Law Firm Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Tricks and Treats

Law Firm Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Tricks and Treats

Halloween may be past now, but there are still some things to learn from this most spooky of holidays. One key lesson to learn is that there are good tricks and bad tricks. This is just as true when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) as it is on Halloween. As you pack up your pumpkins for the season, take the time to learn about some SEO tricks not to try and enjoy the treat of some SEO tips to take advantage of.

Search Engine Optimization Tricks Not to Try

A bad trick on Halloween is one that is destructive or unkind, such as egging someone's house. A bad trick in terms of SEO is something that brings your page rank down. Here's a few SEO tricks to skip so you don't suffer this most scary of fates:

1) Using keywords in your meta tags that aren't found on your page or that don't have anything to do with your content.

Meta tags are the title, description and relevant keywords found in the HEAD section of your website code. Because you can't see meta tags on your website's pages, some people will stuff that section with keywords they think people will search in order to show up on the search engines for that search string. While you want to include relevant keywords in this section, including keywords just for the sake of capturing search engine attention, even when the keywords aren't relevant to your page, can get you penalized by most search engines.

2) Buying links or submitting your site to a ton of directories all at once

Links to your site from other reliable websites are great. Submitting your links to 100 spam link directories all in one day is not so good. Google and other search engines will easily be able to see a sudden spike in inbound links and will also be able to easily tell if most of your inbound links are from "spam" directories. At best, this will have no effect on your site's rank at all. At worst, it will hurt you.

3) Re-purposing duplicate content

Hey, writing content is tiring right, and it can be expensive to pay a writer to do it. Why not just take the same article and use it on a bunch of different pages on your website? Maybe spin it a little, but why go to the effort? Unfortunately, there's a very good reason not to try this trick. Search engines penalize for duplicate content and you can get your site dinged if you engage in article repurposing or spinning.

Your SEO Treats

Now you know what not to do, it's time for your promised treat; some SEO tips to take advantage of. Two key SEO tips to try include:

1) Use the TITLE tag. This sets the text that will be displayed along the browser's top window bar. Typically the first 60 characters of the title tag are the most important to search engines, and what is found in those characters will be used to index your site (this is a good thing, as long as those 60 characters are actually reflective of your site's content),

2) When getting good inbound links (through things like guest posting or posting to reliable and well-respected websites), make sure to use the right link text. For instance, if you're trying to target the keyword "Miami divorce lawyers," then you should try to have the text of the link read "Miami divorce lawyers" to get the most benefit.Law Firm Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Tricks and Treats - Tobecool General Business - Directory Seo - Business Directory