Get Your Website Noticed: Best Practices For The Small Law Firm Internet Presence
As a small law firm, you've got a lot of competition, and you need to be visible to potential clients. A web presence that shows up in the top search results for your region is one way to get the word out that you're taking on cases. However, search engines are very sophisticated now, and they treat certain website tricks as undesirable. That means that your website game must be top-notch, providing readers with lots of information without resorting to these odd tricks.
Constantly Updated Content
Your site needs to be updated constantly. If your site does not change much on a regular basis, search engines may think it's a dormant site, and that the company that runs it is no longer in business. That means you've got to add and remove content frequently. A blog is often one of the easier ways to address that.
With a blog that's updated every month or so, if not every couple of weeks, you get fresh content that not only shows search engines that your website is active but that also helps people find out more about different aspects of the field. Your blog can cover current legal stories that are in the news or give readers examples of how different cases have turned out.
That helps you stay afloat in the sea of small legal firms that are all clamoring for clients' attention. You need search engines to put you near the top of the results; otherwise, all those other sites could get the attention that you deserve.
Sensible SEO
Your site will get the attention of search engines if it's optimized properly. The search engine optimization (SEO) that you do has to be sensible and fit with the latest rules. For example, a very old tactic is to use as many keywords as possible (keyword stuffing) in as many versions as possible. If you do that now, search engines will mark your site as poorly done and possibly not legitimate. It won't appear at the top of the list of results. However, if you use proper SEO tactics and offer text that is readable, rather than just a series of keywords, your site stands a better chance of being noticed by a search engine in a good way.
Intuitive Interface
Your site has to be user-friendly. If there are a lot of dead ends, dead links, confusing instructions, auto-playing videos, or expanding tabs that suddenly obscure the page when a user rolls a cursor over it by accident, that could drive users away and make your site seem unpopular, which is another factor that search engines take into account. Professional design by a firm that stays current on what web users are saying helps avoid these problems.
Legal marketing for small firms can be a good place to start. These firms can either help design your website or refer you to someone who can. With the expert advice from the marketing firm and the expert design experience for your website, you stand a much better chance of being noticed.