From Google's Technology Overview page:

Google Co-founder Larry Page once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” We can’t claim that Google delivers on that vision 100 percent today, but we’re always working on new technologies aimed at bringing all of Google closer to that ideal.

And while many search engine optimizers study how Google works to deliver perfect search results, you don't need to be Rand Fishkin to understand some basics about how you can help Google deliver perfect results. In fact, if we apply Larry Page's perfect search engine definition to websites, it might go something like this:

The perfect website is something that understands exactly what the site's visitors (that it is designed to attract) want and gives them exactly what they want.

Obviously, understanding exactly what your visitors want and delivering that to them, is a great challenge. But focusing on this single aim is likely to have the most dramatic impact on improving your visibility in search results, as well as, converting more visitors into clients.

Who Is Searching For The Perfect Law Firm Website?

Before we get to what your visitors want, it's worth thinking about who your visitors are. If you're an injury lawyer, it might seem logical that your visitors are injury victims. And if you're a criminal defense attorney, you might assume that it's people that have been investigated and/or charged with a crime. And these are most certainly some of the people (and in fact some of the most targeted visitors in terms of becoming new clients) that might visit your website. But if you stop there, you are probably not considering a wide variety of other visitors that are visiting your website.

The perfect law firm website takes into consideration all the different people that might visit your website. Here are a few to think about:

• Journalists
• Other Lawyers
• Law Professors
• Legal Bloggers
• Law Students
• Judges
• Jurors

From planning, to design, to development, to management, these people should be foremost in your mind when launching a new website. And in order to work toward publishing the perfect law firm website, you also need to give these visitors what they want.

What Do The Visitors of The Perfect Law Firm Website Want?

Understanding what your visitors want, is probably the most challenging aspect to Internet strategy. You need to get some idea of how your visitors use the Internet and what they are looking for. Obviously, if you're an injury attorney, you might expect that they would go to Google and search for "personal injury lawyer." And the truth is that they do. However, this directory-style searching is by no means the only way that people might use the Internet to find an injury lawyer.

In fact, they might not even be thinking about finding a lawyer at all. Instead, they might be researching how they will pay their medical bills. Or perhaps they are looking for answers about their insurance policy. Or maybe they are the parent, family member, or friend of an injured person and they are researching more information about the injury. Does your website provide them the answers that they are looking for?

The perfect law firm website should strive to provide the information and answers, for which the visitors that it is designed to attract, are searching.

How Do I Build The Perfect Law Firm Website?

Which brings us to the central question. And here is the answer: Listen.

Listen to your clients. What questions are they asking? What problems are they trying to solve? Listen to your colleagues. What issues are they facing? What questions are they asking? Listen to relevant legal bloggers. Listen to journalists that cover topics that impact your practice. Listen to your state bar. Listen to what writers in various legal publications are talking about. Listen to your online social networks. Listen to your web analytics data. How are your visitors finding you? Where are they looking for you? What searches are they performing to find you?

And once you've listened, spend the majority of your effort on publishing helpful information and answers.