Law Firm Search Engine Optimization and Marketing

Database Driven Law Firm Websites

No well-respected law firm would dare go without a website these days! But putting up a static website could be just as bad as having none at all.

Let's face it, people go to the Internet for information. Your potential clients may not even be looking for a lawyer when they sit down at the computer. The truth is... people use the Internet for Information. You need to give potential clients what they are looking for. By posting timely, useful content to your site your are increasing the chances of people finding your firm. The search engines will pick up on fresh content and rank you accordingly. Additionally, if a potential client finds your web site and reads an informative article, they are more likely to contact you as opposed to a law firm that just posts a list of practice areas and contact information.

From the client's perspective, it can be overwhelming and sometimes scary to contact an attorney. You need to use your website (or BLAWG) to remove those apprehensions!

Content is important. Updated content is crucial! In order to keep your website current and up to date, a database driven law firm web site is must! This is especially true with larger firms covering a wide range of practice areas.

The best way to ensure the timely updating of website content is to use a website content management system. One designed specifically for law firm websites works best. At a minimum, you should be able add, edit and delete content on your web pages, as well as, update and manage attorney profiles and practice areas.

See LegalPracticePages for a comprehensive law firm website content management system. This is a comprehensive solution and unlike other solutions includes custom design, integration and hosting!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 4/10/2008 | Permalink & Comments

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Law Firm SEO on a Budget

What if you could determine exactly what you need to do to get your law firm's website ranking in the top 10 of major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc?

Wouldn't you like to know:

How the search engines view your law firm web pages;
What text they see;
What keywords are prominent on your website;
What you can do to your web pages to improve your search engine rankings;
What keywords are being used by Internet searchers to find your practice area;
How many searches are being conducted each month for those keywords;
Who your competitors are;
Which competitors are ranking well with the search engines and how they are doing it;

Wouldn't you like to:

Automatically submit your law firm website to hundreds of search engines.
Effectively track your search engine marketing efforts
Create detailed reports and history of how your law firm website is performing with the search engines

Introducing Internet Business Promoter - a great time-saving tool for the do-it-yourself law firm marketer.

LegalMarketingPros.com performs results-driven search engine marketing services for law firms. We use tools such as IBP (and many others to aid in our services)! SEO work is time consuming in nature. IBP can help streamline that time, but isn't a replacement for concentrated search engine marketing efforts.

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 9/13/2007 | Permalink & Comments

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Legal Blog Directory

Good morning. I'm happy to share a new blog marketing resource. At this time, it's totally free of charge to list your blog.

My Legal Blog Directory lists your legal blawgs covering a wide range of topics and geographies. Each blog listing is showcased and includes the following information and features:

Blog Title
Blog Description
Blog Author
Blog URL
Blog Feed
Bookmark Images so that users can quickly add a blog to the most popular bookmarking sites.
Blog reviews so that users can review and comment on your blog! (moderated)
Email to a Friend so that users can share blogs with friends!

Each blog gets its own web page within the directory where details and reviews are showcased.

I've decided to offer this resource absolutely FREE to help my readers further develop quality business from the web!

Have a great day!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 7/19/2007 | Permalink & Comments

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Keyword Clouds for Legal Website Promotion

What is a keyword cloud?
It's a visual representation of keywords or tags used on a website. Keywords present on the site with the highest keyword density are displayed with larger fonts, while less important keywords are viewed in smaller fonts. With a keyword cloud of your law firm's web page, you can quickly identify which words or phrases are more prevalent on the page.

Keywords and phrases with a higher density cause the page to be viewed as more relevant and authoritative and therefore ranked higher when that keyword or phrased is searched in the search engines (If you need a refresher in keyword density, read my Keyword Density post!)

To see a visual representation of a page within your law firm's website, use this tool below!

Keyword Cloud Tool © SEO Chat™

URL
Valid URL

Enter Captcha To Continue
To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below

Report Problem with Tool.

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 7/7/2007 | Permalink & Comments

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Keyword Density and Law Firm Websites

What is keyword density?

Keyword density is the ratio of the number of times a particular keyword or phrase is present in your web page to the overall number of words on a web page. It is expressed as a percentage.

Why is keyword density important?

Search engines use keyword density to determine how relevant a web page is for a particular keyword or phrase search. Therefore, it is important to make sure you use targeted keywords and phrases within the content of your web page.

This doesn't mean you can stuff keywords or phrases all over the page and expect positive results! Some search engines actually penalize a web page if a keyword or phrase is overused! In order to avoid being banned by search engines you should make sure your web pages have a reasonable keyword density for your targeted keywords and phrases.

What is an optimal keyword density?

There's no published right keyword density. However experience has told us that when pages have between a 5 – 10% keyword density they seem to perform well! I have seen sites with only a 1 or 2 % keyword density do well, too. The optimal keyword density depends on how competitive the keyword or phrase is on the web. This said, you should never compromise the quality of your content by overstuffing with keywords or phrases.

Below is a quick tool provide by SEOChat.com that you can use to check the keyword density for any page within your law firm's website!

Keyword Density Tool © SEO Chat™

URL
Valid URL

Results
Number of keyterms to display

Elements to include
Select from below
Include Meta?
Include Alts?
Include Title?

Include numerals
E.g. '2004' would count as a keyword
Yes
No

No. words
Number of words per phrase
3 words
2 words
1 word

Enter Captcha To Continue
To prevent spamming, please enter in the numbers and letters in the box below

Report Problem with Tool.

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 7/6/2007 | Permalink & Comments

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Law Firm SEO Cost

How much does Search Engine Optimization cost?

Law Firm Search Engine Marketing is not for weak budgets! From a little research on the web, I was able to determine that a law firm can expect to pay anywhere from $3,000 to over $150,000 per year! The return on that investment is usually related to the cost. With search engine optimization services, you most always get what you pay for.

What are you paying for with Law Firm SEO?

Expertise,ROI and Results. As a professional service provider, you know that quality professional services come at a cost. Basically, you are paying for the KNOWLEDGE and KNOW-HOW that when applied, can bring your law firm results (i.e. quality clients)!

Is Search Engine Optimization worth the price?

It's relative to the services you provide.

Example:

Let's say, for example, a personal injury law firm spends $15,000 per year for law firm search engine optimization services. The firm receives two cases that year from the website that settle for a total of $600,000. Your receive $200,000 in payment for services. In this case, it makes sense to spend $15,000!!!

I'm opening up the comments for feedback. I'd like to know what your firm is doing in regards to SEO. Are you doing SEO in-house or outsourcing? How do you determine your SEO budget?

LegalMarketingPros.com has posted it's recently released law firm search engine optimization packages.

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 6/26/2007 | Permalink & Comments

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Tips to Improve Your Law Firm Search Engine Rankings

Your placement in the search engines (i.e Google, Yahoo & MSN) determines the number of client leads your firm will receive! This is obvious as approximately 90% of your websites traffic comes from clicking through to your site from a search engine.

How do you make sure your firm is in the Top 20?

Why the top 20 and not the top 10? Because more and more folks are clicking through to the second and third page of search engine results! Previously there has been a race for top 10. Yes. Top 10 is best, but Top 20 ain't bad either!

Here are a few tips to try that can greatly increase your position with the search engines.

1. Make sure you've identified what potential clients are looking for. In other words, do the keyword research to figure out exactly what terms people are using to find lawyers in your geographic target and practice area. Keywords should be as specific as possible. See more on keyword selection in my Optimizing Your Law Firm's Site: Keyword Selection post.

2. Use the Keywords in the Title Tag of your pages. Make sure you include the keyword or phrase you are targeting in the Title of the Page.

3. Create a keyword rich description that matches the keywords or phrases in the title. Keep this short. Limit it to just the keyword or phrase.

4. Repeat the keyword or phrase throughout the page. Be sure to include it in your Header tags... <h1> Keyword Phrase </h4>

5. Make sure you have relevant content on that page. The content should be relevant to the title of the page and include the keyword/phrase and variations of it throughout.

6. Finally, make sure you have other sites and directories linking to you!

Implementing these simple strategies can help you dramatically increase your search engine position and dramatically increase your lead intake! These steps imply that you implement a different page for each keyword /phrase, or at a minimum, each practice area. This can be a VERY time consuming task, but it's worth the effort! Hire an Internet Marketing Consultant to help!

This FREE blog is provided by Laurie Williams of LegalMarketingPros.com. Laurie is a veteran Internet Marketer for the legal industry and has provided results for clients throughout the U.S. Contact her for a free consultation!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 8/9/2006 | Permalink & Comments

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List in the Yahoo Directory?

Whether or not to pay the $299 price tag of listing in the Yahoo directory has been a long debated topic. You can try the "free" submission, but good luck actually getting listed on the directory within the next six months. They don't guarantee you'll be listed at all. You can do other search engine marketing tactics and eventually show up in Yahoo's search results, but not in the directory.

So, why does your law firm need to be listed in the directory?
Simple. Because, 22.5% of people use Yahoo for Internet Searches! Furthermore, according to the Law Firm Search Engine Marketing Report, over 3.4 Million searches for the terms "attorney" & "lawyer" are conducted each month! Granted, all of those searches aren't conducted using the directory, a lot of them were!

By listing in the Yahoo Directory, you receive an increased number of incoming links to your law firm's website, which increases your exposure on ALL search engines, including Google, Yahoo & MSN.

When you first list with Yahoo your firm is represented on the "New Profile page" which can generate as many as 200 qualified click-through to your firm's website in just a few days... not to mention how many clicks-through it will generate over the course of a year! When compared to the cost of PPC marketing, it makes sense.

Yahoo directory listings don't "fit the mold" of all companies wishing to promote their products/services online. But with law firms, given the return on that yearly investment, it does.

So, should you submit your law firm? In my opinion, it's a definite "YES"!

Happy Marketing!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 6/28/2006 | Permalink & Comments

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Do-It-Yourself-Search Engine Optimization

Today, I thought I'd share with my readers a "secret"...well, maybe just little known... tool I use to provide search engine optimization services to my law firm clients. It allows me to manage and monitor my search engine optimization projects, quickly and easily. I can run reports that check search engine rankings with search engines, identify quality keywords, identify how competitive sites are doing and much more!

The tool is called Internet Business Promoter (IBP). With this tool, you can monitor and manage how your site performs with the search engines! The following are just a few things you can do with IBP.
1. IBP automatically submits your website URL to all important search engines. You set it up and click send and walk away. Plus, it follows the unique guidelines for each search engine so it's more reputable than other search engine submission tools.

2. It allows you to check and monitor search engine rankings on any number of keywords or phrases. It allows you to quickly check the rankings for any keyword(s) on a selection of more than 350 search engines.

3. It's includes a powerful link popularity tool that helps you with all aspects of professional link management. This is essential in building link popularity for improved rankings.

4. It helps with website optimization. This tool will look at your current site, evaluate keyword density and make recommendations of how you can improve the site!

5. It has a built-in keyword generator which helps build a quality keyword list for your site, so that you can optimize your site with the appropriate keywords which will attract qualified traffic

6 Many more features, tools and guidance.

To learn more about Internet Business Promoter or to download your own copy, c lick here.

I've been able to achieve top 10 results for many clients thanks to this little helper!

Highly recommended for the do-it-yourself law firm marketer!
Happy Marketing!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 6/22/2006 | Permalink & Comments

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Law Firm Directories

Listing your firm in lawyer directories is a great way to attract traffic to your law firm website as well as generate more leads. Directories that make an extra effort to promote their sponsoring firms are the best place to list your firm. These directories are concerned about getting you leads AND traffic!

What do I mean by "efforts to promote sponsoring firms"?
I mean they provide services over and above a standard listing that works for your firm to generate more leads and more traffic to your law firm websites.

They provide direct links to your website without redirects. Search engines will not follow redirects, so non-direct links do not provide any "backlink" value. Backlinks are important because search engines determine your rankings and "importance" based on how many relevant sites link to yours.
They optimize and promote your law firm profile so that it gets hit by search engines. If done correctly, the directory will make sure search engines can "find" your profile, through the use of sitemaps, easily crawled architecture and other common SEO techniques.
They provide a way for potential clients to contact your firm directly, right then and there! The best way for this to happen is through a custom intake form or simply an email address.
They provide other perks such as multiple category listings, news releases, article submissions, etc. These other items, if implemented properly can give your law firm tons of exposure and credibility.

Some suggestions for directories offering this type of options

Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org
Yahoo Directory – http://search.yahoo.com/dir
LawyerFinder.com – http://www.lawyerfinder.com
AttorneyFinder.com - http://www.attorneyfinder.com
AttorneyFind.com - http://www.attorneyfind.com/
LawInfo.com - http://www.lawinfo.com
MoreLaw.com - http://www.morelaw.com/
LegalLawHelp.com - http://www.legallawhelp.com/
RealAttorney.com - http://www.realattorney.com

Happy marketing with directories!

Posted by: Laurie Williams | Posted on: 6/14/2006 | Permalink & Comments

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