Attorney Website

The design of your website, including the underlying code effects that way your site is indexed by search engines. A site that includes a combination of text and graphics is usually best. Websites that contain mostly Flash or Javascript code for navigation can be troublesome for search engine robots to follow. While there are work-arounds, it's typically best to keep it simple.

My suggestions for navigation and graphics:

• Stay away from Flash navigation or flash-only websites.


• Stay away from drop-down menus that are controlled by Javascript. Instead, make sure your drop-down menu is created using CSS.


• Add alternative text for all images. This is a great way to promote a keyword or key phrase.


• Use header tags for section headers instead of graphics. Section headers should use basic header tags such as the H1, H2, H3 tags.


• Use targeted keywords or phrases towards the top and the bottom of each web page.


• Make sure the website code is W3C XHTML compliant. You can check it here.

Content ultimately controls how your website performs. Search engines index content. Users act upon content. If you effectively control content, you can attract visitors from the search engines and convince them that you're the man/woman for the job!

A typical attorney website contains a home page, a page for attorney biographies, a practice area section, resources and contact pages.

I recommend a separate page for each practice area. The more granular you get, the better. For example, if you are a personal injury attorney, you may want to create a separate page, with separate content for sub practice areas, such as automobile accidents, dog bites, pedestrian accidents, etc. The reason you want to do this is because you can focus that page on that practice area key phrase (i.e. Miami, FL pedestrian accident). Yes. It's time consuming to write individual pages for each practice area, but trust me, the results are worth it!

Next, the content needs to provide enough detail that a prospective client will want to contact you about their case. The content should be informative and include a call to action.

Typically when writing attorney website content for practice areas, I use the following outline.

I. Statement of problem or situation.
II. Overview the options and elude to a solution.
III. State why your law firm is the best to handle the situation
IV. Invite the visitor to contact you to contact you to discuss their situation.

Typically I shoot for 200 - 400 words per page. I've found this works best for ranking with search engines. Too much content can be work against you, too. If you want to provide an in depth over view on a topic, that's fine, but include that as a downloadable PDF file or separate page from you practice area page. Link to it from your practice area page.

The navigation of your attorney website is important. The navigation you provide determines how visitors learn about you and your services. Obviously, navigation should be simple and logical, but it should also be programmed in a way where you "control" how the search engines view page relevance or popularity within the site.

Some pages on your attorney website are obviously more important than others. In my experience, I've learned that you typically want to push "importance" to the practice area pages. Why? Because they are typically the landing pages of your website. The more "important' your landing pages are, the better they will rank.

How do you control this? Through the use of XML sitemaps, robot.txt files and "nofollow" tags on links, you can actually tell the search engines which pages to crawl. If your navigation has a link to your disclaimer, to your about us page and to your contact page, your site is "leaking" page rank to those pages. A website's page rank is pushed around through the navigation and link structure. Since this is true, why not push your page rank to your practice pages.. the pages that are most likely to rank in the search engines.

You may be asking "why do I want them to land on my practice pages and not my about page or contact page?" The answer is simple. You want to elevate those pages that are built upon keywords or phrases that people actually search for. Typically, those are your practice area pages. That's why keyword research and competitive research should be an important part of each attorney website launch. If you don't have practice area pages built in line with what your targeted audience is searching and your navigation isn't effectively controlling how the search engines crawl and index your site... your attorney website will not be as productive as it could be! Don't let that happen!

Attorney website design and search engine marketing is more complicated than just putting up a website and submitting it to the search engines. A knowledgeable Law firm Internet Marketing company can make all the difference!

So you have an awesome attorney website, but it's not ranking? Well if you have a friendly search engine design, you've implemented a smart navigation structure and you've got some great content and you're still not ranking... I recommend link building.

The search engines, especially Google, looks at how many links are coming into your attorney website. And I don't mean how many links are on your site... I mean inbound links. Inbound links are extremely important and without them you attorney website will not perform well. But not all links are created equal. You want links that include anchor text that mirror your keywords and phrases. They should also come from relevant sites with similar or complimentary content.

Best ways to get quality inbound inks into your attorney website:

1. Associations. Contact any associations or community organizations that you belong to or support and ask for a link to your website.


2. Local directories and websites. Identify local directories or websites and have them link to your attorney website.


3. Press Releases. When something newsworthy happens, let the world know. Submit your law firm's press release to online press release distributors such as PRWeb. Include a link in your press release and be sure to use keywords as anchor text.


4. Article Syndication. Create articles on a subject of expertise. Make sure you give permission to re-distribute the article as long as credit is given to you and a link is provided to your website. Articles help establish you as an authority on a subject, but when submitted to article directories, they provide a syndication that can develop hundreds of quality inbound links.


5. Directory Submissions. Submit your website to some of the hundreds of web directories. Most have a legal or law category that matches your practice area.


6. Law Firm Directories. Submit your website to law firm directories. There are literally hundreds of them. Submit to all the free ones and then figure out which ones rank well for your targeted practice areas and purchase the minimum listing that gets you a link back to your website. Caveat... it helps if the directory link passes page rank to you website. Not all of them do.

Thanks for reading through this lens. I hope I've shed some light on attorney websites and how to get the best possible results from yours.

I provide Internet marketing consulting services. My company offers top quality attorney design and Internet marketing. We know what it takes to rank and we've done it again and again for our clients.

Contact us to discuss your attorney website and how we may be able to help. We are a small company with the technical and marketing know-how to make your Internet marketing campaign a success!

Trumpet Marketing Group, LLC
13017 Wisteria Drive, Suite 278
Germantown, MD 20874
(301) 515-4184
http://www.LegalMarketingPros.com
info@legalmarketingpros.com