Lawyer SEO

How NOT to Get Ripped Off by Your SEO Company

Thu, 24 May 2012 09:03:23 -0500

So you’ve finally decided to take the plunge and hire an SEO company to promote your law firm. Awesome! Unfortunately, it is very easy to get ripped off when hiring a company to promote your website. Here are some tips on avoiding this,

1. Do not use one of the big companies in the legal marketing industry to promote your site. I’m not implying that there are not skilled, qualified people at these companies. The problem lies with their priorities. Chances are very good that if you go with one of the big companies that everyone knows about you are going to end up being promoted by people who are also promoting many (possibly DOZENS!) of your competitors. That’s just the way those companies work.

2. Ask them who will actually be doing the work. Another common problem is having all work done offshore. Modern SEO requires the creation of large amounts of content that will be used for articles, blog posts, etc. You do not want someone offshore doing your writing for you. Very often, it is poorly written and will not portray your firm positively. Go with a company that actually does most of the work itself.

3. Ask them about their process. SEO hasn’t gotten a lot harder now, and it encompasses three areas: on-page optimization, link building, and social media management. Make sure you feel comfortable that the company knows what they are doing.

4. Ask for proof. Any SEO company that has been in business for a while should have some good examples of rankings earned for clients and themselves. But here is the rub: it is very easy to get a website to rank for a keyword that noone ever uses. So use that as a sort-of mental gauge of how much a ranking really represents skill in SEO.

5. Don’t be cheap. Real SEO is a time intensive process that requires skill and knowledge. If you really think that you are going to receive top notch SEO service for $200 per month, you are in for a very rude surprise. You very likely will end up spending that $200 and not getting anything in return.

Look, law firm search engine optimization is hard work. Don’t believe that is going to be easy or cheap. Be realistic and ask the hard questions. Then you will have a much better chance at success.

Law Firm Website Link Building with the New Google

Mon, 07 May 2012 14:42:21 -0500

The world of Google search positioning is all up in arms these days. A lot of law firms are seeing their Google rankings plummet since recent algorithm changes. But if you obey the rules of sound, conservative law firm SEO, you should see be just fine in the long-term. Here is the approach you need to take:

Obtain links from lots of different types of websites. Article directories, blogs, social media sites, social bookmarking, directories, legal directories, etc. Use them all.
Focus on high quality links.
Make some of the links keyword text links, but also have some that are less optimized (such as links in which the text is your URL).
Spread the link building out. Avoid getting too many at once. This may actually be a lot more important now than it used to be.
Don’t just link to your own site. Cross-link the links you are building that link to your website. The idea is to create a sort-of spider web of links, with the end result still being lots of links to your main website.
Get into social media, especially Google+. Google+ has become a major factor in improving your search rankings.

Ultimately, perhaps the best advice is to continue linking your website, but do so more deliberately and with more patience.

The Power Is In the List...Even For Lawyers

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:32:13 -0500

There’s a marketing expert I really like by the name of Dan Kennedy who always talks about how the true value in any business is not in its products, location, employees, or anything like that…it’s in the LIST! In other words, a list of people that business can contact regularly to sell them stuff.

But it’s different for a law firm…

…or is it? Even though you are not selling a tangible product, do you not think it makes sense for there to be a list of people who regularly receive information from you, and who will think of you first when they need a lawyer?

Let’s just make up an example to see. Let’s say you are a business lawyer, dealing with contracts and legal issues related to business affairs. It would be wise for you to publish an email newsletter with business strategies, and send that newsletter to a large list of business owners in your market. You accomplish a couple of things by doing this: one, you repeatedly put your firm’s name in front of a bunch of prospects; and two, you continually establish your credibility.

So the obvious question is: how do you build such a list? You can take a spammy approach and just go harvest email addresses from business websites in your market area. It’s not the best way to go about it, and you would be subtle in your approach, but it’s one strategy. A better way is to create something desirable to give away, so that people willingly give you their email addresses to get the thing.

The think you will give away will most likely be some kind of book related to your practice areas. This has been an approach that my company has used, and it has been successful. With print-on-demand technology, you could even create an actual print book and give that away, at a cost of not much more than a couple bucks each.

But once you get people in your list, you’ve got to be systematic about contacting them. If you have difficulty coming up with regular newsletter topics, you could set up an autoresponder and put the whole thing on autopilot. An autoresponder is a program that will send a series of emails spread out over some time. There is some work involved in setting them up initially, but after that you’re on autopilot.

So…is there power in having a list for a law firm? I think the answer is a definite YES.

A basic four part link building strategy that any law firm can...

Fri, 22 Oct 2010 16:36:00 -0500

A basic four part link building strategy that any law firm can implement to build out its link portfolio and help raise search engine rankings.

The World’s Fastest Lesson on On-Page Optimization Now...

Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:50:00 -0500

The World’s Fastest Lesson on On-Page Optimization

Now that we have discussed keywords, let’s talk about what to do with those keywords. In other words, how do you optimize your lawfirm website for those keywords? Lawyer SEO, as you will see, is not that complicated if you boil it down to the basics.

The Four Major Criteria for Choosing Your Target...

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:25:00 -0500

The Four Major Criteria for Choosing Your Target Keywords

9-7-2010

A discussion of the four major criteria that should be examined when conducting keyword research to identify the keywords for which your website should be optimized.

Introduction An introductory message regarding what you will be...

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:36:00 -0500

Introduction

An introductory message regarding what you will be learning about promoting your law firm in our new audio blog series.