Your Law Firm is a Business

Take it to the Next Level

How to Optimize Your Website Part 2

By on May 25th, 2022 in Uncategorized

We’ve been doing a series on SEO over at the podcast.

 

As you’ve been tuning into the episodes, you’ve probably realized that SEO is a complex topic. Some companies spend all of their time on it. There are so many different pieces involved in SEO and things to learn about it. 

 

However, our goal is to break everything in business down into just the things a law firm owner would need to know. There’s no need to get overwhelmed by every aspect of entrepreneurial life. 

 

This rings just as true when it comes to SEO.

 

So, let’s continue our discussion on the basics of onsite SEO by talking about the technical aspects of it and how to help Google learn more about your website.

 

What’s A Slug?

 

Slugs are an incredibly important part of your onsite SEO. The slug is the part of the URL that identifies a particular page in an easy-to-read form. It should contain the key phrase that you’re trying to focus on for that page of your website. 

 

For example, if you’re writing a practice area page around divorce, you should have the word divorce in your slug. On top of that, make it user-friendly and readable. Instead of just copying your title tag, get rid of filler words like “a,” “and,” and “but.” Always use lowercase letters and set your slugs to be permanent.

 

Internal Linking

 

Internal linking is when you’re linking between the pages of your website. You can be strategic about this by linking from one page to another. This is very helpful for the user and keeps them on your site longer. It also helps Google understand what your page is about and what the page that you’re linking to is about. 

 

Site Structure

 

Site structure is key to onsite SEO. The structure of your website shows Google which pages are most important. This means that you can influence which content will rank highest in a search engine. 

 

A good way to improve your site structure is to create a spreadsheet of every single page on your website. Have some notes off to the side about the keyword you’re focusing on and what its sub-keyword is. This helps you create parent pages and subpages.

 

Performance

 

The next aspect of onsite SEO is site performance. This essentially explains how fast your website is. When people come to your website, how long does it take to load? 

 

Your performance is actually a ranking factor in Google. People with slower websites have fewer conversions. 

 

One way to affect your performance is upgrading to faster hosting. A lot of people start with a cheap hosting provider whose servers are crammed. However, if you upgrade to enterprise-level hosting, your site performance will improve.

 

Securing Your Site

 

Finally, you must secure your site. 

 

What does this mean? If the URL for your site just says http:// then whatever your law firm is called then dot com, that is an unsecured site. On the other hand, if you see https:// then your unique URL, that’s a secure site. Not only do users look for secure sites but Google also has said they prefer things to be secure. 

If you want to learn more about on-site SEO, check out Episode 043: SEO Series 3B – Onsite SEO.