The SEO process is one of the most important aspects of your expert witness website. After all, if no one can find you, then what’s the point of having a website? Look at SEO as a recipe for your favorite pie. If you leave out an ingredient, then the pie may not turn out right. Add too much and it may “burn”. Align all the stars and it’s perfection! In this case, perfection is a high “organic” or natural (unpaid) placement in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

Since this is a multipart process, I will simply focus on one ingredient for this issue. Look forward to additional tips in coming issues.

PART 1…KEYWORDS

Choose your keywords carefully:

• Put yourself in the searchers shoes. If I am “ABC Expert Witness Services”, I can’t rely on the fact that someone is going to search for my company name exactly. That doesn’t mean you wouldn’t include it in your keywords though. I would, however, consider a broader search like “forensic expert witness”. This is the way you want to think when choosing your keywords.

• Use online tools to help you generate related keywords. Some really great tools exist online that can guide you in the right direction. One of the best is located at http://adwords.google.com. Click on “Get Keyword Ideas” and follow the instructions. Use a phrase (2-4 words) that best describes your services to help narrow down and target the keywords for your site. For example, you would get much more accurate results with a keyword generator by putting in “forensic expert witness” as opposed to just “expert” or “witness”.

Other online keyword tools include:
o http://inventory.overture.com
o http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
o http://www.nichebotclassic.com/

• Evaluate the results of the keywords generated. In Google’s keyword generator, they give you the option of seeing search term popularity, volume and volume trends. If you are considering buying advertising, they even show the relative competition for a keyword. The higher the competition, the more expensive the keyword or phrase will be to purchase.

So pick your keywords carefully, this is one of the most important ingredients in the SEO pie.

Remember to:
a) Put yourself in the searchers shoes…think like a searcher.
b) Use online keyword generating tools
c) Evaluate keyword analytics

The next piece of the SEO “pie” we will explore are “Title Tag Best Practices” and how to create the most effective page titles to increase your organic search rankings.

EWN