us at http://www.lawfather.net/ to learn more.

Understanding Dynamic Content and SEO

One way search engines rank websites is by their relevance. If your legal website does not include information on relative legal topics it will slide down the ranking scale, having less of a chance of showing up on the first page of the search engine returns. To keep this from happening you need to constantly add new and changing content (Dynamic Content) to your legal webpage. Law Father incorporates the top two ways of doing this into all of our client’s web pages; top legal news feeds and a website blog. This is an automatic process administered monthly by the Law Father office. There is no need for you to do anything. You will see monthly updates appear on your legal news and blog sites. Now people will be able to find your attorney website if they are looking for information, perhaps on a new drug recall or recent judgments and settlements. Remember, Law Father shows search engines that your website is one of the most valuable legal resources available online. Including current news stories with Dynamic Content is one of the best ways to prove to search engines that your legal website is one that will be of the best benefit to people looking for current legal information.

You can learn more about incorporating Dynamic Content into your legal webpage by visiting Law Father's Dynamic Content Information page.

Blogging for Attorney Referrals

Most attorneys invest time and money into their websites in hopes of generating new clients from injury victims searching the web for an attorney. What most attorneys forget to do is to use their legal website to generate referrals from attorneys outside their home state. You can generate more outside referrals by adding a blog focused directly to other attorneys on your homepage. Look for legal news in your state and comment on it from an attorney’s perspective. You can talk about different areas of a case you are currently working on. Explain why some strategies are working and why others will not. Talk about your own ideas for handling similar cases in the future. The client side of your website is not the place for legalese. But a focused attorney blog will provide all the key words other attorneys need to find you on the web.

A great example of this kind of attorney blog can be found at http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

If you are interested in generating more attorney referrals by adding a blog to your current website, Law Father can get you started right away! Call 1(800)325-7715 or email info@lawfather.net.