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Inbound links are known to be the currency of the internet. The basic explanation is, having different blogs and websites to link to you is similar to acquiring votes for your site. The more votes you can get, the more trusted your site becomes in the eyes of search engines like Google. Needless to say there are other variables to think about like the authority and importance of the sites linking back to your firm’s website too.
What A Link Building Campaign Can Do For You: A Couple of Benefits Of Backlink Building
1. Link building Can Help Your Law Firm’s Site Achieve Higher Positioning For Selected Key Phrases – Backlinks directed to a particular page on your website, that contain key phrases you wish to rank higher for as anchor text, will help to enhance your search rankings in the search engines for that keyword. Take for example an accident law firm in New jersey. We will say the firm is trying to strengthen their rank for the keyword “New Jersey injury lawyer”. The firm will need to establish a page on their website that is optimized for “New Jersey injury lawyer” after which the law firm will need to get other sites to link back to that page along with inbound links that include “New Jersey injury lawyer” in the wording that comprises the hyperlink. This helps to let Google recognize just what the page on your website is about and will also create authority because other websites are linking to that page with descriptive anchor text.
2. Link Building Establishes Website Authority – As you build additional hyperlinks to different pages on your site, your complete URL will attain authority and confidence as far as search engines are concerned. As opposed to this assisting only one of your web pages rank for a keyword, your increased domain authority will help all of your posts rank higher. This is why when a website such as www.cnn.com writes an article or a new page, it rank more highly than many other websites. This can obviously bring about additional traffic for the law firm’s website. Similar princples hold true for your local lawyer site.
3. The Website Pages Get Visited More Regularly By Google’s Crawlers & Additional Pages Get Found – The only way someone searching Google can find your site is if the site is listed in Google’s search index. When your site gets additional authority and confidence, through backlinks, your website becomes “more valuable” in the eyes of the search engines. The outcome is that Google spiders visit your site more often to check for new content. In addition, more pages on your site get added to Google’s index. This provides you more opportunity to get visitors searching Google for your services.
With minimal time as well as brutal competition, messing around with unsuccessful internet marketing methods is unacceptable. Having experience as well as trial and error, I supply to you a number of on-line marketing approaches for attorneys that everyone should stay away from..
1. Websites made entirely in Flash – Search engines can’t crawl Flash well. This suggests that your beautiful, flash website won’t show up in the serps (search engine results pages) when individuals are searching for your legal services. That’s just too large a market to block yourself from. Integrating some flash areas on particular sections of your website could be fine (I’d recommend having a professional search marketer to glance over the Flash sections to be positive), but don’t build the whole website in flash.
2. Comment Spamming on Blogs – Comment spamming requires building links in to your website by leaving pointless comments on other sites, blogs, and content. Coming from a technical mindset, comment spamming is a waste of your time. Nearly all comments will be moderated by the blog owner and never displayed. Those junk comments that do make it through will probably be “nofollowed” which means the search engines don’t offer you credit for the links. If you make a pointless, generic comment, it isn’t likely individuals will bother to visit your site rendering your efforts a waste.
3. Not Monitoring Your Law Firm’s Identify – With the advancement of Tweeting, Facebook, and real-time information sharing, not being able to keep an eye on your firm’s brand online is a major mistake. I should not have to tell you that your firm’s reputation is among, if not the most, critical assets you have as an attorney. It’s vital that you set up alerts to ensure you recognize when your name is published and can react competently. Employing a free service such as Google Alerts allows you to set up automatic emails that will be provided anytime something is released online about you or your firm.
4. Failure To Understand Your State Bar Marketing Policies – I do not have to inform you that attorneys are held to a different standard with regards to ethical advertising. Considering each state bar determines it’s own ethics rules, it is important that you take the time to learn what is allowable and what is not. Do not give this critical task to your marketing and advertising company, it isn’t their bar license at stake if anything goes wrong.
5. Failing To Utilize Analytics – If you aren’t measuring the effectiveness of your legal site with a free of charge, powerful analytics software such as Google Analytics, than you simply aren’t going to be able to hang with the big boys. As a way to develop, expand, and make vital modifications to your approach you will need to recognize what has occurred, exactly what has worked, and what hasn’t. You can’t accomplish this without the help of an analytics application. There is no reason not to use one since one of the very best programs out there, Google Analytics, is free. Get this setup right now and take twenty minutes to discover how to use it.
Legal professionals frequently explain to me that while they put out the work to write and maintain a blawg, they have difficutly finding ways to get new readers. I have written a checklist of 5 tips that with minimal work, will help to give more visibility to your blog.
1. Distribute the blog to pertinent directories. Even though this might seem obvious, I am amazed at how many attorneys fail to actually do this. Submitting your blawg to directories can help to provide people searching for your blog material the ability to discover it. The following is a list of a few blog directories to get you started: Blawg, Technorati, MyBlogLog, and ABA Blawg Directory. There are numerous others as well. Simply perform a search for “Legal Blog Directories” and get started submitting.
2. Take advantage of Twitter to publicize your blog posts. The great thing about Twitter is that like-minded folks can locate one another and discuss tips and articles around the web. You can use a program, like twitterfeed, to automatically send out your content as you publish them to your site.
3. LinkedIn Groups and Facebook. Sharing your posts and ideas with fellow attorneys and group members by way of LinkedIn and Facebook is a good means to gain further exposure. Start out by subscribing to pertinent LinkedIn groups such as Legal Blogging, Lawyer Marketing, Legal Marketing, and any others that might be more practice specific. Share your posts with the groups. If you write intriguing content, people will visit to read and subscribe.
4. Comment on other Firm’s Blogs. The very character of blogging lends itself to communicating and dialogue. Take time to read other interesting blog articles and comment, sharing your thoughts. DO NOT SPAM. The idea of this exercise is to involve yourself in the blogging community and participate in the dialogue, not spam others.
5. Use social bookmarking sites to submit your most effective articles. Submitting a great article to sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Delicious can drive readers to your blog. If individuals like the posts you wrote, they will “vote” for it. This will bring new eyeballs to your blog.
A law firm website that is hidden from the search engines will never perform as well as a site that avoids law firm search engine optimization mistakes. We observe lawyer sites every single day that could perform much better in the major search engines with just a handful of small adjustments. Below are the top 5 lawyer search engine optimization mistakes to avoid:
1. Zero Incoming Hyperlinks – A law firm site that does not have other sites linking to it is going to get lost within the abyss of the web. Links are the currency of the internet as far as search engines like Google are concerned. It’s essential that you get other, legally related websites to link to your site. Ignoring your inbound backlinks is a classic attorney Seo mistake.
2. Do Not Add Articles – Not adding fresh, relevant content to your law firm’s site is a classic error. The times of creating a static law firm website and expecting to bring in a large amount of visitors are over. You need to add new articles to your site on a steady and frequent basis. We typically recommend 2-3 unique articles per week at a minimum. Incorporating content will help increase the presence your site has on the online and create additional channels for consumers to come across you.
3. Make It Challenging To Post To Your Site – Most sites these days are developed on a CMS (Content Management System) platform. There are many different kinds, however the most important function they all accomplish is making the updating of your site quick to accomplish. As opposed to having to learn HTML code, you can easily revise your website via an easy to use interface and publish the information. If your website is challenging to update, you simply won’t do it. This can hurt your presence in search engines like Google.
4. Don’t Perform Adequate Keyword Research - Yet another classic mistake lawyers make is not performing keyword research. Understanding the keywords that individuals have historically searched for to find your services as well as understanding the relative competitiveness of those keywords is important to the success of your site. Frequently lawyers will just “go with their guts” or decide on words and phrases they “think” people might search for. This is not the way to accomplish keyword research. Using Google’s Keyword Tool is a great place to begin.
5. Do Not Use The Keywords You Identified On Your Website – Utilizing keywords throughout your site will help the search engines better recognize what your website is about. Including keywords in your site’s title tags, headers, and the body of your website is a best practice. You do not want to do this in an obnoxious way where it becomes obvious to someone browsing your website.
Avoiding the above mistakes should help provide your site more visibility when people are looking for your legal services in the search engines. For a more in depth conversation of your law firm’s site and seo contact us toll free at (877) 619-5775.
Education based marketing is the skill of presenting your expertise as a vehicle for marketing your firm. The idea is that by offering a bit of your expertise and educating a possible client, you will develop trust and establish yourself as a valuable source of information. Here are 3 ways you can use education based marketing for your law firm online:
1. Start A Blog – Authoring a blog is an excellent strategy to market your firm online. Submitting informative articles about your practice area serves a couple of purposes. It gives you more exposure and visibility online any time potential clients are investigating their legal concerns. It also creates an opportunity for dialogue because clients can leave responses and interact with your articles.
2. Educational Guides – Another great method to get prospective clients to interact with your website is to provide free e-books for download in exchange for a client’s contact information. As an example, if you run a bankruptcy practice you could write a concise guide “Top Ten Misconceptions About Bankruptcy”. You can offer the e-book for free in exchange for a client’s name and e-mail address. As soon as the prospective client fills out a form giving you the required information, you e-mail them a hyperlink to your e-book. You now have an opportunity to begin a conversation with the prospective client.
3. Online Videos – A great way to present your expertise is by creating a short video. This is a very intimate setting where the prospective client is presented with a chance to see and hear you rather than just looking at text you have written. Any time you are creating an online video for the law firm it is crucial to keep in mind not to simply talk about your firm and how fantastic you are. Speak to the prospective client about their troubles. Answer common concerns or offer information regarding how to do something. Stay away from shameless, self-promotion.
