As an attorney, one of your best marketing tools is something you may not yet think of as a tool: your address book.  Now that over 80 percent of American internet users use at least one social media website, your contact list has just become more valuable than ever.  Making use of your online contacts to extend your networks and get new clients is the way things are done in the 21st century—if you're not doing it yet, you're missing out on one of the best new places to find clients in the online world.  In this guide, we'll give you seven tips that will make it easier for you to expand your network and make yourself more appealing to people two or three degrees of separation away from you.

Tip #1: Blog, Guest Blog, and Get Guest Bloggers

If you're not already blogging, you're missing out on one of the best possible opportunities to do networking in your field.  Blogging, if you're doing it right, can be an exciting way to actually talk to people online that you wouldn't normally be able to get an “in” with in the offline world.  It's worth noting that the only blogs that will do for this tip are the kind you're actually writing in house.  If you're outsourcing blog content, it may be something that can get you ahead in search engine rankings, but it's not going to be easy to get guest blogging spots or to connect with other legal bloggers.

Once you've got a blog that's running fairly well, you can start connecting with people and asking them to guest blog.  Maybe they'll have a topic in mind already that would work with the topic of your blog, or maybe you'll have a topic that you'd like a specific connection to blog about.  Either way, guest posting lets people see fresh content on your blog more often while giving your audience a wider range of opinions and analysis.

You can also participate as a guest blogger on other legal blogs.  This is often a good way to get new visitors to your blog.  If you can make your guest post sincerely interesting to the audience on the blog, you may find that you've attracted dozens or even hundreds of new readers.

Tip #2: Keep In Contact With Friends on Facebook

Don't let your friends on Facebook and other social media platforms fall by the wayside.  You never know when your social media contact list might become incredibly valuable for building a new customer base.  Friends on Facebook can be some of the best sources for finding new clients when you put out a call to your connections.

At the same time, this doesn't mean that you should just friend anyone on Facebook who asks.  Make sure that you aren't including trolls or people who are just spambots on your Facebook friends.  All these so-called “friends” will do is wreck your feed with irrelevant or offensive content.  Make sure that all of your Facebook friends are real people with real profiles.

Tip #3: Start Tweeting and Don't Stop

If you haven't started using Twitter yet, it's time.  Studies have shown that Twitter conversion rates for attorneys may actually be as much as 10 times higher as conversion rates for Facebook or LinkedIn.  This extraordinary difference means that law firms need to get into Twitter and start using it according to community norms.

You may not notice your new Twitter strategy working right away when you first begin to implement it.  However, if you keep tweeting, as time goes by it is likely you will first gain more followers to your Twitter account, followed by account followers and friends on other social media accounts connected to your Twitter name.

Tip #4: Keep Your Website Looking Great

If you want people in your network to be able to show other people your website, you need to make sure that it works well, loads quickly, and doesn't look like something pulled out of 1999.  If you're not taking care to redesign your website periodically to keep up with the changing web, you may not be putting your best foot forward in front of potential clients.

It's often best to have professional web design teams help with this portion of your online marketing efforts.  Trying to do the technical details of a website yourself can get very complicated very quickly, and there's nothing wrong with outsourcing this labor so that your website can be the best that it can be.

Tip #5: Give Things Away Online

People online are used to a culture of getting information for free.  One of the best things you can do to make your content go viral is to give useful, understandable information away in an easy to understand format.  Infographics, short videos, and even top ten lists can all be easy ways to arrange your content so that it's easier for your users to understand.  When you give things away online, people are more likely to pass your content on, getting your message out to people several degrees of separation removed from you and your firm.

Tip #6: Don't Be Afraid of Technology

New technological developments can be challenging for some law firms to accept.  However, these new developments will happen whether you want them to or not.  The only thing you can control is whether you're prepared for them.  Make sure that you've got a good understanding of best practices for online marketing using all the newest technology—this will help you focus your targeted ad campaigns instead of spending more money to get a similar number of clients.

Tip #7: Listen to Feedback and Improve Constantly

If you're going to have viral content, you have to be responsive to your audience.  Listening to feedback is critical to having a great online presence today.  When you hear feedback, even if it's negative, try not to get defensive.  Instead, consider it a chance to get better—it's much better to hear about your problems than to have people simply walk away without telling you what went wrong.

Too many attorneys try to make their online marketing strategy without really considering whether it ties into their already established community marketing efforts.  Over 80 percent of attorneys in the United States get most of their clients from within a 10 mile radius of their office.  That means that your internet marketing plan for your law firm should focus on getting clients from your local area—and today's search engines make that possible.  In this guide, we'll look at ways to maximize the number of local potential clients who see your online marketing campaign.

#1: Get Involved In Person, Not Just Online

Don't make the mistake of thinking that you can just use search engine optimization for your law firm without any other marketing tactics.  You need to have some kind of on the ground presence if you want to draw in clients from your local area.  Wherever you are, there will be local organizations that will actively want attorneys to volunteer their time.  Get involved with local non-profits and with clubs and organizations.  For example, you may want to become active in your local Chamber of Commerce, which often gives you multiple online mentions and links back to your website that will help your local search ranking results.

#2: Cross Promote Your Offline Activities on Facebook

When you participate in events in the offline world for charitable organizations, make sure that you mention it on your Facebook feed.  Sometimes, attorneys worry that talking about themselves would be distasteful or that people won't be interested—but it all depends on where you're posting.  On Facebook, personal narratives are expected and welcomed by the vast majority of followers, as long as they're sincere and authentic.

The biggest mistake you can make is to look like you're only helping out for exposure.  Don't oversell yourself—talk more about the organization you're involved with than you talk about your own involvement.

#3: Talk About Local Issues

If there's a local case that everybody's talking about, it's great to weigh in on your blog and social media feeds.  People expect and want to see analysis of local legal issues from attorneys in their local area.  This helps potential clients understand how you look at cases, which can in turn help them decide whether or not your firm would be a good fit for their legal needs.  Make sure that when you discuss local cases, you're keeping your language jargon-free.  The more legal terms you use, the more easy to understand definitions you need to provide—or you'll risk losing the vast majority of your audience.

Keep in mind the average education level of your local clients when writing your content about local issues.  If you're focused on clients who have high income levels and have advanced degrees, you can certainly use much more complex analysis.  If the majority of your clients are high school graduates but never graduated from college, you'll want to explain legal arguments in more detail and with easy to understand analogies.

#4: Stay Authentic—And Never Lie

This is one of the biggest things that attorneys need to keep in mind when they create online marketing materials for their law firm.  Remember that your online presence isn't completely separated from your offline presence.  This means that there's no use in trying to make yourself sound much more impressive than you really are, and you should instead play up your real strengths.

If you try to use puffery and make your offices and attorneys sound significantly more impressive than they are, people won't be fooled for long.  Instead, you'll lose your chance at a good reputation in your community.  Unless your law firm has the freedom to simply pick up stakes and move to a new location, you need to be good to the people near you.  That means trusting in yourself enough to know that you can put on your most authentic face.

#5: Show Yourself As a Positive Influence

By volunteering with local groups for walk-a-thons and fundraising events as well as helping out with your legal expertise, you show yourself to be a real person who is interested in doing things for his or her community.  When you become a positive influence in your area, your firm can start becoming a household name.  This kind of name recognition will serve you well—when people do web searches, if your website is anywhere in the first page, people will be more likely to visit you because of your name recognition.

Too many attorneys today neglect these kinds of very basic community relations efforts, but the truth is, these kinds of efforts will also get you onto websites for local organizations and media.  This will make your firm climb higher than other local firms in Google results for people searching for lawyers in your local area.

#6: Make New Friends—But Keep The Old

Make sure that when you're making new connections in your community, you don't lose the connections you've already built.  Talk to people in your immediate family, if they live nearby, as well as your social connections locally to help you build on your networks and create new business relationships.

Make sure that you're consistently remembering your past clients, as well, by following up via email and occasional mailing updates.  If you forget about the people you've worked with in the past in favor of getting new clients, you're missing out on some of the best and most consistent business your firm could be doing.

#7: Keep Your Community In Mind

Make sure that you're keeping community standards in mind when you create your website.  If you're in a town that tends toward being more traditional and old-fashioned, you should probably keep your website on the more conservative and traditional end.  However, if you're in a vibrant and progressive downtown area and are trying to attract a younger clientele, you may want to have a website that has a little more fun.
 

While some states have relatively clear laws regarding attorney marketing and advertising, Florida is known for having some of the murkiest.  Attorneys often have a difficult time understanding the Florida laws, including whether certain types of advertisements are considered ethical.  On January 31, 2013, the Florida Supreme Court released its new rules on law firm advertising and marketing in the state of Florida.  Several of these changes are very important to any attorneys who are participating in online advertising, and several of the changes are still relatively confusing.  This guide will help you to understand the new regulations so that you can make sure your advertising and marketing are in compliance with state guidelines.

The Biggest Change: Websites Now Subject to Rules

For any attorneys interested in online marketing, there's no question what the biggest change from the Florida Supreme Court is.  In the past, Florida's attorney advertising regulations applied to television, print, and radio advertising, but for all intents and purposes, the internet was the Wild West—no regulations from the Florida Bar covered attorney websites and social media presences.  This policy was obviously developed prior to the development and success of the world wide web, but managed to persist until the recent Florida Supreme Court ruling.

According to new rules, websites and other online marketing tools are now subject to the same restrictions on content as other types of advertising.  For example, if you are going to include testimonials on your website or make claims regarding the quality of legal services you provide, the Florida Supreme Court's ruling requires that these claims be objectively verifiable.  Subjective claims, even on websites and other online marketing and promotional materials, are considered by the Florida Supreme Court to constitute misleading advertisements for attorneys.  Make sure that any content you include meets the new guidelines if you're already using testimonials or any opinions about your law firm.

Whither Social Media?

One place that many were hoping the Florida Supreme Court would provide better guidance is in the area of social media.  With so many people using social media platforms (over 1 billion on Facebook alone), understanding the rules and ethical problems that can come up with social media is critical for attorneys using the newest marketing techniques.  While some state bar associations have already released guidelines on the ethical and responsible use of social media in attorney marketing, Florida's ruling has stayed conspicuously silent on the subject.

In order to keep in the clear with your social media presence, it's good to make sure that it adheres generally to the quality standards required by a website.  If someone writes a very subjective testimonial on your Facebook wall, for example, you may want to delete the testimonial, writing the person who complimented you a nice note that lets them know you appreciate the sentiment but cannot include subjective assessments of law firm quality as part of your web presence.

Beware of Solicitation in Florida

Email solicitation is now also subject to the same kinds of rules as written communication with potential clients.  Both opt-in email lists as well as unsolicited direct email marketing are now subjected to the rules.  According to the Florida Supreme Court, the word “advertisement” must appear on every page in order to let consumers know that they are looking at attorney advertising rather than an objective report on a law firm.

Direct solicitation of clients in person is generally forbidden by Florida state ethics guidelines.  The Florida Supreme Court did not change this prohibition on direct in person solicitation in the new overhaul of the advertising ethics rules.

Solicitation through referral services must also be done in a transparent fashion. Any attorney referral services must state that attorneys using the service to take referrals are paying for their membership to the referral service.

Committees Decide Whose Ads Air

According to the new regulations, while websites do not need to be submitted to the bar for approval, all other types of attorney advertising, including print ads as well as radio and television commercials, must be submitted to the Florida State Bar at least 20 days before the ad is set to air.  This time allows the bar association to analyze the advertisement and make sure that it is in full compliance with regulations on attorneys.

While television, radio, and print advertising regulations have not been changed too much—so if you weren't having trouble with your ads before, they should still be fine with the bar association now—the bar association also recognizes that changes to website regulations may leave some law firms in need of guidance to make sure their online marketing campaigns follow ethics rules.  While firms cannot submit entire websites to the bar association, they are allowed to ask for guidance regarding specific aspects of their website—for instance, if there's a photograph, specific testimonial, or article you are worried may be a violation of current rules, you can submit it for the bar association's analysis and approval.

It costs $150 to have ads reviewed by the bar association if they are sent more than 20 days before publication, and $250 if they are late filed.

Non-Complying Websites

It's possible that with the new guidelines for websites for Florida attorneys, your firm could find itself in a state of noncompliance with the law.  If this happens to your firm, you will be sent a letter from the Florida Bar detailing the ways in which your website's advertising has failed to comply with ethics regulations.

Currently, the Florida Bar offers what is called a “take down period” for the 15 days after attorneys are notified that they are not in compliance with advertising regulations.  If you take down the offending portion of your website within 15 days of being notified by the bar association, you will not be subjected to any penalties from the bar.  However, you could be subject to fines or other disciplinary action for continuing to leave up content that the bar believes is not sufficiently objective or that may be regarded as misleading to consumers of legal services.

You went to the meetings, you brainstormed, you came up with great strategies for your social media plan in 2013.  The problem is, now that you're implementing the strategies you developed, they don't seem to be working the way you'd hoped.  While huge majorities of law firms are now using social media to some extent, only a very small fraction are getting the most out of their social networking endeavors.  Here are some signs that you may need to trash your current social media plan and start over from scratch.

#1: You Can't Get New Social Networking Connections

You've been trying for months, but the only people who will friend your solo practice on Facebook are your Aunt Emma and your college roommate from freshman year.  What gives?  Odds are, if you can't build initial social networking connections, it's for one of two reasons.

The first of these reasons is that your content just isn't good enough for people to start following you.  If you're never posting anything interesting, why would people choose to read your posts?  Start trying to actually inform and entertain with your posts, rather than just advertising your business.  Who wants to read a feed full of ads?  No one, that's who—stick to content that actually helps your audience.

The second reason that you may have a hard time building new social networking connections is that you're not putting sufficient time into talking to others.  You can't just ask people to listen to you without also being willing to listen to them.  By interacting with and befriending others on social networking sites, you make it much more likely that you'll be able to get the kinds of connections you hoped for when you were initially creating your social media strategy.

#2: You Can't Maintain Your Connections

Other firms have a different problem.  They have no issue initially getting social networking connections, but they notice a strange pattern: after someone is connected with them on a social network for a few weeks or months, they tend to disappear again.

This will always happen with some percentage of your followers—perhaps some of them only wanted to follow your firm for a brief time while deciding on who to hire for legal representation, for instance—but if you notice that it's happening more than usual, you may have an issue with posting too much or posting irrelevant content.  Social network users don't want their feeds to be full of your posts—odds are, they'd prefer for your posts to be somewhat infrequent, while reading more posts from their friends and family members.  Keep your posting numbers down and you'll see that people tend to stick with your feed longer.

#3: You Treat Social Media Like Traditional Advertising

If you've traditionally advertised with non-social media channels, you may be used to a very particular form of expressing yourself.  Usually, traditional advertising has as its goal expressing the biggest strengths of your law firm to people who are unfamiliar with it.

However, social networking has significantly different aims and goals, which means that you can't use the same techniques and expect the same results.  Social media doesn't want to hear you talk on and on about why your law firm is the best.  Instead, you should show why you're the best—responding to questions, helping people get more information about topics relating to your practice area, and so on.  This kind of activity will go much further toward establishing your credibility in social media spheres than any amount of advertising content.

#4: You Post Dozens of Times a Day

If you're posting all the time, it's probably going to start turning people off from your feed (see #2).  However, this kind of super-frequent posting is also an indicator that something isn't quite right with your social media strategy.  It suggests a certain degree of aimlessness in figuring out what topics you want to cover.  It may also suggest that you're taking a shotgun approach, unsure of what kinds of topics will interest your readers.  This “throw it against the wall and see what sticks” tactic is more likely to alienate your readers than to find you new ones.

#5: You Post Once a Week

After you've had your social media accounts for some time, it's easy to find yourself bored with them and unsure of what to post.  One post a day becomes a post every other day, which soon becomes two posts a week, then one.  Keep going that way and soon you won't have any social networking connections left—they'll think that you've abandoned the site and that you have no more interest in interacting with other users there.  If you're getting bored with your social media, mix it up!  Figure out a new platform to use or new things to talk about.  Consider joining groups and making comments—anything to get your posting frequency back up and you more excited about the possibilities of social networking for your law firm.

#6: You Spend All Your Time on Social Media

Sometimes social networking websites can start to feel like an incredible timesink.  If you find that you're putting way too much time into social media as compared to your other tasks, you may need to figure out ways to make your strategies more efficient.

Consider using tools including social media dashboards that can help you use your time more efficiently.  You should also consider keeping track of exactly what you're spending time on, so you can see where it is that you're losing productivity and efficiency.

#7: You're Using Strategies From Last Year

It's unfortunate, but your social networking strategies from even a year or two ago might not work today—even if they worked really well back then.  The ways that people use social networks are changing, as are the networks themselves.

Keep up to date about the latest ways to use social media websites, and you'll have strategies that work today, not ones that worked six months ago.  When you search for social media ideas on Google or other search engines, consider limiting your search for tips to just the last month or two.  These tips will be fresher and more helpful than older ones.

A few years ago, when less than a quarter of law firms were using any social media platforms at all, just being part of social media sites was an indicator that your law firm understood the technological landscape better than most.  Today, though, 9 in 10 law firms are using social media in some way, and 7 in 10 have specific social media plans for 2013.  If you're looking to go above and beyond in your approach today, you can't just sign up for accounts.  You need better, smarter ideas that will help you get ahead of the competition.  Here are seven ways that you can push your social media in 2013 beyond what you've done in the past.

#1: Get a Social Media Dashboard

If you're still actually logging into each social media website to make your updates and comments, stop!  While logging into individual websites is fine for individual users, law firms and other businesses need a more efficient way to handle their social media posting.  The easiest way to make sure that you're posting efficiently is to download a social media dashboard.

There are many of these dashboard programs, each allowing a different array of social media sites.  The programs are at a huge range of price points, from free to those that cost both an upfront purchase price and a monthly service fee.  Your law firm's needs and social media budget will determine which of these services is best.

When you use social media dashboard tools, you'll be able to monitor what people are saying about your brand on social networking sites.  You'll also be able to easily and seamlessly reply, ensuring that you always have a certain amount of control over the buzz surrounding your firm.

#2: Cross-Promote Blogs and Request Comments

When you write a blog—and most lawyers have one, today—you probably want to make sure as many people can read it as possible.  However, you may be promoting your blog on social media sites in a way that's likely to leave some people turned off.  A brief summary of a blog entry and a link won't get most people there.

Instead, try asking a question about your link.  Ask for comments, or stories, or anything—the main component of this strategy is to ask not just for a read, but for a response.  This keeps people reading actively and framing the issue in the way that you want.

#3: Start Conversations—Even Silly Ones!

Too many law firms think of social networking as a one way, outbound communication medium.  However, considering it a two-way communication medium will serve you much better.  Listen to the kinds of discussions and conversations your followers seem most likely to start.

Consider using laughter as part of your marketing arsenal.  Even if the conversation you're starting is a silly one—for instance, “name something you don't want to hear at your meeting with a personal injury lawyer,” with a few funny responses to get the ball rolling—this gets people to feel like they have a seat at your table and are honestly interacting with you.  This kind of genuine interaction is worth far more than yet another staid, professional post about your firm that gets no traction on anyone's social media feeds.

#4: Monitor Your Competition and Interact With Them

In the social media world, you can sometimes consider your competitors to be among your best friends.  Monitoring competitors to see how they're interacting with social media lets you see experiments performed—without you being the one to take the risk.  If you see something that your competition does that's successful, you can consider the best way to use similar strategies for your firm.  Don't copy too closely, but instead take a look at the underlying reasons that a competitor's strategy worked to gain new followers or spark a great discussion.

You should also consider actually talking to your competitors using social media.  There's no reason not to, and you can keep your interactions professional and aboveboard.

#5: Use Social Media Knowledge When Interacting

Before you start posting on any social networking site, you should make sure that you have a handle on the community norms and expectations.  One of the ways that law firms can truly go above and beyond in social media is making sure that they understand social networks well enough to look like regular users of the site, not just people there to make a quick marketing buck.  Consider having a personal account totally unattached to your real name, just so that you can start to learn the ways that people interact on each website.  This surveillance gives you a huge leg up on competitors who only know sites as marketing tools.

#6: Answer Questions With a Quick Turnaround

When someone asks a question on your Facebook wall or other social media feeds, how long does it usually take you to respond?  For most businesses, this turnaround time is anywhere from 12 to 48 hours on average, during business days. However, businesses that go above and beyond can do better.  Consider using your social media dashboard tools to make sure that you're answering all questions to the best of your ability within just a few hours.  This kind of fast turnaround will set you apart from your competition in a way almost nothing else can—people like when their attorneys are quick and responsive to their needs.

#7: Keep In Touch With Brand Ambassadors

If you know that one of your former clients or a social media connection is particularly good about evangelizing for your firm, that's a person that you need to stay in contact with.  Making sure that your brand ambassadors are informed about firm happenings is a great idea.  You can also ask brand ambassadors to help you by posting some of your best links.

An ideal brand ambassador is one who is connected to your firm voluntarily, rather than through bonds of employment or family.  Finding even a few former clients who can brag about your legal services is a great way to boost the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.

Search engine link popularity is now the #1 factor that matters when it comes to where your link appears in the rankings.  If you're not actively working to boost your SEO link popularity, you're going to fall further and further behind your more prepared competitors in 2013 and beyond.  In this guide, we're going to look at some of the hottest search engine link popularity topics of 2012 and examine how they can affect law firms.  Sit back and take some notes, because these tips will help you to get your website onto the top page, where the traffic flows freely.

Is Your Law Firm Prepared for 2013?

It's not exactly a secret that most lawyers hate marketing.  Search engine link popularity just isn't a very exciting topic to most legal professionals, which probably explains why so many lawyers are ignoring it.

Today, though, it's like everybody's living in the future—over 80 percent of people look for lawyers online before deciding on who will represent them, and over 90 percent of those people aren't looking past the first page of their search results.  That means that in order to get clients, you're going to need to put yourself on the first page for at least some search strings that people actually use.  

Google makes most of its rankings decisions based on your inbound links—both how many of them there are, and how authoritative each link is based on the linking website's PageRank.  If you're going to boost your SEO link popularity today, you'll need to not only focus on building large numbers of links but also on checking the quality of every link you get.

Use Caution When Boosting SEO Link Popularity

There is such a thing as trying too hard to boost your search engine link popularity.  If you spam the entire internet with link after link to your website, you might think that the boost to your SEO link popularity would automatically lead to a dramatic increase in your search ranks.  Not so—in fact, Google has several ways to detect when someone is gaming the system.

One of the easiest mistakes to make is building your link presence too fast.  No real website builds its search engine link popularity overnight.  Gradual, slow changes to your SEO link popularity will look more natural and will lead to a slow but steady positive change to where your website appears in search results.

The Difference Between Indexed and Non-Indexed Links

Not all links are created equal.  Not only are some links poorer quality than others for search engine link popularity purposes, but some links actually don't make any difference at all.  Why?  Because Google's “spiders” (the programs used to find new web pages and index their content) aren't able to find them.  If your inbound links can't be found by Google, there's no way for their link juice to add to your website's level of authority.

The best way to ensure that your links will be indexed and affect your SEO link popularity is to put them on websites with easy to navigate interfaces and site maps.  You may also want to actually build links to your links in order to increase your search engine link popularity—this is called nested or tiered link building.

Worry About Clients First, Search Engines Second

With all the focus in the search engine marketing world today, some marketers make the mistake of putting the machines first.  It's worth keeping in mind that the best way to build your SEO link popularity is still to get natural links from people interested in your content.  If you build for people first, and think of search engine link popularity as a nice bonus, you'll do much better than if you make barely readable pages full of content that an audience wouldn't care about but a search engine would.

Methods of Boosting Your SEO Link Popularity Naturally

Search engine link popularity isn't necessarily hard to build naturally, as long as you're good at creating content and can do so consistently.  Start joining and participating in social networking websites, and you'll see your SEO link popularity start to build up overnight.  It's not because you've done anything “black hat,” but because you've actually provided a way for people to find information they're looking for.

You can also improve search results and your search engine link popularity by listing yourself in a large number of directories, both for websites generally and for lawyers specifically.  Attorneys who aren't listed in these directories will have substantially lower SEO link popularity, and most directories are either free to participate in or cost only a nominal fee.

What Changes Will Happen in 2013?

Google tends not to talk about search engine algorithm changes until they come out, so it's difficult to speculate on exactly how SEO link popularity will change.  However, we can make some educated guesses based on how Google has dealt with search engine link popularity issues up until now.

So far in 2012, Google has been making big changes to their search algorithm to prevent people from gaining SEO link popularity through automated or “black hat” techniques that involve spam.  However, spam results are still very noticeable, especially when making searches for very competitive terms.  We can expect for Google to address this and tweak the way they correlate search engine link popularity with rankings next year.  So far, the trend has been toward penalizing automated SEO link popularity building, so you should start phasing out the use of automation programs, even if they're still working for now.

Differentiating Yourself From The Competition

The best way to make sure that your search engine link popularity continues to climb is having an effective brand identity and promoting that brand identity across the web.  If you just seem like another lawyer, without a lot to differentiate yourself from the competition, don't be surprised if your results are tepid.  Don't just do what everyone else is doing—if you want to be on page one, you need to build your search engine link popularity organically and contextually.

Running a free link popularity check tool isn't difficult, but most law firms aren't using a link popularity checker yet.  Why not?  It may be that many lawyers haven't yet really grasped how important link popularity is for their websites—so they don't even know that a link popularity check could be useful.  If you're not sure whether a link popularity check would be beneficial for your firm, this guide can help steer you in the right direction.  Here are seven different ways that a free link popularity check can make your firm's website easier to find for potential clients.

#1: Learn What You're Doing Right

When you run a link popularity check for the first time, you may be surprised by how many links you have.  It's very likely that the link popularity checker will reveal not just links that you've deliberately built for your firm, but also many other links that other people have made with or without telling you.  If you haven't run a free link popularity check in some time, or have never run one before, you're going to find out which of your pages tend to get the most links and which get the fewest.

By finding out what other people are linking to with a link popularity checker, you'll be able to understand which topics are most interesting to your viewers and which don't get as much traffic.  You may not have known that a particular niche was making so many waves for your firm online—this kind of understanding is one of the biggest advantages of running a link popularity check.

#2: Investigating the Competition

Knowing what your firm is doing right is only part of the battle.  The reality is, you've got competitors, and some of them may be doing a link popularity check right now—on both their website and your own.  Once you've already run a link popularity checker on your own website, do a free link popularity check on your competition's site as well.

The results from running a link popularity check on your competitor can be a veritable gold mine of information.  In many cases, you will find through your link popularity checker that they're listed on directory websites or other types of sites that you haven't yet built inbound links from.  You can get your links on the same sites, then re-run a free link popularity check on your own website to make sure they're showing up.

#3: Finding Different Websites For Links

When you use a link popularity check, you can find brand new websites to start posting on.  Maybe you'd never even heard of reddit.com, but now you find out through the link popularity checker that the social bookmarking website already includes three different inbound links for your blog.  Because of your free link popularity check, you can now start using websites where it's clear you or your competitors have had success.

#4: Learning Who's Following You

Having a great network of people is one of the best ways to build inbound links.  By using a link popularity checker, you can find out whether there are a few people or websites that are linking to you repeatedly and seem to be following you.  By identifying these people with your free link popularity check, you can start actually interacting with them and following them as well.

When you use your link popularity check in this way, you're actually building a small web community all of your own.  Make sure that when you reach out to these followers after running your link popularity checker, you don't just seek them out as a source of better links.  Treat them as people deserving of respect and consideration, and you'll have much better results and can possibly make a lifelong career networking connection because of your link popularity checker.

#5: Checking Reciprocal Links

If you've asked somebody for a link exchange, you may have used a link popularity check at the beginning of your arrangement to make sure they put up the link they promised.  But have you checked with a link popularity checker since then?  If not, running a free link popularity check can give you peace of mind and help you see whether anyone has broken their agreement.

If you run a link popularity check and find that someone is no longer running the link that they said they would be, you can talk to the webmaster and ask them to reinsert the link on their website.  If they refuse, you can take down the reciprocal link from your site.

#6: Making Sure Your Links Are Up To Date

When you redesign your website it's imperative to run a free link popularity check as soon as you can.  If you don't run a link popularity check periodically after a site revision, it's possible that your inbound links will direct to pages that you no longer maintain or update.  This means that people trying to follow these links won't get what they're coming for, and they probably won't search all over your site to find it.

When your free link popularity check reveals that some links are going to outdated pages, you have two options.  You can either alert the webmaster of the site where the link is hosted, so that he or she can change the link based on your link popularity checker results, or you can include a new redirect page on your website so that people don't get lost.

#7: Learning Where You Need Expansion

Your link popularity check can show you not only where you've already got links, but also where you haven't got them.  If a free link popularity check reveals, for instance, that you have few or no links from social networking sites, you may want to start pursuing a social networking strategy.  If the link popularity check reveals that you're not yet taking advantage of any type of commonly used link, you should definitely at least consider adding those links to your site.

A majority of marketers today rank link building as being a difficult or very difficult search engine optimization task.  How can your law firm improve link popularity numbers without running into problems with Google?  How can you increase link popularity in a way that will make sure that you're getting closer to the front page of search results every day?  Here we'll learn 8 ways to improve link popularity that work without “black hat” techniques.

#1: Improve Link Popularity With Quality, Not Quantity

If you learned how to increase link popularity in the early part of the 21st century and haven't brushed up since, you may need to start relearning some things.  Today, quality matters much more than just how many links you have.  If you want to improve link popularity for your website, you'll need to focus on getting links from websites with high amounts of traffic and high levels of authority.

Google will increase link popularity for a website more when it receives links from pages with a high Google PageRank.  This is because these websites are viewed as being more likely to be authoritative.  Similarly, because they are perceived as more difficult to get, inbound links coming from .edu top level domains will improve link popularity more than a similar link coming from a .com address with equivalent PageRank.

#2: Increase Link Popularity By Monitoring the Competition

If you're not sure where your strategy to improve link popularity could use improvement, use your competitors to get your next ideas.  Use a link popularity checker tool to find out what kind of links your competition is building, and then use those results to find your own link sources.  Whenever you find a website that your competitors are using to increase link popularity, you can work to get a link built in that website as well.

Consistent monitoring of your competitors can generate valuable intelligence about their strategies to increase link popularity.  Don't be too beholden to their results: remember that you should also strive to improve link popularity in ways that your competition hasn't yet figured out, so that you can more easily defeat them in the search rankings.

#3: Improve Link Popularity Organically and Contextually

Google has recently started paying more attention to whether a website is working to really improve the quality of its results or just the quantity.  Because of new, stricter scrutiny that Google is applying to websites' inbound links, you should try to make sure that many of your links are contextually based.  When you improve link popularity with contextual links, each of your links will grant you more link juice than if they had come from a website with very little in common with yours.

The best way, bar none, to increase link popularity is to have other people post your content and provide inbound links organically.  This means that people are posting links to your website without being asked or prompted to.  However, it can be difficult to improve link popularity in this way.  If you can't, try to at least make it look like your links have been naturally built rather than artificially.

#4: Increase Link Popularity Slowly For Best Results

A sudden spike in the number of links to your website won't lead to a meteoric rise and thousands of new hits.  Instead, it's likely to set you back, because Google will penalize websites that are seen to improve link popularity too quickly.  If you're in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, it may not happen today or tomorrow but you will be found out—and it can be absolutely devastating to search rankings when you are.

Start with three or four links per day at most when you start to improve link popularity.  If you increase link popularity more rapidly in a month or two, this won't look nearly as suspicious as if your link building had happened all at once.

#5: Monitor Your Google PageRank To Check Your Progress

You should consistently check your PageRank to see if your efforts to improve link popularity have translated into a direct result for your website.  If you're seeing your PageRank number slowly increase, you're probably in very good shape for the future.  Keep in mind that because PageRank is a logarithmic scale, even if you are an amazing web marketer, it's very unlikely that your website will ever become a site with PageRank 8 or 9.

#6: Use Analytics to Increase Link Popularity Efficiently

If you're just shotgunning your approaches, you may not know which method for improving link popularity is actually working best.  You should instead try a single method to increase link popularity at a time, and see how it works using analytics tools.  If you find that a particular method is ineffective, you can improve link popularity using a different method and then use analytics again for a side by side comparison.

#7: Improve Link Popularity With One Way Links

If you're using too many links that are reciprocal (that is to say, two way between sites), Google will assume that you have just been trading links.  It's fine to have some casual reciprocity, just don't make it the entire focus of your campaign to increase link popularity.  It's easy enough to build one way links today that you shouldn't have any trouble finding sources.  Reciprocal linking should only account for a small percentage of your overall links.

If you're not able to get enough one way links using conventional means, you may consider using an automated one way linking service.  However, this is usually a bad way to increase link popularity.  When you improve link popularity with one of these services, you're automating the link building process in a way that Google disapproves of.  If you're caught, you can expect to face stiff penalties in the rankings or even see your website de-listed from Google searches—the search engine optimization equivalent of the death penalty.

2012 has made significant changes to how link popularity is tracked and measured by Google.  As link popularity has become important, more firms than ever want to know how to search link popularity.  In this guide, we'll look at some of the reasons that law firms find it in their best interest to perform a link popularity search.  We'll also find out how to search link popularity effectively, and why it isn't always your website that you should be searching for.

Why Should We Perform a Link Popularity Search?

No matter what you've done to build your links, it's a good thing to know how to search link popularity.  Understanding searching techniques will make it much easier for you to monitor and track your reputation online.  By doing a link popularity search, you'll learn what kind of websites are linking to you and where you might be able to create profitable advertisements.  You'll also find out what kind of linking is most effective in bringing clients to your website.

When you thoroughly understand what kind of links you're getting, you can begin to develop a comprehensive plan for expanding your link presence.  Identifying existing strengths and weaknesses can make it easier to develop a more well rounded approach to link building.  This versatile approach is often neglected by online marketers desperate to cut corners instead of providing the very best advice and service.

How to Search Link Popularity: Getting Started

Before you actually start to learn how to search link popularity, it's a good idea to have your goals in mind first.  What kind of results do you want from your link popularity search?  Are you learning how to search link popularity so that you can compete more easily with a rival firm?  Will a link popularity search be used by your firm to figure out where to post your links next?  Understanding what you want will help you make better decisions about what tools to download and how to use them.

How to Search Link Popularity: Free Web Tools

The most common way for people to search link popularity today is by using websites that have free online tools.  These free online tools are a good way to keep people coming to websites, so nearly every search engine optimization guru has his or her own link popularity calculator for people who want to know how to search link popularity.

These tools change locations online constantly, and you may want to check more than one of these tools before you decide that you have a hard and fast number for your law firm's link popularity.  Doing a double or triple check with multiple tools is always a good idea, because disagreement among the results may be an indicator that the websites you're using for your link popularity search aren't working as well as you had hoped.

How to Search Link Popularity: Your Website

The first website that you should do a link popularity search on is, of course, your own.  Start by running a link popularity search that gives you your results for Google popularity.  Different tools will give you different information.  For example, if you learn how to search link popularity using seoprofiler.com, you'll find out how many of the pages of your website are in Google's Top 50 search results, as well as seeing a list of websites in direct competition with yours.

Other tools can just list a large number of backlinks in whatever search engine you prefer.  Don't hesitate to do a link popularity search that involves several different search engines—you may find that you have much better search rankings on one than another, and exploring why can help you create your next strategy for improving your link presence.

How to Search Link Popularity: Competitor Websites

Once you've looked at some link popularity search reports for your website, it's time to turn your attention elsewhere.  Where are your competitors building their links?  Are they getting inbound links by getting directory entries, or by having social media link to their site regularly?  Analyzing where your competitors' links come from can give you fantastic ideas for helping out your own website.

After you learn how to search link popularity, you can do it for any website at all.  If there's a legal website that you're in awe of when it comes to search engine optimization, a link popularity search can take away the mystery and make it easier to imitate that site.

Tracking Your Link Popularity Search Results

It's great to know how to search link popularity and run a search, but just one search is of limited use.  You'll want to use consistent tracking of link popularity in order to make sure that you're seeing whenever a new inbound link appears for your website.

At least once every week or so, you should be looking at a link popularity search.  Tracking changes over time to these results can be helpful in identifying patterns of behavior.

What an Ideal Link Popularity Search Will Show

Google monitors link popularity because some patterns indicate that the popularity has been built artificially.  If your link popularity search reveals that almost all of your links come from the same few IP addresses, you are probably skating on very thin ice with Google and should watch out—your website could be sandboxed at any second.

What you want to do when you learn how to search link popularity is to generate a real variety of links.  You should make sure that you're cultivating links of several different types on many different websites.  Your link popularity search should indicate that you're using varied anchor text and that you don't use the same content over and over for all of your inbound links.

Maintaining link variety is the only way to ensure that Google doesn't identify your website as being too optimized.  What's more, when you have a wide variety of links, you'll be substantially more invulnerable to new spam detection techniques.