Online Marketing for Lawyers & Attorneys
Online Marketing June 3rd, 2009
There are hundreds of thousands of legal practices out there, all of which have a website and some of which engage in online marketing. Some firms are exceptional at this and in some cases; creep into black hat marketing tactics, while other firms have an utterly dismal online presence, having last updated their website years ago. What some firms may or may not know is that kicking your website into gear to be more interactive, more search friendly, and more indexable isn’t that difficult. Making small improvements to your site can really help and potentially lead to new business. The following are five simple ways in which you can bolster your firm’s online presence.
Create a Blog
Adding a blog to your site is a sure fire way to increase indexation. By blogging you’ll not only be adding new and legal related content to your site but you’ll also give your readers a way to subscribe to your content in their feed reader via your blog’s RSS feed. You can also sync your blog’s feed to your Facebook account or fanpage and your Twitter account so that both places will publish your content the moment it’s published on your blog. Additionally, services like Feedburner and Feedblitz can automatically capture email addresses and email your subscribers your blog’s latest post to their email inbox. Globally, Wordpress is the blogging CMS of choice which is free to download and install. There are thousands of free themes out there that you can choose from and later customize to match the look and feel of your existing site. Blogging will ultimately increase your indexation, traffic, and potentially bring in new business if you’re blogging about legal issues and answering common legal questions your readers may have.
Get Rid of Flash
There are so many sites out there that are entirely built on flash. Get rid of it! It may look pretty but it’s usually not helping. Are you interested in giving a prospective client a bouquet of daisies or providing the helpful information they seek? Your audience is looking for counsel and information on legal matters. Delivering the answers they seek quickly without being superfluous is more likely to gain new clients. Additionally and perhaps more importantly, flash can’t be parsed/read by search engine bots. The more your site is built on flash, the less readable and indexable it will be. Some flash is ok in small doses but do avoid building your entire site in flash.
Local Search Campaigning
Most legal practices are locally based and if this is the case for you then you should really be hitting the pavement with local search. Make sure your locality is represented in your title tags and or descriptions. For instance your title tag may look like:
Mesothelioma, Accident Attorney & Medical Malpractice Attorney, Boston MA | Bob Loblaw PPC
And you’ll want to be sure to canvas the local directories with you business information. Here are some places to get you started:
Best ROI:
Google Local Business
Yelp
Citysearch
Yahoo Local
Judy’s Book
Others to consider:
Local
Insider Pages
True Local
Super Pages
Dex Knows
Localeze
Yellowbot
Grayboxx
Editing Your Meta Data
Making sure your title tags and description tags are keyword laden and different on every page is an SEO 101 update that you can easily make. If you know what type of client you want and what they’d probably search for, take these keyword phrases and pump them into a keyword research tool like Wordtracker (paid) or Google Keyword Tool (free). Once you have a short list of targeted keyword phrases, add these to your title tags where appropriate. Make sure the title tags speak to the content contained on the page you’re editing the title tag for. You’ll want the description to be similar in that it contains some keywords and is relevant to the content on its respective page.
Answer Legal Questions
Establishing yourself online as an expert in your field can be done overtime by leveraging the following services. You’ll also want to consider using Twitter and the Twitter search site to find people who may have legal questions in your area. You can search geographically within Twitter under the advanced search option.
Best ROI
Twitter
Yahoo Answers
LinkedIn
Other Places to Consider:
Maholo Answers
Wiki Answers
Answer Bag
Yedda
Fluther
Wondir
Should your firm need a new, robust website or search engine optimization and search engine marketing services, please feel free to reach out. I’d be happy to discuss your online marketing plans with you.
You can contact Brendan here
Recent Comments