Not every website marketing strategy is a winner.  In fact, many website marketing strategies that seem on first glance like they'd save you money and be effective have unforeseen negative consequences.  In this guide, we'll take a look at eight of the most common website marketing strategy mistakes that law firms make.  You'll learn why each is a mistake and how to avoid the problems that each of these website marketing strategies can cause.

Strategy #1: Letting Someone Else Make All Your Content

In the interest of expediting a website redesign, a number of law firms have had outside marketing companies making everything for them, from attorney biography pages to content about the law.  This kind of hands-off website marketing strategy is a bad one for attorneys.  It's absolutely possible to have website marketing strategies that incorporate some off-site content production, but people will also want to see a personal touch on at least some of your site.

Even if you're having someone else make a lot of your website, you should take charge of your attorney biography page.  Studies show that this is the page of your website most people are likely to visit immediately before placing a call to your firm—and that means you need to seal the deal with you, not content someone else made.  Make sure your brand image is conveyed, but also the real personality of the attorney you're writing about.  Professionalism doesn't have to come at the expense of a good sense of humor or a vivid storytelling style biographical narrative.

Strategy #2: Being a Late Adopter of New Tech and Platforms

If you keep waving off new ideas for website marketing strategies, saying that it's a fad and you'll look at it again in a year or two, remember this: in the web world, a lot of strategies really only have a useful life of a few years.  By getting in on technologies and platforms late, you risk spending money on a new marketing technique just as it's getting past its expiration date.  That's not a position that any law firm wants to be in.

Consider taking a more daring approach to your website marketing strategy this year.  Often, website marketing strategies that employ new platforms are relatively inexpensive to deploy because the user bases and costs are still smaller.  By getting in on the ground floor of a new online community, you can make sure that you're gathering up market share before your competitors even realize the place exists.

Strategy #3: Market to Everyone

The more people you'll market to, the more people will call your firm and the more cases will come in, right?  Well, not exactly.  It's incredibly difficult—and, moreover, incredibly expensive—to market to everyone.  Expensive and very popular keywords aren't a good strategy for most attorneys.  Instead, remember: you know what you're good at.  Your website marketing strategy should target the kind of people who would be interested in what you do best, not people who are unlikely to need your services.

Targeting is among the biggest website marketing strategies that too many attorneys are missing out on.  There's nothing wrong with selling to a niche instead of to the whole world.  Optimizing your site for people who are looking for your exact kind of lawyer lets you engineer a targeted website marketing strategy that will pay dividends for months or years to come.

Strategy #4: Set It and Forget It

One thing that many attorneys have started to do when they get busy is to use “set it and forget it” programs to update their social media on a regular basis.  While it's fine to set some updates, the second part of that rhyme is something you should avoid at all costs.  Never forget what you've got scheduled and coming up.  Why?  Because when companies do that, they can end up making an embarrassing faux pas when a news event happens and their pre-made content now seems to be ignoring the event or even mocking it.  This is the kind of public relations disaster that you want to avoid at all costs in your website marketing strategies.

Strategy #5: Social Media Marketing in a Hurry

To cut down on time spent making social media updates, some firms have implemented a social media strategy involving cross-posting.  This means that they're posting the exact same status update or content on all of their social media channels.  These website marketing strategies may seem to save time, but what they really do is visibly communicate with consumers who follow you on multiple websites that you don't care to take the time to really engage with social media.

Strategy #6: Eyeballing and Ballparking

Just trying to guesstimate whether a particular website marketing strategy is actually working for your company isn't enough.  You need actual analytics using real data gathered from your site visitors in order to understand when your website marketing strategies are succeeding or failing.  Estimates are notoriously inaccurate, and confirmation bias can play tricks on you if you want to believe a particular website marketing strategy is successful.

Strategy #7: Ignoring Your Competitors

If you think that you don't need to pay attention to what competing firms are doing, and that you should just run your own strategies without checking, think again.  One of the most effective ways to learn about the holes in your website marketing strategy is to do real competitor research.  Don't be afraid to learn from anyone who knows what they're doing—even if that person is a rival or competitor.

Strategy #8: Neglecting Your Offline Presence

Just because website marketing strategies are a big deal doesn't mean that they operate completely on their own.  Your offline reputation and trustworthiness matters a lot to whether people will be referred to your website.  You need to make sure that you're visible enough in your community that you're building both online and offline contacts.  Website marketing strategies work best when they also take into account your referral clients, who may be checking out your site not to decide between you and a competitor, but whether to trust a referral they've received from a friend or relative.

Building a devoted audience online is one of the best routes to a steady stream of online referrals, high search rankings, and growth even in tough economic times.  However, audience development can be difficult to do—and it only takes one or two mistakes to lose significant portions of even the most dedicated and loyal followers.  Here are seven strategies for building engaged readers who will be happy to become your brand ambassadors.

#1: Let Your Audience Know Who They're Talking To

Too many law firms try to have a neutral looking and sounding profile, and they try to make sure that their content doesn't seem to come from any person in particular, choosing to use “we” instead of “I” and so on.  This is an easy mistake to make, but the truth is that people like for their internet updates to have personality.  It's easier to let that personality shine through when your profile makes it clear who's doing your posts, whether that's an attorney or your social media professional.  Audience development can only happen when you're transparent about who's communicating with who.

#2: Don't Make Everything All About You

Nobody likes the person at the party who talks about nothing but himself—his job, his house, his kids, his pets, his political views.  But when it comes to making online profiles, too many law firms become “that guy.”  They start posting only about their achievements and accomplishments, making their Twitter account look like a brag list and their Facebook feed read like a supplement to a CV.

That's not how you want your social media accounts to look, because that's not how to do real audience development.  What kind of audience, other than the families of the attorneys working for your firm, just wants to see a list of bragworthy items?  Sure, it's fine to have the occasional shout-out about a successful case, but you should also be talking about items in the news relating to your practice area, cases in other areas of the country, and common questions and misconceptions.  If you're not actively helping other people understand what you do and what the law is, you're not doing all the audience development you could be.

#3: Be Real, And Don't Sound Like a Script

Which kind of commercial do you remember better—one with a neutral point of view that calmly tells you a list of facts, or one with personality and a real voice behind it?  The worst thing you can do for your social media brand is to make it too neutral and bland.  Audience development requires developing a brand personality that is outgoing and positive.

This also means you can't sound like a customer service script.  Too much jargon and not enough talking like a regular person will mean that your statements are simply harder to believe.  You can use technical language where it's appropriate, but talking in corporate buzzwords is a sure way to kill your audience development before it's had a chance to take off.

#4: Handle Criticism with Professionalism and Grace

One place where a lot of smaller businesses fall apart is when dealing with critique.  Criticism can actually generate fantastic opportunities for audience development, but too many attorneys squander these opportunities because they let their egos get in the way.  Forget the ego—if you make a mistake, the best thing you can do in social media is own up to it as quickly as possible and move on.  The internet has a short news cycle, and what may have seemed scandalous for a moment is quickly forgotten if a sincere apology is quick in coming.

The worst thing that you can do is personally attack the people criticizing you.  If you are receiving comments that are harassing or defamatory, you can delete these comments and even report them to the social network where they were sent, but you should never act rude to anyone.  It makes you look like you've lowered yourself to the level of your defamers, and that's a position professionals should never put themselves into.

#5: Be Careful When Making Jokes

Something that seems like a good moment of levity during a staff meeting may become offensive when it's broadcast to the public.  Make sure that any jokes you make in social media aren't inappropriate, or you could find your audience development efforts stymied.  It's fine to use humor as part of your audience development strategy, but the humor should never detract from your image as a responsible and professional person.  For example, making jokes about natural disasters should always be considered off limits—this may seem obvious, but several companies including American Eagle found out during Hurricane Sandy that people don't think hurricane jokes are very funny when people are dying, especially when the joke-makers are high and dry.

#6: Open the Floor for Questions and Discussion

When you're posting a link to your blog content or someone else's writing, don't just present the link without comment.  Describe something about it, and then open up with a relevant question for your audience to answer.  Audience development relies on creating a rapport with audience members, and this can be tricky if you're not making posts that lend themselves to comments.

By opening the floor for discussion of a question, you're also making it so that you'll have more comments than you would have otherwise.  Make sure that you have someone watching social networks so that you don't lose out on the audience development opportunities from joining in these conversations.

#7: Moderate Comments Made in Bad Faith

Don't be afraid to delete comments from a discussion if they're not adding anything productive.  Name calling and specious arguments can make people arguing in good faith feel like they're outnumbered, and you want to keep the level of discussion high.

This doesn't mean, however, that you should delete every comment that argues with someone else.  As long as the argument seems to be proceeding without anyone getting too angry, it's probably good for your audience development to let it unfold.  You may want to moderate with some factual information if either or both parties are using misconceptions to inform their views.

If you use Foursquare and Twitter, there are several different ways that you can integrate your law firm marketing campaigns on both social media platforms.  Foursquare on Twitter is a relatively new phenomenon, but the 140 million users of Twitter and 20 million users of Foursquare have significant overlap.  In this guide, we're going to show you reasons that your law firm may want to integrate Foursquare and Twitter for ease of use and better results.  Many of these developments are very recent and only started in 2012, so keep an eye on Foursquare and Twitter news so that you can be sure you're getting the most accurate and up to date information about social media integration.

#1: Expansion of Foursquare's Local Search Results

Today is the best time ever to integrate Foursquare and Twitter.  Until recently, it wasn't easy to put your check-ins from Foursquare on Twitter, or share your business promotions in a tweet from Foursquare.  Today, though, it's far easier—and what's more, tweeting your Foursquare promos can be a great way to reach a much bigger audience than just Foursquare's.

When you use a post from Foursquare on Twitter, as of October 2012, anyone can use Foursquare's local search service to find more information out about a business or venue.  When you use Foursquare and Twitter in combination, then, any Twitter user—even if they have no account on Foursquare at all—can access the information about your law firm that you've made available through the Foursquare local search results.

#2: Twitter's Massive, Connected Audience

Using Foursquare on Twitter isn't just a good idea because Twitter has more users.  It's also a good idea because the kinds of people who use Foursquare and Twitter are among the most likely to be influential with friends and family members.  Early adopters of social networking can be among your best and earliest brand ambassadors, making sure that your information isn't just carried through social networks but also into conversations taking place in homes and businesses.

Using Foursquare on Twitter can, however, backfire if you try to take advantage of this audience too much.  If your Twitter audience feels that your Foursquare on Twitter posts have become excessive, they may stop following you or simply gloss over your links when they see them.  This is why it's always a good idea to limit your Foursquare and Twitter posts to a few per day.  There is no need to overwhelm anyone with your social media presence—limit your Foursquare on Twitter, spread your posts out, and you'll find that it's substantially more effective.

#3: Search Engine Optimization Inbound Links

Because Foursquare's local search is now public, rather than only being used by registered members, it has entered the market with Yelp and Google+ Local.  With this entry into a new market, Foursquare also provides you with a new way to use its results to your advantage: as a search engine optimization tool.

By using Foursquare on Twitter, you'll be able to gather inbound links that bring people to your website or to positive tips about your law firm.  This makes it so that the reviews are indexed more easily and show up earlier in search results.

#4: Building Your Online Reputation

By promoting your account on Foursquare on Twitter, you'll be able to solicit new reviews.  Foursquare and Twitter can work very well together if you're trying to create a specific brand image.  By asking your social media followers to give you a positive tip on Foursquare, you're ensuring a supply of reviews from the people who are most likely to write a thoughtful, sincere review.  These are the kinds of tips that tend to bring people in when you're using Foursquare and Twitter.

If you want to build your reputation using Foursquare on Twitter, you may be thinking about writing some or all of your positive tips yourself.  However, Foursquare and Twitter differ in this important respect: while Twitter still allows spammy accounts to operate, Foursquare tends to shut down efforts to game their tips system as soon as they hear about them.

#5: Ease of Offering Discounts and Promotions

Maybe your Foursquare promotion was so great that you want to extend it to a wider audience.  One of the best parts about using Foursquare and Twitter combined is that it's easier than ever to make sure that your promotions are reaching an audience that will be excited about them and willing to act.

If your law firm is heavily involved in charitable giving, you may also want to start a charitable donation campaign using your law firm's Foursquare and Twitter pages.  This has been highly effective for many companies, both for raising funds for charity and creating goodwill in the online community.

#6: Monitoring and Replying to Tips

When people are talking about you on Foursquare and Twitter, you need to know about it.  If you're not already using both websites, it can be much harder to monitor what's being said and who's saying it.  In some cases, you may want to actually hire a reputation management firm to help you ensure that your presence on Foursquare and Twitter is helping your company and projecting the brand image you want to portray to consumers.

Whenever someone leaves a tip, you should avoid defensiveness or argument.  No matter what, this never looks good to potential clients.  Instead, show patience and good will, and you'll find that you're able to keep new business coming in.

#7: Monitoring the Competition

You're not the only one who's thinking about using Foursquare and Twitter in combination with each other.  Your competitors may also be using Foursquare on Twitter to promote their own law firms.  If this is happening, you need to make sure that they're not getting ahead of you.  Don't try to copy your competition's style, but do try to take ideas from them.

For example, if you find that your competitors are running geo-fencing in a three block radius around a particular area that isn't where their building is located, you may want to think about what they're focusing on and why.

At a 2009 music festival in Austin called SXSW (South by Southwest), two remarkably similar social networks were charging ahead at full speed.  Gowalla and Foursquare were both social platforms that allowed users to check in to various locations, letting other people know where they were and what they were doing. Soon, Gowalla vs. Foursquare was the biggest battle in geolocationally based social media.  However, as time went on, the two companies went in very different directions.  This guide will help you understand the differences between Gowalla and Foursquare, so that you can better anticipate how social media trends will affect companies in the future.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: How They Began

Both Gowalla and Foursquare started as ways for people to connect with others about where they were, where they were going, and what venues they enjoyed.  If you were at a location, you could not only check in, but also see other users that were in the same place.  This allowed people to connect and gather in ways that had previously been difficult or impossible.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: Where They Are Now

The Gowalla vs. Foursquare battle continued as the two networks gained users.  Foursquare's executives were able to form relationships with some major corporations, including Starbucks.  The Foursquare team worked on making their system capable of doing charitable donations for companies who wanted to use charity drives as a marketing campaign.

Gowalla, on the other hand, used innovative design, but could never capture as much market share as Foursquare.  As Gowalla realized that it couldn't keep up with Foursquare, it decided to use the old adage: “if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.”  It made itself into a service that could actually post location information to Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare as well as to other Gowalla users.  Gowalla's service also allowed users to see cross-platform check in activity for all of these social media platforms.

No matter what Gowalla tried, it couldn't seem to win the Gowalla vs. Foursquare traffic war.  It first became a subsidiary of Facebook and tried to exist within that social networking site.  In early 2012, Gowalla's doors closed for good, leaving Foursquare as the undisputed champion in the Gowalla vs. Foursquare war.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: The Discount Difference

Why did Gowalla fail where Foursquare succeeded?  One of the biggest differences had to do with Gowalla being unwilling to capitalize on discounts and other types of direct marketing offered by companies.  This lack of promotions and discounts was a design choice on the part of Gowalla's design team, but resulted in businesses having fewer reasons to really make use of the service.

While both of the services offered various badges (and many critics felt that Gowalla's badges were actually more innovative—some even entitled users to real-world prizes), in 2012 the quest for badges seems to have lost its luster for many users.  Instead, it seems like most users now have gotten over the novelty of social connection and are more concerned about getting deals from the companies they shop at.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: The Location Difference

Location, location, location is the realtor saying, and it turns out that location made a big difference to the Gowalla vs. Foursquare showdown.  Gowalla was headquartered and founded in Austin, Texas, which is a technologically well-developed and hip city.  However, Foursquare located itself in New York City.

Why did the location make such a big difference?  Because the New York City location of Foursquare made it much easier to attract an initial critical mass of users.  People tend to go to the social websites where their friends are.  This was made clear by another social networking battle—Myspace vs. Facebook.  The more users that a service has, the easier it is to attract even more.  Even a slick design couldn't save Gowalla from its poor location choice.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: The Usability Difference

While most critics agreed that Gowalla had a beautiful interface—significantly less cluttered and more intuitive than Foursquare—Gowalla wasn't always as usable as Foursquare.  For several months, many users complained that the location requirements for Gowalla were so tight that they didn't realistically work with most contemporary GPS systems.  People had a difficult time checking into any locations except the very largest.

As Gowalla went into decline, the same critics who had praised it originally seemed to understand what had gone wrong.  Some speculated that in the Gowalla vs. Foursquare wars, Foursquare had actually wanted to connect people with their service while Gowalla used it only as a place to show off their interface and design.

Gowalla vs. Foursquare: What It Means For Marketers

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from the Gowalla vs. Foursquare saga.  If you're a law firm marketing professional, you need to decide which social networks are most important for you to use, and be willing to pull the plug on services that seem to no longer be bringing in new business.  Social networks have a tendency to come and go, and it's a good idea to keep up with what's happening with them, so that you know when it has become a waste of your time to keep developing marketing campaigns for an app or website that is becoming increasingly useless as a marketing tool.

How do you know which social networks will survive?  Gowalla vs. Foursquare can give us a lot of insight in this area.  What we can learn from the Gowalla vs. Foursquare battle is that usability trumps design, every time.  No matter how beautifully designed or intuitive an interface is, it won't be able to overcome usability problems if it has a more usable competitor working in the same niche.

Gowalla also illustrates some of the patterns of social networks that are circling the drain.  When you see services expand their offerings, try to combine with other networks, and so on, you should be thinking about whether they're really growing or whether they're just getting desperate for new users.
 

Less than .1% of web pages have a high or very high Google Page Rank value.  If you're trying to improve your website's total PR value, you may want to start using a Google page ranking tool.  But trying to find the right Google Page Rank tool can feel confusing: there are so many different kinds, and many appear to be basically identical!  Which tools will help you the most in your law firm's quest to reign supreme in your legal marketing endeavors?  Keep reading to find out.

Problem: Learning the Ropes
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: Google Toolbar

Let's say that you're totally new to the whole idea of page ranking in the first place, and want a gentle introduction to the subject.  The best Google page ranking tool for you probably comes from Google itself, in the form of the Google Toolbar.  This toolbar works in several different ways—including giving you a handy Google search input field any time you need it without having to open up a separate browser tab—but can also be used to start identifying Google PageRank numbers.

In order to identify a website's PR value using this Google page ranking tool, you'll need to download and install the Google toolbar to the browser of your choice.  Then, go to the URL of the website that you want to use the Google Page Rank tool on.  Once you arrive at the website, hover over the Page Rank icon to get a number between 0 and 10.  That number is the current Page Rank of the website.

Keep in mind that Page Rank is only updated by the toolbar periodically.  There's always a chance that your PR value will increase or decline the next time the toolbar updates.  The integer value given to you by this Google page ranking tool is created by rounding off all decimal places, so keep in mind that you can't tell whether your actual Page Rank is (for example) 2.7 or 3.4.

Problem: Understanding What PR Means to Search
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: SEOQuake

If you're looking for a Google page ranking tool, you already probably have a pretty good idea that Page Rank matters for search results and also for inbound links.  If you want to be able to see a quick overview of Page Rank as well as a number of other statistics all at once, download SEOQuake.  This Google page ranking tool works by making your searches look different.

How different?  Next to each website URL that you see, you'll also see several different statistics and numbers.  One of them, PR, indicates the website's current Google PageRank.  This tool isn't just a Google page ranking tool—you can also find out how your website fares on other popular ranking websites like Alexa.

Problem: Seeing PageRank for All Website Pages
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: Page Rank Bar

One of the most popular types of tools that currently exists for checking PR values is the Google page ranking tool type exemplified by Page Rank Bar.  While the vast majority of these tools are functionally identical and you can use any you choose, we'll go into Page Rank Bar as our Google Page Rank tool of choice for checking all web pages on a website.

Page Rank value is based on a per webpage basis, not on your site's total PageRank.  However, total PageRank does actually matter to search engine rankings, so you should download this Google page ranking tool and install it on your own website.  After you do this, you'll be able to quickly access a list of your links and the Page Rank value for each one.

Problem: Getting a Historical Overview of Your PR
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: SEOMoz

Understanding how your website is doing on a historical basis is a great way to figure out whether you're still going in the right direction.  However, most of the time, your Google Page Rank tool will only tell you what a website's present PR value is.  Enter SEOMoz, a Google page ranking tool that actually takes a look over how your PageRank has changed over time.

If you use this Google Page Rank tool, you'll see not only the changes to your PR value, but also the dates when those changes occurred.  You can then check your own marketing initiatives and records so that you can tell what drove the positive and negative changes to your Page Rank.  This is a great way to make sure that you're using only the marketing techniques that are most effective for raising your web traffic numbers.

Problem: Checking a List of URLs
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: Multi Page Rank Checker

If you have a list of URLs to check, you may want a Google page ranking tool that can display the results all at once instead of having to check each result individually.  The Multi Page Rank Checker allows you to list up to 25 URLs at a time so that you can receive a list of results tailored to exactly what you need.  What's more, you can always use both your own website and web pages from your competitors to do some direct side by side comparison this way.

Problem: Checking for Page Rank Fraud
Google Page Rank Tool Solution: Fake Page Rank Checker

If you're thinking of buying a domain name for your new legal website, you may have heard that some unethical people are using domain name fraud and 301 redirects to make their website appear to have a higher PR value than it actually has.  Fake Page Rank Checker helps you to make sure that the Page Rank value you're seeing in your searches is real, and not brought about by any fraudulent redirects.  This Google page ranking tool can save you a lot of money if you're at risk of buying a website that wouldn't have gotten you the return on investment you expected.

If you can improve your Page Rank by even one or two levels, your website could see increases in both traffic and advertising revenue.  If you want to know how to improve your Page Rank, though, you'll probably see a lot of different—and sometimes contradictory—advice from different sources.  Here in this guide, you'll get unbiased advice about how to improve Page Rank without sacrificing your website's overall quality.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 1: Better Hosting

You may think that your quest to improve your Page Rank begins when you upload your website's content to the internet.  However, even before you create the first page of your website, there are things that you can do to make sure it will be easier to improve your Page Rank.

A good hosting provider is one that has good uptime, low latency, and high speed.  You'll want to base your hosting package on the needs of your law firm, but many firms find that they are better served by having an entire server than by using shared hosting solutions.  You should also make sure that there are both on and offsite backups of all of your website's files, in case they were ever to become corrupted or otherwise lost.  Downtime can decrease a website's Page Rank very rapidly, so to improve your Page Rank you will need to keep your website up consistently.

Google actually bases some of your search engine rankings on whether your web pages can load fast.  When you make it easier to improve your Page Rank through fast hosting, you'll also be ensuring that your pages appear earlier in search results.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 2: Site Indexing

Another way that you can improve the Page Rank of your website is by making sure that all of the links on your site are properly indexed by Google.  One of the fastest and best ways to do this is to build a site index.  Google and Bing list their requirements for site index listings on their respective websites.  Once you've built an index according to their guidelines, you can submit the index, which makes it substantially easier for search engines to list all of your content in searches faster.

Even with site indexing, it's important to remember that it will take time to improve the page rank for each of the individual web pages you've listed.  Make sure that you're giving these pages adequate time to be indexed by Google so they can receive hits.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 3: Original Content

One of the best ways to make sure that your website is getting the biggest boost possible from every new page you create is making sure that your pages have original content.  You shouldn't copy freely from other websites and expect for your site to become highly ranked—Google makes it very hard to improve your Page Rank without showing a large percentage of original content.

While your content should be search engine optimized and follow basic standards for keyword density, it's also important to build inbound links to your website.  Inbound linking, especially if the inbound links are themselves from quality original content, will do a great deal to improve your Page Rank overall.  Any guide that tries to tell you how to improve Page Rank without using quality content is probably trying to sell you on a short term solution, but you need to think about the long term.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 4: Follow Guidelines

Keeping updated about webmaster guidelines for the search engines you're submitting your website to is an important part of making sure that your Page Rank is as high as it can possibly be.  If you don't follow webmaster guidelines, in the very worst case, you could actually end up de-listed from a search completely because of efforts to improve your Page Rank by buying links.

Most offenses won't get you de-listed, but they can lead to search penalties.  If you're penalized, some or all of your links may no longer contribute any amount of authority to your website.  In order to improve your Page Rank after you've received penalties, you'll usually need to contact Google and show them that you have stopped any violations that you had previously been accused of.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 5: Social Networks

Social networking is one of the best ways to improve Page Rank today.  That's because onb social networks, it's incredibly easy for people to share any content that they find interesting or exciting.  If you post something to a Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter account, for example, you may find that it was shared by several people—and that then, several friends of those people shared the content as well.

This kind of spread is called “viral” because when it's done right, the content spreads almost like an epidemic, from one person to another.  Attorneys should be trying to promote viral marketing wherever possible for their law firms, because this is the updated version of the “word of mouth” referral that used to bring in the bulk of new legal clients to law firms.

Whenever you make posts to social networks, you're increasing the number of views on your pages as well as the number of inbound links going to them, which are two of the biggest factors in how to improve Page Rank.  Keep in mind that fresh, original content is much more likely to go viral than a stale rehash or a copied article.

How to Improve Page Rank Step 6: Analyzing Results

You can't really improve your Page Rank efficiently until you've tried a few methods and determined which is actually working for your website.  You should analyze your Page Rank historically, using a tool like SEOMoz, and then determine which of your strategies for improving Page Rank numbers has seemed to garner the most benefit.