Law Firm Websites, SEO and Social Media Blog

Significant changes are taking place with Google’s search engine algorithms and it’s important for all SEOs to keep up-to-date and understand the changes, but it is equally important for lawyers to know that their SEO teams can be trusted and aren’t using black-hat tactics to get them to the top of the Google rankings.

Google is currently rolling out is latest 'Panda' update (version 3.4). Google notes that this is a rather minor update, only affecting around 1.6% of queries noticeably.

Google is in the process of changing its search engine so that sites that are 'overly optimised' will be penalised in the search engine rankings.

According to CNET News, Google aims to 'level the playing field' for other websites who do not concentrate as heavily on search engine optimisation ('SEO'). CNET cites an audio clip from Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Land in respect of a panel discussion at the recent South by Southwest conference ('SXSW'), where Google's Matt Cutts discusses the proposals.

Schwartz quotes Cutts as saying that Google aims to "level the playing field" regarding "all those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO--versus those making great content and great sites...We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect."

Schwartz notes that the changes should start to affect search engine results "in the upcoming month or next few weeks."

According to a recent website design, SEO and social media infographic by R.O.I. Media, a significant 42% of search users click the top ranking link when they perform a search in a search engine. 8% of users will click the second link and, thereafter, the click-through rate (CTR) drops. The research also indicates that 62% of search users click links on the first page of search results for any given term.

As search engines and search engine marketing continue to evolve, Google has announced in a blog post that it is making one of its most radical transformations ever. Following on from their introduction to Social Search, they are continuing their transformation with the rollout of their “Search Plus Your World” format, comprising three main features:- personal results, profiles in search and people & pages.

Our clients, LawCloud, for which we provide social media consultancy services have recently blogged about setting SMART objectives for law firms in 2012. We thought it would be good to supplement this by explaining how lawyers, law firms and other professional services firms can set SMART objectives for their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategies for 2012.

Google announced yesterday that it has updated its search algorithm, with the results impacting around 35% of Google searches. This news comes only months after their Panda update which had a major impact on search results, particularly in respect of duplicated content. This time, it's about making their search results as up-to-date as possible for news-worthy stories, while preserving the prominence of older posts where these are still relevant.

We have a position available for a website developer to work with our growing legal technology practice in the UK.

The successful candidate should have experience in and be able to demonstrate expertise in designing and developing Joomla! based websites. Passion is critical, as are strong communication & organisational skills.

The position is temporary, with potential to become permanent.

If you are interested in applying for this position, please send your CV to Gavin Ward at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it no later than Friday 11th November 2011.

Head of Google’s Web spam team, Matt Cutts has recently clarified that Google does not consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to be spam.

Hubspot has published an article recently about the "9 must-haves for the Perfect Landing Page".

Google Analytics is the most prolific search analytics tool for many search engine marketing professionals. Yesterday, it became even more valuable, with Google’s major announcement that it is to introduce Google Analytics Real-Time.

While Google still holds the largest share of the global search engine market (with 64.8% according to comScore), Microsoft’s Bing is still trying to catch up. With a current 14.7% share of global searches being made through Bing each day, law firms and professional services firms looking to be found on search engines for targeted keywords should not rely solely on Google. And, indeed, we’re always pleased to tell a client we’ve helped get their website to the number one spot in Google AND Bing and other search engines for targeted keywords.

When working with clients we appreciate that there is strong competition in the Internet search market, with the value of search continuing to increase. Given that much legal business can be won through having optimised online presence, this inevitably means that law firms are finding it more challenging to rank well for the most profitable keywords.

One of the things we appreciate about designing, optimising and enhancing legal websites is that they are, from a functionality perspective, pretty straightforward. Often they won't involve sophisticated queries, algorithms or logic. This doesn't mean that you can't get them badly wrong, but it does mean if you get them right they can really take off and deliver a steady stream of enquiries.

Under relatively recently, barristers could not, except in very limited circumstances, undertake work upon the direct instruction of a client or an intermediary without the involvement of a solicitor.

Its an accepted generalisation that lawyers are seen as being good with words, not numbers. At school this manifested itself in good results for subjects like English, History and French whereas Physics, Chemistry and Maths were given a body swerve. Weren't they? Is this just me?

Unless you can no longer afford the petrol….

Recently we have been reviewing a lot of professional services firm websites and in spite of the fact that we shouldn’t be, we remain surprised at how many of them are being let down by proprietary content management systems.

Larger organisations often have vast amounts of content and good domain histories, and as such they should routinely rank well for the short tail and longer tail keyphrases related to their services. It would appear that often poor on page optimisation arising from inadequate CMS functionality is holding them back.

Traditionally larger professional service companies would have taken the view that ‘we do not wish to be instructed by members of the public and as such search engine rankings are not important to us’  but as internet usage continues to grow, particularly mobile internet searches, they run the risk of only being found by those who already know them thereby losing out on countless opportunities to grow their brand, extend their influence and reinforce their authority.

Recent research by Forrester (as brought to our attention by Ben at Barker Brooks) titled The Rise of the Digital C-Suite, where ‘C-Suite’ is a term used to describe the chief executives, heads of finance and heads of information at the 10000 most successful companies in the world highlighted that not only is the internet the C-Suite’s top information resource but also that members of the C-Suite search for information themselves.

So, back to the title of this post; if you have a strong professional online presence which is not being presented properly to search engines as a result of a content management system which is not fit for purpose then, effectively, you’re keeping the Ferrari in the garage.

If you’re putting time and effort into creating regular content for your website then you want to be getting the most out of it. There are a range of options for getting your content out there but the first thing you should do is check that your Content Management System (CMS) is doing all it can from an on page optimisation point of view.

The first thing I always do when reviewing a customer site, or potential customer’s site, is have a look at their page titles. If their page titles, as opposed to their article titles, are poorly structured then they are falling at on page ooptimisation hurdle number one (I never thought I would say that).

What is a page title?

When an internet marketeer or search engine optimisation refers to your page title he, or she, is referring to the text which is displayed at the top of the browser bar.

Where this become increasingly important is in the creation of articles, bulletins and news items relating to a service or a company but not specifically designed to attract traffic from a single search engine query. Such items will pick up the longer tail traffic, i.e. traffic arriving from phrases you are unlikely to guess at. Over time such traffic will dwarve that arriving from your very specific keyword targets, particularly where your site contains a depth of content.

In such circumstances, if your page title does not reflect the nature of your content, perhaps by dynamically picking up article titles, then your CMS is letting you down and you are not maximising your efforts.

What should you do?

Check out your articles to see if the page titles vary from article to article and display a title relevant to the content. If they don’t get on to your developers and give them the hairdryer treatment.

There has been a lot of research done into what makes people click. Most of this relates to websites offering products for sale, as opposed to professional services, but it is interesting to look at a couple of the key principles and apply them to legal website design for lawyers.

1. Reviews: Often we are swayed by what others are saying about a product, in spite of the fact that we usually have absolutely no idea what makes them qualified to comment.  This behavioural phenomenon is known as social validation and its closest cousin in the offline world is  probably a referral, or recommendation, from someone you hardly know.

Client testiomonials are probably the closest things lawyers can get to a review of their product and these should be prominently displayed on the service pages they relate to.

2. Include Pictures and Stories: Use client experiences and previous cases to tell a story which your potential client can relate to. Use pictures as a way of giving your potential clients a point of reference for their story; something they will latch onto and associate with. We generally work on combining a picture of the partner/fee earner who works on particular cases with individual client pictures where available.

Once you get traffic arriving at your site you have to work at hard at converting it into new business. Learn from the experiences of other service providers to make the most out of your online assets.