The lawyer wanted our help with search engine optimization. She’s looking for someone to “optimize” her site. She thought we might have someone to suggest.

She gave us the address for her site. We took a look just to see what might be involved before pointing her in the right direction.

The site, a very attractive site with a nice picture of her, wasn’t going to be easy to optimize. It wasn’t going to rise in the rankings. It’s not going to capture the attention of people looking for her kind of legal help in her geographic area.

Why?

Because there’s no there there. The site has almost no content. It’s lacking in substance.

“But I’ve got content,” she said.

Um, sorry, you don’t. Three or four paragraphs on a page about child custody isn’t going to cut it today. Four hundred words on the concept of “best interests” of the child followed by a call to action (Call Lawyer X now) isn’t going to grab the attention of Google. Nope, not gonna do it.

What about doing something different?

What Is Meaningful Content?

What about this idea?

How about we produce a page that makes a difference in the life of the reader? How about—kaboom—we do something powerful, useful, important, and meaningful?

What if you produce a page with 7,000 words on child custody? What if those words provided the most valuable advice on custody that could be written? What if that article were the best article ever written on the topic? What if it were the best in the world?

What if we made it look nice by breaking it up with headings, subheadings, bulleted lists, numbered lists, pull-out quotes, and images? What if it were easy to scan, browse, or read?

Would others refer people to the article? Yep. Would people mention it on Facebook? Sure. Would public libraries link to it as a resource? Definitely. Would college professors link to it from their syllabus? Absolutely.

Would you need a search engine optimizer to help that page rank on Google? Nope.

The lawyers most interested in search engine optimization services almost always have the least content. It’s tough to optimize pages without substance. It’s tough to get Google to pay attention when the page helps no one other than you.

You want to get optimized? Then create something worth optimizing.