Archive for September, 2008

Lawyer SEO – Questions to Ask When Hiring an Search Engine Optimization Company

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

According to Google there are some serious items to consider before hiring a lawyer seo firm.  Most importantly – the earlies you hire an seo firm the better. Because ranking a law firm website is becoming increasingly more and more competitive.


The best time to hire an seo marketing firm is when you are considering a new website or if you are considering redesigning an existing website or websites.  This is especially important as web design can have a serious impact on how it will be ranked amongst the top search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live.

Keep in mind that a website typically need new search engine optimization updates as the search engines change their rules on a frquent basis. That way, you can be assure that your attorney website continues to enjoy top positioning and receives lots of web traffic from potential clients. These updates are important in maintaining a healthy PageRank as well.

Here are some useful questions to ask any SEO expert that you are considering on hiring:

  • How long have you been in business?
  • Can you show me examples of other lawyer websites that you have optimized and where they rank on search engines?
  • Can you tell me about some of your client seo success stories?
  • What are the Google Webmaster Guidelines and do you follow those guidelines?
  • What other  online marketing services or advice do you offer to complement your organic search services?
  • What kind of result can I expect to see.
  • How long do you expect these results to take?
  • Do you have specialized experience in my industry?
  • What are the 3 most important SEO techniques that you use?
  • How often can I expect to discuss my results with you?
  • Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site?
  • Will provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?
  • Do you have references from clients in my industry?

LawyerSuccess.com is a very successful lawyer website seo firm. We have been involved with ethical search engine optimization for over 8 years and have worked with 8 of the top 10 most trafficked legal websites on the Internet. NO ONE can make that claim and deliver the results and stellar services our firm can provide for your law firm. Click here to contact us. SEO Marketing Experts for Lawyer

Louisiana New Advertising Rules Contested, Lawsuit Filed

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

One of Louisiana’s largest lawyer advertisers, New Orleans attorney Morris Bart joined forces with Lafayette attorney William Gee and special interest group Public Citizen Inc to sue the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board in response to the State’s Supreme Court new rules to restrict attorney advertising in the State of Louisiana.
 

Public Citizen Inc., is a consumer rights advocacy organization that feels the right of consumers right to choose and be informed are being impeded. The petition against the board was filed last Tuesday in order to reverse the decision tightening the lawyer advertising rules.

The lawyer advertising rules are to take effect this December but the rules were ok’d back in July of this year. The attorney advertising rule changes were designed to clean up the content and forms of lawyer advertising.

One of the major rule changes includes the forbidding of “promising results.” All forms of advertising will also have to be submitted to the bar association committee for review. This review of the lawyer advertisements is meant to clean up some of the offense legal ads to protect the integrity of the legal practice.  Other issues include using actors, testimonials and re-enactments.

The lawsuit claims that the new lawyer advertising bar rules will violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

The other issues with the lawyer advertising rules is that it may go further. There is talk about not allowing law firms to use logos or slogans. Morris Bart, a personal injury lawyer in New Orleans, has built his law firm’s brand by using  slogans such as, “We can get you paid. One click, That’s it” on his website.

Well, if there is a will there is a way.

James

Lawyers.com Review – Fair and critical evaluation of Lawyers.com

Friday, September 19th, 2008

Lawyers.com has been around since 1998. Lawyers.com has under gone several face lifts over the years as the site tries to improve the users experience. Once upon a time Lawyers.com was only an attorney directory with hundreds of thousands of attorney profiles. However, Lawyers.com has turned itself into a website that offers several types of services to legal consumers.


Lawyers.com claims to have over 1 million attorney profiles on their website. Claim to be the leading destination for legal content and attorney marketing solutions.

Contact Details:
Lexis Nexis Martindale-Hubbell
121 Chanlon Road
New Providence, NJ 07974
(800) 526-4902
Email: [email protected]

In my opinion, this greatly diminishes the value of the site to lawyers. That coupled with the fact that they completely oversell the number of attorneys that they list per city and per practice area. Many of my clients have elected to move forward with a Lawyers.com listing and profile even though it is obvious that they won’t receive much business.

Likes:
The amount of attorney profiles they list for consumers to choose from. Great for the consumer.
That they offer legal forms, legal questions answered (forum).
Legal information
Web traffic

Dislikes:
The design of the home page, too many links, too busy.
Oversold listings, not a good value for attorneys
Price, way too expensive and risky

Rating:
2 out of 5 stars

Lawyers.com review

Lawyer Hits The Top of The Search Engines With Fresh Content.

Monday, September 15th, 2008

“I haven’t got time for the pain,” is a catchy and iconic song written tens of years ago by the legendary musician Carly Simon. That song is one that seems to resonate a lot for me when it comes to explaining to my lawyer clients what it will take to effectively market their law firms on highly trafficked search engines such as Google.


“I just don’t have time to write unique and highly practice relevant legal content.” is the most common objection attorneys’ are stating when I explain to them how to reach the top of the search engines.

Legal content for lawyer website is a hot field expertise rising from the shadows of canned content provided by most lawyer marketing and website development companies. The canned or reused content is often sold as articles or newsletters. This recycled content is then broadcast to several other lawyer websites who subscribe to the legal content services.

Is this bad, well not if you are just needing content for the web visitors you intend to send to your website. If you are looking to dominate the search engines, then you better start typing out unique content or hire a firm that can produce this for you.

Search engines love fresh and highly relevant content. Couple that content campaign with top notch (seo) search engine optimization and you will see your sites not only creep to the top of search engine results pages but you will also generate horizontal traffic increases through other keyphrases as well.

Call 769-218-6099 for seo legal content dvelopment.

SuperLawyers – New Jersey High Court Deadline Has Arrived (Super Lawyers)

Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Back in August, New Jersey high court has order all parties involved in the lawyer advertising dispute until September 15th of this year to file their responses to the special master’s report. After that the court will then hear arguments before making a ruling that could effect lawyers from using the “SuperLawyers” logo and claims on marketing and advertising materials.


“Super Lawyers” is a legal publication and website that has expanded their business model through the 50 Untied States. The issue that is being challenge and could potentially effect ethics rulings in other states, is the idea that a “Super Lawyer” or “SuperLawyer” rating implies that a lawyer with said designation would be superior amongst other New Jersey lawyers.

In previous challenges, the court said that a lawyer may use the “Super Lawyer” designation along with other rankings or ratings such as the Martindale Hubble Peer Review Ratings.  The pro-SuperLawyers side believes that the rating services provide the consumer with more information to make better choices about hiring a lawyer.

My opinion is that being a “Super Lawyer” is “super” misleading to consumers. The nomination process is flawed and you have to pay money to use the SuperLawyer designation. In my opinion, that alone loses it’s credibility.

Should an attorney decide to tout the “Super Lawyers” rating or award, they should do the right thing by explaining that they do pay a fee to belong to the organization.

James

What clients want from their lawyer.

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

What clients want from their lawyer. With over my 8 years in law marketing practice, the best way to generate new clients and still the cheapest way is to do fabulous job for your existing clients.


This has a double benefit to your law firm:

1. Happy clients are the easiest to generate repeat business, up-sell or cross-sell additional legal services, and2. They are the best source of new client referrals.

If you concentrate on client service and use some of the proven marketing strategies on this blog or explained in detail through a consultation, then you are very likely to soon find yourself winning more new business than you ever thought possible.

Keep in mind that it is FIVE TIMES CHEAPER to sell to an existing customer than it is to find a new customer. This directly applies to clients of law firms.

When your clients remember you, trust you, believe in your skills and have had a good experience with you before, they are many times more likely to buy other services from you.

Your mission, should be to dazzle your existing clients with top notch service, and then tell them what else you could do for them, AND that you welcome referrals. Always ask for referrals!!!

Ensure that your team members, or staff, truly believe in the law firm’s excellent service and it’s approach to quality client service, then they are more likely to refer family and friends to the law firm as clients, and even step up their own practice development efforts.

So how can you dazzle your clients? How much time do you have?

Let’s start with a few simple, easy to do, and free ideas.

Return phone calls promptly. People hate waiting. It makes them feel unimportant. They LOVE getting calls returned quickly, it makes them feel important.

Don’t keep people waiting beyond their appointment time. I know we all run late from time to time, but as a general rule, always try to start client meetings on time.

Give clients regular updates on the progress of their matter. Too many clients deliver their legal document, and wait…and wait…and wait. It gets them frustrated. Make sure that you deal with clients documents as soon as they come into your office. Call them every week to tell them what progress has been made. Keep them in the loop and give them a reasonable estimate as to when they will have documents to review. They will feel very loyal to you, for doing so, I promise.

Always under promise and over deliver. If a client has a project that HAS to be done by a week on Friday, if you tell them that you’ll do your best to have it by noon on that Friday, but call them on Wednesday morning to tell them it’s ready, then you appear to have pulled out all the stops and performed like a superstar.

James

How to get leads for lawyers.

Saturday, September 13th, 2008

Over the past 8 years I have had the opportunity to meet and discuss lead generation strategy with lawyers from all over the country. These meetings now total over 3,200. The one question I like to ask is, “What advertising initiatives are working for you.”


The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter how much it costs to advertise as long as it generates a profit. Based on these discussions I am providing you with some basic ideas to generate leads to you law firm. If you should desire detailed consultation in any of these initiatives feel free to call us at 769-218-6099 to set up an appointment.

  1. Website Development – Now there are two types of lawyer websites. Ones that work and ones that don’t. So let’s talk about the ones that work. Law firm websites designed to generate leads are by far the most cost effective way to reach pre-qualified clients. A well design and search engine optimized site that is continuously refreshed with new content can drive tens of thousands of prospective clients to your site for about 1-2 dollars per visit.
  2. Search Engine Advertising – Paying for ads on Google, Yahoo or MSN is an excellent way for you to watch your costs. The only issue I have with running ad campaigns such as Pay-Per-Click is that you really need about 5,000 or more keyword phrases to run, test and revise to be cost efficient.
  3. Online Attorney Directories – There are so many attorney directories on the Web these days it may be hard for attorneys to decide which ones are best. There are a handful of directories that I have selected out of 350 that I have tested that actually work. Namely, AttorneyPages.com.
  4. Blogging – I am a huge advocate for blogging. My blog is the most traffic part of my website. I advise attorneys to set up a custom design blog with search engine optimization. Our firm has developed these for our customers and they are the most inexpensive way to generate leads. However, they do require effort to maintain.

I hope this helps you understand a few different ways on how to get leads for lawyers.

James

 

What Does Google Look For When Positioning Lawyer Websites?

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

The original plan of the Google PageRank algorithm was to determine the important and relevance of Web pages in order to position them within the search engine results pages to best serve the Google user.


One of the most important determing factors in the rating for Pagerank was the number of Web links referencing a Web, the relevancy of those links to the site the link to and the Pagerank of those Web pages the links were placed.

Because lawyers know that top placement on search engine like Google can generate lots of new clients and leads to their law practice, many companies began the unscrupulous practice of retailing links to attorneys. This practice is considered to be a “Black Hat” technique for generating inbound links to a Web site. “Black Hat” technique is a term used by search engine optimization gurus meaning, you are cheating and if you get caught your Website is likely to suffer.

In recent weeks it came to my surprise that one of the largest lawyer website development and Internet marketing companies was engaging in the “Black Hat” technique of selling links or Pagerank to their customers. As a result, Findlaw and their Web properties lost 2 points off of their PageRank score which was a huge blow to their prominence and credibility with the search engines and legal marketplace.

As a result the links purchased by Findlaw customers are pretty much worthless. In my opinion, I would imagine that any link supplied by Findlaw to any other Website will probably have no effect on search engine optimization.

Our company has been performing lawyer website search engine optimizationsince 2001. Our clients reach the top of the search engines because we develop sites that are topic specific, geographically targeted and provide a wealth of highly relevant content. Call us at (769) 218-6099 for a free review of your lawyer website seo.

Findlaw Complaints Are Rolling In.

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

We have been helping law firms generate new clients by partnering with important legal websites. You see we do not sell our own products in the lead generation and marketing arena. Instead we carefully test and measure results of other providers and make recommendations to our clients.

Other the past few weeks I have been advised by several attorneys that they are concerned about their subscription to Findlaw. Many are unsure what to do and where to go from here.

Now I am not here to beat down Findlaw or steal their customers. There is plenty of business out there for everyone. However, our firm is offering for a limited time only, a free initial consultation to discuss you situation and help you understand where you can go from here.

If you would like a free consultation please call 769-218-6099.

Dissatisfied With Findlaw website results? We can help.

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

Are you dissatisfiedwith the results of your Findlaw Firmsite?

Many Findlaw customers are concerned about the negative news surrounding FIndlaw and selling Pagerank which has caused Google to levy a heavy penalty against Findlaw.com and several of Findlaw’s Web properties. Many of their customers are dissatisfied with the fees they are having to pay to simply host a website.

If you feel you are paying too much and would like to learn about how our company can provide more personalized service, provide more web traffic to your website and save you thousands of dollars please call us at (769) 218-6099. We are a hard working firm that have worked with 9 of the top 10 most trafficked legal site on the Web each garnering 100k-4 million visits per month. We are a direct competitor of Findlaw and we will earn your continued business.

ALL FINDLAW CUSTOMERS RECEIVE 50% off when they sign on with LawyerSuccess.com.