Legal Website’s Most Overlooked Key

to Search Engine Placement Improvement

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Good design, proper key word density, intuitive navigation, correct Meta tags and informative content are all important to achieving top search engine placement. Especially when it comes to law firm sites, they are almost devoid of one critical search engine element . . .Quality incoming links!

Google, the acknowledged leading search engine, isn't looking so much at word density with its ranking algorithm, as at what other sites are linking to your firm’s site. Google relies primarily on link popularity for ranking pages. They assign a PageRank to each site they index with 10 being the highest. The vast majority of quality sites rank at least four or above. Google isn't breaking away from words-on-the-page -- it never started there.

The logic is that pages other people think are valuable resources will often get linked by other webmasters, while pages that are of low quality or do not contain any information at all, will not gain many links. Thus, the Top10 places will be filled with sites people regard as useful. It does make sense and it adds another way for SE's to rate your website with minimal effort. Virtually all Webmasters these days are aware of the fact that exchanging linkbacks with other sites is an excellent method for building traffic.

The problem is that this change might make it even more difficult for small and new sites to make it to the top and it favors big, high-traffic mega sites. There is a software program that can greatly help in you getting the links that you desire. It does all this automatically. Click here to find out more.

More links are not better unless all of them are high-quality links. Numbers aren't as important as context and relevancy. It is better to have a few links from sites that are similar in content and topic to yours, a few links from the portals, and a few links from site reviewers, than to have 1,000 links on Free For All (FFA) links pages. Actually, in practice, non-themed links can actually lower a site’s search engine placement. This is especially true when lazy webmasters join link swapping plans in hopes of having ‘instant’ mega, in-coming links. These services are designed to immediately boost your link popularity. The way they work is simple: Each member of a link-share program places a machine-generated page on his site and links to that page from his front page. The machine-generated page has links to all other sites participating in the program. Each member submits his machine-generated page to all search engines, and the result is that each member has a link to his site from everyone else.

These programs have produced some positive effects in years past, but many search engines now regard them as spam and often ban sites that they find participating in these programs. Don't even try them, even if you are really desperate. Here is what Google has to say about this practice: “Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of "free-for-all" links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that do not affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines. At least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive”.

The top criteria in selecting a quality linking partner is to simply determine if their site is ranking within the top three pages of search engine returned results for a popular legal key word phrase. If your practice is mainly within a certain geographic area, this should also be considered. For example, lets assume your main practice area is auto accident, and your firm is located in San Diego. A good key word phrase to check on Google would be: San Diego auto accident lawyer or San Diego accident lawyer. Those would be top on my list. Also, more generic phrases like San Diego attorneys, San Diego law, etc. are okay. See who is on page one (exclude the sponsored sites as they usually are only temporary) and contact them via email to see if they would be interested in a link exchange. Unless your site is ranking well for a similar key word phrase, a top ranked site would most likely not be to enthused to accommodate your request. However, it is certainly worth a try! Alternatively, to start your linking campaign, I’d say consider any other sites on Google ranking within the first five pages of results. Also, valuable are any links from other legal related sites. Naturally, start within your own geographic city area, expand to the regional area, state and country.

As a free service exclusively for the legal community, our dozen top rated legal directories have just implemented a free reciprocal award linking program. There is no obligation to join our directories and if your site qualifies, our top rankings will create a valuable linkback for your firm. To check out the program, just click here, or send me an email.

Quality incoming links are critical to improved rankings and therefore, increased business. With a good linking program in place, your firm’s site will soon reap the true potential the Internet offers legal firms.

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