While there are a few major search engines out there, Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., Google consistently received an overwhelming majority of all online searches. Just recently, Microsoft managed to expand Bing’s U.S. search market share marginally to 15.1% while Google still leads with around 66%, according to research firm ComScore. It is extremely important to be on the first page results of Google. If you can manage to do it, it helps a lot to appear in the top 3. Some studies show the top 3 positions receive around 50-75% of the clicks. The highly coveted #1 position receives around 35% to half of all clicks.
It is important to rank your site highly not just for one keyword or phrase, but for numerous keywords. Generally, it would be extremely difficult or impossible to rank highly for a single word search term. The more words that are included in the search phrase, the easier it is to rank for. These are called long-tail search phrases.
For example, it would be nearly impossible to rank #1 for the keyword DWI. New Hampshire DWI would be more relevant, and more easily obtained. Better yet might be New Hampshire DWI Lawyer. If you practice is just one city, you would likely want one of your search phrases to be your city and a keyword from your practice area.
Google presently shows a couple of different listings for any given search. The top 3 results at the top of the page, and on the side of the page are sponsored links. This means the advertising website pays each time their website is clicked on. It is important to have a PPC (Pay per click) campaign. But, it is much better to have your results organically appear.
Sometimes, it is possible to dominate the search results and have your website homepage show up as well as a result for one of your inner pages. In this example the search term portsmouth nh dwi shows our ranking site www.nhdwiguy.com is both #1 and #2 for the search results.
Depending on your search phrase, the next secition might be a list of sites with Google Places accounts/Local Search results.
The below keyword examples are from a website created and maintained by the Legal Marketing Guru. You can see for yourself how well the sites rank for important relevant terms. Please note, Google is constantly changing their search formula (the search algorithm). It is impossible to predict that you will appear #1 for any certain search term. We want to give you the best results possible, and therefore strive to stay up to date on what factors Google considers important, so we can use that information to make your site rank well.
Site 1: www.nhdwiguy.com
One in a million
www.nhdwiguy.com
| Keywords | Google Ranking as of June 1, 2012 | See live result |
| N.H. DWI Lawyer | 1 (out of 5.5 million results) | https://www.google.com/search?q=n.h.+dwi+lawyer |
| New Hampshire DWI | 3 (out of 4.9 million) | https://www.google.com/search?q=new+hampshire+dwi |
| NH DUI Attorney | 1 (out of 1.4 million) | https://www.google.com/search?q=NH+dui+attorney |
| N.H. DUI | 3 (out of 4 million) | https://www.google.com/search?q=n.h.+dui |
| dwi manchester nh | 1 (out of 150,000) | https://www.google.com/search?q=dwi+manchester+nh |