Building An SEO Plan From Scratch | Marketing Legal Association (LMA)
By Kalvin Macleod
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a complex and constantly evolving process of tips, tricks and improvements on site. This helps increase the visibility of your website and its content in the eyes of search engines, while maintaining readability and timely relevance to your equally critical potential customers.
While SEO might seem like a black box of unknowable secrets, it doesn’t have to be that confusing. Building a good SEO plan is like building a big house: the process can be intimidating and there are many potential pitfalls, but if done right you can end up with your home page. dreams.
Similar to a new version, all great SEO plans start with patience, planning, and in most cases, unfortunately, dollars. Of course, if you don’t have a big budget, you can still build a winning SEO strategy. However, to offset the costs, you will need equal amounts of elbow grease and sweat.
Following the house analogy, here are eight steps to crafting an effective SEO plan:
1. Select the correct location.
Just like building a house, your first step is getting the best piece of land. When developing an online SEO plan for your law firm, this land is a domain name for your firm. Your domain has to be somehow related to what you do – either it reflects your name, what you do, or at least something very memorable. Avoid dashes and deliberate misspellings, and stick to major top-level domains (.com) whenever possible. Keywords in your domain are also a great way to increase search engine traffic, but that’s not always possible.
2. Build a solid foundation.
Every home needs a foundation, and with SEO, that foundation is crawlable and compelling content. For thousands of years – or at least it seems so long – generating targeted, easily consumable, keyword rich content has been a cornerstone of modern websites. Finding the right wording requires diligent research, keyword planning, and careful writing to make sure you’re answering the right questions for the right audience by delivering the right content in a timely and accessible manner. If your website does not meet these requirements, or does so in a convoluted way, any potential prospect will not hesitate to visit other more user-friendly destinations.
3. Choose the right floor plan.
Every home needs a floor plan and every site needs a structure. By carefully exposing the overall content and link structure of your website architecture, you will ensure that you are delivering keyword rich content in a variety of accessible ways with minimal clicks. This will inevitably lead your visitors on a critical path towards goal achievement.
4. Build the frame.
Whether you already have a website or are building from scratch, it’s time to go up the walls or reconfigure the rooms. If you are only at the planning stage for a new site, now is the time to take a look at the materials you are using to build. You want to make sure that you are using reputable contractors, quality building materials (for example, a great CMS) and building blocks that are secure and expandable in case you need renovations in the future.
5. Installs plumbing, electrical and fax lines.
It’s the technical stuff that is never very exciting when building a house, but is essential to a functional and livable home. For SEO, this refers to the underlying optimizations that help deliver a great user experience: fast page speed, user-centric functionality, responsive design, and engaging and accessible user interface.
6. Add the finishes.
For a home, finishes include a coat of paint or a kitchen backsplash, but when it comes to SEO, finishes are any other addition that can help you get noticed by search engines. This can include things like proper titles, keyword descriptions, meta tags, pattern tags, and keyword rich URLs.
7. Add the curb appeal.
For a house, the exterior attraction is the porch and the side garden. For SEO, it’s about making sure that your content is shareable and worthy of backlinks. Make it easy for others to post your content to their websites and social media accounts, and use readable headlines; bold and visible buttons; and aesthetic design.
8. Get assessed.
Now that you’ve built your site following all of the best practices available, it’s time to analyze the data to find any gaps or underperforming pages. Then you can make improvements like taking a more targeted approach to content or capturing a larger audience with additional long tail keywords.
Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet to ranking very high in Google (and other anonymous search engines), but by following the steps above, there are various ways to appease the almighty algorithm. and make sure you get the traffic you deserve. This is an iterative process and a long-term game that requires an ongoing investment of time and budget to ensure you stay ahead of your competition. If done right, with enough planning and the right partners in place, you can turn the investment made in those initial stages into a long-lasting and profitable lead generation tool that makes your website the home of your choice. neighborhood.
Kalvin Macleod is the co-founder and lead developer of the Cubicle Fugitive digital branding and marketing agency and the Ontario-wide online directory Toronto Lawyers. For nearly 20 years, Macleod has relied on technological best practices to strategically navigate law firms through the complexities of website development and online marketing. With a deep understanding of the unique challenges facing professional service providers, Macleod develops innovative, targeted and cost-effective web solutions. For more information on SEO, website development and branding for law firms, contact [email protected] and visit their website www.cubiclefugitive.com.