Trying to get on Google page one for keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego". What can I do?

[micasalucasa]

I'm trying to help a friend who is an attorney get on page one for the keyword "criminal defense attorney san diego."

So far I've changed his title and description tags since they weren't optimized before. (SERP shows old title tag, however I submitted a XML sitemap through Webmaster tools to get the new title tags updated.) He also had a few duplicate pages, but I took care of that with some 301 redirects.

I also added a h1 tag, alt image tag, and more content. I also spent a few hours building links for him. He currently has a page authority of 52 and domain authority of 44 with a decent amount of links pointing to his site. I'm wondering why he's stuck on page 4, when his competitors that have less impressive numbers seem to show up on page 1.

I did look at his link profile using OSE and I'm worried that his old SEO guy got him spam links.

His website is www.nasserilegal.com, however the page I was focusing on was www.nasserilegal.com/criminal.html

Any advice would be great.

[RobertFisher]

Lucas

You have made a good start with some on page and you might want to ask yourself a question: Why this keyword phrase? Have you looked at criminal attorney/lawyer san diego? They both have many more searches for them. (So, KW research is important for a competitive area like this).

Next, have you worked on the local G+, gotten reviews from former clients?

But, then: Be careful as it appears you are working on elements as opposed to delivering anything that will make me want to engage your attorney.

Your title tag of CDASD | SDCDA is not the way to go. Stuffing Criminal Defense in the content on that page over and over is a killer and reads terribly. (see image)

Before that though, if I were in jail and needed a criminal atty. I would not go to one who was accentuating immigration law. See image on practice areas. (What is most..)

Last, in your meta description you are still repeating the KW phrase. It has zero effect on ranking, this is where you get someone to click because you wrote something that drove them to your site. "Get out of jail now, before something bad happens." Attorney XXX is here to save your day!

Think about it.

UwKAt.png 9bvkM.png

[TheeDigital]

I agree with Robert.  I would work on the G+ local page to begin with.  It looks like you don't really have anything attached to it, except for an address, phone number, and website.

Remember with local pages, you can attach pictures, videos, and even meta information.  This will help you show up better in search.  Always remember to fill out profiles, it will help you in the long term.

[TheSEODR]

I agree with making the content on this page read a little more natural and maybe splitting it up with some h2s.

To rank for local search terms, I would try to obtain links from "local" websites. Example: Attorney Associations in San Diego, San Diego Chamber of Commerce, and some authority local news sites that accept guest posts.

You can write posts that pertain to your industry and include a relevant linkback to your page. Here are some local new site links:

http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/

http://sandiego.bbb.org/guest-blog-interest-form/

http://scoopsandiego.com/

[MiriamEllis]

Hi Lucas,

You've gotten some good advice here. I will add a few thoughts.

Read David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors 2012 if you haven't already. If your area of expertise is more in the traditional SEO field rather than the Local SEO field, this report will bring you up to speed on the importance of things like citations and reviews, which don't really apply to standard SEO. However, because of the publication date of this year's LSRF report, we didn't have a chance to talk about the rollout of Google+ Local, so that data is 'missing'.

To get a jumpstart on that, here is Mike Blumenthal's step-by-step guide on making the Places-Plus transition:

http://blumenthals.com/blog/2012/06/08/google-for-business-places-forums-wrapup/

Your friend is attempting to break into a very tough market - a major term in a populous locale. To make things more complicated - he offers 2 areas of specialization (Immigration Law and Criminal Law) and these can be broken down into further subcategories of services (theft, assault, etc.). Right now, the site is thin on content to support his work in these areas. The homepage of the site is really lacking in descriptive text. 'Welcome' is a very weak header for the page - he can do much better than this - and the homepage copy makes no mention of his core service keywords nor his geographic location. Homepages are always so important.

I would further recommend that the NAP (name, address, phone number) on his Contact Page and his footer be coded using hCard or Schema. If these are new to you, here are two good resources:

This one is an hCard generator:

http://microformats.org/code/hcard/creator

This one is a Schema generator (be sure to pick Organization>Local Business from the categories):

http://schema-creator.org/organization.php

Robert and TheeDesign have made some important suggestions for you regarding Google+ Local. I will add to this that if you put in major effort and still see your client unable to attain high rankings, you must always consider the possibility of past or current penalties. But, cross that bridge when you come to it. There is a ton your friend can do to improve the presentation of the business, its usefulness to humans and its SEO.

[micasalucasa]

Thanks for all the great advice everyone! I have already started to make a few adjustments to his pages. I ran the seomoz on page optimization report again and it went from a grade D to an A.

In terms of Local SEO, I've been working on getting him more citation sources, but he's basically starting from scratch. Most of his competitors that do show up have a ton of Google Reviews and other citation sources such as Insiderpages.com, kudzu, citysearch.com, etc... I'm currently using whitespark to find all the citation sources that his competitors are getting and getting his business profile created. I also registered his business to InfoUSA, Localeze, Yelp, and a few other Legal directories.

One problem I noticed with his Google Places page only shows one category (Attorney). The rest of his categories: Criminal Attorney, DUI Attorney, Criminal Defense Attorney, and Immigration Attorney do not show up anymore. (I do know that once you click on the category, it should expand and show the other categories). I did fill out the change request form provided by Google a few days ago and hope that this will fix the issue. I'm not sure if anyone else has experience with this, but would welcome any feedback.

I will definitely get started on the Hcard for him though! Thanks Miriam!