Absolute and relative links are links on websites to internal or external sources. An absolute link includes the complete URL of a website or page: the protocol, the domain, the directory and the document name. An absolute link looks like this: http://www.sitename.com/directory/sitepage. If you decide to visit the website of this Louisville asbestos attorney from the link provided, you are clicking on an absolute link.

Relative links only include the extension of the page you are linking to within that same website. For example, a relative link to Why SEO? on ProBonoSEO.com would simply be “/why-seo/.”

A vertical search engine is a type of search engine that concentrates on a particular industry, topic or geographic area instead of the World Wide Web as a whole. While vertical search engines tend to not bring in as much traffic as regular search engines, they usually result in higher quality traffic from individuals interested in a particular subject matter and already qualified for a product or service.

Consequently, it’s important to be found on a vertical search engine because your conversion rate is typically higher than it would be with traffic from a normal search engine. It can also help you dominate your niche and remain highly competitive within your industry or geographical area. While there are numerous subjects covered by this medium, the legal industry is a big one and has three primary vertical search engines.

• Lawyers.com is an excellent resource for obtaining legal information. It matches users with credible lawyers and firms from all over the world, and has discussion boards on a variety of legal topics as well as guest blog posts written by lawyers. In addition, this vertical search engine has more than a million profiles to check out to find a quality lawyer in most areas.
• Avvo is a great place to visit for individuals who need the services of lawyers, doctors or dentists. Its primary goal is to provide users with accurate information on practices in order to make the best possible decision. One area that Avvo prides itself on is the reliability of its information and its overall lack of favoritism.
• FindLaw is an additional vertical search engine that’s similar to Lawyers.com and contains a directory of lawyers. Findlaw also offers updated legal news and message boards for interaction.

A search on any of these for an Orange County personal injury lawyer or a New Jersey injury attorney (or some other variation of the term) will produce a list of lawyers in that specific geographic area who practice personal injury law.

Stop words are predetermined words that search engines ignore when processing searches. Common words like “the,” “and” or “want” are often considered to be stop words and are not considered during a search. Search engines filter out stop words to help conserve disk space on their servers, thereby increasing server speed for visitors. This means that a search for “Polk County and lawyers” would produce the same result as “Polk County lawyers.”

It is important to note that no two search engines use an identical list of stop words, and some search engines don’t use stop words at all. Engines that don’t use stop words are generally based around “phrase searches,” where the person searching for a particular item uses an exact phrase in lieu of a keyword phrase.

On the web, engagement objects are interactive components of websites that allow readers to engage with content in ways other than simply reading. Common engagement objects are:

When properly implemented and optimized, these can be very important tools in your overall marketing strategy. Think about it: are potential customers going to remember the DuPage County attorneys who had links out to their social media pages or to the lawyers who did not? By allowing users to interact with your content in a more engaging way, engagement objects help turn your website into more of an “experience.”

Now that we’ve reviewed topics such as title tags, alt text and metadata in the Basics of Video Optimization, it is time to take a closer look at other elements of video optimization that require a bit more Internet knowledge. If you want to maximize the number of viewers for your video, link partners, a sitemap and a transcript of the video can all make your production more attractive to search engines.

Link partners

Incoming links from other sites leading back to your video will boost your video’s rank in search results. An incoming link to your video with anchor text—the text a viewer clicks on to go to your video—using a particular search term will tell search engines that other sites consider your video a worthwhile link for that term. For example, a link partner who points to an attorney’s video with an anchor term like “Dallas construction accident attorney” will be noticed by search engines as a worthy source of information about such attorneys. Links on large, established sites will enhance your results more than links from smaller sites, but links on multiple smaller sites may be easier to achieve than a link on a major site.

Video sitemaps

Video sitemaps help ensure that search engines can pick up your actual video and not just the page where you have placed it. These sitemaps enable search engines to pick up information regarding the full range of what your video offers to viewers searching for a particular subject matter. A sitemap for your videos should include your video files, along with titles, descriptions, the play page URL, thumbnail images and the raw file location for the video.

Transcripts

While search engines can pick up titles and descriptions of videos, they cannot index your video’s actual content. You can, however, present your video’s content in a form that can be indexed by providing a text transcript of the video. Plenty of services offer transcription if you do not want to do it yourself. Posting a transcript directly on your site can also increase the site’s keywords that a search engine can capture. “Transcripts on the Web: Getting People to Your Podcasts and Videos” further extols the many benefits of offering transcripts of your law firm videos online.

Interested in learning more about how you can optimize your law firm video? Check out “Important Factors to Consider for Video Optimization” on BestLawyerVideos.com.

When it comes to showing videos on the web, law firms must make sure their videos can be found to be seen by the users. Properly optimized videos receive higher placement on search results. This makes them more likely to be seen, which in turn makes it more likely the firm will be able to sell their services to potential clients and reassure current clients that their firm will work hard to get them the results they deserve.

Video titles

Let’s take a law firm that specializes in personal injury cases, for example. The law firm will want to give its video a title that will help increase its visibility online by targeting their geographic area, their main area of practice and any other keywords a potential client may use to search for their services. If there is room, incorporating persuasive or memorable text may appeal to the viewer—once they find the law firm’s video— and make them more likely to choose that law firm over any other firm.

Alt text

Including alt text for the video is another important element of video optimization. In this example, the alt text for this hypothetical personal injury law firm’s video could be “Let our Clearwater accident lawyer fight for your rights.” This includes a keyword phrase that focuses on a specific geographic area and type of service, and gives search engine spiders a clue as to what the video’s focus is on. It also appeals to the emotional needs of the viewer, reassuring them that the law firm will handle their case with the utmost dignity and respect.

Metadata

Similarly, another simple way to optimize a law firm video and target a particular audience is by including keywords in the video’s metadata. Optimizing the metadata impacts the HTML of the file and can be read by the search engine’s spiders.

To learn more about elements of video optimization regarding the placement of videos on different websites, video formats, and video quality and length, check out “Important Factors to Consider for Video Optimization” on BestLawyerVideos.com.