A few months ago we finished a redesign for attydc.com and started a renewed SEO push as well as a social networking campaign.  I was talking to a different attorney (located in a different state from the existing client) today who mentioned that she was needing to redesign her website and do some search engine optimization.  I sent her the following stats information about attydc.com’s Google ranking.  These are the search terms followed by the site’s ranking for that term.

• Wilmington NC Lawyer (#1)
• Brunswick County NC Lawyer (#5)
• Pender County NC Lawyer (#9)
• Bolivia NC Lawyer (#1)
• Burgaw NC Lawyer (#1)
• Carolina Beach NC Lawyer (#4)
• Caswell Beach NC Lawyer (#3)
• Hampstead NC Lawyer (#3)
• Holden Beach NC Lawyer (#1 and 2)
• Kure Beach NC Lawyer (#4)
• Leland NC Lawyer (#3 and 4)
• Oak Island NC Lawyer (#6)
• Ocean Isle NC Lawyer (#4)
• Supply NC Lawyer (#3)
• Surf City NC Lawyer (#1)
• Sunset Beach NC Lawyer (#5 and 6)
• Topsail Island NC Lawyer (#1 and 2)
• Wilmington Beach NC Lawyer (#1 and 2)
• Wrightsville Beach NC Lawyer (#1)

In a lot of the cases where attydc.com is not the #1, there are usually directory websites (as opposed to a direct competitors) ranked above them.  This doesn’t even factor in that there are 12 or 13 practice area pages for each of the above locations that are also optimized; I just don’t have the time to look up and report over 225 search engine results.

High ranking doesn’t mean much if you’re not gaining extra traffic, but looking at the stat reports I noticed that visits and unique visits are both up about 49% from when we retooled the SEO and started the social networking.  I’ve been told by the client that they’ve definitely noticed an increase in phone calls as well.

This stuff works, folks.  Contact us today to discuss how we can help your website rank high in search engines and increase your traffic.

A sitemap, put simply, helps your website communicate better with search engines by telling them what pages are on your site.  They’re very useful if you have a large site or you update it often.  There’s really nothing too complex about them and they’re basically essential if you’re concerned with search engine ranking.

Our sitemap does a lot more than just list pages, though, and it’s even more beneficial if you’re doing SEO (search engine optimization) work.  In addition to communicating with search engines and building a list of pages in your site, ours generates two important reports: a broken link report and an SEO report.

The broken link report simply informs you of any bad links on your site, whether they’re linking to internal pages or other websites.  Some SEO experts believe this is a factor that can hurt your website’s standing with search engines, not to mention that it can lead to a poor user experience.  Let’s face it- if someone clicks a link on your website and the page can’t be found, it reflects poorly on the professionalism of your website.

The SEO report, really, is pretty amazing.  It gives a breakdown of 16 different SEO factors for every page of your site.  Click the details link next to any of the summaries and you’ll get a list of every page on your site that needs attention.  I thought about including a screenshot of the SEO report, but I don’t want to give any secrets away.

At any rate, there are lots of sitemaps out there that simply list pages for search engines, but I haven’t heard of any others that do what ours does.  If you’re really into making sure your site is fully optimized, give ours a try.