A couple of recent conversations with law firms that deal with Spanish-speaking clients has got me thinking about the need for firms to be prepared for this market. If you open up your practice to those who speak Spanish, you could tap into an entirely new market. You might double the size of your practice. Who knows? Of course, something like this is easier said than done. But to get you started, I am going to give you a bare-bones strategy for promoting your law firm to the Hispanic market.

1. If you are going to promote your legal services to people who speak Spanish, you probably need to actually be able to talk to them. So someone on your staff is going to have to be fluent in Spanish, unless you are just going to refer all that business to another firm. But even then...don't you need to be able to understand what is being said?

2. Perform Spanish-specific keyword research using Google's external keyword research tool. The seed keywords should also be in Spanish:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

3. Create pages for your web site, or create a new web site altogether, written in Spanish and optimized for the Spanish language keywords. Caution: do not use software or a web site to do your translation! There is a high likelihood that the language will get mangled, which will damage your reputation. If you're going to do it, do it right.

4. Generate keyword links to your Spanish language pages just like you would your English pages. SEO is still SEO, regardless of the language.

English language SEO is time consuming and has many moving parts. Shifting to a language that you are not familiar with adds to the complexity. If you are already fluent in Spanish, then you've got a big advantage over the rest of us.

Another consideration is whether you are promoting to a broad, global Spanish-speaking market or to markets in particular countries or to specific groups of people. There are many variations of the Spanish language, and what works and is acceptable language to one group may not be understood or even considered rude by another group. In general, the best strategy is probably to take a high level, global perspective and try to avoid using language that is specific to any particular group.

So preparing yourself to do business with Spanish-speaking people will require some effort and resources, but it will open your firm up to a whole new market.

Labels: internet marketing, keyword research, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, search engine optimization, spanish, spanish seo

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

The question of the day: do you have control of your web site? Do you really? Can you change your page titles at will? Can you change your web page copy? Can you add new pages? Can you add links to those pages?

How about this...if you decide you want to move your site to a new server or hosting company, can you repoint your domain name?

If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then you do not have control. You are at the mercy of whatever company set up your web site and content management system. And if you lack control, then you can forget about being able to do the things that will cause your web site to rank highly in the search engines. Success in search engine marketing cannot be left to chance.

We recently became aware of a practice used by at least one of the big companies in this industry. Apparently, depending on what kind of relationship you have with the company, if you want to point the domain name elsewhere, they require THREE MONTHS to do it. Three months for something that should take about a day. Now that is lack of control.

So what can you do? First off, avoid working with companies that tie you into a content system that is very restrictive. Avoid long-term contracts. Avoid letting another company have control of your domain name (as in the example above). And avoid hiring a large company that is already working with hundreds of law firms, many of whom may be your direct competitors.

Think small law firm marketing company that will give you a high level of personal service and let you keep control. This kind of situation will not only serve you much better in terms of having a web site that will generate leads for your firm, it will probably cost less. More control for less money. Now that's a good deal.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, lawyer website design, search engine marketing, seo

I think word is getting out about the unethical practices of some of the bigger companies in the legal marketing industry. Part of it has to do with companies such as ourselves that do our best to try and educate legal professionals about this situation, and part of it is law firms finally realizing that they are not getting what they are paying for.

We have a client we are working with that has a site that was built by a large legal marketing firm, and we have been locked out from doing many of the things that we REALLY need to do. We also got contacted by another firm that knew of the first firm (this firm also has a site built by the same large company) and wanted to hire us as well. We turned the second firm down because it would have been in conflict with our first client (promoting the firms for the same markets and practice areas), but just the fact that the firm sought us out is evidence that the tide is turning.

It is almost 2010. Law firms are getting more savvy about what they are paying for in terms of Internet marketing. That bolds well for companies such as ours that operate in an ethical fashion and work like hell to get our clients' sites to the top of search engine rankings. The giants are falling...and for that, we can be thankful.

Everybody have a great Thanksgiving!

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

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

Work Media would like to welcome a couple of new legal clients into our family: Clark & Clark, criminal defense lawyers based in New Jersey, and USA Hurt, a personal injury firm based in Chicago.

Clark & Clark is also presently a client of the large company that provides Internet marketing for so much of the legal industry (initials "F.L."), and some of the things we have been told about the way the other company operates are ridiculous. I'll say this one more time: ask how many competing firms your SEO firm is representing! Do you really expect them to have you as a priority over their other clients in the same market?

USA Hurt is also a client of our friends at Joseph Media Group, who specialize in creating outstanding television commercials for law firms.

Work Media has a chart in our office with every metropolitan statistical area in the country. MSAs where we have a client are highlighted. It is our goal to have one client in every major market. Because when you are a Work Media client, you are our number one priority, and it is our intention to help you DOMINATE your market. Can your existing Internet marketing company say that? Call us today at 888-299-4837

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

Here is the question: how many other law firms are you promoting in my market?

This assumes that you have already established that the company has the experience to do the job.

One thing that perturbs me about this industry is law firms hiring a company for their search engine optimization that is already promoting many firms for the same market. SEO is war. How can an SEO firm fight like hell to get your website to the top of Google along with dozens of other firms? The math just doesn't work out.

It's not just that the SEO company is competing against itself…it' s competing against companies like mine. We don't have competing interests, and we don't lose. If your firm is promoted by a company like FindLaw, which is probably promoting a dozen or more other firms for the same market, you don't want to compete against a firm being promoted by us. It is highly unlikely you will come out a winner in that situation.

To reiterate: You only want to compete against firms that are represented by other SEO companies. Not your own.

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

Social Media Marketing is about integration. It’s about feeding a piece of content into a machine that drives that content onto various social media web pages. These can include article directories, video directories, social networking sites like Facebook and Linkedin, and anywhere else on the web where people are gathering to share information or to have fun.

By “machine” I mean an organized system for systematically distributing your content. Your system will likely involve a combination of software automation and manual work. However, there are lots of low cost sources of online labor that can greatly reduce the amount of time you have to spend manually working on your system. For example, you can outsource the article writing process. In my experience, it may take some time to find an article writing resource that you trust and that does good work.

For automation, there are a few basic tools you can use to get the job done. For example, Ping.fm is a tool of that will distribute a single blog post to numerous social media sites, such as Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr and WindowsLive. In this scenario you want Google and other search engines to find your content on your main blog first, and then find it on the other social media sites. So you might want to incorporate a staggered distribution strategy in which you first post your content to your main blog and wait a few days before distributing it to other sites.

The staggered distribution strategy applies to article marketing as well. You probably want search engines to first find your articles on EzineArticles Com. And then find it on the other article directories. The reason is that a keyword link from EzineArticles may carry more weight and thus help improve your search engine rankings more than a link on other article directories.

We've started recording the world's shortest Internet marketing videos for law firms, which I invite you to check out at http://12seconds.tv/channel/lawfirmseo. And we recorded a longer video on this same subject on our YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7zGC83lzm4.

Labels: blog marketing, content distribution, law firm blog marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, legal blogging, social media

With regards to search engine marketing, targeting the correct keywords is vitally important. One mistake that many businesses, including law firms, make is that they pick an arbitrary keyword or two that they think they should rank for and concentrate their efforts (or the efforts of people they hire) in ranking for that keyword. Don't make that mistake.

On the other end of the spectrum, some businesses or firms want their web site top-ranked for every possible relevant keyword. Don't do that, either.

So just what do you do? Let research guide your decisions, and pick keywords that meet three specific criteria.

For any potential keyword, judge its effectiveness based on the following three criteria:

1. Relevance. Relevance refers to how closely the keyword is related to the subject of a web site and the content on a particular page of the site. You want to target keywords with a high degree of relevance.

As an example, if a law firm in Miami has a page on its web site about maritime accidents, then a good keyword for that page might be "Miami maritime accident lawyer."

2. Search volume. The more search traffic there is for a particular keyword, the more potential traffic the keyword could drive to your web site.

3. Competition. Keywords that have fewer competing web sites offer the opportunity to get your site ranked quicker.

So the three major criteria for any keyword you are considering targeting is relevance, traffic and competition. You will have to use some judgment for the relevance component, but you know your business better than anyone - you know when something is not relevant. Google's external AdWords keyword tool, found at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal, is one of the best sources of finding competitive data. The competition criterion can be based on a couple of things: either the number of results of a Google search for the keyword surrounded by quotes; or the number of results of an "allintitle:" search for the keyword in Google.

So to begin creating your target keyword list, start by using the AdWords external keyword tool referenced above, eliminating the ones that are not relevant, and then ranking them by search volume. Then highlight the ones that are not overly competitive (less than 1,000 competing sites is good). Your highlighted keywords at this point are your best bet for generating targeted organic search engine traffic in a reasonable amount of time. Your chance of ranking for those keywords, and thus generating visits to your web site, is excellent.

Check back here often for more law firm internet marketing strategies. If you need some help today, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Labels: keyword research, keywords, law firm internet marketing, law firm keyword research, law firm seo, legal keyword research, legal marketing

My partner and I have worked with quite a few law firms by this point, and we are still surprised at how many web sites we look at that have serious content or coding flaws. Some of these sites are not bad at all in terms of design, but design alone won’t get it done if you are seeking search engine visibility. Here is a checklist of items to make sure your web site meets the minimum level of optimization for search engine rankings.

1. Make sure your physical address is on the home page, in text. Pictures don't count. There needs to be some text on the page with your city and state.

2. Create a home page title that contains your geographic market as well as main area of practice. Ideally, your home page title will also be based on keyword research to make sure you are using the phrasing that more people use to search for law firms in your market.

3. Give every page of your web site its own specific page title. Again, it would be useful to do some research so that you can insert traffic-generating keywords in titles throughout your site.

4. Have some copy and text links on your home page. If your home page consists solely of Flash or some other non-text technology, you are putting yourself at a disadvantage right off the bat. You want to have lots of text for search engine robots to read.

5. Use text links to practice area pages that contain the practice area in the page name. For example, your home page might have a link that says "Divorce" to a page titled "Divorce Law."

6. Use your meta tags. Place a set of keywords in the keywords meta tag, and try to use those same keywords in your web page copy. Also give a good, keyword-rich description.

7. Use header (h1) tags to emphasize each page's primary keyword. For example, if your home page is meant to rank for the phrase "Memphis Personal Injury Lawyer," then it is helpful to have a header on the page with exactly that phrase.

So there you go. If your web page does not meet all seven of these criteria, then you are lacking some basic on-page optimization parameters that could definitely help improve your web site's search engine rankings. As always, I would be glad to talk to you if you need some help. You can email me at jwork@workmedia.net, or check out http://www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net for more tips and advice about promoting your law firm’s web site.

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

Social networking is a complex area with a lot of moving parts:

• Blog posts
• Forum posts
• Updates
• Groups
• Content creation and article writing

Social networking is one of those things that tends to happen haphazardly, as time permits, whenever you think about it. This is especially the case when it is done by someone who is extremely busy, such as the typical lawyer. This can all be done much more effectively if you create a monthly social networking/content distribution schedule that tells you exactly when you should be doing things and what you should be doing.

In other words, you need a system.

I have been working on an Excel-based organization system that lets you input some data into some fields, after which a calendar of activities you need to perform for the given month is created. I will be giving this away for free, but also working on a more advanced, online, database-driven version for use by Work Media's clients and friends.

But it's something you can begin to do immediately, even if you are just writing notes out on a piece of paper. You gotta start somewhere.

I consider content distribution to be a major part of online social networking, so that is where your system should start. If you leave this part out, and just concentrate on meeting people online, then you are not taking advantage of the Web's ability to spread your name and marketing message. Writing blogs and articles and distributing that content gives you something to talk about in a social networking environment, and it accomplishes the more broad marketing goals of branding and name recognition. And that's not to mention the search engine optimization effect, which I'm not going to go into at this time.

To begin with, I suggest you create a simple calendar of when blog posts should be posted and articles written. Aim for eight blog posts and three articles per month. You can get away with only two articles, but the eight blog post minimum is written in stone.

When you lay out your blogging and article writing schedule, go ahead and write out an idea for each blog post in advance, and create groupings of two or three blog posts in a row that elaborate on the same general topic. Then for each of those topic groupings of blog posts, specify a date to write an article that combines the information from those blog posts.

For example, a lawyer who deals with a lot of automobile accident cases might write two or three blog posts about driving safely in various conditions, and then combine those blog posts into an article about the same thing. At the end of that blogging cycle, you would have three new blog posts, which search engines will index, as well as an article to mass distribute. You also have several items you can link to or mention in forum posts in social networking groups you belong to.

Just doing the above things will go a long way toward giving your content distribution efforts more focus. In later blog posts, we will continue talking about content scheduling and hit on some other functions that should be included in your social networking calendar.

Contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net if you need some help promoting your law firm online.

Labels: blogging, content distribution, law firm blog marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, legal blogging, legal marketing, legal writing

We are signing up beta users for law firm linking system. If you manage the promotion of a law firm's web site and would like to participate or get more information, just send an email to me (Jerry) at jwork@workmedia.net and I will let you know what you need to do. This is a private system only open to invited users, so this is ONLY for those who promote a law firm.

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

I've been involved in a very interesting discussion on one of the LinkedIn groups that I participate in, and I thought it would be worth blogging about to bring the conversation into the public arena. The discussion started when I proposed an informal three-way linking arrangement among law firm members of the group. Basically, web site A would link to web site B, web site B would link to web site C, and web site C would link to web site A. It is similar to reciprocal linking, except the sites don't swap links, but rather link to one another in a chain. The advantage to this kind of concept is that it helps each site build its link portfolio, and the links carry more weight since they are not reciprocal links.

What has surprised me about the conversation is the amount of resistance to the plan. There is a lot of worry about being banned by Google. Technically, this kind of arrangement is a violation of Google's policies…as is just about everything that my company does. It was pointed out that in 2007, Google banned a bunch of real estate web sites for reciprocal linking. So is there some risk involved in something like this? Sure. But in my opinion, it is just as risky to do nothing.

Which is the better situation? Your web site not having any visibility because you haven't taken steps to promote it, or your web site getting banned? Answer: there's no difference! Either way, you're invisible.

I think one point that I probably have not been clear on is that I am not at all suggesting that you should RELY on any particular link building strategy. I think that is where the above referenced real estate web sites made their major mistake. These were sites being promoted by amateurs who relied on link swapping to build their link portfolio. You don't need a single technique; you don't need a stick. You need an umbrella! In other words, you need to use lots of different strategies to get links from lots of different places.

Swap links. Do three way linking. Distribute articles. Post blogs. Submit to directories. Distribute press releases. Post blog comments. Build social networking pages. Submit to social bookmarking sites…

Do you get my point? Again, search engine optimization ain't about using a stick. It's about using an umbrella. If this sounds like a heck of a lot of work, it is. But either you do it or you don't. Either you promote your web site or you don't. If you're NOT going to promote your web site, if you're not going to be aggressive in doing things to improve your search engine rankings, then you might as well stick to Yellow Pages advertising.

Want to talk about how to promote your law firm web site? Call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email info@workmedia.net. We’ll be glad to talk to you.

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

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

When you are working on building a catalog of links pointing to your web site, you need to remember to think deep. Deep linking is the act of linking to sub-pages of a web site, and not just the home page. You need to remember these two rules:

1. You should seek keyword links that point to web pages optimized for those same keywords.

2. You can really only optimize a single web page for a couple of keywords.

So if your web site has different pages optimized for different keywords (and if that is not the case, you need to call me today), then you need different keyword links pointing to each of those pages specifically. Here is an example. Let’s say you have a web site with pages covering the following practice areas: automobile accidents, maritime accidents, and aviation accidents. To help raise the search engine visibility of each of those pages, each one needs keyword links related to the subject of the page. The automobile accident page needs links such as “automobile accident attorney,” the maritime accidents page needs links such as “boating accident lawyer,” and the last page needs links like “airplane accident lawyer.”

What you have to keep in mind is that search engine optimization is a business of specificity. Specific pages are optimized for specific keywords, and those pages need specific keyword links.

You may be wondering how you go about getting links with specific keywords in it. If you rely on other web sites to hopefully link to you, then you are at the mercy of those other sites with regard to what keywords they use in the links, if any. Most of the time those types of links will just contain your web address, which is useful for the fact that it is a link, but not as useful as a link that uses a keyword.

One of my favorite strategies for creating links that contain the keywords I want is article marketing. Write an article related to some keywords, and then place a couple of keyword links in the article resource box to the pages you want to promote. Then distribute the article to lots of article directories. If you want to get more complex (and more effective), you can do something called article spinning, which will result in lots of technically unique articles being distributed rather than duplicate articles. Another way is by posting on others' blogs with a keyword as your name (but you will need to find blogs that allow "dofollow" links).

I invite you to check out my book, The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book, to learn more about this type of stuff. You can also contact me at Work Media if you would like some more in-depth help.

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

The process of combining your marketing initiatives into a unified campaign is called multi-channel integration, and it is not just something done by big companies with big budgets. It is also something that you should be doing for your law firm. For clarification, the concept I'm talking about is using email, your web site, social networking, blogging and other relevant channels in an integrated marketing plan, rather than just relying on one or two of them.

To clarify, let's look at an example. Maybe your web site has an autoresponder form for people to sign up for your newsletter. Autoresponders are high leverage tools because they automatically send a series of pre-programmed messages to those who sign up. The emails you send should be informational and high value, but they can also be used to promote your web site, your Facebook page, or whatever. Your blog RSS stream would be used to update your Facebook page and other web properties. Your blog content will contain references and links to your various other web properties. Basically, everything should link to everything else.

And there is the matter of your offline marketing - print, TV, etc. All of your offline printing should contain at least your main web site URL. There has been a trend in advertising recently to begin a conversation with the viewer with offline advertising that tries to lead him to the advertiser's online marketing.

For the ultimate example of this type of marketing integration, look no further than everybody's favorite domain registrar, GoDaddy.com. The TV advertising created by GoDaddy is fun, sexy, and a little bit controversial, and it does a great job of driving the viewers of the commercials to the GoDaddy web site where they can view uncensored versions of their commercials and more Web-only content. If you've ever bought anything at GoDaddy.com, you also know that they are the masters of the up-sell (but that's another story).

The main point to come away with here is that any single online or offline property should not be viewed as a standalone entity; it should instead be looked at as one component of an integrated campaign using properties that all relate and make reference to one another.

I would welcome the opportunity to talk to you about this stuff in more detail. Contact Work Media at www.workmedia.net, or check out www.law-firm-internet-marketing.net for more law firm-specific Internet marketing strategies.

Labels: branding, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, lawyer website marketing, marketing integration

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 you've got a web site but don't know how to drive traffic to it? Get in line. You're not alone. Improving search engine rankings is what I do all day every day, and my company employs many different strategies. We work hard at it, both servicing our clients as well as testing new strategies. The easiest way for you to accomplish getting your site ranked is to hire a company like mine.

However, maybe your resources are limited or you're just a glutton for punishment. If that is the case, I am going to give you a super quick technique for creating a blueprint you can use for getting your web site ranked for a particular keyword.

Step 1. Do a search in Google for your target keyword. Avoid overly generic or broad keywords like "attorney." Your keyword should be specific to your target market, such as "St. Louis criminal defense attorney."

Step 2. Click on the top listings that represent real competitors (i.e., competing law firms in your market, as opposed to law firm directories or portals). Look to see if the keyword is used in the title, how many times it is used in the body copy, and where else it is used.

Step 3. Tweak your front page to match the criteria discussed above. Optimize!

Step 4. Go to search.yahoo.com and do a "link:" search for the top sites for your keyword. Your search query will look something like "link:www.website.com." This will give you a good idea of the minimum number of links you need pointing to your site.

Step 5. Now get ready to do some work. Build a catalog of links to your web site as large or larger than your competitors.

Certainly, we've glossed over a lot of details. Anything you need to know is contained somewhere in print or online. If you are willing to put in the work, you can learn how to run a campaign like the one described here. Of course, you can always take easier route and hire a company like Work Media.

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

My company uses a strategy that we call "staggered distribution of spun blog content." Sounds fancy, doesn't it? At Work Media, one of our specialties is making things sound scientific and complex. Despite the long name, it's really just a strategy for getting the most value out of your blogging efforts. I believe if you take the time to write something of value, you should get maximum value from it for your law firm promotion efforts. It's also related to something I blogged about previously, which is using multiple blogs to promote your web site and firm.

In my previous blog post, I stated that you should maintain up to ten blogs focused on your areas of practice. The idea is to use article spinning software to create multiple versions of a core blog post that are technically unique, and use those for updating your blogs. These blogs would be spread out among various blogging platforms and have many different names.

To carry this concept a step further, I also suggest you stagger your blog posts. In other words, rather than updating all of your blog posts on the same day with a similar spun blog post, make the posts over multiple days. Less time is required between updates the more blogs you maintain.

If you are careful, your spun blog posts will each qualify as unique content. However, there is still some risk in releasing many blog posts on the same day that are all very similar. Staggering your blog posts over time closer matches the idea of different humans updating different blogs. It sets off less of a signal.

For more advanced ideas about how to promote your law firm online, check out my book The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book.

Labels: blog marketing, blogging, law firm blog marketing, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, legal blogging, legal marketing

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

Today I'd like to explore another way to better leverage your time, which is making posts to blogs and social networking sites with your mobile device. This is fairly new to me, but it is a concept that can really save you some time.

For example, if you have a Blogger account, you can send a message to Blogger and they will assign you a code for your blog. The code lets you make posts with your phone. This lets you update your blog no matter where you are, even if you are nowhere near a computer.

Tumblr has another very interesting example, which is the ability to call a phone number and leave a message which is instantly converted into an audio post on your blog. This is a great way to instantly add some audio multimedia to your blog, and all you have to do is speak into your cell phone. Audio and video are excellent additions to your blog.

There are just a couple of examples that I have played around with personally, but you have lots of options for mobile blogging opportunities. Just find the directions for doing it on the platform of your choice and practice it a couple of times. Do it on a regular basis and you might even be able to keep all of your blogs updated without using your computer. It does help to have a phone with a qwerty keyboard.

For a complete search engine marketing strategy for your law firm, check out The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book (for sale on Amazon.com):

http://www.amazon.com/Law-Firm-Internet-Marketing-Book/dp/1440485585/

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

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

We've started playing around with Ning, which is a very interesting concept. It's basically a social networking site that allows users to set up their own social networking sites. So we set up one specifically for law firm Internet marketing:

http://lawfirminternetmarketing.ning.com/

I also joined another group on Ning:

http://lawmarketing.ning.com

Ning is the type of site that Google loves, so it would behoove you to set one up for yourself. For instance, let's say you practice divorce law in St. Louis. Why not set up a St. Louis divorce Ning site? It would be another way for people to communicate with you and learn some things about divorce law. And of course, as the creator of the site, you could pepper it with links back to your site and place your marketing message prominently on the site. You may even find that your Ning site ranks higher than your own main web site, but that's just fine.

The site has lots of interesting features that you can add to your own site: forums, blogs, videos, images, etc., all of which get added to the main menu. It really does let you create some powerful, interactive sites.

I invite everyone reading this to come join us on our law firm Internet marketing Ning site. You just might learn something...and you don't even have to pay us!

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm seo, legal marketing, ning, social networking

I've been updating some Squidoo lenses this week. It had been a while since we had logged in (shame on us!), and noticed that there have been some changes to the Squidoo interface. One of the great things about Squidoo is all of the modules you can use that make the pages dynamic by updating themselves from various information sources (blogs, Google News, RSS feeds, etc.). So a Squidoo lens, if built the right way, will update itself forever.

The new Squidoo interface makes it much quicker to add modules and align modules on your page. Formerly, this was a very slow and tedious process. The new system is much better.

So why should you set up pages in Squidoo to promote your law firm? Because Google really loves it. Often, a page on Squidoo that pertains to your practice area will rank quicker and higher than your own web site. So links from Squidoo carry a lot of weight. And as you know, one of the things you should be trying to do in your law firm seo campaign is build a catalog of links from web sites that Google holds in high esteem.

You should incorporate Squidoo as part of your social networking/content distribution campaign. If you publish a blog for your law firm, you should use the RSS module to stream your blog posts to your Squidoo lenses. And use some of the other modules to stream legal news or other blog posts to your Squidoo pages. It is a simple and quick way to build a high quality industry page that links directly to youf firm.

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

We have been trying out a product called Neurolinker, which is an online service that facilitates link sharing among its members. It could make it much easier for you to generate links to your law firm’s sites beyond link swaps with other law firms. There are other similar services but we liked this one because of the positive comments we read regarding the developer’s support and its reasonable price.

Neurolinker basically facilitates trading links with other sites through the use of a script that you place on a page of your web site. The script automatically displays your outbound links to other Neurolinker members. Some other members running the script will in turn display a link back to your site. Shortly after installing the script, you will being seeing links pointing to other web sites.

You can configure the links to be more or less relevant to your web site. You have access to reports that show exactly what sites are linking to you, so you can make the determination if the links are relevant enough.

The system also has a social bookmarking feature. Basically, you bookmark the web sites of other members, earning "brownie points" as you do. The more points you accumulate, the higher your sites will appear on the list of sites to bookmark for other members. So the more you bookmark others’ sites, the more your site will be bookmarked.

If you aggressively use the system, you can create many new links to your site, both from relevant content sites as well as social bookmarking sites.

Labels: law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, neurolinker

We are trying out some new software called JetSubmitter. It is an article spinning and distribution platform. The idea is that you write a seed article, then mark it up using a special article spinning syntax in order to have the software dynamically create different versions of the article for distribution to its network of article directories.

This particular software gets very poor reviews for its customer support, so if you decide to try this out for use in your law firm, tread carefully, and do not sign up for the one year upfront payment. Try to find the page where you can sign up for $17 per month and try it out for a month. So far, I can tell the software is working, at least partly, although I've already seen some things I did wrong because I either misunderstood some of the instructions or the software works a little differently than advertised.

So far, for the price, I am satisfied. However, I have quite a bit of experience with this type of software, so I don't have much of a learning curve and don't require much in the way of support (as long as the software works).

If you would like to give it a try for creating and distributing articles to promote your law firm, you can learn more at http://www.jetsubmitter2.com.

Labels: article distribution, article marketing, article writing, articles, JetSubmitter, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer marketing

Do you perform keyword research before writing a new blog post or article? If you do, we applaud you. If not, you're not alone. Most lawyers (and Web content creators in general) probably do not. But starting today, you are going to do things differently. Starting today, here is what you are going to do when writing content for the Web:

1. You are going to use Google's external keyword research tool to find a keyword related to your practice areas and markets that receives some traffic and mild competition.

2. You are going to use that keyword in your content title and prominently in the main text, and if allowed, in bold and in a header (H1) tag.

If you do this, you will have a tremendous advantage over online authors who write without regard to keywords. Why? Because your writing will have focus. It will be specific, and it will very possibly rank highly for your target keyword, helping drive traffic to your web site.

We confess: we do not always do this ourselves. If there is something you want to write about that just doesn't match up with any particular keyword, then go ahead and write it. But the more you write with specific keywords in mind, the more of your content will show up in search engine results pages. And that's always a good thing.

Labels: blogging, keyword research, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer seo, legal marketing, seo

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

If you've read many of our blog posts or articles, you know one of our principle tenets is that it is impossible to predict user behavior, so the only way to know what web site design will generate the most leads for your firm is to test them. Paid search makes this process easy.

Using pay per click ads, you can send an equal amount of traffic to two different landing pages, each with a different design, to measure the performance of each one. For this to work, each landing page needs its own form or other conversion event in order to be able to generate a conversion rate with which to compare the two pages.

For example, let's say you do this and generate the following data:

Landing Page 1Conversion Rate: 1.45%
Landing Page 2Conversion Rate: .63%

In this case, landing page 1 has a much better conversion rate, so it has the more effective design. You could continue this process, testing this page against other designs, or just go ahead and declare the design a winner and use it for your entire site. This is invaluable information that will greatly improve the performance of your online marketing.

Labels: landing page, law firm internet marketing, law firm seo, lawyer marketing, lawyer seo, lawyer website design, split-testing

Here is an advanced strategy that will give you an edge over your competition: build your own legal information hub. There are a number of good reasons for doing this, such as just attracting traffic, but for this discussion the main advantage is that it gives you a way to guide search engine spiders to pages you want them to find.

If you use social networking, article distribution, or any of the other content-based strategies that we recommend, then you want to make sure those pages get found. But you'd like to make that happen without directly linking to those sites. Otherwise, you've created two-way links, when what you want are one-way links.

If you own an information hub site, then you can use it to guide the search engines to any site you want without having two-way links between your main site and sites that link to you. It may become that the information hub itself ends up ranking higher than your main site for numerous long-tail keywords, which is another advantage. Even though the site will be very focused on providing information, it will still feature your brand and a very soft marketing message.

RSS feeds give you an easy way to display content on your information hub that updates itself. We may cover the technical aspects of how to do that in another post (or you can hire Work Media to do it). It's really not difficult.

Labels: information hub, law firm internet marketing, law firm link building, law firm seo, lawyer marketing, linking

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