That is generally sound advice but as a lawyer, you are in a unique predicament. Through all the bickering, fear mongering, and partisan wiles, politics comes down to the formation and interpretation of your product… the law.

Over the years, we have monitored the performance of the blogs that our law firm marketing clients contribute – and what we found was a little surprising. There is value in political commentary. This was true from both sides of the aisle.

In traditionally left-leaning areas of the law (personal injury and immigration), we found that blog entries that took on a political undertone related to their respective area of the law had higher levels of syndication, more direct inbound links to the blog entries, and higher levels of sharing across social networks like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg.

On the other side of the aisle, we looked at traditionally conservative areas of law (corporate, securities, and tax). Blog entries that spoke out for or against state and federal legislation (bills and laws) not only had greater amounts of sharing across social networks, more syndication, and more readership, law firms in conservative genres had more direct requests for republishing the politically charged article in newsletters, magazines, and journals.

Its safe to say, based on this review, that politics in your law firm’s blog is a great way to charge some interest in your firm’s website. However, you have to keep the focus on the legal aspects.

If you start getting venomous in your political writing and talk more against the individual politicians and not so much the legislation they back or oppose, you may isolate yourself from potential clients that do not fit in the stereotypical political box.

Just as attorneys in those practice areas may not fit the profile, conservative individuals often need personal injury representation and some liberal voters also own large corporations and get involved in periodic tax disputes, so you cannot assume your target clientele share in the comprehensive party beliefs. So keep the focus on what the politicians are doing, how it will affect the interests you represent, and throw in some of your own commentary. This will yield great interest in your firm through your law firm’s message.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

If you are paying a monthly service fee, shouldn’t you receive monthly services? The journey to the top of page one is not a matter of frequent attorney website tweaks or getting listed in a couple directories. You have to hit the Web aggressively and hard.

A monthly line of news releases, articles, blog entries, and links back to your site from social networks, social bookmarks, and syndicated news is how the major law firms compete on the Web. If you are waiting for a quarterly service provider to accomplish something new with your monthly fee, it may be time to explore new options.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

For example, if you are a business attorney in Colorado, a press release sent to the local media discussing how the right contract can avoid future litigation would probably not get picked up. However, an online news release titled, “Attorney John Smith Talks About How Contracts Help Corporations Avoid Litigation,” would reach your direct audience.

While many law firm marketing companies stick to traditional search engine optimization tactics, we often have to explain in detail how news releases are effective. During this process, attorneys often are concerned that what they do is not newsworthy.

Whether you think so or not, your law firm is newsworthy. What you do, who your clients are – all of that is important. A news release about something you’re doing, a case you are involved with (if you can discuss it publicly) or even something that is just good advice, can be spun into a news article that gets distributed in Google News and other outlets that will drive targeted traffic to your attorney website.

We have seen traffic increase for our clients time and time again by making their law firms newsworthy online. It will work for your firm as well.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seolawfirm

Ok, we don’t really have a “lab”, but we do have a few people who monitor search engine optimization trends and come up with new ways to effectively get traffic to our client’s websites.

In fact, getting traffic is what these new plans are all about. Search engine optimization is one very important part of online marketing. But what about clients you are not getting from social networks? What about the people you could reach through Google News and Yahoo News that may otherwise not search for an attorney but still need one?

That is where the new group of law firm marketing plans fill the void. We have created new affordable legal marketing plans that offer the basics for small firms and we pumped up our higher level marketing plans aimed at replacing your Yellow Page advertising altogether while giving a much greater return.

We also have introduced a new Suburban Lawyer plan for attorneys who primarily market in their local community. Why pay for the competition of a major metro area when your target client base is located in the suburbs?

Get more information by requesting a law firm marketing quote!

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

While Twitter may not be generating profits for parent company, San Francisco based Obvious™, it is definitely generating a lot of traffic and new business for many of its users. Where there is business to grab, law firm marketing company, SEOLawFirm.com, is there to discover and create new ways for lawyers to get their piece.

The parent company of SEOLawFirm.com, Tampa, Florida, based Adviatech Corp., wrote on their company blog in April of 2009 a two-part series called “Twitter Me This” and “Twitter Me That.” It was written to help introduce businesses to the value of Twitter as a business tool rather than a pre-teen gossip house.

Since then, the legal marketing holding of Adviatech launched their expansion which includes an attorney directory, social networking, and a variety of free marketing tools for lawyers to tap into along with their premium search engine marketing and website design services. It comes as no surprise that one of the free services developed by SEOLawFirm.com would simplify the way attorneys interact on Twitter.

The concept of the newly released lawURL.com is simple. Twitter only gives space for 140 characters. The theory propagated by SEOLawFirm.com is that Twitter’s core value to attorney marketing is in its ability to drive traffic to a website or blog. Therefore, if a Tweet does not link back to the Tweeting attorney website or blog, the Tweet is not going to be a traffic source.

What the free-to-use lawyer URL service does is shortens URLs. Some URL’s (website addresses) can by themselves exceed 140 characters. By utilizing lawURL.com, a 200 character URL can be shortened to a URL that is 19 characters (for example: http://lawurl.com/k). At 19 characters, lawURL generates addresses shorter than other services like ‘bit.ly’ which averages (with http prefix) 20 characters, and ‘TinyURL’ which averages 26 characters (with http prefix).

Of course, as the service becomes more popular and single letter/number suffixes are taken, character count will grow over time.

The real benefit is a perfectly branded Twitter page that uses a URL shortener only available to lawyers and legal related industries. The service is based on an open source platform that SEOLawFirm.com is still customizing. They will soon release a Wordpress plugin that will exclusively work with lawURL.com and allow attorneys to automatically Tweet through the lawURL.com API every time they post a new blog entry on their website.

To learn more and to start shortening legal related website addresses, visit http://lawurl.com.

But we know that what keeps our clients renewing year after year is partially their high ranking but primarily conversion. How many new cases and contacts are coming from their website… that is what truly matters.

A great factor in conversion is the design of the website. The key to conversion is simplicity and fewer steps. The goal of the design is to instill confidence in a user then make it as easy as possible to contact the law firm.

Keeping It Simple

The best way to increase conversion is to add a simple contact form on every page of the website. The form should request only the necessary information like name, email and phone number. It should be clearly visible and accessible on the home page and every sub page within the website.

Secondly, you should encourage the reader of your website and blog to contact your firm and link to the contact page. It is helpful to place contact links within the content of your site.

Implementing a couple simple techniques may improve leads and your return on investment with your online marketing dollars.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

When deciding how to best search engine optimize an attorney website, we look at competition in a different way. Online, competition is not always made up of lawyers in your city. It often comes from more powerful sources.

When building an online legal marketing strategy, we have to first determine the most popular keyphrase for your practice area. Popular keywords are going to give you the greatest return, since they provide the most exposure. While (for example) “Dallas Texas Criminal Defense and DUI Lawyer” may yield a quick page one ranking, it’s unlikely that the 5 individuals that search for that full keyphrase each month will cover your expenses. However, shorten that to “Dallas Criminal Defense Attorney” and you open yourself up to at least 1,600 monthly searches.

Let’s assume you have a keyphrase that is very popular and very competitive like “New York bankruptcy.” With 50,000 monthly searches, this is certainly a keyphrase worth investing in. However, when you search for “New York bankruptcy” in Google, you see that the competition for your search engine ranking is not always other lawyers.

Below the sponsored listings, the first result for this keyphrase is the website for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court Southern District of New York (nysb.uscourts.gov). Being a government website (.gov), it is going to carry a lot of prominence in the search engines. It’s also now your competitor.

The second ranking is a directory of bankruptcy lawyers in New York. This is somewhat like a competitor in that, should someone click on it, they will be exposed to competing bankruptcy lawyers. The third ranking is the Northern District of New York, another government website. When reviewing the whole page of listings, we find 4 government (.gov) websites. That means that 40% of the results page is dominated by search engine heavyweights.

When thinking about the competition for your keyphrases, your online law firm marketing company must take into consideration that everything on the first search results page is a competitor. This can be Wikipedia, a government website, a video on YouTube, or a news story on CBSNews.com. Knowing who you are really competing against will help your law firm achieve prominent rankings for the keyphrases that get search traffic, which ultimately means new cases for your firm.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

Attorney

The office of a law firm used to be ultimate in luxury. Marble floors, imported furniture, and expensive art were the norm for many high profile firms.

Things have changed in recent years. As lawyers see their client base come from the Internet more so than via traditional media advertising, many are investing in a luxurious website rather than an office fit for a king. Attorney website design and legal marketing company, SEOLawFirm.com has seen many firms paying closer attention to the custom feel of their site and the old “just want something up” attitude is a thing of the past.

An elite look and feel provides a great first impression, but that alone will not bring in traffic. Only consistent search engine optimization with inbound linking and social networking can make that happen. To improve the ability of SEOLawFirm.com’s clients to interact on social networks, they are offering several optional upgrades for their clientele.

The most popular of the newly available features is an application that sends a tweet to Twitter every time the attorney posts a blog entry. One of the most valuable features of Twitter is its ability to drive traffic to websites. A few tweets by themselves may not accomplish a lot, but link to a blog post and suddenly, Twitter is driving potential clients to the law firm’s website.

Another feature now available to SEOLawFirm.com website owners is connectivity with their social network accounts. A couple weeks ago, the company announced their law firm social network. Now, attorneys can syndicate their blog postings onto their SEOLawFirm.com Network profile.

SEOLawFirm.com continues to develop multiple plans for various website needs, and future upgrades will focus on better connecting legal websites with social networking.

To learn more, visit http://www.seolawfirm.com/web-design/.

In the last couple of months, we have seen a lot of fluctuation in rankings which is a pretty good sign that the upgrade is well underway. But one of things we are also seeing is that Google is looking for a new third element, social networks.

It appears that the world’s largest search engine is paying attention to how often a website is linking with popular social networks as a way to gage popularity. Some experts even speculate that they monitor Tweets and Re-Tweets.

The clear message to take from this is that you need a social networking strategy to compete online. It’s that simple. If you are currently working with a marketing company that is not implementing a social network strategy then it’s time to change quickly to catch up with the new Google search.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network

When you go to a store, most major retail outlets have sensors at the doorway. You probably overlook them, but they are certainly watching you. Every time someone walks in and out, a system tracks the activity to see how popular the branch is. Consultants are often brought in to monitor shopping habits from the cameras in the ceiling to figure out new ways to attract shoppers to high profit items.

Fortunately, getting statistics about your website is a little easier but certainly no less valuable. What keywords or referring sites are getting people to come to your website? When they get there, are they staying? Where do they go? Your blog? Your ‘about’ page? How long do they stay? What percentage is filling out your contact form and of that percentage, which traffic source is driving your highest conversion?

Of course you probably don’t know this off the top of your head, but do you at least know how to get your website’s statistics?

Knowing what is happening on your law firm’s website is extremely important. Without statistics, you are flying blindly up (or down) the search engine optimization ladder.

A good place to start is with Google Analytics. If you already have a Gmail account, Adwords account, or other Google Account, you can point your browser to http://www.google.com/analytics and sign up. Your webmaster will have to place code in the footer of your site on every page you want to track.

While other statistics applications and services are available that compete with Google Analytics, we have found that Google Analytics is widely supported and fairly accurate when compared to server logs.

Statistics play such an important role in the success of our law firm marketing projects that last year, SEOLawFirm.com’s parent company bought all of their SEO staff members the Apple iPod Touch and tied in the Analytics data for every client that member manages. We also believe that clients should have access to their data and know how to access and read it.

If you currently do not use a statistics package, integrate Google Analytics into your website and see what you have been missing.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer

Over the years, here are some of the reasons we have discovered.

Age

Most commonly, the cause of the high ranking over a law firm that is new to marketing online is due to the competing firm having a more established presence on the Internet. Law firms that have had an active website for 3-5 years have an advantage over newer sites.

Media

A little attention from the media helps your search engine optimization. Sometimes, law firms that maintain strong relationships with their local news organizations get a boost in their ranking. When a news outlet writes an article in their paper or reports a story on television, they also include the article on their website. News organizations generally have high ranking websites so by maintaining strong relationships with your local news outlets, you can get some strong links pointing to your firm’s website.

More than Age

It certainly takes a lot more effort than just existing to make it to the first page. For example, a law firm in your practice area that sets up a website and does nothing with it (in terms of link building or onsite SEO), is going to rank just as low five years from now as they do the day they go live.

From the time your website goes up, content should be written and distributed with links back to your site, social networks should be pointing to your website, and your onsite blog should be syndicated; a variety of inbound links should start pointing to your law firm’s website from the time it is visible to the public.

So with a little time (which can be greatly reduced with a strong inbound linking strategy), some distributed content and inbound links consistently pointing to your website, your law firm can compete with Internet elders.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer

For example, if your office is in Decatur, Georgia, and your practice area is divorce and family law, they may optimize your website for a term like “Decatur Divorce Attorney.” What they may not tell you is that only 320 searches are conducted on Google each month for Decatur divorce attorney.

If you optimized for Atlanta divorce attorney (just 7 miles away), the search volume goes up to 2,400 searches a month on Google (data provided by Adwords).

While a series of overnight page one rankings may look good in a law firm marketing company’s portfolio, getting a law firm ranked on the first page for a popular term is far more important.

Did you know that most people living in suburban areas search with keywords using their closest metro area rather than their suburban town? By optimizing for suburban areas only, you are exposing your firm to a smaller area, fewer searches, and could possibly be closing your site off to thousands of searches a month, such as in the Atlanta example above.

Before your law firm marketing company optimizes your website, you should insist on the company providing a report as to how many people are searching for the keyphrases they are optimizing for your site. While it may look good to be on the first page for your suburban region, your overall satisfaction will be much greater when new cases are generated from your nearest metro area.

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer