At the start of May, 2010, now not-so-affectionately known by many as May Day, Google made algorithmic changes that affected many websites. It could continue to impact sites going forward, specifically related to long tail keyword approaches. Because most legal blogs that strive for strong organic search engine placement do utilize long tail keyword phrases, this could change the way you should approach your SEO strategy.
What Happened?
Google changes its search engine algorithms regularly. They continually tweak it in an attempt to keep web search as “real” as they can. By real, they mean that they don’t want people to be able to “game” or manipulate their system. More than ever, they want the cream to rise to the top on a consistent basis so that they can retain their position as the most popular search engine in the world.
During the May update, many websites noted that they experienced traffic drops from 5-15% and this directly related to their long tail traffic. Traffic drops happened to many websites and it could have happened for a number of reasons, such as link devaluation, indexing problems, issues with authority site grading, or other issues. In essence, some of the traffic and indexing you were getting may not longer be listed on Google.
Long Tail keywords have been a great way to gain traffic with a high conversion rate in specific industries, particularly competitive ones, such as law firms. By focusing on geographically related keywords, for example, you would benefit from specific traffic. It has traditionally been much easier to rank for a term such as Mesothelioma lawyer, Portland than Mesothelioma lawyer on its own, for example. But if you don’t have a diverse and layered SEO strategy, Google may no longer deem your pages worthy of their former rankings.
What should law firms do?
If you’ve felt traffic take a dip (or worse, a nose dive) or are not sure how much this change has impacted your website or blog, things to do to improve your situation could include:
- Check your analytics. Your website traffic reporting needs an assessment with a comparison of before and after the May Day timeframe to see if you are impacted. Data gathered from those reports will not only show what’s happened but can be very telling to an expert set of eyes in terms of the best SEO strategy to use in the coming weeks and months.
- Improve the content on your pages. Content has always been and always will be vital in terms of gaining search engine results and engaging visitors toward your desired call to action. Yes, keywords are important but content quality is even more important and Google does supposedly still pay attention to latent semantic indexing.
- Create off-page linking campaigns. Link to specially selected pages on your site from off the page. Practice area pages should be linked to from local sites. Categorizing your firm from practice area increases the validity of long tail keyword uses. Then, link to practice area pages from regionally relevant sites with authority, such as telephone directories, nationally recognized topical directories, etc.
- Create on-page linking campaigns. A legal blog is the perfect way to do this. For each post, optimize for long tail keywords that have been selected through research and traffic analysis. Then, build a linking campaign around each post. Include authority links, links to other relevant pages on your blog, and then bookmark the posts through social media optimization as well.
- Optimize on and off your site in terms of establishing online presence in general. Do this through article marketing, guest posting, creating profiles and interacting on professional networking sites, as well as via other social media optimization practices.
Search engines index individual pages and look at a multitude of variables when they crawl each page. Quantity, quality, relevance, authority, interaction, and popularity are all vital aspects to successful ongoing search engine optimization regardless of whether you are a law firm looking to increase online leads or in another line of business. If you need help, talk to us.
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