Foursquare is currently the #1 source for geolocation based social search, after beating out several competitors.  With 10 million users so far in the United States and a rapidly growing user base, Foursquare has received a lot of attention from marketing blogs.  In this guide, you'll learn what Foursquare blog writers have said about the app and how it's being used in 2012.  Every blog about Foursquare has a different perspective, and some of those perspectives may be biased.  We'll try to strip away some of that bias to look at major trends through the eye of Foursquare blog writers.

Foursquare's Biggest Change: More Local Search

One of the biggest things that Foursquare blog writers are talking about in 2012 is a brand new feature.  In October of 2012, every blog about Foursquare erupted with the news: Foursquare would no longer just allow its local search results to be open to users who were making use of the app and check in procedures.

Instead, Foursquare has decided to market itself in a wider way—a way that has made Foursquare blog writers very happy and that puts it into competition with bigger social media empires, like Yelp and Google+ Local.  Anyone can now look at Foursquare's local search results, regardless of whether they have registered with the service or not.  According to nearly every blog about Foursquare, this is a major development.

With the new focus on providing local search to all users, Foursquare has decided to position itself as a social media leader.  Not every blog about Foursquare is convinced that this expansion is a good idea.  Some Foursquare blog writers believe that this additional competition will cause Foursquare to lose sight of its original mission and stop catering to the audience that made the site popular in the first place.

Foursquare's Major User Expansion

One of the things that nearly every Foursquare blog agrees on is that local search will mean a big expansion to a service that already has been growing at a very rapid rate.  When they blog about Foursquare today, many writers have mentioned that the traditionally very young user base of Foursquare is going to be giving way to older users as the service expands.

This is very good news for attorneys and legal marketing professionals.  If it's possible to reach older segments of the consumer market, as many Foursquare blog writers now claim, then it's much easier for lawyers to actually get to their target market.

Another discussion going on in more than one blog about Foursquare expansion is the geographic expansion of the service.  While Foursquare started in New York (and many Foursquare blog writers originally felt it would never be successful outside of the city), today's Foursquare offers a huge number of badges in places from Manhattan to Ghana.

Foursquare Eclipses the Competition

Foursquare blog writers had a huge moment in early 2012, when Gowalla, its biggest competitor, announced that it would be shutting down operations permanently.  It seemed like every blog about Foursquare wanted to analyze the differences between the two services, so that they could figure out lessons about having a successful social geolocation based service.

Today, Foursquare has over 20 million subscribers worldwide, and most Foursquare blog writers believe that number will continue growing for the foreseeable future.  At this point, most writers who blog about Foursquare will tell you that it's now the only geolocation based social networking service that your business needs to use.

Fewer Games and Badges, More Tips and Search

While the Foursquare blog world started by talking about check ins and badges, today's Foursquare users are changing.  As they change, each blog about Foursquare is starting to realize that users no longer care as much about earning badges.  This was primarily a focus of the early adopter group of Foursquare users.

Today's users aren't necessarily social media hounds, though many of them are.  Blog writers who blog about Foursquare now emphasize the necessity of promotions and providing information.  Businesspeople who don't offer promotions, discounts, or up to date information about their business are likely to find themselves without many new clients from Foursquare—even if they try to play the kind of social games that Foursquare marketers were successful with at first.

The Usefulness of Geo-Fencing Tactics

One of the most innovative aspects of Foursquare in 2012 is the ability to geo-fence.  According to writers who blog about Foursquare, geo-fencing is a new technique that allows you to draw an invisible “fence” around a particular locational perimeter.  After this fence is drawn, you can create promotions that will pop up for any Foursquare users who are inside of your perimeter.

This can be very useful for targeting people who are already very close to your law offices.  You may also, if your practice involves working closely with another type of business, want to target locations around that business with your geo-fence.  This is one of the easiest ways to ensure that your advertising is being displayed to the exact people who are most likely to be able to take action as a response to seeing the ad.

Using Your Blog and Foursquare Together

Don't neglect to combine some of your social media experiences.  By using your blog and Foursquare in combination, you can advertise discounts and specials two different ways and reach different audiences.  Blog audiences tend to be slightly older, in general, than Foursquare, and blogs are more likely to attract other professionals and fellow attorneys.

Your blog and Foursquare can work symbiotically, each helping to promote the other.  For example, you can promote your law blog using Foursquare tips and responses.  What's more, you can also make sure that potential clients know that you have updated your business information on Foursquare, and you can ask former and current clients to help you by providing positive Foursquare tips regarding your legal practice.

One of the hottest social media apps for smartphones is mobile Foursquare.  Foursquare is a service that helps people connect to businesses and other venues that are in their immediate area.  Not many attorneys are yet making use of Foursquare for marketing purposes, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be.  Particularly if your clientele skews toward young urbanites, you may do very well by using mobile Foursquare to promote your business and get a leg up on your competition.  Here are seven quick tips that can help you get the most out of your Foursquare strategies as 2012 draws to a close.

Tip #1: Use Mobile Foursquare Individually First

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a business is trying to use a new social media service without really acquainting yourself with it first.  You'd be surprised how much norms can differ, and what kinds of faux pas you can commit if you're not truly familiar with how users relate to the service.

For this reason, it's usually a good idea to build your own individual account first.  This will let you check out the service and learn the ropes without putting your law firm's reputation on the line.  Having a personal account will help you to have more relevant and less generic campaigns when you use mobile Foursquare.

Tip #2: Learn How Competitors Use Foursquare

When you initially build your individual account, you should first check to see whether any of your competitors have already been listed on Foursquare.  If some of them are already using it to make promotions and special offers, or to advertise with a new campaign, you should monitor their mobile Foursquare presence to see how they're doing and what kinds of campaigns they've been successful with.

You should also keep track of what people are saying about your competitors.  If people are praising a specific aspect of your competition when they submit mobile Foursquare tips, you may want to see if you can incorporate that aspect into your own law firm.  This kind of competition research is one of the biggest advantages of using social media—without social networks, it's incredibly hard to get that kind of data without resorting to unethical tactics.

Tip #3: Make Your Website Mobile Ready

Before you make your corporate account so that you can use mobile Foursquare for business marketing, have you updated your website recently?  It's very important that you have a mobile friendly website if you're using Foursquare.  Keep in mind that consumers are very likely to want to look at your website before they make any final decisions about which attorney to hire.  Mobile Foursquare users will not be likely to commit to hiring you if your website doesn't work for mobile users or is very difficult to navigate for them.

You may want to set up a redirect that puts mobile users onto a specially designed mobile website.  If you do this, make sure that there is an option to use the desktop site, as not all mobile Foursquare users will like the mobile site equally well.

Tip #4: Make Promotions and Discounts

One of the best uses for mobile Foursquare is creating promotions and special offers.  You can get a pretty good idea of what's being offered by checking out the Foursquare presence of other attorneys.  You may want to offer a free or discounted fee consultation, or you could even advertise some kind of classes about how to defend yourself against criminal charges or avoid a lawsuit.

Providing promotions and freebies increases goodwill toward your company, and makes it much more likely that mobile Foursquare users will help you out by spreading your content virally.  You can also use Foursquare to help direct people to useful videos and legal forms on your website.

Tip #5: Watch What People Say About You

Keeping an eye on what people are talking about can make it much easier for you to make needed changes to your law firm.  Mobile Foursquare allows users to make “tips” about any business or venue, whether that tip is “this place is fantastic” or “stay away, these lawyers are scumbags.”  If you're not already using mobile Foursquare, you could already be receiving tips from users without even knowing about them.

If negative reports are coming into your website, don't immediately get defensive.  If the tip appears to be a real one, someone has just provided you with incredibly valuable information about how to improve.  You don't need to follow feedback slavishly, but it's a very good idea to at least give people the benefit of the doubt and try to respond to any negative mobile Foursquare tips made about your law firm.

Tip #6: Report Fake Tips to Foursquare

Not all negative tips on mobile Foursquare are actually real.  In some cases, it's possible that one of your competitors has placed the negative tip there simply to make sure that you're not as successful.  Be honest with yourself about tips—own up to the ones that are real—but if you spot an obvious fake, be prepared to report it to Foursquare.  

Unlike some social networks, Foursquare takes fake tips and reviews very seriously, and you will usually be able to have the false tip removed from mobile Foursquare relatively soon after you report it.  However, if you never report it, it will stay up—and that can mean some serious damage for your law firm.

Tip #7: Integrate Foursquare With Other Social Networks

It's much more useful to make Foursquare part of your marketing strategy when you've already gone social in other ways.  Twitter and Facebook can help you cross promote your Foursquare deals.  Make sure that you're not spamming other social networking feeds with posts from either your individual or law firm Foursquare accounts.  Spamming behavior is likely to lead to you no longer being followed, because people don't like to be inundated with dozens of updates every single day—especially from businesses.

When people began to hear about the idea of checking in with a social network and revealing their location, many were skeptical.  However, with over a billion total check-ins reported so far, the Foursquare check in is obviously here to stay, at least for the near future.  If you've never tried to check in on Foursquare, you may want to start.  Encouraging Foursquare check in from potential new clients can be a very valuable tool for technologically and socially savvy legal marketers.  Here, we'll look at some of the most commonly asked questions about Foursquare check in, as well as learning some aspects of check in with Foursquare that attorneys and law firms specifically need to know.

What is a Foursquare Check In?

Because mobile phones now keep track of the user's location using global positioning satellites, any smart phone can now tell exactly where its user is to a very high degree of specificity.  Foursquare check in takes advantage of these GPS tracking capabilities by allowing users to broadcast their location, as well as what time they were at that location.

Foursquare check-ins are visible on the location's page for up to three hours after the person makes their initial check in on Foursquare.  If the user makes another Foursquare check in before the three hours has elapsed, they will no longer show up as being at the first location.  This ensures that no one can check in on Foursquare to two locations simultaneously.

How Do I Check in on Foursquare?

It's incredibly simple to complete the Foursquare check in process.  You actually don't need to do very much at all—just open the app and follow a few basic directions.  With a very small number of taps on either iOS, Android, or Blackberry devices, you'll be able to check in on Foursquare in less than 30 seconds.  Your Foursquare check in process will only complete if the Foursquare servers are up.  In some cases, down time may make it impossible to do a check in on Foursquare for several minutes or hours.

The reason it's so easy to check in on Foursquare is that the app wants to encourage you to check in several times a day.  In fact, there are actually badges on Foursquare for people who make enough check ins in a single period.  For example, you can get one badge for doing a check in on Foursquare 12 different times in a single 24 hour period.

Why Do People Use Foursquare Check In?

One of the first things that people tend to ask when they hear about check in on Foursquare is: why would anyone ever use it?  Attorneys, in particular, tend to be very protective of their personal privacy and client confidentiality, and are wary about letting people see exactly what they are doing.

When people start using Foursquare check in, they get a “newbie” badge.  The badge system seems to encourage people to check in on Foursquare frequently, especially because users may not always know which check-in location will give them a new badge.

Aside from the badging idea, there's really a change going on to the way that young, social, mobile web users view privacy.  Many of the younger generation of web users have grown up in an era where being observed all the time can be a status marker.  By using Foursquare check in, they show their friends where they are and what their interests are.

Legal Ethics Issues With Foursquare Check In

Attorneys need to be somewhat careful when dealing with check in on Foursquare.  You don't want to compromise client information in any way, or reveal to people that you have met with a particular client at a certain time.  While it's fine for your clients to check in on Foursquare at your office, you certainly wouldn't want to be the person to mention who is with you.

Perhaps the best way to make sure that you're not making any ethical mistakes with your Foursquare check in policies is to talk to your state bar association.  As social networking takes off, many bar associations are developing comprehensive policies about how attorneys may and may not use these networks.  Checking is always better than ending up in hot water with the bar because you violated a new set of social network ethics rules.

Offering Discounts to Foursquare Check In Users

When someone does a check in on Foursquare, you can actually provide them with discounted services.  While not all attorneys will want to take advantage of this, it's certainly not a bad idea for solo practitioners who need more business or young attorneys just starting out who need experience.

One of the other aspects of Foursquare check in discounts isn't often used by attorneys.  This is the frequent shopper discount, which is given only to people who visit you and check in on Foursquare at your location several times in a given time period.

Geo-Fencing and Foursquare Check In

Whenever someone does a check in on Foursquare in your vicinity, you may want them to get an advertisement for your firm.  This is possible through Foursquare's new geo-fencing system.  Geo-fencing means that you put an invisible border around an area, and anyone who tries to check in on Foursquare in that area will see the advertising that you've asked to be displayed.

The Future of Foursquare Check In

Many people who have researched how people check in on Foursquare agree that in some ways, the novelty of check-ins is wearing off for users.  Because of this, Foursquare check in is about to be more about discounts and promotions, as well as gathering information like business hours and reviews, than it is about the game of getting badges and sharing locations.

You may want to start preparing for this new world of Foursquare by encouraging clients who are Foursquare users to give you positive “tips” so that other users can see good reviews.  In this way, Foursquare will be better able to compete with Yelp and Google reviews.

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.

“What is my Google Page Rank?”  If you haven't asked yourself this question at least once in the last month, you're making a mistake.  Checking your Page Rank with Google on a regular basis is a key part of making sure that your web marketing strategies are working where it counts—on search engines, where over 85 percent of clients look for a new attorney.  In this guide, you'll find out how to get the answer to your “what is my Google Page Rank?” question.  Keep reading to find out not only how to get your Page Rank from Google, but also how to use that information to keep your website growing and improving.

Why Does My Page Rank with Google Matter?

You may be asking “What is my Google Page Rank?” without really knowing what the Page Rank is and isn't used for.  There's actually a great deal of misleading information on the internet about how much Page Rank matters to Google, so it's important to know beforehand what you can and can't use PR values to do.

Page Rank with Google is a way of estimating how popular your website is compared with other websites on the internet.  The very most popular web pages on the entire internet (less than fifty in total) get a 10, and a logarithmic scale means that there are many, many more 9's than 10's, many more 8's than 9's, and so on.

Attorney websites aren't generally the highest ranked sites on the internet.  The best question may not be “what is my Google Page Rank,” but rather, “what is my Google Page Rank trendline?” If your Page Rank with Google is improving, it is a good sign that efforts you're making to improve inbound linking and overall traffic are working.  If not, you may need to keep working on finding places to place links.

The Basic Page Rank Google Tool: Google Toolbar

The first tool that you should grab if you're going to start asking “what is my Google Page Rank?” is the Google toolbar.  It's easy to use and can tell you the Page Rank that Google has assigned any URL. However, it also has some disadvantages as a tool.

Because this tool comes directly from Google, you might think that it would give you an up to date answer for the question “What is my Google Page Rank?”  However, the toolbar actually only updates periodically, and these periodic updates can be far enough apart that the Page Rank you see listed may not truly represent what your website's PR value is today.

This means that you'll be able to rely on the results of the Google Toolbar more when you believe your Page Rank with Google has stayed roughly the same recently.  If you believe that you've experienced a sustained increase in web traffic since the last time the toolbar was updated, you may not get an accurate answer when asking “What is my Google Page Rank?”  Try again in a few days or a week and see if new updates have been released.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Comparative Tools

Of course, you may not just want to check on your own website.  Knowing what your competitors' Page Rank with Google is can help you understand what you need to do to stay competitive in your legal market.  One of the best tools you can use to help you understand your Page Rank with Google as compared with some other website's is a list PR checker tool.  Any Page Rank for Google tool that lets you input a list of URLs instead of using just one URL at a time is fine to use for this purpose—you may find one that you like particularly well.

If you notice that your competitors are consistently getting web pages with higher PR values than you, you should consider ways to improve your Page Rank on Google.  For example, you may want to look at how they're building their inbound link structure and improve your links based on the ideas that you find from checking theirs.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Increasing PR

Of course, you don't just want to know what your Page Rank on Google is.  You want to be able to increase it.  Because Page Rank on Google is based mostly on web page popularity, as determined by inbound links and overall traffic to the page, you should mostly work on getting more people to visit and link to your website if you want to improve your Page Rank.

You can do this in many different ways—through social bookmarking websites, social networks, or even just telling friends or family with websites to link to your site and tell their friends about it.  Increasing your Page Rank on Google is easier than ever with today's more social internet.

Avoid using any kind of automation, which produces copied content and leaves telltale signs behind.  Google can identify automated attempts to build Page Rank, and will generally stop websites in their tracks who try to use these techniques.

Beyond “What is My Google Page Rank”: Analyzing Changes

You should also learn how to look at the changes that have occurred to your website's Page Rank on Google over time.  Whenever your Page Rank changes, it can indicate significant things have gone right or wrong for your website.  

If you use a tool like SEOMoz to check out the historical Page Rank of your web page, and you notice a sudden drop, you should figure out what happened.  Had it been just a brief spike for your Page Rank on Google, and the drop brought it back to baseline?  This often happens when an article is posted to a social bookmarking site.  A huge drop may mean that Google believes you've violated webmaster guidelines and is now penalizing your site in rankings.

Too often, initial questions like “what's my page rank?” can turn into bad attempts to get a better ranking using outdated information from the web.  Today's information on web page ranking is different than it was even in 2010 or 2011.  If you want to know not just “what's my page rank?” in 2012, but also what to do in order to improve your ranking, this guide can be your lifeline.  Keep reading for four do's and four don'ts that will help you understand exactly how to keep building your web page ranking now and for the foreseeable future.

DO: Build Your Web Page Ranking Through Original Content

Once you ask “what's my Page Rank?” and find out the answer, odds are you won't be satisfied.  You'll want to keep improving your Page Rank.  That's a great impulse, but you'll want to make sure that you're building your web page ranking in a way that looks organic to Google.  This means creating original content.

What's my Page Rank got to do with original content, you may be wondering.  The answer is: more than you might expect.  Google actually checks your content to see if it is indexed anywhere else on the web when it indexed your page.  If your content is original, your web page ranking will be slightly higher.  It will be lower if it's elsewhere on the web, and significantly lower if you're just copying things that appear in a wide variety of places.

DON'T: Build Your Web Page Ranking Through Automation

If you're not satisfied with the answer you got when you asked “what's my Page Rank?”, don't make the mistake of automating link building just to escalate your PR values rapidly.  Many different websites have tried link building automation, but Google tends to crack down on known link buyers and sellers, as well as people who otherwise manipulate search results or over optimize their websites.

Natural looking is absolutely key—your web page ranking will grow much better if you're able to maintain a natural appearance for all of your links and content.  It's simply not worth the risk of growing your website through automation.  If you do, you risk asking “what's my Page Rank” someday and finding out that the answer is lower than it has been in months or years due to Google imposing penalties on your site.

DO: Keep Track of Your Competitors' PR Value

While it's of course important for web marketers for law firms to ask “what's my Page Rank,” it's also important for them to ask questions about the Page Rank of the websites for your competitors.  If you're not doing at least some competitor research, you're missing out on a vital part of the marketing puzzle.  It's easy enough to find out the web page ranking for any URL on the internet.  Many web tools will let you look at Google PageRank as well as other ranking numbers for any web page you want.

If your answer to “what's my Page Rank” is significantly lower than your answer to “what's my competitor's Page Rank,” you should start looking into how your competitor is structuring their links.  You may be missing out on vital inbound link resources that are giving your competition a vital edge.

DON'T: Expect Instant Changes to Your Web Page Ranking

Sometimes, when people first make some changes to their website and get a little more traffic, they run a PageRank tool right away, asking “what's my Page Rank” within hours or days of putting up a new link.  This is likely to be a very disappointing exercise, because in most cases, Google won't even have a new web page indexed for some time after it is submitted to the search engine.

You can usually expect for your web page to start building some Page Rank on a new website within a few weeks.  If it's taking longer than that, you should try to work on some inbound link building strategies to encourage your web page ranking to climb faster.

DO: Work On Getting Traffic From Unusual Sources

While you should definitely use some information about your competitors' inbound links to inform your own strategy for increasing your web page ranking, you should also get some inbound links from other sources.  Otherwise, you'll only be able to match your competitors' performance—never beat it.

Try getting involved with some social bookmarking sites and really learning how to interact with their user bases.  If you do it right, your next answer to “what's my Page Rank?” may very well be higher than ever before.

DON'T: Plaster Your Name on Irrelevant Websites

Contextual links matter a lot more when you're asking “what's my Page Rank?” than non-contextual links.  If you put your website's name all over websites that have nothing at all to do with the practice of law, your web page ranking will probably stay very low.  That's because Google can now identify when websites are linking contextually versus non-contextually, and tends to view sites with non-contextual links as spammers.

DO: Build Your Reputation In Your Community

One of the best things that you can do for your overall web page ranking is to get inbound links from .edu and .gov websites.  Typically the best way to do this is by creating relationships within the business and education communities.  Your reputation is key—this is another reason that you should make sure you're not using spam techniques online.  You want to be able to create those relationships in an authentic way.  In other words, don't just do this because you want to be able to have a better web page ranking.  Do it for the future of your firm.

DON'T: Do “Astroturfing” to Build Your Web Page Ranking

“What's my Page Rank?  Too low?  I have to do something!”  Don't let that “something” be astroturfing, a technique where you give yourself pretend reviews or false buzz.  As an attorney, astroturfing can not only present you with a serious public relations problem, it can also mean ethics board hearings if you're ever caught.

Foursquare business marketing is taking off as one of the latest trends in social media and networking.  While Foursquare, with only 10 million users in the United States, is not the most popular of the networking sites available, its unique user interface has made it one of the best for local marketing to a young, web savvy audience.  If that describes your client base and you're part of a law firm in an urban area, you need this guide.  You'll learn seven lessons about Foursquare business marketing that can make your law firm's popularity on Foursquare skyrocket.

Lesson #1: Get Involved With Foursquare Individually First

Before you decide to use Foursquare for business, you should first try getting an individual account.  This will help you understand how other companies are doing their Foursquare business marketing so that you can optimize your strategies.

One of the first things that you'll find out is that Foursquare isn't equally popular in all areas of the United States.  For example, if you are working in a small town in North Dakota, you may be hard pressed to find more than a few other Foursquare users locally, and the users who are there may not actually be very active in tagging or checking into locations.

On the other hand, if your law firm is located in Brooklyn or San Jose, you're in a lot of luck.  There are many Foursquare users in trendy and technologically developed areas, and Foursquare business marketing plans tend to work great in these areas.  If you're intending to use Foursquare for business somewhere outside of a large metropolitan area, you may have an uphill climb—that's why it's better to check it out individually first, before you invest your business's time and money into the effort.

Lesson #2: Maximize Foursquare Business SEO

In addition to the traffic that you'll get from using Foursquare for business, you can also use Foursquare to improve your search engine optimization.  Most SEO tactics today are oriented around bringing in new inbound links, the number of which will influence your rankings in Google search by more than any other one factor.

When you build your initial profile on Foursquare for business owners, you'll be able to include a link back to your website.  It's a good idea to make this link go to a landing page rather than directly to your homepage, so that it's targeted directly toward Foursquare's customer base and can be more easily tracked for analytics purposes.  Every new inbound link that you build through your Foursquare business marketing will help your website climb a small amount in search rankings for any keywords found on your web pages.

Lesson #3: Foursquare For Business = Promotions and Discounts

Part of Foursquare business marketing involves being able to make promotional rates and discounts available, either to all Foursquare customers or to customers who are loyal and check in at your place of business a certain number of times.  While loyalty rewards may not work particularly well for attorneys, you can still use Foursquare for business promotions like free consultations or discounted rates.

Keep in mind that people who use Foursquare tend to be more connected and more trusted by their friends as sources for product and service reviews than the average internet user.  This means that you're more likely not only to gain repeat business when you use Foursquare for business marketing, but also business from friends, colleagues, neighbors, and relatives of the user.

Lesson #4: Use Social Media Plus Foursquare For Business

If you aren't getting enough inbound links from your Foursquare business marketing strategies, consider linking your user account to your Facebook and Twitter accounts.  This makes sure that your check-ins are recorded via social networks, and also allows you to create more links for yourself.

Combining social media inbound links with your Foursquare for business links will maximize the number of high quality links coming into your site.  In turn, this makes Google less likely to penalize your site if you begin to be linked by lower quality websites—a valuable insurance policy in uncertain times.

Lesson #5: Check Ethical Guidelines

Before you start using Foursquare for business, it's a good idea to confirm with your state bar association that there are no statewide rules in your state that bar you from being able to use the app for marketing purposes.  Usually, your bar association will be able to give you some guidelines that will help you understand what kinds of advertising are and are not allowed when using Foursquare business marketing.  For example, it will always be prohibited to share any information about privileged information via Foursquare, even if it is only indirectly given out.

Lesson #6: Support Charities Through Foursquare For Business

If you want to support a particular charity during the holidays or at any time of year, a great way to tie your Foursquare business marketing campaign into charitable donations is to donate money for every check-in.  Foursquare for business actually streamlines this and makes it quite easy to donate money to charity for every user who promotes your law firm or checks in at your location.

This kind of promotion can help get new people through your doors and will also help you to advertise your own charitable reputation in your community.  Since reputation is key for service businesses like law firms, this kind of charitable contribution may actually enhance your ability to solicit new business and make connections with new clients.

Lesson #7: Use Relevant Geotagging

Let's say you're an education lawyer specializing in helping students get needed accommodations through 504 plans and IEPs.  You could add “geotagging” for your law firm to schools and tutoring centers in your area—this makes it so that when people check in at those locations, they'll see your advertisements for your legal services.  Geotagging only works if some venue is actually connected to your field of expertise in some way.  Attorneys who take all types of cases will be much less successful at finding good venues for geotagging.

With 860,000 businesses currently reviewed on Yelp, there has never been a better time to start a legal marketing campaign on the site.  Advertising on Yelp can be very rewarding for law firms, and Yelp advertising is relatively easy to set up whether you're a solo practitioner or a big firm.  This guide will give you 7 of the best rules for advertising on Yelp in 2012.  You'll learn several pitfalls to avoid when you start to advertise on Yelp, based on real advice from real businesspeople who have tested the waters before you.

#1: The Best Yelp Advertising Comes From Clients

While businesses that advertise on Yelp for pay are allowed to display photographs and other information about their business, and all businesses can have profiles, the best advertising on Yelp happens in the form of reviews.  No matter what else you do in your Yelp advertising, not much will help if you simply can't get clients to give you a good review.

If you have a client who is interested in giving you a Yelp review, there are a few pieces of advice you can give them that will help with your advertising on Yelp.  First of all, you can tell them that more detailed reviews tend to be more useful than very brief ones, and less likely to be filtered.  Additionally, you're much more likely to have a review that is considered fair if you talk about both positives and negatives, rather than focusing only on positive aspects in your Yelp advertising reviews.

#2: Put Your Best Foot Forward When You Advertise on Yelp

Reacting in an extremely negative way to criticism will not help your advertising on Yelp.  If you believe that someone's review is hurting your Yelp advertising, one of the best things you can do is talk to that client and see if there's something you can do to make it right.  If you are successful, soon they may advertise on Yelp that you made a mistake but corrected it—and that's something that nearly any potential client can appreciate.

Another part of putting your best foot forward for Yelp advertising is making sure that all information contained in your profile is accurate, including all of your contact information.  Outdated or incorrectly typed information can be a serious mistake and cost you much of the revenue that you would have made through advertising on Yelp.

#3: Don't Make False Yelp Advertising Reviews

Almost every small business owner has been tempted while advertising on Yelp to start “helping” their business along by simply writing some of the reviews themselves or hiring people to write positive reviews.  This is a strategy that until October of 2012, Yelp blocked exclusively by using a filter that filtered out fake results.

Now, though, they've added a new tool to their arsenal.  Several businesses that tried to advertise on Yelp using fake reviews were actually found through a sting operation of sorts conducted by Yelp.  After the website's investigators found out that these businesses planned to use fraudulent advertising on Yelp, the businesses had their Yelp pages marked with special information that said they had been caught red-handed trying to purchase reviews.  Attorneys can't afford that kind of mistake.

#4: Paying to Advertise on Yelp Can Help

If you're called by Yelp and asked if you want to start advertising on Yelp for around $300 a month, it's probably best to take the offer.  While officially Yelp denies the rumors (and a lawsuit on the subject was dismissed with prejudice in 2010), hundreds if not thousands of business owners have reported that soon after declining the purchase of the advertising service, they suddenly had their best reviews filtered, leaving only a smattering of 1 and 2 star reviews behind.

If it's in any way true—and the reports have continued all the way through the present day—then it's blatantly unethical.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.  At $300 a month, even one or two more conversions will pay the entire fee.  In a business where every conversion means hundreds or thousands of dollars, it just doesn't make sense to risk your Yelp advertising.

If you do pay to advertise on Yelp, you'll also get some additional, official benefits.  You'll be able to choose your best review as a featured review, which will be the first advertising on Yelp clients see when they look through your ratings.  You can also use images, which can enhance your Yelp advertising.

#5: Solicit Positive Reviews From Happy Clients

Reviews don't write themselves, but what if your clients don't seem to know that you want to advertise on Yelp?  To make your advertising on Yelp easier, consider soliciting reviews from past clients via email lists or social networks.  Make sure, though, that you make it clear this Yelp advertising can only come from genuine clients—if your parents, your college roommate, and your wife's cousin all write glowingly positive reviews at once, it could definitely look suspicious.

#6: Report Fake Reviews To Yelp

In some cases, you may find that your attempts to advertise on Yelp are made more difficult by negative reviews that look like they don't belong.  These reviews won't just seem like bad advertising on Yelp—they'll seem like they're made by people who've never so much as walked in your door.  This can be a tactic used by rival firms to make their own Yelp advertising work better.

If you suspect you have been the victim of a fake review, you should report the review to Yelp promptly.  User reports suggest that businesses that advertise on Yelp are more likely to have complaints about negative reviews heard.

#7: Analyze Your Yelp Results

Make sure that you have a special landing page from Yelp, so that when you advertise on Yelp you can track how many clients are coming to your website from the Yelp page.  It may be that you'll be better off trying to advertise on some other platform instead of continuing to advertise on Yelp.

There are now over 20 million Foursquare users worldwide, with about 10 million of those users in the United States.  Because it is one of the newest social networking websites, not all attorneys are familiar with how to use Foursquare.  If you don't know a Foursquare superuser from a Foursquare mayor, this guide can help to answer your most frequently asked questions.  You'll learn not only how you can use Foursquare as an individual, but also how Foursquare users can actually provide a valuable source of new business for your firm.

What is Foursquare?

Foursquare is an innovative application that allows users to “check in” at their location at any time, using a phone with GPS (global positioning system) capabilities.  Because smartphones are becoming increasingly popular, Foursquare users are signing up for the system every day.

As you check into places using your account, you can actually obtain discounts to the places you're visiting as well as other local businesses nearby.  If Foursquare users do the right things and check in from their location frequently, they can eventually earn a different title (like Foursquare Superuser or Foursquare Mayor—more on both of these in just a minute).

You can also use Foursquare to earn “badges” on your account.  When Foursquare users earn a badge, it is displayed in their profile for everybody to see.

What Types of Foursquare Users Are There?

While the vast majority of people using Foursquare are just termed “users” and have no special title, there are two different types of titles that should be discussed in addition: the Foursquare superuser and the Foursquare mayor.

Superusers are actually divided into three different categories.  Level 1 is the “lowest” category of Foursquare superuser, while Level 3 is the highest.  In order to get any of these status levels, moderators at Foursquare have to determine that you have been making regular and helpful contributions (for example, by routinely posting excellent tips about locations).

If you are a Foursquare Superuser Level 1, you can help the Foursquare team to clean up some of the map results.  If you see something that's out of date—a venue has been closed or re-opened or re-named—you, unlike regular Foursquare users, can change it.

As a Foursquare Superuser Level 2, you can do all those things as well as adjusting the geolocation of a spot and merging listings that are actually identical.  Superusers who attain Level 3 status are able to see a queue of user requests from around the world for updates and more.

Unlike a Foursquare Superuser, you don't actually need to make any contribution in particular to become a Foursquare Mayor.  Instead, being a Foursquare Mayor of a place means that you have visited that particular place and checked in with Foursquare more than any other person.  There are no special account abilities attached to being a Foursquare Mayor, but your name and profile will be displayed prominently when people click on a particular location.

Why Do People Use Foursquare?

Attorneys, who are often quite concerned about privacy issues, are often surprised to learn that there are Foursquare users at all.  To become a Foursquare Superuser or Foursquare Mayor would require giving up so much time and privacy that some people can't see why anyone would do it.

Mostly, the appeal to Foursquare users seems to be the way that the application allows them to share where they are and find other people and businesses locally.  The hyperlocal focus of Foursquare helps everyone, from a Foursquare superuser to a brand new account, know where the closest “check ins” are.

Additionally, there's no denying that there's a competitive vibe.  Becoming a Foursquare mayor may not give you any real power, but there's a small thrill in being the person who has been in a place most.  Not everyone needs to try to become a Foursquare Superuser or Foursquare Mayor—maybe their competitive wheels just start turning when they find out about the badges they could win.

Is Foursquare Useful For Legal Marketing?

Even if you never become a Foursquare Superuser—and you're only the Foursquare Mayor of your very own office—you can still use Foursquare as part of your web marketing strategy.  Foursquare allows businesses to develop their own promotional events.  For example, you may want to advertise a promotion for Foursquare users that would give them access to a free or discounted consultation.  Of course, for some attorneys, that consultation would already be free or very close—which means you're not losing any money by getting the occasional Foursquare Superuser to visit your firm.

Some features of Foursquare aren't very useful for attorneys.  For example, there is also the option to make some discounts available only to the most loyal customers.  Unless someone wants very badly to be Foursquare Mayor of your building, it's very unlikely that clients will keep coming back to your law firm again and again just to check in on their app.

You can, however, make use of the Foursquare “tip” system as part of your legal marketing strategy.  Asking clients who use Foursquare to give your business a positive tip can make it more likely that you'll get more local business in the future.

A Word About Foursquare Suitability

Not every law firm is equally equipped to get the most out of Foursquare.  If you're in a rural area or a city that tends to lag technologically behind the curve, it may be that there simply aren't enough Foursquare users in your area to really make a difference to your bottom line.  If this is the case, you'll be the Foursquare Mayor of nothing in particular, rather than actually attracting people to your site with your marketing.

If your clientele skews older, Foursquare may be a very poor bet as well.  The site tends to be used by a young, hip crowd that is very plugged in to the internet at all times.  If your clients are more likely to have a hearing aid than a Bluetooth headset, you may want to consider other methods to get your message out.