By Elijah Fayerman
SEO at Law

1. Retrieve your current title and description from Google

The simplest way to check what your page looks like in search engine results pages (SERP) is to use the [ site: ] operator. Google allows you to specify that your SERP must come from a given website. For example, the query [ legal marketing site:nysba.org ] will return pages related to legal marketing but only from nysba.org.  (See Google search basics: More search help).

Note: For Yahoo! users, simply enter the full URL of the target page, including the [ http:// ] part, otherwise you will see the following: “Tip: Your “site:/domain:” query has been redirected to Site Explorer. You can continue to use normal web search for other queries.”

For purposes of this tutorial, we will query un-optimized version of “Contact SEO at Law”:

[ site:seoatlaw.com/contact-seo-for-lawyers ]

2. Analyse and optimize the title

How many characters, including spaces and punctuation, should be in the title? According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the title should ideally be less than 64 characters in length. While it is true that in certain situations Google can display up to 71 characters, longer titles will often be automatically truncated in SERP. The general rule is, if Google displays an ellipsis (3 dots) at the end of your title, your title is too long.

As you see from the first query above, “Contact SEO at Law – SEO at Law” is too short and is not too descriptive. Therefore, (1) You need to make sure your page title gives Google additional information about the content of the page. (2) Keep the title useful enough to help users decide whether to click on your page in the SERP. (3) Follow the proper title and description length guidelines.

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Below are some of the titles that I think will work well with seoatlaw.com/contact-seo-for-lawyers

1. “Contact New York based SEO services for free evaluation and pricing“ (67 characters)
   
2. “Contact New York SEO consultants for law firm & legal marketing“ (63)
3. “NY Search Engine Optimization: Free Consultation & Price List” (61)

Note: Your choice of keywords will depend on your page content. In my example, keywords in bold directly relate to the content found on seoatlaw.com/contact-seo-for-lawyers. That is, any of the three titles above (1) indicate that SEO at Law is headquartered in New York, and (2) hint at why someone would want to contact SEO at Law (i.e. price list, free consultation, etc.),  The word “Contact” is not an essential keyword, but is “useful enough to help users decide whether to click on your page in SERP”.

3. Analyse and optimize the description

Drafting an effective meta description is similar to drafting a statement of issue in a legal memo. Remember from law school, “a well crafted issue informs the reader of the scope of the memo by identifying in one sentence the precise legal question raised by the key facts of the case.” (Legal Research, Analysis and Writing, William H. Putman). While the meta description need not be limited to a single sentence or be in sentence format, include clearly tagged facts in the description. Create descriptions that accurately describe each specific page.

How many characters, including spaces and punctuation, should be in the description? You should not really worry about that number. Even W3C doesn’t specify the size of the description meta tag. At the time of this writing, a quick test in Google revealed some gigantic titles up to 318 characters (see below). Generally, keep the description under 160 characters long, whether you work with Google, Yahoo! or Bing.

Below are some of the titles that I think will work well with seoatlaw.com/contact-seo-for-lawyers

1. “Free website evaluation by New York‘s Internet marketing experts. See our Search Engine
   Optimization price list. SEO at Law provides online marketing for legal professionals and law firms.” (188 characters)
2. “Contact our New York based company for Search Engine Optimization of your law firm or
   solo practice website. Request a free evaluation and our price list.” (154)
3. “SEO at Law is based in Manhattan, New York. Contact us for free evaluation and price list.
   Why outsource in India if you can pay the same in your own homeland.” (159 — This would be a great title if it matched the page content.)

Again, the words in bold show what I think a potential Google user will be searching for in order to get to my contact form. At the same time, I am trying to “inform the reader of the scope” of the web page; namely that the target page contains contact details of some SEO company located in New York.

3. Final result

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