March Solicitors SEO Review
Ongoing monthly work will be based on the below audit and recommendations.
This report outlines all aspect of SEO, current status and recommendations. The two elements of SEO are organic
positioning (free listings & Google Places) and Pay Per Click results using keywords and targetted audiences.
Organic SEO Overview
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The website is set up very well overall for keywords, description and titles.
Most other SEO elements have been addressed but need tweaking
Site contains a good keyword ‘solicitors’ which has some benefit
Although no official SEO management has been actioned in recent years, pages have been set up with SEO
in mind and this combined with regular updates has made for good progressive SEO.
The visitors trend is on a desired upward trend over the last 3 years at least, up year on year.
2013 was by far the biggest jump in users, up 25% in one year and almost 50% in two years.
Overall bounce rate is up suggesting some disparity between searches and relevance to users needs.
PPC Overview
We can’t tell from the Adwords account what actions have been carried out in the last year as history
reports have been discontinued.
I can see the overall cost has dropped from 700 to 450/month this year
In the same time performance has increased with a slight increase in clicks, which partly explains the
increase in site visits
This is the dichotomy of cost reduction in PPC. Where there should be a clear correlation between cost
and Clicks, in my experience a decrease in cost can inexplicably retain or even boosts performance and
click throughs.
This is the approach I recommend we take with the account. Reducing cost while keeping performance
levels and combined with Organic tasks, overall site visitors
PPC Approach
I will be:
● Running recommendation reports to look for further cost savings.
● Looking at eliminating more negative keywords
● Monitoring 3rd party sites and Google’s partners, which in my opinion can be money-wasters
● Managing new features and opportunities they may provide
We should specifically analyse if ‘online divorce’ ads are cost effective. A lot of keywords and ads are
targetted at online divorce with no apparent conversion success. Lack of takeup may of course not be an
Adwords issue alone.
Analysis of Current Organic SEO setup
All the points below are specific to SEO
Area
Analysis
Recommended action
Connect Reporting tools
Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics
Already completed
Sitemap
XML sitemap installed [UPDATED 26/9]
Add HTML sitemap
robots.txt
Installed []
Review and check
Google places
Set up - details correct
Add latest offers listed [Can't do from
USA] :(
Basics
Add for priced service and fixed cost
elements [set up 2 home page
business listing and online divorce]
Rich snippets
Tags
Crawl errors
2 reported
Look into these and rectify if possible
Anchor text
Check all links are descriptive AND varied Look at home page 'offer' boxes CTA
Internal links
Make internal links more noticeable with
css. Review internal links
e.g) 2nd most pop page = faq - link out
to some listed services to reduce
bounce rate
Image alternative text
Good!
Vary on slideshow
Page titles
Some duplicates detected
Tweak titles - e.g. lose ' a little more '
and just have 'about march solicitors
...'
Description tags
Some duplicates detected
Make unique[UPDATED 26/9]
Menu
Search engines may not understand from store cupboard - doesn't work well in
the menu what the site is about
url or messaging - call it 'legal advice'?
Canonical domain
Primary domain is
www.marchsolicitors.com
User journey
Labelling on links and titles needs to
match. Online divorce is second
Fixed Cost Divorce: can't find it - too many highest search term but i don’t believe
levels - labeling should be better
its easy enough to find.
Navigation structure
OK! could flow better in places
Check is in header throughout site
news , faq need landing pages for
search engine
Change ‘whats-news’ folder to
‘divorce-news’
file structure
OK!
breadcrumbs
OK!
Home page
I don't think the words fully communicate
what the site is about?
ditto - offers and slideshow. Need to
make sure search engines understand
Homepage - insert more keywords
Readability
Some pages are a wall of text
Add paragraph headings in some
sections
404
Not present
Add 404 page
Other SEO recommendations to improve SEO
These will require more time, discussion and investment
Some of these tasks will help measure success and provide direction rather than improve SEO results
directly. We will action them after the above tasks have been fulfilled.
1.
AB testing - good for testing alternative home page offers, layouts. Need more time / budget
2.
Measure Conversions - set up contact form usage measuring
3.
Mobile use on the up/ bounce on the up - These may be related. create mobile home page with A/B testing.
if users can’t read or use the site easily they will ‘bounce’.
4.
Incoming links are great to have and hard to get. March should always be cognicent of getting good inbound
links but they should come naturally through good content and relevant content. Most notably via social
media and blogging.
5.
Turn news into blog - keep the content fresh - not only display news but turn it into a blog. Currently news is
only linked from the home page and is overlooked for an area of the site users and search engines both like
6.
Videos - YouTube specifically. Can we add some videos on useful topics. Great for traffic and standing out
in the organic results
7.
Social media - can really help drive traffic to the site which helps traffic. All great for SEO if done right.
Data References
The following will be used to measure and align the required actions and keywords as supplied by March Solicitors.
Top Search Terms that bring up March Solicitors site
march solicitors
online divorce
solicitors newbury
solicitors in newbury
march solicitors newbury
newbury solicitors
online divorce uk
on-line divorce
berkshire solicitors
sears tooth agreement
quickie divorce
divorce solicitors newbury
divorce lawyers newbury
family solicitors newbury
solicitors berkshire
family law newbury
family law solicitors newbury
Keywords as the Search Engine sees the site
divorce (4 variants)
solicitors (3 variants)
court (3 variants)
matters (2 variants)
law (2 variants)
cost (4 variants)
children (2 variants)
family (2 variants)
march
legal (2 variants)
included
regulation (2 variants)
financial
charges (4 variants)
child (2 variants)
fees (2 variants)
spouse (3 variants)
personal (2 variants)
newbury
authority
Top Pages
Terms
Imp.
www.marchsolicitors.com/
Clicks
CTR
Avg. Pos
3000
90
3%
37
/FAQs/funding-divorce.asp
250
30
13%
12
/online-divorce/our-online-service.htm
600
<10
-
52
/store-cupboard/DIY Divorce versus using a
Solicitor.pdf
250
<10
-
39
/legal-advice/legal-terms-glossary.htm
150
<10
-
1
/contact-us.asp
110
<10
-
6.3
/faqs/divorce-faq.asp
110
<10
-
20
/testimonials.asp
90
<10
-
1
/FAQs/divorce-questions.asp
70
<10
-
4.7
/family-law-services/4-ways-we-can-help.asp
70
<10
-
3.2
/family-law-services/money-matters-financial.htm
60
<10
-
11
/online-divorce/index.asp
12
<10
-
1
/family-law-services/money-matters-settlement.htm
12
<10
-
5.9
/family-law-services/living-together.htm
<10
<10
-
1
/family-law-services/divorce-flowchart.htm
22
<10
-
1
/a-little-more.htm
16
<10
-
4
/FAQs/living-together.asp
12
<10
-
1
/family-law-services/index.asp
<10
<10
-
1
/family-law-services/divorce-process.htm
<10
<10
-
97
/legal-advice/helpful-resources.htm
<10
<10
-
1
/whats-news/whats-news-story.asp?story=49
<10
<10
-
1
/legal-advice/index.htm
<10
<10
-
1
/whats-news/whats-news-story.asp?story=92
<10
<10
-
1
/family-law-services/uncontested-divorce.htm
<10
<10
-
12
/whats-news/whats-news.asp
<10
<10
-
27