If you want to avoid pay per click charges, then you need an alternative legal marketing strategy that combines search engine optimization with other media forms that will yield instant results. The best way to do this is to merge press releases with your search engine optimization strategy.

Press releases do two things – they get your name instantly in Google News, Topix, and other online news services which drive traffic to your website and they build links which helps with your long term search engine optimization goals.

For a news release (or press release) to drive traffic, it needs to relate to a popular topic. We often recommend political commentary or viewpoints on high profile cases that relate to your area of practice. You should also make sure your legal news and attorney press release distribution service allows hyperlinking of keyphrases.

For example, if you are a Boston divorce lawyer, you should refer to yourself as one then hyperlink that keyphrase to your website. Here is an example:

“If this law passes, it will force couples to stay married for one year while going to state ordered marriage counseling at their own expense. It is clearly overstepping the role of government and putting the state in the middle of a personal matter,” said Boston divorce lawyer, John Smith.

The news release will show up in Google News, thus driving immediate traffic while also spreading the hyperlink of “Boston divorce lawyer” back to your website helping it rank better for that term.

Together, the strategies provide short-term traffic while laying the foundation for long term success.

Let’s Build a Bigger Law Firm Together

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

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network | Legal News | Attorney Press Release Distribution

Today, more people are replacing their newspaper with online news sources and this means your law firm can more easily connect with its audience.

By drafting news releases to communicate with your target audience, your firm gets to write interesting stories that can spark interest in the people and businesses your firm wants to attract. You can use masked case examples and really engage with your audience.

The old days of being dependent on a journalist picking up your story and giving your firm a favorable tone in the final article are long gone. By writing news releases and using online media, you can engage with your target clientele and completely control your 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

He then continues to explain how social networks are like cocktail parties which is where this week’s metaphor begins. When attending a social event, you always find different people, but they can be classified in similar categories.

Can’t Hold Their Liquor

This classification of party patron can be interpreted online as the online users that talk too much about too little. This is a parallel to the users who post comments on twitter keeping you up-to-date from getting out of bed, to morning cup of coffee, to shower, to mouthwash, to driveway, through morning traffic, and into the office. Generally, these people provide little to any value to the internet as content is currency on the web.

The Attention Grabber

We have all seen this person. They scream “me” at the top of their lungs with the way they dress, their just-slayed-the-world’s-most-dangerous-dragon smile, but when you finally get a chance to speak to them you find that their conversation is little more than a regurgitation of their autobiography and many great accomplishments, proven or imagined. They have no interest in why you are talking to them only that you are, thus giving them an audience for the many great things they think about themselves throughout the day.

An Informative Presence Is All They Need

Now we tie this into your law firm marketing strategy. The last person in the cyber cocktail party is who your law firm needs to be. This is the person whom everyone goes to because they have the answers. Real answers. They give a brief bio of their history and qualifications, but the preponderance of your conversation with them is about you. You have questions and this confident but warm person has helpful answers. Your law firm needs to position itself on the web.

Your law firm’s news releases, website content, and social media marketing need to focus on your clients. What problems are they facing? What solutions can you offer? Who else are they talking to? There is a chance that prior to talking to your law firm, they have had a disappointing conversation with the “look at me lawyer” who provided an impressive resume with no solutions to their problem. They have also ignored the attorney on TV who is filmed in a boxing ring and on his boat doing things that have nothing to do with their legal needs.

Your firm needs to be about solutions. If your website and marketing content talks about solutions with just a brief bio of your expertise, your law firm will become the presence in the room that gathers an unsolicited audience which ultimately means new cases.

If you haven’t already, I recommend reading Scott’s book as it will help transform your view of online marketing as being more than just search engine rankings but rather a combined marketing effort with many different solutions coming together to achieve one goal: making your law firm grow.

Recommended Reading

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

Here at Adviatech’s SEOLawFirm.com, we love finding new ways to improve the way lawyers market themselves online. While your search engine ranking is important, massive traffic can come from other sources. It is this focus that brings us to one of our additions… first, we want to tell you how we tested it.

In February, SEOLawFirm.com launched a new look, a new lawyer directory, a new social network, and the most controversial, a newsroom.

We embraced the journalistic backgrounds of four of our staff members and set them free to produce legal news articles based on current events under the watchful eye of our editor. We even granted license to (in a professional manner) slant the articles based on their perspective even if we as a company disagreed with their ideals and politics. After all, news is about the reader. We also made a commitment not to censor legitimate comments even if they disagreed with the writer.

Shortly after launching the newsroom, we were accepted by Google News as a contributor. To date, our news articles have been linked on The Huffington Post, syndicated to Current.com, and picked up by a long list of smaller online publications.

One of our news articles was read 1,500 times in 9 hours. It was syndicated, commented on, and generated a lot of traffic to the SEOLawFirm.com Newsroom.

Aside from our usual readership and being Google News contributors, a lot of traffic comes from social bookmarks. We have included bookmark icons at the top of all of our news articles and blog entries. This allows readers to plug our content on Digg, Google Buzz, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and other networks located at the bottom of our blog entries.

With these buttons on your law firm’s blog entry, you open your blog to the readers that are on these various networks. One newsroom article was shared by a reader on their Facebook profile. That link has since been shared 375 times in the Facebook network.

That is why we are integrating these buttons on all of our existing client websites and will include them on all future client (that’s you) websites.

These five icons may very well be the tunnel that sends valuable visitors to your law firm’s website.