Case Study: McDivitt Law Firm
When I first worked with McDivitt Law, they came to my previous employer with very limited online presence. From a design perspective, their web presence was outdated and lacked any real interactivity with their audience and limited engagement. Rankings and marketing wasn’t too much of an option since they didn’t have the expertise to write SEO-based, marketing-centered copy.
The challenge from an SEO perspective was to get their brand exposed on search engines ASAP. Given resources we had, we attacked this challenge in four different avenues:
- Keyword Research and Content Development
- Targeted web pages
- Social Media
- Link Building
Keyword Research and Content Development
First and foremost of importance, an extensive research on targeted keywords were aggregated, ensuring that we would be able to generate traffic for general keywords, and specifically more traffic for specific geographic locations. We analyzed the usage of short-tail and long-tail keywords and devised a plan on what types of keywords will be used on different pages. The result was the creation of keywords like “colorado personal injury lawyer,” “pueblo personal injury lawyer,” and “colorado springs personal injury lawyer” that we implemented on both content as well as URL naming conventions.
Call to action elements
One of the most important strategy we implemented was utilizing a conversion-based SEO structure on their site. Targeted keywords from our research were used as call to action elements throughout the site. This was done as part of the guidelines we created to establish strong keyword-rich content, in order to enhance user engagements for conversion purposes and increase SEO link juice towards internal pages.
Targeted web pages
We believed that landing pages were crucial to generating traffic and conversions on their specific business locations and expertise. Centering our search efforts on that geolocation, we added the typical SEO additions to each page, like meta tags (titles, keywords, descriptions), image tags (alt and title) and header tags, in addition to the keyword-rich content previously mentioned. Targeted URL naming conventions, like colorado-personal-injury-lawyer.php and pueblo-car-accident-lawyer.php were used to enhance the search weight of these geographic locations and expertise to better position them in search engines.
In streamlining the weight of these pages, content was written specifically to target users searching for specific content (i.e. car accidents) in specific locations, utilizing the keyword research used and SEO-based call to action elements. Thus, with the keyword-rich content and naming conventions covered, we were able to holistically target our search engine efforts across the board.
Social Media
At that time (back in 2006 or so), blogs , social bookmarking sites, and UGC-oriented sites like YouTube were the social media ways to get noticed and searched. We decided to put our content into good use and implemented the following tactics:
- Created social bookmark links on global footer page as well as sidebars and subheaders
- Created YouTube landing page, uploaded newly created video spots, and tagged them using targeted keywords used in research
- Created a systematic method of using reviews on bookmarks to generate searches
Link Building
Next to keyword research, we spent most of our time implementing a comprehensive link building strategy to create viability and page authority for their firm. We created specific landing pages for our links and used our targeted keywords (again) as part of our link building strategy. We required specific parameters on searching for link partners and exchanges, and also molded an extensive link check schedule on link backs to ensure healthy link juice coming into our site.
The Result
To our surprise, after only a month+ of working on their site, we found them to be ranked in the top page of Google for most of our strong long-tail keywords that we were vying to rank on. Long-tail keywords like “colorado springs personal injury lawyer,” “colorado personal injury lawyer,” and “pueblo personal injury lawyer” were ranked within the top five spots on the first page and continued on for almost a full year. These results were based on 2006 data and until the SEO team disbanded in 2007 and new blood showed up to take the reins.
