In our previous blog, we spoke about the core beliefs that shape our approach to marketing for law firms. While we respect SEO’s role in a larger marketing plan, it shouldn’t be your priority. Content is still king for professionals like attorneys who rely on the strength and value of their content to connect with their audience. Part 2 focuses on how our content still has secondary SEO benefits, specifically regarding headlines, social media, and URL redirecting—elements that, when executed correctly, can enhance your online visibility without succumbing to some of the pitfalls of SEO.
Additionally, we’ll look at the aspects of SEO that Spotlight Branding chooses to avoid. This isn’t because we underestimate their value but because there’s a more authentic and engaging way to attract and retain your audience. From the overemphasis on keyword stuffing to the reliance on backlink strategies that often miss the mark on genuine engagement, we’ll discuss why these methods don’t align with our ethos of creating content for people, not robots.
Headlines
What is the purpose of a headline? New clients often ask for a tagline that encapsulates their firm, values, and target audience. That’s a tall ask for a few words. The only thing a headline is meant to do is get someone to read the next sentence. When Volkswagen advertised the Beetle in 1960, the headline was “Lemon.” Although it didn’t describe the car, it was interesting enough to get someone to read the body copy—which did sell the car.
Despite writing headlines for people, the copy we create for websites still impacts SEO. The difference is that we want to communicate with people rather than robots. Look at these two examples:
- Estate Planning Attorneys Protecting Your Assets In Boston, Massachusetts
- Preserving Your Legacy & Safeguarding Your Assets Through Estate Planning
Using keywords and attractive headlines has SEO benefits, but they don’t have to sound like they were written for Google. As long as the headline isn’t clickbait and relates to the content, it will work toward SEO.
The tags we use in the code of those headlines make a difference. Spotlight Branding’s websites are programmed with six different heading styles. However, only headings one and two are picked up by Google for search relevancy. All of our page titles are given the H1 tag. The most important subheadings within the copy of a page are given the H2 tag. These tags stand out to Google, which uses relevant keywords within the heading to index the site and apply them to relevant searches.
Social Media
Social media impacts SEO in two primary ways. First, the old SEO practice of link sharing works on social media platforms because they are well-known and trusted authority sites. Something as small as adding the client’s website URL to their Facebook, Twitter, etc. profiles provides an SEO benefit.
Second, consistently promoting links from a client’s website on social media tells Google that a website is producing consistent, evergreen content. When those posts are boosted (which we do), and the content is shared, it tells Google that this website is trusted and active.
URL Redirecting/Matching
While we don’t do most “Site Age”-related SEO (more on that below), we offer URL redirecting/matching to clients. This practice keeps URLs that have long been active on a client’s new website when they become a web client with us. For example, if a client has a contact page “exampleclient.com/contact-us” on their old website, their contact page on the new website should be “exampleclient.com/contact-us” with our latest programming and design implemented.
We have internal tasks that include using an SEO redirection plugin if the URLs do not match. This ensures any past hyperlinks to those pages remain live.
What Spotlight Branding Does NOT Do with SEO
Track Relevancy: Because lawyers deal with universal topics, we don’t need to monitor trends and constantly update keywords to catch a trending topic.
Work with Authority Websites/Link Sharing: While we add badges to client websites to display their Avvo rating or a SuperLawyers Award, we do not actively seek other websites to share links. The concept of link sharing deals with putting a client’s website URL inside another website’s content and vice versa. This is an old SEO tactic that Google is starting to move away from because it can easily be taken advantage of. For example, an SEO company, in an attempt to drive traffic and increase rankings in irrelevant keyword searches, can paste a client’s URL on websites in different markets and more businesses they do not endorse. It has the potential to create an ethical dilemma.
Hidden Text: An easy way to stuff keywords and make a page more attractive for SEO is to insert a block of text full of locations and common keywords into the site’s code. It won’t appear on the live site because it lacks any sort of visual directive. However, when Google crawls the site, it will still see it. Like link sharing, this is an SEO practice that Google places less importance on.
Site Age: The longer a URL exists, the more trustworthy it becomes. This is why we do URL redirection/matching for a client’s old website. Those URLs have built a reputation with Google, so keeping everything the same is important. Otherwise, we (or any SEO company) cannot control a website’s pre-existing SEO reputation.
Clients who want to change their entire URL must be aware of the ramifications. Although it may better suit their branding, the SEO rankings will suffer (at least temporarily).
Stay Rooted in Content
When you focus on content, you can still reap some of the benefits of SEO. If you ever find yourself in a content vs. SEO debate, we hope you can see some overlap between the two. Ultimately, well-written and informative content still impacts SEO. An overall strategy rooted in valuable content plays a more significant part in your online presence than SEO alone.
Spotlight Branding
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