Given the amount of new web pages being created every single second, it is virtually impossible for the search engine robots to be able to interpret and rank each web site perfectly. There are simply too many limitations no how they are able to perform their ranking algorithm. For that reason, it is absolutely essential that you optimize your website as well as you can to make it as simple as possible for the search engines to interpret everything on your site and rank it accordingly. This is one of the more technical aspects of lawyer web design but it is one of the most important. Here are a few of the critical aspects of good search engine optimized website design that you need to employ when developing your firm’s website and content.
The best way to think about optimizing for search engine robots is to imagine that they are very simple-minded readers. A robot will visit your site, and the first thing they’re interested in is what your website is about. What’s the subject of your website? A sophisticated user might be able to tell by understanding the context of your writing or viewing the images on your website. However, a search engine bot will only understand explicit indications of what your website is about. So, if your law firm website doesn’t contain the words “attorney,” “lawyer,” or “law firm,” anywhere, the bots won’t know that’s what your website is about. Even if you use it once, they might not know that it’s the first and most important fact about your site. Same thing applies when it comes to your location and preferred practice areas. Be specific and mention these words often and in important locations, and the bots will be able to easily grasp the subject of your website. They will then index your site under those subjects, bringing interested searchers your way.
Easily Indexed Content
It is of utmost importance that your website has content that can be indexed easily and efficiently by the search engines robots crawling the web’s content. To do that, you need a website that is readable by the search engines. Although they’re working on developing programming that will be able to handle it, at the moment, most search engines can really only properly read and interpret text content. If you have a lot of flash, java or even images, the robots will most likely not be able to make sense of it, making those elements of your website virtually invisible to the search engines. Don’t let this happen to you by making sure you always have your important content in regular text form.
Playing along with the robots is simple enough if you have it in mind while creating content, and it makes a huge difference in search engine placement. Try to use proper title tags and meta tags, and keywords that are specific and accurate to your services and location should help you reach the proper clients.
For more information about search engine indexing read here.
Internal and External Links
Similarly, to get your website indexed properly and ranked well, you need to have link structures that can be easily crawled by the search engines. The internal links are those links that connect your own website in a big network. These are the links that connect different pages of your site to each other and it is important that the search engines are able to navigate this web of links easily. Make sure to include clear navigation and a solid hierarchy of links. This will make it easy for the search bots to make their way through the various pages of your website and scan the content to assess its relevance with regards to various key search terms. This directly affects your ability to rank highly in the search results list and bring targeted traffic into your website.
With regards to external links, it is recommended that you include no more than a hundred outbound links on any given page within your website. This is Google’s attempt to crack down on spammers so definitely don’t place yourself into that category by keeping your outgoing links to a reasonable minimum.