People in search of legal help look online to research and find the help that best fits their needs. As greatly discussed in this blog, "content is king". This applies to both the search engines and the ability to convert website visitors to clients.

Properly written and coded text drives search traffic to website. This includes searches using attorney names, common searches (more on that in the next sentence), and long tail (recently discussed in my blog). "Common searches" involve the following syntax (non-sequential): lawyer/attorney - legal issue - geographic location. For example - "car accident lawyer woodland hills" is what I would call a common search. I should mention that there can be some overlap between classification of common and long tail - because frequency of the search term is also a factor used for classification.

I showed a nice long-tail chart a few posts ago, and I've just compiled a pie chart using the keyword data from a smaller FindLaw FirmSite. I grouped the search terms into the three categories listed above, making a few judgment calls regarding long tail vs. common.


The results are pretty much in-line for numbers I have seen from technical teams presented at nationwide meetings. Again, my chart is for a smaller website- our larger sites have a higher ratio of content/attorney information, so names searches are usually less prominent.

Besides the content amount- the quality and type is important. This is really evident in focused websites, where even smaller sites that have more unique content capture an amazing depth of search terms. A website focusing on Arizona Negligent Security Law, is a perfect example of content doing it's job. Multiple pages on a common theme, set this website apart from the thousands of attorney websites in the search engines. I bet if I created a keyword type chart for the aforementioned website, the attorney name portion would be a considerably smaller piece of the pie.