Just last week, we reviewed a website for a law firm and this particular page on the website was related to bankruptcy law.

The client’s URL was: websiteurl.com/lawyer-attorney-1267187.html.

What Google outlined in their search engine optimization guide 2 years ago, was that they want to see relevant keyphrases in the URL. So if this was our client, this page would look like the following:

Websiteurl.com/practice-areas/bankruptcy-lawyer/

This tells Google that this subpage of the site is related to one of the keyphrases we are optimizing for “bankruptcy lawyer.” The other URL mentions “lawyer” and “attorney” but does nothing to describe which of approximately 50 practice areas this particular page is discussing.

Utilizing clean descriptive URLs is something that helps your search engine ranking as well as your click conversions from search result pages.

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

1) Descriptive titles – It all starts at the top. By clearly describing your law firm, region, and practice area in your website’s title tag, you are giving the search engines a clear description of your type of website. Before you copy and paste the same title tag on every page, keep in mind that every sub page on your website needs a unique descriptive title tag.

2) Blogs – Blogging is the most effective form of search engine marketing. By posting brief updates to your blog, you keep your law firm’s website fresh, relevant, and ever-growing. It also helps drive traffic to your law firm’s website by getting the blog feed listed in Google Blog Search and the ABA Journal’s Blawg Directory.

3) Design to Convert – What good is a high ranking if nobody is clicking or calling? A well designed website with conversion elements in place will help your law firm succeed. Placing a short contact form on every page will help increase the number of contacts you get from your visitors. The average lawyer website gets 1.8 pageviews per visitor. If you don’t have a contact form on the first page the visitor sees, your chances of conversion are drastically decreased.

4) Start Spreading the News – Utilizing news releases is the fastest way to get traffic to your website. In fact, with the right strategy in place, news releases can drive web traffic and clients to your firm long before your website is ranked on the first page of Google and other search engines.

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

Recently in our law firm marketing podcast, we talked about the best ways to communicate with your target clientele through color and branding.

The podcast episode was based on a two part series that we did some time ago then updated for the podcast. In listening to Sierra Winter describe the different things that attorneys do right and wrong, it reminded me of the importance of color when marketing a website.

One of the easiest ways to turn somebody off on a subconscious level is by using the wrong colors on your law firm’s website. Sometimes, you can take some risks and make a website bold but for the most part, you should keep your brand and color scheme consistent with your market. For example, softer colors for sensitive matters like personal injury and divorce. Stronger colors are acceptable for criminal defense and business law.

If you haven’t heard it already, you should listen to the first podcast here, subscribe on iTunes, or subscribe with Feedburner. The second part of the series is coming out next week.

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

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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/.

A common mistake made by many law firms is pushing their website and online legal marketing strategies to the back of their priorities. By doing this, the law firm loses a lot of exposure and potential clients.

Everyday, people and businesses go online – not to the phone book – to look for a lawyer. In every major city and in every practice area, thousands of searches flock to Google and other searches engines to seek legal counsel.

To show you how important it is to begin quickly, we ran a search count in several major metro areas in different corners of the United States. The number represents the number of searches Google received for that keyphrase each month. It’s an approximation provided by Google.

Miami divorce attorney – 1,600

Seattle personal injury – 6,600

Boston bankruptcy lawyer – 1,700

Houston criminal defense – 12,000

Los Angeles immigration lawyer – 3,600

As you can see, the traffic is out there and if your website can’t be found or if it doesn’t look its best, your firm is missing out on new cases.

Keep in mind, search engine optimization does not happen overnight so beginning a strong online law firm marketing campaign soon is imperative to the success of your firm in 2010.

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

In our Tampa office, we have a constant arm wrestling tournament between the designers and the search engine optimization and writing team. The designers want clean designs, a few crisp images, and “Apple like” simplicity. The search engine optimization group is also a big fan of simplicity, but not so much with images; they want text.

The result is always a clean design with adequate room for plain text to be optimized, though text placement is something done by the designers with an almost querulous tone. Ultimately both sides are pleased and the client is always happy with the end product.

Does it have to be a battle between the designers and word warriors? Not really because people and search engines both want to see the same thing. When you are searching for something, you want easy-to-read text on a white background. You want a navigation menu that is direct and to the point. You also don’t want to interpret clever slogans.

Clever slogans? That’s our next stop on the simplicity highway.

We were talking to a semi-competitor that specializes in imagination. They’re a consulting group that helps companies come up with completely out-of-the-box methods of getting the word out regarding their products and services. They could not figure out why they were getting so much traffic, yet very few contact requests.

When a visitor would land on their well-designed website, they would see a lot of information, examples, and everything was pretty much in line with web layout and design standards. However, rather than having an intuitive button that said, “Get a Quote” or “Contact Us,” they had a button that read “Imagine!”

Clearly, people going to their website were not in the mood to learn somebody’s corporate culture lingo, so visitors interested in getting a quote were even less interested in using their imagination.

The moral of this week’s article is that simplicity can work for everybody. Branding can play nicely with design. Designers and search engine optimization specialists can work together to present SEO friendly text in the center of a crisp website, and the end user can clearly navigate the website to discover the exact information for which they are looking.

That translates into a professional image for your law firm and, most importantly, new cases on your desk.

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

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

Most popular blog platforms will automatically generate RSS feeds. Blogs like Wordpress, Blogger and TypePad will create an RSS feed based on your blog entries. Then other blog owners can receive your RSS feed and subscribe to your content. Or they can subscribe to your content using an RSS feed aggregator like the freely available Mr. RSS Puller (http://mrrsspuller.sourceforge.net/).

RSS feeds allow people to customize the information they receive. If you like the technology section of the USA Today, but the political commentary of the Washington Post, then subscribe only to those categories. If you are interested in what is getting published on other websites, plug in their feed and have it automatically updated.

On the marketing side, having an RSS feed readily available will increase the number of eyes that have access to your content and if they syndicate your content onto another website, the RSS feed can also build new inbound links to your website.

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

But is that all the entire Internet has to offer? A higher ranking in the search engines? No, in fact now is the time to go beyond search engine optimization and focus on one primary goal of “getting found.”

Getting found means being present through as many websites, articles and newswires as possible. Getting found means having a presence in as many places as possible. We are not talking about spamming classifieds sites or random linking; going beyond search engine optimization means social networking on overdrive.

Social networking provides you with an instant database of potential clients. By publishing a blog on a social network, you are making your information available within that network. You are also expanding the amount of content related to your firm on the web.

Google is more than a web search engine, it also has a news search engine (Google News – http://news.google.com) and a blog search engine (Google Blog Search – http://blogsearch.google.com).

If someone searches your area of practice in a Google News or Google Blog search, will your law firm be in the search results? Will your content be available? Through using content, spreading relevant information and utilizing social networks, your information will appear on Google Blog Search and other blog search engines, as well as Google News and other aggregate newswires.

By making your firm present in as many resources as possible, you will be going beyond search engine optimization and start getting found.

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

The best way to do this is to make your website an asset to your visitors. About 5 years ago, the quality of search engine results was getting lower due to the introduction of two ideas – doorway pages and keydomains.

Doorway pages were pages that frequently repeated the target keyphrase in order to display an “optimized” page. Ultimately, a website was filled with hundreds of doorway pages containing repetitive copy, the only difference being the keywords.

Keydomains worked along the same lines only instead of having highly optimized pages, they had highly optimized domain names.

For a while it seemed like no matter what you searched for in Google or Yahoo, you were bombarded with low quality spam pages that provided little, if any, useful information. So Google started punishing the sites using doorway pages and keydomains and no longer ranked them favorably.

Most ethical search engine optimization companies and online legal marketing companies stopped the practice of doorway pages and keydomains, and moved forward with other ideas that were an effective means of optimizing a site while helping the search engines display useful search results.

With that said, you need valuable content and information. A website with many pages of useful information will generally rank higher in Google and other search engines. Plus, it helps build credibility for your law firm.

Making your website an asset to visitors is not solely accomplished with content (though content is very important); it’s also accomplished through providing resources. Help your visitors find more information on a topic of interest by linking to relevant government resources, state/county websites, and even articles written by other attorneys — in areas outside of your practice area. All of this will help your law firm’s website be an asset to your visitors and the search engines as well.

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

Is it appropriate for your law firm to engage in social networking? Yes… with restrictions.

The first rule of business in social networking is to avoid MySpace. MySpace is not a place for business; it’s a place for kids, and their market share is quickly switching to Facebook.

The goal of any social networking is twofold. First, you need to get your name out in a community, and then connect with other businesses, law firms and individuals with whom you may share common goals and interests. Doing so may result in cross country exchanges of leads and prospects which is certainly a priority.

The other side, which excites us as online legal marketing geeks, is the further spreading of content and generating inbound links back to your firm’s website.

You need to use social networks that allow you to publish a blog on their system. Then you can publish content, articles, stories, and credentials; all of which link back to your website. Having an abundance of information on your social networking profile will build credibility for you and your firm, and prevent you from being just another profile.

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

Lawyer directories, such as http://directory.seolawfirm.com, Lawyers.com, and others do provide a useful service when it comes to driving traffic to your website. However, if a legal marketing company is ONLY providing a directory link, your ranking is not likely to improve in Google or other search engines.

The process of search engine optimization consists of your onsite presentation and use of keyphrases, and the number of third party websites linking back to your law firm’s website. Just one directory listing will not achieve that as you need multiple links to your website to enhance your ranking.

Does this mean you shouldn’t use directories?

Not at all. What this means is you should use both. Directories are a good traffic source and generally, a directory is a powerful inbound link for your website; so they are good to have. However, you also need search engine optimization and a monthly process in which multiple inbound links from multiple sources are being created for your website.

It’s also important to make sure your legal marketing company clarifies exactly how they are getting links for your website. If your contract only states “link building,” then they are probably just plugging you into some of their internally owned websites.

Always get a detailed outline of what is being done for your website’s onsite search engine optimization and inbound link building because ultimately (according to Google), you are responsible for what gets done to improve your ranking.

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

Since last year’s economic downturn, traditional advertising has experienced a steep decline. Radio, television and print advertising are slowing sectors of marketing; however, online marketing is on the rise even with less than favorable economic conditions.

Why are so many law firms turning to online marketing? It is more affordable than traditional marketing; plus, you can track conversion of an online law firm marketing campaign in ways that traditional marketing cannot be monitored.

With a search engine marketing campaign, you can see how many visitors the effort is yielding. Through tracking contact forms, you can also monitor conversion.

How much does search engine optimization cost?

The amount of work needed to achieve a page one ranking on Google is determined by the competitive nature of your keyphrases; thus, the cost will vary. However, in most cases search engine marketing costs much less than advertising in your local Yellow Pages and yields a much greater return.

The best way to see if search engine optimization is a viable addition to your online law firm marketing effort is to get a quote.

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

Thirteen years…

The Internet has been used commercially since the early nineties and began trickling into homes around the world in 1992 (although it originally went live in 1969 as a U.S. Department of Defense project called ARPANET).

Four years after the Prodigies and AOLs started making their irritating fax machine noises on computers everywhere, this one competing law firm purchased a domain name and set up a website.

Today, that firm has thirteen years of links to it. Some of those links are as old as the website itself. The result of this thirteen year old investment (which the attorney was most certainly mocked for doing when he originally purchased the site) now has his firm ranked number one, on page one, for a personal injury related website in a popular metro area.

Had he set up his website and paid no attention to search engine optimization, he would not be where he is today; so age isn’t everything. But, here is something to think about… if you were competing against this law firm in their regional market, they would have a thirteen year advantage on you.

Don’t be the last law firm to market yourself online. Having a website isn’t good enough; you need a search engine marketing plan to get your website found and positioned highly in the search engines. Every day you wait, your competitors are being handed the advantage.

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

The other side of search engine optimization, however, deals with your actual website. Items such as the platform in which your site is written, or your hosting environment, is basically what your law firm’s website is sitting on.

The biggest hindering factor in search engine marketing is a website that uses a content management system that is not SEO friendly. Are you unsure if you use a content management system? If you are able to login online and make changes to your firm’s website content, then you are using a content management system.

Not all content management systems are bad. In fact, many of them have built-in, search engine friendly URL’s and other tools needed to market your website successfully.

The two most important elements of a solid content management system are the ability to add custom page titles on every page (as opposed to having one universal page title), and search engine friendly URL’s.

An example of a non-search engine friendly URL is this: yourdomain.com/index.asp?=2029_id_29,0,20,13

All of those commas and characters at the end make it difficult for Google’s search engine bot to crawl your website.

A search engine friendly URL for a page on your website pertaining to personal injury (for example) would be this: yourdomain.com/practice-areas/personal-injury.

Notice how that URL structure is descriptive of the content within that page and uses the keyphrases.

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

Over the past few weeks, we have been talking about writing articles that drive new cases to your law firm’s website. The first step was writing a title and summary that sparks interest while utilizing your keyphrases.

The second step was writing an interesting article without using your name or law firm’s name in the body of the article.

With the body of the article not allowing you to include your name, law firm name, or website, you may be wondering how this is going to help build links to your website. The solution? It’s all in the footer.

Article directories allow you to submit your content with an “author credit” in the footer. This is where you attribute the article to your name, law firm, and link back to your website.

We have been using a fictitious Boston law firm called Smith & White, a divorce law firm. A good SEO friendly footer for Smith & White (assuming named partner John Smith wrote the article) would be the following:

John Smith is a Boston divorce lawyer with Smith & White, a Massachusetts law firm specializing in family law. To learn more or to contact a Boston divorce attorney, visit us at (website address) or call 1.800.555.9595.

Now, in the article directory, you will want to highlight “Boston divorce lawyer” and “Boston divorce attorney” and link them to your website. Of course the terms will vary depending on the type of law you practice and the region in which you are located. You can usually link to your website by clicking on a chain link icon in the article directory submission form.

So where do you post your articles? We will give you a couple good sources to use while showing you how to include your content in Adviatech’s social network… http://connect.adviatech.com.

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

Articles are used to share information with Internet users while building back-links to your law firm’s website. They are a crucial part of your legal marketing strategy.

When writing your articles, you should know a few important things.

1) You may not use your law firm’s name, your personal name, or references to yourself in a manner such as “us,” “we,” or “I.”
2) Articles are to be informative. They should provide direction to your users.

It’s OK to encourage readers to use an attorney, but you cannot in the body of the article reference your own firm.

Last week, we built a title and summary around a fictional Boston attorney that specializes in divorce.

Title: Boston Divorce Petitioners May Face Delays

Summary: Are you filing for marriage dissolution in Massachusetts without a Boston divorce lawyer? Here are some ways to avoid delays in your case.

Now it’s time for the article body. Your article should be 350-400 words. The rules for what’s allowed in the article are set forth by the article directories to which you will be submitting. So if you mention your firm’s name, they will decline your article.

Begin your article by utilizing your keyphrases. In this example, the keyphrase is “Boston divorce lawyer.” The first paragraph needs to encourage your readers to continue reading.

First Paragraph of Article Body: Getting a divorce is one of the most stressful events a person can face in their life. The emotional side that constantly presents uncertainty and fear has to be set aside to deal with the legal aspects of divorce. In a divorce, all property and assets must be reviewed and agreeably split between the two parties. Doing this without a Boston divorce lawyer could spawn disaster. Without the use of a Boston attorney in your Massachusetts divorce, you may let the emotions of the divorce get in the way of the asset disbursement part of the dissolution, which will only complicate the matter.

From that point, you want to continue to give brief insight on the process of getting a divorce while periodically (no more than once per 100 words) mention the keyphrase Boston divorce lawyer.

So you can’t use your name, law firm name, or personal information in the article… wondering how that’s going to get traffic to your law firm’s website?

Next week we will talk about how to link to your site from your articles while getting them approved by the article directories.

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