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.