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Posts Tagged ‘law firm website’
Saturday, October 1st, 2011
Search engine penalties can be bad news for your legal website sending it plummeting down the list into no-man’s land—or worse, being removed entirely. It’s imperative that you check your law firm’s website frequently in order to ensure you are not violating any search engine rules. All the major search engines have their own list of “do’s and don’ts” which tend to change fairly rapidly in an effort to stop black hat SEO and other unethical practices. If your legal website has inadvertently violated one of these rules, don’t despair, as it is possible to dig yourself out from under these penalties–so long as you take immediate action.
What Causes Search Engine Penalties?
The majority of the causes of penalties by search engines are not ones you will ever have to deal with, as they are deliberate efforts to hustle and con the search engine. Code swapping, also known as cloaking occurs when one thing is submitted to a search engine, then when the user clicks they see something entirely different. This can occasionally be done legitimately in order to prevent others from imitating a successful page of to hide a text-only page for a more visually appealing one. Either way, it will get you a slap on the wrist from your search engine, so it’s important to delete this practice from your legal SEO arsenal.
Keyword and Meta Tag Stuffing
More commonly, websites will be penalized for repeating a word or phrase over and over in an attempt to increase relevancy and move up the search engine ladder. Remember to use keywords judiciously in your legal website and legal blog, and if you manage your own meta tags, never place your high traffic legal keywords in meta tags when they have no relation to the actual web page. Check your content and your meta tags thoroughly to make sure your keywords are used in a natural and acceptable manner in order to avoid penalties. Remember that a normal occurrence of keywords in high quality copy writing will be between 2% and 5%. If you repeat your legal keywords to the extent that they make up more than 10% of the words on your page, expect a negative consequence.
Call (769) 218-6099 for a free discussion about your law firm website.
Penalties for Other Practices
Tiny text, page stuffing or duplicate pages and page spoofing are usually done deliberately, rarely accidentally. Those who are attempting to “game” the system will hide keywords by putting them in at a 1pt font—beware, search engines are getting more and more sophisticated and able to spot such techniques. Page spoofing occurs when a page seems to be legitimately developed for a particular keyword, then when the user clicks on it, they are taken to a page with little relation to the original click.
Page stuffing occurs when the same web page is either directly duplicated, or modified only slightly, then submitted to the search engine. If your law firm has multiple legal websites as well as one or more legal blogs, make sure you take extra care not to duplicate content from one to another. This is also known as “mirroring” a site, meaning you have several domains and put the exact same content on each. Whatever the reason, it is considered spamming and can get you penalized.
If your Legal Pages Have Been Penalized
If your legal websites or blogs have been removed for what the search engine considers an infraction, you have two choices. You can get a new domain name and, essentially, begin from scratch, making sure you don’t employ the same tactics which garnered your original penalty. If you had a well-established legal site, however, this is somewhat akin to business suicide. You have likely built your brand name and spent extensive time and money marketing your legal website.
A better idea is to first find out what earned you the search engine’s wrath by contacting the individual help and support branch for each search engine. Once you know what went wrong, then the offending practices or page must be immediately removed. If you have linked to bad sites, get rid of the links. If you have hidden text, remove it, if you have engaged in keyword stuffing, have your content rewritten. You may be required to contact the search engine, admit your mistake, tell them how you have corrected it and beg forgiveness—in other words, fall on your sword. After that, the only thing you can do is wait—it can take as little as a month, or as much as a year for full absolution to occur and the search engine to allow you back into the fold.
Tags: law firm website, Law Firm Website advertising, law firm website marketing, law firm website seo
Posted in Legal SEO | Comments Off on Monitoring Your Law Firm Website to Avoid Search Engine Penalties
Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
As Rudyard Kipling noted, “Words are of course the most powerful drug used by mankind.” Lest you’ve forgotten the cardinal rule of website success, I will say it again: While the look and feel of your legal website is crucial—and perhaps second on the overall list—content is the heart and soul of any website. The ultimate goal of your legal web pages are to build a relationship with potential clients, and while the glitz and glamour of your design may initially “hook” your reader, if your copy is not extremely compelling, they will click on by with lightning speed.
Not to mention the fact that search engine bots just happen to be the blindest users who will ever visit your site—web crawlers virtually ignore the flashy design and go right to the meat of the content to determine how your legal site is indexed and found. Search engines ferret out quality content, and content happens to be the only factor they value, so you can see just how important unforgettable the legal copy on your pages can be.
How to make it Personal
The Internet gets more personal by the day, therefore writing in third person using long legal terms your readers may have trouble understanding will only ensure they pass you by and find a website they can understand. Your potential clients come to your website because they have a problem they need solved in the most expedient manner possible. Your legal copy needs to make a personal connection with you and your firm, and legal blogs especially should convey your personality. Reach your clients by speaking directly to them—in plain English without the technical/legal jargon.
Hold Your Visitor’s Attention
Compelling copy grabs your reader, holding their attention to the very last sentence. When you are writing legal copy for your website or blog, put yourself in the shoes of your potential client. What is their problem? How can you solve the problem? How is your solution different/better than that of your competitors? How can you, right this very minute, make your reader’s life easier and better by solving their legal problem? Don’t forget to slip in a reference about how you can also save your client time. Because we are all so crazy-busy, anything that saves us time and/or trouble becomes very appealing.
Break up Your Page
You are probably aware that readers of web pages scan your legal website pages more than they actually read. Huge chunks of copy can be overwhelming, causing the visitor to leave your website quickly. Frequent paragraph breaks, headings which tell the reader exactly what the paragraph is about, and bulleted lists can all help your reader get to the end of your page. We love short bursts of text, short, easy-to-read sentences, balanced white space and bold black headings, so incorporate those things in your legal blog and web pages.
Edit before Publishing—then Edit Again
Don’t edit as you go along, rather wait until you are finished and can see the whole picture. When you stop to edit as you go along, you compromise your creativity. Once your legal article or blog posting is complete, then go back and remove any undesired elements. Once your content satisfies you, proofread, proofread—and proofread yet again. If you were meeting a prospective new client for the first time, it’s a sure bet you would go out of your way to make a great first impression. Your legal website or blog is your first impression for a score of potential clients, and, let’s face it, the old adage about never getting a second chance to make a first impression is quite true. If your first impression is full of spelling, grammar or punctuation errors, your professional image can be critically damaged. Many copywriters read their words out loud to ensure they have the rhythm they were aiming for, hopefully the rhythm of natural speech.
Tags: improving law firm website conversion, law firm website, legal website content, Legal Website Copy
Posted in Lawyer Website Content | Comments Off on Is Your Legal Website Copy Compelling On Your Law Firm Website?
Saturday, September 24th, 2011
If you are fortunate enough to have reached and maintained your legal web page ranking goal, the next step is to commit to a certain level of maintenance to keep them at their present coveted position. It can be said with reasonable assurance that throughout your attorney SEO campaign you will notice three stages, or three critical areas of importance as they relate to keywords. Occasionally you may see an initial surge or spike soon after your legal pages are published, crawled, indexed and scored. If your pages demonstrate an authority in your particular niche (and they certainly should) they may well remain buoyant, however if your legal site’s keywords have millions of competing sites with the same keywords, that initial spike can spiral downward quickly.
Managing the Rollover Effect
Following the initial spike of your legal pages ranking, you could also see something known as the roll-over effect. This is relatively common especially in legal blog sites in which there are a set number of posts on a page, then the results roll off the page into an archive, or into pages further down the line. The problem lies in those important links on your legal site; when the page rolls into an archive or a page 2, 3 or 4, the links roll over as well, causing your pages to take a significant dip in search engine ratings.
And Finally—the Comeback
Once your legal website has firmly established trust, stability, quality and relevancy, that roll-over dip which likely filled you with dismay will be relegated to only a dim memory. When you are considered an authority on your subject, and those who are searching for answers to critical questions find them in spades on your legal sites, you have likely passed the search engine algorithm litmus test.
Your Ultimate Goal
The goal you should be shooting for is to naturally attract more of the quality potential clients you want, and less traffic you don’t want, and one of the best ways to accomplish this is to consistently focus on keyword selection on an ongoing basis. Keyword management is fast becoming critical to your overall bottom line, therefore each and every keyword in your arsenal must deliver maximum bang for the buck. Be ruthless when you find under-performing keywords which are not delivering conversions. Add new keywords, but only after you have done some in-depth keyword research. Raw query logs and reports are helpful in showing you which terms your potential clients are actually searching for, so take advantage of them. Refine any broad-match keywords or phrases with exact matches; you will see your traffic refined, your conversion rates increased, and your search engine ranking climbing quickly.
Don’t Forget Negative Keywords
Many people are unfamiliar with negative keywords, which are essentially keywords that you don’t want to be found under. Again, check the raw query logs and reports, but look for queries which are really irrelevant to your legal website or legal blog, and add the terms to your negative keyword list. It’s extremely important that you monitor your keywords on a regular basis in order to gauge their continued effectiveness.
Check Out Your Competition
Just as you need to monitor your keywords, you also need to continuously monitor your closest competitors. Although you may be king of the mountain today, other law firms can gain dominance through SEO as well, toppling you from your throne without warning. Because 42% of all searchers click on the top search engine result, it is certainly a position worth fighting for and constant tending to. In the end, just as anything worthwhile requires ongoing attention, so will your legal website and legal blog. Monitor your keywords, add quality content often, strive to include quality links, and soon you will have achieved organic search engine nirvana.
Tags: law firm website, Law Firm Website Conversion, law firm website design, law firm website keywords, law firm website optimization, law firm website seo
Posted in Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Managing Keywords on Your Law Firm Website to Eliminate Unwanted Clicks
Sunday, 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
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Assuming you are already using Google Alerts—and presumably already loving it, there are some easy searches you can run that you may not have thought of which can give you some amazing results in your inbox each day. Additionally, if you want more accurate results from your Google Alerts, you will need to utilize some of the advanced search options or search operators in order to narrow your searches.
Advanced Search Options
In other words, if you are interested in receiving the latest legislation regarding DWI in your state, you might type in DWI+Texas+legislation. Enclosing your search results in quotes, and using the minus sign (-) to filter out unwanted results can also give you much more precise Google Alerts results. On each search term you will set how often you want the alert to be sent, so for topics you want to keep an eye on, but are not critical, selecting “once a week,” may be appropriate. For topics which you need to be apprised up the second after they happen, then you will, of course, set “as it happens,” for frequency. Many people simply have a blanket setting of once per day for everything, however this can potentially give you many legal alerts you don’t need or want.
When setting how you would like to receive your alerts, you can check e-mail or RSS feed; if you choose e-mail, you will receive a separate e-mail for each alert you create, or you can subscribe to the RSS feed in Google Reader rather than e-mail. You will next need to tell Google exactly which information to include in the search, whether news, blogs, web, comprehensive, video or groups. Depending on your search terms you may want to only search in blogs, or news, or you may simply use “comprehensive” for most of your search terms.
What Search Terms Should I Use?
First and foremost, do a “vanity search” for your own name, your firm’s name, or your blog’s name in order to find out when your name or your blog is mentioned by someone else. You can set it up as “Richardson Law Firm,” Robert+Richardson+Lawyer, or even Richardson’s Legal Blog. If your name or your firm’s name is fairly common, put it in quotes. You can track incoming links to your legal website or legal blog by inserting your blog’s URL which can track links from other sites to your own site. Use the highest URL level where you have content for your site links, and if you want to track incoming links to a specific post, enter the post’s exact URL.
Check Your Own Content for Plagiarism by Others
Sometimes content can be “stolen” unintentionally, or sometimes content can be stolen using robots which strip out links so the post remains primarily text. You can set your search terms for “specific phrase from your content” which will immediately tell you if someone else is using that amazing phrase you thought came straight from your own creative mind. Unless your content is, in fact highly creative and original, it is likely you will receive lots of alerts regarding the portions you are having checked.
Check for Your Favorite Topics
If you are currently working on a specific brief, or a particular case, you can set search terms for the topic—you will soon realize what a great way this can be to research a topic and see articles and posts where others are talking about the subject as well. Narrow and refine your search topic through the use of (+,-,””, or, not) or through search operators (link:, site:)
As long as you don’t forget that Google Alerts is neither 100% foolproof or reliable, and that it only sends alerts when new pages enter into the top searches, you should greatly enjoy the results your receive from Google Alerts. You may also want to try out Yahoo’s similar service, called, appropriately enough, Yahoo! Alerts.
FREE ADVICE from top law firm Internet marketers is available by calling (769) 218-6099. No sales pitches, just real advice!
Tags: Google Alert, law firm website, legal blogs
Posted in Law Firm Blogging, Lawyer Website Design, Legal Blogging | Comments Off on More In-Depth Ways to Use Google Alerts for Your Law Firm Website or Legal Blogs
Thursday, April 9th, 2009
Art and Design: One of These Things is Like the Other
What do clients look for in a law firm website? I think the answer is simple. Creativity and ingenuity. Those two facets are what Lawyer Success does well. Nobody wants to look at a drab website. The key is to create something that will be remembered. Many law firm website designs look the same.
If you want something to stick out from the competition then Lawyer Success is the way to go. Teamed with a group of professionals who understand what it takes to succeed, Lawyer Success provides you with the tools to gain more clients.
Professional designers have always said, websites should be designed and created like an artist drafts their paintings. It should be express something: an idea, a theme, history, but most importantly, your business.
What does that involve? That involves more than just two or three colors that mesh with each other or stand alone. That’s boring. It takes an interconnectivity of schemes, templates, designs and graphics to really succeed. Most importantly, it should reflect your business, your personality and your work ethic.
There is a growing demand for attorneys so why not take advantage of the fact that you could have a really great website and gain clients over your competitors. After all, you deserve it after all the hard work that you put into getting your law degree. All those hours of studying, all the money you spent on tuition, and all the research you’ve done should count for something. Let the professionals handle your website and you’ll see results in no time.
For a free rate quote and a free consultation so you can have the best law firm website, call (768) 218-6099. You don’t want your hard earned money put to waste.
Tags: law firm sites, law firm website, law firm website design, law firm website templates, law firms website
Posted in Lawyer Website Design | Comments Off on Law Firm Website Design – See Results in No Time.
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