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.

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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

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 it comes to marketing your law firm’s website, the goal is always centered around links. The more quality websites linking to your website, the higher quality Google sees your website content as being. So, how do we build link?

Press Releases
Press releases go out across (primarily online) newswires which then syndicate content through places like Google News, Yahoo News, the Law Firm Chronicle, etc. When your law firm’s press releases are syndicated, the link to your website is also syndicated; thus increasing your inbound link population. We recommend at least two press releases each month which your legal marketing company’s writers should supply.

Articles
Articles work much like press releases; however, press releases are all about your law firm and articles are strictly informative. Generally, your law firm’s name is never mentioned in the body of the article only in the author credit footer. In the footer, we are able to link to your website using keyphrases. So a divorce lawyer in Boston would have this keyphrase, “Boston divorce lawyer” linking to the law firm’s website. Just like press release, we recommend at least two articles be written each month.

Articles serve a double purpose because they are also used in the social networking and blogging aspect of your legal marketing plan.

We will go into detail on blogs and social networks in next week’s issue.

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