Why Online Law Firm Marketing Can’t Wait
Patience may be a virtue, but it is new cases that keep your law firm growing; and waiting for someone to stumble onto an older website is not going to help your firm achieve those goals.
A common mistake made by many law firms is pushing their website and online legal marketing strategies to the back of their priorities. By doing this, the law firm loses a lot of exposure and potential clients.
Everyday, people and businesses go online – not to the phone book – to look for a lawyer. In every major city and in every practice area, thousands of searches flock to Google and other searches engines to seek legal counsel.
To show you how important it is to begin quickly, we ran a search count in several major metro areas in different corners of the United States. The number represents the number of searches Google received for that keyphrase each month. It’s an approximation provided by Google.
Miami divorce attorney – 1,600
Seattle personal injury – 6,600
Boston bankruptcy lawyer – 1,700
Houston criminal defense – 12,000
Los Angeles immigration lawyer – 3,600
As you can see, the traffic is out there and if your website can’t be found or if it doesn’t look its best, your firm is missing out on new cases.
Keep in mind, search engine optimization does not happen overnight so beginning a strong online law firm marketing campaign soon is imperative to the success of your firm in 2010.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and attorney websites visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
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Simplicity Meets Attorney Optimization
An exciting part of what we do is designing new websites and re-branding law firms. It’s a lot of fun. It’s in this area of law firm marketing that we get to be the most creative as we strive to exceed what we’ve done in the past.
In our Tampa office, we have a constant arm wrestling tournament between the designers and the search engine optimization and writing team. The designers want clean designs, a few crisp images, and “Apple like” simplicity. The search engine optimization group is also a big fan of simplicity, but not so much with images; they want text.
The result is always a clean design with adequate room for plain text to be optimized, though text placement is something done by the designers with an almost querulous tone. Ultimately both sides are pleased and the client is always happy with the end product.
Does it have to be a battle between the designers and word warriors? Not really because people and search engines both want to see the same thing. When you are searching for something, you want easy-to-read text on a white background. You want a navigation menu that is direct and to the point. You also don’t want to interpret clever slogans.
Clever slogans? That’s our next stop on the simplicity highway.
We were talking to a semi-competitor that specializes in imagination. They’re a consulting group that helps companies come up with completely out-of-the-box methods of getting the word out regarding their products and services. They could not figure out why they were getting so much traffic, yet very few contact requests.
When a visitor would land on their well-designed website, they would see a lot of information, examples, and everything was pretty much in line with web layout and design standards. However, rather than having an intuitive button that said, “Get a Quote” or “Contact Us,” they had a button that read “Imagine!”
Clearly, people going to their website were not in the mood to learn somebody’s corporate culture lingo, so visitors interested in getting a quote were even less interested in using their imagination.
The moral of this week’s article is that simplicity can work for everybody. Branding can play nicely with design. Designers and search engine optimization specialists can work together to present SEO friendly text in the center of a crisp website, and the end user can clearly navigate the website to discover the exact information for which they are looking.
That translates into a professional image for your law firm and, most importantly, new cases on your desk.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
Improving Your Law Firm Marketing with Headers
There are two sides to marketing your law firm website with search engine optimization. The first is onsite optimization. These are the changes made so your website’s tags and content clearly reflect your most popular keyphrases.
The second part is link building. This is the process of getting third party websites (not affiliated with your own) to link to your website.
This week, we are going to focus on the first part: onsite search engine optimization.
A very simple modification you can make to your law firm’s website to help its search engine optimization is to include keyphrases in the header tags.
Your website’s header tags are assigned as H1, H2, and H3. You can continue to H6, but the top three are the most important. In November 2008’s Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, Google talks about why headers are so important.
“Since heading tags typically make text contained in them larger than normal text on the page, this is a visual cue to users that this text is important and could help them understand something about the type of content underneath the heading text. Multiple heading sizes used in order create a hierarchical structure for your content, making it easier for users to navigate through your document.”
With the goal of onsite search engine optimization being to make your law firm’s website look good to both users and the search engines, header tags are an easy way to accomplish both.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
Quiet Departures Simplify Reputation Management
While most online reputation management problems are started by unhappy customers, old business relationships, or mishaps that make it to the public eye; other reputation management problems are caused by employees.
When getting ready to dismiss an employee, you should quietly begin changing access codes to online databases, profiles, and email accounts that the soon to be removed employee has access. A disgruntled employee can take a mailing list of clients and prospects and potentially ruin the good name of your organization.
They can also distribute trade secrets which can ultimately get in the hands of your competitors. While non-disclosures may hold in court, the possible compensation received from an employee does not match the damages caused by their actions.
So quietly sever the ties and remove access power before the notice. Taking a few simple preliminary steps can save your company a great deal of reputation management problems.
To learn more about online reputation management or reputation management, visit EBadPress.com or call 1.800.998.6005.
Law Firm Marketing on Autopilot
Perhaps the most intimidating factor of marketing your law firm’s website is the belief that you don’t have the time to do it. If you are like most attorneys, this is true; you really do not have the time to market your website.
Some legal marketing companies offer website templates which you log into and build. Then, you have to build links to your website and perhaps manage a blog. Save yourself time and headaches by working with a company that will put your law firm marketing on autopilot.
If you are going to embark on a journey through law firm marketing quotes, then here are some questions to ask your prospective legal marketing company:
1) Website – If the company is going to build your website, always ask for examples. Have them show you fully functional websites that have been custom built. Cookie cutter websites and template designs do not convert traffic to new cases. To convert your web traffic into new cases, you must have a quality law firm website with web 2.0 standards and marketing/branding techniques built-in.
2) Search Engine Optimization – Ask your prospective legal marketing company for websites they have optimized. You should ask specifically for examples of small sole practitioner firms. Larger law firms may pay the company to do additional search engine marketing that is not included in the plan they are proposing for you. If a company can get sole practicing attorneys on the first page with a modest budget, then they can get any law firm ranked on the first page.
3) Content – Getting ranked on the first page of Google and other search engines involves link building. The best way to do that is by writing and distributing press releases, articles, blog entries, and social networks. Your law firm marketing company should handle all of this and only require you to review written content.
By working with a legal marketing company such as SEOLawFirm.com, your law firm’s search marketing success can be put on autopilot and become an asset to your firm rather than a time liability.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
Reputation Management – Addressing the Bad News
We often talk about the importance of staying silent when your company is faced with a reputation management problem. The more you talk about it, the more content on the web exists that links to the online reputation management issue.
However, sometimes a problem is so large, widespread, and common knowledge that it may be appropriate to address the bad news publicly.
For example, an officer in your organization is publicly accused (and likely guilty) of unethical practices. Several newspapers, blogs, and reputable media sources have all run stories on your organization and this unethical officer.
At this level, you cannot just sweep the reputation management problem under the rug, it is best to address it. The best way to do so is by publicly dismissing the officer from the organization, with a message from the board on policies in place to prevent it from happening again.
However, if the mainstream media has not yet picked up on the story, we still maintain that silence and quiet “rug sweeping” is the best way to solve the reputation management problem.
To learn more about online reputation management or reputation management, visit EBadPress.com or call 1.800.998.6005.
Legal Marketing After SEO
Last week we talked about the importance of onsite law firm search engine optimization. As you recall, SEO is the process in which your law firm’s website is optimized with keyphrases, which are included in title tags, meta tags, image tags, and properly displayed in your website content. Now that your website is optimized, it’s time to truly begin legal marketing.
When it comes to marketing your law firm’s website, the goal is always centered around links. The more quality websites linking to your website, the higher quality Google sees your website content as being. So, how do we build link?
Press Releases
Press releases go out across (primarily online) newswires which then syndicate content through places like Google News, Yahoo News, the Law Firm Chronicle, etc. When your law firm’s press releases are syndicated, the link to your website is also syndicated; thus increasing your inbound link population. We recommend at least two press releases each month which your legal marketing company’s writers should supply.
Articles
Articles work much like press releases; however, press releases are all about your law firm and articles are strictly informative. Generally, your law firm’s name is never mentioned in the body of the article only in the author credit footer. In the footer, we are able to link to your website using keyphrases. So a divorce lawyer in Boston would have this keyphrase, “Boston divorce lawyer” linking to the law firm’s website. Just like press release, we recommend at least two articles be written each month.
Articles serve a double purpose because they are also used in the social networking and blogging aspect of your legal marketing plan.
We will go into detail on blogs and social networks in next week’s issue.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
SEO Before Legal Marketing
The online legal marketing process consists of two primary goals, search engine optimization that occurs on the law firm’s website and link building that takes place off the law firm website.
Often times, the term search engine optimization is used to explain all aspects of web marketing. Actually, search engine optimization only occurs on the website. The optimization process takes care of the following:
Tags – Your websites title tags, keyword meta tags, description meta tags, and image/alternate text tags should all use your keyphrases with consistency, but without overusing them to the extent they appear as spam. An image tag is a text tag that is associated with a picture. If you have a picture of a car, Google cannot see the car so you tell them what is in the picture by using alternate text. For optimization purposes, we include keyphrases to describe the image content.
Content – Using your keyphrases in the actual content of the website is also very important. Positioning keyphrases in key areas of paragraphs and pages, while making them sensible, will also make a great difference in your overall relevancy.
Navigation – Google needs to be able to find your website’s subpages. To make sure they can do that, navigation optimization is necessary. Basic techniques like textual sitemaps, XML sitemaps, and textual links to substitute image/flash/java buttons will allow Google, and other search engines, to easily crawl your law firm website.
So your website is optimized, but what happens next? That is when we begin legal marketing after search engine optimization, which we will explain next week.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
Designing Your Legal Marketing Strategy
We often talk about the importance of a website’s design in reference to website conversion. So how does a law firm get a non-effective design? Easy, get a template.
Yes, template or cookie cutter law firm websites are on the rise and this is a serious problem. Unless your firm is located in a proverbial “one horse town” where you are the town’s lone lawyer, you have competition.
Visually setting yourself apart from the competition is probably the easiest way to jump-start a branded law firm. If your law firm’s website is a cookie cutter site that looks like any common attorney’s website, you are telling your visitors that your firm is just that – common.
A custom design is just one piece of the branding puzzle. Your logo, letterhead, and website should all work together to convey your law firm’s professional image.
Just remember, money spent on a cookie cutter design is money burned.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
Why Your Legal Marketing Is Failing
There are many reasons why a law firm’s website may not be getting visitors or converting visitors to new cases. Conversion is a law firm web design problem. If the information your visitors see is not attractive or does not encourage them to contact your law firm, you should consider a redesign.
When attempting to attract visitors to your website, the number one cause of failure is inconsistency. As I mentioned in the last week’s Law Firm Marketing Weekly, consistency is the key to a successful search engine marketing campaign.
Writing an occasional article or press release every 3-4 months is simply not enough. On a monthly and sometimes weekly basis, you need new content on the web in blogs, social networks, newswires, articles, resources, and directories. It is an ongoing process with search engine optimization success in the near distance.
So, if your website is not bringing in new cases, the problem may very well be a simple lack of consistency, which is easily remedied by a professional legal marketing company such as SEOLawFirm.com.
To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.
