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On Site SEO
I am a lawyer and I have a website where my content (articles) are 2nd to none. I also have great, relevant backlinks (Moz DA 31). I am still on page # 2 for “Chicago divorce lawyer” on google.
It must be an on page SEO issue, I’m thinking. Yoast says I’m doing everything right, though
Does anyone do consulting for on page SEO?
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4 Replies
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You are almost certainly in a very competitive market. Those competitors may have more backlinks, more content, and better content. They may have been doing this for longer than you, too. Have you done a competitive analysis?
Also, how’s your Google pagespeed score for mobile? And does your site look good on mobile from a user perspective? Design and usability is more important than many realize.
It’s certainly possible you could have technical / on-site issues, too, but you may want to consider these other factors first. SEO is hard in big markets for competitive terms.
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I used to do SEO for a bunch of lawyers in Minneapolis. It’s super competitive.
Eventually you need to start directly comparing your site to the top ones in key metrics.
* Local signals
* Keyword density
* Back link quality (pr, anchor text , etc)
* Techs stuff like page speed , etc
* Internal linking schemes
* Titles and headingsIt goes on.
Not trying to pitch my services, but if you need help, I could take a look.
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I live in Chicago and I have done a massive amount of research on attorney websites within the city and also nationally.
If that is the only keyword phrase that you want to rank for, that is your mistake. How does your site turn up when people search within your neighborhood?
Divorce attorney in Lincoln Square or divorce attorney in Bucktown, that type of thing..
When people search for divorce attorney in Chicago or Chicago divorce attorney, most of the results are going to be the very popular Attorney- directories. Many of these are owned by the same company called Internet brands Incorporated. That company is worth almost $1 billion.
So with that keyword phrase you aren’t really competing with other attorney websites you’re competing with multi million dollar directories.
If you already have decent content on your site, the thing that you have to do is build more links to your site and make it more popular.
Here’s what you can do, instead of writing articles on your website or information on your website you can start to write, produce and post for newspapers, magazines, and other blogs… Q&A, insider info, top five things, top 10 things, lists, interviews, how to prepare for a divorce top things men can do, top things women can do…. all externally from your website with by lines that lead back to you.
You can begin to write detailed information about how the cook County court system works, you can write information about judges you can profile judges on your website so people know exactly who their elected officials are.
You can start a podcast and have different attorneys discuss different issues like men’s rights, child custody law, no fault divorce and that type of thing. Make it all Chicago and Illinois-based- for sure cook county.
You can call in different attorneys like financial planners and interview them on video and post it on YouTube and then post the video on your website with a transcribed text version of everything that was said. (look at how MOZ whiteboard Fridays pages are)
The people you interviewed or had a podcast session with will also post your article or podcast on their Twitter feed, their blog post that they were interviewed by you and that type of thing so you have other popular service professionals posting about your material.
That’s the only way to do it… you have to go above and beyond what other people are doing.
You’re in the third largest city in the United States or fourth largest city in United States and it’s a very competitive keyword phrase.
You’re not going to get there unless you go above and beyond 10 times more than your average divorce attorney.
And when you do all that after a couple years you’ll figure out that it’s not that keyword phrase that’s bringing you and all the business it’s all the stuff that lead to a first page Google result.
That’s the way it works.
Or you can start a paid advertisement and fork out $18-$25 per click.
That means it’ll cost you about $250 to bring in a new client. Whatever your retainer is you just have to absorb that into the cost of the retainer.
Either way you’re going to spend your time or your money to get there. There are no shortcuts there is no way to tweak your website that is suddenly going to take you to google’s first page and by having a first page result on one keyword phrase its going to make you millions. It’s not going to happen.
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May be your competitor are having better backlinks and content. Competitor site may have good control over keyword density and keyword research as keyword plays really great role in ranking.
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