Choosing your top keywords is all about good old-fashioned economics—the interplay between supply and demand.  Your best keywords will have a higher demand relative to supply.  Demand is measured by the search volume; supply by the number of other sites competing for the same term.  The amount that people are willing to pay for a term usually correlates with supply and demand.

Keyword Research Using Google Adwords Keyword Tool

All of this data (search volume, competition, and price) is available in the free Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  To use the tool, log in to your Google account in the top right.  Then paste your keyword list into the “Word or phrase” box and click Search.

You will get four columns of information for each keywords: Competition, Global Monthly Searches, Local Monthly Searches, and Approximate Cost-per-Click:

• Competition – This column gives you the 0 to 1 score of how competitive a particular keyword is.
• Global Monthly Searches – This column gives you the approximate 12-month average of searches for the keyword on Google search.
• Local Monthly Searches – This column gives you the approximate 12-month average for the number of searches in your country (if you specified a country or language for your search).
• Approximate CPC – This column gives you the approximate cost-per-click that you might pay if you were to bid on the keyword in Google’s advertising platform.

You should look at these results using all three of the match types on the left.  The three match types are:

• Broad Match – The sum of the search volumes for the keyword idea, related grammatical forms, synonyms and related words.  For example, data for “Florida bankruptcy lawyer” may also include data for “Florida bankruptcy attorney” since “lawyer” and “attorney” are synonyms.
• Phrase Match – The sum of the search volumes for all terms that include the whole keyword phrase.  For example, “Florida bankruptcy attorney” may include “Orlando Florida bankruptcy attorney” and “Miami Florida bankruptcy attorney” since each of these terms include the phrase “Florida bankruptcy attorney.”
• Exact Match – The search volume for that keyword idea only.  “Florida bankruptcy attorney” will return data for “Florida bankruptcy attorney” only.

Running your keyword data through these queries will help you pinpoint which terms are most likely to work well for your site.  If your website has a high domain authority, you may be able to rank for competitive keywords without much work.  Most sites will need to either choose lower-competition keywords or be prepared for link-building.

Keyword Research Using Google Adwords Testing

In some situations, you may want to know exactly how much traffic a keyword will bring to your site.  You can find this out by setting up a Google Adwords campaign, then using your web analytics to test how much traffic the keyword is sending.

If you have the budget and have more than one keyword to evaluate, you may want to set up the campaign for a broad match.  You can then test from there to narrow down to your best exact match keywords.  But if you have done all of the steps mentioned so far, this may not be necessary.  Instead, just set the campaign up for an exact match and direct the traffic to the most relevant page of your website for that term.

Once the campaign is set up, monitor the traffic to your site and the conversion rate (the number of visitors who take a predefined action, such as e-mailing you or downloading a white paper).  This will give you a more accurate picture of the type of traffic you can expect for that keyword.  Once you have the data you are looking for, you can cancel the Adwords campaign.

Keyword Research Using SEOmoz Data

If you have an SEOmoz Pro account, you can use SEOmoz’s Keyword Difficulty Tool to get some nice data regarding keyword competition.  This tool gives you a percentage measurement of keyword difficulty so that you have a better estimate of how hard it will be to rank for the term.

But perhaps the bigger benefit is the competitor data that comes with the keyword difficulty report.  The competitor data lets you know who you are trying to beat for the term. It also gives you actionable metrics so that you know what to do in order to land that top spot.

Note:  If you are not a Pro member, you can take advantage of the free 30-day trial to check out the tool and the other benefits offered by SEOmoz, including their other SEO tools, forums and educational materials.

Important Note:  The Long Tail

Keyword research is a critical part of your website strategy.  It lets you understand your audience better and design your flagship content around what they are searching for.  This can help guide your site architecture and let you know where to focus your link-building and other SEO efforts.

But even though keyword research is important, it must be kept in perspective.  Your top-level keywords (things like “Florida foreclosure attorney”) will probably make up less than 25 percent of your overall traffic.  The remainder will come from thousand or even millions of “long-tail” keywords that are impossible to predict because they are seldom used.  As a group, these long tail keywords make up the bulk of online searches.

This means that you should resist the tendency to focus on the most profitable keywords to the exclusion of other topics.  View keyword as a tool to help you focus on your potential clients’ needs.  Your content should ultimately be written for people, not search engines.  If you think a topic will be useful to your potential clients, write about it—even if it doesn’t involve profitable keywords.  This will help you land those long tail keywords and help the search engines identify your site as an authority on your topic.  But most importantly, it will give your potential clients the information they are seeking.

Expanding Your Keyword List with Ubersuggest

Once you have an idea of your basic terms, you can use the free tool at ubersuggest.org to expand your list.  This is a great tool that can save you hours of manual work.  It scrapes Google’s suggestion feature (the words that auto-populate when you start typing a term in Google) to give you an expanded list of related keyword terms.

To use ubersuggest, simply type in your base keyword term into the box and click “Suggest.”

Ubersuggest will return a list of keyword suggestions organized by the base keyword and the letters of the alphabet. Clicking the green plus button by a term will add it to a keyword list on the right.

Once you have worked your way through the results, you should have a healthy group of keywords.  Click the “Download” button on top of the keyword list to produce a tidy little list of keywords.

Expanding Your List with Keyword Eye

To further expand your list, hop on over to the keyword visualization tool at Keyword Eye.  You do have to register to use this tool, but it only takes a few seconds.  The basic edition (Keyword Eye Basic) is currently free and should work just fine.

Once you are registered and logged in,  select “New,” they “Keyword Suggestion Report.” from the top left corner of the screen.  In the search box, enter your keyword term.  Be sure to select Google US for the search engine if you are a US attorney (it defaults to Google UK).

Click “Run Report.”  You should get a pretty keyword cloud, with the most popular keywords indicated by larger font.

Be sure to toggle between the Keywords, Visualization, and Grid View tabs at the top.  (The Grid View tab in particular will give you a lot of useful information about search volume and competition, topics that we will discuss in the next section.) If you run across any terms that you failed to include, add them to your list.

By now, you should have a healthy list of keywords.  In fact, the list might be so large that it seems unworkable.  Don’t worry, the next post in this series will teach you how to hone in on the money keywords for your website.

Putting Together a Seed List for Provider-Based Terms

Putting together your seed list of provider-based terms is fairly straightforward.  It will involve a combination of your practice area and descriptive terms that people use to look for lawyers.  The formula for a basic provider-based seed list would look like this:

Practice Area + Provider (e.g., Bankruptcy Attorney, Bankruptcy Attorney, Bankruptcy Lawyers, Bankruptcy Law Firm)

If your practice is limited to a specific geographic area, your seed list could also incorporate those geographic terms.  A local seed list would be structured around one or more of these formulas:

State + Area of Law + Provider (Louisiana Bankruptcy Attorney, etc.)

City + State + Practice Area + Provider (New Orleans Louisiana Bankruptcy Attorney, etc.)

When putting together compound keyword phrases like this, I like to use SEO Book’s free keyword list generator.  This tool allows you to separate out the variations of each component of your keyword, then combines them into a comprehensive list.  (If have been doing this manually using find-and-replace, you will probably want to send me chocolate for letting you know about this tool.)

To use the tool, simply enter your keywords into the various Word List boxes (be sure to follow the directions—comma separated with no new spaces or lines between keywords), then click Generate.

This will give your initial seed keyword list. Don’t worry about being comprehensive at this stage.  You will have opportunity to flesh out and refine your list using the tools described in the next sections.

Note:  Later, we will learn how to identify top keywords based on actual search volume.  Depending on your local area, there may not be enough local search volume to give you any actionable data.  In other words, incorporating the city and state-specific keywords may be too restrictive.  If that is the case, simply eliminate those Word Lists from the Keyword List Generator.

Putting Together a Seed List of Information-Based Terms

Your list of information-based terms will require a bit of good old-fashioned brainstorming.  Think about the types of questions that clients most often ask, the subspecialties of your practice area, and the names of the court proceedings or documents most often used in your practice.  This should give you a basic list.

Again, don’t be too concerned at this point about missing a term or two.  You will have opportunities to expand your list as the process moves on.

Genesis uses the latest code standards and a very SEO-friendly architecture, making it easy for search engines to find and categorize your content.  It is configured for SEO right out of the box, but allows more advanced users to tweak the SEO options.  This makes it a great choice for both beginner and advanced SEOs.

But the biggest benefit I get from using Genesis is access to the ever-expanding catalog of turn-key designs by StudioPress.  These designs come in the form of child themes that can easily be added to the Genesis framework from within WordPress with just a few mouse clicks.  When you sign up for the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package (affiliate link), you get unlimited lifetime access to both the existing designs and the yet-to-be-developed themes that are constantly being added to the catalog.

In other words, when you sign up for the Pro Plus Package, you pay once.  Period.  This gives you unlimited support, unlimited updates, and unlimited websites. The price doesn’t go up with future price increases or when new themes are added.  This allows you to develop any number of sites using StudioPress themes.  When it’s time to update your site design, just pick a different theme.

StudioPress is raising it’s price on the Pro Plus All-Theme Package on January 31 (the current price is $299.00).  For a limited time, StudioPress is offering a ten-percent discount for purchasers who want to buy before the price increase.  To take advantage of the discount, purchase the StudioPress Pro Plus All-Theme Package and use the discount code TEN at checkout.

If you’ve been thinking about developing a website or blog or moving to a more professional or SEO-friendly design, now’s your chance. And since I will set up your site for free using the StudioPress theme of your choice, you really don’t have an excuse. Take advantage of the promotion while it’s here.

It’s almost time to start putting together our initial keyword list.  But before we do, I want make a distinction between keyword types that will help you think strategically about your keyword research and your overall website design.

Categorical Seed Lists

Keyword research begins with a seed list—a collection of keyword phrases that may be important to your website. Your keyword phrases can be composed of root (attorney), secondary (bankruptcy attorney), and tertiary terms (Louisiana bankruptcy attorney) terms, and so on.

When I am putting together a seed list, I group keyword phrases into two broad categories: Provider-based terms and information-based terms.  An understanding of each of these type of terms will help you to develop an effective keyword strategy.

Provider-Based Terms

Provider-based terms are keywords that people use to look specifically for attorneys.  Louisiana bankruptcy attorney is an example of a provider-based term.  Searchers who use provider-based terms aren’t just looking for information.  They already know that they need help and are looking for an attorney.  In other words, searchers using provider-based terms are already in buying mode.

Because people who are looking for a buyer are already in purchasing mode, provider-based terms tend to be high-converting keywords.  In other words, people who use provider-based search terms are more likely to convert to paying clients than people who are just looking for information.  But because your competitors realize this too, the highest-converting keywords will often be the most competitive.

Information-Based Terms

People use information-based terms when they are looking for information on a topic.  They may not know whether they need an attorney, but they have questions they need answered.

For example, a person searching for bankruptcy auto loans is probably wants to know whether she will be able to keep her car if she files for bankruptcy.  She may or may not decide to hire an attorney or file for bankruptcy.  She simply has an immediate question and is looking for an answer.

As you may guess, information-based terms tend to have much lower conversion rates than provider-based terms.  A high percentage of information seekers will find their answer and move on.  But this doesn’t mean that you should ignore information-based terms.  In fact, I believe that information-based terms are more important to your overall website strategy than provider-based terms.  Here’s why:

• Depending on your practice area, there is probably a much higher volume of searches for information-based terms.  The higher traffic volume will often make up for the lower conversion rate.
• There is usually less competition for information-based terms.  Grab the low-hanging fruit.
• Using information-based terms helps you build your content around your clients’ needs.  Answer your potential clients’ questions.  When they do need an attorney, they will be much more likely to call you.
• Because informational pages are not overtly commercial, they are more likely to naturally attract links than provider-based terms.
• It is much easier to develop content to support pages that are optimized for information-based terms.  There are only so many ways you can naturally incorporate “bankruptcy attorney” without drifting into keyword-stuffing.
• Building a site around information-based terms is the right thing to do.  Don’t make your clients pay for a consultation just to get a basic answer to a simple question. Answer their question up-front and save the consultations for clients that really need your services.

When I was building my own law firm websites, I focused almost exclusively on information-based terms.  I started with my clients’ needs and worked out from there.  This attracted more traffic and garnered more links.  As a result, the pages that were focused on provider-based terms naturally shot up in the rankings.  I ended up ranking well for both information-based keywords and provider-based keywords—a win/win.

The next post will get to the specifics of how to put together your provider-based and information-based keyword lists.

• Does the title tag on your page include that keyword phrase?
• Does your page text include that keyword phrase?
• Does your page text include variations on the keyword phrase?
• Where does the keyword phrase appear on the page?
• Do the pages that link to your page use that phrase in the link text (anchor text)?

There are a bunch of other factors, and the algorithms are far more complex. But the principle holds true:  Your placement in the search results (and correspondingly the number of eyeballs that see your site) depends on whether the search engines can relate your page to the terms that your clients are using to search for it.  If the search engine cannot make the connection, it does not see your site as relevant to what your clients are looking for.

So how do you know what keywords your potential clients are using to look for your services?  This post is the first in a series on how to do just that.

This series will focus on how I do keyword research.  There are many different (and possibly better) ways to do it.  But, alas, I am a creature of habit and tend to stick with tools and processes that work well for me.  I will try to link to these tools (most of which are free) and give step-by-step instructions.

Note:  I wrote recently about how your law firm website should be built around your clients’ needs.  Many law firm websites make the mistake of using keywords that the attorneys use to describe their services.  Don’t do that.  Think like your customers.  Use the language they use.  Write to their needs.

1. Whether there is a linking community that will bring visibility to your site; and
2. Whether there are enough clients in your geographic area to make your efforts worthwhile.

This post focuses on the first of these questions: How to tell if there is a community of people that will link to your law firm blog.

A Quick Review

As I wrote in the first installment of my link-building guide, inbound links are the primary way that search engines determine relevancy (and, correspondingly, whether you deserve that top ranking).  If you are blogging in hopes of being found on search engines, you can’t afford to ignore links.

Search engines prefer that you acquire links naturally.  Search engine algorithms rely on the assumption that links are the product of sincere interest by the third-party site that links to your blog.  Because manual link-building erodes the foundation of that theory, search engines discourage you from doing anything extra to help your content along.

This post is about how to tell whether the search engine’s assumption that links will occur naturally is reasonable.  This is important.  The failure of most law firm blogs to achieve search visibility is due to the lack of a linking community—the group of bloggers or other website owners that will naturally add links to your content. 

How to Locate a Linking Community Using Competitor Analysis

If your competitors can attract natural links, you can too.  So start by taking a look at your top competitors’ link profiles.

It’s hard to beat SEOmoz’s Open Site Explorer for competitor analysis.  This tool allows you to check backlinks based on data from SEOmoz’s Linkscape index (which currently includes 36 billion URLs and 9.2 trillion links).

To use the tool, simply enter your topic in your favorite search engine.  Identify the top several sites that appear to be closest to your blog topic.  Then, go to Open Site Explorer.  Click the “Compare Pages” button beneath the search box.

Drop these sites into OSE and click Search.  On the results page, scroll down to the root domain metrics and take a look at the data.

The number of linking root domains will usually tell you more than the sheer number of links.  You may notice that, in some cases, one site has far more links than the other even though the linking root domains are more/less the same.  This is often an indication that the links for that domain did not occur naturally.  If most of your competitors are using manual link-building strategies, you should be prepared to do the same.

Once you have compared your competitors’ sites, it’s time to drill down to the individual sites to get a better understanding of their link profile.  Enter the competitor’s URL in OSE, then us the filters to narrow the results down to links from “only external” pages to “pages on this root domain.”   Then, use the Export to CSV function to download the data into an Excel spreadsheet.  You can then use Excel’s Filter and Sort functions or manually comb through the data to identify linking strategies.  Check out this post for useful ways to parse OSE data.

Note:  The free version of Open Site Explorer is limited. If you are serious about doing your own SEO, you should consider purchasing a SEOmoz PRO membership.  The tools, ongoing education, and community are well worth the $99.00 per month that they charge for basic membership. They offer a free trial that will let you know if the PRO membership is right for you.

How to Locate a Linking Community by Listening

Competitor analysis is a good place to start, but don’t stop there.  It could be that there are opportunities out there that your competitors haven’t discovered.  The best way to identify these opportunities is simply to listen to what people are talking about over the internet.

Google reader is a great tool for tapping into what’s going on in the blogosphere.  Simply go to your Google Reader account, click “Subscribe,” type in your keyword, and click “Add.”

Then review the results to find blogs and other feeds that are talking about your topic.  If the blog itself is about the topic (as opposed to a single page about the topic on a more diverse blog), check out the subscriber numbers. If you find healthy subscriber stats on a blog that deals with your area of law, you can rest assured that there are people out there that will link to it.

Topsy.com is another great listening tool.  Instead of being limited to blogs, it allows you to search the entire social web.  Just enter your topic into the search box and find out who is taking about it.

The stats box on the left sidebar gives a quick reference to the popularity of the topic, and the results list gives you insight into real-time discussions of the topic.

Using these tools should help you easily identify whether there is a community of people to naturally link to your blog.  If not, you may need to either adjust your blog strategy to include a broader topic or be prepared for manual link-building.

A final caveat: Remember that link-building (and the corresponding site visibility) is only part of the equation.  It is important to also be sure that there are enough potential clients looking for your services to justify your efforts.  We will deal with that in the next post.

1. You produce a series of well-written, targeted posts on a consumer topic, say, Minnesota probate law.
2. Because you have worked hard to craft a well-optimized post that us full of useful information, bloggers and other website owners will link to it from their sites.
3. Search engines will interpret these links as a signal of value to their users and promote your site high in the search engine results.
4. John Doe in Minneapolis is looking for information on Minnesota probate law and sees your site at the top of search results.
5. John Doe clicks on your link, reads your informative article, and decides to hire you for help with his Minnesota probate issue.

We’ve heard this line so often that few stop to think about whether this process is realistic.  I believe that the failure to question these assumptions is one of the reasons most law blogs do not bring in new clients from search.  It’s not necessarily because the content is no good.  It’s because there is a breakdown in the system that Google (and some legal marketers) blindly adhere to.  These assumptions simply don’t hold true in many cases.

If you stick to this template and do nothing else to help your content along, only one of these steps (number 1) is in your control.  Before you get to step 5, you need three key ingredients:

1. A Linking Community – You need community of bloggers, website owners, or social media users that link to the content that you are writing about;
2. Google Indexing – You need Google to crawl and index both your page and the pages linking to the content; and
3. A Searcher in Purchasing Mode – A person who is actually looking for the content and is likely to hire based on an internet search.

Before you leap headfirst into the legal blogosphere, think critically about whether you have these necessary ingredients.  The second ingredient (Google indexing) usually happens naturally, especially if you use a sitemap and are listed in a directory or two.  This means that you need to focus on the other two, specifically:

• Is there a community of bloggers, site owners, and social media users who are so interested in your topic that they will spend their valuable time linking to your site?
• Are there enough potential clients in your geographic area that are looking for blogs on that topic and make a purchasing decision based on what they find?

The answer may be “yes” in both cases.  But it could be “no.” If your goal is to bring in new clients through search, you need to know this answer up-front.  Otherwise, you could be wasting time that could be directed to more productive marketing efforts that do not rely heavily on search marketing.

I will follow up with separate posts that will tell you how to answer each of these two questions.  To keep up to speed, sign up for my newsletter or subscribe to my feed.

To develop content that will reach your goal, you need to do three important things:

1. Know your audience;
2. Know your audience; and
3. Know your audience.

Your law firm website will never reach its potential unless your content is directed to a clearly-defined audience.

Before we go too far, let me be clear that by “audience” I mean “people.” As in human beings.  Too much content on law firm websites is directed more toward search engines than people.  Content that reads like this:

Bankruptcy law in Chicago is practiced by our Chicago bankruptcy attorney, who knows the Illinois law on bankruptcy.  You should contact our bankruptcy lawyer in Chicago immediately for help with bankruptcy law in Illinois.

Some law firm websites use content of this nature in hopes of snagging a stray ranking for a long-tail keyword.  Not only is this unlikely to work, it is incredibly short-sighted.  It damages your credibility and shows no value to the client.

It is okay to place a few strategic keywords here and there, but don’t write primarily for search engines.  Develop your content for people.  Maybe people that will someday hire you. Maybe centers of influence that will share your content. Maybe your parents, who you want to impress with your success in life.  Whatever.  Just know who they are before you start and direct your content to them.

One of the best ways to target your content is to put a virtual face on your reader.  Since you cannot know the exact characteristics of each potential reader, you should think in terms of personas.  A persona is a fictional character that shares the characteristics of the majority of your target market.  When you write with a persona in mind, your content is more likely to be targeted to your audience’s needs, desires, and interests.

To develop your personas, ask a few questions to help you identify the key characteristics of your target audience:

• Gender – Is your target audience male or female?
• Education – What level of education has your target audience reached?
• Age – How old is your target audience?
• Income Level – What is the average income level of your target audience?
• Interests – What interests do members of your target audience share that also relate to your site?
• Common Enemy – What aversions or prejudices do members of your target audience share?

The answer to these questions can shape the overall tone and content of your law firm website.  It is best to answer them up-front.

If you do a good job of listening, your understanding of your target audience will evolve over time.  As you learn more about your audience, you will be better able to identify their needs, desires, and interests. Use what you learn to focus your content on meeting your audience’s needs.  Let your visitors know that you understand and can solve their problems, then watch them convert to paying clients.

If your answer had anything to do with profit, slap yourself in the face.  Twice.  Your law firm website is not about profit (at least not directly).  That may be your goal.  Your law firm website can and should contribute to that goal.  But making money is not the right goal for a law firm website.

So what is the right answer?  Simply this: To convince a defined audience that you can solve their problem and do it better than your competitors.

The communicated ability to meet your clients’ needs better than your competitors is your law firm’s client value proposition.  It is why your clients are willing to give you money.  If you get this right, everything else (including the money) will fall into place.

Let me put it another way: If you want to make more money with your law firm website, focus on the value that you deliver to your clients instead of the economic benefit you receive from your clients.

Your website should show your clients that you really do understand their needs. Your site visitors aren’t searching for self-laudatory statements or general practice descriptions that read just like every other bland attorney website.  Most of them don’t care where you went to school and aren’t equipped to evaluate your drafting skills.  They just want to know that you understand and can solve their problems.

Don’t be like so many attorneys who launch their website or blog, slap together a few generic practice area descriptions, then whine about how internet marketing didn’t work for them.  Such drivel may have worked in the past, but it doesn’t work today’s market and it will not work in the future.  The internet has fundamentally changed marketing.  The shift from the old-guard form of marketing by interruption is quickly being replaced by the inbound paradigm.

The most successful companies are those that do the best job of solving their customer’s problems.  Build your law firm around this, and build your law firm website around communicating this.