Checking Up On Your SEO

How Your Law Firm Can Monitor It’s Search Engine Optimization Performance

A lot of business owners are skeptical about search engine optimization and who can blame them? Almost every attorney we talk to has at least one horror story from dealing with an internet marketing company that promised them the world, but they wound up with nothing but a headache. Some things stand out like a sore thumb:

• Poor customer service and long response times
• Websites not launching in a timely manner
• Missing from Google’s search results for branded search terms
• Receiving a penalty from Google and falling off the map

But how can you make sure your SEO company is performing up to snuff? Here’s a few quick free tools and tactics you can use. Keep in mind, this list is meant to give you a simplified and quick look at your website’s performance. If you would like a more comprehensive report, call us at 877-916-0644.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Screaming Frog SEO Spider crawls your domain and returns data on each element of your website. There are two factors you should be looking at here:

• Under “Title 1” every page of content should have a clear title that directly relates to the content of the page. Usually the front end of this title should be your primary keyword being targeted.
• Under “Status Code” you should see every page returning either a 200 or a 301. If you see anything returning 302 (temporary redirect) or 404 (page missing), you should request that those pages get permanent 301 redirects to the closest relevant page.

Screaming Frog is completely free for these functions. You do not have to pay for a license. Just go to http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/ and download the software. There is a lot of other great data available for free as well.

Open Site Explorer

Open Site Explorer gives you a list of backlinks currently pointing to your domain. You get 3 free requests per 24 hours unless you pay for Moz Pro. The backlink report that comes back is not comprehensive, but you should be seeing every few months an increase in linking domains, a general rise in domain authority over time and not many spam links. Now what do I mean by spam links? Well if you are a United States attorney and you see “carsalesdirectory.ru”, “freeseodirectory.com” or something else that appears irrelevant, it’s most likely spam. Spam links can draw both algorithmic and manual penalties, especially when there are a lot of them and no effort has been made to remove or “disavow” them. Don’t jump to conclusions or start disavowing links yourself, but have the discussion with your team and feel free to give us a call if you are not satisfied with their answer. At Digital Law Marketing, Inc. we will do a quick review of your backlink profile free of charge.

Note: Please keep in mind that there are reasons your link totals or domain authority could drop, including intentional removal of bad links. Do not act hastily on this data.

SEMRush

SEMRush really requires a subscription to get comprehensive data, but using the free version for your domain can return some key data insights. Who are your true online competitors? What are some keywords you are currently found for? It also provides some historical information on estimated traffic and total keywords you once ranked for. This is probably the hardest of the 3 tools to interpret, so please give us a call if you’d like a walk-through. We do have a paid subscription and can offer you a comprehensive report on your website during one of our free consultations.

Free website audit!

If you want to check the pulse of your website, please give us a call. We are happy to provide you with a report within 24 hours and we will take the time to sit down and explain what you are looking at.