Professional Services Accounting ARTICLE -
Don’t Just Build A Web Site, Optimize It

Target Audience: Legal Professionals, Professional Service Firms, Law Firm Partners

“Build it, and they will come.” If that maxim was ever true in the brick and mortar world, it certainly hasn’t been on the Web. Attracting prospective clients to your firm’s site takes a well-strategized and -executed marketing plan. Central to that plan is search engine optimization (SEO) — which means maximizing your ranking among Internet search engines so that your firm’s site is among the top search results.

Cracking Google

The Web offers many general and specialized search engines, but Google garners almost 70% of all search traffic. Most law firms, therefore, focus on optimizing their sites for Google’s search algorithm. Although the company is known to closely guard and frequently alter the formulas it uses to rank sites, certain factors are known to raise a site’s profile, including:

Keywords. You can improve your firm’s online visibility by embedding into your site’s code certain keywords that are commonly used as search terms (for example, “medical malpractice” and “real estate contracts") and that accurately reflect your site’s content.

Quality. The quality of Google’s search results affects its brand, so the engine favors professionally built sites with good content and design.

Links. Incoming links from other reputable Web sites, particularly high-traffic ones, can give your site a significant Google bump.

Putting The Plan In Place

If these sound like simple-to-implement ideas, they’re not. Researching the most effective keywords, and then programming them into your Web site, takes considerable time and expertise you may not have in-house. And outsourcing your site design to a neighbor kid, simply because he’ll work cheaply, isn’t a serious option.

Instead, talk to SEO professionals who specialize in working with law firms. If you’re building your Web site from scratch or redesigning an outdated site, be sure to include an SEO specialist on the project team. It’s a lot easier to implement SEO practices during the design stage than to have to go back later and “retrofit” your site. Once you launch the site, this consultant can not only help you cultivate relationships with other sites to provide links to yours, but also suggest other ways to boost your rankings.

1 vs. 20

With such intense competition for clients and Web presence, you simply can’t afford to ignore the boost that search engines can provide your Web site in terms of site traffic. Landing on page 1 vs. page 20 of Google’s search results could be the difference between a well-known practice and one that … well … isn’t.

Find out how our expertise in professional services accounting can add value to your business. Email us or call us at 1 (888) 875-9770.

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