There is a difference, technically between acronyms and initialisms. Acronyms form a new word that is pronounced as such, like SNAP, while initialisms form a series of letters that is read as letters, like FBI or ACH. Both acronyms and initialisms should be used thoughtfully and sparingly when writing for a broad audience – and especially when writing for marketing purposes.

Marketers are one group of professionals who seem to be able to use endless acronyms to describe fundamentally non-technical information. Why do marketers like acronyms so much? This question may be unanswerable, but the practice should still be addressed. According to Marketing Profs, 64 percent of marketing professionals say that producing enough content is their biggest challenge. Maybe the constant demand of producing new content forces people into a bubble from which they forget not everyone knows the language of their trade. Or, maybe content producers sincerely think that peppering their articles with acronyms makes them seem knowledgable….

But that assumption is BS: Bad Strategy. Using too many industry specific acronyms is confusing and annoying to readers who are not familiar with them. It can make you seem aloof and pretentious, as though you are more concerned with playing the expert than you are with actually communicating to your audience. If readers are confronted with acronym after acronym they do not understand, they are not going to take the time to look them up. They will simply click away.

When writing articles for general consumption, avoid the following bad habits:

1. Headlines that contain too many acronyms. In professional writing, the best rule is to always write out a full phrase first, identify the acronym and then use the acronym throughout the rest of the piece. By definition, this precludes using them in headlines. (In less formal writing, ubiquitous phrases like, “U.S.” or “FBI” my be written as acronyms from first mention. But these terms are hardly relevant to only one industry.)

Headlines with too many acronyms suffer from multiple issues. First, people who do not know the industry-speak may be instantly turned off. You could have something valuable to offer, but your readers will never know whether they should be interested if they do not understand what you are saying. Also, headlines with too many acronyms smack of industry-related overbearance. Just because you know the terms does not mean you need to cram as many of them into a headline as possible. That is all bluster, no substance.

2. Headlines that use overly vague words. You have seen them – article titles that are so non-specific that they could apply to any group or industry. Headlines that read obliquely, “Ensure Your Strategy Succeeds” do not convey any information about the article’s content. Sure, you want your strategy to succeed, most people do, but no one wants to read about strategies that are completely irrelevant to the problems they need to solve or the goals they hope to achieve. Headlines must tell people why they should take the time to click through and read. Overly vague, acronym-laden headlines fail that test.

3. Assuming that others understand your acronyms. No matter how often you have heard an acronym used, always remember there are others out there who have no idea what it stands for. Also remember that there are many acronyms that have multiple meanings, depending on the setting in which they are being employed. You may be saying something completely different and nonsensical to a reader who has a different understanding of certain acronyms than you do. It is best to err on the side of caution and clarity in your writing.

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At Google’s I/O conference in San Francisco last week, they announced their plans to make internet search a little more conversational. With a little inspiration from Star Trek, Google wants users to search with casual verbal conversation.

Google Senior Vice President Amit Singhal said the search engine of the future will “answer, converse and anticipate.”

The presentations at the conference involved Singhal searching for pizza by asking, “What’s the nearest pizza place?” He then asked follow-up questions such as, “When does it close?” then “What’s its phone number?”

Google Vice President Johanna Wright showed attendees a preview by asking Google to “Show me things to do in Santa Cruz.” The search engine showed pictures, landmarks, and restaurants.

Like most early previews of Google products, this creates more questions than the company is willing to publicly answer. But, based on the examples provided at the conference, here is how your clients are going to find you:

“Google, I need an attorney.”
“I was hit by a cab driver while jogging.”
“Show me lawyers within 5 miles of my location.”

That looks very different from today’s queries which rely on terms such as “pedestrian accident attorney” or “personal injury lawyer” or “San Francisco personal injury lawyer.”

Of course, this will not only change the way people find a lawyer after an accident.

Google will eventually have to serve listings to people that say:

“My autistic child is discriminated against at school.”
“I need bankruptcy options.”
“I have been arrested for DUI and need a lawyer.”
“How do I protect my family from estate taxes?”
“My client breached their contract.”
“A competitor is using our invention.”

And that’s not all. Your website is going to have to be optimized for follow-up queries:
“I need an attorney.”
- “Divorce.”
- – “We own a business and two houses.”
- – - “We have three children.”
- – - – “One is in college, two are in high school.”

Multilevel verbal search is going to completely change keyphrase research and website optimization.

Is your website ready to have a conversation?

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News | Attorney Press Release Distribution

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However, through all of Google’s updates, the basic rules have remained the same. And so has the underlying formula: a combination of authority and relevance. The search giant has simply (and consistently) been stepping up enforcement of things long considered to be unethical or bad practices and attempting to reward content that is genuinely useful.

Social media increasingly has a place within this equation. Businesses that produce content others find helpful are more likely to get liked, shared, tweeted about and followed. And marketers just cannot stop talking about social media. But it is not the magic bullet that some seem to wish it to be. Search marketing that produces strong, organic results is still a key component to online visibility and conversion. Firms must find the right balance between search and social. Here are some items to consider when developing your budget, time investment and approach.

Social media is still not a good driver of actual conversion. Search marketing drives people to your site who are more likely to actually contact you. The fact that they are actively searching for information about services places them into a category of prospects that are somewhat to very likely to convert. However, people still use social media predominantly for entertainment – they do not visit such sites with the primary purpose of finding a product or service.

Search is good for mobile and local. People who are searching on mobile devices are more likely to act quickly, usually within twenty-four hours. Statistics show that over 70 percent of those who find a site via mobile search call or contact the business within that time frame. Mobile searchers are often using things like tablets or phones to do quick searches for local businesses – places they will either call immediately or use their device to get directions in order to pay a visit.

Search works better for people who are not already familiar with your firm. Social medial is a place people go to interact with others they already know. Those who use social media tend to follow individuals or businesses they are already familiar with in their offline lives. If they seek out your firm’s Facebook page, chances are they have already had interactions with one of your attorneys. Search, however, gets information about your firm to people who may never have heard of you. A good organic search ranking can introduce you to potential clients and be their first contact with your firm.

Social medial may influence SEO. Both Google and Bing have admitted to using social signals as one element in determining rankings, but search marketers are not in agreement as to precisely how much influence social media activity actually has. For Google, the biggest factor appears to be whether or not your website is linked to a Google+ page for your firm. Being active on Google+ and having plus-one buttons on your content are likely one of the best time investments. Getting shares directly from your website and blog also seems to have some bearing on results, more so than likes or tweets. Links to your content from social media sites can also be helpful if that content is again shared.

Social media helps build relationships. One of ways in which social media participation is most useful is its ability to help you grow relationships with colleagues and clients. Word of mouth referrals are still one of the leading sources of new attorney business, and nurturing your online circles of influence can be beneficial in the same way as traditional networking. If you are taking full advantage of social media marketing, you will be doing more than just broadcasting story after story about your firm. You will also be engaging in discussions, recommending useful content and developing strategic relationships.

Incorporating social media buttons in email campaigns increases click-through rates. Email marketing is still a good way to stay in touch with people who have been in contact with your firm. According to MarketingProfs, a typical marketing email has a click-through rate of about 2.4 percent, while those that include social media icons have a click-through rate of 6.2 percent. Some social media participation may be able to boost email campaign performance.

Should you sink all of your marketing budget into social media? No. Organic and local search results are still the primary drivers of high-quality traffic to your website. But you should also not ignore social media altogether. The right activity can influence your search marketing efforts, enhance your reputation as a trusted resource, and help with peer-to-peer networking and relationship building. It is simply one piece of a balanced strategy that must also include your website, on-and-offline marketing and good client service. Google+

Convincing a website visitor to contact your firm is just a first step; the ultimate goal is of course to convert that visitor into a client. The more you can personalize their experience and convince them that you are a trustworthy resource, they more likely they are to actually take the next step and hire your firm. An often underutilized resource in the conversion process is the thank you page that is displayed after a visitor completes a form submission.

Hopefully, your website already uses thank you pages. That is, once a visitor fills out and submits a form, they are redirected to a page that at a minimum thanks them for their interest in your firm and tells them when they can expect to hear from you. If you have different forms on your site for different purposes, like signing up for a newsletter, then your thank you pages should be customized accordingly.

But what can you do that goes beyond just a mere thank you? Try some of these practices to make your thank you pages work harder for you.

1. Add testimonials. Social proof – the idea that people tend to do what others are already doing – is a real phenomenon online. If your state bar allows you to use testimonials as a part of your marketing, place some select quotes on your thank you page. Professionals that have good Google reviews and offer solid client testimonials (especially video testimonials) tend to get more conversions. People simply trust those who they feel others have already been able to count on. Letting them know you have been able to help their peers can nudge them toward hiring you.

2. Offer a free download or other supporting content. If you have written any ebooks, like a divorce guide or estate planning basics, offer a download to those who have contacted you. This will help keep you in the forefront of their minds and will remind them of you any time they open the document to reference a question they might have. It also offers a point of conversation when you do contact them to set up an appointment.

3. Sincerely show gratitude. Give a real thank you, not just a canned, “we appreciate your interest” sentence that a visitor could see on anyone’s website. Let them know that you understand that they took valuable time to review your website and submit a question – and that you recognize their time investment. Making a personal connection by showing you respect a visitor’s efforts can go a long way toward making them feel comfortable with hiring your firm.

4. Verify your voice. Your thank you page should reflect the personalty you have cultivated at your firm and in your marketing. Do you have a certain style of writing? Have you incorporated a particular type of graphic or photography throughout the site? Make sure you include these elements on the thank you pages as well.

5. Control expectations. Give the most accurate account of what someone can expect once they have submitted a question. Let them know within what timeframe they can expect to hear from you. Depending on your practice area, you may be able to offer some insight into how they will be able to proceed once they hear from you. People in need of legal services are often nervous and full of questions. Giving them as much realistic information as you can about what to expect may help calm their fears and establish trust with your firm.
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Including pictures of lawyers doing something they enjoy can make their attorney bio page more than a resume and a way to connect with prospective clients.

People hire you to handle their legal matters. They don’t hire logos, DIY legal document services, they hire you – your experience, your credentials, maybe even the style of your hair. Whatever it is, you are who they are contacting.

You need to think about the power of you when selecting an online marketing strategy. Your website should not be a buffer between you, your law firm, and prospective clients. Instead, it should be an extension of you and what you stand for.

Don’t think this only applies to sole practitioners. If you have a larger firm with multiple attorneys, you can capitalize on this philosophy by bringing the characters and personalities of your law firm to life so that the many personalities that make up your practice can become part of your online presence.

How to make your website personal

1) Who are you, really? – Your attorney bio page is one of the most popular pages on your website. When reviewing analytic data, we see it confirmed across all practice areas and major cities. Your bio page on your website is a great place to talk about you.

List your credentials, but don’t focus on them. Everyone assumes you went to law school, that doesn’t need to be the focus.

• What are some of your hobbies?
• What organizations do you volunteer for or contribute to?
• Most importantly, why did you choose the area of law that you practice?

2) Step away from the bookcase – Your attorney bio page can be so much more than just your resume, and that means going beyond the picture of you in a suit and tie. Include photos of you doing things you enjoy, like sailing, golfing, horseback riding, rebuilding classic cars, cycling, dog training — anything that gives the potential client a glimpse of who you are. Then, have the other lawyers at your firm do the same thing.

3) Share personal stories on social profiles – Of course, you need to maintain a professional image, but extending your hobbies and the interest of your staff to your social profiles is a great way to show off your human side. A few examples of personal events to share could be weddings, adopting a dog or cat from an animal shelter, or participating in an athletic event.

Sharing a piece of yourself with prospective clients can give your firm a powerful competitive edge. Clients need to make a connection with you and the other lawyers at your firm. Adding some personal insight makes it easier for clients to connect with you and your firm, and those connections lead to new cases.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News | Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Keeping users engaged on your website has two main benefits. First, the longer they are on your site, the more likely they are to convert. If people looking for information on legal services find a wealth of it on your pages, they are more apt to trust you and contact you. And the more engaged visitors become with your content, the more likely they are to remember you and recommend your site to others. You may not even be aware of it, but you could be creating little mini brand ambassadors by simply posting good content.

Your bounce rate and time on site statistics can only tell you so much, and they do not reveal how people interact with the content on your pages. You may also want to know things like how far down the page they scroll, whether they click off pages or navigate away via an on-site link, or whether certain authors are more popular than others.

Enhance your statistics with Event Tracking

Google Analytics allows you to use Event Tracking to create events, or actions, and then record how many users engage in your chosen actions. For example, you could make scrolling halfway through an article an event and reaching the bottom of the page a separate event. You can also time how long it takes visitors to complete an action, which helps determine if they are just scrolling quickly to the bottom of the page or actually reading your content.

Other events include visits to a certain category or to posts written by a certain author. You can also track actions like how many times a .pdf file is downloaded or how often forms submissions are started and abandoned. If you offer every newsletter as a download, you will be able to tell which newsletters are the most popular and focus more on those subjects. If you are having difficulty with conversion, data on which forms users are abandoning could be used to refine them for greater completion rates.

If you use WordPress, the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin by Yoast can help you create and track events easily through your admin panel. It is the most popular, most comprehensive and easiest to use analytics plugins available. Events can also be added via jQuery, with the help of a web developer.

Successful websites keep visitors interested long enough for them to call you or fill out a form. Great websites keep people coming back to look for more helpful content and encourage them to share with others. The the more actions you are able to track, the better you will understand what content users see as valuable and what they tend to skip. This allows you to tweak your site accordingly. Lowering your bounce rate and increasing time on site should also help with your search ranking, sending you more new visitors – visitors you can grab with your engaging site. Google+

But there is a whole world out there beyond your own website where people looking for legal services are searching for information about you. The firm Moses & Rooth, curious about opinions from actual consumers not marketing companies, partnered with Mike Blumenthal to conduct a study about the behaviors of those in need of a specialty lawyer. One question asked, if you are searching for a lawyer online, “what is most important to you?” The top choice of respondents was, “Information about them elsewhere on the Internet,” followed by Google reviews at number two. These choices together received over 50% of all responses. Establishing yourself as an authority through your own website is important, and extending that authority beyond your site to the rest of the web is critical. Here are tips for broadening your influence:

Connect with journalists. Some attorneys find the thought of interacting with journalists distasteful. It smacks too much of self-aggrandizement and takes valuable time away from what you should be doing: good work for clients. But having a reporter or reporters who know you are available to add comments to important stories can be an invaluable marketing tool, especially for local SEO. Try to avoid the hard sell, and instead interact with journalists and complement their work. Do not ignore their calls. Networking with journalists is a good way to get articles that support your reputation as a leader in your area distributed online.

Remember: press releases are not dead. At the beginning of the year, Google’s Matt Cutts announced that press releases no longer have any SEO value, causing something of an uproar within the search marketing community. While Google may ignore links within press releases posted on well-known sites, like PRWeb, there is still worth in the distribution. Press releases (that contain actual information) may be picked up by other sites with high page ranks, or the release may be written about and linked to by other sources. Both of these things help build Google-approved, quality links. In addition, having your firm appear on highly regarded news websites bolsters your authority among those looking for services.

Take advantage of HARO. The website Help a Reporter Out (HARO) connects journalists with sources and can be a great resource for attorneys wishing to contribute to stories relating to topics of interest to their clients. HARO offers a basic, free account for sources, which is probably all your firm will need. Once you have signed up as a source, you will receive emails, or “Publicity Alerts” informing you of stories that could potentially use your expertise. If you use the site wisely, you can potentially come away with some helpful contacts while spreading the word about your firm.

Solicit reviews. People tend to feel better doing things that others are also doing, and hiring a lawyer is no different. Having good Google reviews matters, and it does influence users’ behavior. Simply ask a few select clients if they would mind contributing. If you have done good work for them, they will likely be more than willing to share.

Transition your thinking from keywords to value. If you want your blog posts or press releases to gain traction, they must actually provide information that is worth talking about. No one is going to cite a press release that is full of obvious keyword spam or link to a blog entry that does not add anything to the conversation. When writing content, forget about keywords. Think about what you would be interested in if you were looking for a lawyer and write about that. Speak to people, not search engines. One of the best ways to build natural links is to be recognized for your relevant insights and observations.Google+

MarketingProfs published a provocatively titled article this week, claiming that most small and medium business websites will fail. Small and medium businesses (SMBs), the article claims, are not as prepared to face the reality of competing online as they should be by this point in the life of the Internet. Their analysis is based largely on data drawn from vSplash’s SMB DigitalScape, which reveals some surprising facts about small and medium business websites, including:

• 93.3% are not mobile-compatible
• 80.5% contain no links to social media
• 60% have no phone number on the homepage
• 56.3% have no keyword information

Do not let your website fall into one of more of these categories. Remember these five things that the most effective websites have in common:

Conversion: Above all, you want your website to convert. It can be well-designed, contain great information and represent your firm in a professional manner, but if it does not prompt people to contact you, you have wasted your money. A phone number must be present on all pages, top and bottom. Make sure that the phone number is actual text – people using smartphones will want to tap and dial. It is also a good idea to have a form on all pages and at a minimum on the home page. If forms are not on all pages, a clear, obvious contact button must be present.

Compatibility: It is no secret that people are addicted to their mobile devices. The number of different types of devices continues to proliferate, and law firm websites must keep up. According to data from Knotice, at the end of 2012, 41% of commercial emails were opened on mobile devices. Since your emails should link to your website, users must be able to have a seamless experience. In addition, more searches are being performed on mobile devices. If people cannot view your website on their device, you are missing out on potential business.

Content: Website content can be viewed in a number of categories. There is static content that remains largely unchanged, like practice area information, attorney bios and contact information, archived content like articles or glossaries, and fluid content like blog entries and press items. Content is key to onsite optimization and link building, and the way in which content is written is important. Keyword placement cannot seem forced, nor can the same keywords be consistently linked to the same page. Robotic keyword laden text and headlines will no longer do the trick.

Connection: Websites must be frequently updated in order to appear relevant. Part of this process involves connecting your website with appropriate social media profiles. The goal should be achieving a balance in which all outlets are updated regularly with information that is appropriate for each venue. Do not simply broadcast item after item about your firm to all profiles simultaneously. Schedule different updates for different profiles. You may also want to incorporate items like recent tweets into your own website to help keep content fresh.

Communication: Comprehensive search marketing involves more than tossing in a few keywords and some external links. Google has systematically cracked down on questionable SEO practices over the past several years, targeting link exchanges and keyword spam among many other things. As a result, website content must be more naturally written, links must be more diverse and your website cannot be your only method of communicating online. Integrated marketing requires building relationships, much like traditional offline networking. Posting regular updates to both your blog and social media profiles, answering questions, providing informative analysis of current events and recognizing the work of peers are all methods that can (and should) be employed as part of a communication and relationship building strategy. Google+

An aspect of simple design that is growing more popular among lawyers is the use of one dominant image, above the scroll, on attorney websites. This is a departure from the practice of throwing as much information at the visitor as possible, and it is rooted in the fact that people are better able to make decisions when faced with a limited number of choices. Firms are recognizing that while practice area information must be easily accessible, it does not have to occupy all of the most valuable real estate on a web page. Instead, employing a large image, simple headline and obvious call to action pushes visitors toward the desired response – contacting your firm – without the added confusion of too many options or too much text.

Attorneys are also recognizing the need for good, high-resolution images of their own attorneys and staff in natural interactions within the firm’s office. In some cases, this is a necessity, as your state bar may forbid the use of stock photography that implies the actor may be an attorney. However, as is more often the case, much of the available stock photography is widely overused. Stock may be an option, but it is not always the best one. Custom photo shoots with a professional photographer allow your firm’s personality to come through on your site. Quality images help create a connection with the user and, when coupled with a well-written headline, give visitors an immediate impression of why they should contact your firm.

SEO | Law Firm, for its part, was happy to introduce the Gavel Free Guarantee several years ago. The guarantee expresses the desire to avoid clichés and create marketing materials that are representative of a firm and the value it offers to its clients. While the gavel is perhaps the most ubiquitous law firm cliché, it is not the only one. Handshakes, puzzle pieces, people writing on white boards; these have all been done. When choosing images, think about what you see most often from competitors and try to choose another direction.

In addition to paring down text and placing more emphasis on large graphics and headlines, more firms are seeking to simplify their navigation. Simplicity in navigation allows visitors to find the information for which they are searching more quickly. Law firms often have a wealth of information to share, which is good for both building trust and enhancing search marketing efforts. However, there is a hierarchy to what items are most important, and content should be categorized accordingly. Limit the number of options in main navigation bars to the basics: things like bios, services, why hire and contact. Think through a logical flow of content when creating a sitemap and structure sub-menus accordingly. Giving people an unambiguous path to follow helps enhance the user experience and increase conversion.

Simplicity is becoming a necessity. People are more distracted and are accessing your site from a more diverse set of devices than ever. Giving everyone the best experience – from those who have time to sit down at their desk and research to those who are looking up your number on their smartphones – will help you reach the widest number of prospects. People appreciate simplicity. Attorneys are taking notice.Google+

SEO | Law Firm’s parent company, Adviatech, whose servers host hundreds of websites for law firms throughout North America, woke up staff members in Florida and California, and coordinated with their server administrators in Texas to execute an emergency plan which heightened security on all of their websites built on the WordPress CMS. Eighteen hours later, long after the sun had set on both coasts, every website had been carefully reviewed, secured, updated, fitted with additional brute-force protection, stripped of all old administrator accounts, and prepared to weather out the storm.

Having prevented their clients from withstanding an attack, Adviatech assigned several people to closely monitor the servers’ activity throughout the rest of the weekend. Monday morning, Adviatech’s clients were mostly unaware of what had taken place to protect them over the weekend – which is exactly how it should work.

Why should a legal marketing company have emergency protocol in place for internet threats? Because weak website security can harm your search engine ranking.

Online marketing goes beyond keyphrase reports, news releases, link building, podcasting, ebooks, blogging — even staying up-to-date with the latest Google Penguin 2 update. If everything is executed perfectly and then your website is hacked, your web traffic can lose 99 percent of its traffic because of one sentence that displays in Google: “This site may harm your computer.”

As Google crawls and indexes websites, it scans them for known malware and viruses. It’s a way to help make the internet a safer place. If your law firm’s website was hacked and a virus or malware application was installed on it, Google will not immediately remove it from their index, but instead, your search engine listing will display a warning that says, “This site may harm your computer,” effectively stopping virtually all click-through traffic.

Once a site gets the “harm your computer” label, the process of getting it removed involves detecting and fixing the security problem, then submitting the site for reconsideration within Google. They will then (at some time) review your site and decide whether or not to remove the label.

The damage could already be done. While your site had the label, it was delivering thousands of first impressions of your law firm name that stated, “This site may harm your computer.” There is no way to submit a first impression for reconsideration.

Fortunately for the law firms that work with Adviatech’s SEO | Law Firm for their website and legal marketing, they put their trust in a company that not only employs some of the most creative designers, talented writers, and experienced search engine marketing minds in the industry, but they also have security-focused developers, server administrators, and crisis plans for the various threats that may come their way.

Marketing is fun and getting a law firm’s website ranked at the top of page one feels great. But a legal marketing company doesn’t have the luxury of just getting a website well-positioned; it also has to protect the website from outside threats.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News | Attorney Press Release Distribution

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PowerPoint can be a dangerous thing. It does have features that, if used appropriately, can help create effective supporting slides. But, it is merely a tool, and like all tools, it can be used for good or bad, to inform or to confuse. People sit through far to many boring presentations throughout the course of a professional lifetime. Do not force them to endure another. Avoid some of these most common PowerPoint mistakes:

Too much text. People think and learn visually. Pictures can often provoke a memory in a way that listening or reading cannot. Take some time to think about how your firm can demonstrate the key points of your seminar with interesting photography or illustration instead of list after bulleted list. If you give people too much to read at the same time they are trying to listen, they are not going to remember what they saw or what you said.

Wrong font or font size. Your choice of font affects your presentation in many ways. Too many fonts within one presentation is distracting and makes it more difficult for people to digest information. All slides will need to be readable at a distance and the type size must be large enough for everyone to see. Using large type also prevents you from putting too much information on each slide. There simply won’t be room. In addition, remember that sans serif fonts, like Arial, are easiest on the eyes, while script or display fonts can be difficult to read.

Bad color choices. Color choices affect the feel of the presentation as well as the readability of the text. Pick one or two colors and use only those throughout all slides. Having one main color and a complementary or contrasting color is a good rule of thumb. Do not pick colors that yell at your audience. You want them to be comfortable while they are looking at the slides. Avoid placing colored text on a differently colored or black background. Colors that have similar levels of saturation, even if they are different, are difficult to read when grouped together or placed on top of each other.

Reading your slides. Your audience can read the words on a slide much more quickly than you can read it out loud. They will reach the end before you do, tune you out and then turn to thoughts of what to have for dinner or what to focus on in their next workout. In addition, creating slides that are just a rehashing of your full presentation does not give you the opportunity to make the necessary visual impression.

Inconsistent layout. Consistency in your layout involves using limited colors and fonts as well as having the same graphic styles throughout all slides. Perhaps your graphics are primarily illustration rather than photo based. Or, maybe you have one element that appears in the same place on all pages like a top or side bar. You may want to create a simple slide template and use that as the background for all of your slides. This should be something as subtle as a small logo in the bottom corner. Please, no patterns or any other graphics that will draw attention away from your actual materials.

Failure to follow-up. Admittedly, this is not exactly a PowerPoint problem, but it is a common mistake of seminar presenters. Combining a perk for attendees with a method for collecting contact information is particularly effective. Give atendees an incentive to visit your website, like a free download of the seminar if they provide their name and email address. (You do not have to give away the whole thing, but you could offer a summary or select slides.) Hand out a special seminar code and tell them they can use it on your website to download a free ebook or practice area guide.When setting up the seminar, you should have required RSVPs. At the seminar, make sure people check in. This way you have two lists with which to follow-up.

Presentations are a great way to introduce your firm to a high-value audience. Make sure you do not waste the opportunity. Give people a reason to remember you.Google+

What is it about this particular design that has given it a sense of timelessness? What keeps it from feeling dated after almost four years – an eternity in Internet years? Several features have contributed to the site’s success, including the use of imagery, structure and organization of information.

Background image: The large format background image was, at the time, a style that was still finding its way into the mainstream. The client in this project was eager to try new things and create a website that did not look like those of the competition, which allowed the design to take shape around a central, striking photo. This willingness to explore a variety of styles and experiment with what works helps create an atmosphere in which unexpected choices lead to positive outcomes.

Were the site to be reprogrammed today, the background image could be modified so that it resizes dynamically to fill the user’s whole screen at any resolution. The site currently uses a repeating horizon image to fill the screen beyond the main background picture on larger monitors. While this tweak may add an element of modernization to the site’s code, the large background image plus repeating horizon still come together to create an effect that still looks current even years later.

Organization: The client was interested in incorporating a jet engine into the navigation of the site, which led to the creation of a circular menu for the main link choices. This gives the site both an unexpected and memorable design element as well as a focal point that helps point the user to the main – and most important – navigation elements.

Since the main navigation contains only essential links to a limited number of pages, a solution had to be found that would help direct users to informational pages that are of interest to potential clients. This was done by incorporating a simple drop-down menu below the main picture in the middle of the page. The visual separation of the two menus helps make both of them easier to find and use, and it helps eliminate any confusion that would be caused by forcing visitors to click through several pages in order to find that they are looking for.

Structure and use of widgets: For the last several years, websites have been moving toward a more modular structure, exemplified in social networks like Pinterest and magazine sites like Forbes.com. These sites split information into smaller, more digestible pieces, delineated by either white space, or, in the case of Pinterest, actual borders. The businessaviationcounsel.com site creates a similar effect with semi-transparent widgets that divide menus, images, blog entries, transaction results and content into their own spaces. This helps give the site visual balance, and it gives each of the pieces room to breathe.

It is easier on a visitor’s eyes if there is clear division between elements of a website. When information is not well organized, it can be overwhelming, causing users to click away instead of sorting through the confusion. Recognizing the value of a widget-based structure has helped the site stay current throughout the years.

If your firm is considering a website redesign, take a close look at the styles that are informing modern designs. Look outside of your field for ideas you may not see on other attorney’s websites. Spotting interesting ideas, creating an atmosphere that allows for experimentation and recognizing trends with staying power will help your site stay relevant for many years to come.

Google+

With mobile internet usage expected to overtake desktop usage within the next few years, most firms interested in SEO are also interested in mobile-friendly websites. In particular, having a site that functions properly on a mobile device is critical to local search marketing efforts. More and more, people are just as likely – if not more so – to perform a local search on a smart phone as they are on a desktop or laptop machine.

The necessity of having a mobile website may be well understood, but the issue of whether a responsive design or a separate mobile website is best for SEO is still hotly debated. Google has indicated its preference for responsive design, and that is certainly a consideration. In fact, Google refers to responsive design as an industry best practice. But that has not stopped some from arguing that responsive design is bad for SEO. Here are some pros and cons from arguments on both sides:

User Experience

Pros: Having a website that transitions seamlessly from device to device makes it easier for users to interact with your content. If someone shares something from their desktop, that person’s friends, who might access the content on their phones or tablets, will see the same thing. They will not be taken to a stripped down version of the site, which may or may not not contain the shared items. Conversely, someone might first see an item on a mobile site – say at work – and make a note to do more research at home. Later, if they access the site from a laptop or desktop and have to navigate through a different site, they could experience frustration. In Google’s mind, a responsive website creates the most seamless, and therefore the best, user experience. And, since a good user experience is supposed to help with rankings, it is good for SEO.

Cons: People may use your mobile site and your desktop site in very different ways. Before going with a responsive website redesign, consider what the user’s primary goal as they access the site from various devices. If you find these goals to be similar, responsive design will work for you. If you find that mobile users want something entirely different, it may be necessary to create a targeted mobile site.

Search Marketing

Pros: Responsive design makes your search marketing efforts easier to manage. Overseeing one campaign is less of a hassle than tracking two separate campaigns. If you have one well-optimized site, it is less likely that items will slip through the cracks or be forgotten in otherwise busy and hectic schedules, causing one or the other site to fall behind. Splitting your time between two campaigns can be more costly in terms of both time and money spent. It is important to determine if the investment is worth it before eschewing responsive design.

Cons: People may be using different keywords when searching from a mobile device. It is important to look at your analytics and see what terms people have used when they land on your pages from mobile devices versus those used by people searching on desktop computers. If these two sets of keywords are not compatible, it may be necessary to create two sites optimized for two different sets of terms. However, if there is overlap, remember that there is no reason one responsive site cannot be optimized for both desktop and mobile searches. Keywords are keywords, and as long as they make sense within their context and the content on your site flows naturally, they can be doing double duty.

The debate over whether responsive design is good or bad for SEO is not likely to end soon. This is partly due to the fact that there will never be a single right answer that fits everyone’s needs. The simplicity and ease of use that responsive design offers are certainly worth considering. But the final decision will rely on knowledge of your users and how you can make their interaction with your site as positive as possible. Google+

Law firms often look at their SEO investment in terms of increased rankings, web leads, phone calls, and other measurable improvements. But there is another way to look at your SEO investment, the pay-per-click value.

The pay-per-click (PPC) value looks at these elements:

1) Your search engine rankings in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

2) The cost-per-click (CPC) for those keywords at their current position (i.e., if the website is ranked number five for “Boston divorce lawyer,” the CPC would be based on a sponsored listing at position five). That is calculated for all three search engines.

3) The amount of money it would cost to run ads 24/7 on all three search engines with no daily maximum. This is essentially the level of exposure you are receiving with your search engine placement.

We ran a report on a small handful of websites in various practice areas and cities to show a comparison of what firms are spending for their search engine optimization and the pay-per-click value of their natural rankings. The numbers are based on averages for multiple firms within a practice area. The SEO rate is based on a monthly fee and PPC rate is how much the firm would spend each month in click charges to get the same exposure as they are getting with their natural placement.

Practices Areas
SEO and PPC costs and values are per month.

Personal injury
SEO: $4,500.00
PPC: $510,000.00

Bankruptcy
SEO: $1,800.00
PPC: $2,150.00

Family Law
SEO: $1,800.00
PPC: $21,000.00

Estate Planning
SEO: $1,900.00
PPC: $62,000.00

Business Law
SEO: $3,100.00
PPC: $129,000.00

Criminal Defense
SEO: $3,700.00
PPC: $16,000.00

Social Security
SEO: $1,100.00
PPC: $9,900.00

Veterans Law
SEO: $1,300.00
PPC: $10,200.00

In most cases, the pay-per-click equivalent was 10 times greater than the SEO fee. Of course, the fee and return are based on averages. Some personal injury firms may be paying far below the average, because they are in a smaller market or are focused on a niche practice area. Others may be paying far above the average in a major metro area. However, the PPC charges are calculated based on the value in that region so the return is relative to local market rates.

When considering whether to do search engine optimization or pay-per-click marketing, SEO delivers the value.

*85 percent of the websites reviewed in this study were SEO | Law Firm clients. Rankings and keyword value data based on results achieved in February 2013.Google+

Some sites specialize in convincing designers to perform spec work by offering “contests” in which some lucky winner will be chosen to be paid for their logo or other design. Every unlucky non-winner simply gave away their time and expertise for free.

Asking for spec work is like walking into a bakery, eating five different pastries and then deciding whether or not you want to pay for any of them. The proprietor would not allow it. Or, to make a more apt analogy, going to five different law firms and asking each of them to draw up a contract or negotiate a divorce and then deciding who to pay after you see the results. It is a practice that is not seen in a lot of other industries; you are expected to pay for products or services at the time of purchase. The world of design should be no different.

The temptation to perform spec work is understandable. When designers are just getting started, the prospect of being able to have your abilities recognized in a very competitive market is admittedly alluring. The temptation to ask for spec work can also be strong, marketing is a big investment, but it should be fought. Here are some reasons why:

You will not have rights to the work. Without an agreement, your designer could decide at any point that he or she could benefit more from selling the work elsewhere. There is nothing to stop them from doing so. When you begin a relationship with any marketing firm, you should sign a contract that lays out each party’s obligations, and make sure that contract gives you rights to all work done for your firm. You should, for example, own your website design; you should not have to pay again to move it to another provider. Without such a contract, however, the designer has complete ownership of his or her work.

You want to work with experienced professionals. You do not want to trust your firm’s brand to a marketing company that has too much time its hands. People who are willing to do spec work often really need the job. To be fair, this could be because they are young or just starting out, but it could be for other, less benign reasons as well. If a marketing firm has built a solid reputation by doing good work and engaging in good client service, it will not have time for spec work. Nor will it have the interest.

You want to foster a strong relationship. Marketing, branding and design require short and long-term thinking. And above all, successful projects require good communication and a level of trust with your design team. You want to develop a look and feel that will carry you for many years and that will help with whatever growth strategy you have developed. High expectations are fine, but can only be fulfilled if you are working together as professionals. Spec work tends to create a tenuous bond in which the designer has no loyalty to stick with the project or really think in your firm’s long-term best interests.

You want the firm you hire to actually do the work. Remember the software engineer who was caught outsourcing his own job to China? Don’t let that happen to you. There are plenty of firms from which to choose that churn out quick, generic work for pretty low prices. Designers who are not being fairly compensated often sell projects online to the lowest bidder and then pass the work off to clients as their own. This is not the kind of thoughtful approach that you need and deserve for your marketing. Your designer should respect your firm and work with you, keeping your goals and the needs of your clients in mind.

When you hire a design team, you are paying for quality and time (and rights to the work). Because quality takes time. From research to brainstorming, to sketching and planning, to revisions, and through implementation, good websites and logos and other marketing materials require a considerable amount of effort. Of course, some of your firm’s new business will come from word of mouth referrals, but, often the first contact a prospective client has with your firm may be online. They will see your website or other online profiles before they call your office. The choices that are made during these first stages of design will to affect what people think and how they react when they come into contact with your firm. You want that reaction – the connection you create with clients – to be thoroughly thought out and implemented effectively. Google+

• Facebook – 1 billion+ users
• Google+ – 500 million+ users
• Twitter – 500 million+ users
• LinkedIn- 200 million+ users
• Pinterest – 48 million+ users

Those audiences should not be ignored, however when looking at what drives leads into your office, we see that search is still the driving force.

Online lead sources for law firms:
Search engines

• Google – 77.09%
• Yahoo! – 8.93%
• Bing – 8.01%

Social Networks

• Facebook – 2.51%
• Twitter – 0.13%
• Google+ – 0.27%

Other – 2.97%

How We Conducted the Study

Multiple locations and practices – We sampled a variety of websites belonging to law firms in various regions in the U.S. practicing a variety of areas of law.

No name searches – Search traffic was not calculated for law firm name searches. For example, if someone searched for “Law Office of John Smith” in Google, we did not record that lead as being sourced via Google.

Powered by – A lead coming from a smaller search engine powered by Google, Yahoo, or Bing was credited to the search engine, rather than individually. For example, AOL.com’s web search is powered by Google, so that lead is credited to Google. The only inconsistency is Yahoo and Bing; Bing powers Yahoo’s search engine, but they both have marketshare greater than 10 percent, so we felt it was best to report on them separately.

Not a client review – While some of the websites included in the study were SEO | Law Firm clients, the sampling pool was divided among law firms working with various legal marketing companies. Our staff knows a lot of attorneys, so we called in a few personal favors and got to peak at some Google Analytics accounts.

Only web leads – This chart exclusively shows leads going to the law firm via a contact form on the firm’s website. This does not reflect phone calls or other means of contact beyond a trackable form.

Other – “Other” reflects smaller social networks, third-party websites, and other sources of traffic that generate leads outside of Google, Yahoo, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

Timeframe – We reviewed leads that came between January 1, 2013 and March 21, 2013. We are too excited to wait until the end of the quarter.

Lead Source vs Search Engine Marketshare

When conducting this study, we learned far more than what is reported in the chart. One interesting item is how our numbers compare with the comScore qSearch search engine marketshare analysis.

Marketshare vs Percentage of Leads

Google
Marketshare: 67%
+ AOL Markshare: 69.8%
Leads: 77.09%

Yahoo!
Marketshare: 12.1%
Leads: 8.93%

Bing
Marketshare: 16.5%
Leads: 8.01%

The report from comScore tracks AOL as a separate search engine and Ask.com which we placed in our “Other” column when conducting our study. If we gave comScore’s 2.8% from AOL to Google, the Google search marketshare would be 69.8%.

Google+ and Twitter

An interesting item worthy of poitning out is how Google+ yielded close to twice as many leads as Twitter. We did our best to filter leads that came from a Google+ Local search result and categorize that as a search lead as to not confuse it with a lead coming from Google+ social activity.

Stop social networking?

While social networks are not delivering the web leads, they are very important in generating referrals. Most followers on a social network profile know someone at a law firm prior to following them. Or maybe they have been introduced to the firm’s social profile after getting to their website. Keeping that audience entertained and informed can lead to referrals and returning clients.

Referral leads come in the form of a phone call or direct email. Neither were accounted for in this report. They may also come in the form of searching for a lawyer’s name or law firm name, thus generating another type of lead that was removed from the report.

Conclusion

This report shows off two things: First, how much the legal marketing nerds at SEO | Law Firm love statistics. Second, it shows that search engines (especially Google) are still the best source for generating leads from an audience of people that do not know your law firm exists. For attracting brand new clients, search engines are delivering the leads.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Reviews are mixed, with some questioning whether or not it is worth getting attached to another Google app considering the recent demise of Google Reader. For attorneys on the go, Keep has both pros and cons. It may work as a an easy, quick way to jot down ideas, but it does not appear to be ready to replace more heavyweight apps like Evernote.

Here are some of the things Keep is good (and not so good) at.

Pros:

Ease of use. Google Keep is very, very simple. By default, the app displays a single column list of entries with a text entry box at the top in which you can enter new notes. The display is reminiscent of Microsoft’s color-block design, and you can color-code your notes for better visual separation. You can save both pictures and text, and you can record notes. Clicking on a note allows you to edit it and swiping it to the side will archive it. Its simplicity is one of Keep’s most helpful features. Not everyone is interested in complex functionality, and Keep is perfect for those who simply need to keep track of items that are of immediate or pressing interest.

Sync with your PC via Google Drive. When you log anything with your phone, be it a note, list or picture, it will be available online. This is handy if you think of something on the fly that will later need to be fleshed out and edited in a document. Quick ideas, lists or agendas can be started and then elaborated upon from a laptop, tablet or desktop machine.

Voice note taking. The voice recognition capabilities of Keep are somewhat impressive. If you are not in the position to type, you can speak a note into your phone and it will be transcribed instantly and added to your list.

Cons:

Difficulty organizing. Keep organizes things in reverse chronological order, and that is it. You can search by word or phrase, but not by color, which makes the color-coding just a visual perk for now. You cannot group items or change their order in the list. In this respect, Keep really is like an online version of a post it note – simple, and not made for permanent storage.

Limited sharing. Keep does not currently support Google+ integration, which limits sharing options to Drive or email. In contrast, Evernote allows you to share a note via a public url or to organize a shared notebook that can be seen by selected colleagues, even if they are not running the app. The ability to share through tapping, from app to app or within a network like Google+ would add some helpful functionality for those working in groups. However, Keep is focused on simplicity, so it is unclear whether developers will have an interest in adding anything beyond Google+ integration (if they are working on that at all).

Android Only. Unless you want to use the online version, Keep is limited to people who have a device running Android 4.0 or higher. It is unlikely that Google will put effort into creating an iOS compatible version.

Will Keep last? That probably depends on the degree to which Google connects the app with their core product. There is potential for Keep to be work in conjunction with Google Now, which would give the search engine even more information about you (and thus the ability to serve even more target ads). There is also the potential to use Keep with Maps or Calendar. For example, you could make a note of an appointment that would automatically be synched with your Calendar. Then you could have directions sent to you through Google maps. If Google decides Keep is helpful within the scheme of its overall business model, it could be here to stay.

Google+

The problem is becoming so pervasive that some law schools are considering opening their own firms to better prepare students for the real world of the legal profession. Arizona State, for one, is setting up a non-profit firm for its students this summer. According to Arizona State University law school dean, Douglas J. Sylvester, the program will be like a “teaching hospital for law school graduates.”

What does this have to do with marketing?

Now more than ever, you have to stand above your competition. There are, quite simply, a lot of attorneys out there who do what you do. You have to make it clear to clients that you offer something more. In terms of marketing, that means getting back to the basics, focusing your message and building online authority. You can get started by reviewing how your firm is performing in some of these areas:

1. Differentiation. Sally J. Schmidt at attorneyatwork.com writes that differentiation is something lawyers generally understand but often do not embrace. Differentiation, or centering your marketing around a subset of specialized areas, is critical to helping connect your firm with the right clients. There is a tendency to think that marketing a certain specialty will turn people away. The opposite is actually true – offering too many choices is more likely to discourage people from picking any. If you were to peruse the menu of a restaurant that offered gourmet American, Italian, German, Thai and Ethiopian food, you are likely to move on to a place that specializes in one type of fare. It is too easy to assume businesses that offer everything are not the best at anything.

2. Attorney Bios. Attorney bios are an underutilized resource. They often contain little more than a resume or list of practice areas, schools and maybe publications. Studies have shown that attorney bio pages are some of the most visited pages on a firm’s website. They present you with an opportunity to speak directly to prospects and explain to them in your own voice why they should choose you. Be consistent – explain why you got involved in a specific area of law. Visitors are not interested in reading dry lists. Instead, give them a reason to like and trust you.

3. Client Reviews and Testimonials. Good word of mouth matters online. If people see that others have hired your firm and been pleased with the results, their trust in your abilities increases. Solicit Google reviews and incorporate them into your website. Monitor sites like Yelp to make sure your reviews are positive, and ask clients to add their voices, too. If allowed by your state bar, place testimonials in prominent places on your website. Potential clients know your opinion of your own firm is biased, and they are more likely to believe the reviews of others.

4. Professional Profiles. LinkedIn has released a string of updates aimed at making the network more useful for online marketing. Make sure your profile is complete and that it mentions just a small number of focused areas. If you can, have others endorse specific skills. Be sure to keep tabs on your LinkedIn skills and keep them to a reasonable number, since others are allowed to suggest them on your behalf.

5. Photography and Graphics. Lawyers have to be careful to follow their state’s online advertising guidelines, so some website practices may be restricted. This could include the types of photography you are able to acceptably use. But that does not mean that you have to use the same photography as everyone else. People know what to expect of a law firm, they do not need to see “the handshake.” If your state limits the use of stock photography, hire a professional to take some pictures around your office. Make sure to get some candid, non-traditional shots that show off the personality of your firm. Standing out visually will make your firm easier for prospects to remember.

The market is saturated and people have a lot of choices. Make their choice easier by focusing your marketing and standing out from the competition. Google+

Access to the beta version of the new site is being provided to a limited number of randomly chosen individuals who request it from the demo page. But everyone can check out the preview, and it is worth doing. Some good lessons can be learned from examining what the new site is doing right.

Simplicity. In its current incarnation, the Times website suffers from the same clutter that afflicts many high-information sites. Upon first glance, it is difficult to determine what to do – very little stands out. The home page contains five columns, which forces both the headlines and copy on most items to be relatively small. Within those columns, there are 7 article summaries, 7 editorial headlines, and a thin column dedicated to listing what appears to be a link to every section of the paper. And this is just above the scroll. The busyness continues down the page.

The new site will provide a much less cluttered experience. There is an obvious feature, the text is bigger and the navigation is simplified and tucked away but still readily accessible. The lack of visual noise makes it much easier for readers to find the stories they are looking for and in turn more likely that they will stay on the site longer.

Big features. A lot of pixels have been dedicated to the idea that big is in. Big pictures. Big text. Big buttons. And the new Times layout is in step with this trend. Much of the credit for the simplification of the home page can be attributed to the use of one large, predominate feature alongside a single bold headline. The site also uses wider columns, taking advantage of the increased real estate on most users’ screens. Larger elements make a site look cleaner and more modern, and they help prevent users from straining to read unnecessarily small text.

Use of the scroll. The Times also seems to have acknowledged the fact that it is no longer critical to cram as much information as possible in above the scroll. Of course, the most important items should still be featured toward the top of the page, but people are used to scrolling. Most pages scroll and many even employ the scroll as a design technique. Accepting the scroll helps give everything room to breathe and will make for a more enjoyable reading experience.

HTML 5 comments. While most law firms will never achieve a comment volume comparable to a publication like the Times, their new comment display is still instructive. Comments will no longer housed at the bottom of the page. They will instead be hidden by default, but visitors will be able to pull them up by clicking on an icon at the top of the page. Comments then slide in to fill the right hand column and can be closed at the user’s discretion. This is a good example of how non-critical information can be tucked away to promote simplicity and ease of use while still providing those who wish to view the content a way to do so. Thankfully, you just do not have to stuff everything you have on to a page anymore.

Simplified navigation. The new design does away with the long column of section titles and replaces it with a nested menu, organized by category and always available in one click from the top of the page. Users will be able to identify the sections they visit most frequently and add them to a personalized shortcuts menu. One of the most important things any website must do to be successful is give users easy access to important items. You cannot make people do too much searching or too much clicking before they find what they need. Doing so is almost guaranteed to decrease conversion. The new menu seems to address this issue in a much cleaner way.

You can request access to the Times beta site here.Google+

Unfortunately, many attorneys identify and promote the wrong things – things that clients do not find relevant or helpful. These things can be categorized as “features” of a firm, like having 20 years more experience or boasting a larger network of non-lawyer collaborative partnerships. That is not to say that these thing don’t matter; it is simply that they matter to people searching for a lawyer only insofar as they provide a real advantage to clients. Therefore, your point of distinction must feature a benefit to clients rather than a self-focused description of your firm.

With search engines encouraging people to write content that sounds more natural, the opportunities for useful differentiation continue to grow. Google wants you to write with you own voice and to do less irrelevant internal linking. Take advantage. Produce content that shows off your firm’s personality and explains how clients can gain from it. Here are a few steps to follow:

Understand your firm’s culture. You are likely knowledgeable enough about other firms in your area to understand how you differ. You could be more compassionate or more ruthless, have a large staff or appreciate being a small firm or solo practitioner. Understanding the culture of your law office is as basic as looking at what you actually do and how you encourage attorneys and staff to act. Be honest in your assessment. Wishful thinking will not win clients.

Extrapolate how that culture leads to success and show how it helps clients. Take, for example, a firm specializing in business law. A feature of the firm’s practice is it’s age and experience. An aspect of the firm’s personality (or culture) may be an air openness and collaboration, leading attorneys to support each other and build relationships with members of the community. Because of this, over time the firm has built a network of investors, which provides a distinct advantage to their small business clients. This firm may be more able than others to secure valuable start-up funding or venture capital. Being able to grow a business is something that is extremely relevant to potential clients.

Show value without having to explain it. If you have to describe the punchline of a joke, it isn’t funny. If you have to tell people you are an authority, they are not likely to believe you are. This is where regular contributions to a blog and/or a professional network like LinkedIn are so important. People who search for attorneys are looking not only at the firm’s website but also for information posted by or about them elsewhere. The more you contribute, build networks and build influence online, the more people will trust you – without you having to tell them to do so.

Solicit reviews from clients. According to research done by Mike Blumenthal for Moses & Rooth Attorneys at Law, positive reviews – particularly on Google – matter. Their survey asked the question, “If you search for a specialty lawyer on the Internet, what is most important to you?” The top two answers respectively were: 1) Information about them elsewhere on the internet and 2) The quality of reviews on Google. Word of mouth matters on and offline. People look to others when they are making a big decision. Having good reviews will influence their thinking.

Marketing is about convincing people you will provide them with an advantage, not just repeating the same self-absorbed facts about your firm. Make it about them. Show them how you can help, how you have already helped others and how you offer distinct benefits. Google+

The information contained on the site’s landing page is pretty basic; anyone who spends a lot of time online is probably already familiar with the concepts. However, each of the steps has its own dedicated, in-depth page that explains the process more thoroughly. The site also offers plenty of links to more comprehensive information, including a download of their search quality evaluation precision guidelines, links to answers in their knowledge base, a video that describes ways in which they try to improve search and guides to identifying spam.

Google may not be crystal clear about what goes into producing what it considers to be “quality” content, but the company is very willing to define what it believes to be spam. The site’s fighting spam page lists and describes ten forms of spam and offers live spam screen shots. You can scroll through a selection of real sites that Google has manually identified as spam and removed from search results within the last hour. It is a cornucopia of bad grammar and uncomprehensive sentences clearly thrown together or auto-generated to showcase a certain keyword. If you are interested in knowing what tactics will hurt rather than help your ranking, this site is a good resource.

Search marketing sometimes gets a bad reputation from companies that use shady tactics (or no tactics) to essentially steal from well-intentioned business owners. Danny Sullivan at marketingland.com calls some of these tactics “no-hat” and “crap-hat” SEO, playing off the commonly used terms black-hat (unscrupulous and spammy) and white-hat (supposedly reputable and safe). Crap-hat is what Google refers to as pure spam. These are sites that do not pretend to do anything but exist as spam. They may contain pages full of nonsensical, automatically generated content filled with poor grammar and jumbled words that no sane person could misconstrue as representing a legitimate business.

The tactics Sullivan refers to as no-hat are more pernicious. They are not decidedly unethical (we might disagree) or explicitly banned by Google and could technically be described as white-hat. They are simply worthless. These are people who offer spectacular results for unbelievable prices that will inevitably fail (yes, they are unbelievable for a reason), or companies that send contact form submissions lamenting how your site is not ranking well for its “popular keywords” and promising to fix your search woes. Anyone who owns or manages a website has seen their share of these emails, which can be instantly discounted. How could they possibly know what you are optimizing for? These companies like to throw around a lot of good-sounding industry jargon in an attempt to fool people unfamiliar with the process into thinking that they actually know what they are doing.

Designers see the same downward pressure from places like cheap logo houses that promise results for $50 or $100 – prices that should not even cover a fraction of the time that goes into creating a quality design. Organic search marketing, design, content writing – these are things that take time. And they should. If you were to promise clients a guaranteed fast win for a price that won’t even cover an hour of your time, they are certain to be disappointed in the results.

Search marketing is not magical or mysterious. It cannot miraculously work in a week or even a month. It is a process that will continue to evolve as Google tweaks and re-tweaks its algorithm. Understanding the search process and knowing what Google considers to be spam will help you avoid shady practitioners and no-hat, no-results services. Google+

1. Be a good reader. Good writers read. Regularly. Writing in a void without exploring examples of the skilled writing of others can result in poor quality material. Reading helps strengthen your own writing and critical thinking skills, particularly if you read material that comes from a point of view with which you do not agree. It also helps give you ideas. Coming up with regular ideas for posts is one of the hardest parts of blogging. Taking a look at what others are saying is a great way to expose yourself to potential topics.

2. Anticipate the needs of your readers. Like all marketing tools, your blog must be directed toward your readers. If you spend your time only talking about yourself, then you are not providing a resource with the depth of information visitors seek. You will also give your blog an air of predictability, which discourages people from returning to explore more articles. People who actively seek out legal blogs are looking for information. They do not need to know about all the handy features of your firm, they want to know about benefits. They have a problem or question they need answered, and if you can provide that answer, they will likely return.

3. Make keywords secondary. When creating a blog entry, do not make optimization your sole focus. This results in awkward headlines and long, strangely worded sentences. Yes, you should have search marketing in the back of your mind and be aware of how your writing affects your marketing goals. But is it more important to write quality pieces than it is to engage in keyword stuffing. Learn to optimize naturally, without keyword abuse.

4. Get local. High-profile national cases already receive a lot of attention. Writing about the same thing as everyone else will inevitably force your blog entries to the bottom of search results below well-known, large publications that have an advantage in Google’s algorithm. Picking topics that are relevant to a local audience gives you unique content that is more likely to be found. Locally oriented content is also more relevant to your target audience – those whom you would most like to become regular readers.

5. Stop broadcasting. Start interacting. Your creative cooking blog may just exist to talk about what you like, but your legal blog exists to build relationships and get clients. In order to accomplish this, you have to acknowledge those around you with links and comments. Building readership may involve interacting with other bloggers in addition to the audience you consider to be prospective clients. Establishing associations with other bloggers can earn you mentions and links that will reach a wider audience than your blog can alone.

6. Make a content schedule. Blogging is like running a marathon (apologies to marathoners). If you sprint up the first hill, you will never finish the race. Many bloggers make the mistake of rushing to post two, three or four posts a week – a pace that is unsustainable over the long-term. Eventually, the posts trickle to nothing and the blog is updated sporadically and infrequently. Take a serious look at your calendar and decide how much time you can spend blogging a week. The most successful blogs have at least one post a week. More than one is ideal, but only commit what you or your staff can manage. Consistency is your friend. One solid post a week – or even every two weeks – is better than an on again off again schedule that turns off frequent visitors.

A few good habits can go a long way toward building a more consistent readership for your blog. Google+

Last year, Google’s Penguin updates, paired with their ongoing Panda updates, changed the rules for how websites were positioned in the search engine. Google is continuing to do updates, and launched the most recent one at the end of January.

In a report being organized by SEO | Law Firm to be released next month, the company tested some minimal keyword usage on some of their newly launched sites.

One client, a catastrophic injury and wrongful death law firm in Washington D.C., saw a first-page ranking for “Washington DC wrongful death lawyer,” as well as other related terms, like “dc wrongful death attorney” just three months after launch. The practice area pages mentioned the keywords, but did not over-use exact-match phrases.

The second website covered in the study is an elder law and estate planning law firm in Virginia. In this test, SEO | Law Firm only used one exact-match keyphrase in one header tag.

For example:

Header 1: Special Needs Planning

Header 2: Virginia Special Needs Planning Lawyers

Header 3: Supplemental Needs Trusts

This website actually saw 75 percent of the keyphrases, make it to the mid-first page of Google just three weeks after launch.

The personal injury law firm has increased month after month, starting lower page one and currently ranking mid-page one.

Of course, the minimal usage of keyphrases is just one element. Both websites actively utilize social media, have a substantial link portfolio, and include deep levels of content.

Aside from the limited use of keyphrases on the website, the keywords used when linking to the law firms on third-party sites have also changed. The company is scaling back on exact match links, opting instead to link practice area words without a region (i.e., elder law attorney) and the law firm’s name.

Based on the most recent results, it would appear that minimal keyword usage is not only good for your readers, but also an effective way to rank higher in the search engines.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Infographics can be fun and interesting, but they are only effective as a marketing tool if they gain traction through pins, shares and retweets. Infographics must be well-designed, engaging and contain information that people actually want to know. Certain types of content are more likely to go viral than others, like lists, graphics that tell a story, information that is surprising, and information that either confirms or challenges our basic assumptions. You may be surprised at how much marketing value you can glean from a solid collection of legal-based infographics. If you are interested in diving in, here are some points to keep in mind:

Use your own data. Your firm is in possession of a valuable source of knowledge: your clients. You can do informal surveys of clients and prospects and in doing so produce your own set of exclusive statistics. For example, if you are a criminal defense attorney who is a former prosecutor, ask clients if that affected their decision to choose you. Depending on the results, this could work in your favor. If 72% of your clients say yes, make a graphic, do a quick blog post and share. In the post, use the data as a segue into your past experience and your ability to help clients. This can work for any practice area. Think about what characteristics and concerns your clients share and put together some quick questions to tap into their insights.

Be selective. Infographics can be overwhelming. You do not want to lose people because your graphic scrolls, seemingly with no end. Focus on a single topic and present a limited amount of supporting material. President Obama’s 2012 election campaign, for example, made excellent use of direct, concise infographics. The campaign’s “Truth Team” website had an entire section devoted entirely to graphics, most of which only contain between one and five individual pieces of data. The brevity allows people to quickly get the message, and it keeps the graphic small enough that it is easily sharable and viewable on sites like Facebook and Pinterest.

Remember: graphics do not have to be numerical. When people think of infographics, they often think of things like oversized pie charts and bar graphs, but there are many other items that can come together to produce an interesting piece. A lot of great graphics do not contain any numerical data at all. Checklists, for example, tend to be very popular. What are the top 5 things people need to know if the have been in a car accident? If they are accused of a crime? If they want to set up a trust? How should people expect their case to proceed through court? Is there a “typical” process? These types of graphics address clients’ specific needs without any number-based data.

Research. Research. Research. A beautiful infographic is useless without informative content. Make sure that yours is relevant to the right audience. You want to attract good clients, so your infographic must be helpful to that target demographic. Read reports, ask questions and visit polling or other statistic heavy sites. People who are in need of legal help are full of questions, try to answer some of them creatively.

Keep it simple. Make sure graphics have a consistent style and use a limited color palette. Most infographics have a similar feel – with large elements and contrasting colors. People need to know where to look, and if the graphic is crowded with illustrations and competing numbers, your point will be lost and you will not gain the necessary social traction you need to make a marketing impact.

Looking for more inspiration? The site coolinfographics.com keeps a running list of fresh examples. Google+

Truly tech-savvy early adopters have been searching for ways to digitize the business card for some time. LinkedIn offers an app called CardMunch, which lets you take a picture of a physical business card with your iPhone and then convert the information to a contact in your address book. This may be good for storing other people’s information, but it does not address your ability to share your own digital card. Other apps, like Cardcloud do allow you to create and share a digital business card via phone or email. Unlike some card apps, Cardcloud does not require the person with whom you are sharing to also have the app. Cardcloud stores your location when you receive a contact and allows you to add notes and access social profiles from the card.

The newest arrival to the digital business card scene is Icon, a cloud-based card system that provides you with your own url as well as a sharable card (called, unsurprisingly, an “Icon”). Icons can be shared through email, phone, online or in person.

Icon differs from other card apps in its robustness and reporting tools. In your admin panel, you can connect the social networks of your choice to your profile, which Icon then curates automatically to present an overall professional persona along with your contact information. (You can choose which content to curate and which to keep to yourself.) You do not have to add notes or update your card – this is done for you when you post to any of your connected networks. If you revise your LinkedIn profile information, for example, your resume description will change to reflect this on your Icon page and in your app.

Once you have shared or received an Icon from someone else, you can click a “Find out what you have in common” button, and the app shows a comparison of your professional skills, keywords and interests. This allows you to get to know your colleagues (or prospects) in a different way than your average business card. You may find that you have things in common with a contact that comes in handy when in a networking or other professional setting.

Icon also offers some reporting tools, which allow you to see who has viewed or shared your card. While the service is still in its infancy, these tools could become useful should it gain a large user base. Knowing how often your Icon is being seen and shared will help you do some experimentation to learn what type of information gets the most traction with other users.

Print is not dead yet, and it is still a good idea to carry an old-fashioned business card to meetings and events. But digital solutions are becoming more viable, and are likely to be much more widespread in the coming months and years. If you feel like doing some experimenting, you can claim your name at www.icon.me.
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Decide on the type of general overview page you want to use – for example, “About Us,” “Attorney Profile,” or “Firm Profile.” The “About Us” or “Firm Overview” page is a general overview of your law firm. If you are a solo practitioner, you will want to substitute this page for an “Attorney Profile” page. If you have more than one attorney, it is appropriate to include an “About Us/Firm Profile” page as well as individual attorney profile pages.

Like anything else, your website needs a plan. So let’s start by creating a preliminary content sitemap. The list is organized by the level of importance, as if it was going to be listed in the top menu of your website.

Practice Areas – Practice areas should come first, because that is what your audience wants to see.

Since Google and other search engines wish to see a substantial amount of content on your website, it is always a good idea to expound upon your topics as much as possible. So, for our divorce lawyers in Boston, we would make a content sitemap that looked something like this:

Practice Areas
Family Law
Divorce
Child Custody
Child Support
Alimony/Spouse Support

Firm Profile

Attorneys
Mr. Smith
Mr. White

Contact Us

Blog

Of course, if the firm also provided services for more specialized practice areas like adoption, international custody, and so on, these would need to be listed as additional practice areas. Each practice area should have its own page of content. If you have one practice areas page that lists a brief paragraph for each of your practice areas, you are cheating yourself out of pages and missing out on the opportunity to increase your page count.

A good starting number is about 10-15 pages of content but the target should be closer to 50. That number should consistently keep growing. Your website is a dynamic marketing tool; you can always build more pages after the website is live.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Like it or not, you need a good profile picture – a picture of you, not your dog or your child or your favorite beach. And you need a quality picture – one that does not look like it was taken in a cave with a camera phone. If the first thing people see on your profiles is a turn-off, then they may never recognize the value that you have to offer through your professional activity and services.

Why put time into your profile picture?

You want to portray an accurate professional image. A good profile picture should achieve a balance between being eye-catching and appropriate for your industry and position. In the world of first impressions, there is such a thing as negative attention. Pictures that are poor quality or too casual can cast you in a negative light.

People may be looking for you. While it has become much less common on professional networks, some people still use pictures of things or animals instead of themselves. People you have met at networking events may be looking for you. If they do a search for John Smith that produces multiple results, some of which are trees and dogs, they will have to guess which profile belongs to you. Do not miss out on connections because of an inappropriate photo.

Humans are visual creatures. Most people think and remember primarily through visual cues. And most people also have very short attention spans. Giving people the right visual cues immediately is critical to getting their attention and gaining their trust.

How do you create a good profile picture?

Pick an appropriate background. If you are able, pick a background that pops. The amount of leeway you have will depend on the culture of your firm, your area of practice and your target audience. You may need to stick with neutrals, but if you can, try exploring a brighter color (within reason) if it is available. You might be surprised with the results. If you are working with a designer, you may also want to have a photo with a white background available so that they can easily use the picture in a variety of applications.

Be consistent. All of your social profiles should have the same picture. Putting a different picture on every network is confusing to visitors and bad for your marketing. Once you have chosen a picture, stick with it. Do not change it every week or month. Consistency is key to gaining traction online.

Pay attention to lighting. Too much or too little light will prevent your camera from capturing information. Too much light and you will appear washed out, too little and the photo will appear dark and maybe even a little grainy. Different types of light also affect the colors in a picture. Try to use natural or diffuse light and run far away from the green hue of fluorescent bulbs.

Consider hiring a professional. Hiring a photographer for a single sitting is not a large expense, and the results are more than worthwhile. Your photographer will have lighting equipment, backgrounds, quality cameras, creative ideas and experience framing pictures for the best results.

Be aware of dimensions and proportions. Most social networks require a picture that is square, but they do not all require pictures that are the same dimension. Resize your picture with a photo editing tool before you upload it. If you do not have editing software available in the office, online services like pixlr will let you do all the editing you need on their site. Failure to edit before uploading could result in strange and unflattering distortions of your picture.

Try to avoid clichés. People have a basic understanding of what lawyers do. You do not have to stand in front of a bookcase – they are likely already convinced that you can read. Attorney clichés do nothing to set you apart and may actually work against you, making you blend in with others who are doing the same thing. If you would like to use a location shot, pick a spot in or around your office that is characteristic of your firm. Or, pick an area that is reflective of the audience you serve. Even a small profile picture can benefit from a little personality. Google+

One thing an employer (or firm) can to do combat inappropriate online activity is to institute a social media use policy. Use policies are an especially good idea for larger firms at which multiple associates and staff may be visiting and using social networks in both a personal and professional capacity. Policies may be broad or specific as a matter of firm preference, but should at least cover:

1. The responsibilities of each individual. Emphasize that everyone is responsible for what they write and should therefore use their best judgement. If there are certain associates or staff responsible for specific updates, spell this out and provide guidelines for style.

2. An explanation of why the firm engages in social media. What are the goals of social media activity? How will those responsible for posting work together to attain those goals?

3. A confidentiality policy. Clearly lay out what constitutes a compromise of firm or client confidentiality. Just because you are online does not mean you can all of a sudden start introducing prejudicial information about a client before trial. (You would be surprised – this happens.)

4. A description of your target audience. To whom are you writing? How can you bring value to that audience? What tone is most appropriate for that audience? Your firm must establish its own voice, and that voice must be appropriate for the clients and community you are trying to attract.

5. A clear call to respect copyright. Social networks encourage us to share and share alike, and a lot of people produce images with the express purpose of receiving as many shares as possible. But not everyone wants you to use their intellectual property for free. Be aware of fair use guidelines, particularly if you are quoting someone else’s writing, and do not pirate images that require a license.

6. A plan for productivity and priorities. How much time should staff spend online? At what point does too much time on social media sites cause productivity to suffer?

Social media use policies can establish a set of guidelines that serve as a reminder: What every team member does online is important to the culture and reputation of the firm. But official documents aside, what constitutes good online protocol is mostly a matter of common sense. No matter how tight you think your privacy settings are, there is always a chance that your posts will reach the public at large. If you would be embarrassed for your mother to see something you are writing, don’t post it.

In addition to simply not doing something that could result in embarrassment of some sort for you or your firm, try to take the positive step of being genuine in your online interactions. Use your real name, and when you are engaging in professional interaction, consider using your title as well. Share your thoughts but listen to others, and give them credit when appropriate.

It is easy to get caught up in the anonymity of the web and engage in harmful behavior that would never happen in a different environment. Remember that your firm is attempting to build a community of connections with the ultimate goal of bringing in more cases. Community members are supportive and attentive, they post information that provides a benefit for users and they do not engage in overly competitive or ego-centric behavior. Building relationships takes time and respect online, just as it does offline. Firms that emphasize this reality will find a greater reward over time. Google+

The past few years have seen a trend toward shortening firm names as one piece of branding and marketing efforts. Shorter, branded names are easier to remember and may help set a firm apart in more competitive markets. Not all firms are able to move away from traditional partner naming, however, and not all firms wish to. Some state bar associations require firm names to contain the names of partners. And some firms, especially those that are older or more well-established, understand that their client base is not interested in a new or shorter name.

(One firm that has famously bucked the short name trend is Holly, Kraft, Jacobs, Wainwright, Deunster, Chattersworth, Cravens, Zymbrowki, Langston, Johnson, Tillerskein, Quoss, Thompson & Dudley. According to turnipnews.com, a spokesman for the firm said that they were “tired of trendy and vacuous-sounding law firm names and [have] opted to ‘get back to basics’ with the time-honored tradition of naming all of the firm’s partners, even the dead ones. We’re pleasantly stoked.” We would argue that not all shortened names are vacuous, but we are glad that they are stoked.)

Whether you aim to have the longest law firm name on record or have chosen to rebrand your firm with a shorter version, you should put thought into a tagline. Within ethical limits, of course, a tagline can be anything you want it to be. It can both reinforce your firm’s personality and help distill your value to clients, letting them know how they will benefit from your services.

The legal marketplace is saturated. It can already be a little overwhelming for people in need of legal help who are looking for an attorney. Within this crowded environment, most law firm slogans and taglines are regrettably alike – many say essentially the same thing. Some words most frequently used in attorney taglines include “experience,” “results,” “commitment,” and “practice.” Not only are these words commonly used, they are also firm-centric. That is, they attempt to describe the firm rather than explain how the firm helps its clients.

People have come to reasonably understand what to expect from an attorney. They expect you to be committed to their rights – they are paying you well for it. They understand you are experienced and that cases end in results. These words do nothing but reinforce what they already know about attorneys and the law. Your slogan must stand out and connect with prospects on a deeper level. Here are some things to consider when crafting a slogan:

Learn from the pros. When Apple undertook its marketing push in the late 1990s, they told people to “Think Different.” Can you imagine a campaign with the slogan “Our Computers are Great!” getting nearly the same traction? Apple was appealing to a specific type of customer, just as Nike is appealing to the athlete in all of us with “Just Do It.” You will notice none of the great, memorable slogans talk about the product. They address the customer, evoking an emotion that connects with the brand.

Talk to your clients. What were they looking for when they found you? What words resonate with them? What aspects of their contact with your firm have they most appreciated? If you have a niche practice or cater to a distinct type of client, use this focus to help build your tagline.

Look to your experience. What types of cases do you handle most? What are the ways in which you help clients most often in these cases? Are clients generally in similar situations when they approach your firm? Instead of just saying that your firm has experience, try incorporating an understanding of how that experience works for your clients into your tagline.

Remember it is not about you. A good tagline tells your prospective clients what they can expect from your firm. It is about benefits, not features.

Some examples of good law firm taglines:

Practicing the Art of Law
Spector Gadon & Rosen

Putting Imagination to Work. (TM)
Shefsky & Froelich

Lawyers You Want to Know. (TM)
Gordon Arata

Seriously Unbelievable Client Service
Sandberg Phoenix Von Gontard

Keeping You On Course
Stewart H. Lapayowker, P.A. (Aviation Transaction Attorneys)

Our name is easy to remember. Our work is hard to forget.
Bryant Miller Olive

Our clients do great things. We get the assist.
McCarter & English

A Better Partnership. (R)
Warner Norcross & Judd

Accomplish more. (SM)
Dinsmore

Make your ideas untouchable. (R)
Woodard, Emhardt, Moriarty, McNett & HenryGoogle+

Google claims to be waging a war against unoriginal, robotic and repetitive content. Over the past several years, the search engine has targeted and taken out one technique after another that it considers to be cheating or in some way unethical. Some of these changes have succeeded while others have been less effective, and adapting is challenging enough. You must also factor in the additional weight that is now being given to social cues such as likes, shares and retweets. In this environment, social networks are becoming harder and harder to ignore.

One concept that permeates many of Google’s updates is genuineness. More emphasis is being placed on originality and diversity of content. When you are thinking about how to shape your firm’s search marketing efforts, you should be aware of how the rules are changing.

Quality matters. Content marketing is a hot topic, but it is not at all a new practice. Search marketers have been encouraging clients to increase their reach online with fresh content for many years. The methods that work best are simply changing. Content for content’s sake is no longer effective. The length of an article or page is is becoming less relevant than the substance. Smaller bits of well-written, original content will trump long pages full of meaningless repetitive phrases.

Keywords are out (sort of). Inserting a set of linked keywords into every page of website content used to be a fairly dependable way to help better your search engine ranking. This is no longer always the case. Keyword stuffing, the practice of cramming as many awkward but supposedly relevant phrases as possible into every page is now frowned upon and can hurt your ranking. Linking within your articles and blog posts must be less frequent and more diverse. Always linking the same words to the same urls is no longer effective – linked phrases should be varied and point to a mix of different urls.

Humans are in. The best, and perhaps most ambiguous advice Google likes to give search marketers is to write content that sounds like a real person actually wrote it. Content should be written from an individual perspective and touch upon subjects in a way that other websites do not. The ability to pull from your own personal experience when writing blog entries and develop a distinct voice for your firm is much more valuable than being able increase the number of times you can fit a set of linked keyphrases into a sentence. No matter where you post new content, you are ultimately talking to fellow human beings. Your writing should reflect that.

People are not as interested in “engaging” as you think. Marketing professionals love to use the word “engage.” Engage with followers, engage with potential clients, engage with blog readers, they say. But to what end? Research has shown that consumers who are frequent users of social media do not necessarily want to be a part of your community. They want reward. For retail businesses, payoff can come in the form of coupons and special deals. For attorneys, providing value is a little trickier.

You cannot think of social media as something you simply put some arbitrary number of posts into every week to produce a stream of new clients. You must develop a voice, listen to peers and followers, deliver the right message to the right segment of contacts, reply to comments, give credit to others and generally act like a genuine person. Social media can help build professional relationships that lead to new clients but not if your only action is to broadcast without paying attention to others.

People know when they are being fed canned, cheesy marketing content. The worst social media activity is tone deaf social media activity. Provide value and, quite simply, be yourself. Building a network of trust is always good marketing. Google+

To do this, consider all of the questions prospective clients have asked during consultations. A family law attorney could consider the following:

How long does a divorce take?
Will a divorce ruin my credit?
What happens to my house in a divorce?
What happens to my business in a divorce?

While a question like “What happens to my business in a divorce?” gets very few searches in Google, the individuals searching for that answer will probably be larger clients.

But what above the first question, the one about the time it takes to get a divorce? Here are some variations of that question and the number of monthly inquiries it receives in Google:

How long does a divorce take? – 320 monthly inquires in Google
How long does a take to get a divorce? – 210 monthly inquires in Google
How does divorce mediation work? – 12 monthly inquires in Google

If you create a library of 50-100 questions that receive 10-to-300 monthly inquires in Google, your firm will be exposed to a brand new audience of potential clients, ones not using the popular keyphrases.

When reviewing the law firms that use this strategy, we see hundreds of visitors coming into their site every month using keyphrases that start with “how,” “why,” “when,” and “will.” Sure, these informative pages only get a couple of visitors each, but those visitors are getting there with a keyphrase that has very limited competition.

Setting up multiple pages to answer questions will help drive traffic to your website and improve the quality of your site, thus helping it rank better for your popular tools. It’s one of the most valuable content investments you can make in your website.

Editor’s note: This week’s Legal Marketing Weekly story was scheduled to be about slogans. Slogan’s for law firms will be covered this week on the SEO | Law Firm blog.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Function is a critical design element. A website’s design is more than just the colors, pictures and words on the page. These things all add to the experience and help create a connection with the user that is, ideally, in line with your firm’s identity. You do want your site to look good. Beyond that, however, it must be functional. A beautiful website without an obvious phone number, for example, will likely be of limited use to your firm. People need to be able to quickly find what they are looking for when they land on one of your pages, and they must be presented with action items that prompt them to take the next step and contact you.

The user experience should be the basis for layout decisions. A website design is the totality of the user’s interaction with the page. Try to put yourself in the position of a new visitor to your site. What are you looking for? Is it easy to navigate? Is the text readable? Are links obvious? Decisions about menu items, menu placement, font size, headlines and graphics must take user expectations into account. They must create a flow that gives a visitor obvious direction. Contrary to what consumers may think, they do not actually crave choices. They are more likely to take action when options are clear and limited.

HTML 5 offers possibilities that allow you to stretch the limits of your creativity. The most common HTML 5 based effects are things like slideshows and floating menus. Many firms find these items useful, and you may, too. But what about doing something totally new? What is HTML 5 really capable of? The website form follows function (fff) shows off some of the lesser known effects, like 3D rendering, animation, and user-controlled cursor effects. Clicking though its collection of color-coded samples is a fun way to delve into unexpected possibilities.

Admittedly, these examples are abstract and seemingly irrelevant to a law firm website. But it is important to look outside of your industry and outside of the traditional way of thinking about website design in order to jolt your mind into coming up with new ideas that do match up with your design needs. Just knowing what programmers are capable of creating helps remove constraints in your own thinking, allowing you to visualize in terms of what is possible rather than impossible.

When developing a new website, one of the most difficult aspects of the design process is conveying a sense of how the programmed, final product will behave. In the first stages, you are usually looking at only static comp images. Designers can spend hours upon hours in Photoshop creating examples of hover effects, slideshows, menus, links and any number of interactive elements, and this is often helpful. Ultimately, they are creating an experience in their own minds that they must be able to communicate in order to keep everyone involved in the project informed and on the same page. Looking to examples of imaginative design elements can help you visualize how your website will function when it is still a mere .jpg on your desktop. Google+

For the specialty practices, the classic law firm style will probably be best. Many of your clients will have traditional ideas about working with attorneys, and a clever name may make your firm appear inexperienced.

If you’re in one of the more aggressive areas of law, you have a lot more to consider — especially if you work in personal injury.

Personal injury lawyers are advertising everywhere: billboards, television, radio — even via direct mail based on accident report lists (in states where that’s legal). Branding yourself in the competitive personal injury market is going to be a challenge, but not an impossibility. If you live in or near a major metro area, you know exactly what we are talking about. The billboards are everywhere. “Have you been injured?” “Are you an accident victim?” “Call The Smith Law Firm.” “Call Smith, Jones, Michaels, & Steele.” “Call Davis & Davis.”

How is your name going to stand out from that crowd of traditional legal names? You will be lost in a sea of surnames, ampersands, and toll-free numbers.

Your law firm name can maintain the traditional “Law Offices of My Name” style, but by utilizing a DBA (doing business as or fictitious name), you can really make a statement. This, of course, assumes such practice is allowed in your state.

If you want to focus on motorcycle injuries, you could, perhaps, register a DBA of “Motorcycle Accident Victim Advocates.” Imagine an injured motorcyclist sitting up in the hospital bed, in a lot of pain, stressed about missing work, scrolling through the phone book, or online with his smart phone and coming across the “Motorcycle Accident Victim Advocates.” I think it’s safe to assume that “Smith Jones Michaels & Steele” will not be getting the first look from this accident victim. You can apply this same tactic for your divorce, custody, family law, and bankruptcy practice, as well.

If your local advertising guidelines do not grant flexibility in the naming of your firm, a strong slogan is the next best thing. We will cover that next week.

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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Fonts are an much overlooked design element. Too often, they are a mere afterthought, a smattering of Arial, Verdana or Times arranged into paragraphs for general consumption. But fonts are actually the largest design element on your site. You may have a logo and one or two pictures or illustrations, maybe some icons for good measure, but everything else is text. Your visitors are interacting primarily with words on the page and failure to think about how this affects them can work against you. Poorly picked fonts and bad formatting may keep people from learning about who you are and how you can help them.

If you want to enjoy some fun with typography and learn a few things while you’re at it, Tommi Kaikkonen has put together an interactive guide aimed at helping visitors see how the interplay between different font choices affects a website. The guide provides a solid introduction to the fundamentals of typography, including fonts, fonts size, layout, line height, visual hierarchy, color and more. Examples are shown for each topic, and you can make adjustments to the text and layout that you see on the site in real time.

Playing with the different options for text formatting makes it easy to understand how important good typography really is. Subtle differences can make a site much more readable and easy on the eyes. Since changes to Google’s algorithm have given brand influence and social interaction more weight, keeping people on your site and getting them to recommend your articles is critical to your search marketing efforts. If users are squinting to read 10 point text bunched together in long paragraphs with little variation, they will likely look elsewhere no matter how prescient your insights.

In addition to encouraging visitors to read on, typography can help speak to your firm’s personality. Fonts can make your firm appear young or established, conservative or contemporary. The emotions associated with different fonts run the gamut. If your firm is involved in high-stakes business litigation, you probably do not want to use a whimsical sans serif or display font. However, if you do a lot of work with new startups, intellectual property or even environmental law, you may want to appear more modern or even slightly unconventional. Whatever the mood, it should reflect with clients can expect to experience when they visit your office and speak with you in person. It should be created to attract your ideal client.

Click on over to Tommi’s site and play around. You may be surprised at how different the reading experience is with a few changes to layout, font and spacing. And, as he states on his site, your readers will thank you.Google+

When looking at consistency between natural Google rankings on desktops and smart phones, we see little changes. About 85 percent of desktop rankings have the same position when conducting a search on a smart phone or via tablet.

Those other 15 percent are generally websites that do not have a mobile-friendly website or a responsive web design, and generally perform worse on mobile searches. Since Google is aware of the device a user is using, we can expect them to improve their mobile search engine to be more selective.

If you are on a road trip and craving some pizza, you can get out your smart phone and type in “pizza.” Knowing your location, Google will display pizzerias near your present location. Searches for lawyers work the same way.

If Google displayed a website for a pizzeria that was not mobile-friendly, thus making it difficult to navigate, you might start using some other search engine on your smart phone, like Bing. Google knows this; they want to display mobile-friendly websites for mobile searches, so that Google’s loyal desktop users also remain loyal mobile search users.

A mobile-friendly website acts much like your normal website, except it’s scaled down for easier use on smaller touch-screen devices. However, your mobile ranking in Google is based on your desktop (aka, full-size) website; a well-optimized website that has an available mobile website is usually sufficient to keep your high placement for mobile searches.

With the content of the mobile website is not yet a major ranking factor, your firm can focus less on mobile textual content and more on easier navigation and an intuitive user experience. Making a mobile website comfortable to use will help improve mobile conversions. With 2013 poised to deliver more than a quarter of your visitors via a mobile device, your firms’ mobile ranking and mobile interface is an important consideration in this years’ marketing plan.

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Even the best of us will succumb to typos, and unless they are in a particularly embarrassing place (like a resume), we will be forgiven. But systematic use of unnecessary phrases that muddle your meaning can be a turn off for your readers. Here are some common culprits of cluttered copy that can be stricken from your lexicon post haste:

Redundancy. Our speech contains a lot of redundancy, and it is easy to let some of these conversational quirks sneak into your writing. But what is ok for informal speech can be disruptive when in print. Reducing repetition is an easy way to bring the focus back to the idea you are trying to elucidate. All of these could be shortened to just one word:

1. Absolutely necessary
2. Exactly the same
3. Summarize briefly
4. Close proximity

Unnecessary formality. Unnecessary formality is the cause of what most non-lawyers would describe as “legalese.” Many of the words mechanically inserted into documents can and should be removed. Common offenders:

1. In the absence of (absent)
2. Aforementioned (remove entirely)
3. All such things as may be necessary (just “necessary”)

Emphasis that is not. Some emphasis words are so commonly used that they no longer do anything to add force to an argument. They can also add a bit too much hyperbole, giving your articles an inappropriate tone. Use these (and other) “ly” words sparingly:

1. Really
2. Severely
3. Extremely
4. Completely

Disposable phrases and clauses. This category includes words like “which”, passive voice phrases like “there is” and clauses that cannot stand on their own, such as “as a matter of fact.” You can shorten or eliminate them without detracting from a piece’s substance.

1. For the most part
2. Due to the fact that
3. In a manner of speaking
4. For all intents and purposes

Keeping a list of outlawed words and phrases handy will help you become more conscious of your phrasing. As you practice attention to (unnecessary) details, concise writing will become a habit. You may also try reading things out loud. You will likely find yourself tripping over awkward and unnecessary language. If it is difficult for you, your readers likely feel the same.Google+

The best you can do is develop a site that will look as good as possible on all browsers and machines. There are multiple ways to approach this issue, which must be a consideration from the beginning of the design process. One question you should ask yourself is whether you want your site’s layout to be fixed or fluid.

Fixed width. Fixed width layouts remain the same size no matter how large the user’s monitor. The size of the page and everything on the page is set during the design process, and none of the elements will resize when visitors stretch or shrink their browser window. Typically, fixed width sites are centered. The design will hover in the middle of the page, giving the background room to fill the space on either size. This is a popular method for website layout that frequent Internet users are doubtless accustomed to seeing.

Fixed layouts offer the most control over a website’s appearance. Designers can make pixel-perfect tweaks with the knowledge that they will stay consistent. Since the width of the columns of text does not change, they also maintain their readability well from monitor to monitor. However, fixed layouts are less flexible and more likely to break if users adjust their font size.

Liquid. Liquid layouts adjust so that they always fill the full width of the browser window. This process can be clunky – and often was in the early days of coding such sites. As column widths adjust to fill large spaces, users can end up with pages full of awkwardly spaced, difficult to read text.

Liquid layouts are gaining popularity with the growth of responsive design. And they are becoming more agile. Flexible images will resize automatically to fill the whole screen of any device. The layout may adjust from three down to two or even one column depending on the space it needs to fill. The process is more complicated than simply stretching elements from one edge of the browser window to another. It involves planing a layout that will adjust gracefully to different user’s needs.

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While the company works to distinguish itself from Google, the process in which a Facebook page ranks well when users search in Facebook Graph shows a close resemblance to the classic rules of search engine optimization.

Facebook Studio posted these suggestions on their blog:

Continue to invest in your Page by making sure your Page is complete and up-to-date.

Focus on attracting the right fans to your Page and on giving your fans a reason to interact with your content in an ongoing basis.

Does that sound familiar? Relevant content, descriptive pages, profile activity, and keeping information up-to-date? It sounds like the same over-generalized suggestions offered by Google for better placement in their search engine and local results.

As Facebook Graph morphs from hyped beta feature to a tool used daily by millions of people, studies will be conducted, and theories will be formed, and perhaps a new breed of optimization will take form.

Until then, keep your law firm’s Facebook page up-to-date, accurate, and full of activity.

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We have written about the damage that overused words and jargon can do to your writing’s effectiveness. At best they simply take up space without adding any substance, and at worst they turn readers away who are tired to death of hearing them. Do not take unnecessary hits to your credibility. Start your list of words to avoid now.

PR Words:

Press releases have to be somewhat formulaic. Newswires have standards and requirements, and you have specific information that you need to share. But that doesn’t mean you have to use the same words everyone else does. The top five offenders include:

1. Authentic
2. Innovative
3. Next Generation
4. Creative
5. Unique

For a more extensive list, PRNews put together the 25 most overused words in press releases based on observations from its staff.

Marketing words:

Marketers love to use buzzwords. The pervasiveness of fluff in marketing literature takes away from good, substantive advice. Banned marketing words include:

1. Strategy
2. Empower
3. Influencer
4. Leverage
5. Best Practice

Forbes did a fun jargon madness game last year that encouraged users to vote on their least favorite words and phrases. “Drinking the Kool-Aid” edged out “leverage” for the win. Hubspot also has a more comprehensive list.

Tech words:

The tech writing community can be quite clever, creating new words when nothing that already exists will suffice. But sometimes even the most resourceful people get stuck on too much of a good thing. Like these words:

1. Ecosystem
2. Metrics
3. Engagement
4. YOLO
5. Curate

The Atlantic has some humorous comments about the words ecosystem, curate and YOLO. Rebecca Greenfield said of ecosystem, “This reasonable science-related word has been co-opted by the tech writing community, which has senselessly ravaged it.” For more withering critiques, read the whole article here.

What words are most irritating to you? Ask your colleagues and add your own. Create a banned words list for your office. If you catch yourself using any of them, bring out the thesaurus. Your readers will thank you.

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Most designers are taught to use a grid when creating layouts for print publications. The grid is simply the invisible structure that is used to hold the design together. Grids are comprised of grid units – the smallest element of space that will be used to build the layout. A print grid unit may be 2 inches by 2 inches, whereas a website grid unit may be as small as 50 pixels by 50 pixels. More complicated layouts have smaller grid units and more options for arranging text and images.

The consistency of grid units does not mean that everything on the page will be the same size. One column of a website may occupy 4 grid units, creating a column that is 200 pixels wide, using the above example. An image my use 12 grid units, taking up a space that is 600 pixels wide. Some grid units may be left empty to create white space and visual balance. The overall effect is an orderly spacing of elements that fit together based on the underlying grid.

Why use grids?

Grids create order and are soothing to the eyes. You may not know consciously why a layout is pleasing, but on a subconscious level your mind appreciates structure and consistency. Visitors are more likely to spend time on websites that allow their eyes to rest and are more likely to leave those that bombard their senses. Keeping people on your site is critical to conversion.

Grids help organize information. Grid layouts are widely used for magazine and news sites, like The New York Times and NPR, both of which contain large volumes of content. This may be helpful if you have a lot of material, like articles, newsletters, seminars, videos and glossaries to include on your site.

Grids help complicated sites appear simple and easy to use. Visitors appreciate organized information and tend to look for items in consistent places from page to page. Grids help ensure that consistency, making sites more user-friendly and easy to navigate.

Grids make your pages easily scannable. People do not read websites. They scan from section to section, picking up headlines and the first couple of sentences of a paragraph in order to decide whether they should read on. A grid helps break your content into digestible pieces, making your content easily scannable.

Grid layout may not be right for every law firm website, but it is an option to consider. Evaluate the key functions you need your site to perform to help make that determination.

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Over the last four years, the number of online marketing firms which claim to focus on attorneys has dramatically increased. Much of this is due to the economic downturn that started in 2008; many search marketing firms looked to lawyers to maintain their revenue, as law firms in many practice areas were not as severely effected by the economy as other industries.

Some search engine optimization companies offer exclusives, agreeing to only work for one law firm per city and practice area. Others, like SEO | Law Firm, limit their market size to three attorneys per keyphrase – thus, they would not work with more than three “Boston family law attorneys” or “Miami personal injury lawyers,” and so on, and they offer exclusives to interested firms.

When conducting this study, we found several companies that do not limit their number of SEO clients; they work with an unlimited number of law firms competing in the same city with the same practice areas. We found this to be troubling, because, as we researched their progress, we discovered that this unrestricted acceptance of new law firms means these marketing companies are knowingly taking money from firms that can never see the first page of Google.

Looking at markets in San Francisco, CA and Tampa, FL, we searched for various practice areas, from personal injury and family law to bankruptcy and corporate law.

Personal injury is the most commonly oversold practice area by marketing firms that don’t limit their competing clients. We found one company working with 13 competing firms in the same city that focus entirely on personal injury. For that keyword, Google is displaying 10 natural search results. That means the company knows they are taking money from at least three law firms that cannot possibly make it to the first page of Google.

The reality,of course, is that the page one results are not going to only consist of law firms working with the same SEO company. In this case, where the marketing company had 13 competing clients, only three of them were on the first page of Google for their most popular keyphrases.

To make sure your firm’s marketing company is not betting against you, here a few tips:

Look for a Partner – Find a company with a strong track record that will truly have your best interest at heart. This is more easily achieved with a small-to mid-size company, as they can become more involved with your success. Smaller companies can also be more agile and quickly adapt to changes in search engine marketing.

Require Full Disclosure – Require that your marketing firm tell you if they are working with a competitor – not just at the beginning when they are hired, but also if they start working with any new competing law firms after you retain them.

Seek Limitations – Getting exclusivity is a little more expensive, so if that is not within your online marketing budget, at least require limits. By limiting the number of competing firms in a market to three, it’s realistic that those three clients can all enjoy a high-lead generating, page one ranking. If the limit is more than that, keep in mind that most natural search engine traffic goes to the top three results, so while you may be on the first page at position nine, your traffic will be minimal until higher on the page.

Having a strong marketing partner is crucial to the growth of every law firm. By doing a little research and making several reasonable demands, you can make sure that your legal marketing company is not betting against you.Google+

Generating a regular flow of informative posts is difficult, but it is a necessity for lawyers engaged in search marketing. Fresh content is the norm. Websites cannot compete if they simply exist as static brochures. Frequent updates to your site, blog and social media profiles help build trust with visitors, cement your position as a knowledgable professional and give you more weight with search engines.

So how do you come up with the next great idea? Here are some tips for attorneys needing to meet that content deadline:

Change your setting. Sometimes, just getting away from the desk is all it takes. A change in physical scenery or a peek at an article or book that is completely unrelated to the law can help jolt your mind back into producing ideas. If you are ambitious, take a walk or engage in some form of light exercise. Freeing your mind from the focus of your frustration may be all it takes for inspiration to find its way back in.

Look to your experiences. Personal stories are a great source of blog material. As an attorney, you have worked hard to acquire the knowledge and skills it takes to run a successful firm. Use that experience. You can write about something that compelled your interest in the law or pull from your case history (keeping clients anonymous, of course). People in search of legal services have questions about what to expect when working with an attorney. Answering them with an engaging narrative helps you appear more accessible and able to meet their needs.

Mine news headlines. There will be plenty of people writing about high-profile cases (particularly of the celebrity variety), so try to focus on lesser known or local issues. You can offer commentary and opinion about cases or, if applicable, discuss how they relate to items your firm addresses. You may also want to look to sites like scotusblog.com to see what is in the works nationally, and extrapolate about how it could affect clients in your area.

Make a list. People love lists. Blog posts that contain lists (and are obviously labeled as such in the title) enjoy a higher than average click-through rate.

Follow up on a previous post. If you have written about a news story, perhaps the facts have changed or a verdict has been rendered. Update readers and add your thoughts about the developments. Or, review you blog to see which past posts were most popular and write more on the same topic. You can also reply to comments made on your blog or social media pages, but be careful not to give legal advice and to make it clear it is not your intent to do so.

Participate in a debate. One of the best ways to force your mind to work is to have a conversation with someone you disagree with. If you know a colleague who likes to engage in a little friendly exchange of words, see if he or she has time for a chat. You may be forced to think in a different way or look at an issue from an uncommon perspective – always good methods for breeding new ideas.

Do an interview or or have a guest post. At times, you may some outside help. If you know someone who is an authority on a certain topic, see if they will agree to be featured in an interview piece. Or, ask if they are interested in guest posting on your blog. Bringing some diversity to your blog is always a good thing, and it helps build relationships with other professionals who may one day give you the same opportunity.

Create a regular feature. Come up with something that you can do on a weekly or monthly basis. Tuesday is a popular day for tips (readers like alliteration). On Thursdays, you could offer thoughts about local issues or cases. Make one day a regular interview day. If you do not think you can pull it off every week, schedule it every other week or once a month.

Be careful not to fall into the trap of being restricted by your topic. You may find a regular feature to be helpful at first but ultimately too inflexible. If that is the case, end it.

Getting out of your comfort zone is always a great way to force your mind into overdrive. Try something new and nurture your own, individual voice.

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LinkedIn has been actively promoting its company pages, releasing a new look and several upgrades toward the end of last year. The network, which is known predominantly as an arena for making b2b connections, is attempting to compete with other social media sites that have long been considered avenues for direct interaction between businesses and their target audiences. Company pages look to be a promising way of increasing LinkedIn’s value to its members, but they contain many features that are still underutilized. Try using these to enhance your firm’s page:

Company status updates. LinkedIn rolled out company status updates in October, providing firms with a way to share news, articles and other content. Like any social media platform, one key to building worthwhile relationships is frequent engagement. But do not just update your page for the sake of saying you have. Make sure you comment on items that those in need of your services will find relevant and useful.

Products and services. The products and services tab offers more useful features than may initially be apparent. It is perfect for highlighting your most popular practice areas, but it can also be used to show off ebooks, planning guides or other promotions – all of which help drive traffic back to your site. The products tab also provides a “Product and Service Spotlight” area, which can contain up to three clickable, scrolling banners showcasing your firm’s services. These enable you to steer connections to specific pages within your site, depending on their needs.

Audience targeting. LinkedIn allows you to create multiple targeted landing pages within the products area. This means you can emphasize different services based on a set of parameters like industry or geography. Not every visitor will see the same information, allowing for very user-specific messaging. Depending on your firm’s size, this feature could be helpful for generating need-based leads that are more likely to convert.

Prominent visual branding. Visuals matter on social media sites. LinkedIn’s company pages encourage visual branding by providing a large banner space at the top of the page in which your firm can reinforce the visual message being conveyed by your website and print marketing materials. Thoughtful use of consistent visuals helps make your firm more memorable and accessible.

Recommendations. Getting clients and colleagues to endorse your services on your company page gives your firm more clout with those searching for legal services. The phenomenon, dubbed social proof, is real. People tend to do things that other people – particularly their friends – are doing. Showing evidence that people have hired your firm with positive results helps convince others to do the same.

Videos. A well-done video gives you the opportunity to show people in need of your services how you will help them. Videos are an effective way to introduce yourself to prospects and build some level of trust before they even call your firm. Videos can be incorporated into into the products and services area, but they must be hosted on YouTube.

LinkedIn already provides a useful venue for lead generation through recommendations and referrals from colleagues, which attorneys should be leveraging. The additional ability to communicate with potential clients only adds value to your firm’s presence on the network.

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A new website does not have to harm your search engine rankings.

Online marketing consists of many things beyond just search engine placement – things such as your website. All of your online marketing efforts will eventually lead a potential client back to your law firm’s website. When that happens, is your website ready for conversion?

Some law firms have been building out their websites for over a decade. They have built-out libraries of tutorials, frequently asked questions, blogs, and landing pages. Their websites’ age, quality, and the massive amounts of content they hold have kept them on the first page of Google for popular keyphrases. Their sites get a lot of traffic, but that traffic is not turning into leads.

Having a lot of great content is crucial. It’s important for search engine rankings, and it’s important for conversion. But, if that content is not organized to follow a professional design, one that is easy to navigate with clear calls to action, your firm’s website is the online equivalent of a crowded store with no paying customers.

A New Design Will Not Harm Your Rankings

If your firm’s website gets a fresh redesign by a company that understands search engine optimization, you can protect your search engine rankings. The main reason most law firms don’t update the design of their well-positioned websites is because they are afraid of losing their positions.

This is a valid concern. A new website design on a new content management system could change your sub-page URLs, which may cause you to lose all of the link value from websites currently linking directly to your internal pages. For example, your car accident sub-page URL may be …/car-accident-attorney.html on your old site. The new site will have a URL of …/practice-areas/car-accidents/. Websites linking to …/car-accident-attorney.html will be linking to a dead link.

If a web design company tells you that Google will simply figure it out, they are wrong. The only way Google will allow you to keep your sub-page search engine placement with the new URLs is if you utilize permanent redirects. The initial setup of these redirects is quite time-consuming, but absolutely mandatory if you are going to maintain your high positions after a redesign. With a redirect, you are telling Google that …/car-accident-attorney.html has permanently changed to …/practice-areas/car-accidents/. With the permanent redirect, Google will pass all of the link value from the old sub-page URL to the new one, thus maintaining your positions.

Before contracting with a design firm, make sure they provide a clear strategy for your website’s transition and understand their plan for protecting your rankings.

With your strong position in the search engines and a new conversion-targeted website design, your firm can increase the return on its online marketing investment.

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You have read them – sentences that seem to drag on endlessly without actually saying anything at all. Sometimes you will find you have read an entire paragraph about “doubling down” on “client-focused results” where “the bottom line” is “thinking outside of the box” only to realize that you actually feel less informed than you did before reading it. If phrases like these grate on your nerves, you are not alone. Clients and judges do not like them either. And marketing materials filled with overused platitudes are not likely to send eager prospects flocking to your office.

As a profession, lawyers have built a reputation for using a writing style that is needlessly wordy and obtuse. But stereotypes were meant to be overcome.

Watch out for clichés and buzzwords. Overuse of clichéd statements is another nail in the coffin and the straw that breaks the camel’s back for your writing’s effectiveness. It makes your sentences appear longer at the expense of actually saying something to your readers. Every profession is guilty of spawning its own insider language, some of which is helpful and even necessary. But in many cases words and phrases get used so often that they no longer have any real meaning or value to offer. They are simply information-free filler.

Consider making a list of words to avoid that you can keep handy whenever you are writing. Ask others what their pet-peeves are. Do a search for overused industry terms. The marketing profession has its share of fluff, like “guru”, “synergy” and “innovative.” Keep you list updated and be vigilant when clichés rear their ugly heads.

Eliminate unnecessary language. Some of the most commonly used extraneous words and phrases include “on the other hand”, “anyway”, “for example” and “in other words.” You could probably come up with several more without much effort. Most avoidable expressions are transition words placed at the beginning of a sentence in an effort to make writing flow or appear more cohesive. Leave them out. If the statement cannot stand on its own, it is superfluous.

Know your audience. Legal briefs, scholarly works and blog entries require different levels of formality and the language contained within them should be adjusted accordingly. People in need of legal services are not interested in law review articles. Representatives for Google have repeatedly stated that website copy should sound like it is being written for human beings, not keyword-hunting robots. When you speak directly to clients and attempt to address their needs, your writing will stand on its own. There is no need to stuff it with unnecessary jargon.

Use a thesaurus. One of the surest ways to make your writing appear as though it was written by someone still in grade school is to use the same word repeatedly – especially within the same sentence. Everyone is a little guilty of liking some terms more than others, which is why it is helpful to always have a thesaurus handy. If you find your word processing software auto-completing too many words, start looking them up. You do not have to use difficult or awkward substitutes, but you may be surprised at how many good options are out there from which to choose.

Have others proofread. For important documents, consider employing the services of a professional editor. For other items, at least give your colleagues a chance to catch mistakes you may have missed. It is difficult to edit your own work. You have been immersed in it for long enough that it is easy for your mind to skip over errors or fill in blanks that will be glaringly obvious to new readers. Editors and proofreaders can help save you from embarrassing public misstatements.

You are a well-educated professional and you should sound like one. Give your writing the attention it deserves. Do not fall into the trap of embellishing with filler and fluff. Unless annoying your audience is your real goal.

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Laptop and desktop machines are still the primary method people use when accessing the Internet from their homes, but the rapid increase of connected mobile devices is changing people’s relationship with the online world. Tablets and phones are convenient, and Americans are increasingly using these devices to perform searches or browse the Web even when there is a laptop or desktop available.

The trick, in terms of website design and search marketing, is that everyone uses their devices in different ways. Some may not ever actually open a browser and perform a search, preferring instead to use apps like Yelp, Foursquare or even Facebook to find information, reviews and recommendations about service providers. Additionally, the same person will use different gadgets for different purposes. Smartphones are more likely to be used to perform quick searches on the go, and smartphone users are typically looking for a specific piece of information, like a phone number or location. Smartphone users also convert better. People who land on a site after performing a search via phone are more likely to call or contact the business within 24 hours.

Although the percentage of people who access your website from a mobile device may still be relatively small, it looks as though their numbers will continue to grow. The more comfortable people become accessing the Internet with an array of mobile technologies, the more they will come to expect an easy to navigate, consistent experience from gadget to gadget.

Mobile websites are becoming more valuable in an environment in which the sheer number of devices makes it nearly impossible to create a site specific to all screen resolutions and operating systems. You would need an iPad version, a Kindle version, a Nook version, an Android version, a Blackberry version and so on ad nauseum. Creating a site for every device is both expensive and impractical.

Because of this reality, responsive design appears to be a trend that is here to stay into the foreseeable future. Responsive web design is the practice of building websites that sense and adjust to the user’s operating system, browser and screen resolution. Sites that are planned and developed in line with responsive design principles can eschew special templates for separate devices. Rather, the site is programmed with flexibility and intelligent code. Smart use of CSS and media queries result in a site that actually responds to the user’s needs.

Responsive design requires a new way of approaching a website project. Layouts must be fluid so that they can adjust to a one, two or even three column layout depending on the device. Images must be flexible and resize automatically to fit within various screen sizes. Websites that contain a lot of information may need to hide some elements on smaller devices like smartphones. Touch screen browsers do not show hover information, so all links must be clearly defined without relying on a rollover affect to grab the user’s attention. All of this should be mapped out from the beginning of the project, not added as an afterthought. As website design moves into the new year, this is one trend deserving of notice.

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While some areas of law require a fast decision from the client — like personal injury — most areas of law pertain to things people and businesses have to think about. Should I file for bankruptcy? Should I get a divorce? Is the infraction of a competitor worth filing a lawsuit over? Should I have a lawyer for the purchase of a small building? All of these are questions that individuals and companies work through prior to picking up the phone.

It is in those legal markets that free information and the collection of data will be of great value.

We will use a fictional divorce law firm to show you what to do.

Divorces are rarely mutual, and one party of the marriage is generally thinking about it for quite some time before they ever talk it over with their spouse. If you are a divorce attorney, you have a great opportunity to win over a client.

Essentially, you will be writing a short ebook that addresses frequent apprehensions people struggle with while entertaining the thought of divorce (or whatever your area of practice may be).

First, write an outline.

An ebook should be 10-30 pages, complete with a cover branded to your firm. You should also have your law firm’s content information in the footer of each page.

When writing an outline, go directly to the hot buttons. Here is an example of a Family Law ebook outline:

1) Considering A Divorce – In this section, you should comfort the reader about common fears and encourage them to read on.

2) Is It Expensive? – Without giving away your rates, express the affordability of your retention and give way for variables, such as jointly-owned real estate, businesses, and custody of children.

3) What If My Spouse Doesn’t Want A divorce? – Explain local laws and briefly what to expect in this situation.

4) What Happens to My Credit? – Give a basic outlook on how credit is affected in the divorce process.

5) Property and Assets – Don’t give too much information. In a very brief manner, explain the laws of property distribution in your state. You don’t want to give away a fully detailed “how to,” just basic expectations.

6) Children and Custody – Again, in just a few hundred words, give a brief “what to expect.”

7) How Long Does It Take? – Explain different variables that may come up. However, never present an obstacle without presenting your proposed solution in the event it comes up.

8 ) What Will My Lawyer Be Doing for Me? – Now is your chance to sell. Talk about your successes, responsibility, and, again, present solutions that you can implement in the event that the divorce takes a turn for the worst. Always steer the reader away from attempting to file themselves without representation.

With just a one- or two-page explanation for each of those items above, you should have a 10-to-15 page ebook.

Now it’s time to convert it into a PDF. If you don’t have Adobe Acrobat Professional, you can download OpenOffice. Open your ebook which you wrote in Word using the OpenOffice Writer. Include your contact information in the header. Then click on “File,” then “Export as PDF.” Now you have an ebook ready for distribution.

The next step is setting up an email list. Services like MailChimp.com make this easy. You will setup an auto-responder and a preformatted email. Then, you will include a form on your site provided by MailChimp. When a user fills out the request form to download your ebook, your auto-responder will automatically send them a link, while also subscribing them to your email list.

You can take also your ebook delivery a couple steps further:

Digioh.com offers a file delivery service that integrates with MailChimp. By using their service, you can secure your ebook file: only users of your MailChimp form are able to download your book. You can also choose to receive notifications every time that your ebook is downloaded, allowing you to track and measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

AmazonKindle – You can make your ebook downloadable on both Amazon.com and Kindle devices. You may need to coordinate with your marketing firm to ensure your ebook complies with their formatting rules. This is a great way to get a larger audience to your ebook while also gaining credibility.

Marketing your law firm in 2013 is going to be about more than just search engine rankings; you have to consider a far larger canvas of exposure. New competition is popping up in every practice area, so experienced lawyers need to make sure the public knows that they have the knowledge and experience to win cases.

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5. Large photo backgrounds. Large images have been coming into style for quite some time, being made popular predominantly by photographers and fashion designers. But other industries have been picking up on the trend, and large, screen-filling background images are now being used successfully by a range of companies. Large images are not just for portfolio sites anymore. They can be used to help make a big impact, create a memorable website and give pages a clean, modern feel. Law firms are starting recognize and participate in this trend. Here are some law firm examples:

http://www.vwlawfirm.com/
http://www.edulaw.com/
http://www.bdblavocats.com/en/

6. Color and picture blocking. Solid blocking takes the design grid and emphasizes it with alternating areas of solid colors, pictures and text. Microsoft has influenced this trend with its Microsoft phone operating system and most recently with Windows 8. Like big images, solid blocking can help give websites a strong visual impact, and the contrast between colors and images encourages users to explore different areas. When done well, color blocking can help simplify pages, presenting visitors with a limited number of options. The Goldman Sachs website is a good example of this. However, it can also be a little busy when many blocks are used, as is the case with Pepsi’s website. Different examples of color blocking:

http://www.pepsi.com/
http://www.goldmansachs.com/
http://www.steinsperling.com/

7. Infographics. Infographics can be an interesting way to convey information, processes or statistics. Law firms can create infographics from available information about relevant case law or – and perhaps more effectively – by doing informal surveys of clients and prospects and highlighting interesting findings. For example, what is the number one concern of start-up businesses? Or families engaged in estate planning? What are people searching for when they need to find a personal injury lawyer? Infographics are an effective and compelling way to share information with the added benefit of being easily shared across social media outlets. Some infographic links:

http://www.coolinfographics.com/
http://designtaxi.com/news/353840/How-To-Make-A-Good-Infographic/
http://i.superlawyers.com/sl/Selection_Process_Infographic/index.html

Fads may come and go, but trends have staying power. Look for some of these web design trends in 2013 and beyond.

Let’s Build a Bigger Law Firm. Call 1.800.728.5306 ext. 1

Other Resources: The Bigger Law Firm magazine | The Bigger Lawyer Social Network | Legal News |Attorney Press Release Distribution

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