While more and more legal professionals are getting a good handle on law firm internet marketing terminology, concepts, and strategies, there are still many more that are still trying to get a grasp on the basics. For example, there are many lawyers that don’t understand the differences between various parts of a search engine results page. Here’s a quick break down of the most relevant differences.
So where do you want your law firm website to appear? The answer is everywhere. While as many as 90% of all search clicks may go to natural or organic listings, there is still plenty of new visitor opportunity in the paid search or sponsored listings areas. Let’s face it, that’s a significant portion of Google’s revenue.
Marketing your law firm through search engines will increase the number of people that “see” your law firm. As people continue to migrate to the web for locating local professional services, using the web for lawyer marketing campaigns just makes sense. For the consumer, finding a lawyer online can be more effective than using traditional methods (like yellow book, or directory listings).
The Net market is growing at an astonishing rate. The sooner you accept search engine marketing for your law firm, the better results you will see from your web marketing campaigns. Once your page appears in the first three results for a particular high volume key phrase, you will see amazing traffic, lead, and new client increases for your firm. Lawyer search engine marketing is the is the future of tapping into the vast number of people online. Successful online lawyer marketing involves demonstrating your professional credentials through articles, analysis and other forms of content. Additionally, using video in your internet lawyer marketing has proven one of the most effective ways to demonstrate expertise. Producing a successful video can be expensive, but if professionally done, it can be well-worth the investment.
As previously state, people are using the internet to do just about anything. Even initial legal consultations can be performed almost completely online. More information is available about a lawyer or law firm than ever before. Once you build and maintain a strong online presence, you will begin to access the overwhelming number of people in need of legal services on the web.
There are probably as many online lawyer marketing companies as there are lawyers. It should come as no surprise that, depending on the key phrase, your law firm is competing with thousands of other websites. If you don’t take advantage of search engine optimization techniques, you will not survive. Many law firms target the most competitive keywords in a particular field and area. While this is an important piece to an online lawyer marketing campaign, it is not the only way to have success.
There are many techniques involved in executing a successful lawyer internet marketing campaign. Each strategy has a special part to play in contributing to your law firm’s website’s ranking profile. Some of these core concepts include keyword discovery and targeting, technical components of your site’s structure, and the nature, quality, and quantity of the content on the site. Once these core concepts are working in harmony, you will see more traffic, leads, and new clients from your website. A website is an integral part of your lawyer marketing strategy and will achieve better success if it includes a blog and other social media tools.
Using the web to perform lawyer marketing strategies may be the best investment for your law firm. However, if executed improperly, it may be the worst. One of the keys to getting new clients from the internet is finding a web consultant who has interests aligned with your law firm. Structuring the proper relationship is the first part of finding success with lawyer internet marketing.
The internet provides several channels for conducting a lawyer marketing campaign. Perhaps one of the most successful ways to market a law firm online is with search engine optimization. Law firm SEO involves many techniques. However, not all techniques are created equally. Some will produce much better results than others. Further, some may actually be counter-productive.
Lawyer search engine marketing includes many techniques. The goal of each is to increase your firm’s site’s visibility in the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing. When properly implemented, these techniques will generate more targeted web traffic to your site. From that point, your site needs to be optimized to convert this traffic into actionable leads for your law firm.
Lawyer search engine optimization involves getting your lawyer website to rank in the natural results of a search engine results page. There is an important difference between natural results and paid results. For example, for every ten clicks on a search engine result page, 7 clicks will go to the natural listings and only 3 to the paid listings. Obviously, ranking naturally opens up far-more traffic opportunities.
Obviously, the biggest distinction between natural listings and paid listings, is that your pay for clicks on paid listings while you pay nothing for clicks on organic listings. In terms of return on investment, ranking in the natural results opens the possibility for much higher returns on investment as your cost for traffic acquisition remains fixed. In paid search, your acquisition will grow depending on your conversion rate (a topic for a different article).
Successful lawyer marketing campaigns need to be built on a strong law firm SEO foundation. From this foundation, you can build out other lawyer internet marketing campaigns including social media marketing and press releases. However, each of these additional efforts will be more effective if they are based on a solid law firm search engine optimization foundation.
When considering hiring a third party to perform your law firm search engine optimization, it is critical to consider the unique requirements and regulations of lawyer marketing in your state. Make sure that any search firm that you are considering employing is familiar with the regulations in your state.
Attorneys using the internet to market their practices need to be aware of the content being publicized on their sites. There are many important ramifications of having original quality content on your website. These can range from ethical considerations, marketing effects, and search engine optimization aspects. While some lawyers provide their own site content, many more are turning to third-party content sources. A content production firm will produce new, fresh, and unique content for your website. However, if you decide hire a content production service, be sure you grow your relationship slowly.
Another aspect to hiring the right content provider is being sure they are experienced in SEO. “Writing-well” and “writing-well for the internet” are two different things. Some content providers don’t understand the nuances of content production in the context of SEO. Ideally, your SEO firm handles your site’s content production. That way, you can be sure that your content is written with search engine optimization in mind.
One of the core search engine optimization components that your content provider should understand is keyword density. Keyword density represents how many times your targeted keywords are used on a page. If this number is too low, you may not get the full benefit of the SEO for that term on the page. On the other hand, if the density is too high, also known as stuffing, search engines like google may actually penalize the page or your entire site.
Since your content provider should be writing content optimized for your keywords, you need to supply the provider with the keywords that you’d like targeted. This is another example of why having your SEO and content provided by the same firm is economical. Your SEO should be handling keyword discovery for your firm. Since they know your core keywords best, they will be able to provide content that is optimized for all keyword segments. In any case, it is important that your content provider is familiar with your keyword goals so that they are able to appropriately leverage those keywords in the site content.
In addition to keyword density, your content provider should also be familiar with keyword placement. Keyword placement deals with where keywords are placed on your web page. As a guideline, keywords need to be placed higher on your page. Some other good places for keywords are titles, headers, anchor text, and bold and emphasized text areas.
There are many considerations to be made when hiring a company to produce SEO content for your website. Overall, the most important factors are unique content that is written with search engine optimization in mind. Getting good content is one of the best ways to help your website get found and generate new clients for your law firm.
The web has fundamentally changed the speed with which we can publish information as well as the access others have to that information. With these changes, it has become increasingly important that you not only make sure you are putting forth efforts to establish your reputation online, but that you monitor what is being said about you as well.
There are many good ways to track what others are saying about you or your law firm online. In this article, I want to address 4 ways you can keep a close eye on the online chatter in addition to building your reputation online.
1. Create a blog and regularly contribute to it – By writing articles about the fields of practice you work in is a great way to build trust and reputation. Others will look to you as an expert and you will build a great catalog of material to “show off” to prospective clients.
2. Google Alerts – This handy, free tool from Google allows you to enter keywords you want to track online. It will then scour the internet looking for new instances when they appear. You can have the results emailed to you or connected through RSS to a reader such as GoogleReader. Start by entering your name, the name of your law firm, other employees, etc. This is a simple way to track when new discussions mentioning your arise.
3. Use Twitter Search – By searching in the Twitter stream for your name and your firm’s name, you can track in real time when others tweet about you. You can also respond quickly if a criticism or complaint is found.
4. Involve yourself in social media – Take time to answer LinkedIn discussions and questions. Submit blog posts to Digg.com. Friend other professionals and lawyers on Facebook. Taking part in these activities will establish connections and build your reputation.
Fundamentally, interactions on the web are very similar to those in the offline world. As you get recognized as a thought leader in your areas of expertise, people begin to trust you and your reputation gets built. This comes in especially handy if others write negative things about you or have questions about your work.
When others write things that are negative or complain about and experience with your firm, this is an opportunity to track what is being said and respond accordingly. Most often, the situation can be diffused and turned into a positive for your firm.
When you put forth effort into establishing and developing your online reputation you will see potential clients turning into actual clients. Establishing trust and monitoring is essential in the online community.
