Legal Marketing & PR

Is SEO Killing Your Law Firm Blog?

By Amy Derby

Remember Humans? They Use Search Engines, You Know…

SEO (search engine optimization) is important to any website or blog, of course. But more important is not losing sight of the people using those search engines.

Example: I’m currently in the top spot for “law firm blogger” in google, but if you clicked through and didn’t find any useful information here about law firm blogging, that wouldn’t do you (or me) any good.

Not all SEO is created equal.

You don’t have to rank at the top for every search term. In fact, you shouldn’t bother trying to. If you’re an E. coli lawyer, that’s probably a key phrase you want to come through so folks searching for you can find you. Do you need to be at the top for every search phrase containing the word “E. coli”? Probably not. Trying to do so will waste your time and drive your readers crazy.

Don’t stuff your pages.

One of my big pet peeves with many self-proclaimed SEO gurus is that they want every page of every law firm website and blog to be crammed full of as many related keywords as possible. Doing that harms you in several ways:

1. Your content becomes hard to read. Key phrases should come naturally if you’re talking about what you do. Forcing in as many keywords as possible, and repeating them unnecessarily, loses your flow (and your readers).

2. Your personality gets lost in the sea of keywords. Folks can’t find you anymore. And if they can’t find you at your blog, they’ll move on.

3. Folks see through it. They catch what you’re trying to do straight off, and they move on to read someone who is talking to them rather than to a robot.

4. Your tricks are disappointing. You waste the time of anyone who clicks through landing on your key phrase after it turns out you’re not really writing about that topic at all.

5. People will remember you as a cheater. (Let’s face it… that’s bad for lawyers.) Your first impression is ruined, so even if you do something really cool in the future, they’ll see your link and think bad thoughts.

Online, there are rarely second chances. And you only get one first impression .

Rather than spend your time talking for robots, wouldn’t you rather spend your time talking to people?

How does your firm use SEO on its websites/blogs? Are you happy with the results?

Full post as published by Law Firm Blogger on November 11, 2008 (boomark / email).