If you have an attorney marketing firm that handles your SEO, adding personal technical knowledge can help you understand what’s happening behind the scenes with your online brand.
Technical SEO will also add to your visual and informative content ranking by allowing the search engines to read what’s happening in their very own language. It also allows you to understand the actual tools that are in place to help your website succeed.
URL Structure & Page Organization
URLs are the actual location or address for the individual pieces of content on the web. Search engines display URLs on the results pages, which means your firm’s web address and format can impact your click-through rates.
Searchers use URLs to make decisions about which web pages to click on, but URLs are also used by search engines in evaluating and ranking pages.
Clear Page Naming
All search engines require each page of your website to have a unique URL.
Clear URL structure and naming are more than a helpful optimization tactic, but they are also helpful for people who are trying to understand what a specific URL is about.
Clear example: attorneymarketingnetwork.com/website-design-for-lawyers/
Not as clear: attorneymarketingnetwork.com/asdf/453?=design-23432-1123
Searchers are more likely to click on the URL that reinforces the information they are looking for, and less likely to click on URLs that less clear or confusing.
Page Organization
Properly organizing your website’s internal pages is a key component in getting prospective clients to navigate your site for the information they need that will convert them to actual clients and cases.
Your practice areas pages should have very clear titles and only include subpages that are relevant to the page they are nested under.
For instance, if your law firm practices family law and bankruptcy law, the subpage “divorce” should be nested under family law, not bankruptcy. While that seems obvious, each page within your practice area must be found where the searcher looks. Clear page organization allows prospective clients to find what they need. Don’t make them work too hard at it.
URL Length
Click-through rate studies have shown that when searchers are given the option between a URL and a shorter URL, they prefer the latter.
With that said, descriptive URLs are important. Be careful not to shorten the length if it means sacrificing the URL’s descriptiveness.
Minimizing the length of your URL can happen easily by including fewer words in your page names and removing unnecessary subfolders. This makes them easier to copy and paste and more clickable.
How Do Search Engines Work Google Webmaster Guidelines Keyword Research for Lawyers Content Creation for Lawyers Technical SEO for Lawyers Link Building for Lawyers