By Chris (Tres) Homer
I’ve recently been taking a lot of time to educate attorneys on how to better their web presence. I’ve analyzed over 100 websites in the past couple of months and compiled a list of SEO mistakes that I run into the most.
1. The website is not mobile responsive
There have been basic WordPress templates out for years that allow for mobile responsive sites, so there is no excuse. Over 50% of all searches and traffic are done on mobile devices, so the time is now. Do not wait any longer, get this done NOW.
2. Where is the content?
You can’t properly optimize a website if there is no content to optimize. A law firm website needs at least a homepage (800-1000 words), attorney bio pages, practice area pages, some form of resources (FAQ, guides, etc.) and a contact page. Without abasic amount of content Google will never be able to display you in the search results.
3. Site structure? Who needs that?
Proper site structure is a roadmap for the crawlers to find pages and understand the correlation between that page and others. For example, having a page that talks about Head on Collisions is great for a personal injury attorney. If the page is by itself, it doesn’t quite make sense as to why that is on a legal website. Now if that page is nested under appropriate parent pages, like a personal injury and car accident page,it makes sense. An example of a URL with structure would be:yourwebsite.com/practice-areas/personal-injury/car-accidents/head-on-collisions/
Please, please, please structure your site.
4. One tracking number to rule them all
Also, if you are going to use a tracking numbers, make sure you use more than one so that you can properly measure ROI for each channel in your lead funnel. Don’t let agencies take credit for EVERY call you receive.
5. No title tags or meta descriptions
6. The international travelers of backlinks
7. The over-optimizer
Also, please don’t use the same keyword 28 times on a page that has 200 words. Do you want your website to sound like an infomercial? Because that is what you are doing.
8. Mr(s). “I Don’t Believe in SEO”
9. The Impatient Strategy Changer
2 days later. “I’m not ranking for slip and fall injuries.” “Well, we agreed that we would focus on motorcycle injuries.” “But, I’m not seeing any cases so I want slip and fall injuries.”
Look, SEO takes time. You can’t keep changing your mind. Pick a strategy and adhere to it.
10. “I can do all of this by myself, why do I need you?”
Yes, of course you can, just like I can represent myself in court. *mic drop*