Excite.com and Search Rankings for Legal Terms
By Peter Boyd on September 26, 2013 in SEO
Excite was a decent search engine back in 1995 and was once one of the most recognized brands on the Internet. The website has not really undergone any major changes in the past few years though. I have, however, noticed that their legal directory of content is getting indexed and ranking higher for specific legal terms.
Legal Information Directory – http://www.excite.com/education/lawyers
Where did these rankings come from?
A lot of the core legal articles are now appearing on page 1 or page 2 in Google. I came across these new pages when conducting some research for a few clients.
Since I remember the original Excite, I was, well … excited … to see if they have renovated the brand. Unfortunately, the brand is the same.
The legal directory appears to be a quickly designed portal of basic information. The articles are often a cursory examination of the area. They are held under a subdirectory that really applies to Excite Education, which appears to be a degree finding website.
However, it appears to be working. They are ranking high based on the Excite.com domain authority.
Good Starting Point, but More is Needed
Kudos to Excite.com and Mindspark Interactive Network, Inc. for recognizing that all Excite.com needed was some simple copy to rank high in search for specific practice terms. They can now increase ad revenue, listing fees, or case leads from this content in the legal arena.
Show me the Rankings
Here are some examples:
- Nursing Home Neglect – Page 1
- Mesothelioma Law Firm – Page 1
- They are also on page 2 for a lot of other phrases.
Now they just need to work on the design and calls to action. If even a modest amount of effort was put into this, they could actually begin to rival some legal directories such as FindLaw, Martindale, Avvo, Nolo, and even About.com.
Big Picture and How this Applies to your Law Firm?
Content rules. Make sure your law firm is writing unique copy on every practice area that pertains to your firm. Not only are you competing against other law firms, but now you are competing against larger websites (with significant domain authority) that can simply drop in content and rank high.
