Developing a keyword strategy for your law firm should take into consideration the following factors:
- Volume
- Competition
- Relevance
- Conversion
Volume
This is the number of users that are searching for a particular keyword, Generally speaking, keywords with higher search volume are more competitive. Identifying keyword search volume can be accomplished through web analytics and tools like Google’s keyword tool.
Competition
Competition refers to the number and quality of sites that are indexed in a search engine for a particular search phrase. In other words, it is a measure of how difficult it will be to gain a top position for the particular search phrase. Usually, valuable search phrases are more competitive as more websites target and optimize for the phrase.
Relevance
Relevance is a measure of how topically related a search phrase is to a particular website. Google’s ranking algorithm is essentially a relevance algorithm. The goal of search engines is to provide useful relevant results to its users. Getting relevant traffic to your website is the one of the first steps to an effective law firm Internet strategy.
Conversion
In addition to relevance, a search phrase’s conversion probability plays a large role in its value to a webmaster. While a search phrase may be very relevant to a particular website, it may not be valuable in terms of conversion. For example, the search phrase “criminal defense law” may be relevant to a site but not as likely to “convert” into a client as “criminal defense lawyer”.