It is widely documented that web users are increasingly using search engines as a path to access relevant information. As more information becomes accessible on the internet, business people need a simple and accurate way of finding what they want. These requirements may be for research, for finding goods, services or even trading partners and suppliers. The internet has become an integral part of modern business communications and this raises the question of how much attention your business pays to ensuring that its content is properly accessible to search engines.

During the past few years I have noticed that many legal businesses – particularly barristers' chambers – have been slow to ensure that they gain good visibility for their websites. Much of the focus in the sector has been on getting information out there, through development of a website. There is a misconception that a website creation allows immediate communication to a global audience. Unfortunately, in today's competitive world, that is not enough. People need to find you and increasingly they are relying on search engines to provide them with accurate information. This misconception can be an expensive one, as the return on investment achieved from the development of a website is proportional to the number of people visiting the site. The logical next step for the legal sector is to ensure that they maintain a high profile on the search engines, encouraging qualified visits by people looking for specific goods and services in which they specialise.

The beauty of search engine marketing is that, if applied intelligently, companies can advertise specifically to people looking for services provided by the organisation. This typically delivers a better return on advertising spend than more generic advertising.

Consider a set that specialises in aviation law. Advertising in search engines on the term 'aviation law solicitors' or 'aviation law barristers' is likely to offer a higher yield than more traditional advertising routes, as you are only paying for advertising to people who are interested in aviation law services.

These factors combined present an opportunity for chambers to take a structured approach to search engine optimisation, thereby dominating certain search terms that relate to specific practice areas or people. This leads to qualified visits by people online looking for these services. Pupils and law students are increasingly encouraged to use online search engines to research placements. An added benefit is the perceptions of these user groups when doing their research.

There are two main ways to gain visibility on the search engines. One is through paid-for search (results that appear on the right-hand side of computer screens). This consists of the search engines charging you for every click on a link that is displayed on a particular keyword when search is performed. Google has set up a marketplace where people bid money for positioning on certain search terms. When you bid, you appear, when you stop bidding, you disappear. You can start off with as little as you like and see if the particular terms are profitable.

The other way is the natural or organic search results on the left-hand side of search results. Bear in mind that for Google to exist, it needs to deliver credible (and valuable) search results. That is why most of us now prefer Google. Search engines have developed sophisticated algorithms whereby they can calculate how best to rank search results. Getting into these natural search results list is not as simple as handing your cash over to the search engine, it takes a more considered approach, but the benefits of a successful strategy are significant and can be summarised as follows.

Firstly, online users are becoming more savvy in terms of their consumption of search engine media. They are realising that the results on the right-hand side of search results pages are sponsored. This means that they may bear no real relation to the information they actually seek. I have seen a more considered use of media on search engines emerge. People are not just blindly clicking search results, they are considering more before clicking, and there is a trend that users are increasingly able to discern between paid-for and natural search results. Indeed, tracking search marketing from click to conversion shows that natural search delivers consistently better returns.

Second, the natural search results have a degree of longevity. Once you achieve a good search engine listing on particular terms, your position remains and your returns on investment can typically be calculated over a much longer period of time.

And finally, click volumes on natural search are much higher than pay-per-click search.

Achieving results in a natural search is not a black art and it is all very logical. However, there are no shortcuts to achieving results and much of the work is time-consuming and can be quite tedious. Work on a natural search takes time. The approach, however, is extremely structured and logical. It is best to get started sooner rather than later as it takes at least three months before results are achieved. Given the labour-intensive nature of the approach (search engines have identified and screened out all known automated techniques) it is typically not always the best use of your time and a task best suited to outsourcing to a specialist.

Search engine optimisation ideally needs to be fully considered when embarking on the website build to ensure that the completed site is geared to getting good results. It is a benefit to considering this before launching your website so that a search engine-friendly structure can be built first time. Alternatively, you will launch your site, only to revisit the structure and the content after it has been completed, which is not the best use of resource. Ideally, it should be done properly, from the outset to minimise costs.

Make sure that your website designers are specialists in search or get them to work with a company that is. Many companies claim to be specialists in search but are barely scratching the surface of requirements so make sure they are able to show proper case studies of the results they have achieved for clients with an explanation of how they were achieved.

The key areas to look out for can be summarised as follows:

- be clear about which keywords you wish to target. This is where most companies go wrong – they guess the keywords that are best to optimise for, without considering alternatives. Proper quantitative analysis should dictate the best keywords to pursue;

- make sure that the site is structurally sound. There are more than 100 on-site factors that determine how the site will be indexed. Few of these factors are make or break but they each contribute to the total rank weighting your site achieves. These elements include things such as title tags, description tags, image tags, the domain, external javascript calls, avoiding frames, adding site maps, structuring page and file names with relevant keywords and making sure that the pages of the site interlink well (including adding keywords in the link that is displayed) among others;

- ensure that the content of the site is aligned to the keywords that have been selected. This means ensuring that your keyword densities on pages are optimal, therefore optimising your keyword-to-content ratios and hyperlinking between different parts of the site. Make sure each page of your site has content optimised for a few keywords on which you aim to achieve results; and

- spread the word and get sites speaking about you. One of the most important measures that search engines place on how they ultimately rank a site is about how many online properties are speaking about you. Search engines give sites an 'importance weighting'. It stands to reason that when the search engine spiders are indexing sites online, and when they see a site that is spoken about on other websites, particularly in the same sector, that the site must be an important online destination. Much like in the real world, if a company is in the press all the time, people typically have a higher regard for the company.

So, how do you get sites speaking about you? Short of begging them to speak about you, the quickest and fairest way is to pay them for their time. Remember, for them to 'speak about you' they actually have to place a link on their website which takes time and effort. If your site is a credible destination, a payment for the inconvenience of changing their site is typically the best way to get them speaking about you.

Success with search engines can add significantly to companies' bottom lines. I have worked with many companies that have had such success with search engine returns that this search is now the focus of their marketing strategies, rather than being one component. However, success in this space is a moving target as the search engines continuously change their algorithms. The work is best suited to specialists who are in a position to understand the impact of different algorithm changes and offer this intelligence to clients to enable best results. n