There are many things about the Google AdWords platform that I just don't understand - things that seem to make it harder for the advertiser to maximize the performance of his campaigns. One example of this is the way the AdWords program treats keywords with capital letters. The same keyword can be considered distinct if it is typed with different capitalization. Here is an example:

law firm marketing

Law Firm Marketing

These two words would be considered different keywords. This may not seem all that significant, but we have found that Google seems to favor keywords that are all lower case by awarding them with higher quality scores. So if you have two versions of the same keyword, you may be charged a higher click cost because of a lower quality score. Can I guarantee this will happen? Nope. But why take chances? Especially when you are dealing with an expensive advertising category like legal services.

Another problem with having multiple versions of the same keywords in your ad groups is that your AdWords account can become needlessly unmanageable. Accounts that are fine-tuned to the best (and smallest) set of keywords are much easier to manage.

This is just one example of how something that seems very insignificant can have an impact on your overall paid search account performance. It is important to pay attention to the details. The difference between a quality score of 5 and a quality score of 10 can represent a significant amount of money that could be used to acquire more leads for your law firm.

Got questions? Feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm keyword research, law firm marketing, law firm search engine marketing, legal marketing, paid search, ppc

Content distribution as a search engine marketing technique has many benefits: it spreads your brand, it establishes your credibility, it generates keyword links (thus helping improve search engine rankings), and it even drives some direct traffic. The downside is that it can be a real drag. You, as the reader of this blog looking to promote his own legal web site, have a real advantage over me, the Internet marketer charged with writing articles on dozens of different subjects. You already know a lot about what you are writing about. However, that does not mean that it is never necessary for you to do some research, especially when trying to crank out articles for marketing purposes. So what follows is a strategy that will help anyone research topics and find material that can be used to write articles quicker.

The first place most people start is by searching Google. But you definitely have to wade through a lot of irrelevant (or just very poor) material like that. However, we've recently discovered that Amazon.com can be an excellent research tool.

The key is to use Amazon's Look Inside feature. Look Inside allows you to search for and read passages from books in the Amazon catalog that contain specific keywords. You are only allowed to use this feature if you are a registered user on the site with an order history. So sign up for an account and go buy yourself something nice. Then you'll be good to go.

Start by doing a book search based on your primary keyword. Then, scroll through the list of returned results and find a book that has the "Click to LOOK INSIDE" logo on top of the book cover image. Those are the books that you can search. Click the book cover.

On the next screen, you will see a search box labeled "Search Inside This Book." Type your keyword in that box and perform another search. You will now be returned a list of links to passages in the book that contain the keyword. If you are a registered user with an order history, then clicking on the link will show you that passage.

Searching through a book like this will provide you with all kinds of information about a keyword from a real book written by a real expert, rather than marketing material written by amateurs.

Anyone can be a successful writer of online content for distribution if he takes the time to do his research. This process can be tedious, but using the best sources of information will make the process a whole lot easier. Content distribution is an outstanding law firm Internet marketing strategy that you should begin incorporating into your marketing plan today.

Labels: blog marketing, content distribution, law firm blog marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo

Due to some difficulty we are having getting started with one of our client's web sites, I wanted to take this time to reiterate the following:

Do not hire a search marketing company that does the following:

> Requires a ridiculously long-term contract that is basically for nothing more than putting the site up.

> Is promoting many of your competitors.

> Does not give you full control of the site.

Our client, who has a contractual web site obligation with one of the big companies in the legal marketing industry (initials "F.L."), has been told that the ability for him to modify his web site's page titles and meta tags has been "locked down."

So...you're not going to promote the site (you might say you are, but come on...), and you're not going to let me do the things I need to promote it?

That is a bad deal. Look, avoid the temptation to take the easy road by just hiring a company because you have heard the name or because the specialize in the legal industry. Hire a REAL SEO firm that knows what it is doing and will do everything it can to get YOUR site to the top.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, law firm seo, search engine optimization, seo

Blogging, micro-blogging and social networking can be an integrated process if you use the right tools. Integration, as intended here, means dynamically combining content from multiple sources into content for a third or more source.

How about an example?

I am Director of Marketing for a small law firm in Austin. I update my firm's blog every Tuesday and Thursday. A couple of times per day, I also update our Twitter account. At five minutes per tweet and about an hour per blog post, my weekly time investment is about three hours.

For those three hours, in our original configuration, I am just updating my blog and micro-blog periodically. However, I can get much better leverage on my time if I stream that content to different places, such as a Facebook page.

Using a tool like Ping.fm, I can configure my firm's Facebook status to update every time I update Twitter. Taking it a step further, I can use the Facebook Notes application to update my Facebook account every time I update my blog. Now I not only get my blog and Twitter account updated in a three hour time frame, I get my Facebook page updated as well.

We have left out one important component of Facebook, which is acquiring friends. So I may need some additional time to periodically log into Facebook and search for new friends. I could even automate that part using a tool like Facebook Blaster. I will still want to log into Facebook periodically and check on things.

Since I'm using Ping.fm, I could also choose to set up some more social media pages and have them update every time I update my blog. In this case, it will be important to separate blogs from update sites using groups. Otherwise, I will end up with a bunch of extremely short blog posts with no titles.

Assuming I just stick to one blog, a Twitter account, and a Facebook account, I can still merge the information created from two of them (my blog and Twitter) into my Facebook account, thus having a Facebook account that remains fairly active without requiring any additional work on my part.

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, facebook, internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer marketing, ping.fm

Yesterday Twitter blew up. From what I understand, there was a "spamcloud" (whatever that means), and in response, Twitter suspended many thousands of accounts of innocent users (including mine).

It goes without saying that this is very poor policy on Twitter's part, and the kind of thing that could kill the app. I think Twitter needs to keep in mind that there will be competitors come along to try and knock it down, and this kind of policy is the kind of thing that will hasten its demise.

Here is an important rule of Internet marketing that this episode highlights:

You should spend your time and resources promoting properties that you control.

Twitter owns your Twitter account. Do you own your Facebook account? Nope. Your LinkedIn account is not yours. You are at the mercy of those sites to stay in business and keep your account live.

A simple solution is to point your own custom domain names to your social media pages. For instance, if you have a Facebook Pages page, then you could register a domain name that point to that page. If Facebook goes down or just decides that it doesn't like you any more, then you can just repoint the domain name somewhere else. If you have promoted a particular domain, rather than the default page name, then you have control. Facebook owns you if you have spent all of your time promoting the default Facebook URL.

So be proactive. Do not let yourself be a victim to the whims of whatever social media sites you like to use. Spend your time optimizing and promoting your own web site, and use custom domains for promoting your social media pages. Then maybe you can avoid the next meltdown such as what happened with Twitter this weekend.

As always, get in touch with me if you need some help implementing an aggressive Internet marketing campaign for your law firm. Contact 888-299-4837 or www.WorkMedia.net.

And I invite you to check out my favorite Twitter management tool for free at www.TryTweetLater.com.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, legal marketing, social media, twitter

In Internet marketing, fast is the name of the game. Got an article? Don't just submit it to one article directory, submit it to a hundred. Don't do it manually, use software. Then turn it into a video and submit it to a bunch of video directories using video submission software.

And so it was with great excitement that I recently started trying out Article Video Robot. I absolutely LOVE the concept of this service. The idea is that you load a text articles into a web site that automatically reads portions of the text, which is then combined with animated static images to create a video from the article. You can even then mass distribute it from the same program. All in under three minutes! For busy professionals like lawyers who don't have much time to devote to Internet marketing, this is a fantastic strategy.

Great idea. It only it worked.

This is junk software for people creating junk content to try and make money on affiliate sales. For a business like a law firm, where reputation is very important, this software is to be avoided.

There is nothing wrong with the idea of creating videos by combining an audio voiceover with still images (it's a low tech technique that we use all the time), but transitions should be smooth, and the voiceover should sound somewhat professional. We found that a large amount of time was required to tweak the videos into respectability. Three minutes? Try three to six hours. The system is awkward to use, and in the end, it is quicker for us to just create videos manually, even using plain ol' Windows Movie Maker.

One of the main problems is that the computerized voice readings of article text tend to need a LOT of tweaking to sound reasonably human. The software gives you the option of recording your own voice for each “frame” (which corresponds to a paragraph of the text article) of the video. But by the time we do all that, it would have been just as fast to manually record an audio track and mix it with some still shots using our own software. Any video you create in three minutes using Article Video Robot will be trash.

The company claims to offer a trial period, but we were refused a refund even though we used the software less than two weeks. The stated reason is that we had done four video submissions (which was actually two videos, due to two failed attempts at using the system), which was too many for a refund. What I wonder is how we were supposed to thoroughly try the system out without actually creating and submitting videos.

I wish I had the time back that I spent trying to use this junk software. But a refund would have at least left me with the feeling that this is an honest company trying to create an honest product that just quite isn't there yet. Instead, I am left feeling like I got ripped off.

Article Video Robot is definitely not recommended for any law firm's use. If you want to use video distribution to promote your law firm, you should find another way to get it done. Or contact Work Media. We'll be glad to help out.

Labels: article distribution, article marketing, article video robot, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, legal marketing, video distribution, video marketing

In a blog post I recently wrote, I talked about how important it is to integrate your legal marketing efforts; blog to web site, offline to online, etc. Everything should fit together. I think one important strategy is using RSS to stream your blog content into the static pages of your web site. Sometimes it can be tricky to work out the code to make it happen, but it's a beautiful effect when your entire web site gets updated every time you make a new blog post. This can be especially helpful for law firms, since the business lends itself to content creation and blogging.

While Twitter is a fairly new concept to me personally, I am warming up to it and am exploring the idea of using streaming Twitter content to update web pages as you would blog content. While the code for streaming blog content can be tricky, Twitter makes it fairly simple. The first step is to log onto Twitter and then look at the bottom menu, where you will click the Apps link. Then click the Widgets link and select the type appropriate for your site. From here you can create an HTML widget or a Flash-based widget. Since the goal of this experiment is to have the text streamed to your web site, I feel like the HTML widget makes more sense. When using the Flash widget, you also have a greater chance of excluding some users from seeing the content if they do not have the correct version of Flash.

Next, you can just copy and past the supplied code into the pages of your web site. If your site uses include files, then you can easily stream your Twitter data throughout your site by including the widget code in an include file. On www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net, for example, the following include file wraps up the side menu:

#include virtual="leftside.asp"

By doing this, it enables you to change one file to update your entire site, instead of having to manually update every single page.

You may need to do some in-line CSS styling if the widget does not look quite right. As an example, I was not happy with the look of the bulleted lists of posts after I installed the widget, so I used the following style to depress the bullet point: style="list-style-type:none;".

There are other Twitter apps that I will talk about in later blog posts, but I advise you to take a look at the Twitter widget for the purpose of integrating Twitter content into your mainstream law firm Web content.

Need some help with integrating your social networking with your other online marketing? Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, legal marketing, social media, social networking, twitter

For most of the last week, I have had my head buried in a project that was inspired by some conversation on a LinkedIn group that I participate in. It was a programming-heavy project that required many hours of work. I had to pound on it until it was done.

But a funny thing happened during the six days (counting a weekend) that I spent working on it. I stopped promoting. I realized yesterday that I had not written a new blog post in several days...had not made a Twitter post in several days...I really had not done any promotion.

For a small business, promotion is existence. The business that doesn't promote itself, more often than not, is a business that goes out of business.

I am reminded of something said by one of my favorite marketing pros, Dan Kennedy. To paraphrase:

Do one thing every day to put business in your pipeline.

Every day, without exception, before you lay your head down for the night, do at least one thing to generate business. Send an email. Do a blog post. Post on a forum. Write a letter. Do something.

Have you done something today to generate business?

Need some help orchestrating your firm's internet marketing plan? We're here to help. Contact Work Media at info@workmedia.net or call 888-299-4837.

Labels: internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, legal marketing, marketing

Probably not many legal marketers reading this are actively using StumbleUpon, and that could be a mistake. The site displays random sites submitted by other users based on your interests. I doubt many legal marketers really have time to just sit and watch random web sites appear. However, where StumbleUpon becomes useful is in submitting web pages of your own into the StumbleUpon system to be seen by others. StumbleUpon is very popular and has the potential to put your web site in front of a lot of eyeballs.

There is one caveat: you must create the appearance of being an active user, and not just a marketer trying to get your site in front of people. Follow these rules and your "stumbling" will be more effective.

Make sure you set up a good profile with a nice photo. Failing to set up a good profile will emphasize that you are a marketer only looking to promote your own web site, rather than a part of the community.

Every time you submit a site, take the time to provide a well-written description and appropriate tags.

When another user recommends your site, send that person a personal message.

Only submitting your own web pages makes you look like a spamming marketer. Recommend enough other web sites that it is not clear that you are trying to promote a particular site of your own. Try to submit sites that you think other people would really be interested in.

For your pages to receive maximum exposure, they should be strong enough for other people to recommend. The pages you submit should therefore be light on fluff and heavy on value or usefulness. Pages that do nothing but try to sell your services will likely receive few recommendations. The more approval you get from people who see your site, the more visibility you will have in the StumbleUpon system.

StumbleUpon also has its own advertising platform that allows you to pay to have your site displayed to users in a particular category. There is a legal category. Impressions in StumbleUpon cost a nickel each. That may sound expensive, but it is actually a good value because an "impression" in StumbleUpon means someone is actually viewing your web site, rather than an ad for your web site.

I am currently working on a new book specifically about this type of thing, but in the meantime I recommend you check out The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book on Amazon.com for more Internet marketing strategies for law firms.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, law firm seo, legal marketing, stumbleupon

The economy is lousy. Businesses of all types are laying people off or going out of business. Unless you are one of the luck recipients of a huge undeserved bonus, chances are you are not doing as well as you were a year ago. So now is no time to be spending your marketing funds on search engine optimization, right?

No way!

This is the time to INCREASE the amount of resources you devote to search engine marketing and optimization (SEO). There is always going to be some lag time (sometimes substantial) between the time that SEO is done and when you see results. So position yourself NOW to dominate in the future.

The economy will eventually improve. The percentage of the population (and thus your target market) that uses search engines to find businesses, including law firms, is going to continue to rise. The number of firms competing for the top spots is only going to increase. Do you want to be the aggressor, and increase your search engine visibility, or do you want to the be the firm that waits for a “better time,” only making it more difficult to catch up in the future?

So maybe you're already the top-ranked site in Google for a search of your market and services. You can just cruise along, right?

Hell no!

It is highly likely that there are firms being aggressive right now, optimizing their sites and generating impressive inbound link catalogs. If you stop, you will get passed. Avoid complacency. Keep building your link catalog. Keep blogging and distributing content. You can bet some of your competitors are.

Don't wait until you think you can afford to engage in a search engine optimization campaign. Time is not your friend here. Climbing the search engine rankings is often a very slow process. Start working on your search rankings today so that when economic conditions improve, your web site will be the one people find when searching for your type of services.

So...what are you going to do?

If you want to learn how to do this on your own, please check out my book The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm marketing, law firm seo, legal marketing

So how do you know what marketing strategies you should be using to promote your law firm? You have many options. You can do paid search and SEO (both of which I highly recommend), TV advertising, radio, newspaper, Yellow Pages, and the list goes on. You might start by finding out what marketing methods are working for other successful firms in your market.

One problem is that the strategies used by your competitors may not be the same that work for you. If you really want to find out what works, the only sure-fire way is to try different strategies and carefully track the results of each. You need to make a direct connection between the leads you generate and the marketing that generated those leads. You can measure performance by using a special URL with different advertising campaigns. For example, a print ad in a newspaper might display a URL like "www.myfirm.com/special". Then checking your web site stats for traffic to that URL will give you an idea of how effective the ad is.

There is one flaw in this technique. Some viewers of the ad will not use the full URL, instead just typing your root domain name. This is at least a starting point. Displaying a different phone number for each ad is a more accurate way to generate data. Then you can tell which ads are working by how many calls come in for different phone numbers. It's pretty cheap to do and there are quite a few companies that can provide the service. Just a couple to check out are callsource.com and capturethecall.com. Just search Google for "call tracking" to find more.

Yes, this is a lot of work. But finding the right marketing mix can mean the difference between success and failure for your marketing. And if you're going to promote, you might as well do it right.

To learn more about online marketing for law firms, check out my book The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book on Amazon.com.

Labels: analytics, call tracking, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer advertising, lawyer marketing, lawyer seo, legal marketing

Print on demand (POD) is a technology that my firm has made heavy use of for self-promotion. It is a fantastic technology for use by publishing companies, as well as any independent business that wants to produce its own books. In this post, I want to discuss a concept related to POD that I call "trend hopping." The idea is to use print on demand technology to quickly create books or other products focused on very timely subjects - subjects related to your areas of practice.

POD allows you to quickly create products based on the public's interests at the moment. One example is mesothelioma from asbestos exposure, which is a hot subject in the legal industry. Your could write a book on this subject and make it freely available to anyone who visits your web site. The book could provide more information about what mesothelioma is and what a person's legal rights are.

Intuitively, it might seem like an expensive form of marketing, but it's really not. To order copies of your book yourself will probably cost you $2 or $3 per copy. If you use paid search to drive traffic to your web site, you might be paying $25 or $50 per visit. So in the general scheme of things, another couple of bucks is not much relative to the cost of getting traffic to your site, and it just might improve your chance at signing up a client.

Trends always change. Just because people are interested in something right now does not at all mean that they will be tomorrow. The kinds of cases you pursue today may be different tomorrow. Traditional printing does not deal with this situation very well because it requires the publisher to estimate the number of copies of a book that will sell (or that you want to give away). Predicting when a trend will end is difficult.

POD eliminates the risk completely. You don't have to worry about printing and storing books in advance. With POD, you will only print the number of books that you need and no more.

Contact Work Media, a Nashville-based search engine marketing firm, to learn more about using this and other strategies to promote your law firm.

Labels: book publishing, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer marketing, legal marketing, pod, print on demand, publishing

A pet peeve of mine is when someone tells me how to do search engine marketing. I have been doing this for years, have promoted dozens of web sites, have written hundreds of articles and blog posts, and have two books in print on the subject. SEO is what I do.

As an SEO expert, I can tell you right now, unequivocally, that link swapping is a valid link building technique. Until I see that it doesn't work anymore, my firm will continue doing it.

Here's what I don't understand: why do attorneys seem to have such a distaste for link swapping?

We continue to talk to attorneys who question us on the matter; who don't really want to swap links with other sites. Look, link swapping has nothing to do with having links on your site that you actually want people to follow. It's strictly for the search engines. Don't worry about it!

I'm not at all implying that you should rely on link swapping is your only strategy for getting links. Certainly, without a doubt, one way inbound links are better, and you need to use other strategies to get those types of links. But link swapping is one important component of your overall online marketing campaign.

However, to receive maximum benefit, there are a couple of rules you need to follow. For starters, limit the number of links on any particular page to 40 or 50. So you will probably need to have multiple pages. You also need to supply your link partners with very specific verbiage and HTML to use for their links to you. Your links pages do not have to be prominent pages on your site. You don't need a link to it on your main menu. Place a small text link to your links page at the very bottom of your home page. That will be good enough for search engines to find.

This is a great way to begin the process of building a catalog of links to your site if you are just getting started.

Get over it.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer marketing, lawyer seo, link swapping

An underutilized link building strategy for law firms is posting comments which contain keyword links on relevant blog posts. This is an old school strategy that has been used for years. Internet marketers have also abused the strategy. The major blogging platforms have mostly made it so that blogs, by default, do not allow "nofollow" links.

So what exactly does "nofollow" mean? "Nofollow" is an attribute that can be set for any link to disallow search engine spiders from following the link. You don't get credit for it. So why bother?

For one thing, just getting your name and firm name on an active blog page related to your areas of practice is good self-promotion. You can't do too much of that. Another reason is that blogs that allow the kind of link you need still exist.

First you have to find them. One tool to make this process easier is Fast Blog Finder. It works by looking for blogs that contain a target keyword and then evaluating the HTML of the blog to try and determine if it allows "dofollow" links.

It is a time consuming strategy, but one that is very effective. But I believe that you should seek links from many different types of web sites. This strategy is one that will compliment your other link building techniques.

Labels: blogging, internet marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm marketing, law firm seo

I recently became aware of a web site (blog, technically) that could be of great use to anyone responsible for law firm online promotion. This blog is written by a guy who seems very intelligent and a master at his craft.

http://misterthorne.org/set_in_style/

With over 20 years of experience as a writer and editor, the blogger, the mysterious "Mister Thorne," has a lot of detailed knowledge about legal writing that he shares with his readers.

His blog is interesting because it is so specific: it deals only with the intricacies of legal writing, including web page copy. And he goes deep. For example, he has spent several blog posts recently discussing proper word spacing. This guy has knowledge that could be of great value to those looking to improve the conversion side of the Internet marketing equation.

Close more deals with better writing.

If you need help with the traffic side (getting people to your web site), well, then you need to call my company, Work Media, or check out our Internet legal marketing portal, www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net.

Labels: blogging, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, legal marketing, legal writing, writing

Go wide with your blogging Wide as in managing five blogs, not just one.

Whoowhee... It's hard enough just to make regular posts to one blog, much less five.

And what would be the point? For one thing, it gives you the opportunity to be more focused on specific areas of practice. And the process creates lots of content for Google to index. The key to managing five blogs is leverage.

Here' how to do it. At the start of the week (or Wednesday, or Thursday at 3:00 AM...whenever), create five new blog posts, each between 200 and 300 words, using article spinning syntax and many alternate passages and paragraps. In other words, each of the five blog posts should be written in such a way to serve as a seed article for numerous other technically unique posts.

Next, use article spinning software to create five versions of each blog post. You now have unique content for twenty five blog posts, which you can distribute among your five blogs over a couple of weeks.

It would also be useful to do some keyword research before you write the five blog posts so that you can write them to emphasize some specific keywords. Look for specific, niche keywords that you can dominate. Your posts should also contain a liberal amount of links to your other web properties.

Need help with this stuff? Call me. I'm Jerry Work, with Work Media. www.WorkMedia.net. You can also learn more law firm Internet marketing strategies at www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net.

Labels: blogging, law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, legal marketing

Our BRAND NEW book, The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book, is now available for purchase on the following page:

http://law-firm-internet-marketing.net/the-law-firm-internet-marketing-book.asp

This book is written specifically for people who promote and market law firms. It compresses everything we know into a tight, cohesive law firm Internet marketing plan that incorporates MANY different elements: SEO, PPC, social networking, blogging, etc.

Currently, it is only for sale via digital download in PDF format, but in a couple of weeks it will be for sale on Amazon.com for those of you who prefer a hard copy.

Some of the topics covered by the book include:

• Keyword research to identify the keywords that people are using to search for the legal services you offer.
  
  
• On-page optimization to rank highly for your target keywords.
  
  
• How to use blogs and the SEO content cycle to create huge amounts of content to link to your site.
  
  
• Using social networking sites like Squidoo and StumbleUpon to promote your web site.
  
  
• Using social bookmarking sites to improve search rankings.
  
  
• Creating your own informational site to guide the search engines to links you want them to find.
  
  
• How to create XML sitemaps to make sure the search engines find all of your web pages.
  
  
• How to perform keyword research specifically for pay per click.
  
  
• How to manage your pay per click accounts to generate the maximum number of leads for your marketing dollars.
  
  
• How to write pay per click ads and landing pages that get results.
  
  
• Specific pay per click strategies for Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter.
  
  
• How all the pieces of search engine marketing fit together.
  

This is a book based on real-world strategies that Work Media uses to promote our clients.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, lawyer website marketing, legal marketing

Google just released a new feature for AdWords that is in beta trials called automatic matching. This could be useful for your the promotion of your law firm's web site if you are not maxing out your budget every month.

The feature is intended to help you capture traffic that you may have missed because you didn't have certain keywords in your account. It works by analyzing your account and displaying your ads for keywords that Google deems relevant, even if you have not specified to show ads for those keywords.

The amount of traffic your existing keywords receive is not supposed to be affected. So if you already spend all of your budget, then the feature probably won't have any affect on your account. However, the pay per click market for legal terms is very expensive, so this might be a good way to get some additional traffic by letting Google automatically manage any budget that may be left over.

Google wants you to spend every dollar of your budget, so this is certainly helpful for Google because it helps the company maximize its revenue.

But is it good for law firm advertisers?

It depends. I would certainly not recommend increasing your budget just to let Google manage some of it for you. If the economics of your account are working in your favor, then it probably won't make much difference. But if you are in a very expensive market (as most legal markets tend to be), then it might be a way to generate some additional targeted traffic.

The following links contain more information about pay per click placement:

http://hubpages.com/hub/placing-ppc-ads

http://placing-ppc-ads.tumblr.com/

Labels: AdWords, automatic matching, Google, law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer website marketing, legal marketing

Here are some strategies you can begin implementing immediately to build a catalog of links to your law firm's web site:

1. Create a very useful, informative, or entertaining web site. The more valuable and useful your web site, the more likely it is that others will link to you. As a lawyer, you know all kinds of things that other people need to know. So use your web site as a forum to reveal your awesome knowledge. Don't worry about giving information away for free. It won't cost you any clients.

2. Publish a blog. Carefully include specific keywords in your blog posts and link to other relevant blogs.

3. Write and distribute articles. Make sure your articles have a byline with a keyword link back to your site.

4. Build pages on social networking sites. Sites like Squidoo.com and HubPages.com let you build pages about anything you want. Those pages will, of course, link back to your main site.

5. Post comments on other blogs. If possible, locate blogs that allow "do-follow" links.

6. Link swap. This is the classic technique, but it still works. Contact other law firms or companies in the legal industry and offer to swap links.

Link building is hard work, but it is definitely doable if you are systematic and force yourself to spend a few hours per week doing it.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, link building

Here are some questions you should ask any SEO firm you are considering hiring to promote your law firm web site:

1. What exactly will you be doing? Make sure the firm can explain how it plans on promoting your site.

2. Who will be doing the work? Make sure it is not going to be interns or junior employees working exclusively on your site.

3. Do you have any referrals, testimonials or case studies? You can't go wrong by asking for proof.

4. How do you charge? Make sure you understand what you are paying for.

5. Are you promoting other law firms for the same market? This one is huge. You want to hire a company that is ONLY going to be promoting your web site for your geographic market.

If you find a law firm SEO company that can explain how it works, that has some referrals, and that is going to be promoting your site EXCLUSIVELY for your market, then you may have a winner.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, law firm seo, lawyer marketing, lawyer seo, search engine marketing, search engine optimization, seo

Welcome to the Law Firm Internet Marketing blog! We will occasionally publish articles of a more lengthy nature (available via our Articles page), but in this blog we will pass along frequent, small nuggets of information and advice related to online law firm promotion. We have years of experience in the online promotion of law firms, and our intention here is education you so that you make good use of your marketing dollars.

It is so easy to get ripped off in this industry...

We're not going to name names, but there are some very large companies associated with the business of promoting law firms who take on multiple, multiple clients in the same market and the guarantee them all high search engine rankings. How exactly does that work?

Don't fall for it. Educate yourself about this business. And then hire a company you trust. It would be great if you hired us. But regardless, learn as much as you can and then make a decision that you are comfortable with.

We'll do our best help with the process.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm marketing, lawyer website marketing, legal marketing