Search Engine Optimization for Law Firms

By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved.

Is engine optimization worth the cost? The answer is it depends on your return on investment potential vs. other methods of getting targeted traffic (potential clients) to your site.

Remember, real search engine optimization requires a lot of custom design and coding work. This specialized work does not come cheap. Plus, what many will not tell you, is that any true website optimization requires regular monthly updating/re-coding to maintain your site’s ranking

New websites are constantly being created and re-worked, all fighting for top search engine placement. Combine this with constantly changing algorithms of the search engines and you realize why true website optimization is an on-going process. Sure, there are many quick fix pitches to attain top search engine rankings in a matter of days or a few weeks. Don’t fall for such pitches as the majority are outright scams and/or of such a manner that violates the search engines rules/polices and therefore could and have caused websites to be banned from a number of search engines.

When you think about it, there really isn't anything in life that is a real overnight success. Nor is there a whole lot of luck involved in successful endeavors. Take movie stars and musicians, for instance. Many of them are thought to be an overnight success by the press because it makes for a good story. However, 99% of the time if you check what those successful stars were doing before they were "discovered," you'll find that they were plugging away at their artistic endeavors for years and years.

There are many successful ways to optimize a website for top rankings, but many factors combine to preclude a single optimization method.

Here at Promotions Unlimited, we feel that proper optimization will only be truly successful if built on quality site content. Our second key element to top optimization is quality themed links. To round out our top three preferred website optimization elements is how your web pages are constructed and the amount of graphic coding used.

In search engine optimization, content is boss! How amazing you and your firm are should not be on your website. Useful information relating specifically to your practice area should be on your site. Interesting facts and legal resources should be on your site. Such useful information will provide a solid foundation on which to build up your sites search engine standings.

Just always keep in mind that if you really want a successful website it will require constant work. This is true for any website, optimized or not. Many firms spend quite a lot to develop their sites and may only update them once a year. Such a stagnet site is fine if you are not interested in search engine rankings. If you want to achieve higher rankings than the majority of competing firms, monthly revisions are mandatory.

Finally, (yes, here comes the plug) if you want to maximize your return on investment, for most small to medium firms, it would definitely pay to advertise with our network of existing city-specific, high ranking, legal directories. In essence, going this route, your firm can have the page one exposure for the key word phrases most likely to generate new clients for your practice. We have the confidence in our service to offer new clients the opportunity for a fully functional photo listing for four months for about the cost of a good lunch! Yes, just $40 (and no further obligation) you can easily prove for yourself the cost effectiveness of our service.

Good luck!

Copyright 2007 Promotions Unlimited. City specific legal directories. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz, is the founder of Promotions Unlimited (search engine optimization) a Internet legal directory (CA, TX & Las Vegas) publisher and search engine placement technology analyst. You can contact Bob via e-mail at seo711@gmail.com or visit his San Diego legal directory at: www.sandiegolawyerforyou.com