Law Firm Marketing Blog

Each year, some of us day dream about where we will be next New Year’s eve. That is also a good time to ponder on where you have been. What decisions were made that helped your law firm grow and get new cases in the previous year? Even more importantly, what is eating your marketing budget and offering little to no return?

It’s probably your web site.

A law firm web site that is not properly designed and optimized will act as dead weight to your firm rather than a solid marketing tool. Older web sites without proper design and navigational flow may actually be repelling new cases rather than attracting them.

Just because you offer a form, doesn’t mean anyone will fill it out. Your law firm’s web site quality needs to instill confidence in your future clients.

Once your web site is live, properly designed, and functional, you need to be found. Search engine optimization should be at the top of your legal marketing budget in 2009. Law firm marketing online is drastically increasing and that is only because, online marketing is effective.

So when you’re standing on a beach, hotel balcony, or in your backyard welcoming in 2010, gazing up at the fireworks and thinking about the decisions you made in 2009 that helped your law firm grow, hopefully you remember clicking here and requesting a law firm marketing quote from SEOLawFirm.com.

To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.

To get the most out of your legal marketing strategy for the upcoming year, you may need a new look. Not just a new web site but a new brand all together. Attorneys and law firms that utilize a branding effort will convert better across all advertising medias because a strong brand gives their target client base an image to remember.

When businesses and individuals are looking for representation, they are bombarded with web sites and logos of other law firms that use the scales of justice and gavels. To really stand out, your law firm and law firm web design needs a unique brand.

Branding a firm will increase the success of your law firm marketing strategy whether its search engine optimization and online marketing, billboard advertising or print media. People remember imagery more clearly than words.

So this New Year, lay the foundation for a successful 2009 legal marketing plan online and off by getting a new logo and branding kit along with a new web site design.

To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.

Your law firm’s web site might have a great design but if it is not optimized for the right keyphrases, your traffic will be either non existent or not relevant to your firm.

The biggest mistake many web developers make is simply thinking too broad. For example, when building a web site for a divorce lawyer in Minnesota, they might include keywords like “divorce” and “lawyer”. Individually, that’s telling Google your keyphrases are for “divorce” and “lawyer” when actually, you are relevant to a “divorce lawyer”. Plus, you will need to throw in your region.

That is why we focus on keyphrases rather than keywords. Optimizing for a general keyword is not going to yield results because your web site will not be ranked on the first page for “divorce” or “lawyer”.

Work with a legal marketing and law firm marketing company that understands keyphrase selection and make sure that the law firm web design company understands search engine optimization.

To learn more about law firm marketing, legal marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.

Lawyers and law firms are moving their marketing dollars from Yellow Pages to the natural white search engine results.

In years passed, the process of legal marketing started and often stopped with a yellow page ad. Need law firm marketing? Simply make the biggest, best, most attractive and catchy full page advertisement in your local Yellow Pages and wait for the phone to ring.

The internet is changing things and becoming the more popular media for law firm marketing but Yellow Pages across the country seem to be holding strong on their pricing… sometimes, beyond its value. Which is why many lawyers are migrating to the internet with their marketing dollars in hand looking for better conversion.

Some areas of law that deal with clientele that have lower levels of education (such as disability, social security, etc) may see some results from the traditional phone book advertising. However, most areas of law will convert their marketing dollars better using search engine optimization.

The white listings in the center of a Google search result are referred to as “natural listings” or “natural rankings”. These web sites appear to the Google bot as being the most relevant for that particular phrase. So, if you want to come up “naturally” for a term related to your area of practice and region (ie: Boston bankruptcy lawyer), your web site must convince the emotionless, unbiased Google Bot that you possess the most relevant and highest quality web site related to that term.

A new law firm web site may be necessary to improve the quality of your image to Google but if you have recently had a new web site built or your existing web site has proper web standards, a search engine optimization company should be able to optimize the web site you already have to achieve success.

To learn more about law firm marketing, legal marketing, or law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306 ext 1.

Several law firm directories exist online and many customers ask if the directories are worth it– simply put, yes. Search engines use directories to find quality web sites. If your web site is linking to a law firm directory, it is a highly relevant link and generally from a high page ranking web site.

The cost of law firm directories varies from the higher end, such as Lawyers.com, to the affordable value added service, LawyersGuide.com, which also allows you to hyperlink your keyphrase. For example, if you are a “Boston Personal Injury Lawyer” you can link that phrase to your web site, which further assists your search engine optimization effort.

The best place to start is with a value added directory like LawyersGuide and if it is successful, then invest in more expensive ones as well.

Visit Directory.seolawfirm.com to learn more about law firm directories.

Omitting Search Engine Optimization from your Legal Marketing Can Cost Your Law Firm

Many law firms are still not utilizing the Internet in their law firm marketing to get more leads from their web site. This is often due to not fully understanding the process of optimization, or the value associated with it.

Currently, you have–depending on your area of practice and region– nearly 1,000 searches on Google that are relevant to your law firm each month, and possibly more. Based on click through rates and elimination formulas, you are realistically missing out on 200-300 people in need of representation. How much is a case worth to you?

Law Firm Web Design with Conversion in Mind

If you’re law firm web site is more than a few years old, your search engine optimization campaign will be more effective with a new look. New design styles, web site programming, and page formats provide a pleasant experience for your web site visitors; as well as search engines like Google and Yahoo. You should ask for a web design quote along with your search engine optimization quote.

Is Search Engine Optimization Expensive?

Compared to other forms of advertising such as Yellow Pages, Newspapers, and even Pay-per-Click advertising online, search engine optimization doesn’t come close. In fact, if you have received a quote from services like Martindale, you were over-quoted. Get a search engine optimization quote from SEOLawFirm.com and compare.

It’s that time of year again. The closing of a year past, the beginning of a new one, and the time of year when many law firms start thinking about next year’s legal marketing strategies.

If your law firm is planning to harness the power of the Internet for 2009, some early planning may be needed.

Search engine optimization is a progressive process that starts with content optimization (sometimes a new law firm web design) and is followed by getting websites, blogs, and news outlets to link to your law firm’s website. Therefore, it takes a few months for all of these elements to take effect in Google’s search results.

Content Optimization

Optimizing content is the process in which we include your keyphrases in your website’s content. For example, instead of “We have been practicing law in Boston for 15 years,” we would optimize that phrase as “Boston personal injury lawyers, Smith and White, have been practicing law for 15 years.” That, of course, is based on a personal injury lawyer in Boston.

Link Building

Link building is simply the process of getting other websites to link to your law firm’s website. We write articles and press releases on behalf of our clients and then distribute them across newswires and directories; at that point they get syndicated through places like Google News and Google Blog Search. This results in a series of websites linking to your website.

To see a return in the early part of 2009 for your online law firm marketing plan, you will need to start your search engine optimization project this month. Redesigning your site may increase your ability to achieve higher rankings if your current website is more than a few years old.

To learn more about law firm marketing, legal marketing, and law firm web design, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306 ext 1.

Each week, we talk about the various elements that will make your law firm’s web site rank higher in search engines. Google having the highest standards is of course, the search engine we base our law firm web design and law firm search engine optimization practices and policies around. But to truly understand search engine optimization requires an inside look at what Google really wants.

Search Traffic
Google wants more people to use their search engine than any other search engine available. Currently, they get about 70% of search traffic. That means, they have 30% of online users to win over to their cause. All of their webmaster regulations are geared towards making their search engine have the most relevant and highest quality web sites indexed and ranked.

Quality
That brings us to quality. Google wants quality sites with quality content ranked in their search engine. If someone is searching in a search engine and the top ranking web sites are spammy, that lowers the quality of the search engine. Therefore, Google wants to see quality content and a professionally developed web site. Go ahead, do a search on Google and see how many top ranking web sites look like they were made by a “do it yourselfer”. Most high ranking web sites are professionally designed and developed.

One Way Links
Judging the quality of a web site by the number of quality web sites linking into it is referred to (in the SEO community) as the Google democracy. If you look at each quality web site on the internet as a qualified voter, that helps you understand their link philosophy. The most qualified web sites linking to your site, the more “votes” you have, thus a higher ranking.

This simple outline of what Google wants will help you understand the legal marketing strategies used by your search engine optimization company when development a law firm marketing plan.

The powerful quality of internet marketing is that it allows your firm to be found by an audience that is seeking legal advice. However, once the visitor is on your web site, your job is just beginning.

Many people begin searching the web to find free legal advice. Often times, they know what they are going to do, they just need to be reassured and have their fears calmed. The family whose credit card payments are getting out of control may start by learning more about the bankruptcy process. A small business owner who has been cheated by a large client may be considering filing a lawsuit. Or an individual who is in pain with rising medical expenses from an incident due to store negligence may be seeking repayment.

The key to turning these visitors into new cases is selling them on their own decision. In most states, you can not have a legal sales department to continually call and sell people on starting a case, but on your web site, you can give them the information they need to make the right decision. Then make the decision to go with your firm.

You have heard all the questions in your career. The best way to calm someone’s inhibitions is by publishing common questions. A bankruptcy lawyer may answer general questions like “Will I go to jail if I don’t go bankrupt?” or “Will everybody know if I file bankruptcy?”. A divorce lawyer may answer questions such as “Will I immediately lose half of my savings to my ex if I file for divorce?” or “How do I file if I can’t find my spouse?”.

Answering these fear associated questions will calm your visitors and build a certain level of trust. This will increase the likelihood of the visitor contacting your firm thus becoming a new client.

To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, law firm web design, and search engine optimization, visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.

While many of us are anxiously waiting for next weeks election to see who will take office in January of 2009, we would like to remind you that this is the best time of year to elect a new brand for your law firm.

Your law firm web design is going to be the first impression given to 100% of the clients you get from the internet. That is the going to be the impression that makes them contact your firm or move on to the next.

The three main attributes of a successful web site can be briefly described as these…

Findability
Ok, its not really a word but it bests describes a web sites ability to be found on the web. This increased “findability” is achieved with proven search engine optimization methods.

Professional Image
Once your law firm is found, it is important that you look your best. A professional web site is one that stands out while maintaining class. It is with a professional designer and branding expert that this is accomplished.

Conversion
Your web site is found, the visitor is looking into your law firm, now its time to close the deal. Conversion begins with immediate access to you either by a contact form on every page or a phone number that easily found. The easier you make it for a visitor to contact you, the greater number of visitors will convert to new clients.

Combined, these three legal marketing elements will pour a foundation of success for your online law firm marketing campaign.