In the current era of Google (and we shouldn’t forget Bing), any legal business that appears first, or close to first in search results when searched for are likely to have a considerable advantage over those that do not. But what if your webpage is not achieving this? There are many paths to an improved Google search result ranking. One of the most important tools at your disposal is your own use of keywords. What are keywords? Quite simply, keywords contained within your online content are used to determine if your legal webpage is relevant to the search entered by potential law firm clients. It may sound overly simple, but the careful and well considered choice of keywords can make the difference between being on page one of a search result, or page 30. Why is Google so popular? Because it provides search results that are highly relevant to the user, and to do this, it focuses on quality of content, not quantity. In other words, just adding every word you can think of to your pages is no longer going to pay off. It needs to be real content, not fake. The keywords chosen are extremely important, but it’s equally important that you use them correctly. There is little point in having 30 keywords in your article if they are not used in a way that a search engine can make sense of them. So how can you make sure that your use of keywords has a direct impact on your law firm’s Google ranking? Find the best keywords Firstly, your keywords need to include those common search terms that will lead to your site. To achieve this really does require careful analysis of the words that potential legal clients may use, and these may not always be those you might expect. Google provides a tool which is extremely useful for this purpose as part of their Adwords site – www.google.com/adwords/. You needn’t pay for Adwords but by logging into the Adwords service, you will have access to their Keyword Planner tool. Using this facility to get an approximate idea of how many searches per month are run in Google, hence will quickly help you narrow down your selection. Ideally avoid words that result in very low monthly searches, but also don’t make the mistake of focusing solely on very high volumes, as you will struggle to reach the top of the ranking due to high competition. Instead look for phrases, which are combination of keywords that relate specifically to your legal business. For example, for our own website, we would avoid “copywriter” and would use “legal copywriter” or “law blogs” as these are more likely to steer the type of customer we are looking for to our site. After all, legal content is what we do. Using your keywords correctly in your legal blog or webpage Once you’ve chosen the keywords and phrases you are going to use, you need to think about how it is you’re going to use them for maximum impact. Every keyword you include needs to work naturally within the body of your law firm online content and add to the information you are trying to convey. You can also include your keywords in the page title and headings which will also have a positive impact on your ranking. Make sure that every page of your legal website, including blogs, whitepapers and news articles are keyword optimised. By taking these very simple steps, legal organisations will go a long way to improving that all important Google ranking and attract new clients to your doors. It is something you can easily adapt into your writing process and will quickly become second nature. And best of all, it won’t cost you a penny. To talk to us about writing engaging, optimised content for your law firm please call us on 01767 600544.