Trying to get on Google page one for keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego". What can I do?
-
I'm trying to help a friend who is an attorney get on page one for the keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego."
So far I've changed his title and description tags since they weren't optimized before. (SERP shows old title tag, however I submitted a XML sitemap through Webmaster tools to get the new title tags updated.) He also had a few duplicate pages, but I took care of that with some 301 redirects.
I also added a h1 tag, alt image tag, and more content. I also spent a few hours building links for him. He currently has a page authority of 52 and domain authority of 44 with a decent amount of links pointing to his site. I'm wondering why he's stuck on page 4, when his competitors that have less impressive numbers seem to show up on page 1.
I did look at his link profile using OSE and I'm worried that his old SEO guy got him spam links.
His website is www.nasserilegal.com, however the page I was focusing on was www.nasserilegal.com/criminal.html
Any advice would be great.
-
Thanks for all the great advice everyone! I have already started to make a few adjustments to his pages. I ran the seomoz on page optimization report again and it went from a grade D to an A.
In terms of Local SEO, I've been working on getting him more citation sources, but he's basically starting from scratch. Most of his competitors that do show up have a ton of Google Reviews and other citation sources such as Insiderpages.com, kudzu, citysearch.com, etc... I'm currently using whitespark to find all the citation sources that his competitors are getting and getting his business profile created. I also registered his business to InfoUSA, Localeze, Yelp, and a few other Legal directories.
One problem I noticed with his Google Places page only shows one category (Attorney). The rest of his categories: Criminal Attorney, DUI Attorney, Criminal Defense Attorney, and Immigration Attorney do not show up anymore. (I do know that once you click on the category, it should expand and show the other categories). I did fill out the change request form provided by Google a few days ago and hope that this will fix the issue. I'm not sure if anyone else has experience with this, but would welcome any feedback.
I will definitely get started on the Hcard for him though! Thanks Miriam!
-
Hi Lucas,
You've gotten some good advice here. I will add a few thoughts.
Read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2012 if you haven't already. If your area of expertise is more in the traditional SEO field rather than the Local SEO field, this report will bring you up to speed on the importance of things like citations and reviews, which don't really apply to standard SEO. However, because of the publication date of this year's LSRF report, we didn't have a chance to talk about the rollout of Google+ Local, so that data is 'missing'.
To get a jumpstart on that, here is Mike Blumenthal's step-by-step guide on making the Places-Plus transition:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/06/08/google-for-business-places-forums-wrapup/
Your friend is attempting to break into a very tough market - a major term in a populous locale. To make things more complicated - he offers 2 areas of specialization (Immigration Law and Criminal Law) and these can be broken down into further subcategories of services (theft, assault, etc.). Right now, the site is thin on content to support his work in these areas. The homepage of the site is really lacking in descriptive text. 'Welcome' is a very weak header for the page - he can do much better than this - and the homepage copy makes no mention of his core service keywords nor his geographic location. Homepages are always so important.
I would further recommend that the NAP (name, address, phone number) on his Contact Page and his footer be coded using hCard or Schema. If these are new to you, here are two good resources:
This one is an hCard generator:
http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator
This one is a Schema generator (be sure to pick Organization>Local Business from the categories):
http://schema-creator.org/organization.php
Robert and TheeDesign have made some important suggestions for you regarding Google+ Local. I will add to this that if you put in major effort and still see your client unable to attain high rankings, you must always consider the possibility of past or current penalties. But, cross that bridge when you come to it. There is a ton your friend can do to improve the presentation of the business, its usefulness to humans and its SEO.
-
I agree with making the content on this page read a little more natural and maybe splitting it up with some h2s.
To rank for local search terms, I would try to obtain links from "local" websites. Example: Attorney Associations in San Diego, San Diego Chamber of Commerce, and some authority local news sites that accept guest posts.
You can write posts that pertain to your industry and include a relevant linkback to your page. Here are some local new site links:
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/
-
I agree with Robert. I would work on the G+ local page to begin with. It looks like you don't really have anything attached to it, except for an address, phone number, and website.
Remember with local pages, you can attach pictures, videos, and even meta information. This will help you show up better in search. Always remember to fill out profiles, it will help you in the long term.
-
Lucas
You have made a good start with some on page and you might want to ask yourself a question: Why this keyword phrase? Have you looked at criminal attorney/lawyer san diego? They both have many more searches for them. (So, KW research is important for a competitive area like this).
Next, have you worked on the local G+, gotten reviews from former clients?
But, then: Be careful as it appears you are working on elements as opposed to delivering anything that will make me want to engage your attorney.
Your title tag of CDASD | SDCDA is not the way to go. Stuffing Criminal Defense in the content on that page over and over is a killer and reads terribly. (see image)
Before that though, if I were in jail and needed a criminal atty. I would not go to one who was accentuating immigration law. See image on practice areas. (What is most..)
Last, in your meta description you are still repeating the KW phrase. It has zero effect on ranking, this is where you get someone to click because you wrote something that drove them to your site. "Get out of jail now, before something bad happens." Attorney XXX is here to save your day!
Think about it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How handle pages with "read more" text query strings?
My site has hundreds of keyword content landing pages that contain one or two sections of "read more" text that work by calling the page and changing a ChangeReadMore variable. This causes the page to currently get indexed 5 times (see examples below plus two more with anchor tag set to #sectionReadMore2 This causes Google to include the first version of the page which is the canonical version and exclude the other 4 versions of the page. Google search console says my site has 4.93K valid pages and 13.8K excluded pages. My questions are: 1. Does having a lot of excluded pages which are all copies of included pages hurt my domain authority or otherwise hurt my SEO efforts? 2. Should I add a rel="nofollow" attribute to the read more link? If I do this will Google reduce the number of excluded pages? 3. Should I instead add logic so the canonical tag displays the exact URL each time the page re-displays in another readmore mode? I assume this would increase my "included pages" and decrease the number of "excluded pages". Would this somehow help my SEO efforts? EXAMPLE LINKS https://www.tpxonline.com/Marketplace/Used-AB-Dick-Presses-For-Sale.asp https://www.tpxonline.com/Marketplace/Used-AB-Dick-Presses-For-Sale.asp?ChangeReadMore=More#sectionReadMore1 https://www.tpxonline.com/Marketplace/Used-AB-Dick-Presses-For-Sale.asp?ChangeReadMore=Less#sectionReadMore1
Technical SEO | | DougHartline0 -
How fast should a page load to get a Green light at Googles PageSpeed?
So, trying to get e big e-commerce site to work on their page loading issuses. Their question left me without an answer, so how fast should a site be, so that it will get a Green light at the Googles Page Speed test? Is there a number in seconds? Do we know that?
Technical SEO | | ziiiva1230 -
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect?
If I want clean up my URLs and take the "www.site.com/page.html" and make it "www.site.com/page" do I need a redirect? If this scenario requires a 301 redirect no matter what, I might as well update the URL to be a little more keyword rich for the page while I'm at it. However, since these pages are ranking well I'd rather not lose any authority in the process and keep the URL just stripped of the ".html" (if that's possible). Thanks for you help! [edited for formatting]
Technical SEO | | Booj0 -
Multi page with title with same keywords
Greetings Team, I have a webiste home page optimize for the keyword ''example apartments'' and i have included in the title but that i have another page called site.com/exampleapartments and is optimize for the keyword example apartments How can i make them different ?
Technical SEO | | WorldEscape0 -
Google Indexed Only 1 Page
Hi, I'm new and hope this forum can help me. I have recently resubmit my sitemap and Google only Indexed 1 Page. I can still see many of my old indexed pages in the SERP's? I have upgraded my template and graded all my pages to A's on SEOmoz, I have solid backlinks and have been building them over time. I have redirected all my 404 errors in .htaccess and removed /index.php from my url's. I have never done this before but my website runs perfect and all my pages redirect as I hoped. My site: www.FunerallCoverFinder.co.za How do I figure out what the problem is? Thanks in Advance!
Technical SEO | | Klement690 -
Why do I get duplicate page title errors.
I keep getting duplicate page title errors on www.etraxc.com/ and www.etraxc.com/default.asp, which are both pointing to the same page. How do i resolve this and how bad is it hurting my SEO.
Technical SEO | | bobbabuoy0 -
Blank pages in Google's webcache
Hello all, Is anybody experiencing blanck page's in Google's 'Cached' view? I'm seeing just the page background and none of the content for a couple of my pages but when I click 'View Text Only' all of teh content is there. Strange! I'd love to hear if anyone else is experiencing the same. Perhaps this is something to do with the roll out of Google's updates last week?! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | A_Q
Elias0 -
Should we use "and" or "&"?
Our client has an ampersand in their brand name. The logo has "&", their url is spelled out. I'm trying to get them to standardize the use of the name for directories/listings. Should we use "and" or "&"?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0