The Rainmaker Blog : Law Firm Marketing and Business Development : The Rainmaker Institute : Stephen Fairley : Professional Legal Marketing

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When you hear the words law firm Internet marketing, you are almost certain to hear the term “search engine optimization”. But what does it mean? 

More importantly, how does it affect your law firm Internet marketing efforts?

Put simply search engine optimization is the most basic tool used by law firm Internet marketers and web masters to increase the amount of traffic to your web site.

The first thing you should know about SEO is that your Web site must appeal to both people and search engines. If you remember to keep these two in balance, not only will potential clients come to your site, they are more likely to spend time there learning about why your firm is the best choice to meet their legal needs.

Below you will find the basic, working information you need in order to choose a law firm Internet marketing provider who can really help you.

Search Engine Spiders: A well-designed web site will appeal to search engine “spiders”. Search engine spiders (also known as web crawlers, web robots, and more) are the part of the search engine (such as Google or Yahoo!) that crawls the Internet in search of Web sites that match the “search words and phrases” that someone has typed into the search box.

If your site is a good match for the viewers search terms, your site will appear in that person’s search results.

What Search Engines Look for: Different search engines look for different things. Some things they all have in common is that they like popular, well-organized sites that make it easy to find the search words and phrases. Search engines like:

• To find several instances of the exact keyword phrase it is looking for – optimally, the exact keyword phrase should appear 2 to 5 times per 100 words.
• Bulleted lists
• Bolded headings
• Links from outside source into your site
• Links from your site to outside sources
• Very often, they like “metatags” and “alt tags” (key words in the “code” of your site)

Those are the basics regarding how search engine optimization works with your law firm Internet marketing approach.

To learn more about optimization and law firm Internet marketing where I will share the top three questions you should ask a law firm Internet marketing provider before making your selection.