Everything About PPC Management

So you've started using pay per click marketing for your law firm—but what now?  Do you want keywords that cost $50 or more, or to bid lower on keywords for just a few dollars?  PPC bid management software can cost hundreds of dollars, and PPC management services can cost thousands—are they worth it?  This guide will explore how you can best manage your pay per click advertising, with or without PPC management services.  You'll also learn about common PPC bid management mistakes to avoid when you begin working on your PPC management strategies.

PPC Bid Management Options

When you start learning about pay per click marketing, one of your first questions might be “how do I know what to bid?”  There are several different answers to this question, depending on your PPC management needs and your current pay per click advertising budget.  Usually, the search engines offering this type of advertising also offer PPC management services and options that can help you manage your bids.

While it's easy to use these services for your PPC bid management, you may know about your other options as well.  Some companies offer software that can help you make bids and learn more about PPC management in your pay per click campaigns.  Others offer full PPC management services that allow you to focus on your firm's business without thinking about your own pay per click advertising campaign.

When Should I Use Search Engine PPC Management Services?

If you're new to marketing with PPC, you may want to start doing PPC bid management with the tools offered by the search engines themselves.  These services have a few distinct advantages: they're easy to use, with effective tutorials that can help you learn how to do the basics of PPC management.  However, there's a reason that up to 70 percent of big businesses eventually hire specialized PPC management services to handle their pay per click campaigns: it's not easy to just use what you're given by search engines.

Keep in mind that any PPC bid management that you do with the services offered by Google or Yahoo will be run by them, and that they're more interested in their own profit than your law firm's.  When you use their tools, then, don't be surprised if the way they do PPC management seems hazy.  They simply don't make all the best analytical information available to consumers.

When Should I Use Third Party PPC Bid Management Software?

Once you've worked with PPC management tools from the search engines for a while, you may be ready to move on to tools that give you more control.  For this, you'll want to look for third party PPC management services software.  The quality of these tools can vary, and some can cost hundreds of dollars for a user license, so you'll want to make sure to look for online reviews of any software before you buy.

Of all of your PPC bid management options, using third party software can give you the most control over your bid strategies—if you know what you're doing.  Make sure that you understand the tools that you have, and consider sending an employee to a training that can help them get the most out of any PPC management tools that you've spent money on.  Remember that the tools you use are only as good as the people using them.  If you're not able to spend money on training someone to use PPC bid management software, you may want to hire PPC management services to handle your bids.

When Should I Use PPC Management Services?

Micromanaging pay per click bids isn't for everyone, and many law firms end up deciding that it would be better to leave PPC bid management in the hands of specialists.  There's nothing wrong with using one of these services for PPC management, but keep in mind that the cheapest service may not be the best.

PPC management services that keep your data may be cheaper in the short term, but make no mistake: when you lose data, you lose money and time. You may not think that your data means much, but think of PPC bid management as a series of experiments.  Some work, and some don't, and every time you find out one that works you'll save money and attract clients.  If your data doesn't belong to you and you switch PPC management services, you're back to square one: you won't know which of your PPC management strategies worked, and which were failures.  

The best companies that provide PPC bid management won't just make bids for you, they'll discuss your marketing strategies and help you build a website that converts clicks into clients.  This can be much more cost-effective than hiring bare bones PPC management services to handle your marketing on the web.

Common PPC Bid Management Mistakes

When you're new to PPC management, you can easily fall prey to common bidding mistakes.  One of the easiest traps to fall into is bidding too high.  Obviously you'll get more clicks when you bid high, but how many of those clicks become clients?  Experiment with bids that don't necessarily put you into the top position—you may find that you're getting just as many clients when you're spending a great deal less on your bids.

Law firms that are new to PPC management also tend to start by using keywords in their ad groups that are simply too general to get the kinds of clients they want.  Keywords that are too general hurt your PPC management in two different ways: they make conversion rates go down while causing your bid prices to go up.

It's also important not to keep changing your bids too often, too early.  While some PPC management strategies may require changing bids fairly frequently, smart PPC bid management relies on building historical data and using that data wisely.  Changing your bids too much when your campaign is new can result in bad data and bad PPC management.

Everything About PPC

In today's legal marketing world, the internet has begun to dominate the discussion, and pay per click is more popular than ever.  You may have heard that PPC pay per click advertising can raise your law firm's website traffic by as much as 66%, but have very little idea what else PPC can do for your firm.  This guide will help answer the most basic questions, from “what is PPC?” to “How do I manage my PPC bids?”  It doesn't have to be hard to set up a PPC pay per click campaign—you'll learn how to start from the basics here.

What is PPC?

Both new and old law firms need advertising that works on the web.  You have several options: you can manage keywords on your website or in blog entries, then use search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to get onto the first page of someone's web search.  However, this kind of search engine marketing requires a high level of skill with web writing to make sure that your content is relevant while keeping keyword density high enough to put your firm into the top few pages of results.

Instead of trying to get your website into the first few pages of results through a traditional search, you can instead use PPC pay per click marketing.  Even if you have little computer experience and are still asking “what is PPC?” you can still use Google AdWords or another PPC program to get your marketing campaign off the ground.  PPC pay per click advertising allows you to target your firm's advertising and only pay when someone clicks on your ad.

What is a PPC Keyword?

When you start to run a PPC pay per click advertising campaign, you'll need to think about what clients are typically looking for when they come to your website.  If your firm specializes in helping people to beat traffic tickets, for instance, your clients probably begin their web search by looking for keywords relating to traffic tickets.

When you advertise using PPC, you can decide which searches your PPC pay per click advertising is seen on.  You will choose the specific keywords that your firm will bid on.  If you're in the top several bidders for a keyword when someone searches for it, your website's ad will be seen by that person—meaning that your site is seen by the exact people you want to attract as clients.

What is PPC Going to Cost My Firm?

The cost of a PPC pay per click campaign depends largely on exactly what kinds of keywords you're bidding on and what your bid strategies are.  If you want to bid on very expensive keywords, like “mesothelioma,” the answer to “what is PPC going to cost” will be very steep indeed—often tens or even hundreds of dollars for a single click!  However, by narrowly tailoring your keywords, you can bring PPC costs down.

For example, you may want to include geographic terms in your searches.  You may also want to include very specific keywords that clients are likely to use, rather than using the kind of keywords that lawyers use.  Instead of using PPC pay per click keywords like “personal injury attorney,” consider terms like “rear end car accident lawyer.”  You can also choose some PPC keywords to exclude from searches—so if your firm doesn't handle a particular type of case, you can exclude clients searching for lawyers who can.

What is PPC Bid Management?

Because PPC pay per click advertising uses bidding, the cost you'll have to pay to get your advertisement displayed prominently will depend on what other firms have already bid.  While firms that are still trying to figure out “what is PPC?” may not be able to work out a great bid management strategy right away, as you continue to use pay per click services you'll learn how to maximize the profits from your bids.

For example, you may find that it might be much cheaper to appear early in search results with your PPC pay per click campaign when you're advertising at certain hours of the night.  If you still get the same conversion rates (the same percentage of people call your firm after clicking), you'll want to make sure your PPC bid isn't any higher than it needs to be.  You can use PPC pay per click bid management software to help you figure out what is PPC bid strategy that will work best for your law firm.

What is PPC Campaign Management?

“What is PPC?” is a more complex question than just what keywords to bid on.  If you're still not sure how to use PPC pay per click marketing, you may want to look into PPC campaign management.  Campaign management services can help you get beyond the initial difficulties of setting up your PPC campaign so you can move on to getting the clicks and conversions you're hoping for.

What is PPC Strategy?

Building a great strategy for your PPC pay per click ads requires knowing about your potential clients.  When your clients are looking for websites to answer their legal questions or find a lawyer, they want accurate information and contemporary web design that is aesthetically pleasing.  In order to have the best PPC results, you'll want to create strategic landing pages that contain the content your clients are searching for.

When you have done PPC pay per click advertising for some time, you can begin to look at changing and developing your strategy based on what works.  What is a PPC effective strategy can depend largely on the exact nature of your practice—you'll want to look at which pages are driving conversions and what those pages have in common.

What is PPC Going to Do for My Business?

Used effectively, PPC pay per click can help your business to grow—not just by getting eyes on your website, but by getting the right eyes.  When you use PPC, you're targeting only clients who specifically want exactly the kinds of services your firm is providing.  When you begin to develop your PPC pay per click strategy, you'll find that your conversion rates can steadily increase, making it cost less for each new client you're finding online.  While other forms of marketing require a great deal of computer knowledge, you can begin a campaign with pay per click advertising relatively quickly and easily.

Everything About PPC Campaigns

The internet has changed everything about finding a lawyer.  Today, 65 percent of potential legal clients look online for law firms before choosing which lawyer to call.  One of the fastest ways to get your website into the top pages of search results is to use PPC search engine advertising.  This kind of advertising is highly effective, and can increase the traffic to your website by 60 percent or more when you design your PPC campaign with your client in mind.

Starting Successful PPC Campaigns

One of the toughest things about designing a pay per click ad campaign is just knowing where to start.  You may have seen other law firms buy their way into sponsored web results, and wonder if there's a way to have your firm do the same thing.  PPC search engine advertising is available through most major search engines, and many of these search engines offer quick tutorials that can help you get PPC campaigns off the ground within days if you want to move fast.

While the speed of starting a pay per click campaign is one of the advantages of this form of advertising, it's important not to get too carried away.  Waiting to initiate your PPC campaigns until you are sure you know what you're doing can ensure that you get the maximum return on investment.  Before you start working with PPC search engine advertising, here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you know what your goals are for your advertising campaign?  Keep in mind that just generating more website traffic doesn't necessarily mean you'll get more clients—don't just have a goal like “we want to see a 50 percent increase in visitors to our website,” think about how many new clients you're hoping for.

• Are you familiar with the jargon and terminology of PPC campaigns?  You'll have a much easier time understanding best practices for PPC search engine advertising if you know enough of the vocabulary to do your research.

• Is your website attractive and well designed?  Even the best PPC campaigns won't work if your pay per click ads lead to a website with inaccurate information or broken links.  If your website is merely mediocre, up to 85% of clients will leave before they've even looked for 30 seconds—and they aren't likely to come back.

What to Do If Your PPC Campaigns Don't Work

Because PPC search engine advertising is still relatively new, it's easy for people designing new pay per click campaigns to run into some trouble when they first start designing their advertisements.  Here are a few common problems and how to fix them:

• If you're spending your PPC search engine advertising budget too quickly on too few clicks, you may want to focus your PPC campaigns on narrower, less prestigious keywords.  Hyperlocalization can help you to get the most out of each click made on your advertisements.

• If your ads aren't bringing in many clicks, the copy of your ads themselves may need fine-tuning.  Don't bother including a phone number in your PPC search engine advertising—save that for your landing page, where it isn't taking up such a high percentage of your space.

• If you're getting a lot of traffic with “broad match” keywords, consider adding negative keywords to your PPC campaigns.  For example, you may want to make sure that your PPC search engine advertising doesn't involve paying for clicks from people seeking free legal aid.

• If you have plenty of clicks but no one's calling, take a long, hard look at your website. PPC campaigns can fail even when ad copy is brilliant if a website is messy or just plain boring. The more you can differentiate yourself from the competition with your website, the more likely it is that your PPC search engine advertising will be successful.

You may want to consider hiring a service to help you with your PPC campaigns if you have corrected what you believe to be the problem, but haven't seen any results.  A well-organized pay per click campaign should have a significant impact not only on your website traffic, but on your number of clients.  If it's not, you may want professionals to evaluate your PPC search engine advertising and your website.  Professional help may save you money and time when trying to design a new campaign—think of these services as an investment, rather than a cost.

Third Party Software and PPC Search Engine Advertising

When you want to step up your analysis of data from PPC campaigns, you don't just want to rely on Google or Yahoo services for bidders.  There are dozens of third party tools that can help you improve any aspect of your PPC search engine advertising.

In order to understand how to get the most out of any third party software tool, you'll need to know how to use it.  Some tools for PPC campaigns include enough tutorials and documentation that you'll understand the basic features right away.  However, if you're a power user or you want to be one, it's critical to seek out training.  Training seminars and webinars can make it easier to use the more complicated features on your software so that your analysis of your PPC search engine advertising is more robust.

Alternatives to PPC Search Engine Advertising

While PPC campaigns can be a great way to get your website in the spotlight quickly, it's important not to let pay per click be your only marketing strategy.  A more complete internet advertising campaign will also include search engine optimization (SEO) strategies that can help place your website higher in organic (non-sponsored) search results.  

You may want to work on your PPC search engine advertising at first, when your internet marketing campaign is new, and then gradually increase the effort your firm puts into SEO.  Then, once your organic search results are high enough, at least for some terms, you can scale back your PPC campaigns on those terms and work on different sets of keywords or simply reduce your pay per click budget.

Everything About PPC Advertising

Starting your PPC campaign can seem like a giant headache: how do you make sure that your PPC advertising works and doesn't cost more than you can afford?  This guide will help you sort out the basics of PPC advertising, including common pitfalls for your law firm to avoid as well as strategies to maximize your conversions and clicks.  You'll also learn how the best PPC campaign strategies can depend largely on the size of your firm and the amount that you can budget for your pay per click ads.

PPC Campaign Management: Common Pitfalls

When you begin working with PPC advertising, it can be tempting to start with just one ad group leading to a single landing page on your website.  While this is certainly the easiest way to begin your PPC campaign, it also takes many of your options for PPC campaign management away.  Without running multiple campaigns, it's very difficult to see what's working well for your firm and what is failing.  While it's possible to run a successful PPC campaign without multiple ad groups, it's very difficult—and why would you want to miss out on valuable information?

You may also want to avoid having your bids managed by the same company that is profiting from those bids.  While bid management tools from Google and Yahoo can be easy to use, they also take away some of your control, and work mostly to maximize the profit to the search engine, not to your law firm.  You may want to look into obtaining third party software to make sure that your PPC campaign is working for you, not for Google.

One of the other big mistakes made by beginners to PPC advertising is spending too much on bids.  This usually happens for one of two reasons: either your PPC campaign is not focused enough on a niche target, or your PPC campaign management strategy has involved bidding too high for keywords.  Expensive “prestige keywords” can cost a great deal of money without offering great conversion rates.  If you always have the top bid for a particular keyword, you may be overpaying for your PPC advertising without seeing the results you were hoping for.

PPC Campaign Management: Landing Pages

One of the most important aspects of your PPC advertising involves where your potential clients go when they click on one of your advertisements.  Many firms that are new to running a PPC campaign make the mistake of having advertisements go to their law firm home page.  However, especially if your firm handles several different types of cases and is using multiple ad groups, you should consider making separate landing pages to get the best conversion rates.

PPC advertising that goes just to your home page requires clients to go through multiple clicks just to find what they're looking for.  By creating targeted landing pages, your PPC campaign ad goes right to the information your client wants.  Today's internet depends on instant gratification: if your clients can't get the information they want within that first click or two, your PPC advertising is likely to fail.

PPC Campaign Management: Learning From Your Campaign

Every PPC campaign that you run can give you valuable information about how to run future campaigns.  You may want to get some third party PPC advertising tools to help you learn how an individual PPC campaign went and what you might be able to do in order to maximize future returns.  You may want to examine which niches have been generating the most clients for your firm and either strengthen your advertising for those niches or use the same PPC advertising techniques for your other niches.

Especially when you're buying very targeted, lower cost keywords, you can afford to experiment.  Remember that trying something new with your niche marketing won't always work, but you should be careful not to give up too quickly.  Sometimes a new PPC campaign strategy will take time to work, and your PPC advertising may be more effective at a certain time of day or even a certain time of year.

PPC Campaign Management Strategies

When you begin to experiment with PPC advertising, you should think of it as science.  Much like with any type of science, having a clear hypothesis in mind before you begin experimenting can help you to get the best results.  Instead of just saying “I want to try a bunch of PPC campaign strategies and see which ads stick,” think about a question that you have about PPC campaign management.  Do you want to see if “exact match” gets better results for your ads than “close match”?  Do you want to see how much your click rate increases when your bids are toward the top?

No matter what your hypothesis is, it's also important to be honest when looking at the results of your PPC advertising strategies.  If one PPC campaign didn't work, or your hypothesis was incorrect, remember that this information isn't bad—it's great!  Knowing what doesn't work can be as important as knowing what works when you're working with PPC campaign management.

Complete PPC Campaign Management Services

If your firm has a large budget for PPC advertising, you may want to look into having your PPC campaign managed by a specialized marketing firm.  Make sure that if you are using the services of one of these firms, they allow you access to any data that is generated from your PPC advertising.  Without this data, you will have to start over from scratch if you need to hire a new company to handle your PPC campaign management.

A good marketing service will be able to show you how your campaign is working and what ad groups are most profitable for your law firm.  Even if you can't afford dedicated PPC campaign management services, you may still want to purchase PPC advertising software.  This can help you to analyze the results of a PPC campaign so that you can maximize profits on future campaigns, without the costs of hiring professionals to do the analysis for you.

Everything About Social Media Marketing Tools

Using social media as a marketing tool can expand your client base and build your brand with businesses and consumers.  As of 2012, 20 percent of law firms have hired a full-time staffer to monitor and expand their social media presence.  Social media marketing tools can make it easier for your company to manage several different accounts, monitor your reputation, and make sure you're getting the return on investment you need.  What kind of social media marketing tool can help your law firm thrive?  Keep reading to find out.

Managing Social Media as a Marketing Tool

In order to get the most out of social media as a marketing tool, you'll need to diversify your social media presence across multiple websites.  One social media marketing tool that almost every social media specialist will use is a management system.  These social media marketing tools can log you in to a wide range of websites with just a single username and password, and help you aggregate recent activity from people and businesses you're following.

Some social media marketing tools of this type also include mobile and email marketing features, and will allow you to share your links in a wide variety of ways simultaneously.  When using this type of social media marketing tool, be careful not to share too often—the key rule of using social media as a marketing tool is getting new followers, not scaring them away.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Reputation Management

So you've used social media marketing tools that helped you put together great looking, well-functioning pages on major social media networks.  The next step to using social media as a marketing tool is finding out exactly how you're perceived in the online world.  Do people love your Twitter feed, or hate it?  Do people think your blog entries are fascinating or failures?  That's where a new kind of social media marketing tool comes in: the reputation management tool.

Tracking and monitoring programs for reputation management help you effectively use social media as a marketing tool by keeping track of what the rest of the web is saying about you.  If your other social media marketing tools have been successful, you may have generated comments and blog posts all over the web.  To make sure you're reaching the right people, you may want to use a social media marketing tool that also identifies Klout scores or other measures of online influence for those linking to you.

One of the best ways to use social media as a marketing tool is to engage with people when they talk about your brand online.  Some social media marketing tools offer integrated functionality that lets you comment and post with a single interface.  Because time can be of the essence, especially if you're dealing with a potential public relations headache, this type of social media marketing tool is a must-have when you're a legal professional.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Social Bookmarking

Using social media as a marketing tool is easier when you can spread your message far and wide.  Today, a large number of social bookmarking sites exist that base their content on user submissions.  If you use the right social media marketing tools, you can submit to a large number of these sites at once.

For example, you might want to use a social media marketing tool so that you can simultaneously post to Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon—all sites that can generate great web traffic.  However, if you use social media marketing tools in this way, make sure you're observing website rules.  If you try to use social media as a marketing tool without learning the etiquette for the websites you're using, your links will languish in obscurity or become the target of mockery.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Measurement

Even if your social media feeds are regularly updated, you can't just assume that your business is effectively using social media as a marketing tool.  To find out how effective your outreach efforts have been, you need to download a social media marketing tool that can measure how your web traffic is being affected by your social media presence.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Analytics

In some cases, you may find out that in spite of trying to use social media as a marketing tool, you aren't getting the measurement results you want.  Measurement tools can't always help you figure out why this is happening—for that, you need an analytical social media marketing tool.  Analytics can crunch the numbers so that you see exactly what parts of your social media strategy are succeeding and which may need revision.

This kind of social media marketing tool works best when you use it continuously and try to make repeated incremental improvements to your strategy.  Using analytics, not just measurement, ensures that you're able to fix mistakes promptly so that using social media as a marketing tool keeps being effective.

Social Media Marketing Tools for Campaign Creation

A final type of social media marketing tool is often underused by law firms, especially smaller firms and solo practitioners.  Campaign creation lets you use social media as a marketing tool by creating contests, quizzes, and other types of content that go beyond graphics, video, and blog entries.  The types of content you can create with many of these tools is interactive and designed to promote conversions—if you've ever wanted to make a video game about your law firm, now's the time to try it, and there are tools to get you started.

The type of social media marketing tool you'll need to create your campaign depends on what kind of content you're hoping to create.  Most of these tools also allow you to track the results of any campaign that you create, integrating measurement and analytics for specific campaign actions.  If your company thrives on cooperative work, you may want to choose a social media marketing tool for campaign creation that allows multiple authors to edit campaigns at the same time.

Studies show that building inbound links is the single most important factor for searches, in part because it improves your Page Rank from Google.  “But how can I find my Page Rank?” you may ask.  Your Page Rank won't appear on your website automatically, and you'll need to download a tool or use a webpage to be able to find your Page Rank.  In this guide, we'll look at why someone might want to find their page rank, and what you can do after you know what your page rank looks like and how it's trending.

Why You Need to Find Your Page Rank

Let's say that I run a website for a law firm that has a large number of competitors in my area.  No matter what, I notice that it seems like my web pages always display lower than the pages of my competitors whenever I search online.  When this happens, I need to find my Page Rank.  When I find my Page Rank, I will probably discover that it is substantially lower than my competitors' PR value.  That will make it much harder to have my links displayed early in search results.

If you're running a website, you need to be able to not only find your Page Rank right now, but also to keep track of it over time.  “But how do I find my Page Rank value from times in the past?”  A tool like SEOMoz can actually help you to find your Page Rank value over a period of months or years.

How Often Does Page Rank Change?

So now, we'll say I decided to find my Page Rank and discovered that it was a 4, and that it has been a 4 for quite some time.  How often can I expect it to change?  How often should I find my Page Rank so that I can tell whether it's been moving up or down?

Typically, you can wait to find your page rank for several weeks to a month after you calculate it once.  If I try to find my page rank once a day, for example, I won't really be getting much new data.  That's because Google actually only updates the Page Rank values infrequently.  In some cases, you may have to wait up to several months to actually see a change to your page rank, even if you've been building inbound links at a very good pace.

How Can I Find My Page Rank Today?

In order to find your page rank right away, you can use any of several calculator tools online.  However, probably the simplest and easiest one to download (not to mention the one that is always, always available with no downtime) is the Google Toolbar.  The Google Toolbar is a very fast download, and by hovering over the Page Rank icon, you can find your page rank very easily for any web page on your site (or any other website).

The Google Toolbar, as well as any other tool I can use to find my page rank that relies on Google's numbers, will only display an integer value for Page Rank.  However, this is a rounded value.  You can even find some tools that will help you to estimate your current Page Rank so that you can find how many links you'll need to add to go up another level.

How Can I Find My Page Rank Numbers for Competitors?

One of the greatest things about the Google Page Rank system is that you don't have to stop by trying to find your Page Rank.  When I'm done trying to find my Page Rank, I can always look at my competitors' websites and see whether they're doing as well as I am.  If I find that my competitors are having a very fast uptick in their Page Rank numbers, this is a good sign that I need to become more aggressive in my marketing strategy.

If you find your Page Rank is significantly lower than that of your competitors, make sure that you try to build your inbound link profile slowly.  Google regards it as suspicious when websites with relatively low amounts of traffic suddenly build huge numbers of inbound links all at once.  Artificial linking patterns also tend to show large “spikes” of inbound links being built on some days (weekdays!) while other days show no links were built.  To make your linking patterns look as natural as possible, keep your links building as consistently as you can.

How Can I Find My Page Rank Predictions?

Okay, so Google hasn't updated for a while.  Is there any way to find your page rank before the toolbar updates for you?  Absolutely.  Search for “page rank prediction.”  When you use a prediction tool, you'll find your page rank based on many different Google data centers.  The different data centers update your Page Rank at different times, which means that you can sometimes essentially predict the future using one of these tools.

Don't expect to see predictions that extend far into the future—no one can see what the future will hold for your link building!  However, you can use this to understand whether you can expect your Page Rank to increase within the next few months.

Beyond Finding Page Rank: Analyzing Your Data

Once you find your Page Rank, you need to actually take a look at the trends you're seeing and do something about them.  In general, if you're seeing a steady increase in your Page Rank, you don't need to change your ways unless you want a sudden boost.  However, if your Page Rank is slowly declining, this is usually a sign that your link building efforts have been slowing down.  You should work on building more backlinks.

Sudden decreases in Page Rank are usually the result of violating some aspect of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.  If you are building links artificially instead of organically, your website could be penalized (also known as “sandboxed”) by Google with the result that your Page Rank drops precipitously.  You will need to look in your webmaster email to see if Google has notified you about what the problem is and how to correct it.

Everything About Viral Marketing

Over the last decade, several new forms of marketing have evolved on the web—and one of the most exciting is viral marketing.  Viral marketing can change a company's fortunes overnight, and companies using successful viral strategies have been able to get millions of page views for company websites and videos.  Viral marketing, by definition, spreads like wildfire.  Whether you're looking for strategies to help your company's website go viral, or if you're still asking “what is viral marketing?”, this guide can give you some great pointers.

What is Viral Marketing?  Pinning Down a Viral Marketing Definition

When asking “what is viral marketing?” it's a good idea to look at some of the things that viral marketing is not.  For example, while the viral marketing definition does include some things that could be classified as publicity stunts, not all publicity stunts are viral advertising.  The viral marketing definition is using some way to enhance brand awareness through people's word of mouth, in a way that explodes numerically in the same way that a virus does when infecting a population.

The reason that you need to know what is viral marketing is that people respond to it.  While only about 15 percent of people will click on an advertisement, up to 80 percent of people will click on a website or video link that a friend sent them.  To capitalize on that, you need to take advantage of the viral marketing definition and get your ads to spread because people want them to, not because you paid an advertising company to post links.

How Viral Marketing Began—And What That Can Teach Us

One of the first great success stories that started people asking “what is viral marketing?” was the success of Microsoft's Hotmail client in the 1990s.  With relatively minimal advertising, Hotmail became the email client of choice for millions of internet users, all because the viral marketing definition came into play—people telling each other about its services.  

Back then, most email clients cost money or came with your internet service provider.  Hotmail made its email services free, then added its own small signature to any email you sent.  The signature was unobtrusive, but it made its point: free web email.  Within months, people around the world used it, and people for the first time saw what is viral marketing and what it could do.

Even that first example under the viral marketing definition can teach us a lot.  Hotmail did something no one else was doing at the time.  Offering something different is still critical to viral marketing today.  They also gave people something for free that most people were offering for money.

What is Viral Marketing With Video?

The web has evolved a great deal since the 1990s, and the viral marketing definition has evolved right along with it.  Today, when you ask “what is viral marketing,” most people think of viral videos.  Youtube has made it easy for individuals and businesses to get their videos in front of as many people as possible.

Some of the most popular viral videos of all time, especially in the early days of web video, didn't really fall into the viral marketing definition at all.  Why?  Because they weren't associated with any particular commercial product.  Even today, not all videos that go viral are part of a marketing campaign, but as advertisers have become savvier, the percentages are climbing.

What is Viral Marketing Good For?

Now that you know the answer to the question “what is viral marketing?”, it's time to think about how you can use viral marketing to help your law firm.  If you've been online for a while, you've undoubtedly seen several viral videos.  Some things that fall into the viral marketing definition stay in a small social circle—did seven different lawyer friends all email you the same link?  Sounds pretty viral, and that's exactly the kind of word-of-mouth you want your own viral marketing campaign to generate.

Nearly any marketing goal you have can be met in part with viral advertising.  The viral marketing definition is so broad that it lends itself to a wide variety of marketing strategies, and you can focus on any aspect of your business that you think could go viral: blogs, videos, or even apps.

What is a Viral Marketing Agency?

Because web marketing strategies change so quickly, you may want to look at hiring an agency to handle all of your viral marketing needs.  Some advertising agencies are specialists in viral marketing, and can help you map out a strategy that can save you money on marketing costs in the long run and increase your name recognition throughout your community—or even throughout the world.

Hiring an agency is often a particularly good idea if you're interested in going viral, because a single misstep can prevent your viral campaign from working.  Even if you later decide to do work on viral marketing campaigns in-house, starting with agency work can give you a good idea of what is viral marketing all about, and how to run a campaign that attracts attention from all the right people.

The Future of Viral Marketing

The answer to the question “what is viral marketing?” was quite different ten years ago than it is today, and odds are it will be different still in another ten years.  The viral marketing definition in the future may evolve due to changes in social media platforms (which are still less than a decade old), or because of super high speed fiberoptic internet that makes even the fastest speeds today seem sluggish.  

Because no one knows what the future of viral marketing will hold, it's important to keep up to date: read blogs, watch videos, and—perhaps more importantly—keep an eye on what you and the people you know are receiving virally.  If a web link is being spread around by everyone you know, that's the viral marketing definition.  You should check into it, and try to figure out what made it successful.

Effective content marketing is rarely accidental, and it's not usually a matter of “eureka” moments.  What makes good internet marketing today is having a good sense of your audience, a knowledge of targeting, and ideas on how to make content that resonates with the people you want to reach.  In this guide, we'll explore seven different ways that you can make effective content marketing to reach new clients or referral sources.  Keep in mind that the ideas that worked even a few years ago may not work today.  The standards for effective content marketing change all the time, and being successful in 2013 depends on creating a good strategy now.

#1: Be A Great Storyteller

Any attorney who has ever gone to trial knows how important it is to be able to tell a good story.  Storytelling is in some ways at the heart of the legal profession, but you wouldn't know that from looking at most law firm websites.  Many of these websites don't have effective content marketing.  Instead of telling a story, they focus on irrelevant details, marketing jargon, and legal terms that their clients may not even fully understand the meaning of.

A great law firm website with effective content marketing will have a clear focus.  There's no need to use formal language in front of potential clients—try to keep a conversational but professional tone at all times.  Explain any legal terms or concepts in language a regular person in your target audience is likely to be able to understand, because potential clients are likely to hit the “back” button if they see that an attorney is using too many terms they can't understand.  Narrative and storytelling make the most compelling and effective content marketing, so you should use it throughout your site, including in attorney biographies and press releases.

#2: Understand Who Your Audience Is

Too many law firms waste a great deal of their marketing budget by making too broad an appeal.  In today's market, it's much better to be the market leader in a relatively narrow niche than to be mediocre at a wide variety of practice areas.  Depending on what kinds of cases your firm specializes in, you may have different types of clients.

Understanding who your audience is and what they're looking for when they start to look for an attorney is critical.  If your website can help people to address common concerns or questions, you'll have effective content marketing that works to convert potential clients.

#3: Be Creative When Choosing Media

Many attorneys are hesitant to change up how they spend their marketing budget, and may think that effective content marketing still looks about like it did a few years ago.  Those attorneys are getting left behind as the web changes, and you don't want to get left behind with them.  Be willing to be flexible about where you put your effective content marketing.

For example, one place that many people don't think about for content marketing is the app store for Android or iOS devices.  If you make an app or advertise your law firm in apps that you believe might be relevant for clients like yours, you'll be doing something most of your competitors don't—something increasingly difficult to do in the very connected social web world.

#4: Share Your Content Widely

Speaking of the social web, it's no longer enough just to create effective content marketing.  To really make sure that it has the maximum effect possible, you need to make sure other people can see it, too.  Sharing your content on a wide variety of social media platforms makes it much more likely that something you create will become a local or even global sensation.

However, just because you should link to your effective content marketing from several sources doesn't mean you should always use the same description.  Facebook allows for a bit more description than Twitter, and LinkedIn has a more professional audience than either.  Use your discretion when deciding how to describe your marketing content on each site, but don't make it the same.

#5: Make Your Video Content Viral-Ready

There's no specific formula for video content that goes viral, and it can sometimes be difficult to predict what the web will latch onto as the next major sensation.  However, you can help to ensure that your content is viral-ready by making sure that there are no sound or video problems and that your video content is professionally produced.

Attorneys aren't likely to create the next “Gangnam Style,” but that doesn't mean that virality is a lost cause.  Sometimes, effective content marketing can be viral in a relatively small group—for instance, other attorneys in your region—and may never really expand beyond that group.  However, if you can make something that will be shared among a group of people that you really want to talk to, viral video's a great way to try.

#6: Keep Creating New Content

Some attorneys think that they can simply create an internet marketing blitz, and that their effective content marketing is essentially a one time only purchase.  However, effective content marketing depends largely on continuing to have fresh content posted.  Google tends to rank websites lower that aren't updated with some frequency.

Some lawyers stop producing as much effective content marketing when they're busy, because they're so focused on helping clients.  However, you need to keep in mind that marketing is one of the most important responsibilities you have—without marketing, the boom times won't last forever and you may not have the momentum to carry you through more difficult times.

#7: Analyze Which Content Works Best

Not all content marketing will actually work for your website.  That's fine—but you need to know when you've made a mistake so that you can correct it before any more money or time is wasted.  This is why it's important to have an analytics tool to help you understand where your web traffic is coming from and whether you're actually getting a return on investment from your content marketing strategies.