8 Basic Rules for Local SEO - Keywords and Backlinks for Miami Criminal Lawyer

Eric A. Kay, Criminal Attorney in Miami

Miami Criminal Lawyer Ranking Gives Local SEO Consultant Heart Burn

Do you just love a challenge?  I sometimes think that ranking Miami Criminal Lawyer for both the website and the Google Places listing might be the ultimate test of SEO smarts.  I recently built a website for one of my clients at http://attorneysMiami-Fl.com .  It isn't as old or as big or have as many backlinks as dozens of other Miami Criminal Attorneys, so I'm holding my breath waiting to see if I can move up in the ranks. 

Here are the basic rules I live by for writing online content in order to generated views and back links in 2013 that haven't changed:

Rule #1 - Headlines and content should be written for the viewer, not Google.
Rule #2 - Rewrite for back links 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 criminal lawyer in Miami attorney for criminal law around special patterns," and hyperlink Criminal 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 was giving 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 criminal lawyer was noted for having one the hat trick award while working for the Broward County Public Defender's office.  The Miami based Criminal Law Attorney now provides a website that gives South Florida residents a place where they can understand if and when the need an attorney for a traffic ticket, DUI, possession, or felony murder case.

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 Eric A. Kay, P.A.  has an active presence on Linkedin and provides updates to those who are connected on a regular basis.

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 attorney, Eric Kay helps clients and potential clients is through an extensive blog designed to help consumers understand legal issues.  The blog is available at http://blog.attorneysmiami-fl.com

Rule #7 - I also changed the URL for this blog to have /Miami-criminal-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 back links 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?