As an agency, Omnizant is often asked about our approach to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). In the most basic sense, his excellent SEO strategy consists of his three activities.
- Make sure your website has no technical issues that prevent or limit its ranking in search engines
- Find the keywords your audience is searching for and create content that appeals to those people
- Earn relevant, high-quality links that point to your content
In this article, Omnizant’s Director of SEO, Eric Warncke, addresses frequently asked questions about the second step: keyword research.
Q: What is keyword research?
A: In a nutshell, keyword research is an umbrella term for discovering the terms your audience is searching for on search engines like Google, so that your law firm’s website will appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). ) to help you rank higher. The goal of getting the top spot in results is, of course, to increase organic he traffic to the website and get more leads.
Q: At what point in the website development process should companies conduct keyword research?
A: Before you start developing your website, you should do some keyword research. It’s important to know what keywords your audience is searching for so you can reach the largest possible audience.
For example, let’s say you’re a personal injury attorney and you live in Cincinnati, Ohio. At the beginning of your website development project, you may want to know which keyword variations get the most clicks. This allows you to tailor your content around URLs, page titles, meta descriptions, heading tags, and keywords with the highest potential traffic. The results of this example include:
- Personal Injury Lawyers Ohio (average 500 searches per month)
- Cincinnati Injury Attorney (average 450 searches per month)
- Accident Attorney Ohio (average 780 searches per month)
- Accident insurance company Cincinnati (610 average monthly searches)
Recognizing intent, search volume, and how difficult it is to rank for certain keywords is critical to a website’s organic success.
Q: How would you approach it? Best practices? What tools do you use?
A: When it comes to keyword research, there are many tools and methods you can use to find data, so I’m only recommending one method here, which is free and available to everyone. First, ask yourself a few questions.
- What area of law do you specialize in? What services do you provide? (It is important to note the difference between these two questions. If you are an Oregon estate planning firm, the first Your answer to that question might be “property planning and probate”, but the second question is different: your answer to this question is “the client protects the property and the trust of the wealthy family.” It will be something like:
- Which deals/cases are most important to your company by contributing the most to your bottom line?
- What regions do you serve?
- Who are our clients?
- Why do our clients need our help?
- When a client needs legal assistance/representation, how do you usually find it?
Once you have collected this data, you can hand-assemble your initial keyword list. Let’s go back to our previous example. The first keyword may include:
- Oregon Real Estate Planning Attorney
- Real Estate Planning Attorney Portland OR
- Real Estate Planning Attorney Salem OR
- Real Estate Planning Attorney Eugene OR
- last will and testament attorney oregon
- Last Will and Testament Attorney Portland OR
- Last Will and Testament Attorney Salem OR
- Last Will and Testament Lawyer Eugene OR
- probate law firm oregon
- Probate Law Firm Salem OR
- Probate Law Firm Portland OR
- Eugene OR Probate Law Firm
Once you have an initial list of possible keywords, you can begin the keyword research process in earnest. Ahrefs has a great free tool that gives you information about the keywords you enter. As you walk through your keyword list, the tool will show you how hard it is to rank high (based on 100 where 100 is the hardest), the average number of searches per month, and when the data was last updated. increase. , and many other similar keywords that you can consider targeting. Doing this for all your keywords will give you an idea of how many searches these keywords have, how difficult they are to rank, and what other keywords you might consider creating content for.
A site called AnswerThePublic is very good at generating keyword ideas based on your initial prompts. For example, if you insert the first keyword above, “Real Estate Planning Attorney Oregon”, AnswerThePublic will generate 47 additional questions related to the original term for your consideration. Of course, there are plenty of other free and paid tools for performing keyword research, but at the end of the day, just know which keywords get the most searches and how hard it is to rank for those keywords. is enough. Another great idea is to do a Google search for your chosen keyword and see which pages are ranking higher in the Google SERPs and try to make them better than the ones already high on the list. am. Google provides a number of helpful resources outlining what we consider quality content. In this article, I will share the basics.
Q: Do you have a word of caution for companies operating on their own?
A: It’s very tempting to always go after the keywords with the highest search volume, but it’s often not the best tactic for success. Everyone goes after keywords with the highest search volume. As such, these keywords are the most competitive and difficult to rank for. It’s often a good idea to optimize your web pages for keywords that have a low number of searches but are likely to convert once they reach your website. For example, let’s say your firm specializes in criminal defense. It might be wise to rank by the keyword “narcotics possession attorneys in Queens, NY” instead of “criminal defense attorneys in New York City.” The more specific the keyword, the lower the number of searches, but users who search for the more specific keyword are more likely to convert once they reach your website.
Q: If your research gives you a long list of keywords, how many keywords can you realistically optimize with your SEO strategy?
A: The truth is that you can write content for your website for many keywords as long as you have the time, energy and resources. As long as your content is high quality and valuable to searchers, it can rank for a myriad of keywords. However, that’s not viable for most businesses, so the general rule of thumb is to focus on your highest priority keywords first, make those core pages as useful as possible, and then click Likes. We move on to more niche keywords that are considered ”. I have. Your ability to prioritize your keywords and content can make the difference between average and exceptional results from your SEO efforts.
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