8 Rules for Using Backlinks Help a Miami Lawyer to Rank?

Miami Lawyers Gilbert and Smallman

My Miami Lawyer Client Is the Hardest Keyword I've Ever Faced

Some keywords are easy, like chimney sweep Hackensack.  Other keywords are hard.  I was talking about this with another SEO consultant the other day.  We weren't sure if Miami attorney or Philadelphia lawyer was harder.  We just agreed, both were tough.

The basic rules for writing online content in order to generated views and backlinks haven't changed:

Rule #1 - Your content should be written for the consumer of the content, not for Google.
Rule #2 - Rewrite to optimize the article for backlinks without compromising the quality of the writing.

Both of these rules will please the Google Beast.  You must first feed it strong, healthy food, then you can add in the Extreme Moose Tracks.  For a while in 2010 - 2012, this was not necessarily the case.  You could write, "spell article by lawyer in Miami attorney for criminal law around special patterns," and hyperlink Lawyer in Miami to their home page.  Then you would merely place this sentence in an article, press release, forum,  and/or "guest blog," and Google actually gave the links credit.

But algorithm changes Panda, Penguin, and assorted others changed everything in early 2012, and today this same practice might actually cause the beast to eat you.  There are some new rules in 2013.

Rule #3 - Don't overuse the same exact keyword from the same source.   We used to believe that you just needed to keep the total use of a keywords under 5% of the total on the page (or some other percent depending on which guru you were reading).  Now you can lose the value of keywords or even get negative attention if the keyword is overused even in the same website or blog.

Rule #4 - Solve the overuse problem by using synonyms.  Google wants you to write naturally, and knows that good writers don't use the same words over and over.  A good writer will say that, "The Miami lawyer was noted for involvement in a synthetic marijuana case.  The Miami based Attorney made the news in this case which potentially would break new legal ground."

Rule #5 - You will note in the above rule #4, that each link is to a different URL that the dealer hopes to help to rank.  In this case, one is to the website and the other is to the blog.  It would be easy to also point out that,"The Law Offices of Gilbert and Smallman offer many videos about criminal law in South Florida."   This link goes to their YouTube channel or could go to a specific video.  You can repeat this with individual blog posts, inside pages on the website, and so on.

Rule #6 - Google also knows that good writers will commonly provide a "natural" url instead of a hyperlink.  So they like to see variations in this theme as well.  "Another way that Miami criminal attorneys Gilbert and Smallman impact the legal scene in Florida is through their extensive blog on all designed to help consumers understand legal issues.  The blog is available at http://blog.hgilbertlaw.com

Rule #7 - I also changed the URL for this blog to have /Miami-lawyer appear first in the internal page portion of the URL.  Google looks at URL's, and believes that what you put in the URL is what is most important to you.

Rule #8 - I created a "Search Description" which is the equivalent in Blogger for the description tag.  This tag should be written as a teaser and have 140 characters or less.  

The blog post above provided my client with 5 backlinks to 4 different URL's with 3 different keywords.  And you'll also note that one of the links was in the H1 headline.  The article sounds perfectly normal, not jammed with inappropriate or weird sentences designed to merely spam.

What would you add to this analysis?  Are there other techniques that you are currently using to provide great content, but that also benefit your sites with links?

Local Business Review Sites and Reputation Management

Small Business Owners Who Ignore Business Review Sites Risk Loss of Sales and Profits 

Any small business owner who learned the trade from a great mentor or who has read a dozen decent books on the how to run and manage a business knows the old rule:  If you make one customer unhappy they will tell 10 friends, but you need to make 10 customers happy to get one of them to tell one friend.  

And so it goes today with online reputation.  If anything the results are even more disproportionate.  I have clients with pretty decent customer service and lots of daily traffic with almost no reviews on Yelp, Google+, or any of the other online reviewing search engines.  Then again, I have clients with so-so customer service who attract negative reviews and can't understand why. 

If you are a small business owner, put yourself in the shoes of a potential client.  They search the internet and find a list of potential businesses that say they can fill the need of the moment.  As they quickly scan the list of options, the review scores are significantly different.  One company has 50 good to excellent reviews, another has 8 good reviews, and another has 5, but their score is 2 stars.  What would you do? 

It is a critical aspect of any business marketing strategy today to solicit reviews and testimonials.  You must find clients willing to take a few minutes to write up nice things about you on Google+ local so that the reviews show up on Google Places.  You also need to keep track of the comments being made on Google Places and Yelp.  If you see negative comments, you need to respond.  And that response needs to be courteous, engaging, and written with an eye to the idea that it isn't written to the unhappy customer, but to the others who have just read the negative review.

For more on reviews see http://googleplaceshelp.blogspot.com/2012/07/google-local-basics-410-reviews-will.html

What have you done about reviews?  What has worked for you to get more reviews? What are you doing about Reputation Management?

Eucalyptus - A Steam Room Must Have the Scent and Health Benefits

Steam Rooms are great.  Used to have one in my home.  I really miss it.  But most gyms, spas, message places, and many luxury hotels have steam rooms, so there are plenty of options.

I have a client who offers a solution for the SMELL that sometimes destroys the steam room experience.  It is a small pump that automatically dispenses pure Eucalyptus Oil directly into the steam. The oil itself is available on Amazon at

Eucalyptus Oil Shower Mist and Steam Room Spray - 8 Ounce

In a commercial spa, the cost is only a couple of dollars a day.  All the details are available about the Mystifier automatic injection system at http://www.Eurospachemicals.com

I bring this up for many reasons, but one of those is that I'm testing some new SEO methods.  After I see how they test, I'll give an update later.  Click here you'd like to read my longer article on Steam Rooms. http://bit.ly/steamsauna

Google Goes Back to Its Roots - Local Small Business Marketing Feels the Effect

Content is king, long live content.  Google's intent has always been to organize the information man has created and continues to create.  In the information age, he who controls the primary commodity of the era is likely to have a lot of power.  And, clearly they do. 

During the course of the past year, Google has tightened and tightened its methods for separating the wheat from the chaff, and deciding what content is valuable and that which is not.  This has primarily effected the value of back link campaigns.  And there is no doubt that huge amounts of useless content was being piled onto the internet for the singular purpose of creating back link support for other websites. 

We at Randy Kirk and Assoc., try to maintain 100% white hat approaches to the internet, but I have to admit that I succombed to the siren song of cheap back links and paid the price.  However, in a rare twist, one of my clients seems to have been slapped more than any other, even though his website has massive original and useful content, and he has a ton of white hat back links.  http://www.mortgagehelplosangeles.com has been one of my most successful efforts.  While you can imaging hos hard it is to rank well for mortgage broker los Angeles, we had controlled the number one spot on Google Places for months, and were on page 1 of the Google Everything search with the website. 

Even in the month following the penguin change, our position remained dominant.  Then in the last week or so, the website dropped precipitously and we are flirting with number 3 or 4 on Google Places.  We did buy a few cheap back links, but not a lot.  The client has 40 YouTube videos up with very original content and a blog at http://mortgagelosangeles.blogspot.com/ that is active and has tons of original content.  Of course, both the videos and the blogs are pointing to the website. 

So, if you would like to show off your skills, take a look at the website, and see if you can find the missing piece of this puzzle.  Why do you think we got slapped?