Online competition is brutal: enhance your results with SEO.

• Author: Raasch, Janet Ellen
• Position: Search engine optimization

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If your law firm is not showing up on the first page of search results, you are at a distinct competitive disadvantage. Very few online searchers ever go beyond the first page of results. In the eyes of Internet users (everyone), if you do not appear on this first page, you are not credible. You will not get the call.

What can you do to improve your search engine results in a highly competitive marketplace?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an online marketing strategy that helps position your firm among the top results for given search terms. It involves creating a structure for your website that meets the need of search engines and populating your site with a constant supply of fresh, keyword-rich content.

Automated search engine spiders constantly "crawl" through web pages, compiling word indexes that they then use to rank pages based on algorithms. The algorithms assign varying weights to elements like keywords and phrases, as well as links. The resulting calculation pushes the most competitive web pages higher on a search engine results page than others.

"Search engine spiders must be able to access and easily make their way through all of the pages of your website," said Kim Mears, chief visionary officer and founder of Mears Interactive, a Denver-based online marketing agency. "Anything that prevents them from doing so will affect your ranking. Poor optimization could even prevent your site from being indexed at all. The basics of SEO as a competitive tool are not hard to master. There are things you must do and things you must avoid. In general, you should track your results using Google Analytics, choose the right keywords, create effective metatags, build incoming links and add well-written, fresh content."

Is Your Law Firm Website Working?

Although there are a number of search engines, Google dominates this field with 85 percent of search traffic. "If you aim to optimize for Google and its algorithms," said Mears, "you should be in pretty good shape with any search engine."

Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about traffic on a website. The basic service is free and fills the needs of most lawyers and law firms. It generates useful reports on site performance and tracks visitors from online referral sources, all of which can be used to your competitive advantage.

Reports generated by an analytics program can be used to determine visitors, bounce rates and...