DoMoreBiz! Blog - Ideas to make more $$

Once upon a time, SEO experts had “magical” writing skills to help merchants, business owners, and vendors get their websites to show up on the first page of search engine results.   Once upon a time, it was quite simple - place a few keywords in strategic places within the page content with the correct keyword densities and the search engines would place that website on the first page of Yahoo, AOL, and others.

Then along came Google! They developed new algorithms that were much more discriminating and placed a greater emphasis on not just page content but backlinks or links pointing to your website.  

Today’s search engines analyze and determine word patterns that people are looking for and then deliver relevant content in the form of search results. Sure, the location and frequency of keywords is still very important, but now there is much more.

Here’s how SEO works now;

Much of what determines the ranking position of any particular page is due to what happens off of the website pages, in the form of links from other websites. Getting those links has become the hardest part of SEO. For example here are 2 backlinks to our client sites;

Florida Condo Association Lawyer

Fort Lauderdale Felony Attorney

When the search engines find this page and these links, they begin to equate the landing page (after you click each link – try it) with the keywords you clicked on.    Increasing the number of links to your pages is critical in order to improve your search rankings.  Think of SEO this way- if your content isn’t good enough to attract good, natural links from other websites, it doesn’t matter how “optimized” that content is, your website will not appear on the first page of the search engines.

There is a second alternative - paying someone to add backlinks to your articles and website.   Let’s look at two of our clients and their SEO results.  

Mr. John Contini is a veteran, Fort Lauderdale criminal defense lawyer known for handling high profile civil and criminal cases such as murder, wrongful death or civil rights violations.   His website, JohnContini.com, has been operational for almost 4 years.  Mr. Contini started with a basic html site and then upgraded to a content management system using Joomla, a world class open source content management system.   Joomla enables people with little if any programming skills to add pages to their website by typing and then clicking save.  As a result, Mr. Contini’s secretary can now add pages when needed and his website has over 200 pages, many of which are still to be optimized.  

However, the search rankings for the JohnContini.com website are still not high enough to generate the additional business he is looking for.  In spite of a well optimized site, Mr. Contini’s market is extremely competitive with respect to criminal law and related searches.    Instead of being the first few listings in the search results he often finds himself on the bottom of the first page or on the 2nd page.  There are over 30 other well optimized Broward County criminal lawyer websites, many using in-house, full time staff to improve search rankings.  Most of the lawyers are all chasing the same keywords such as “Fort Lauderdale criminal lawyer” and “Fort Lauderdale criminal attorney”.

To address this problem, our new strategy for Mr. Continni’s website was to find other keywords which have significantly less competition but are still searched on a regular basis, such as “Fort Lauderdale Felony lawyer”, and “South Florida Felony attorney”.  We also began a new backlink campaign for his website which involves creating hundreds of links pointing back to his website.   To create even more backlinks, we are arranging for Mr. Contini’s website to permit website visitors to leave comments about his articles.   As other visitors reply to his posts many additional backlinks will be established.

Our second example is the Jay Steven Levine Law Group, a Florida Hurricane Lawyer.    The Levine Law Group specializes in Florida Community Association law and Florida Homeowners Association law which involve representing condo and home owner associations.  Their website was built by DoMoreBiz less than 90 days ago yet they are already seeing 1st page listings and in some cases they are the first listing on the first page.    Their website only has 25 pages of content at this time but they have the capability to quickly and easily add pages themselves using a built in blog.

How can a client’s new website, so recently opened, rank in the top 3 positions on Google whereas a 4 yr old website ends up on the second page of most search engines?

The answer has to do with competition for search terms.  The second client is in a less competitive area of the law and therefore there are substantially less competition for their important keywords.  There are only 3 or 4 well optimized law firm sites for the Florida condo lawyer vs. 30 or more for Fort Lauderdale criminal lawyer, John Contini.   

As more law firms come to learn that a lot of business comes from the Internet, the increased competition may negatively impact the website rankings for our Florida community association law firm, but for now this client is in an enviable position.

Summary

In today’s Internet environment, content is a very important facet to successful SEO.  You should always strive to use the same keywords you select for targeting by web searchers in each and every article.  Use those key words in the title whenever possible and throughout the articles.  

Create your own links from one page of your site to another. Then get focused on a daily basis to add links from other sites back to your site.  Make sure to use your keywords for those links such as "Local Internet Marketing” rather than just a link.   In other words Rochester Lasik Doctor is superior to http://www.robbinseye.com.