I have been reading the messages on the board and some of them are really helpful, but I was sondering if anyone had any ideas about how you would optimize for a real estate service business like a law firm.

We currently have a firm website The Watkins Law Firm, but we don't get a lot of business from it. I would love to makes some changes so that it would be more effective if you all have some ideas.

Thanks
Josh Watkins

Hi Josh,
Let me first say to wait for Doug's reply, as it is a bit closer to his area of expertise. That being said, after having a quick look it is obvious that you went the template website route. The results are a "pretty" site that is not designed to or optimized to get favorable ranking in the SE's. The site lacks any keywrd tags whatsoever among other things. We tend to favor the comprehensive approach of optimized site & strong emphasis in your overall marketing plan to drive the right traffic to your site. What have you done in terms of promoting traffic to the site within your target market. Yours is an very on site type of service so you'll need to keep that in mind. Won't do you much good to get 50,000 hits a day from people that are not in a position to be able to reach you to do business. Unless your planning on franchising...LOL

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Rich
vtws.com

The marketing we have done includes: placing the website address on business cards, registering with google, registering for the payed submission service to Inktomi, Fast, Ask Jeeves and making it a policy to place the website in any "signature" (if available) we make when visiting any forum/chat site. Also, we have registered for a few legal web listings.

Thanks,
Josh

Hi Josh,

Nowadays Google uses mostly off-page criteria when ranking a site so to optimize for Google you first need to have many other sites link to you. That can include a reciprocal linking campaign and listing your website in various directories.

Then, and this will apply for optimizing for ALL search engines, make sure you have the keyphrases you want to be found for in your site's title tag, description and keyword meta tags, headings, body text, and link text. In other words, if you want your site to be found for specific keyphrases then the site has to be specifically about those keyphrases.

That will usually get a site ranked well for most search terms that are not ultra competitive. I would think legal related phrases relating to your market area would fall into that category.

It may not be worth your while to worry about it anyway as you will probably find there are not a lot of folks looking on the web for a lawyer to help with their real estate transaction. Around my neck of the woods Realtors and Bankers usually feed the lawyers in a real estate transaction - and lawyers 'farm' the bankers and Realtors by taking us out to lunch occasionally - works for me

You can do some keyword research by using Overture's Keyword Research Tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

I know from looking at log files that searchers do look for info about real estate closing costs - so that may be one term to consider.

I hope this helps you!

As has been mentioned, the problem with the site is its template based nature. If you want to get some good search engine placement you'll need to either pay for it using PPC advertising or redo your website through a custom design and layout.

Additionally, you would want to work with an internet marketing company to optimize your site. Lawyer sites are easy, so it shouldn't cost you an arm and a leg to optimize it.

Thanks to everyone for their advice. I really do appreciate it.

Josh Watkins