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How Vulnerable Are Your Online Legal Marketing Efforts?

August 12, 2010 By

vulnerable online legal marketingEven if you’re at the top of the search engines, you’re vulnerable to new competition.  Go to sleep at #1, wake up at #4.  Is this a risk you’re willing to take when marketing your law firm online?

A few days ago, I was semi–involved in a debate that was raging on an e-mail discussion list in which I am a member. One person asked a question about marketing your law firm online with a blog, and a lawyer started touting the fact that his website ranked at the top of the organic search engine results for his chosen search term. The lawyer in question does no blogging whatsoever, and essentially stated that blogging was worthless to his efforts at marketing his law firm online.

Of course, this being a marketing discussion group, chaos ensued fairly rapidly. The resident legal marketing professionals jumped all over this poor guy, and basically proclaimed him to be full of shit.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Not only does the lawyer in question do no blogging, he produces no content on any of its websites. They’re all extremely thin, and none of them stand out whatsoever. They’re all filled with the same trite, empty language that is so pervasive on law firm websites.  To him, marketing his law firm online didn’t require any content production strategy.  And his results were, to his mind, proof that his theories worked.

If I were to hazard a guess I would say that the attorney has ensured his high rankings based on off–page search engine optimization. By that I’m talking about massive numbers of back links to his site from other sites, with appropriate anchor text tied to his chosen search term.

Assuming this to be the case, and further assuming that there is no funny business or “black hat” tactics being employed, then I applaud this attorney for his efforts. Undoubtedly, he gets a tremendous amount of traffic and, I would assume, quite a bit of business as a result of his efforts to market his law firm online.

So, you see, this stands as proof of the fact that you need not blog in order to attain a high search engine ranking for a single term. I would go so far as to say that you don’t need to blog in order to do well for any term whatsoever.

The fact, however, doesn’t mean a thing. We all know that Google and the other search engines reward websites with more content over those that are thin. We also know that people who visit your website are more inclined to hire you after seeing the depth of your expertise reflected in your blog posts.

So even if this attorney ranks very well for a narrowly-defined search term (which may or may not get enough traffic to sustain him), it’s unlikely that he’s able to capture a tremendous percentage of those site visitors and convert them into paying clients. People are searching for information, and won’t stop looking for answers until they find them. If they happen to find them on the top–ranked site that matches their query, then they will go no further. However, if their first click does not result in an informative answer to their question then they are likely to move to the next site presented by the search engines.

I’m sure that my colleague does very well now, but his attitude with respect to his efforts to market his law firm online makes him an easy target. If one of his local competitors establishes a new website and continually adds content that is relevant, in formative, and optimize for the search engines as well as for human visitors then the likelihood is that this new site will quickly rise to the top of search engine rankings with very little effort.

How about you?  Are you willing to take on this sort of risk when marketing your law firm online?

Image credit: mlhradio (Flickr)

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing Tip – Check Your Site For Broken Links

May 26, 2010 By

W3C Link CheckerYour website or blog is critical to your online legal marketing efforts.  It’s got to be clean, well-organized and accessible.  Take the time to do some housekeeping to maximize your search engine results.

In order to engage in online legal marketing you need to understand search engine optimization, that nebulous field that deals with maximizing your search engine placement and visibility.  Without at least a minimal grasp of search engine optimization, your online legal marketing will never be as effective as it can be.  Period.  After all, how can you do something really well unless you know how to do it?

Remember that online legal marketing means attracting people to your content, keeping them involved, and educating them about how you can help.  As a result, you become a trusted resource and more likely to get a particular client as opposed to another lawyer.

One of the important search engine optimization factors you need to know about is the use of links on your website.  Links between pages on your site as well as links that go to other sites are useful not only to the search engines, but to your readers as well.

When someone visits your law firm website or blog and sees a link, they’re going to click it.  If that link takes them somewhere else on your site, you’ve kept them interested and engaged.  More interest and engagement leads to a greater likelihood that your online legal marketing efforts will lead to a paying client.  Paydirt, baby!

That greater level of engagement also serves to reduce your site’s bounce rate, one of the visitor engagement metrics that’s so important to search engines when determining how and where to rank you.  I’ve already talked about how to lower your bounce rate, and why doing so is an important facet of your online legal marketing strategy.  Lower bounce rate means better rankings in the long-term.

Though external links don’t do much for your rankings, broken ones tend to annoy visitors.  Ever go to a website, click a link and find out that it’s busted?  That sucks, and you’re less likely to visit that website again.  As the owner of the site, your online legal marketing efforts have been wasted if you lose a visitor because of something as simple as that.

On the pure search engine optimization front, you need to realize that the spiders are constantly looking at your site and making sure all those links work.  If they do, everyone’s happy.  But if they don’t, the spiders are decidedly unhappy.  It looks like you’re falling down on the job, delivering a less-than-optimal user experience to visitors.

And if the search engines think you’re doing a bad job then your rankings are going to suffer.  Bad rankings mean bad rate of online legal marketing return.

These are the reasons why you need to check your site for broken links, and do so often.  The tool I use is a free web-based on called the W3C Link Checker.  The tool will go through your entire website or blog and report back on any broken links.  If there’s a problem, you know where to look for it – and fix it immediately.

So check those links with this free tool.  Your wallet will thank you.

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

5 Online Legal Marketing Hacks To Get More Traffic Fast

April 21, 2010 By

Online Legal Marketing HacksWhen you’re marketing your law firm online, you need to always look at maximizing the traffic to your website or blog.  The more people who visit, the better your raw conversion numbers will be.  I don’t take issue with those who say that it’s the quality of the visitor as opposed to the quantity, but if you’re optimizing your content to maximize search engine coverage then the quality thing tends to sort itself out over time.

The beauty of online legal marketing with a blog or website is that you can create valuable content once and let it act as your mouthpiece for months – if not years – to come without any additional investment of time.

So again, the question becomes one of quantity. Especially when your blog is so young it’s wet behind the ears, you need to generate as much traffic as possible.

Why?  Because writing great content is useless if you’re not getting anyone to read it.  The more people who read your pearls of wisdom, the more likely it is to get passed around.  And even if it isn’t getting passed from person to person, more readers yields a greater number of blog subscribers or opt-ins to your email list.

We’re not talking about long-term online legal marketing tactics, these are hacks – quick hits to get a little leverage.  Some cost a few bucks, and others are free.  But they’re all effective.

  1. Tell your clients. Yes, your clients are already sold on your expertise – but how about their friends and family members who aren’t quite ready to talk with a lawyer?  Send a letter to your clients asking them to let people know you’ve got a great online resource for legal information and to tell them to visit it.  Totally old school offline referral marketing, but absolutely effective.
  2. Ask a question and post to your social networks. You’re probably on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn – perhaps all of them.  Post a link to your blog post with a question, asking people to comment directly on the blog.  This social media traffic registers with the search engines – in fact, Google uses social media traffic as one of over 200 “signals” in ranking sites.  More social traffic translates into better long-term rankings for your site.  Better rankings translates into online legal marketing success.
  3. Give away an ebook or special report. There’s value to putting an ebook behind an opt-in form and requiring people to give up their email address in exchange for your item of value.  But if you’re looking to create awareness of your website or blog, you’re looking to garner as much traffic as possible in the short run.  Consider removing the barriers by ditching the opt-in form and giving away the ebook or special report to all visitors.  Not only will more people come to your site, but that giveaway will get passed around and turn into a long-term client generation magnet.
  4. Hitch your wagon to a star. Something going on locally that you can somehow tie into your practice area?  Sports hero busted for DWI?  Local business going belly-up?  If so, there’s a good chance people in your area are going to the search engines to read the news – and typing in the name of that sports hero or local business.  Creating content around that person or business and fitting it into your practice area will yield huge traffic spikes, which is exactly what this online legal marketing hack is all about.
  5. Coffee shop postcards work – really, they do. If you’re a lawyer, you’re a local business.  So you’ve got an edge over the multi-national companies marketing online – you can go grassroots without breaking a sweat.  Go to your local printer or click over to VistaPrint and get a bunch of postcards printed up with a headline like, “Where Can You Find Answers To All Your Questions About Getting Out Of Debt?” (if you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, that is – if you do divorce work, this headline probably won’t work for you) and the URL for your website or blog.  Grab a stack and start putting them in every coffee shop in town.  Tack them up on community bulletin boards.  Anywhere you can go guerilla, go for it.

As you can see, online legal marketing need not start online – that’s just the platform.  Your information is online, so the goal is to drive traffic there.  But you need to take off the blinders and realize that people still live offline – they eat, sleep, meet, and communicate in the real world before going online for their information.

Your online legal marketing efforts will get a shot in the arm by looking to the technological edge as well as going old school (just not in the Will Ferrell way).

But remember – this is not a long-term fix for your efforts. It will not serve as a substitute for creating valuable content that keeps people coming back again and again.  It won’t fix poorly-converting copy, a bad user experience, or lack of optimization.

What it will do is provide a jolt of energy to your blog or website, exposing more people to the intelligence and information you provide.

Photo courtesy of grewlike.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing Overdrive – 9 WordPress Plugins That Rock My Blogs

March 10, 2010 By
Online Legal Marketing And WordPress Plugins

Online legal marketing needs to include a blog – I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again before too long (that is, unless I end up saying that blogging is dead – nah, not likely).  And if you’re serious about your online legal marketing efforts you should be using WordPress.  Not the one they host for you (that would be wordpress.com), but the one you host on your own website.

Why?  It’s free, well-supported, easy to use, free, widely used (heck, the New York Times runs on WordPress) … I’ve gone through that a few times as well.

But once you’ve got WordPress installed you need to make sure you’ve got some plugins hard at work behind the scenes.

What are they?  Those are little mini-applications that you can install to make WordPress run even better.

On the heels of this fantastic post over at Six Revisions titled 6 Critical WordPress Plugins You Should Have Installed, I thought it would be helpful to let you all peek in on the ones I use on this site as well as on my other blogs.

Akismet:  This is an awesome anti-spam plugin, made by the folks who created WordPress.  You need to go to WordPress.com and sign up for a free account; once you do, you can get what’s called an API Key to make the plugin run.  Nothing worse for your online legal marketing efforts than your prospective clients seeing a bunch of less than <ahem> respectable comments on your site.  Bye bye spammy comments!

DISQUS Comment System:  The DISQUS comment system replaces your WordPress system with one hosted and powered by DISQUS. You can organize all the comments for all of your blogs in one place, mark spam accordingly and respond to others.  DISQUS also gives you a clean output in your blog to show not only comments, but also reactions to your posts through the entire spectrum of social media sites.  In doing so, it create a more effective barometer of your online marketing efforts.

Google XML Sitemaps:  This plugin generates a standardized XML sitemap so the search engines can index your blog more easily.  If you’re not being found, you’re not marketing – you’re yelling into a black hole.

Redirection:  Once in awhile, you need to move a post from one place to another.  Maybe you need to kill off a category or change a URL slug to make it more search engine friendly.  With Redirection you’ll never get those dreaded 404 errors again.  And we all know that when Google sees a 404, it gets sad.  We don’t like to make Google sad.

Scribe SEO:  I love Scribe SEO.  Period.  Check out my previous post about it.  Remember, I do as much on the cheap as possible – and I ponied up the money for this plugin immediately.  Some of the best money I’ve spent in a long time (the money I spent on Headway is still better, but it’s so – darn – close).

WordPress Database Backup:  I will never forget when I lost an entire blog.  All that hard work, down the tubes.  WordPress Database Backup runs automatically and emails me a copy of my blog database every day.  If the site blows up I can reinstall WordPress, upload my backup and be running again in a matter of hours.

WP Super Cache:  WP Super Cache makes your posts load up to 259.1% faster (according to Six Revisions – I just know it loads way faster). The faster a page loads, the less likely someone’s going to get antsy and click away.

WPtouch iPhone Theme:  This plugin works for not only iPhone, but for pretty much any mobile browser (Android, BlackBerry, etc.).  Using this handy little plugin lets you see my blog in a mobile-friendly version rather than having to squint to see the regular site in that tiny screen.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin:  This plugin is responsible for that list of related posts at the end of this one.  It finds the other posts on this site that are on the same or a related topic and serves them up automatically.

I use a few others, but these are the kings of my plugin world.  If you’re not using them, you need to start doing so immediately.  Your blog readers will thank you.

What plugins do you use?

Photo courtesy of ell brown.
Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing 101 – Be Original

March 1, 2010 By

Online Legal Marketing - Be Original

When marketing your law firm online it’s important to remember that originality is key. And I’m not just talking about the design of your law firm’s website or your point of view – it should be obvious that you need to be different so as not to blend in.

What I’m talking about is the originality of your online content. The words you use, the way you put your thoughts together, and the way it all reads. It’s all got to be original or your online legal marketing efforts will fail. And not because they won’t resonate, but because they won’t be seen.

Case in point, with names changed to protect the innocent. A colleague of mine is a bankruptcy lawyer who relies almost solely on his online legal marketing efforts to keep his doors open. He’s a good lawyer, a good guy, and smart. But he got a little careless when he built his current website.

His law firm’s website is gorgeous, filled with video and lots of pages of content. He’s got his picture up on the site, his contact information, and all the bells and whistles that we want to have in place when marketing online. Reads well, designed well … but all was not well.

His site was placed at the top of every single relevant search term for quite some time. Until one day he noticed it wasn’t there anymore. Like, at all. Gone from Local Search, gone from the index … poof. Even his Google Profile was deactivated and blocked.

So he did what I would have done. He freaked out. Sent emails, called his web host, tried in vain to contact Google’s search team. He got back cryptic emails, all essentially telling him that his law firm’s website was somehow a bad apple.

Finally, his SEO people started digging around and were told of the problem. His website was filled with content found elsewhere online, on sites for his law firm as well as on sites for other lawyers.

In other words, his site was unoriginal. And that was a problem for two reasons:

First, Google has been clear that duplicate content isn’t the best way to go.  Duplicate content is defined as:

substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.

In fact, the Google Webmaster Blog says:

Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.

What does it mean to be deceptive and manipulative?  Well, that’s tough to say.  But if your site is so clearly filled with content that’s found elsewhere, the chances are good that Google’s going to find that your intentions are less than honorable.

Why does Google hate duplicate content?  Because Google’s primary business is to delivery the best possible search results; in doing so, it ensures that people will come back to Google again and again when they want to find something.  If the search engine lists a ton of different sites with the exact same information, where’s the value add for the searcher?  It isn’t there at all, which is why the search engine will cull out the duplicates and show only a single instance of the content – and that single instance will be on the domain that has the highest PageRank, relevance and trust scores overall.

Second, duplicate content isn’t worth your reader’s efforts and time.  Let’s say I can pick up the exact same book in a bunch of different libraries.  Why would I look to one as a better library than the others?  I wouldn’t – unless one particular library has a bunch of different books on the same subject.  In that case, one is better than the others.

So, too, with your web content.  Your law firm website needs to have something relevant and unique to say, something that sets it apart in the eyes of the visitor in order to spur that person to take action.

How do you avoid the duplicate content problem in your online legal marketing efforts?  Speak in your own words, as if you were talking with a client or prospect.  Be genuine, be honest, and be yourself.  If you’ve got any passion for what you do, this will come through easily.  That’s it.  No magic potion.

And if you’ve hired someone to develop your website copy, take the time and a few bucks to run it through Copyscape.  That’s a service that will go through a web page’s content and ensure that it’s not a duplicate of another site.  Well worth the money.

Photo courtesy of SpiritMama.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing – Fish Where The Fish Are

February 17, 2010 By

Online Legal Marketing Is Like Fishing

When you’re marketing your law firm online it’s easy to get caught up in the blogging whirlwind.  After all, that stuff takes nothing more than time – and it’s entirely within your control.  There are technical issues to contend with, but they’re easily tackled.

Most people will tell you to work on excellent content and optimize it for the search engines.  Once that’s done, optimize for actual readers to decrease bounce rate, increase time on site, and overall create an environment that makes it easier for potential clients to interact with and, ultimately, hire, you.

But what’s missing for this equation is that by providing excellent content and optimizing it, you’re taking too passive of a position.

That’s right, I called you passive.  Your online legal marketing efforts are reliant upon someone stumbling on your site.  It’s like opening up a store on a dead-end street and hoping that someone will magically find it.

Not gonna happen.  At least, not quickly.

The toughest part of your online legal marketing efforts are to get as many qualified prospective clients to your websites, blogs and social media circles as possible.

Your need to promote your content overtly by using Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, and indirectly by establishing yourself as a trustworthy professional who knows a thing or two about your field of practice.

How?  You need to fish where the fish are.  In the world of online marketing, you still need to (and I dread this statement) get yourself out there.

I’m talking about consumer finance listservs, debt and credit forum sites, and blogs that discuss personal finance issues.  You can hang out on the lawyer listservs too, but that’s for you – not your online marketing.  Use the lawyer sites for education and camaraderie, but don’t expect to get much business there.

You’ve got to fish where the fish are.  And those fish are on the consumer finance sites.  You need to take the time to get to know these online communities and start answering questions.  Give from your base of knowledge – without promoting yourself or your sites.  In time, people will come to realize that you’re a smart lawyer and will begin to rely upon you as a referral source.

Yes, it takes time.  But so does any relationship.  You didn’t marry your spouse on the first date.  You didn’t wake up one morning with a new best friend or business partner.  It took time.  So does this.  But it will also give you the reputation that’s earned only when people know and trust you.  People who are your potential clients and referral sources.

People who may need help someday – help you can give.  And isn’t that the goal?

Photo courtesy of bogdog Dan.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Video Marketing For Lawyers – Maybe It’s Not Right For You

January 12, 2010 By

Video marketing for lawyers is all the rage.  It’s … sexy.  Everyone wants to be a TV star, right?  We all want to have our name in lights.  And these days, every online marketing consultant is pushing the fact that this is the next big thing.

Truth be known, they’re right – video is the next big thing in online marketing.  We’ve all read the stats that YouTube is the second-largest search engine.  Google owns YouTube.  Google search results show YouTube videos.  And chances are excellent that things are going to be more heavily involved in this medium as the years roll by.

Visuals are compelling, entertaining, and for many people easier than text or audio. You can humanize yourself and your practice, show you care, and present your marketing story.  Some of my colleagues swear it’s magical, and I don’t disagree.

Video done right is awesome.  When it’s done badly, that’s just sad.

But there’s the rub: it needs to be done right in order to be good.  And it’s not easy to do it right.  It takes money, time, and effort.

There are people who will take care of the time and effort problem.  And as to the money part of things … well, that’s all relative.

The final thing that this medium requires is something that nobody can (or should) do for you.  You’ve got to be relaxed, smart, funny, and just as ease in front of the camera.

I lied – someone could help you with that.  But the process won’t be cheap or easy.

If you hate being in front of the camera and can’t remember what you wanted to say, forget it.  Go elsewhere.  Stick to blogging or podcasting.  Getting in front of a camera is going to do you more harm than good.

Will more people look to video in the coming years?  Yes.  Because video done right is extremely powerful.  But that power can just as easily be turned against you.

So if it isn’t right, it isn’t right.  Leave it to the other lawyers in your town, and concentrate your efforts on what you enjoy.  That enjoyment will show in the results.

Photo courtesy of “Big Daddy” Nelson.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Blogs As Online Legal Marketing Tools

October 25, 2007 By

To Blog Or Not To Blog

Much has been made about this blogging thing as a sure-fire online legal marketing tool. A variety of my colleagues blog as part of their online legal marketing efforts.  for my own part, I am a co-founder of the wildly popular Bankruptcy Law Network (as well as a variety of other blogs, including this one). Still, I am often asked why I do it and whether these efforts yield paying clients.

Here’s a clue: aside from my attorney referral network, I do no paid advertising at all for my law firm.  My online legal marketing pays the bills and keep the office running.

And for my online legal marketing consulting services, I do ZERO paid advertising. All of my business comes as a result of my blogging.

I didn’t start out with this as an overt strategy, but it grew into one after I learned the benefits of what I was doing.  Now I’m not only experimenting with content creation, I’m feeding myself with it.  Proof is in the pudding, to continue the eating metaphor.

Over at Branding & Marketing, there was a terrific post about the use of blogs as not only a marketing tool but also as a means of networking (link removed because the blog apparently took down the article, which sucks). And though the article is no longer available, I can tell you that it spoke to the unique ability of content creation to enable people to connect.

This, of course, before the rise of such services as Twitter and Facebook. It shows how even then, using content creation as a means of connecting was a powerful thought in the minds of many.

Over the years I have had the pleasure of meeting a number of wonderful lawyers and technologists I never would have come to know in the absence of their blogs.

These relationships have resulted in a number of great ideas for my practices and business ventures, and the people I’ve come to know have helped me raise my game significantly. I can only hope that I have done the same in return.

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