Online competition is brutal: enhance your results with SEO.

• Jurisdiction: United States
• Author: Raasch, Janet Ellen
• Date: 01 March 2013

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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."

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