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May 3rd, 2011
When assessing your attorney website, be aware that the speed of the website happens to be one of the most important factors, both for the usability to your potential customers but also for search engine rankings, performance and profitability. Google recently updated the algorithms of their search engine ranking to take the speed of a website into account. In fact many law office website owners are finding, to their dismay, that potential advertisers are visiting websites to check out the speed prior to purchasing advertising. We Americans are becoming increasingly impatient, expecting our websites to load almost instantaneously. Even though I lived through the dial-up age of Internet, like everyone else I find myself closing pages that take longer than a mere nano-second to fully load. Although we may want to believe that broadband has triumphed and we no longer need to worry about speed, this is far from the truth. So, how does this need for speed we are engaged in affect your attorney website?
Webmasters must be highly cognizant of the speed issue and must know how to fully optimize their sites for speed. Toward the end of 2009, it was ever-so-gently suggested that Google would eventually be introducing the speed factor into their current algorithms, and, lo and behold, that day has arrived. Google’s site performance actually details the average time it takes the Google bots to download your indexed pages, and has a section known as “Let’s Make the Web Faster,” which will give you some excellent articles on the speed subject as well as tools to increase your speed. To get started on your search for speed for your law office websites, consider the following:
Optimizing Page Loading Speed
While optimizing images used to be a more difficult task, most graphic editors of today have special features which allow you to optimize images for the web—in other words, with a few clicks you can easily turn a 100kb file into 20kb with little loss of quality. Keep in mind that simply re-sizing an image using the height and width tags, while making the photo visibly smaller, still remains essentially the same, slowing down your law firm website considerably. Rather than using large images, consider thumbnails which can be clicked on should your viewer want to see the larger version. Some web site building software has automated thumb-nailing options. Ditch the animations if you want to increase your page’s loading speed—while animations can be cute, consider carefully whether they are seriously effective for your overall attorney website presentation.
Using Tables Carefully
Should you be using tables on your attorney website, use them carefully. Browsers wait until all items in a table are loaded before rendering the content. Therefore, your user sees absolutely nothing until all components of the table are loaded, then it magically appears. A user can get impatient, however, and click off somewhere else rather than waiting for the table to finish loading. If you must use tables, split the content into header, middle and footer tables which will allow your user to a least see something while the page is loading, persuading them to hang around to see it in its entirety.
YSlow or Page Speed?
Don’t forget that your site’s speed is not always 100% about what’s on your pages—some hosting company servers tend to be notoriously slow, most especially in a shared hosting environment where there may be in the hundreds of sites on the same server. When testing your server’s response time, a quarter to half a second response time is great, while a few seconds is just too long. The Google Speed site is attempting to make Web browsing just as fast as turning the pages of a magazine, so if you are responsible for your lawyer website, you may be wondering where to go to get an overall idea of your site’s performance. Go to your Google Webmaster Tools account and log in; click on Labs, then Site Performance where your site’s performance data will be displayed, based on feedback from crawlers. YSlow does much the same as Google’s Page Speed tool, however YSlow provides a grade for each page you review, handing out “grades” for each examined element. Page Speed offers only a green check, yellow triangle or red warning symbol.
It is really well-worth the time, when considering law firm SEO, to also consider the loading speed of your law firm website pages. If you want to remain at the top, bringing in more traffic—and conversions—optimize your site so that it literally zips along and keep your clients happy.
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Tags: Best Law Firm SEO Experts, Best Law Firm Website Design
Posted in Law Firm Website Tools, Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on The Best Tools for Optimizing Page Speed on Your Law Firm Website
April 19th, 2011
Google announces to their Google Places “Tags” customers that they will be eliminating or “retiring” the new “Tag” feature offered through their Places service. In an email to customer’s, Google stated that they have decided to focus their efforts on the technologies they expect will yield the most benefit to businesses in the long run.
Today, Google also announced that they are shutting down the ability to create or add more “Tags” to the Places service. All active tags will however remain in effect until the end of April at no charge.
The billing history will be made available to customers up until July 31, 2011 and the performance metrics will be made available through May 31, 2011.
It appears that Google has decided to stick with the Google Boost advertising program.
If you are interested in discussing developing new clients for your law firm through search engines such as Google, call (769) 218-6099 for free lawyer Internet marketing ideas, tips and advice.
Tags: Google Boost for lawyers, Google Tags for lawyers
Posted in Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Google To Retire Google Places "Tags" on April 29, 2011
March 22nd, 2011
One of the best ways to ensure your legal website is successful and profitable is to study other sites from your particular niche. In particular, if you are attempting to vie for the top spot with one of your closest competitors, then the importance of profiling that competitor and fully understanding what they are doing to excel in online marketing can be critical to your own firm’s success. The only way you can pass your competitor in search engine rankings is to directly compare your site statistics to theirs. Believing you can ignore your fellow attorneys who are struggling to reach at least some of the same clients you are is a mistake—after all, they may be using new and innovative strategies you haven’t even considered.
Determine your Closest Competitors
Although it is likely that you are already well aware who your closest competitors are, just to be positive, type on Google the keywords and key phrases related to your own website and see which other sites rank well for the same words. Once you have identified the websites which use the same keywords and phrases, check their backlinks to see where they are acquiring them. Backlinks are incredibly significant because they are viewed as a type of “recognition” given to your legal website from other legal website owners. All search engines bestow a higher reputation for superior backlinks—especially if they are from other quality websites within your specific niche or legal specialty. And, of course, the more significance your site is perceived to have, the greater it will rank. Finally, read through the competitor’s websites so you can check the content of their legal website pages, making note of the number of pages on each website, the number of words on each page, and the internal link structure of each site.
Check out Competitor Backlinks
If you are looking to gain lots of information regarding those oh-so-important competitor backlinks, or are simply looking for the best SEO keywords for your own legal website, give SEOprofiler a try. (www.seoprofiler.com). Simply enter the URL of one of your legal competitors in the search box at the top of the page and press the return key. Once the information comes up, you can click on the blue tabs to switch from section to section—each tab contains different information regarding your competitor’s backlinks. You can move your mouse pointer over any question mark icon on the results page if you want further information. This level of SEOprofiler is free, however if you upgrade to a premium membership you can do a bit more sleuthing.
Traffic Count
If you are merely interested in finding out how many visitors or hits your legal competitors are garnering each month—a good indicator of how effective their website is—then there are several sites that will give you varying degrees of information. First, try TrafficEstimate, which is free. Search for a competitor’s web address to see the estimated number of visitors to the site in the past month. Although the resulting number is, at best, an estimate, it will give you a good ballpark figure. You can also try Alexa (www.alexa.com) which is also free; you can search for any website and see how it ranks compared to all other websites in the word. Alexa will give you a good idea of your competitor’s online performance. Again, don’t take the numbers for the gospel truth, however they can be extremely useful for comparing similar legal websites, or sites within the legal industry. Of course most of the sites promise to give you the best, most up-to-date stats on your competitors, however the results can be a little less than. Of all the sites, SEMrush most consistently gave the most accurate results regarding competitor’s website info. The downside is that you must pay to get a full data list from SEMrush, however the ability to see the keyword lists and how your competitor’s rank for those terms is appealing. Google Trends, Google Insights and Google AdPlanner are also good options for testing various components of your competitor’s site, and all are useful to some extent, however—as expected—they will be testing based on Google search.
The bottom line is that to boost your own legal website’s performance, it is always a good idea to look at your competitor’s performance. You never know what jewel you may find that can be integrated into your own website, boosting traffic and bringing in quality clients.
FREE ADVICE HOTLINE: Call (769) 218-6099 for a free 10 minute Q&A with an experienced Law Firm Internet Marketing expert.
Tags: Free Law Firm Marketing Advice, Law Firm Marketing Expert
Posted in Competitive Website Analysis, Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on How You Can Successfully Predict and Monitor Your Legal Competitor’s Website Traffic
March 8th, 2011
The role of your law firm’s landing page is to both echo and amplify the message that drew your potential client to the page in the first place, thus decreasing the likelihood they will bounce off the site, and greatly increasing the chances they will convert. If at all possible, your landing page should include some sort of targeted banner which follows your potential clients around as they click from page to page, taking them back to the landing page whenever they click the banner. Tests have shown that conversion rates go up dramatically when a banner is used—although it may take extra effort, it both enhances the visitor’s overall experience and leave them feeling that they haven’t just been dumped on your law firm’s website then abandoned. Your landing page is where your potential clients will get 85% of the specific services your legal firm offers, meaning that 85% of those visitors will click away if they don’t immediately see something compelling. Your landing page should be warm, welcoming, and above all, honest, and should make them want to know more.
Using a Tagline on Your Landing Page
When a potential client visits your legal website for the first time, the first question they will either consciously or unconsciously be seeking to answer in their mind is “What’s in it for me?” Because of this, it is imperative that your legal website’s landing page—the very first page seen by visitors—communicates clearly the benefits your legal firm offers. The tricky part is that these benefits must be conveyed in less than ten seconds. One way to accomplish this seemingly-impossible feat is to include a tag-line which succinctly summarizes your firm’s specialties in a very customer-oriented manner. Make sure to place this tagline so it is immediately visible even if your reader chooses not to scroll down. If you are unsure of the best way to craft such an all-important tagline, try using a solution-oriented statement which both emphasizes the value the client will receive from calling your legal firm, and describes your personal promise, using words your reader would use. This tagline is possibly the most important factor in your quest to anchor your landing page and reach the highest conversion rate possible.
Radiate Trust
Following the all-important tagline, the second concern most visitors to your website will have is “Can I trust this legal firm?” It’s incredibly important that your landing page—as well as subsequent pages—give your readers a strong sense of credibility and quality. Many companies don’t bother placing their legal firm’s name, contact details and landline phone number as a footer on each and every page. This is crucial in reassuring your readers that your law firm is entirely legitimate. Despite the fact that we exist in a high-technology world, visitors who see a real address and a real landline phone number will find it very comforting. Include a link to your contact page, and on that page include your e-mail address, phone numbers, both cell and landline, and a physical address. (This is in addition to the footer on each page. You don’t ever want your potential clients to have to play hide-and-seek with your well-hidden contact information—they will find it incredibly annoying and will probably move on to another site). Include a link to your “About Us” page which includes background and information about your firm, the attorneys who practice, your specialties and your mission. Staff photos are great for adding a touch of humanity to your legal website, so incorporate them whenever possible. If you have client testimonials, display them prominently as this is a great trust-builder.
Converted visitors come back. Converted visitors trust you, and communicate this trust to others—they talk freely about their experiences with your law firm, share on social sites and drive more traffic to your site. Converted visitors share your links freely, and most importantly, converted visitors become faithful clients. In the overall picture, happy, converted clients are much more important than simply more traffic.
FREE ADVICE from the best attorney website design and marketing experts, not sale representatives – Call (769) 218-6099 for free advice, tips and guidance.
Tags: Attorney Websites, Best Attorney Website Design
Posted in Landing Pages, Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Best Attorney Website Design Tip – Converting “Wayward Clickers” By Anchoring Your Attorney Website’s Landing Page
March 8th, 2011
SEO is a technique which is widely used to make your legal website or blog more visible in an environment (the Internet) where there are already plenty of websites with the exact same type of law firm or legal specialty as your own. Most research will tell you that if you want to get the desired traffic to your legal website or blog, you need to be within the top 10 in the search engines. As you probably already know, however, competition to be in that top 10 is fierce, and staying there once you’ve made it is just as difficult.
SEO crosses the barriers between search engines, as they all operate by the SEO Bible, and allow your business to attract more of the “perfect” client, thus increasing your offline business. If your law firm has spent thousands—or more—creating the highest quality, most creative legal website around, but have left it running in an un-optimized manner, then you are simply spinning your wheels on the Internet. In older advertising terms it is something like have the most fabulous sign made up for your firm, then sticking it in the storeroom, where obviously your targeted clients will never see it.
While SEO is imperative, ethical SEO is critical for natural or organic search engine rankings. Major search engines such as Google are highly developed and able to easily understand the credibility of SEO techniques. By the same token, they can quickly identify unethical search engine techniques, with a potential consequence of blacklisting your website or even banning it. While “black hat” techniques can boost your search engine rankings quickly, in the long run it is a bad choice. In case you are unclear about what constitutes “black hat” techniques, here are some of the most common:
- Keyword stuffing involves the repetitive use of the same keyword phrase over and over in your meta tags, comment tags, alt tags or the actual copy on your website. Repeat your targeted keywords no more than six or seven times within each 200 words.
- Inserting hidden text or links that are readable by search engines but cannot be seen by your human visitors is not good use of SEO. All search engines consider these hidden text and links to be spam and will penalize the page, or possibly the entire site.
- Cloaking involves a software program to direct search spiders to a group of pages which are created to “trick” the spider and re-direct the user—while cloaking can have some proper uses, by and large it is used to deceive search engines, and is therefore considered spam.
- Creating mirror sites or duplicate content and placing them on multiple servers with different domain names, and search engines will not only suppress duplicate content but will also count them as a violation of the search engine’s spam guidelines.
- Link farming refers to putting hundreds of links on one page to sites which are essentially unrelated to your site content and can contain poor quality content that is useless to your potential clients. Reciprocal links can associate you with “poor neighborhoods,” so you should avoid link farming at all cost.
- Irrelevant link exchange is often considered unethical SEO, and no matter how tactfully or carefully you hide them, hiding repetitive keywords is also considered unethical.
These types of spam can cause your firm to lose your rankings and be booted off the search engine index; while search engines have varying rules for spam detection, the end result will be the same, and it can be extremely difficult for your firm to recover from a ban, which is why ethical SEO is so critical. Used correctly on your legal website or blog, proper search engine optimization techniques will almost certainly get you ranked higher in the search engines, and achieved legitimately, organic links can last indefinitely. Acquire your search engine rankings fairly, and maintain them ethically for far-reaching positive results.
FREE LAW FIRM SEO ADVICE AND TIPS – Call (769) 218-6099 for a free consultation with a one of the best law firm SEO experts with an 11 year track record of success.
Tags: Best Law Firm SEO, Ethical Law Firm SEO, Law Firm SEO Advice, Law Firm SEO Tips
Posted in Law Firm SEO | Comments Off on Why the Ethical Use of Law Firm SEO is Important
March 3rd, 2011
The potential benefits of a well-executed legal blog are immeasurable. Aside from giving your organic SEO a hefty boost by filling your blog pages with keyword-rich links, a legal blog will also build your reputation as a legal authority. Although these benefits alone are enough to jump on the legal blog bandwagon, consider that a well-written, often-updated legal blog can also boost the reputation of individual attorneys, create a solid, high-quality legal persona, increase your connections within the legal realm and increase the likelihood of receiving positive press mentions. In order to ensure your blog accomplishes all these things—and more—keep the following tips in mind when creating and maintaining your blog.
Post on a Regular Schedule
If you jumped wholeheartedly into the idea of a blog, but have found the reality to be a rarely-updated blog page, then you may actually being doing more harm than good. When a potential client clicks onto your legal blog site and finds it hasn’t been updated in three months, they may leave with a very unfavorable overall impression of your law firm. The assumption may be that if you don’t take the time to update your blog, that perhaps you are either overbooked—in which case a client will look elsewhere for an attorney—or are simply a procrastinator who doesn’t take the time to tend to necessary tasks. Neither of these assumptions would be beneficial to inspiring trust or gaining new clients. Aside from the negative impression a potential client will garner from a neglected blog site, there’s no SEO benefit to infrequent updates. Google must be fed regular content in order to place a high value on your law firm’s website and blog.
Remember That Online Copywriting is Different to Offline Print
Online readers, as we all probably know by now, behave in a completely different manner than offline readers. Online content is often viewed as somehow less valuable that reading a newspaper, magazine or book. This could be simply because it is free—and sometimes “free” translates into a perception of lower quality. Because of this, and because most all of us are always pressed for time in our busy world, readers are much more likely to skim-read your blog copy, and less likely to actually read to the end of an entire article—especially if there are included links. Remember as you write to use short sentences, and keep your calls to action early on in the copy rather than at the end where they may well be overlooked.
Be a Guest Post Blog Contributor
One of the easiest and best ways to build a following for your own legal blog is to contribute to other legal blogs, writing on your specialization area. Guest posts are great in that they give you inbound links to your own website, while also gaining attention for you own firm’s blog. Many blog experts advise that you have a high-quality blog written, or at least outlined, before contacting other legal arenas and offering your expertise. Remember that others treat their blogs as a business, just as you do. Whether you are writing your own blog, or guest blogging, remember that a blog is, in essence, a conversation. Don’t post and consider your job done, rather take the time to read and respond to comments from readers—even the negative one!
Encourage Visitors to Come Back Often
Make it as easy as possible for your potential clients to return to your blog by allowing them to subscribe, offering to e-mail them when a reply is made to their comments, or encouraging them to sign up for your legal firm’s newsletter. In other words, go the extra mile—or two or five or ten—in order to ensure that your casual browser becomes a repeat visitor, and ultimately a satisfied client.
Is Your Attorney Blog Easy to Find?
It should go without saying that you should be promoting your blog through your legal website, on your home page, and on every subsequent page. If you do e-marketing, make sure you include links to relevant posts on your blog. Mention your blog on the social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter often—after all, if your blog is difficult to find, what is the point?
Use Great Headlines and Lists
Every headline or title of your blog needs to be stellar. Your blog headline is the “hook” which grabs people’s attention (or not) and must be both short enough to fit into a tweet, exciting enough to grab people’s attention, and explanatory enough to give people the incentive to read the entire blog. It is definitely worth the time spent to ensure your headline is the very best it can be. People tend to respond well to lists, especially “Top Ten Tips For…..,” “15 Ways to….,” or the “Twelve Best….” Lists tend to be more easily scanned, and can condense lots of information in a relatively small amount of space.
Offer Your Readers High-Quality and Value
Your legal blog articles must be valuable, useful, and informative. Many times legal blogs in particular are written by experts on the subject who are afraid of offering solid advice for fear the reader will simply take the advice and skip hiring the lawyer. Don’t be frightened of being honestly useful. You, as the attorney, are still the expert, you are simply showcasing your area of expertise and knowledge and educating your future clients. Even those readers who don’t end up as your client may still share your content or link—when the rewards to your firm are so great, it’s never a bad idea to offer high-quality, information.
Finally, although you may truly be the most knowledgeable person in your field, keep the legalese to a minimum and don’t talk down to your readers. Web readers may be pressed for time, but they are hardly stupid, so never come across as though you are speaking to them from your pedestal way on high. Your legal blog can be an incredible asset to your law firm, so take the time to make it something you are truly proud of.
FREE ADVICE from the best lawyer website design and most experienced attorney blog design company, Lawyer Successs, Inc. Call (769) 218-6099 for the best lead generation blogging tips for your attorney blog.
Tags: Best Lead Generation Blogging Tips, Experienced Attorney Blog Design Company, Tips for Your Attorney Blog
Posted in Attorney Blogging Tips | Comments Off on Best Lead Generation Blogging Tips for Your Attorney Blog
February 15th, 2011
Having a great legal website design and fabulous legal SEO can allow your law firm to become much more focused—and the more focused your firm becomes, the more quickly they will be recognized as a specific niche area expert. Once that happens, you will find that other attorneys will begin referring cases to you which are applicable to your specialty, and soon you will find that while other attorneys may be forced to take any case which walks in the door, you will be attracting your ideal client. While television ads go out to all those watching television, the Internet can be a much more specific magnet which attracts only those clients who are looking for a specific attorney to deal with their specific problem. It is this specificity which makes online marketing essential for legal firms, and gives law office websites tremendous marketing power.
Free Advice concerning Legal SEO and online marketing. Speak with an expert not a sales representative and get REAL ANSWERS to your questions. Call (769) 218-6099 for free tips and ideas on online marketing for law firms.
You may have seen solo practitioners who list every known practice area on their website—a strategy which is almost guaranteed to be unsuccessful. This is typically known as the “shotgun” approach, and while the jack of all trades attorney may feel he is attracting more clients by specializing in everything but the kitchen sink, the reality is that potential clients may feel there is no focus to the practice, and quickly click to an attorney website which does offer focus. The second reason these types of attorney websites are often unsuccessful is due to the fact that there is not enough information on any one subject, meaning nothing shows up in the search engines.
The Ideal Client
The ultimate goal of your online marketing strategy is to attract your ideal client, not just any client. If your staff is constantly answering phone calls from clients who either do not have particularly attractive cases or cannot afford your services, then your online advertising budget is being wasted. Internet marketing can give you the capability to specifically focus with precision and accuracy—if you use it wisely. Your ideal client is interested in seeing a focused attorney who successfully represents clients with the same specific problem they are currently experiencing.
The potential client who turns to the Internet to research attorneys can now put in very precise search terms to find the most experienced attorney in a particular practice area. Your ideal client has likely screened several attorneys from the comfort of their home before they ever pick up the phone to make an actual call. Should your client want to pursue a personal injury claim following a bus accident, they will likely type in “Bus Accident Attorney in Albuquerque,” to find a local attorney devoted to their issue. By the same token, the client who has recently been charged with a DUI or DWI is looking for an attorney who focuses exclusively on drunk driving defenses; if the client’s case involves a breath test reading then he or she will want an attorney who has demonstrated the best strategy and has the most experience in fighting the Breathalyzer used in their jurisdiction. It is also much more likely that the client who is putting in such specific search terms are also willing—and able—to pay for your services.
Marketing Your Legal Firm from an SEO Perspective
Search engines are uniquely designed to find a particular page on a website which most thoroughly answers the consumer’s questions. Therefore, the more helpful—not to mention detailed—your firm’s website is, the more likely you will other sites linking to your pages, and the greater chance you stand of being known as an authority on a specific topic. The more websites which link to your pages, the more likely your pages will show up in the search engines. If you want to optimize your law firm’s website, you must have a great amount of unique content on one specific practice area as well as more interior pages which deal with the many issues related to that practice area.
Of course you need to make sure you have a well-designed website with an easy-to-use navigation system, as well as a content management system which allows your attorneys to visit the site frequently, adding and editing content as necessary. The quality of your online content is extremely important, as are the links to other interior pages on the website relating to a particular issue. Your local telephone number and address need to be easy to find, and, ideally, on every page of your site. More and more important are the number of links from social media websites, as well as the outbound links to other websites which deal with the specific issue. In any case, tailoring your website for your ideal client, while being extremely aware of SEO, can make the difference between run-of-the mill clients vs. your ideal client.
Free Advice concerning Legal SEO and online marketing. Call (769) 218-6099 for free advice and tips. Speak with an expert not a sales representative and get REAL ANSWERS to your questions.
Tags: Legal SEO, legal website, Online Marketing For Legal Website
Posted in Lawyer Website Design, Legal SEO | Comments Off on The Importance of Online Marketing for Your Legal Website
January 20th, 2011
Many people are as yet unaware of the small magnifying glass icon on the right of the organic search results you get once you type in a search term; it is called Google Instant Preview, and no one has yet determined how it will affect ultimate conversion rates—it’s just too soon to tell. To be honest, although I took some kind of vague notice of the tiny magnifying glass I had yet to click on it until I read an article about Google’s latest change. Apparently the goal of the new feature is to refine the relevance factor in search results, alleviating the frustration users can feel when they click on a result which has little to do with their original search.
One of the key factors in conversion rate optimization is managing human expectations, therefore it’s a good idea for your law firm to keep a close eye on how Google Instant Preview evolves over the coming months. It will be a matter of significant importance to be able to tell whether or not GIP is becoming popular with your targeted market. And if GIP makes their small little magnifying glass bigger, will this affect the number of people who use it? Before you read further, do a quick check of your law firm’s website pages to see how they show up in GIP—you certainly don’t want to be the last one to realize that your pages are virtually unreadable when previewed.
After the Preview
If you test your site with GIP and get some kind of funky results—or worse a totally black page—then you must take the bull by the horns immediately in order to ensure your page shows up as it should. Occasionally, if a site has used Flash for a large portion of their page content, weird results will show up in GIP as it doesn’t seem to be particularly fond of Flash. If your legal website is fine when you visit, with content which is relevant to the search query, but doesn’t look at all like this in GIP, your potential clients may move right on to the next results and not bother with yours. If the above paragraph has made you want to rush into a total web re-design, take a moment and regroup. It may be worth your firm’s time and money to wait and see whether GIP proves to be popular enough with your target market to justify the expense of a total overhaul to your website.
If your law firm’s website has already taken care of the core elements such as ensuring your legal webpages have page content closely matched by their descriptions, then you have already promoted conversion from search results that are not previewed. However even if your firm has done the necessary work on core elements yet your pages just aren’t looking great in GIP, consider that GIP does not affect your ads on the Google Display Network as they don’t feature a preview icon, and neither does it affect paid search results, or traffic that is either PPC or affiliate-driven. These factors alone can be a good reason to hold off on re-designing your legal firm’s websites—for the moment at least.
Future Changes
If the future brings lots of people in your search target market who are becoming enthusiastic fans of GIP, then beyond just fixing your webpages so they look good in preview, you may want to reconsider your overall search strategy. If, for instance, you use affiliates, consider that a large collection of thumbnails can be really difficult to see when the entire page is being shown as a thumbnail. If you are providing an organic search result which is accompanied by an attractive preview, you may end up getting more traffic than a paid result at the very top which lacks a great preview.
GIP and SEO
The new GIP feature has made law firm SEO even more important than ever by essentially “killing” the second page of a search index. When you are typing into the search bar, Google suggests terms for you, making your search theoretically more effective, but pushing those businesses which are not saturated with content down the line. GIP pulls content from blogs, photos, social media, news and products, so obviously the more places your business covers, the higher your law firm will rank. You can’t simply focus on keywords and backlinks anymore, but need to expand and cover all topics with content related to your law firm. Some believe that Google Instant Preview will increase conversion rates and render more satisfied searchers, and Google has made some suggestions to business owners to help them continue to rank high.
Your legal website’s overall appearance and organization matter more now than ever, so ensure your site is uncluttered, readable and very visually appealing. Eliminate all popups which could appear in a preview pane as it could hide relevant content, preventing users from clicking on your site. Legal SEO is more important now than ever for your firm’s website, so your job is to be super-aware of what your potential clients are searching for. In their own blog, Google stated that using Instant Preview will make searchers 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click on—the big question remaining is whether that 5% is really enough to change the way people search.
Free Advice Hotline – Call (769) 218-6099 for free advice from an experienced law firm Internet marketing guru not a sales representative.
Tags: experienced law firm Internet marketing guru, Google Instant Preview, law firm seo
Posted in Google SEO, Law Firm SEO | Comments Off on How Google Instant Preview Affects Your Law Firm Website SEO Plan and Results
January 17th, 2011
Following the finalized Yahoo-Bing Merger last April, many of us have been carefully watching the Bing search machine to see how it stacks up to Google for our law firm SEO. Predictions are rolling in that Bing will continue to gain popularity over the next few years for a variety of reasons. First of all, Bing is on a long-term strategic plan, meaning they care less about next year than they do about the next five—or ten. Bing is heavily investing in search, and focused on improving relations with in-house SEO teams. Just as Google’s algorithms have improved over time, Bing’s innovations will also bring about positive changes. Because some search engine users are beginning to see Google as a greedy, ever-more commercialized business, Bing may be benefitting from the comparison—and so may your law office websites.
Bing’s Webmaster and Maps
It can be a problem to get new sites indexed, and Bing can be especially slow to index a new site, especially in the beginning. You may see only part of your lawyer website indexed at first, which can be detrimental to any new site’s success. The good news is that the Bing webmaster center has a specific area which allows users to submit their own XML sitemap which in turn lets Bing crawl your attorney website more quickly. Bing has really been “one-upping” Google when it comes to providing an online map service. It is expected that if Google doesn’t get in the game quickly that Bing’s impressive beta map will steal the market share. Make sure your law firm’s physical address is listed on the Bing maps so you can be more readily found.
Target Long Tail Keywords
Bing has a “related searches” feature which assists users in narrowing down their search by (politely) suggesting more specific phrases they might want to try. This makes it easier to be found using long tail keywords. Should you be unfamiliar with the long tail concept, keywords can basically be split into either short tail keywords or long tail keywords, or, more simply, broad keywords or narrow keywords. A long tail keyword tends to target the less-competitive niche markets rather than the immensely competitive broad keywords. A long tail keyword for your law office websites could be “Denver personal injury attorneys” rather than the short tail version of “Denver attorneys.” Understandably, “Denver attorneys” would easily have 30 times as many competitors as “Denver personal injury attorneys,” however the short tail version would get more searches each month. If you wonder why anybody would want to target hundreds of keywords which bring only small traffic, the answer is that there is less competition, which means the long tail keywords can bring you lots of traffic overall, which is why Bing is targeting these keywords.
Outgoing Links
If you use the search operator “linkfromdomain” on Bing, you will be able to see all of the pages that a given site links to; type “linkfromdomain:yourwebsitesname.com” into the search bar on Bing, and you will immediately see the quality and relevancy of the sites you are linking to. If your law firm website is having trouble ranking for a specific subject, you can easily use this tool to ensure the sites your firm is linked to contain the same subject or keyword. Don’t forget that many search engines, in effect, judge your law firm website by who you hang out with, or in the web world, who or what you are linked to.
Social Media and Bing
Bing is rushing to establish itself as the search engine to choose if you want to index social networks like Twitter or Facebook more quickly and, in fact, if you want to get a new attorney website page indexed fast, post a link to it on Twitter. Since Facebook’s deepest desire is to become the next Google, they have structured a deal with Bing which allows Bing to become the first search engine to show U.S. users which sites Facebook friends like. The companies have entered into an alliance arrangement in an attempt to best the giant, Google. Both Bing and Facebook report they see future opportunities to surface people who are specific-subject experts.
As with Google search, Bing wants quality content, however links and competitive keywords will push your attorney website to the top of Bing’s search. Microsoft has a huge budget to promote Bing, meaning you will likely see at the very least, an early surge of Bing users. Will Bing go the distance? Only time will tell, however for the health of your law firm website, it is well worth your while to learn as much Bing SEO as possible. Bing represents legitimate competition to the best search engine of the day, so jump on the train before it leaves the station!
Tags: attorney website, Attorney Website SEO for Bing
Posted in Bing SEO, Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Don’t Ignore Attorney Website SEO for Bing Search Engine
January 16th, 2011
The domain name you choose for your legal website can be like the color of your home—it says something about who you are as well as what you stand for, and is the first impression clients have of your legal business. Quite often lawyers simply choose their firm name as their domain name, believing they are, in effect, “branding” their law firm. Unfortunately, rather than the branding they intend, they may be merely muddying the truth about who they are and what they do. Perhaps a client has been injured in a slip and fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They will likely type in those search parameters to begin their search for the perfect attorney. When the search results come back, most people tend to click on the one which stands out the most—and the things which stand out are the title, the description and the domain name. Remember, Google puts the search terms in boldface in the results with a goal of drawing your eye to the very most relevant search results—a trick which works pretty well. Because online marketing requires you to use every tool to your best advantage, consider that your domain name is something you can do when setting up your law firm’s website which can give you a leg up on the competition almost immediately.
The Best Domain Names
While your domain name surely won’t be responsible for bumping your law firm website to number one on the search engines, it’s an easy fix that can’t hurt. Your domain name should be short enough to be memorable—if the domain is too long or hard to read, its value goes down. If the average human can’t say—or type—the domain name correctly, the value of it goes down. Most especially if your firm’s name is rather common, then you might not want to use it as your domain name. If you haven’t already chosen a domain name, make a list of words and phrases associated with your law firm. Once you’ve made the list, remove every one of them which have more than twenty characters. Create new additions to your list by adding “and” between keywords and phrases. Then prioritize your list and go to the mat with it to see which domain names are actually available. When your chosen name is not available, you will get a list of “alternative suggestions,” for other domain names. While most of them are names you might never ever choose for your law firm’s website, others can be possibilities.
Register Your Legal Firm’s Domain Name
Once you’ve seen what’s available, and have chosen your best domain names, registering them is your next step; there are all sorts of companies on the Internet which you can register your domain name with. When I recently looked at domain name statistics, I was somewhat surprised to learn that registering 70,000 new domain names per day is not particularly unusual. What this should tell you is that it can be a good idea to register several domain names, not just your number one pick. You never known when the day will come that you want to change your domain name, or add another website—if you already own the domain names you are a step ahead of the game—and registering domain names is pretty inexpensive as well.
Try to Choose a Domain Name for Your Firm and Your Product
If at all possible, choose at a minimum one domain name with your firm’s name, and another with your specialties. The clients who know you only by your firm name will be able to find you as well as those who are looking for a DUI attorney, or personal injury attorney. You can easily have both of your domain names pointing to different pages of your website. Some experts feel that domain names with dashes in them are both more aesthetically pleasing and easier to read, however the names with dashes are harder to type. Despite the typing difficulty, domain names with dashes can sometimes rank a bit higher in the search engines, bringing more clients to your legal website. The bottom line here is that buying multiple domains and pointing each of them to a specific area-related page on your main site can give you more converted clients. Don’t point multiple domains at the same page, however as this can get you dropped from search engines.
Choosing a domain name can be a very important part of your firm’s overall marketing process. Don’t take it lightly and make sure your domain name properly represents your legal firm, your specific services, and your image and you will have laid a solid foundation for future conversions.
Free Expert Law Firm Marketing Advice Hotline – Call (769) 218-6099 for free tips, advice from the best law firm Internet marketing companies. Since 2003, Lawyer Success has advise 4,000 law firms and has worked on 7 of the 10 leading legal websites online.
Tags: best law firm Internet marketing experts, law firm domain name advice tips, law firm website
Posted in Law Firm Domain Name Advice, Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Legal Website Marketing Using Your Law Firm’s Domain Name
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