In speaking with attorneys about search engine optimization, we’ve received thousands of questions about the process. Many want to know what exactly it is, how it’s done, what works and what doesn’t. In discussing the necessity for high-quality information, many attorneys are quick to question how the search engines are actually able to crawl each website and decipher good information from subpar content. Once we had an attorney comment that Google must employ millions of web surfers to do this well.

Over the past few years, as a number of open-source platforms like WordPress have become more popular, the use of content management systems (CMS) has become more prevalent in the legal industry. This software varies greatly in terms of capability; some are very basic allowing website owners to simply edit a few core pages while others give a webmaster full management capabilities with the option to add or delete pages and even do more advanced tasks like manage upcoming events or an e-newsletter distribution list.

Each year, Google makes hundreds of algorithm updates, many of which go undetected and have a relatively minor impact on a very small number of sites. In the past few weeks, however, Google rolled out Penguin 3.0 which was both a data refresh and an algorithm update; this update is expected to have impacted a much larger number of sites across the globe. Much like the earlier versions of Penguin, this update looks to further penalize sites with spammy backlinks.

Many attorneys invest thousands of dollars in search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns in an attempt to improve their ranking in the search engine results and increase their firms’ visibility on the web. On several occasions, we’ve written about black hat techniques that are often employed by SEO consultants; while these strategies may produce quick results, once they are discovered by the search engines, the consequences can be devastating to a firm’s online presence resulting in the ultimate penalty – having your website deindexed.

Last year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced nearly 1,300 new Top Level Domains that are being released throughout 2014.  In the world of online marketing, there has been much discussion surrounding these new internet properties and how they will impact websites and SEO.