SEO Optimization is causing rankings to drop

[musillawfirm]

The more I improve my site and the more links I try to get it seems that my site is just ranking worse and worse.

Any ideas?  domain name: www.musillawfirm.com

Top Keywords wanting to rank for:

Melbourne FL DUI lawyer

Melbourne FL immigration lawyer

cocoa FL DUI lawyer

cocoa FL immigration lawyer

[AlanBleiweiss]

Mario,

No offense, but you apparently don't understand SEO best practices.

Example 1: The links in the footer area pointing to each town? That box with all those links is an old-school method of driving SEO value.  Nowadays, links in footer areas offer much less ranking weight.  When they're all stuffed with the same words, that's even worse because it pretty much waves a red flag saying "spam over here".

Example 2:  Links in the footer for various towns - there is so much duplication of content across these pages that they're all harming you, not helping.  When a page has mostly the same content as another page, it's a problem.  Multiply that by every town linked, it's a nightmare.

Example 3: when I go to one of those and click into the DUI & Criminal Defense link, it doesn't go to a unique services details page with several paragraphs of unique text.  Instead, it goes to a page with a small amount of text followed by several links.  So pages at this level are nothing more than link pages, and thus offer little value to the overall SEO.

Example 4:  http://www.musillawfirm.com/criminal-defense/criminal-mischief/  Look at that page.  There's almost no unique content dedicated to that page's topic.  What little text is there that's unique is overwhelmed by the duplicate content that exists in the header, sidebar and footer area).  Why would search engines consider this page important to someone doing a search?

So before you do any more "optimization", I would highly encourage you to learn what real SEO in 2011 means.

[KeriMorgret]

After looking at your site, I have a couple of questions and suggestions about the site in general. Remember, it's not just rankings, it's also visitors and conversions and visitors trusting your site.

1. The latest Open Site Explorer crawl is showing only 13 different domains linking to you, and not all of those are relevant (such as the five-page skylifeguard.com site that links to STD tests, XBox 360 cheats, and a couple of dozen other sites including yours.

2. Remove that pop-up! When i try to view another page on your site (not trying to leave the site), I get a big window that asks me if I'm sure I want to leave the page. It's not helping your users have a positive experience.

3. Is the blog content unique? I'm seeing what looks like the same content on several other blogs. Also, the "223 comments" next to a blog post but the message of comments being closed and no comments being shown is confusing.

4. If you haven't yet, verify the site in Google Webmaster Tools to look there for any messages from Google regarding the site, and to see more information about the site.

5. There have duplicate content within the site. There are twenty pages that appear to be identical, except for the city being targeted.

[musillawfirm]

Thank you for the suggestions -

How would you recommend that I target the different geographic locations in my area. My location consists of many small towns right next to each other and I can serve all of them, so I'm trying to figure out a way to target all of them. I was told by a local seo "expert"  to setup the separate landing pages. Apparently that won't work.

[musillawfirm]

Thank you for the suggestions -

How would you recommend that I target the different geographic locations in my area. My location consists of many small towns right next to each other and I can serve all of them, so I'm trying to figure out a way to target all of them. I was told by a local seo "expert"  to setup the separate landing pages. Apparently that won't work.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Mario,

The first thing I would suggest is that every page on the site needs enough unique quality content to set it apart as a truly unique page.  there's no hard and fast rule to how much content each page would need, but a general guideline I recommend to clients is between 400 and 1000 words.

As much as it would be ideal to be able to ensure you're found for every single area of practice for every single town you're targeting, it's best to start by optimizing your site for the  larger geographic area, and for the two locations you have a physical presence in.

To that end, I would suggest shortening your page Titles to focus on two or at most three word keyword phrases, and including Brevard | Collier FL in each title which allows you to begin to be found for both counties.   So for example, your main Criminal Defense page's Title might then be "Criminal Defense Attorneys Brevard | Collier FL".

Next, I'd suggest putting both location addresses in the footer of each page where those "spammy" type links had been.  These should be in HTML so search engines can pick them up.

From there, I would encourage you to then get both office locations into Google Place pages as verified listings.  A good article on how to do this can be found at http://themilwaukeeseo.com/2010/11/07/google-places-guide/ and another at http://www.sugarrae.com/seo-sphere/how-to-pimp-your-google-places-page-for-better-rankings/

After these are set up, get your listings into Yahoo Local, Bing Local, CitySearch, Yelp, YP.com, Superpages.com, and any relevant directory specific to each county - these would be smaller sites but highly refined because they're dedicated to your locations of choice.

That's a pretty strong start in the right direction.

[AlanBleiweiss]

Oh - and one last suggestion - just above the two addresses in the bottom area of all pages, have a statement about how you serve Brevard and Collier counties.  So something like "The Musil Law Firm has been serving Brevard and Collier counties since XXXX".  And have a similar but unique statement to that on your home, About and Contact pages directly in the main content area of each.