After you decide to move forward with a comprehensive search engine optimization campaign, it is time to determine your best primary keyphrases. Your SEO company should do this for you, but it's important to know their process.
What makes a good keyphrase and a bad keyphrase?
Good Keyphrases
It may come as a surprise, but popularity is not all that makes a good keyphrase. A keyword like “lawyer,” which gets millions of inquiries each month on Google, will not serve your law firm well; it is too general. This is why most of the results for the word “lawyer” returns directories and information websites that have thousands of pages built into their websites.
A good keyphrase targets your region and your practice area in a format that proves to be the most popular and relevant.
Bad Keyphrases
A bad keyphrase could be one that is too general, like “lawyer” or “lawyers,” or too targeted. For example, an estate planning attorney may do wills, trust, and probate, but those should not make up the primary keyphrase. The subpages for wills, trust, and probate should be individually optimized, but the primary good keyphrase should be the most popular, relevant keyword related to the practice and region. Thus, if an estate planning firm in Tampa, FL picked “Tampa FL wills and trust attorney,” that would be a bad keyphrase. It is so specific that nobody is really going to search for it.
Keyphrase Selection Tips
1) The city or state (if you live in a smaller state) should always come first.
2) More people search for “lawyer” or “lawyers” in the United States than “attorney” or “attorneys.” But that is not always true in each region, so it's important to learn how your local audience is searching.
3) If your area of law sounds redundant with the your professional title (i.e., “Tampa Elder Law Lawyer”) you may consider dropping “lawyer” and just optimizing your region and area of law (i.e., “Tampa Elder Law”). If the keyphrase which sounds a little awkward is getting a lot of inquiries and is relevant to your practice, embrace it and make it work.
4) Experiment with different terminology related to your practice area.
Using the right set of keyphrases can make a big difference on how successful your search engine marketing efforts are in 2013.
Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution
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