1. Enabling new clients to find your firm

In any business, one of the top challenge is in finding new customers.  Finding these new customers is expensive, time consuming and frustrating.

From a customer perspective, they will ask for recommendations and search the internet using a popular site like Google™ to find who they will bring their business to.  In fact, it has become so commonplace, google has become a recognized word in the dictionary. 

To enable new customers to find you, you need a web site and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Google™, Yahoo™ and others are engines that search the internet looking for sites, put the results into a massive database and let people search for the site they are looking for.  Now how do these engines find your site out of the billions and billions that exist on the planet?  SEO.  Search Engine Optimization.

SEO is the term to make it easy for engines to find your site and get your site at the top of the search list (the “rank” of your site).  In other words, SEO is what you need to enable a new client to find you.

There are different things that can be done to make it easy for engines to find your site.

Keywords 

Each page on your site can have keywords that are not shown in the browser.  Keywords help engines know when your site should be shown to a new client.  If Jane is looking for a “personal injury lawyer” in “Hoboken”, the site with those keywords will be in the results.

Having keywords on each page of your site is simple and costs basically nothing.  Surprisingly, many sites do not have them.  One reason is tools to build-your-own-site do not include the option or it is not apparent to the user.

Keyword density is another aspect to how search engines determine where your site comes up in the result list.  Keyword density is how often the keywords are used in the page.  This gets more complicated.  Analysis can be done for a page to determine the keyword density and then the challenge is to balance a great message while getting a high density.  This starts costing some money for consulting help.

Tip:  Make sure every page has a good set of keywords!  It costs little to nothing and is one of the first things a search engine looks for.

Tip:  The frugal approach is not to pay the costs of keyword density analysis.  Instead, get the low cost functionality first and see where you are in different search results.  If you want to get higher up on the list, then look at other things you can do – keyword density is one of possibilities.

Submit to Search Engines 

Search engine companies have applications called “robots” that constantly go out on the internet looking for new sites and new information on existing sites.  With billions and billions of sites out there, it might take a long time before your site is found.

To get their attention, your site can be “submitted” to them.  Submitting your site information lets them know your site it there, when they should check back for new information, etc.

Each search engine company has their own way of submitting your site.  Basically, your entire site (all the pages) are placed into a specially formatted file and submitted to the search engine through an account.

Your site needs to be submitted when it is first created, and can be submitted again, over and over.  After all, the “squeaky wheel” expression isn’t around for nothing.  Now should you submit it every day?  No, the companies have dealt with plenty of clever people.  Resubmitting quarterly or annually is fine (depending on how much the site is updated).  However, if a major change does happen in your site, then resubmit!

Tip:  Some search engines, like Google™ may not show a site in the results list until it has been around for 6 months.  This keeps the temporary or fly-by-night sites out of the list, but it also means your valuable site won’t appear either.  Two recommendations:  make at least a portion of your site available as soon as possible (to start the clock ticking) and be sure your site is submitted to the engine.

Links to Your Site 

Rank is the place in the search result list your site comes in.  One of the ways rank is determined based on which sites point to your site;  i.e. if someone else thinks your site is worth including in their site, then it must be worthwhile.  If a site with a better rank than your site points to you, then that is even better.

There are some typical ways this can be done:

• Having good content that people want to reference – this is the best, but also the hardest.
• Adding your site to directories – a common approach that’s not bad to do (but search engines are well aware of this trick).  Directories are happy to get a new listing, after all, listings are their bread and butter, and it is usually easy to get your site added.  On the other hand, there are the robots out there that want to get your contact information.  A conservative and simple approach is to provide your information, web site, but not to provide your email address.  
• Contributing to other sites (such as blogs) is a nice way to give back to the community and by referencing your site address, you receive some benefit.  In fact, your contribution might be a good additional page to your web site.

Tip:  Include your web site address (URL) on everything.  That can get new clients to your site but also get links to your site out there. 

New Content 

Search engines keep track of how often a site is updated, and they have gotten past the trick of doing a trivial change.

If a site is constantly getting new information, then the search engine will keep checking it (based on how the site was submitted).  The importance (and rank) will go up.  However, constantly updating your site takes time and you probably have much more important things to do.

The most important aspect of content is not to let your site get stale.  By at least adding a new page each year (and resubmitting your site), will let the engine know your site is alive and fresh.  If you can add a new page for free, then adding it when you get a new idea is fantastic.  If it costs you money to add a new page, then you might see it as an annual expense. 

Tip:  Practically all newspapers and magazines enable you to include references to their news stories (RSS feed).  You can select articles by defining the words to search for. 

SEO Marketing Strategy 

The above points will get your site up on the search engine radar, move up the list ahead of a lot of sites, and not cost much money.  Hurray!

Can you do more to get higher up in the list?  Absolutely, but then we are talking a marketing strategy and money.  The frugal approach is to: do the inexpensive steps first, wait 8 months (to be sure the sites have fully processed your site) and then determine if more time and money is appropriate.

Tip:  When thinking about spending more money for SEO, consider the sites that appear ahead of you.  Do you think they are spending big bucks to be there?  If so, would you want to spend more than them? 

Tip:  A good approach is to focus in on your strength areas.  Rather than being the first lawyer site in the country, you can focus on being the first personal injury lawyer in Ann Arbor, MI, who handles workers compensation.