Ford, Bowlus, Duss, Morgan, Kenney & Safer, http://www.flfirm.com, is a full service law firm serving the Jacksonville area. The firm’s offices are located in Mandarin near the intersection of I-295 and San Jose Boulevard. Their focus is on: Commercial and Residential Real Estate, Corporate and Business, Litigation, Estates, Trusts and Probate, Elder Law.

Very targeted campaigns for unique or specific practice and geographic areas, receive less inquiries on average.  Broad campaigns definitely get more inquiries, but that is dependent on the firm’s practice areas. 

If your firm practices in personal injury, criminal, immigration, you can expect more inquiries than an intellectual property firm. The same goes for geographic areas in that New York would get more inquiries than Fort Lauderdale.

Bottom line, is that you need to be on the first page of results to get noticed and preferably the top three spots.

• Too much similar anchor text.
• Page too aligned with keyword term.
• A web site may scrape your content.
• Site too aligned with a keyword term.
• Too many reciprocal links.
• Duplicate Content
• Not in a Community
• Few Links and Non-Fresh Links
• Manual / Automatic Penalties (of course that is usually caused by the above).

In the past we have experienced the scraping, duplicate content, similar anchor text, and aligning a site too well with a keyword phrase before on various web sites. Probably the most common drop is due to duplicate content and recently a crack down on reciprocal links.

1. Strategy
You need to research all potential keywords and keyword phrases before starting any search engine optimization campaign. First, brainstorm all your practice areas, geographic areas, and any other terms that someone could find your firm. Next, use databases that detail actual search results Wordtracker is a good start for research - http://www.wordtracker.com. You can also use the Yahoo/Overture search tool - http://inventory.overture.com/ - and of course commons sense when selecting keyword phrases.

2. Site Optimization
You need to make sure that your site can be indexed by search engines. The good news is that your site seems to be able to be indexed, even though it is using frames in certain areas. Some sites that use frames, Flash, Sessions, or other technologies that prevent search engines from indexing their web site, so they can never be ranked.

For your site, I recommend the following to obtain higher rankings:

* Change your graphic menu to a text based menu. This will allow good keywords such as “Accounting & Auditing”, “Business Valuations” and other words to be indexed.

* Change your office address graphic on the home page and turn it into actual html text. Again, this would allow New York, Westchester and New Jersey to be indexed. Put your contact information on all pages too.

* Change your frame based web site, to one that is not. Frames make it harder, if not impossible, for search engines to index your web site. Without doing a detailed analysis of your site, the search engines may be missing a few pages. To be safe, you should have individual, unique pages for your entire web site. It’s also just easier for a designer to maintain.

* Change your Title tag on each page. This is one of the most important changes you could make. The title tag should have unique keyword phrases that you are targeting and should match up to your pages information.

* Change your Meta description and keyword tag on each page. Although these are a very minor part of the algorithm these days, the description should be unique and interesting so that it can be used in the search results.

* Some advanced features would be using ALT tags for any images. Also, change your headlines so that they are not graphics, but rather text and relate to your keyword phrases.

* Finally, your content needs to target the keyword phrases. In certain areas, you may need to expand the content, in others simply change a few words.

3. Creating Link & Content Campaigns
Your site is already listed with all the major search engines, so there is no reason to resubmit ever. However, search engine algorithms rank sites based on the number of links to your site. You do need to develop inbound links to your web site.

To put it simply, the more links you have to your site, the higher you will rank. However, search engines record the types of sites linking to you, the text on their pages, the rank of those sites, etc. You want to receive quality inbound links to your site that are topical. The best types of links are one-way direct links from other trusted accounting/legal directories, accounting / legal web sites, and other topical sites. To get direct links to your site, write interesting articles that people will want to link to naturally via their web site or blog. If you have nothing interesting to say, you can always start a link building campaign to buy or trade links. However, beware that Google is cracking down severely on buying links and trading links as of late. So you are running the risk that eventually the bought or traded links may become devalued.

4. Analyzing of Campaign
Once your campaign is setup, run a baseline report to show your current web site traffic and rankings. If done over time, you can increase your rankings and more importantly traffic to your web site over time. The key is that any search engine optimization campaign should be viewed as a long-term investment. Sometimes it takes a month to obtain top rankings for older sites, but often it can be a several month process. However, once done you can begin getting multiple calls per day for your business from the web site.

Extra: Snake-Oil
Finally, a lot of comments about snake-oil salesmen in this field have been made. As with any industry, there are companies that try to “game the system” or sell outdated services. It also helps that SEO is generally an unknown field. My gut reaction is that if an offer is too good to be true, then its probably snake-oil. This is true when I am buying a car, sandwich or whatever.

If you get a top search rankings for your practice areas and geographic areas, its going to lead multiple inquiries per day from your web site. This is not just traffic to your web site, but actual contacts. Depending on your business model it could mean $10,000, $100,000 or millions of dollars more in revenue. Keep that in mind when you are budgeting for search engine optimization, as it should be viewed as an advertising expense that generates ROI.

Extra: Search Engine Optimization Process
Based on the above, our standard four-step process includes:

1. Strategy
* Research Effective Keyword Phrases
* Brainstorm to find the all possible keyword phrases
* Research to find out what people really search
* Selecting appropriate keyword phrases

2. Site Optimization
* Site Structure Modification
* Site Build Modification
* Avoiding Technical Errors
* Title Tag Modification
* Meta Keyword Tag Modification
* Meta Description Modification
* Alt Tag Modification & Other Code Changes
* Content Editing
* Content Writing

3. Creating Link & Content Campaigns
* Link Partner Research
* Link Partner Analysis
* Link Addition
* Content Editing

4. Analyzing of Campaign
* Monthly Reports of Rankings
* Monthly Reports of Web Traffic
* Re-Optimization of text and tags, if needed

To do so, simply go here.

While PageRank always seems to be outdated, it is a good general way of viewing a sites overall popularity.  Of course, popularity does not necessarily mean high rankings.

PaperStreet.com is currently at a PR 6 and most of our clients range from 4 to 6.  However, we have some top ranked sites with a PR of 2 and even 3.  I also know that some PR 7 and higher sites rank lower for certain keyword phrases.

It just all depends on the quality of the site’s content and the keyword phrases that you are targeting.

Does the SEO firm set realistic expectations about what they can and can’t do, or do they simply promise the moon? 
Realistic expectations equal happy clients.  So of course, we set realistic expectations.  SEO is really an all or nothing business (i.e. you are ranked high or not).  We work with clients to define their goal, their budget, and timeline in the initial meetings.

Does the SEO firm have a proven record of success and not just for “long-tail” keywords?
As you can imagine, obtaining a top ranking for the single term “Lawyer” is much harder than obtaining a top ranking for “Florida Lawyer”, than “Florida Estate Planning Lawyer”.  At PaperStreet, potential clients can ask us for a few ranking reports for our current clients.  Results are easily proven and verifiable.

Does the SEO firm provide recommendations for making your site better than it currently is, or are they attempting to do things to it that will actually make it worse for your users?
If you are lucky enough to get the users to your web site, you have roughly three seconds to impress them or they will retreat back to other search results.  Good internet marketing has to be a combination of optimization and design.  Since we are a web design company, we are not going to do anything that makes the web site look bad.  In fact, we often suggest changes to design, navigation and usablity for our clients.

Does the SEO firm tell you what they’re doing and why they’re doing it, or do they just want you to blindly trust them? 
We have a five step process to optimizing web sites.  Our steps include:

1.    Researching effective keyword phrases.
2.    Selecting appropriate keyword phrases.
3.    Coding the web site.
4.    Creating link and content campaigns.
5.    Analyzing log files and data to improve.

Everything is explained up-front and at any time the client can ask “Why in the heck did you do this?” 
Does the SEO firm use *only* automated methods to achieve their goals?
Our process is pretty-much all manual.  We of course use automated research tools and hopefully a good web design that will speed up the process of coding.  However researching, selecting keyword phrases, coding, building popularity, and analyzing take a considerable amount of manual time.

Wrap-Up.  Although not asked, this is our view point on the timeline of results.
In general, results will vary based on the existing relevancy and popularity of the site you are optimizing.  For existing domains with good overall popularity, but lack good coding or content, results can be dramatic in as little as one month as soon as on-page optimization is done.  For sites that are lacking popularity, but have good content, then it may take a few months of link building to raise the ranking results via off-site optimization techniques.  For new clients with brand new domains, you should expect to see results for your keyword phrases in six months to a year for Google and half that time for MSN, Yahoo, and other search engines.  Quite simply, Google (and other search engines) use ranking systems that evaluates a number of factors.  New sites are in essence penalized as they do not have the link popularity needed to compete with older, more trusted sites that have existing links to them.

On certain servers, they are still relenquished to the sandbox. However, on a few new servers, they are ranked in the top spots.

This is either the start of a new update, or some type of test.
More information to come…

The law firm of Mike Murburg, P.A. is dedicated to the zealous representation of its clients. It is the mission of the firm to responsibly represent and pursue the rights of the injured and disabled in order to obtain the fullest amount of compensation that the law will allow. Since January, 2005, the firm’s clients have been awarded over $2,380,700 in past due social security benefits. In all cases, consultations are always free. No fees or costs are ever due up front for personal injury, wrongful death, social security disability or worker’s compensation matters. They work on a contingency basis only so that clients will never be charged fees or costs unless the firm is successful in obtaining a decision, settlement, or verdict in their favor.