Writing content requires an upfront commitment of time and resources. That said, you derive real long-term benefits from writing the content, as once it is written, most material does not need to be updated very often. Investing your time and energy in writing high-quality original, focused content for your website is the most cost-effective strategy for online marketing.
We can divide our discussion of high-quality, original, focused content into its individual components: (A) high-quality content, (B) original content and (C) focused content.
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Any content you publish on your website needs to be high quality, so that it reflects well on you and your firm. Search engines also are interested in websites with high quality content because they want to refer their users to authoritative sources.
Google, in particular, has focused on identifying and providing higher quality content, with its updates to their search ranking algorithm, called Panda, which started in 2011 and have continued periodically since.
Panda seeks to prevent low-quality content from ranking highly in Google’s search results. In the past (through 2015) Panda was updated periodically, causing a waiting period even after content was cleaned up. The good news is that Panda is now part of Google’s core algorithm, so your ranking should improve more quickly when you improve your content.
How is quality measured? Search engines evaluate a number of factors to determine the quality of a webpage. Some quantifiable elements of a written page that the search engines can use as proxies for quality include page length, spelling, grammar, and keyword density (which is used to detect text spam). Other factors that may be used to measure quality are harder to understand, such as the uniqueness of words used on the page (e.g., using terms not found on other webpages, such as legal terms, increases the probability that the page will not be penalized by the Panda filter).
Search engines favor webpages with substantial content. More content is seen as a signal of higher quality. If you have too few words of content on a particular webpage, that page’s ranking will tend to be low and will get little, if any, referral traffic from the organic search results. We recommend that each page include at least 500 to 650 words of original content to establish substance. If the page becomes overly long, it might not be the best user experience, so it may be more digestible for users if you break down a 3,000-word article, for example, into a few pages.
It is important to remember that word count refers to the unique content on the webpage; it does NOT include text that is on every page of the website, such as text in the header, sidebar, or footer. Sometimes there might be an initial jump in rankings for shorter written content on a new or redesigned website, but eventually Google will index all of the pages of the website and distinguish the unique content on each page from that which appears site-wide. The website’s ranking may suffer if the unique content is not long enough.
You also need to make sure to check your content for spelling and grammar. This is as easy as opening up Microsoft Word or another word processing program and running a spelling and grammar check on the content.
Finally, ensure that your content is useful to the reader. If it is just pieced together sentences and paragraphs, it will not rank well. Google does a very good job distinguishing between content that is written to game the SEO system and content that provides real value to the reader, even if there are some SEO features included in the content. Write content that you can be proud of – it will help your webpage rank better and make a better impression on visitors.
Originality is the second key component when search engines approximate quality. Search engines do not want to rank highly two pages with the exact same or substantially similar content. In nearly all cases, the original version of the content will be the one that ranks higher.
You can check the originality of your content by using a service like Copyscape, which matches the text of a webpage against other webpages. We recommend purchasing the Copyscape paid service, which costs 5 cents per search.
Do not worry about duplicate content that is from your header, sidebar, or footer of your own website. Google and other search engines will recognize them as part of your site structure and will not hold that against you. Nor should you be concerned if you have a small amount of content that appears elsewhere on the Internet. Your content might include a quote from a state statute or a blog feed; as long as you attribute the content to the original author, it shouldn’t be a problem from an SEO perspective.
However, we recommend at least 500 words of original content in addition to the duplicate content. If you do have duplicate content on your webpage (not including the header, sidebar or footer of the website itself), try to have a substantial majority of original content to duplicate content. For example, if you have a 300-word quote, try to have 600 words of original content (for a total of 900 words on that page). In addition, try to put the original content before the duplicate content on the page. Content that appears higher on a page tends to be given more weight than that which appears further down.
If you have multiple pages on your website that have substantial similar content to each other—enough to be considered duplicative—you can address the issue either by rewriting one of the pages, or by using a canonical tag for one of the pages so that Google knows both pages are substantially the same and that Google should only rank one of them. A canonical meta tag is an HTML markup element that specifies the preferred version of a webpage. You can learn more about them here.
Finally, if someone has copied your content, check to see whether you are ranking higher for it. Copy a sentence or two of the content from your webpage and paste it into Google’s search field. If your webpage with that content ranks higher than the other webpage that has it, you are probably fine and the person copying it is likely being punished. If the other webpage is ranked higher, then you can either contact the person who copied it and ask them to remove it, file a DMCA request with Google and the other search engines to have them remove the page that copied yours, or rewrite your content.
If you copied someone else’s content, then write an original page and replace the copied content, for legal, ethical and SEO reasons.
In addition to writing high-quality, original content, you need to write about the subjects for which you want to rank. For example, if you want to rank for (and thus reach clients in) Chicago, then you should use the word “Chicago” on your webpage (and for larger cities like Chicago, the page itself should be focused on Chicago, as opposed to trying to incorporate an entire region of smaller cities).
For competitive terms, it is important to ensure that the webpage markup is also focused on the term (e.g., the <title>
tags and meta descriptions should be properly used).
In general, we recommend that you try to use variations of the key terms on the webpage, but do not over use the term. If you overuse a term, Google might punish your page for that particular term alone in the search results. We have seen instances where a lawyer has used the same term on a single page in excess of 40 times. Don’t do this; it will definitely not help, and it can potentially be disastrous. Be reasonable in how many times you use a term. A good rule of thumb is to try reading the content out loud and see if it sounds natural. Any key words and phrasing should be integrated into the content in a natural way.
Consider using synonyms and varying the order of the words for key terms. Google associates words with their synonyms, such as “lawyer” and “attorney,” or “car” and “auto.” Going back to our previous example, you might use synonyms and vary the order of the words on your webpage, and thus could have (1) Chicago car accident lawyer, (2) auto accident attorney in Chicago and (3) Chicago lawyer handling car accidents. Google will associate these terms as being the same, and it will often make your page easier for human readers to read and understand.
Law firms should continue to focus their efforts on writing high-quality, original, focused content. This is the best SEO investment you can make.
]]>This new web traffic report tracks the number of profile impressions and page views that lawyers receive across the Justia and LII properties. These impressions are grouped by the following page types to provide a more detailed understanding of how potential clients can see and access your profile:
Premium Placements show the number of times a visitor has seen your Premium Placement ad in the Justia and LII lawyer directories. These placements appear above and within the free listings in the Justia and LII directories for heightened visibility. Premium placements are also featured across the Justia and LII legal portals to reach visitors searching for legal information and solutions.
Lawyer Directory lists the number of impressions that your free listing has received in the Justia and LII lawyer directories. Visitors will see these listings when searching for a lawyer by practice area and location.
Profile tallies the number of page views that your lawyer profile has received on the Justia and LII lawyer directories.
Ask a Lawyer shows how often a visitor has viewed your listing in the Justia Ask a Lawyer forum. Lawyers who answer basic legal questions are credited with a free listing next to their responses.
Case Law Annotations report on your page views in the case law section of the Justia legal portal. Attorneys who provide annotations to state and federal case law are provided with a free listing to recognize their assistance in making case law easier for the public to understand.
Leaderboards show the number of page views a lawyer has received from appearing in the Ask a Lawyer Leaderboards, which recognize lawyers who have contributed the most high quality answers to the forum. Ask a Lawyer highlights attorneys in the leaderboards by practice area and jurisdiction.
Premium Members may view their stats by logging into their account and clicking on the “View Stats” link.
The Justia lawyer directory offers free full profiles to all lawyers. Premium Members pay a fee and receive premium placements, a premium profile (with no competitive advertising), and traffic statistics. If you are interested in joining as a Premium Member, please contact our services team by calling us at (888) 587-8421 or using our online form.
]]>This years ABA Law Firm Marketing Strategies Conference is being held in Philadelphia, November 12-13, 2009. Those who register up before August 31, will save $200-400.
Above the Law’s David Lat will be speaking on image control (that should be interesting and President and CEO of BBDO New York, John Osborn will be speaking on strategic branding.
If you want nice focused time efficent to-dos in how to approach social media from a law firm marketing perspective… I am on two panels about Web 2.0 and social media marketing, and will be covering LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Friend Feed, Avvo, Google Local, JDSupra, Martindale-Hubbell Connected, Legal OnRamp and the ABA’s LegallyMinded. Joining me in sessions moderated by Steve Silverberg, will be Tom Mighell, Greg Siskind and William W. Bowser
And, as always, I and others will be hanging out after sessions to answer individual questions etc…
Tim
]]>In early December, Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School setup a pre-beta version of “Legal Birds” of legal twitterers and their tweets, and integrated twitter feeds into the attorney profile pages in our Lawyer Directory. We have now enhanced the twitter section with graphical tools, community-building functions and better search functionality. The updated version can be found at LegalBirds.com.
Currently, LegalBirds.com
We have further integrated Twitter into the Lawyer Directory with ia Twitter tab for individual profiles. And we have opened the directory to accommodate profiles from academics (professors, school librarians, students, etc.), legal professionals (legal publishers, experts, consultants, firm librarians, non-practicing lawyers who want a community profile, but do not want to be in a “lawyer” directory), and the judicary (judges, magistrates, and court staff).
Of course, we will be adding in more features and will be integrating a version of LegalBirds.com into the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School website with some extra academic focus :). And, we will be tying it into Justia BlawgSearch as well (the Justia version of LegalBirds.com design is based on the BlawgSearch.com‘s look and feel).
Everybody loves rankings… and so we have set-up a few different versions. Find the one you rank best on, and use that one when talking with folks. First a few terms:
“Community” members are those tweeters currently in the Legal Birds Community (i.e., LegalBirds.com is indexing their twitter feed). If we are not following your twitter feed, be sure to Join Legal Birds today. We are continually adding feeds from new Legal Birds.
“All” are all twitter users.
“Connections” mean two tweeters are mutually following each other (i.e., tweeter A follows tweeter B AND tweeter B follows tweeter A). We view connections as the most valuable type of relationship because these are more likely to lead to conversations in the twittersphere.
“Followers” are those that follow a tweeter.
We rank tweeters by:
Community Connections – mutual followers from the community of legal tweeters.
Community Followers – followers from the community of legal tweeters.
All Connections – mutual followers from all twitter users.
All Followers – followers from all twitter users.
Tweets Today – the number of tweets a user has made in the last 24 hours.
We have set Community Connections as the default ranking because we value it the most (both tweeters in the legal community, following each other is more likely to lead to interesting legal twitter discussion).
You can view the people in multiple ways:
We also display community tweeters on Google Maps. You can view all of the community tweeters, those in a particular category or location, or just your own community connections, followers and followees.
Of course, you can also download a KML file to see all of the legal birds on Google Earth. We also provide KML files for each of the categories and for your individual community connections, as well as tweeters you follow and those who are following you. Click here to download the KML file of all Legal Birds.
In any event, enjoy LegalBirds.com, more will be coming soon
Peace,
Tim & Ken
]]>Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School have been building a lawyer directory the last few months to help individuals, families and businesses find lawyers and legal service organizations. (See the Justia Lawyer Directory and the LII Lawyer Directory).
We are happy to announce that this project will be moving out of pre-beta and into beta. Also see the LII Blog announcement: LII launches free lawyer directory service.
Any lawyer licensed to practice in the United States may have a free full profile. Just claim or add your profile and update. It is really easy.
The Lawyer Directory can help lawyers reach new clients. The Lawyer Directory connects consumers and businesses facing legal issues with attorneys and legal services organizations. The directory organizes lawyers throughout the United States by practice area and location. To find a lawyer, a prospective client can browse the directory by practice area or location, or search by keyword and location.
Full lawyer profiles in the directory are free. Lawyers can claim their profiles and enhance them with professional biographical data including practice areas, education, job history, jurisdictions of practice, as well as photos, videos, and links and/or feeds from legal & social networks (JDSupra, Avvo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and SSRN), and their law firm’s web site and blog.
Provide & Promote Free Information and be Rewarded with Higher Rankings in the Lawyer Directory
Lawyers who support the publishing of free legal information online, either through their own direct efforts (such as by blogging) or by helping organizations like the Legal Information Institute, will be listed higher in the rankings.
Currently, the lawyer directory awards a “Blawg” badge to lawyers who have had their blog editorially included in Justia’s BlawgSearch.com directory. Submit your Blawg to BlawgSearch.com for editorial consideration – it is free :). We also award a “Legal Birds” badge to lawyers who use Twitter. More participation options will be coming soon. With the badges also come higher lawyer directory rankings – so collect them all.
Support the Legal Information Institute.
Lawyers can also earn a LII badge by supporting the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. There are three levels of support: Bronze ($250/yr), Silver ($500/yr) and Gold ($1,000/yr). The support goes to Cornell, and they will use it to hire up programming and editorial talent to put up more free information. What could be better! All of the Justia in-house lawyers have Gold LII badges :). And we are now in the process of encouraging our clients to get badges too.
Blogging, tweeting, or financially supporting LII will lead to higher rankings on listing pages but are not required to be included in the directory with a full profile. They only impact the rank order on the listings pages. So get in the directory no matter what, and then start planning how you can help the online community put up more good free legal research information to make the world a better place and get some marketing credit for yourself.
We are developing more features… but more on those later
Peace,
Tim & Ken
]]>Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool now gives the search approximate monthly search volume for different keywords.
You can read more about this new feature on the Google AdWords Blog here.
And here are a few words and their approximate monthly search volume
4,090,000 Lawyer
7,480,000 Attorney
1,000,000 Law Firm
7,480,000 Legal
20,400,000 Law
Of course, as can be seen in the image above, Google gives additional suggested terms as well. Should be something fun for people to play with
Peace,
Tim
]]>Kevin O’Keefe and the LexBlog team have updated the design and features of the LexBlog’s “Real Lawyers Have Blogs” Blog.
LexBlog has changed the blog into a resource center for legal bloggers, with a Chicago Cubs look and feel Very nice… check it out (like we do every day
Peace,
Tim
:: It Don’t Come Easy, Photograph: The Digital Greatest Hits by Ringo Starr
WM 8/27/1966 – 9/7/1982
]]>Cicely traveled up to Bellingham, Washington to meet with a new client Anderson, Connell & Carey to check out what the Bellingham work environment of ocean views and clean air is really like.
Debra Sheldon stands outside the office
Riley hangs out on the deck (more photos below).
Clean air, just like the Silicon Valley
A few more photos below in the extended entry… to get to Bellingham… just visit LexBlog and drive north 80 miles or and drive south 40 miles :).
Peace,
Tim
&
Riley hanging out inside.
Anderson, Connell & Carey Bellingham Office view…
This years BlawgWorld e-book is out from Neil Squillante, Sara Skiff and the TechnoLawyer Team.
The BlawgWorld 2007 ebook has sample posts from a number of blogs, AND a legal technology solutions guide. You can download the ebook here. It is free
You can also check out the ebook press materials, including a video on the TechnoLawyer blog.
So download away, read a few posts, and check out the solutions guide as well!
Peace,
Tim
:: You Get What You Give, Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too by the New Radicals
A class action law suit was filed today against Avvo. You can get more information from LexBlog’s Kevin O’Keefe’s blog and/or read the complaint. Kevin has some additional commentary and resources about the case, so news.justia.com (which is in pre-alpha). The complaint and other case documents, as they are filed, can be found on our Avvo case (Browne et al v. Avvo Inc et al) tracking page . You can then get daily updates and download new filings, and even track updates for the case with a case specific RSS feed. (as you can do with any of the cases we are currently featuring).
We will add the Avvo case to those we are tracking on news.justia.com (which is in pre-alpha) once the initial complaint is in the Western Washington Federal District Court’s electronic filing system. You can then get daily updates and download new filings, and even track updates for the case with a case specific RSS feed. (as you can do with any of the cases we are currently featuring). I will update this post once the documents are in our system with a link to the Avvo case page.
And while the litigation begins, the Avvo site continues to make adjustments. It looks the current Western Washington Federal District Judges are no longer Avvo rated. In fact it looks like there has been a large purge of judge ratings. Which I guess makes sense, as they are not practicing as lawyers, although I am not sure why they are even listed in the lawyer directory… shouldn’t you just remove judges? or at least note on their profile they are a judge and not available for hire. You don’t really want people trying to contact and hire judges, even “not rated” judges. Anyway we will see what happens.
UPDATE 1: Eric Goldman also has some interesting commentary on the Avvo case, and how it relates to the current Roomates.com case and the “additional layer of information” provided by a host site to that produced by users/visitors [ Eric Goldman’s Roomates.com Blog Post | Judge Kozinski’s 9th Circuit Decision].
UPDATE 2: We now have Avvo case (Browne et al v. Avvo Inc et al) in our news section. We will be checking for new documents in the case daily. You can track new documents in the Avvo case here or subscribe to an RSS feed to track new documents.
UPDATE 3: The Avvo case will be discussed on this weeks Lawyer 2 Lawyer Plaintiff John Henry Browne will join Carolyn Elefant and Denise Howell [DH’s ZDNet Blog] in a discussion withBob Ambrogi and J Craig Williams. You can download the podcast of this conversation on Monday from the main Lawyer 2 Lawyer home page, or subscribe by RSS or through iTunes.
And Avvo Mark Britton’s statement on the law suit can be on the Avvo blog (as well as Bob Ambrogi’s LawSites, which was my original source for Mark’s comments).
Peace,
Tim
:: Century City, Damn the Torpedoes by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers