While our Myers Freelance is indisputably the best source of information for search engine optimization (SEO) for lawyers (indisputably!), there is only so much we can cover in a single-post-per-week format. A lot of important information swims past while we pull out the most important fish in the river.
For lawyers who are interested, passionate, or masochistic enough to want more information on the SEO world to market their law firms online, there are numerous other sources of information to turn to. Here are 6 that we recommend.
Search Engine Land and Search Engine Journal
These two sites are the CNN and the NBC of the SEO world—they cover breaking developments of both importance and non-importance in the online marketing field. From articles covering the hyper-technical minutiae of error codes to deep dives in the latest game-changing algorithm update, Search Engine Land (SEL) and Search Engine Journal (SEJ) are where the news tends to hit the presses, first.
Unfortunately for law firms and lawyers, SEL and SEJ write for an audience of their own. They ignore the vast gulf between SEO professionals and the regular populace who don’t understand nuanced differences between Google and Bing’s algorithms. This makes matters particularly bad for attorneys who might not carry a full and comfortable understanding of the big picture of SEO and online marketing—with so many news articles passing through SEL and SEJ, it’s easy to overestimate the importance of a particular development for your online marketing efforts.
For example, the front pages of both outlets were dominated last year by Google’s decision to take away the “view image” button from image searches. They portrayed it as a groundbreaking move for sites… that rely on image searches. Law firms almost never rely on image searches to attract traffic, so we ran an article pointing out that the development was a red herring.
These are just caveats about SEL and SEJ, though. The fact remains that, if you want to keep up to date on the world of SEO, these should be set as your home pages when you open your browser.
Google’s Webmaster Blog
The bravest among us do not rely on SEO journalists to report what’s happening: They go straight to the source.
The Official Google Webmaster Blog is where the dominant search engine leaks out important information meant to push website owners into building a better internet. This is just one of the sources that many of the SEO journalists go to, first, when they are reporting on a news story.
Much of the information that trickles out about SEO comes from Twitter. Many of the leading thinkers and developers have active Twitter accounts that they use to leak out important information about search engines and dispel important misconceptions. Some of the most important accounts to follow include:
- Barry Schwartz, editor of basically every SEO journal of note
- Moz, a leading SEO company
- Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz
These are, of course, just three of the many SEO-heavy Twitter accounts that share some important insights into the online marketing world that your law firm can utilize.
How Myers Freelance Fits into the Mix
Myers Freelance works as both a filter and as an explainer for lawyers who are interested and reliant on SEO marketing, but who do not have the time or the deep knowledge necessary to follow some of these outlets. We aim to separate the important information from the unimportant, often by pointing out some of the red herrings that are making the loudest noise in the news cycle and by showing what makes them unimportant for the legal marketing niche.