That’s why you need to know the on-page, technical, and off-page elements that influence how your content will perform in the search results—plus the best practices you need to follow. Doing this will help you avoid publishing content that doesn’t help you achieve your business objectives.

Here is a guide on WordPress SEO best practices to help you avoid making mistakes that will affect your website’s performance and improve the likelihood of high-ranking content.

Why Use WordPress Over Other CMS Tools?

Even with other CMS solutions available, WordPress is still the most popular CMS tool. There’s nothing simpler than navigating the WordPress dashboard and block editor that comes default with the platform.

Founded in 2003, it has won numerous awards, including “Best Open Source Software”, and powers most of the world’s websites. In fact, it powers around 43% of all websites.

What makes WordPress the go-to option for most website owners? Its flexibility. WordPress allows you to customize your website to fit your exact needs, including adding SSL, meta description, alt text, sitemap, breadcrumbs, and even schema markup – everything you need to optimize for the SERP.

For example, from a user experience perspective, you can buy WordPress themes that you can customize to align with your brand strategy and deliver content dynamically to different devices. Your web visitors will have a smooth browsing experience as they interact with your content because they can easily find what they’re looking for.

From an SEO perspective, WordPress allows you to use different plugins to optimize your content and improve website performance. Popular SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, RankMath, and Meta Sync SEO are perfect for content optimization. You can also add an analytic SEO plugin such as Google Analytics or Bing Webmaster Tools.

WordPress SEO Best Practices

WordPress allows you to manage all your content in one place easily. Optimizing your WordPress site increases the chances of driving more organic traffic to your website and achieving your SEO strategy objectives.

While we could publish a WordPress SEO guide article about basic SEO practices such as using the Yoast SEO plugin, connecting Google Analytics, using a focus keyword, or writing a meta description, we’ll focus more on the concepts of WordPress SEO you should focus on to perform better on the search engine.

Here’s what you need to keep in mind:

1. Create and Publish Content that Satisfies User Intent

Since content is the vehicle you’re using to achieve your business objectives, it needs to be relevant to what your potential buyers are looking for in the search results.

Your readers might land on your blog post at any stage of their buying journey, which means you’ll need to stand out by providing the answers they need when they enter the search query. Then, point them to the solutions they’re looking for.

You could start this process by performing keyword research. SEO tools such as Google Search Console, Semrush provide SEO expert information to help find a specific keyphrase to focus on.

Publishing content that satisfies your reader’s intent requires you to start with the end in mind. This means creating a content strategy that helps you clarify your objectives and identify your ideal readers.

For example, let’s say your ideal readers are furniture vendors. A furniture vendor has two challenges when running their business: acquiring more customers and managing their product information. Suppose you are trying to sell a product information solution. In that case, content for this furniture vendor audience needs to teach how to solve their initial challenge (customer acquisition) before introducing a solution to their second challenge (managing product information).

This approach makes your content relevant and helpful, which is exactly what Plytix, a product information management tool, has done.

Their content helps the reader tackle both challenges by creating a furniture marketing strategy and then introducing their product with a specific page to navigate at the end of their post. As they get more customers, they’ll need to manage their product information better. Hence, their content ensures that the business owner knows what solutions to look for when they want to manage their product information effectively.

2. Make Your Content Accessible

In addition to making your content relevant and helpful, you must ensure that it’s easily accessible to both search engines and website visitors. Making your content accessible includes creating and submitting an XML sitemap to Google in Google Search Console so that its bots can crawl and index your content to ensure that it appears in search results.

Your HTML sitemap also needs to make site navigation easier so that your web visitors can find the information they’re looking for on your WordPress website. When using a WordPress sitemap, your content appears in a user-friendly format so readers won’t have trouble finding their way around your content.

You can use the SearchAtlas Site Auditor to ensure that there are no technical issues with your sitemap.

In addition, you also need to write a descriptive SEO title telling a potential reader what the web page is about. When writing descriptive page titles, be clear and direct. If your reader doesn’t understand what your page is about, they won’t click through to read your content. Instead, explain how readers will benefit from your content once they click on your meta title.

Your readers are intelligent, and making it easier for them to find what they need is a cornerstone of content accessibility. Use header tags that break down different sections of your content to help the reader self-select what sections to read and what to skim.

For accessibility, it’s also important to add alt text to your images. The alt tag not only helps visitors using screen readers, it’s also a ranking factor for image SEO.

One other aspect of accessibility is ensuring your SSL is up to date. This is important for both the search engine and potential visitors to trust your WordPress site. Luckily, it is pretty easy to generate a free SSL certificate from many major hosting platforms.

3. Use User-Friendly URL Structures

The URL structure of a webpage is easy to overlook, especially if you haven’t changed your permalink settings inside WordPress to have a custom URL structure for your content.

In addition to making your site crawlable, reader-friendly URL structures improve user experience. They do this by telling readers what the page behind the URL is about. This makes it easier to decide whether it is relevant to them or not.

When creating your permalink structure, narrow it down to your primary keyword. Then, get rid of any other information that makes it longer than it needs to be. This includes numbers and symbols.

You can also add keyword modifiers to your URL to align it with the searcher’s intent. Modifiers can be based on niche, location, or topic. For example, if your primary keyword is “local SEO,” modifiers might include: “how to,” “real estate,” or “New York SEO.”

These modifiers will appear in your title tags, so you’ll need to include them in your URL. This way, you’ll match with specific searches that readers will run when looking for information related to your primary keyword.

Lastly, ensure this final permalink is set as your canonical URL, which you can do in Yoast SEO or AIOSEO. Otherwise, the crawler might not be able to distinguish duplicate content. Properly mapping redirects and schema markup will also help avoid this duplicate content issue.

4. Add Internal Links

As you publish more content, you’ll need to create more internal links to relevant pieces of content. This means internal linking is another task you need to cross off your to-do list before you publish your post. Internal and external links are important in SEO for passing page rank, or “link juice” to relevant pages. These backlinks also tell the search engine where important pillars and trusted sources are.

We have three types of internal links: navigational, in-text, and sidebar links.

• Navigational links help your visitors move from one place to another on your website.
• In-text links help readers access similar topics within your content.
• Sidebar links help users access related content.

When publishing a blog post, you need to focus on in-text links to improve the chances of ranking on Google. If you have a huge library of content, use a WordPress SEO plugin such as Rank Math or Link Whisper to help identify relevant content to link to.

If you’re just getting started, create a content structure and choose topics that align with this structure. In addition, make sure you use relevant anchor text for your internal links. This makes it clear to both readers and search engine crawlers what the content on the next page is about.

5. Optimize your Site for Mobile

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Your web visitors access your site from different devices. More than 58.9% of traffic is attributed to mobile users, so there’s a high likelihood that one of your web visitors will access your site using a mobile device.

Mobile users expect to navigate the site smoothly, find the content they need, and take the actions they need to take.

For this to happen, your website needs a fast page speed and render properly on a mobile device.  Use WordPress themes that dynamically deliver content across different devices. Also, avoid full-screen pop-ups that decrease your site speed and prevent mobile web visitors from accessing your content.

We suggest you turn on the Google Accelerated Mobile pages plugin in WordPress and test using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

Are WordPress Plugins Good for SEO?

Being an open-source software, WordPress offers a plugin library to expand and improve different use cases related to search engine optimization, website performance, and security. For example, you can choose an all-in-one plugin such as AIOSEO or Yoast SEO plugin, a cache plugin and an SSL plugin (to add an SSL certificate to your WordPress site.

However, due to the huge number of plugins, you need to ensure the plugin you choose meets your needs without compromising on website performance, security, or the functionality of other plugins you’re using.

When choosing the best plugin, get it from the list of plugins on WordPress.org. Read through user reviews to learn about the experiences other users had and also make sure that the plugin provider provides support for their customers.

Once you buy your plugin (or decide on a free plugin) and install it, monitor it to see if it negatively impacts website performance and address any emerging issues.

Use WordPress SEO to Boost your Content Rankings

Done right, WordPress SEO will move you closer to your content and SEO objectives. It’ll ensure your content shows up in search results for your readers.

It also helps you stand out among your competitors. If your content keeps showing up in the top search results, then readers know the solutions you provide must be what they need.

You’ll need to publish content that satisfies reader intent, make it accessible, create user-friendly URLs, optimize your site for mobile devices, and internally link your content to relevant content that readers need.

Along the way, you’ll need plugins to make your work easier. If you’re unsure which SEO plugin to start with, consider scaling your SEO campaign with Linkgraph’s SEO Content Assistant to help you implement the best practices we’ve covered.

About the Author:

Alex Birkett is the co-founder of Omniscient Digital, a premium content marketing & SEO agency. He lives in Austin, Texas with his dog Biscuit and writes at alexbirkett.com.

The post WordPress SEO Best Practices: 5 Tips for More Organic Traffic appeared first on LinkGraph.

Content pruning is all about removing any unnecessary content from your website, which can help your website rank higher in search engine results and can also improve user experience.

In this article, you will learn how to do content pruning for SEO, from identifying what needs to be pruned to taking steps to ensure that it’s done correctly. Keep reading to find out more.

What is Content Pruning?

Content pruning involves a thorough review of all content on a website to identify any content that could be seen as irrelevant or low quality from the perspective of search engine algorithms. Once identified, content pruning involves removing those low-quality pages from the website or replacing them with better content. 

A part of regular website maintenance is making sure that all of the content on the website is up-to-date and relevant to the website’s goals. This can help ensure that a website has content that is useful to its visitors and provides value to users who arrive from search engines. 

By removing low-quality or outdated content, websites can see improved search visibility for their highest-value, highest-converting web pages.

Why Remove Content From My Website?

Content production takes time and resources. So you may be wondering: Why remove content from my website after all the work it took to create it?

Although it may feel counterintuitive to your content strategy, content pruning can actually have major benefits to your search engine performance. This is even more true for websites that have a robust SEO content strategy and are publishing new web pages on a regular basis.

Some of those benefits include the following:

• Improve a website’s visibility by allowing search engines to index your best and highest-converting web pages
• Ensure visitors are presented with the most up-to-date information
• Provide higher-quality content and a better user experience
• Prevent visitors from seeing any low-quality pages
• Ensure your crawl budget is spent on rank-worthy content

Any content that sits on your websites that doesn’t pull its weight in either traffic or conversions isn’t actually bringing value to your business.

By taking the time to regularly prune their content, content managers can ensure that their website is performing at its best. That’s why sometimes content pruning is the right choice for your content strategy.

What Makes a Web Page Prunable?

Here are some of the qualities to look for when searching for content on your website that may need to be pruned.

Low-Quality

Bad content can have a negative impact on a website’s rankings. Low-quality content can include pages with duplicate content, thin content, or other qualities. It can also include pages that are not user-friendly or are low on useful information. Content pruning can help to identify and remove such pages, allowing search engines to easily index the more relevant, more quality content on the website.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is web pages with the same content or similar content that search engine crawlers do not identify as distinct. Google does not want to see duplicate content on a website unless it has been clearly identified as such via a canonical tag.

Thin Content

Thin content is often short-form content that doesn’t provide any real value to the user. Although there is no exact content length that Google privileges in search engine results, experiments have shown that longer, in-depth content tends to rank higher.

Most often, thin content can be combined with other pages on your website to provide a more comprehensive, in-depth answer to a topic, question, or keyword query. Combining content, or redirecting thin pages to more in-depth ones, are also a part of the content pruning process.

Outdated Content

The reality is, the content on our website will become outdated over time. This is why creating evergreen content is important, however, it’s unlikely that your long-form content will last forever without the need for updating. Trends, technologies, and knowledge will change, and web pages should include the most up-to-date, useful information for search engines. 

Also, outdated information can be confusing for visitors and lead to a poor user experience. Removing outdated content can ensure that visitors are presented with the most relevant and useful information.

Under-performing Content

If you have a web page on your website that does not get traffic or conversions, what value is it bringing your business? If the web page does not rank in search results, convert users, or is not a vital part of the buyer journey, it doesn’t really have a place on your website unless you take the time to improve its content.

How to Find Pages for Content Pruning

You can use the Page Pruning tool in the SearchAtlas dashboard to discover pages that may be eligible for content pruning.

To find the tool, navigate to Site Auditor > Page Pruning. 

This tool will show you any pages that are eligible for pruning due to a variety of reasons:

• Low organic impressions
• Low clicks
• Indexability
• Total ranking keywords
• Average position
• Content quality/scores

Remember, just because a page appears on this list doesn’t mean that it has to be pruned/deleted, but that it may be eligible based on its performance metrics.

Next Steps for Page Pruning

Once you have reviewed the software’s suggestions and confirmed that the pages are eligible for pruning, here are the next options for you to take.

1. Improve the Content on the Page

The underperformance of the page may rest in the fact that the content is thin or is not providing a comprehensive answer to the user’s questions. 

You can look to the “Boostable,” tab in the Page Pruning tool to identify those pages that just might need a slight content score boost.

The URLs that are listed here are already earning organic impressions but are not seeing as much success in organic traffic. Most likely, Google sees those pages as relevant but is not ranking them on the first page as a result of the content.  

You can use the SEO Content Assistant in your SearchAtlas dashboard to discover ways to strengthen and improve your content. Or, use the on-page audit tool to see what on-page elements may be impacting your performance.

Follow the guided suggestions for focus terms, headings, questions, and internal links. Include them on the page to make the content more rank worthy. 

2. Update the Content to be More Evergreen

If your content covers trends or keywords that have seasonal search volume, that may impact their underperformance.

Consider updating the content with more evergreen information so the content has a longer shelf life in the SERPs.

Also, make sure that the information on the page is up-to-date with accurate, relevant information. Over time, links may break or content may become outdated. Updating your blogs and articles every 1-2 years should be a part of your regular website maintenance.

3. Build Backlinks to the Page

If both the SEO Content Assistant and on-page content school confirm that your content has high scores and is rank-worthy, you may just need a bit more of a link boost.

Backlinks are Google’s number one ranking factor. If you don’t have very many backlinks pointing to your web page, that may be a reason why it is not ranking on the first page.

You can use the backlink research tool in your dashboard to see which of your web pages have the least amount of link equity.

Consider investing in a link-building campaign in order to improve the off-site signals of the content. Doing so is likely to improve the overall keyword rankings, impressions, and organic clicks.

4. Reoptimize the Page for a Different Keyword

Another possible explanation for your content’s poor performance may be keyword related. 

Some keywords are more competitive than others. If you optimized the page for a keyword that is out of reach, reoptimization may be your next step.

When choosing keywords for SEO, you want to make sure your website has a realistic chance of ranking for the target keyword. Websites with higher Domain Authority will stand a better chance of ranking for competitive keywords.

At LinkGraph, we suggest keywords that are less than or equal to your website’s Domain Authority.

So once you find a more realistic goal, optimize for that keyword instead. This will likely involve changing metadata, website copy, and headings on the page. But it can make a huge difference in improving organic performance.

5. Redirect the Page to a More High-Quality One

A page may be flagged for pruning because Google is ranking a more helpful piece of content on your website.

This is known as keyword cannibalization. It happens when two pieces of content are very similar and Google doesn’t know which to promote. If there is a page that is ranking less often but is similar in relevance, you can do your “content pruning,” by adding a 301 redirect from the less comprehensive page to the better performing. 

6. Combine Thin Content into a More Comprehensive Resource

If you have a series of pages that are thin on content but relate to a similar cluster of keywords, consider combining those pages into a more useful, long-form resource.

Why? Because Google likes to promote content that satisfies users’ search intent. That means not only answering their initial questions but all of the additional questions that might follow regarding that primary topic. 

So before giving up on that set of keywords entirely, combine those various pages into one page. Then, see if the overall keyword rankings improve.

7. Consider Removing the Page Entirely

This is the last step you want to consider after you have concluded that none of the above steps help to elevate content performance.

The reality is, if a piece of content is not driving website traffic, converting users, or an essential part of the buying journey, it doesn’t really deserve space on your website. 

Take the ultimate step and trim that content branch off your tree.

Conclusion

Making content pruning a regular part of your website maintenance is a good habit to get into. This is especially true for websites that publish a lot of content and have a robust SEO strategy.

You can also use the same SearchAtlas tools to scale up your content marketing and blog strategy. Connect with one of our product managers to learn more about our enterprise SEO software platform.

The post Content Pruning Guide for Content Managers and SEOs appeared first on LinkGraph.

But people hate ads. And 93% of online experiences start with an organic search. That means most people run to Google to help find what they are looking for. And let’s face it, they aren’t clicking on the ads.If you aren’t ranking at the top of those organic searches, you’re missing out on a big piece of the pie that could help grow your business.

In this guide, we’ll share six SEO strategy tips to drive business growth in 2023 and beyond.

Let’s dive in.

1. Enhance Website Speed and Usability

Before focusing on the nitty gritty of creating content and building links, it’s crucial to make sure your website is fast and easy to use.

After all, what’s the point of spending money, time, and energy on driving visitors to your website if it can’t handle the traffic you are generating? Or worse, providing a horrible experience that causes visitors to bounce immediately and lose trust in your brand?

When it comes down to it, if your site is slow to load, your visitors will leave your page in search of a faster answer. This action sends a negative signal to search engines, which can seriously impact rankings. Further, if your site has poor usability, like hard-to-navigate menus, or doesn’t scale properly on mobile devices, you guessed it, another negative signal.

Your website should load in three seconds or less on any given device. That’s the sweet spot.

Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to test the current speed of your page. If your page is slow too load, Google will offer helpful suggestions to improve the performance.

For usability, focus on adding a search box to your website, so it’s easy for users to find what they are looking for. You can also create collapsible menus for display on mobile devices to clean up the look and feel of your site.

2. Zero in on Keyword Research

If you build it, they’ll come. Right?

Wrong. The internet is a black hole of information. And once you hit publish on your blog post, it enters into the deep abyss.

So how do you get your content to see the light of day? It all comes down to choosing the right keywords. What are users really searching for? That’s where you need to focus your attention.

Finding proper keywords that both relate to your product or service and align with what your audience is searching for is the bread and butter of a successful SEO strategy.

Take Nlyte, a company focusing on data management and infrastructure solutions, as an example. They do an excellent job creating simple FAQ pages that target competitive keywords such as “colocation data center” or “data center infrastructure” to provide value for the audience searching for more information about these terms.

Let’s look at some numbers to drive this concept home. One targeted keyword generates almost $10,000 worth of traffic value to their website.

What does that mean? $10,000 is the estimated monthly cost it’d take to generate the same amount of traffic using a paid search for that single keyword.

The takeaway? Writing helpful content around the proper keywords that resonate with your target audience is a surefire way to boost organic traffic for a fraction of the price of paid ads. It’s a no-brainer.

Use a Keyword Research Tool

Thankfully, there are plenty of SEO tools like SearchAtlas that help you streamline keyword research and identify high search volumes. But you don’t always want to target the most competitive keywords.

The secret sauce is finding the less competitive long-tail keywords that still have decent search volume. For example, the generic keyword “garden tools” has a keyword difficulty of 45 with 61,000 monthly searches, according to SearchAtlas. The more specific keyword “garden tools names” has a much lower keyword difficulty of 10 with 4,000 monthly searches.

Of course, the monthly search volume is much lower for “garden tools names,” but you’ll have an easier time ranking for this keyword and can quickly drive traffic to your site.

Rinse and repeat this process and watch the organic traffic come flooding in.

3. Align Content with Buyer’s Journey

Now that you have followed my SEO strategy tip of choosing fresh, hot keywords, it’s time to pump out the content.

As we mentioned, you can’t just build a few pages and expect to drive 100,000 qualified leads to your website every month.

People must be able to discover your website by searching for relevant keywords across all of the stages of their buying journey. To make that happen, you must publish high-quality content with relevant keywords for each step of the journey.

Suppose you are a fintech startup that provides a debit card for teens. You want your brand to appear as the first result in Google when parents start the search for banking options for their kids and also when teenagers decide to sign up for a debit card.

Here are some examples of content that you could publish to align with each stage of the buyer’s journey:

• Awareness: A research report on how teenagers spend their money
• Consideration: An expert guide about the pros and cons of debit cards for teens
• Decision: A comparison post about your teen debit card features vs. those of your main competitor

Create and publish 5–10 pieces of high-quality content each month for the best results. If this doesn’t sound possible, try using a blog idea generator or other AI-based writing tools to help speed up the process.

Note that AI tools aren’t meant to replace writers completely. They do, however, speed up your workflows, help pull in topical relevance, and allow you to focus time on other critical growth areas.

4. Differentiate your Content in Search Results

Over 2.5 billion blog posts are published every year. And everyone is trying to land a spot on the first page of Google.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to differentiate your content in search results to drive better results.

If everyone is writing posts about the “XX Best Dining Tables,” simply creating another “XX Best Dining Tables” piece won’t help you stand out or rank well in search results.

Creating a rehashed version of what already exists is no longer the best way forward. Instead, focus on the topic vs. angle approach.

In this case, the topic is dining tables. The angle is the differentiator that helps you stand out from the crowd, rank higher on search engine results pages, and drive higher click-through rates.

Find a unique angle that puts you on the radar and encourages clicks:

• 2023 product comparison
• Beginner’s guide on how to choose the right dining table for your home
• Compare genuine customer reviews
• Interview interior design experts and rank the top dining tables based on your data

The key is to avoid restating what already exists online by adding new value to the topic from a different angle.

5. Prioritize On-Page SEO

Once you have content ready for publishing, you can start thinking about on-page factors that’ll play a contributing factor.

These include the URL, the title of your post or page, the meta description (a blurb describing what a page is about that appears under the link in search results), and image alt text.

On-page optimization can help search engine crawlers better understand your content and enhance the user experience. When people spend more time on your site, it increases their chances of converting into a customer.

URL String

Make sure to include your long-tail keyword in the URL string. For example, if you are writing a post about “what is a virtual receptionist” your URL should look like this: 

Keywords

When you write the introduction of your content, try to use the keyword you are targeting naturally. This will help search engines understand your article and reassure readers that they clicked on the correct link.

You can also use an optimization tool like the SEO Content Assistant. These tools are easy to use and can help improve the quality and relevance of your content for a given keyword and maximize the impact.

Image Alt Text

Adding alt text to your images is an easy way to tell search engines and screen readers more information. If you don’t include them, your images may not be crawled or understood by search engines.

Use simple phrases that describe the picture. Also, don’t stuff keywords in your alt text.

Internal Links

Internal links help search engines identify and organize your site’s content, connect related pages, and spread link authority.

External links can provide you with authority and credibility. Internal links help you distribute that authority across your site and create an interconnected web of content. They also give users helpful information and let search engines know how your web pages are connected.

Follow these simple steps for a results-driven internal linking strategy:

1. Scour pages on your site with quality backlinks (the most link juice) and create an internal link back to lower authority pages with relevance.
2. Focus on building internal links to pillar posts and hub pages.
3. Make sure all links are only three clicks away from the homepage.

Internal links are the workhorses that ensure that your site stays organized. Without proper internal links, Google has difficulty figuring out what page goes with what keyword and what pages on your website are related.

6. Invest in Link Building and Digital PR

Link building is a crucial component of ranking well on search engines. Links from other websites (external links) can signal to Google that your content is trustworthy and helpful to readers.

For example, as a travel startup, getting a mention from Travel and Leisure’s blog would be a reason to celebrate. But why?

Travel and Leisure is:

• A company that’s highly relevant to the travel industry
• The website has a high authority (recognizable brand that’s been around for a long time with lots of content and links )

When you gain an external link from sources like these, the site’s authority gets passed back to you.

With a few high-quality links from reputable sources, you can start to move the needle and improve your organic rankings. But it’s easier said than done, from guest posting to conducting studies or writing yearly reports to helping a reporter out (HARO).

All these tactics are tedious and time-consuming. If you don’t think you have the time or resources to pull this off, consider investing in link building services that can speed up the process and guarantee results. You won’t regret it.

Conclusion

Building a solid SEO strategy isn’t difficult, but it’s not easy either.

It requires maximum effort, consistent content creation, and ongoing tweaks.

But if you want to succeed online, don’t wait to follow these SEO strategy tips. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes to rank and the longer it’ll take to see results. And you are opening the door for competitors to gain an advantage.

Start by familiarizing yourself with what your ideal customers are searching for and how to add value to their buyer’s journey. And then create, optimize, and distribute that content to improve your rankings.

And finally, this is your sign to invest in targeted PR and link building efforts so you can sit back, relax and watch the traffic on your site continue to climb.

About the Author: Guillaume is a digital marketer focused on handling the outreach strategy at uSERP and content management at Wordable. Outside of work, he enjoys his expat life in sunny Mexico, reading books, wandering around and catching the latest shows on TV.

The post 6 SEO Strategy Tips For Better Rankings in 2023 appeared first on LinkGraph.

• NoIndex: Don’t add my page to the search results.
• NoFollow: Don’t look at the links on this page.
• Disallow: Don’t look at this page at all.

These directives allow you to control which of your site pages can be crawled by search engines and appear in search.

What does No Index mean?

The noindex directive tells search crawlers, like googlebot, not to include a webpage in its search results.

How Do You Mark A Page NoIndex?

There are two ways to issue a noindex directive:

1. Add a noindex meta tag to the page’s HTML code
2. Return a noindex header in the HTTP request

By using the “no index” meta tag for a page, or as an HTTP response header, you are essentially hiding the page from search.

The noindex directive can also be used to block only specific search engines. For example, you could block Google from indexing a page but still allow Bing:

Example: Blocking Most Search Engines*

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

Example: Blocking Only Google

<meta name=”googlebot” content=”noindex”>

Please note: As of September 2019, Google no longer respects noindex directives in the robots.txt file. Noindex now MUST be issued via HTML meta tag or HTTP response header. For more advanced users, disallow still works for now, although not for all use cases.

What is the difference between noindex and nofollow?

It’s a difference between storing content, and discovering content:

noindex is applied at the page-level and tells a search engine crawler not to index and serve a page in the search results.

nofollow is applied at the page or link level and tells a search engine crawler not to follow (discover) the links.

Essentially the noindex tag removes a page from the search index, and a nofollow attribute removes a link from the search engine’s link graph.

NoFollow As a Page Attribute

Using nofollow at a page level means that crawlers will not follow any of the links on that page to discover additional content, and the crawlers will not use the links as ranking signals for the target sites.

<meta name=”robots” content=”nofollow”>

NoFollow as a Link Attribute

Using nofollow at a link level prevents crawlers from exploring ad specific link, and prevents that link from being used as a ranking signal.

The nofollow directive is applied at a link level using a rel attribute within the a href tag:

<a href=”https://domain.com” rel=”nofollow”>

For Google specifically, using the nofollow link attribute will prevent your site from passing PageRank to the destination URLs.

Why Should You Mark a Page as NoFollow?

For the majority of use cases, you should not mark an entire page as nofollow – marking individual links as nofollow will suffice.

You would mark an entire page as nofollow if you did not want Google to view the links on the page, or if you thought the links on the page could hurt your site.

In most cases blanket page-level nofollow directives are used when you do not have control over the content being posted to a page (ex: user generated content can be posted to the page).

Some high-end publishers have also been blanket applying the nofollow directive to their pages to dissuade their writers from placing sponsored links within their content.

How Do I Use NoIndex Pages?

Mark pages as noindex that are unlikely to provide value to users and should not show up as search results. For example, pages that exist for pagination are unlikely to have the same content displayed on them over time.

Domain.com/category/resultspage=2 is unlikely to show a user better results than domain.com/category/resultspage=1 and the two pages would only compete with each other in search. It’s best to noindex pages whose only purpose is pagination.

Here are types of pages you should consider noindexing:

• Pages used for pagination
• Internal search pages
• Ad-Optimized Landing pages
  • Ex: Only displays a pitch and sign up form, no main nav
  • Ex: Duplicate variations of the same content, only used for ads
• Archived author pages
• Pages in checkout flows
• Confirmation Pages
  • Ex: Thank you pages
  • Ex: Order complete pages
  • Ex: Success! Pages
• Some plugin-generated pages that are not relevant to your site (ex: if you use a commerce plugin but don’t use their regular product pages)
• Admin pages and admin login pages

Marking a Page Noindex and Nofollow

A page marked both noindex and nofollow will block a crawler from indexing that page, and block a crawler from exploring the links on the page.

Essentially, the image below demonstrates what a search engine will see on a webpage depending on how you’ve used noindex and nofollow directives:

Marking an Already Indexed Page as NoIndex

If a search engine has already indexed a page, and you mark it as noindex, then next time the page is crawled it will be removed from the search results.

For this method of removing a page from the index to work, you must not be blocking (disallowing) the crawler with your robots.txt file.

If you are telling a crawler not to read the page, it will never see the noindex marker, and the page will stay indexed although its content will not be refreshed.

How do I stop search engines from indexing my site?

If you want to remove a page from the search index, after it has already been indexed, you can complete the following steps:

1. Apply the noindex directiveAdd the noindex attribute to the meta tag or HTTP response header
2. Request the search engine crawl the pageFor Google you can do this in search console, request that Google re-index the page. This will trigger Googlebot crawling the page, where Googlebot will discover the noindex directive.You will need to do this for each search engine that you want to remove the page.
3. Confirm the page has been removed from searchOnce you’ve requested the crawler revisit your webpage, give it some time, and then confirm that your page has been removed from the search results. You can do this by going to any search engine and entering site colon target url, like in the image below.
   If your search returns no results, then your page has been removed from that search index.
4. If the page has not been removedCheck that you do not have a “disallow” directive in your robots.txt file. Google and other search engines cannot read the noindex directive if they are not allowed to crawl the page.If you do, remove the disallow directive for the target page, and then request crawling again.
5. Set a disallow directive for the target page in your robots.txt fileDisallow: /page$
   You’ll need to put the dollar sign on the end of the URL in your robots.txt file or you may accidentally disallow any pages under that page, as well as any pages that begin with the same string.Ex: Disallow: /sweater will also disallow /sweater-weather and /sweater/green, but Disallow: /sweater$ will only disallow the exact page /sweater.

How to Remove a Page from Google Search

If the page you want removed from search is on a site that you own or manage, most sites can use the Webmaster URL Removal Tool.

The Webmaster URL removal tool only removes content from search for about 90 days, if you want a more permanent solution you’ll need to use a noindex directive, disallow crawling from your robots.txt, or remove the page from your site. Google provides additional instructions for permanent URL removal here.

If you’re trying to have a page removed from search for a site that you do not own, you can request Google removes the page from search if it meets the following criteria:

• Displays personal information like your credit card or social security number
• The page is part of a malware or phishing scheme
• The page violates the law
• The page violates a copyright

If the page does not meet one of the criteria above, you can contact an SEO firm or PR company for help with online reputation management.

Should you noindex category pages?

It is usually not recommended to noindex category pages, unless you are an enterprise-level organization spinning up category pages programmatically based on user-generated searches or tags and the duplicate content is getting unwieldy.

For the most part if you are tagging your content intelligently, in a way that helps users better navigate your site and find what they need, then you’ll be okay.

In fact, category pages can be goldmines for SEO as they typically show a depth of content under the category topics.

Take a look at this analysis we did in December, 2018 to quantify the value of category pages for a handful of online publications.

We found that category landing pages ranked for hundreds of page 1 keywords, and brought in thousands of organic visitors each month.

The most valuable category pages for each site often brought in thousands of organic visitors each.

Take a look at EW.com below, we measured the traffic to each page (represented by the size of the circle) and the value of the traffic to each page (represented by the color of the circle).

Now imagine the same charts, but for product-based sites where visitors are likely to make active purchases.

That being said, if your categories similar enough to cause user confusion or compete with each other in search then you may need to make a change:

• If you are setting the categories yourself, then we would recommend migrating content from one category to the other and reducing the total number of categories you have overall.
• If you are allowing users to spin up categories, then you may want to noindex the user generated category pages, at least until the new categories have undergone a review process.

How do I stop Google from indexing subdomains?

There are a few options to stop Google from indexing subdomains:

• You can add a password using an .htpasswd file
• You can disallow crawlers with a robots.txt file
• You can add a noindex directive to every page in the subdomain
• You can 404 all of the subdomain pages

Adding a Password to Block Indexing

If your subdomains are for development purposes, then adding an .htpasswd file to the root directory of your subdomain is the perfect option. The login wall will prevent crawlers for indexing content on the subdomain, and it will prevent unauthorized user access.

Example use cases:

• Dev.domain.com
• Staging.domain.com
• Testing.domain.com
• QA.domain.com
• UAT.domain.com

Using robots.txt to Block Indexing

If your subdomains serve other purposes, then you can add a robots.txt file to the root directory of your subdomain. It should then be accessible as follows:

https://subdomain.domain.com/robots.txt

You will need to add a robots.txt file to each subdomain that you are trying to block from search. Example:

https://help.domain.com/robots.txt

https://public.domain.com/robots.txt

In each case the robots.txt file should disallow crawlers, to block most crawlers with a single command, use the following code:

User-agent: *

Disallow: /

The star * after user-agent: is called a wildcard, it will match any sequence of characters. Using a wildcard will send the following disallow directive to all user agents regardless of their name, from googlebot to yandex.

The backslash tells the crawler that all pages off of the subdomain are included in the disallow directive.

How to Selectively Block Indexing of Subdomain Pages

If you would like some pages from a subdomain to show up in search, but not others, you have two options:

• Use page-level noindex directives
• Use folder or directory-level disallow directives

Page level noindex directives will be more cumbersome to implement, as the directive needs to be added to the HTML or Header of every page. However, noindex directives will stop Google from indexing a subdomain whether the subdomain has already been indexed or not.

Directory-level disallow directives are easier to implement, but will only work if the subdomain pages are not in the search index already. Simply update the subdomain’s robots.txt file to disallow crawling of the applicable directories or subfolders.

How Do I Know if My Pages are NoIndexed?

Accidentally adding a no index directive pages on your site can have drastic consequences for your search rankings and search visibility.

If you find a page isn’t seeing any organic traffic despite good content and backlinks, first spot check that you haven’t accidentally disallowed crawlers from your robots.txt file. If that doesn’t solve your issue, you’ll need to check the individual pages for noindex directives.

Checking for NoIndex on WordPress Pages

WordPress makes it easy to add or remove this tag on your pages. The first step in checking for nofollow on your pages is by simply toggling the Search Engine Visibility setting within the “Reading” tab of the “Settings” menu.

This will likely solve the problem, however this setting works as a ‘suggestion’ rather than a rule, and some of your content may end up being indexed anyway.

In order to ensure absolute privacy for your files and content, you will have to take one final step either password protecting your site using either cPanel management tools, if available, or through a simple plugin.

Likewise, removing this tag from your content can be done by removing the password protection and unchecking the visibility setting.

Checking for NoIndex on Squarespace

Squarespace pages are also easily NoIndexed using the platform’s Code Injection capability. Like WordPress, Squarespace can easily be blocked from routine searches using password protection, however the platform also advises against taking this step to protect the integrity of your content.

By adding the NoIndex line of code within each page you want to hide from internet search engines and to each subpage below it, you can ensure the safety of secured content that should be barred from public access. Like other platforms, removing this tag is also fairly straightforward: simply using the Code Injection feature to take the code back out is all you will need to do.

Squarespace is unique in that its competitors offer this option primarily as a part of the suite of settings in page management tools. Squarespace departs here, allowing for personal manipulation of the code. This is interesting because you are able to see the change you are making to your page’s content, unlike the others in this space.

Checking for NoIndex on Wix

Wix also allows for a simple and fast fix for NoIndexing issues. In the “Menus & Pages” settings, you can simply deactivate the option to ‘show this page in search results’ if you want to NoIndex a single page within your site.

As with its competitors, Wix also suggests password protecting your pages or entire site for extra privacy. However, Wix departs from the others in that the support team does not prescribe parallel action on both fronts in order to secure content from the crawler. Wix makes a particular note about the difference between hiding a page from your menu and hiding it from search criteria.

This is particularly useful advice for less experienced website builders who may not initially understand the difference considering that removal from your site menu makes the page unreachable from the site, but not from a prudent Google search term.

The post Noindex Nofollow and Disallow: Search Crawler Directives appeared first on LinkGraph.

Need proof? Check out these stats…

• 96% of people use a search engine to seek legal advice.
• 38% of people use the internet to find an attorney.
• 62% of legal searches are non-branded (for example, Miami car accident attorney).

Additionally, your law firm website is a great spot to generate new leads for your firm. 74% of consumers who visit a law firm’s website end up taking action, such as contacting the firm by phone.

Also, the lawyer SEO competition doesn’t necessarily reflect the legal market you’re in. Only 35% of law firm websites have been updated in the last 3 years, and 40% of law firms don’t even have a law firm website.

In short, by applying an effective law firm SEO strategy, you’ll leap ahead of most of your competitors.

To help you put together your own SEO campaign, I’ll show you how to rank your law firm #1 in Google – step-by-step.

ARTICLE CONTENTS

TECHNICAL SEO
Step 1. Determine Website Structure
Step 2. Setup Your GMB Listing
Step 3. Improve Your Site Speed
Step 4. Mobile Optimization
Step 5. Implement SSL
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Step 6. Understand Search Intent
Step 7. Find the right keywords
PAGES & CONTENT
Step 8. Identify User Content Goals
Step 9. Format Your Pages Properly
Step 10. Optimize Your Home Page
Step 11. Create Practice Pages
Step 12. Rank Better with Blog Posts
Step 13. Fix Zombie Pages
DOMINATE LOCAL SEARCH
Step 14. Tailor Pages to Markets
Step 15. Legal Directory Citations
Step 16. Claim & Manage Reviews
LINKS
Step 17. Outbound Links
Step 18. Inbound Links
MEASURE RESULTS
Step 19. Tools to Use
Step 20. KPIs

TECHNICAL SEO FOR ATTORNEYS

Step 1. Determine Your Website Structure

Structure your own website so your users (and Google) can find everything. Your website needs to have a defined structure. Without one, it’s difficult for users to navigate and difficult for search engines to crawl and discover your web pages.

Structuring your site for your users

Users need to be able to easily find what they’re looking for. This means that you need to understand what information people seek out when visiting your law firm’s website and put that important information  on the homepage or make it easy to access from the navigation bar.

For example, if a prospective client is looking for a personal injury attorney in Miami, they may search your firm’s website for practice areas, office location, reviews, and the about section.

Look at how this law firm’s website quickly addresses those needs with their navigation bar.

EXAMPLE 1

• Practice areas, either directly on your navigation menu or as a dropdown if you have multiple services. This gets your law firm’s services based keywords on every page of your site, sending strong relevancy signals to Google crawlers.
• Location information, either directly on your navigation menu or as a dropdown if you have multiple locations. This gets your location-based keywords on every page of your site, sending strong relevancy signals to search engine algorithms about the geographic area you serve.
• A link to your attorneys or about page, which should give an overview of the years of experience of your whole legal team.
• A link to your reviews or testimonials page – to build trust.
• A link to your “Contact Us” clearly labeled with a unique color where visitors can contact you via phone number, email, or an embedded contact form. This is a call to action.
• Your phone number. This is another call to action. Even if you already have a “contact us” button that links to a contact page, 74% of people who land on a law firm’s website are likely to contact you via phone, so making this form of contact as simple as 1 click is to your advantage.

If you’re unsure about what users are likely to look for on your website, search Google for your practice areas and look at the top ranking competitors sites to get ideas for your navigation and site layout.

Finally, it’s important to make sure your navigation menu is usable both on desktop and mobile.

In fact, 31% of all law firm related website traffic comes from mobile, so a large amount of your leads are likely to come from a mobile device.
Take a look at how this law firm’s website made their navigation menu easy to access and use on mobile phones.

This is referred to as the “tap area” of a button and is a key component of converting on mobile devices. Make sure this is sized appropriately for phones and fingers of all sizes. Users can become easily frustrated if they have a difficult time tapping the correct button on a mobile device and may leave your site.

Structuring your site for Successful SEO

Google also uses your law firm’s website structure to determine what website content is important and relevant information. Here are a few ways to help Google crawl your law firm website in a more effective way.

Use proper page and URL Structure

Ideally, your website as a whole should be structured like a pyramid, with your home page at the top, your category pages (the ones in your navigation menu) beneath that, and your individual pages beneath your category pages.

Not only does this make it very easy for users to find relevant content on your site, but also makes it easier for search engines to index each page of your website.

This means that they should only have one slash after the .com, .net, etc (aka. the “top-level-domain”).

So, your about page should look like https://yourdomain.com/about

Any individual pages that are a subset of your category pages, like blog articles, should only have two slashes after the top-level-domain.

For example, blog articles would look like this: https://yourdomain.com/blog/how-to-hire-a-personal-injury-lawyer

Clear URL structure makes it easy for search engine crawlers to find pages on your law firm website.

Clear linking and navigation titles

The placement of navigation items is an important factor for users and search engines alike. While users are more likely to pay attention to navigation titles, search engines use the anchor text of these navigation items to determine the topical relevance of a page.

What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink.
Here’s what it looks like in your site’s code

If we inspect the code on Harell & Harell’s site, we can see this in action. Here’s the navigation menu item’s anchor text for the user.

These same link signals can be leveraged in the footer of your law firm website as well. Adding links to pages such as to your blog, privacy policy, or sitemap in the footer can help boost the link signals to these pages without taking up space in the main navigation menu.

Proper use of H tags – How to use H tags for SEO

Header tags (commonly called H tags) outline the structure of your page. Often times, an H tag is used as the title displayed on the page, while the page title is what’s displayed in the organic search results.

Common H tag page formatting looks like this:

Notice the difference between these 2 articles. One is using H tags properly, while the other is writing their headlines in plain text.

Header Tags Used Properly

When writing your H tags, keep a few things in mind:

• Only use 1 H1 tag on your page.
• Use H2, H3, and other H tags to segment out the content of your page.
• Use related keywords in your HTML tags.

Step 2. Create and optimize your law firm’s Google My Business listing

85% of people use online maps, such as Google Maps, to find legal services.

Google Maps is a huge part of local SEO. If your firm largely targets local clients, then getting listed on Google Maps is a must.

How to add your law firm to Google Maps

So, how do you get listed on Google Maps?
By creating a Google My Business listing.

Here’s how.

Google My Business best practices

Google uses information from Google My Business to display information for searches that have local area intent.

Clearly, it’s important that this information is up-to-date, accurate, and fully optimized.

How to optimize your law firm’s Google My Business listing

Here’s how to optimize your firm’s Google My Business account:

• Enter your business information correctly on the map so users can easily find you.
• List the official website of your law firm.
• Include your opening hours.
• Make sure your business name, address, and phone number is EXACTLY the same as listed on your website. Google aggregates this information from across the web.
• Choose the most appropriate and specific category for your firm so that you show up in the right search terms.
• Add photos of your office, staff or anything else you’d like that’s relevant and professional.
• Describe your law firm. Include links and relevant keywords in the introduction.

If you’re interested in seeing how users behave with your listing, check out Google My Business insights.

Step 3. Make your law firm website as fast as possible

Google is now mobile-first, which means they assume users are accessing your site with a 5G connection.

They want to provide users with a great page experience. Presenting users with slow websites doesn’t accomplish this, so if you want higher rankings, your website needs to be fast.

Due to its impact on user experience, website speed is one of the most important SEO ranking factors.

If a website takes a long time to load, the user will click back to Google to find a better choice. Google will simply think the user didn’t find what they were looking for and your website rank will drop.

Amazon found clear correlations between page speed and bounce rate. Just a few seconds too long, and your users are 32% more likely to leave.

To make your site as fast as possible, use Google’s PageSpeed Tool to see how your site loads on desktop and on a 5G connection. This tool is a simple way to discover any issues that you can address to make your site faster.

Step 4. Make sure your site is mobile friendly

Consider this – you’re a personal injury attorney, and a potential client just got into a car accident.

They try to access your site to call you, but they have a poor mobile connection.

Or worse, they’re nervous – their adrenaline is pumping – and they’re having trouble tapping their screen with accuracy.

Your website takes too long to load, and when it finally does, the user pushes the wrong button on accident, so they move on to the next listing in Google.

This is why mobile optimization is important for attorney websites.

At a minimum, you should make sure that:

• Your website loads quickly on mobile.
• Your buttons are sized well enough that people with small screens or big fingers can tap them without accidentally tapping a different button.
• Keep important information above the fold – i.e. keep your call to action visible without requiring users to scroll down.
• Have a click to call button for mobile.

Check out Lawrence Law Group’s site as an example of doing this correctly.

This, and Google prioritizes mobile experiences when ranking websites.

Step 5. Secure your law firm’s website with SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

Ever come across a website and see something like this?

As an attorney, you know that trust between you and your target audience is important, so why would this be any different online?

This is what happens when a website isn’t secured with an SSL certificate.

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, and is essentially a form of validation for your website that confirm there aren’t any intermediaries between a page and the web host that could potentially steal a users information.

Basically, an SSL certificate proves that a website is who they say they are. This is shown by a site having https instead of http at the beginning of their domain.

Google has also confirmed that it is, in fact, taken into consideration for rankings.

Often times, you can get an SSL certificate through your web hosting provider. They’re usually available for an annual fee, and will fix all of the issues associated with “website not secure” popups or messages.

If you prefer to go the route of free, or would rather have your SSL certificate not tied to your web hosting provider, you can use a service like Let’s Encrypt instead.

Once you get your certificate set up, plug your homepage https URL into Why No Padlock? to have their tool crawl your site and make sure it’s implemented correctly.

A few things to note about getting your site SSL certified:

• Google will treat this as if you’re moving your site to a new domain name, which means you may temporarily lose search rankings and organic traffic until Google crawls your site again and reindexes your new https pages.
• You could end up with a lot of broken links, so it’s important to make sure you properly 301 redirect your http links to your new https links when migrating to https.

KEYWORD RESEARCH

Step 6. Understand searcher intent and keyword types

Before you start optimizing your law firm’s website, you need to know what kind of keywords you’re going to go after.

In attorney SEO, as in all SEO, a keyword is really just a search term that Google’s users type to find what they’re looking for.

What they’re looking for is described as searcher intent – and can be broken down into three categories:

• Awareness
• Evaluation
• Purchase

Searcher intent addresses the question “what are the searchers really looking for?”
Let’s assume a musician is trying to copyright their music. Here are some search terms they might use in each stage.

• Awareness – This is where the musician is looking for answers, resources, educational material, and insights. Example search terms (or keywords) may include:

• • • How can I protect my music?
    • Do I copyright or trademark a song?
    • How to copyright a song

• Evaluation – This is the middle stage where the musician knows what needs to be done and is researching options. Example search terms (or, again, keywords) in this stage may include:

• • • Music lawyers near me
    • Who are the best copyright lawyers in Nashville
    • Copyright lawyer reviews

• Purchase – This is the final stage where the musician is figuring out what it would take to become a customer. Keywords used in this stage are likely to be very specific:
  • Law firm name contact info
  • Lawyer name contact info

In this example, the musician wanted to protect their music, learned more about what’s involved, then narrowed down the options until they found the best one for them, then took steps to contact the appropriate firm.

The closer a user gets to a purchase, the longer the keywords usually are. This is where the phrase long-tail keywords comes from.

Step 7. Find the right keywords

Now that you understand searcher intent and know about how people use Google to make purchases, let’s dive into some keyword research.

To find new keyword phrase ideas, just head over to Google’s Keyword Planner, log in, and click “Discover new keywords.”

Next, enter your website or a keyword of your choice to get started. For this example, I’m going to enter a keyword.

You’ll notice that you have columns that show you the monthly search volume and the cost-per-click bid range if you were to run ads.

If a keyword has a high bid, that means advertisers are bidding high amounts for that search query in PPC advertising campaigns –likely because it drives sales.

That means these keywords are likely to have high purchase intent. These are the keywords that you’ll likely want to target with pages that have lots of call-to-actions.

If you want more keyword ideas, you can leverage Google. Just take one of your chosen keywords, plug it into Google’s search box, and look at the “People also ask” section.

If you click one of the questions, Google automatically generates more of them.

When you find your keywords, remember to use your primary keyword within the H1 and title tags of your page. This gives the search engines a clear indication as to what the page is about. For more information on keywords and keyword research check out Keywords 101: A Beginner’s Guide.

PAGES & CONTENT

Step 8. Understand Google’s content preferences

Google prioritizes pages based on how it views search intent for different terms. You won’t be able to effectively rank a product page for an informational search.

Google often prioritizes long-form content, but content that meets a user’s need always wins out.

It’s the difference between “how to find a good accident lawyer” and “accident lawyer near me” searches. One will land on a blog post/long form content, the other on a directory or services page.

Think about it like this – someone with a broken faucet is looking for contact info for an available plumber, not a long-form article on plumbing.

Step 9. Format your pages properly

When formatting your page, there are a few things that need consideration.

• Formatting your titles
• Using H tags
• Writing meta descriptions
• Formatting your content

Let’s go over each of these.

How to write your page titles for SEO

The page title is the clickable headline of your page that appears on search engine results pages (commonly referred to as SERPs).

When writing your title tags, keep a few things in mind.

• Keep your titles about 55-60 characters long. Too short and they aren’t detailed enough, but too long and they’ll be cut off at the end in search engines, meaning people won’t be able to read them.
• Use your target keyword in the title as close to the beginning as possible.
• Describe your page content in the best way possible.
• Keep your titles unique to the specific page. Otherwise, multiple pages may compete for the same keyword.
• Use your brand name wisely. In most cases, your brand name should be left to the end of the title.

Here are some examples of well formatted page titles, and one that’s not as well formatted:

• Their title is too long, which made it cut off at the end.
• They didn’t use a searchable keyword in the beginning of the title. Instead, they used their brand name.

How to write your page descriptions for SEO

Page descriptions are the short paragraph of text placed in the HTML that describe the contents of a page. These are known as “meta descriptions” and will show under your page in the organic search results.

Google has specifically stated that they do not use the meta description as a ranking signal. However, the number of people who click on your website vs. others is a ranking signal, and the meta description influences a user’s decision to click on your website.

Because of this, the meta description indirectly influences your rankings.

So, when writing your meta descriptions, do so with the goal of convincing users to click on your listing rather than stuffing keywords in there.

Here are a few things that can accomplish this:

• Keep your description between 135-160 characters so that it doesn’t cut off at the end.
• Don’t duplicate your meta descriptions. Write unique ones for every webpage.
• Use your keyword in the description. This is important not because search engines use this as a ranking signal, but because the keyword is often highlighted in bold, which can draw attention to your organic listing.
• Treat the meta as an advertisement for your page. Make it compelling and relevant. It should match the contents of your page while being as appealing as possible.

Step 10. Create a winning home page

Your homepage is the most valuable page on your site. Here are some ways to make it have a better chance of securing top rankings.

Optimize for the most competitive terms

As far as search engines are concerned, your home page carries the most weight in terms of value. Because of this, it’s best to optimize the page for your most competitive keyword.

Boyd Law does this very well.

Your page may not rank right away, but as you build your domain authority and visibility, it will climb closer to the top of the search results.

Feature reviews to build trust

You need to establish credibility and trust as quickly as possible. The best way to do this is featuring reviews or testimonials on your homepage.

Take a look at how Morgan & Morgan features powerful video testimonials on their homepage.

Use images or videos to boost engagement

Google uses dwell time as a ranking factor, so it’s in your best interest to keep users engaged on your homepage as long as possible. Using videos or other visual graphics accomplish this.

Look at how The Law Offices of Peter C. Bronstein does this.

Craft a compelling call-to-action (CTA)

A clear, consistent call-to-action is what generates leads.

When writing your CTA, you want to keep 3 things in mind.

1. Use action words and be specific – Phrases that encourage users to do something are much more powerful than generic phrases. A CTA like “Call Now for a Free Consultation” is much more compelling than “Click Here to Call.”
2. Create a sense of urgency – By simply telling users to do something now or that time is running out, suddenly your CTA seems more urgent. You can accomplish this without hard-selling by using the word “Now” or pointing out that users can “reap the benefits today.”
3. Use contrast in your design – If your CTA is the same color as the rest of your website, it isn’t going to stand out. Use a contrasting color so users are quickly drawn to it.

Let’s look at an example of a good CTA vs. one that could use some work.

Step 11. Create practice area pages

After your homepage, your practice area pages are going to be the next most valuable in your SEO efforts.

It’s important to make individual pages for each practice area because it gives you more opportunity to go after keywords related to those practice areas by addressing the specific needs of that audience.

If we look at Morgan & Morgan’s website, we’ll see that they have a dropdown listing all of their practice areas.

• The purchase intent keyword related to this practice area as identified in your keyword research (discussed above in steps 6 and 7).
• Page titles and meta descriptions with the keyword’s searcher intent in mind (discussed above in step 9).
• Answers to common questions about this practice area. You can identify common questions by typing your target keyword into Google and looking at the “People also ask” suggestions. Each question you address on this page should use an H tag so that search engines understand the structure of your page.
• Testimonials from clients that you’ve helped in this specific area of practice.
• A call-to-action that’s specific to this area of practice.

Step 12. Become an authority with epic blog content

You already have lots of legal info in your head from your experience. Creating high-quality content on your site that communicates this effectively to potential clients positions you as an authority in your legal space.

Consider your practice areas and think about how you can create great content and super-detailed blog articles that help potential clients.

Things like step-by-step guides, simplifying otherwise complex topics, or even simple blog posts on key pain points your audience may face are great examples of this.

Look at how Peterson Watts Law Group does this with their music copyright article.

You can come up with content marketing ideas by:

• Looking into your clients most commonly asked questions.
• Reviewing Google’s “People also ask” questions for related search terms.
• Reviewing questions on Quora in your space.
• Using tools like Google Trends to find topics that are trending online.

When you create your content, keep in mind that you’re writing for the internet – which means you should make your content easy to skim. Here’s how:

• Write short, concise sentences using simple language. Try and keep your writing at a 10th grade reading level or less. Tools like Hemmingway can help you determine the readability of your content.
• Use lots of white space by keeping your paragraphs 1-3 sentences long.
• Use the right font size. A 22 point font provides the best reading experience online.
• Use bullet points whenever possible.

When writing your content, while it is important to intersperse your keywords throughout, Google algorithms are getting better at understanding language and will understand synonyms related to the topi. It’s more important that the topic is covered in full, and keyword stuffing won’t work. The primary objective should be that your content fully addresses the needs of its audience.

Step 13. Fix zombie pages

What are zombie pages, and why are they bad for SEO?

Zombie pages are those that exist on your website but provide no value whatsoever – meaning they don’t bring you any traffic.

They usually take on one of the following forms:

• Duplicate content (ex. News stories copy and pasted from other sites – don’t do this. It can actually make your site appear more spammy and can cause your rankings to drop.)
• Outdated blog posts
• Aging press releases
• Pages that shouldn’t be indexed
• Archive pages
• Category and tag pages (often found on WordPress blogs)
• Search result pages
• Old press releases
• Thin content (<50 words)
• Boilerplate content

These pages are often indexed by Google, but rank poorly because they provide no value to users.

Because search engines use metrics like pages viewed per session and dwell time on a page, thin pages and zombie pages can give Google the impression your site is low-quality.

Should you delete zombie pages?

If you can’t bring a zombie page to life by improving the content and making these pages useful to users, then redirecting the page to more useful content may be the best alternative.

Redirects are especially important if a page your are deleting has any links pointing towards it from other websites.

Links pointing to your site from others are referred to as backlinks. We’ll touch more on these later, but in short, Google counts links as votes of confidence to your site and uses them to help determine rankings for a page or pages of a domain. Any high ranking web page likely has lots of links pointing to it.

You can check backlinks to a page with tools like Ahrefs, SemRush, or Majestic.

In most cases, since zombie pages provide little to no value to your users, it’s unlikely you’ll find any backlinks pointing to them.

However, if you do, you should redirect these pages to another relevant page on your site to retain whatever search equity the page had acquired.

How to redirect pages

The best way to redirect pages on your site is using 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. They essentially send visitors and search engines to a different URL than what they clicked on from a search engine page or typed into their browser.

Let’s put this into practice.

If you click on either of these URLs, you’ll be directed to www.google.com:

• https://www.google.com
• https://google.com

That’s because google.com 301 redirects to www.google.com, since Google wanted that to be their primary domain.

Here’s a step-by-step video showing you how to set up 301 redirects in WordPress.

How to properly delete pages

If you don’t have any pages on your site that you can redirect your pages towards, and the page in question has no backlinks, then deleting those pages may be your best option.

When you delete a page, make sure you set the HTTP header to “410 content deleted.”

This tells users – and search engines – that you intentionally deleted the content, and will result in Google removing it from their index sooner.

You can use this plugin to do this on WordPress.

Use Lawyer SEO to dominate local search

Step 14. Create pages for specific markets

71% of people looking for an attorney believe it’s important to have a local one.

This means that they’re likely looking for lawyers within their specific geographic area using the name of a town or county that may otherwise be underserved.

If other law firms aren’t targeting these smaller towns or counties, this could be a great opportunity for you.

Just look at how Morgan & Morgan creates specific pages for the small town of Tavares just outside of Orlando, Florida.

You won’t receive as much traffic for these pages as you will on your homepage, but if you target enough areas, it adds up.

Just look for nearby cities, counties, or towns and create pages tailored specifically to each of them with a customized page title, meta description, and page copy.

Do this with 5 surrounding areas for 10 practice areas and that’s 50 new pages that can attract a very targeted audience!

Finally, make sure other pages on your site link to these pages to help improve their link signals. For example, if you write a blog post about car accidents in Los Angeles, California, link to your “Los Angeles Car Accident Attorney” page.

Step 15. Get citations in popular legal directories

If you serve local clients, quality citations – mentions of your business name, address, and/or phone number – are important.

Google considers citations from relevant, reliable websites when as an important ranking factor in local search results.

Not only that, but lots of people still find lawyers through online directories.

In fact, legal directories often rank for competitive search terms in the legal industry.

Getting citations from targeted directories add credibility, context, and authenticity to your law firm, and allow you to be found by search engine users who click the directory listings in the search results.

How to find citation sources

The best places to get cited in are prominent legal directories and data aggregators.

Legal directories

A good way to think about directory placements is to go after ones that you think you can actually get clients from.

The best way to find these directories is to type all of your target keywords into Google and simply look at the directory listings on the first page. Anything here is worth getting listed in because you can potentially grab second-hand search traffic – i.e. people will click the directory listing in Google, then find your firm

Some of the most popular legal directories worth getting listed in are:

• Avvo
• FindLaw
• Lawyers.com (paid)
• Justia
• Hg.org
• Nolo

For a full list of directories, check out this page from Moz that organizes citation sources by city. Remember to look at nearby cities as well

Data aggregators

You also want to make sure your information is correct with all key data aggregators because search engines pull data from these sources.

Most search engines get their data from:

• Acxiom
• Factual
• Infogroup
• Localeze

…who pull their data from:

• Twitter
• Foursquare
• Yellowpages
• Facebook
• Bing Places for Busines

So it’s important to make sure your information is always up-to-date in these sources. Otherwise, your rankings can drop if any out-of-date information is passed along.

Step 16. Get reviews on Google, Yelp, and law directories

Reviews are important for Google rankings, click through rates, and creating a perception of trust.

This is true for your Google listings and your law directory listings.

According to Bright Local’s Customer Review Survey:

• 85% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.
• 73% of people trust a business more because of a review.
• Yelp and Google are some of the review sources people trust most

Needless to say, reviews are an essential part of your law firm’s SEO strategy

Here are some ways you can get reviews on Google, Yelp, and law directories of your choice.

Ask your clients

If you’ve given excellent service to a client, a great way to earn reviews is to simply ask!

Amazon does this through email, so why not do this with your clients as well?

Just send them an email explaining how you want to hear more about their experience with a link to your preferred review source. If you’ve given them great service and have developed a strong relationship with the client, they’ll see your request as a good thing and be more than happy to do this.

Keep in mind that you want to make sure you ask happy clients for reviews since they’re more likely to leave good ones.

Add review links to your site

In some areas of legal practice, clients are likely to revisit your website frequently

In these cases, leaving links to your preferred review sources can encourage repeat clients to share their experiences.

Take a look at how Johanson Law Group does this.

Just link the “write a review” button on your site to Google, Yelp, Avvo, or whatever your preferred directory is.

Use review generation tools

There are tools that can help automate the customer feedback process to make it easier.

• GatherUp
• BirdEye
• Podium

These tools handle client follow-ups on your behalf via text or email which frees you up to handle more important things.

While these are great, if your firm is relatively new, I’d recommend calling or emailing each client individually until you have a consistent inflow of clients to ask for reviews.

LINKS

Step 17. Link to authority sources from your site

Linking out is a great way to show Google that you’re interested in providing value to your users.

When Google analyzes links, they look at them like neighborhoods. If you’re linking out to lots of high quality, high domain authority sites in your industry, and lots of high quality sites are linking to you, Google considers your site as part of a good “link neighborhood.”

The opposite can also be true. If you link out to low quality sites and lots of low quality sites are linking to you, this is a bad “link neighborhood.”

Linking to non-competing legal sites can help enhance a reader’s understanding of a topic you may be writing about on your own site.

This will improve user experience on your site – which will lead to better SERP rankings.

For example, Yavitch & Palmer’s site links out to a number of legal resources related to their areas of practice.

The rel=“nofollow” tag

The rel=”nofollow” tag is a value that can be added to a URL that tells search engines not to follow the URL.

In the code for a URL, it looks like this:

This was introduced in 2005 by Google to stop people from blog comment spamming in an effort to get links to their site that would influence their rankings.

This tag should only be used if a link is paid for or can be easily added by the public (such as in comments or reviews).

Otherwise, you don’t really need to worry about it.

Increase dwell time with outbound and internal links

If people can find what they’re looking for on your site, they’re more likely to stick around.

This includes when you give them what they’re looking for by linking to it.

So if you’re writing a blog article and mention a resource that readers may want to learn more about, link to it!

Peterson Watts Law Group does this regularly in their blog articles.

When you do link out, make sure the pages you link to open in a new browser tab when clicked so users can easily come back to your site. Here’s how to do this in WordPress

Follow these same guidelines with internal links – links from one page on your site to another – to help search engines better understand the structure of your site and rank it on an ongoing basis.

Step 18. Increase your rankings with backlinks

One of the best ways to increase your Google search results is to get other sites to link to yours.

Google counts links as votes of confidence. If other reputable sites are linking to you, Google trusts your site more and pushes you up in the search results pages.

These are known as backlinks (i.e. another site is “linking back” to you), and the process of trying to get these backlinks is known as “link building.”

A lot of sites pay for backlinks, but this is against Google webmaster guidelines and is known as “black hat” SEO.

“White hat” link building is done leveraging methods that follow google’s guidelines. Often, these methods require a lot of time and hard work, like creating new content like guest blogs or long-form articles that includes links back to your website, and then pitching that content to other webmasters to publish on their site. This is the safest way to build links, and even more so when working with a reputable SEO agency.

Two of the best ways to get high-quality backlinks for your site are guest posting and HARO.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is the easiest way to get other sites to link to you. It basically works like this.

1. You find other sites that accept guest articles.
2. You pitch them an idea.
3. You write it and send it to them with a link to your site in the body of the content.

Simple, right?

Let’s break down the steps.

Find other sites that accept guest posts

To find sites that accept guest posts, we’ll use Google.

Simply enter search terms like these:

• Your keyword + “write for us”
• Your keyword + “guest post by”
• Your Keyword + “contribution by”

Make sure you maintain the “”. This tells Google to only find pages that contain this exact phrase.

When you find a site that looks like a good fit, you’re ready to craft your pitch.

Pitch 3 article ideas

For each of the sites you find, look around at the types of articles they write and come up with 3 similar ones that they haven’t covered yet.

Once you have your article ideas, send them an email that looks something like this:

My name is [Your Name] and I’m [Your Company and Role]

I’m contacting you because I’d love to contribute a guest post on [Website].

Here are some ideas I’ve come up with that I think your readers would get a ton of value from:

[Idea #1]

[Idea #2]

[Idea #3]

I’ll make sure the piece overflows with information that can’t be found anywhere else.

To give you an idea of the quality I’ll bring to your site, here’s a link to a guest post that I recently published on [Other Website].

Cheers,

[Your First Name]

Once you hear back from a site, the next step is to write and send your article to them!

When you write your article, make sure it provides real value to their readers and isn’t just an article written in an attempt to get a link. Any good site will see right through this and will reject your article once they get it.

Make sure you link to your site within the body of the content – ideally to a blog post you have. Most sites will link to your site in your bio, but Google usually doesn’t count these.

If you do a good job, they may ask you to contribute content about your main practice area or a specific topic on a monthly basis. This means lots of long term SEO success for your law firm website and elevating you and your team of lawyers as industry experts.

HARO

HARO (or Help A Reporter Out) is a great source of links and press mentions.

Basically, they send you 3 emails each day with a list of topics reporters are writing about for news sites and need some help with – like this:

All you need to do is scroll through the list of topics, pick one out where you can offer value, and write your reply.

Here’s an example of one that’s fit for attorneys.

Just click on the query to be taken down to the section of the email where you can read it in full.

Finally, just click the email address listed with the query and draft your response!

Remember, with HARO, the more helpful information you can provide, the better. Often times, reporters will take only part of what you say, so giving them more to work with gives you more of a chance at landing a placement. In some cases, they may include a website link with your comments.

MEASURING RESULTS

Step 19. Make sure you have the right tools.

In order to measure your SEO results, you need to install the correct analytics tools.

Google Analytics is important because that lets you see how much organic traffic you’re getting and gives you insight into how your users are using your website. You can leverage this data to make improvements to your user experience.

Here’s a video that walks you through how to set up Google Analytics for your website.

These tools let you analyze ranking data and give you a look at your position for different keywords as well as how many impressions and clicks you’re getting from search.

Here’s a video that walks you through how to set it up for your website.

Step 20. Understand how to measure SEO performance

Once you have your tools installed, it’s important to start measuring your SEO performance over time.

Specifically, you want to look at the following key performance indicators (KPIs):

• Rankings – How many keywords and keyword phrases are you ranking for? How have your rankings changed for those keywords over the last few months?
• Traffic – How many visitors are you getting from organic search?
• Conversions – How many new leads are you getting from organic search traffic?

Here’s how to look at each of these.

Use Google Search Console to monitor keyword rankings

The best way to look at your keyword rankings is with Google Search Console.

If you log in to Google Search Console, click “Search Results” on the left. This will show you a report of all the keywords you rank for and your position over time for those keywords.

Don’t look at rankings over weeks – look over a period of months. Legal SEO work takes a while to kick in.

Use Google Analytics to monitor traffic and conversions

Traffic can be measured in Google Analytics.

If you open your Google Analytics account and go to Audience -> Overview, then scroll down and select the “Organic Search” option, you’ll be able to see all of the traffic that comes from search engines.

Again, make sure you measure this over a period of months – not days. The nature of good SEO is that it takes time for search engines to react to your efforts, especially in a competitive landscape or given keyword phrase like car accident lawyer, divorce lawyer, or dui lawyer.

As well as simply looking at the traffic, you’ll also want to look into a variety of factors:

• What website pages visitors are landing on.
• Visitor demographics.
• What they’re doing on your site.
• How frequently they’re revisiting.
• Monitor site speed.
• Check for any differences in behavior between mobile and desktop users.

CONCLUSION

There you have it – a 20 step action plan to dominate the search results! Whether you’re a car accident lawyer, divorce attorney, criminal defense lawyer, family law, or other type of attorney, lawyer SEO is the fastest way to break into competitive markets by securing top rankings for your law practice website.

Hopefully this gave you lots of valuable insight into the inner workings of search engine optimization and how they prioritize organic results for sites that give users what they’re looking for.

A solid SEO strategy is something that every digital marketing campaign should include. These strategies have worked for hundreds of other websites, so they’ll work for yours too! If you need help, working with an SEO company and SEO experts can help you build domain authority and site visibility faster through comprehensive digital marketing strategy. reach out to one of our law firm SEO experts to learn more.

The post Law Firm SEO – A 20 Step Action Plan for Attorneys appeared first on LinkGraph.