Search

An SEO glossary

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. This glossary explains all the terms relevant to that practice and more generally to website development. There are many more useful articles on these topics on the Hallam Blog. 301 Redirect – […]

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Right to be forgotten on Google only applies in EU

Much has been written about the problems surrounding permanence of data once it has been uploaded to the internet – whether it’s a misjudged Twitter comment by a politician from 10 years ago, or a risqué photo from bacchanalian university days which emerges when someone is looking for a job. The difficulty of erasure impinges […]

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The building blocks for more intelligent legal research

We live in a world of facial recognition, genome sequencing, and automatic fraud detection. You can talk to your phone out loud have it translate your words into any language you like. Your car can drive itself (almost …). That is to say – the machines are getting clever. Very clever indeed. Tasks previously thought […]

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Getting the best from GOV.UK

The Government has been transitioning its published web data to the GOV.UK platform over the last few years. Since the move of departmental websites over to GOV.UK, which completed in December 2014, documents and information have become increasingly hard to find. Collections of information on certain topics that previously could be browsed on departmental websites […]

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Google’s mobile-friendly updates

Google has rolled out another significant update to its algorithm, the rules it uses to determine the rankings of websites in the search results. The “mobile-friendly” update went live on 21 April of this year, and it is designed to give a boost to mobile-friendly web pages in the Google mobile search results. More than […]

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SEO: law and good practice

Humans love miracles. Even if you don’t believe that Jesus turned water into wine or fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, miracle cures still attract many. The 19th century gave us snake oil salesmen whose products could cure all ills. Even today people still believe in losing weight through taking obscure supplements, […]

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Who links to my site?

With webmasters and site owners talking about the signals that links are sending to Google about their website, it is very important to know who is linking to you. We find that many business owners do not know how to check the links to their website and often do not even know that they can […]

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Long tail SEO for law firms

As reliance on the internet becomes ever more prevalent and Google is considered to be more of an authority on all matters than ever before, reaching the upper echelons of search engine rankings is of paramount importance to legal firms. The competition is high but the attractive Google real estate is extremely limited so implementing […]

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Getting local in search

The internet may be global, but for many firms of solicitors their most desirable customers are right on the doorstep in the local area and their potential customers are using the internet to find a local legal services provider. Google reports that more than 20 per cent of all searches have local intention, 92 per […]

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Google Hummingbird takes flight

As the world’s most popular search engine celebrated its 15th anniversary in September 2013, it revealed a new search algorithm named Hummingbird. According to the head of search at Google, Amit Singhal, Hummingbird represents the most dramatic change to Google search for over a decade. Google has been reluctant to disclose any specifics of the […]

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A solicitor’s eye view of SEO

In December 2007 I finally decided I knew enough about my chosen field to open up my own firm, Driving Defences LLP. My partner, Philip Trotter, and I, opened the door and waited for the work to flow in. I made my website as good as I could, plastered my phone number all over it […]

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Guide to SEO for law firms

This article is intended as a step-by-step guide to optimising your website from a Search Engine Optimisation point of view (SEO) – in other words, how to be “found” by the major search engines and given a good position in the results page. Let’s suppose that your law firm has offices in Swindon, Wiltshire and […]

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