A website must be dynamic, ever-changing, and responsive to the latest demands, requests, and needs of legal consumers. What makes a website dynamic? It must be constantly evolving and changing, with new content, updated navigation, and filled with information that its visitors find useful, helpful, and engaging.
Search Engine Optimization
There are many different measures of a website’s performance. One measure is whether it helps people find you. This is best measured by how well it performs in response to search engine inquiries.
Those for whom you want your website to appear in search engine results fall into two broad categories: those who are looking for you specifically and those who are looking for someone like you. How your website fairs in the search engine competition for placement is important for both categories. Afterall, virtually everyone uses a search engine to find a website. They enter your name if they are looking specifically for you or descriptions, traits, and characteristics if they are looking for someone like you. Within nanoseconds of the search being entered (actually it begins while the search is being entered), the search engines are digesting information in order to predict the sites that will be of most interest to the person searching – the sites that the seeker is most likely seeking. This is done in a host of mysterious ways, but basically algorithms score all of the available websites to rank those which it presents to searchers. A website scores better if it provides the most up-to-date information. Why? People generally want the freshest and latest information.
Engaging Content & Graphics
But the success of a website (and another measure of its performance) depends on more than showing up in search engine results. Once appearing there, a website must be engaged by the searcher. And the more engaging the interaction, the better the website’s score in future searches. There must be new, fresh, up-to-date information for the searcher to engage with if that is to be accomplished. And it must be easy to find. It must be “engaging.” What makes a website engaging? What do you find engaging? High quality graphics, photographs, videos, relevant and substantive information, and easy navigation are all important.
The analytics of a website’s visits tell a lot about how engaging it is. What pages do people frequently visit? Are there opportunities for them to easily visit other pages on the website which they find appealing, interesting, or relevant? How long do they visit? What do they find most engaging on the site? Who are these visitors? Where are they from?
Social Media & Email Integration
Another way to enhance a website’s visibility on search engine results is to increase its number of visitors. Keeping a website new and fresh is important but so is whether people are visiting it. Encouraging visitors through social media or email campaigns can drive up a site’s visitors which also helps its scoring in the search engine analytics.