11 replies to this topic

[RisaBB]

Hello,

I was excited when I saw this topic when this forum first launched, so after reading Jill's newsletter for over a year, I used her advice and here is the site I would like reviewed:

Vincent J. Russo & Associates | New York Elder Law Attorneys | Long Island Estate Planning Attorneys

Here is some background:

My client is a pretty famous Elder Law attorney in New York who has 3 offices on Long Island and is opening a fourth. He has written books, lectures, has a daily one-minute spot on a local radio station, and has commercials on a local TV station. He wants his site to rank in the top 10, and although I encouraged him last year to pay for a SEO pro, he said he wanted to "pay me for my education," so for a reduced rate, I am optimizing his site.

I want to accomplish my client's goal of a higher ranking, so I welcome all suggestions. THANK YOU! Here are the answers to Scottie's questions:

General
This updated site was launched in March 2001. There are two pages that I optimized, the home page at www.russoelderlaw.com and the seminars page at www.russoelderlaw.com/seminars. I just optimized these pages on 10/8/03.

SEO
There are 2 incoming links from www.elderlawanswers.com and www.martindale.com.

The keywords that I am targeting for the home page are: Elder Law Attorneys, Estate Planning Attorneys, New York Elder Law Attorney, New York Estate Planning Attorney, Long Island Estate Planning.

The keywords that I am targeting for the seminars page are: free new york estate planning seminars, free NY elder law seminar, free new york elder law seminars, elder law issues, free long island seminars, senior seminars.

I would like the code reviewed for errors or improvements. I recently put the top nav bar in an include file, with an external javascript. I got this suggestion from here to shorten the length of code on the page (and to make updating easier).

Marketing
The target audience is seniors, children of seniors, and professionals who work with seniors, who want to learn more about Elder Law (Breakfast With Vincent page, Elderlaw Newsletter page, Resources page) and to learn more about the firm through published articles and commercial and radio clips. The audience will be all income ranges. Some will need advice with estate planning; some will need advice about Medicaid. People who need wills and living trusts will be interested in learning more about my client.

Someone will want to do business with this firm because they are established with a prestigious staff of Elder Law attorneys.

The purpose of the site is to attract new business by getting people to call and order brochures, ask questions, and make an appointment to come in. It also has a lot of information about Elder Law. My client does a lot of PR to promote himself and shows it off on the website.

Usability is important. It will probably be viewed by people aged 55 and over, so the navigation should be easy to remember.

Design
Although I am asking for SEO advice for the 2 pages I optimized for now, I would like design suggestions on the entire site.

Thank you.

Risa

[Peter]

Hi Risa,

How are you?

Lets start with some keyword research:

Elder Law Attorneys
Estate Planning Attorneys
New York Elder Law Attorney
New York Estate Planning Attorney
Long Island Estate Planning

That is quite a lot for 1 page. Also it seems that these phrases address 2 different things: Elder law and estate planning. I would advise to create an extra page for each of these 2 fields. You can then use these pages for external back links, rather then using the start page to link to.

The way you talk about SEO gives me the impression you´re very focussed on on-the-page factors, but SEO is much more than that. Have you thought about internal linking structure, and then specifically anchor texts of internal links?

I´ll will write some more, but now it is already late here,... Let me know what you think so far.

Regards,

Peter

[webstream]

I would like design suggestions on the entire site

Everyone has their own interpretation when it comes to color. My preference would be select colors that don't give you the impression of "delicate" or "romantic". I do believe there are emotional feelings conveyed through colors. When I think of law and an attorney I have a different visual color scheme in my mind.

Whenever possible, I tend to try to follow the suggestions by some of the "color gurus", like Leatrice Eiseman and recommend to the graphic designers to use certain color tones. Of course, depending on the client it may not always be possible, especially if they want specific colors based around their logo, or corporate colors.

Just a thought.

Webstream

[RisaBB]

Peter and Webstream,

Thanks for your feedback.

Peter, I don't quite understand what you mean when you say:

The way you talk about SEO gives me the impression you´re very focussed on on-the-page factors, but SEO is much more than that. Have you thought about internal linking structure, and then specifically anchor texts of internal links?

What is "on-the-page factor?" I thought each page can be optimized independently.

Why would an internal linking structure be better than separate pages - this way I can optimize each page separately?

Also, wouldn't the key phrases I listed really be 3 and not 5? Two of them are the same, except I put "New York" in front of them, so the key phrase, "New York Elder Law Attorney" would show up for people searching for "Elder Law Attorney" too?

Webstream, regarding the color scheme, I'll look into what the expert you mentioned has to say. My client can be hard to convince to change things, although if I knew some color protocol, I might never have given him this color scheme as a choice to begin with. I took advice from Jill and Scottie, and even quoted them, to finally convince my client to have the same navigation scheme throughout the website. Of course, I should never have even designed a site with a different home page, but I never thought of SEO or usability issues 2 years ago.

Thanks!
Risa

[webstream]

Risa,

I totally understand what you are saying. I don't pretend to be a color expert so I rely on those who know a lot more about it than I will ever know, or care to know.

Here is the book I highly recommend, that I use all the time to help me understand colors for communicating...

Pantone Guide to Communicating with Color

Webstream

[Peter]

Risa,

On-the-page factors are mostly the HTML code and the copy. A search engine however, makes a list of many factors, the on-the-page factors are just part of it.

You have to optimize each page independently, but after that you need to look at the of-the-page factors. These are things like the anchor text of links that point at a page. These factors are very important too.

Internal linking structure is just all the links that you have inside the web site. Links in the menu can help you gain positions when you use keywords in their anchor text.

Lets talk just about the home page for now...

The title is too long,... Over 100 characters. It should be about 60 to 70 maximum.
The description is also too long,.. better to keep it at around 180 to 220 characters.

Too many keywords is really a problem. I would suggest you go for just 2 keyword phrases: Elder law and Estate planning. These 2 can be in combination with an extra word: Attorney

Your title can then be something like this:

Elder law & estate planning attorney - New York Elder law & estate planning firm

This is still a bit long, but at least a lot shorter than over a 100 characters that the title has now. The 2 keyword phrases show up twice and also you have the words attorney and new york in it.

Do the same in the description,... where the first half of the title can be the start of the description.

Then you need to rewrite the copy and the header tags a bit in order to get the keywords to show up.

Then try to work on the links in all the pages,.. try changing the anchor text or alt text of a clickable image "home" into something like "elder law & estate planning home". Specifically for alt atributes this is very handy since the image can show the text home, while only on the mouse over the long text shows up.

I am sure that these suggestions will get you much better rankings.

Regards,

Peter

[RisaBB]

Peter,

Thank you for your suggestions. I'm going to work on them in the next day or two.

I'm just wondering if I should NOT put my client's name in the title tag as you suggested, because according to statistics logs, people do search for his name, Vincent Russo. I've thought about this before because I've read the advice about not putting the company name in the title tag unless it's famous, and I think he may be famous enough in his field that it is a search term.

Am I wasting the 60-70 characters of the title tag if I swap "elder law" and "estate planning" for "Vincent J. Russo?"

Thank you so much for your advice.

Risa

[daniel]

I've thought about this before because I've read the advice about not putting the company name in the title tag unless it's famous, and I think he may be famous enough in his field that it is a search term.

Just a suggestion, but it might be wise to leave the client's name out of the title on most of the pages, but you could create a 'biography' or an 'about us' page that can use the client's name in the title. This page can be optimised for the client's name, and all things beign equal, these pages are the ones that will come up when someone searches for the client's name.

[RisaBB]

Peter and Daniel,

I took your suggestions and I did the following: The address again is http://www.russoelderlaw.com.

- I changed the Title tag of the index page.
- I changed the description tag to include the title and some more text.
- I tweaked one header tag and some text a bit.
- I added biography pages for all the attorneys under Staff Profile.
- I added alt tags for images on the home page and staff biographies.

I'm now going to do a better job optimizing the Seminars page.

Thank you for your input. Any another suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Risa

[Peter]

Risa,

If his name is so well known that people use it to find his web site, then you can use it. But who are the people that are looking for his web site using his name? Are they potential customers? Are they people that already know of his firm? What is the goal of the web site? To find new customers I think.

Perhaps it is better to do what Daniel suggested and set up a seperate page where an biography of him is given. This page can then be used to optimize his name for and also it is an excelent page to prove his expertese, which can be a selling point.

Regards,

Peter

[Peter]

Ah and if I can make another suggestion:

This line:

A New York Elder Law and Estate Planning Firm That Makes a Difference

may work better if you change it into:

The New York Elder Law and Estate Planning Firm That Makes a Difference

Just a small difference, but it shows stronger self confidence I think. Something I would expect from a lawyer or law firm.

Regards,

Peter

[RisaBB]

Peter,

I just took your suggestion and changed the first H1 tag to say, "The Elder Law..." I think was was a great suggestion and does give it a different tone.

I also took Daniel's suggestion and created a separate page for my client at http://www.russoelde...tml/russo.shtml. I created separate pages for all the other attorneys, too.

And as for:

Ah and if I can make another suggestion:

Please, don't hesitate.

Thanks!
Risa