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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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 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