Everything About Search Engine Marketing Strategy

When you're beginning to market your law firm website, you need to plan ahead.  Having search engine marketing strategies in place before you begin to redesign your website or plan a social media presence can make a big difference to the effectiveness of your SEO marketing.  This guide will help you understand some common search engine marketing strategies that work, and also some that are less likely to get you the new clients your business needs to thrive.

Common Search Engine Marketing Strategy Mistakes

Search engine marketing strategies are not all created equal.  While a search engine marketing strategy that's done right can bring many new clients to your firm, bad planning can lead to disastrous results.  Here are some of the most common mistakes that people have made when their search engine marketing strategies fail:

• Bad content.  If your content is repetitive or seems like a keyword-laden ad, your search engine marketing strategy has failed.  This kind of marketing tends to turn off potential clients and can lead to having a lower conversion rate.

• Bad design.  No matter how good your search engine marketing strategies are, you are unlikely to draw in new clients with a website that looks outdated or has broken links. Clients view your website as an extension of your law firm, and websites that look shoddy can make your firm seem unprofessional and out of touch.

• Prestige keywords.  When firms are developing their search engine marketing strategies, they often decide to use pay per click (PPC) advertising with “prestige” keywords that are very expensive.  However, the rate of return on these keywords isn't always good, and you may end up wasting money if most of the clicks are other firms considering using similar keywords in their search engine marketing strategy.

• Staying isolated.  The web today is a social tool as well as an informational one.  If you want your search engine marketing strategies to work, your website can't be an internet island, unconnected to any other sites.  Your search engine marketing strategy needs to include connections to client review websites and social media outlets.

Search Engine Marketing Strategy #1: Niche Marketing

If your search engine marketing strategies include pay per click ads, you'll need to understand the basics of niche marketing.  If you want to consider what kind of niche to market to, it's time to look at your firm's client base and what your real strengths are.  Think about the kind of client you want, and then consider what that client starts by looking for.  

“Atlanta personal injury attorney” may be a very expensive click, but you might be able to get something closer to your practice's real area of expertise—be it car accidents, plane crashes, or birth defects—for considerably less.

If your firm offers contingency fees, it can be a good search engine marketing strategy to focus on keywords involving the costs of hiring a lawyer in your practice area.  In order to maximize the returns from this kind of ad, your search engine marketing strategies should focus on content: you'll need to have a page on your firm's website clearly outlining the basics of your firm's fee structures.  Without this information, clients who have questions about attorney fees will find answers from another firm's website.

Search Engine Marketing Strategy #2: Video Marketing

One of the most profitable search engine marketing strategies you can incorporate into your firm's website is video marketing.  Even a few brief videos can increase your web presence in a way that turns clicks into paying clients.  When your search engine marketing strategy includes video, clients become several times more likely to call your firm once they've clicked through to your website.

The videos that you include in your search engine marketing strategies should be appropriately tagged and make your firm look human and relatable.  Showing some personality is a good idea: make clients see the individuality of your firm, and you're more likely to keep their business.

Search Engine Marketing Strategy #3: Social Media Presence

If you're not familiar with social media, developing a presence for your law firm on Facebook, Twitter, or other social media sites may seem intimidating.  However, these sites can form the backbone of successful search engine marketing strategies today.  If you want to have a successful search engine marketing strategy, you need to make sure that your law firm can communicate fluently using social media.

If you're already familiar with social media sites, you can focus on maintaining a presence on these sites that makes your firm's personality and unique strengths apparent.  Make sure that your Facebook feed represents the brand that you want to show to the public, and you'll be able to bring in more clients from social media.  Pay attention to the feedback you receive—give your clients more of what they “like” and less of what they don't.

Search Engine Marketing Strategy #4: Blogs and Legal Content

In order to bring in clients who are doing very specific web queries, you have to have a great deal of content about a wide range of specific legal issues.  One of the best ways to tie this into your social media presence and search engine marketing strategies is to start a blog for your firm or a practice group within it.

The content contained within your blog should be SEO-conscious, but shouldn't look like an advertisement.  You want people who read your blog entries to trust the accuracy of your information, and to find it readable as well.  Make sure to keep your keyword density high enough for search engine optimization, but not so high that readers of your blog think it looks like spam.

There's no one right way to write a blog, and no one right way to address legal topics.  You may want to consult with branding specialists who can help you better understand the art of blogging for your brand.   It's worth speaking with professionals to ensure that your blog is putting your law firm's best foot forward.

 

Everything About Search Engine Marketing Services

When you're starting to consider your SEO strategies for a law firm website, you may want to think about using a search engine marketing service to help you get the most out of your website.  Search engine marketing services can help you to interpret the clicks you're getting so that you can refine your website's content accordingly.  This guide will help you understand how a search engine marketing service may be able to make your SEO marketing take less time and generate better results.

Search Engine Marketing Services and Website Content

One of the biggest areas that a search engine marketing service can help your website with is content.  Using search engine marketing services that look at Google Analytics numbers can help you see where your website traffic is coming from and what niche areas seem to be generating the most conversions after clicking.

Once you know which legal services you offer are most appealing to clients searching for your website, you can go one of two directions.  You may want to use a search engine marketing service to figure out how to make your other practice areas get as much attention as the areas that are doing well with your current search engine optimization strategy.  Alternately, search engine marketing services can help you specialize even further in the niche area that is driving most of your web traffic already.

Search Engine Marketing Services and Website Design

You may also want to hire a search engine marketing service that can help to evaluate your website's design, especially if you notice that you are receiving a high number of clicks but not many new clients.  A low “conversion rate” (clicks that become paying clients) can mean that your website is not designed well enough to attract clients and make them want to use your legal services.

Search engine marketing services can often analyze your website's design and offer suggestions for improvement.  Your search engine marketing service may offer options for a complete redesign of your website, including blogs and social media links.  Increasing not only the amount of content your website has, but the number of links it has to social media, will make it more relevant and accessible for potential clients.

Search Engine Marketing Services and SEO

Search engine optimization, or SEO, is one of the best ways to get more eyes on your law firm's website.  When you have effectively optimized your content, your website will appear high in search result rankings.  Your search engine marketing service is likely to focus on SEO, because most clients won't ever get past the first few results when they do a web search.  If your website only appears after someone has clicked through twenty pages of results, you are unlikely to get new clients with your website.

Search engine marketing services can make sure that your content uses SEO effectively and that you have enough content for search engines to rank your pages highly.  Your search engine marketing service can also help you to identify niche search terms that can help you drive more traffic to your website from clients who are ready to hire a lawyer.

Search Engine Marketing Services and Pay-Per-Click

Today, PPC advertising (pay per click) is often considered inferior to SEO.  This is because PPC costs money every time someone clicks on your advertisement, and these clicks can often be very expensive for many keywords.  However, a search engine marketing service may still advise you to use PPC as part of your search engine strategy.

In order to effectively use PPC, you'll need to strategize about what keywords you should use to attract new clients.  Generic keywords and extremely prestigious keywords may cost hundreds of dollars for a single click.  Instead of appearing when clients search for “Atlanta personal injury lawyer,” for instance, you may want your PPC advertising to appear when clients look for “birth defects after taking prescription drug Atlanta lawyer.”

Search Engine Marketing Services and Blogging

Today, having good search engine results means having a steady stream of new, accurate content on your website.  Blogging can be a good way to market your services and make your firm seem more human and easy to relate to.  A search engine marketing service can help you to set up a new blog and may also be able to help you develop content for that blog.

If you already know a bit about search engine optimization and blogging, you may want to start a blog on your own if you are a partner at a small firm or a solo practitioner.  You can blog about topics that interest you and relate to your practice.  Maybe there's something that you think every legal client with a particular legal issue should know, or a common misconception about the area of law you practice in.  Even one or two blog posts per week can make a big difference to the results you get from your your search engine marketing service.

Search Engine Marketing Services and Social Media

Today, the web is increasingly social and interconnected.  Just having a website is no longer enough, as your search engine marketing service can tell you.  Getting good search engine results is also a matter of being connected to other places on the web, and one of the easiest ways to ensure that your firm is well marketed is to increase its presence on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Establishing not just a Facebook page for your law firm, but a frequently updated Facebook page that contains fresh new content on a daily basis can make a huge impact to the number of clients you can bring in.  Your search engine marketing service can help you to establish your Facebook page and help you decide what kind of content would be best.  Once clients begin interacting with you on your Facebook page, their friends and relatives will see their activity, driving more views to your pages and helping you to find new clients more frequently.

 

Everything About Search Engine Marketing

A few decades ago, most people found their lawyers with phone books or by asking friends, colleagues, and relatives for recommendations.  Today, it's much more likely that your clients will try to find your law firm with a web search.  In order to get new clients through the internet, it's important to use search engine optimization marketing for your business.  SEO search engine marketing allows you to generate more clicks for your website and get more clients every day.

Types of Search Engine Marketing: Pay Per Click

One of the primary types of search engine marketing that is available for law firms is called “pay per click,” or PPC, advertising.  In this form of advertising, your ad will be displayed when clients search for a particular search term.  You'll only be charged an advertising fee by your search engine marketing company when people click on your ad.

While pay per click marketing can sometimes generate “conversions” (clicks that become paying clients), clients today are becoming increasingly internet savvy.  This type of search engine marketing is generally displayed in a “sponsored results” section of a search, which some clients may ignore in favor of looking at the first search results that are displayed in the non-sponsored results area.

Pay per click advertising has become much more expensive in recent years due to an explosive growth in the number of attorneys using PPC for a wide range of legal search terms.  If you want to use PPC instead of search engine optimization marketing, you may want to make sure that your terms are very specific and oriented toward a niche market.  “Prestige” terms, like “asbestos attorney” or “Boston personal injury lawyer” can be extremely costly, but “lawyer for construction accident in Boston” may be much less so.

Types of Search Engine Marketing: Search Engine Optimization Marketing

Instead of using PPC marketing, an increasing number of law firms are using SEO search engine marketing.  Search engine optimization marketing involves using key terms and phrases that place your website in the first several pages of results for a particular search term.  

SEO search engine marketing has several advantages over pay per click search engine marketing methods.  Search engine optimization marketing doesn't require you to pay anything when a potential client clicks on your website.  Many clients are more likely to click a website that involves SEO search engine marketing, because these sites don't appear as “advertising” in the same way that a website marketed with PPC does.

Search engine optimization marketing isn't always easy, though.  In order to maintain a good web presence using SEO search engine marketing, you'll need to have well-written content—and usually a great deal of it.  You'll also want to make sure that your search engine optimization marketing is tailored to the phrases that actually bring in clients.  You may want to use several search engine marketing strategies at once to ensure that you're bringing in clients from as many places as possible.

Building a Friendlier Website

Search engine optimization marketing means more than just generating clicks for your website.  In order to have successful SEO search engine marketing, you'll need to convert those clicks into real clients.  The best way to do this is to make sure that your search engine marketing leads to a legal website that is designed to attract customers.

You should make sure that your website contains the information that your clients really want to know, if you want to have the best chance converting clients from your search engine optimization marketing.  You may want to use search engine marketing tools to find out which keywords are bringing clients to your website and which are generating leads.  This can make it easier to know what parts of your website content could be fleshed out more for the best SEO search engine marketing results.

Keep in mind that no amount of search engine marketing will help your business if your website is poorly designed or lacks informative content.  Search engine optimization marketing depends on your site maintaining accurate and relevant information.  You'll need to make sure that you are adding new content regularly in order to make sure that your SEO search engine marketing strategy succeeds.

Blogging For Better Business

One great way to increase your website's SEO search engine marketing presence is to start a blog about legal topics relating to your practice.  As an attorney, you already spend time thinking about what clients ought to know about some types of cases, or about what the current state of the law is in one of your practice areas.  Instead of just thinking about these issues or discussing them with other attorneys, help your search engine optimization marketing by blogging about them.

The best blog entries don't just look like search engine marketing spam.  You'll want to have more than search engine optimization marketing terms in your blog entries: make them informative, exciting, and even a little bit fun, and you'll have the best chance of attracting clients with your blog entries.  Remember that when clients click on your blog, your SEO search engine marketing will only work if they think you're an attorney they can trust with their case.

Using Social Media

Today, more people than ever are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media services.  You can make your web presence on these sites part of your SEO search engine marketing strategy.  Maintaining a Facebook presence, including allowing people to “like” blog posts and updating about big wins for your firm, can mean that potential clients see your best side when they begin to do web research.

SEO search engine marketing with social media also shows your clients that you are willing to engage with them in an internet community setting.  Facebook posts are a relatively easy way to connect with potential clients and existing ones, and you can use these posts to link to relevant pages on your website.  With a social media presence, even more search engine marketing possibilities can open up for your law firm's website.

 

 

Everything About Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

When you're a smaller law firm, it's a good idea to focus your marketing efforts on small business search engine marketing.  This means working with local search engine marketing so that your business is noticed by local residents.  In this guide, you'll learn about several different strategies to enhance your small business search engine marketing plan, including several different types of local searches that can bring your firm new clients on a regular basis.

 

 

Designing Your Website for Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

Before you start implementing your small business search engine marketing plan, you need to make sure that your website looks, runs, and feels the way you want it to.  Keep in mind that clients looking at a website for the first time can make up their minds not to hire your firm within moments.  If your firm's site hasn't been updated in years, contains links that go nowhere, or is riddled with spelling errors, it doesn't matter how many people click on your website, because most of them will just go elsewhere.

 

 

You may want to hire a website design firm that specializes in small business search engine marketing.  These firms may be able to make your local search engine marketing easier by offering you a web design package that includes a website, blog, and social media pages.  If your firm doesn't yet have a clear brand identity to differentiate it from other, similar law firms, you may want to focus on branding before rolling out your small business search engine marketing plan.

 

 

Video Small Business Search Engine Marketing

 

 

One of the best ways to make people who click on your website call your firm is to include video as well as text on your website.  Video small business search engine marketing doesn't have to be difficult.  Even a few basic videos that introduce you to potential clients and help them understand what your firm does can make a big difference to your conversion rates.

 

 

In order to make your local search engine marketing with video more effective, make sure your videos look professional and are hosted on reliable servers.  While working, polished video will attract clients, a broken video link is likely to make them look for another law firm with a fully functional website.

 

 

Client Reviews and Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

Today's legal clients are more web savvy than ever, and they're using that acumen to search client reviews before they ever call a lawyer.  When you plan your small business search engine marketing strategies, you need to take these clients into account.  A number of sites exist for clients to review attorneys specifically, and even more are for all types of local businesses.

 

 

You can help to establish yourself through local search engine marketing by making sure any contact and basic firm information contained on these review pages is accurate and complete.  You may want to add to your page on one of these sites by including a link to your firm's website.  You can also encourage happy clients to help your firm by giving you a positive review, enhancing your small business search engine marketing strategy.

 

 

Some law firms, like other local businesses, are tempted to take a shortcut and write their own positive client reviews (or negative reviews for competing firms) in order to get better local search engine marketing results.  While this may seem like a good strategy in the short term, there can be significant consequences.  This is against the terms of service for most websites, and your firm could even be on the hook for damages if you post negative reviews about another firm as part of your local search engine marketing strategy.

 

 

It's important to keep an eye on client review websites to make sure that no defamatory reviews have been posted of your law firm.  Just a few bad reviews can sabotage your small business search engine marketing strategy.  You can usually contact a website to have a bad review removed, and if you don't have time to manage this part of your local search engine marketing, you may want to hire a reputation management firm to help you avoid the damage that a negative review can do to your reputation online.

 

 

Local Sources for Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

One of the best ways to make sure that your small business search engine marketing is successful is to advertise on true local websites.  It can often be substantially cheaper to do your local search engine marketing by advertising on the websites for local newspapers, radio stations, and television stations than paying per click from search engine results.

 

 

Social Media and Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

You can also improve your small business search engine marketing by advertising to local markets using social media websites.  Targeting hyperlocal clients can ensure that you are getting the most return for your advertising investment.  Maintaining a presence on social media sites can also be effective if your content is shared by clients—often, this sort of sharing can work very much like a word of mouth recommendation for an attorney.

 

 

Pay Per Click Local Search Engine Marketing

 

 

When you begin your local search engine marketing campaign, you may want to include pay per click advertising, which puts your firm's website into sponsored results for a web search.  However, in order to get the most bang for your advertising buck, you'll need to keep it hyperlocal.  Use the name of the town you're actually in, not the big city nearby.  If you're a law firm in a large city, consider using your neighborhood, rather than the city, as your advertising search terms.

 

 

When you're paying per click, it's also important to have targeted landing pages that speak to the concerns clients have when they search for a particular term.  You may want to have a large number of these landing pages in order to maximize your chances of conversions with your small business search engine marketing pay per click advertisements.

 

 

 

Everything About Search Engine Marketing For Lawyers

When you begin using search engine marketing tools to improve your web marketing strategies, you'll see an increase in clicks and conversions on your law firm website.  This guide will help you learn more about search engine marketing for lawyers, whether you're just getting started or have been dissatisfied with your previous SEM strategies.  You'll learn about common mistakes that lawyers make when using search engine marketing tools and techniques, and about how to get the most out of your search engine marketing strategies.

Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers: Common Mistakes

Because search engine marketing for lawyers is relatively new, it's easy to fall prey to common misconceptions that can drain your advertising budget without bringing in the new clients you need.  Here are a few of the basic mistakes that lawyers make when they're trying to use search engine marketing tools:

• Bad Website Content.  If you're generating plenty of clicks but your search engine marketing for lawyers still isn't getting new clients, you may want to take a look at your website.  Does it contain information that clients really care about, or just summaries of attorney education and experience?

• Bad Website Design.  Even if you have terrific content, a website that looks dated or has missing links won't impress potential clients.  When your search engine marketing tools show that you have low conversion rates, bad design is sometimes the culprit.

• Thinking in Generalities.  Unless your firm is a behemoth with hundreds of lawyers and several locations, you can't be everything to everybody.  Thinking too generally can lead to overpaying for keywords and failing to be specific enough in your use of search engine marketing tools.

• Putting Your Eggs in One Basket.  If you focus on only one strategy for search engine marketing for lawyers, you could find yourself in a difficult position if that type of marketing goes through sudden changes.  With websites changing regularly, you're better off using your search engine marketing tools to diversify the ways in which you market your niche to clients.

• Changing Too Often.  While it's important to keep what works and ditch what doesn't, give new search engine marketing tools time to work before dismissing them as useless.  Good search engine marketing for lawyers can take time to bring in clients as you build your content base.

Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers: Finding Your Niche

One of the best things that search engine marketing tools can do for you is help you find the niche that your firm attracts the most clients in.  Understanding niche marketing can ensure that your dollars spend on search engine marketing for lawyers go as far as possible.  

You can use your search engine marketing tools for reporting on what search terms have led to online inquiries and phone calls, then build landing pages around those search terms to bring in even more clients.  Search engine marketing for lawyers can also be enhanced by buying pay per click ads pertaining to the specific niches that your firm does best.

Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers: Putting Your Best Foot Forward

When you start using search engine marketing tools, you should already have your website ready to go.  A poorly designed website can steer clients away, but a well designed one can stop comparison shopping clients in their tracks and generate consultations every day.  In order to have the best results with your search engine marketing for lawyers, make sure that you've thought about the brand identity of your law firm.  It's not enough to just be competent—what makes your firm special, unique?  What keeps your clients coming back?

Whatever your firm's best qualities are, make sure that they're represented in the content and design of your website.  Once your firm's brand is consistently represented on your website and in all its content, you'll see more conversions when you look at reports from your search engine marketing tools.  If you're not sure how to build a brand identity for your law firm, you may want to consult with advertising firms that can help you to construct your website's brand.

Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers: Keeping it Fresh

When it comes to marketing your website, content is king.  You can use your search engine marketing tools to figure out what phrases are bringing clients to your website, and maximize the content on your site that pertains to those phrases.  One way to keep new content appearing on your website all the time is by using a blog.  A blog is one of the best search engine marketing tools you can use to make sure that your content reflects the newest search results bringing clients to your website.

When blog entries for your website are written—whether by an attorney at your law firm or an outside freelancer—you should make sure that they reflect the brand image that you are trying to create for your website.  Consistent tone and branding will ensure that your website is seen as organic and professional, rather than as a glorified advertisement.

Search Engine Marketing for Lawyers: Branching Out

No website is an island, and making sure that your website is linked on as many other sites as possible and that your firm is mentioned on other websites can help to ensure that your organic search engine results are as high as possible.  You may want to make sure that your website is linked in chamber of commerce directories or on other local websites to increase your visibility to clients from your hyperlocal area.

Search engine marketing tools can also help you improve your presence on social media websites, which drive an increasing amount of web traffic today.  If you make your social media presence known to clients and have content that is likely to be shared, you will be increasing your number of page views without needing to spend additional dollars on advertising.  Especially in areas where not many competing lawyers have yet established social media pages, his type of outreach can set you apart from your competition.

 

Everything About Advanced Web Analytics

The basics of web analytics for law firms can be tough to master.  But once you already know about your conversion rates and your unique site visits, you may be confused about which web analytics report gives you the results you need to really change your website's effectiveness.  If you want the best results—20 to 30 percent conversion rate increases, doubling of web traffic—you'll need to use advanced web analytics.  Going beyond the basics of your tools can ensure that you're getting exactly what you want out of your web analytics reports.

Why Standard Web Analytics Reports Aren't Enough

Looking at your first web analytics report can be tremendously confusing, but as you've used web analytics reports more frequently, you've probably familiarized yourself with the statistics that are important for your law firm.  You may also start to notice problems—blind spots in your statistics, things you can't figure out from a standard web analytics report.

When you started investigating your web traffic, you may have been surprised at the sheer number of web analytics reports available with your reporting tool.  What you may have learned through trial and error is that one great web analytics report can often be more useful than a thousand that don't give you exactly what you need.  

Quantity is much less important in advanced web analytics than quality.  Many analytics professionals refer to standard web analytics reports as “data pukes.”  It's easy to see why: in spite of the amount of data provided in a web analytics report by Google, Yahoo, or other tools, it can be hard to know how to translate that data into the kind of real-world results that matter.  

For example, your standard web analytics report may report your conversion rate and which keywords are bringing traffic to your site, but you may not know how to figure out which keywords are bringing in the best potential clients.  Advanced web analytics can help you differentiate between keywords so that you can focus on the ones where there is the most potential for improvement.

The important thing to remember is that your business is unique.  Google didn't set up its web analytics reports to help your company specifically.  If you want the best results from your web analytics report, you'll need to use advanced web analytics that keep your firm's goals in mind.

Custom Web Analytics Reports

Creating great advanced web analytics reports means that you'll need to understand exactly what you're looking for.  What are your goals?  What frustrates you about your web analytics report tools?  What information would make your web analytics reports more useful to you?

For example, you may be frustrated by how many bounces are included in your web analytics reports.  While some companies focus on eliminating these bounces altogether, maybe they don't matter as much as you think—especially if you're getting bounces from search engine results, not paid clicks.  This can happen if, for instance, you're highly ranked in search engine results for a topic that involves multiple types of results.  The bounces you're getting may not be possible to convert into paying clients—so why focus on them?

If this happens, You may want to create advanced web analytics that can focus only on your non-bouncing site visitors, so that you can understand how they interact with the website.  You can design a custom web analytics report that helps you focus on the clients who may be most interested in your website—for instance, those who have looked at several pages or watched at least one of your law firm's videos.

Social Media Web Analytics Reports

An increasing amount of web traffic today comes from social media like Facebook and Twitter.  When you want to increase the conversions you get from social media sites, you need advanced web analytics to understand your social traffic.  A standard web analytics report about social media can give you part of the picture, but if blogs, Twitter and Facebook are a major part of your marketing strategy (and they should be), you need to go deeper.

A custom web analytics report can tell you a great deal about how your firm is perceived on social media sources.  You may want to know if a new social media strategy—for instance, starting a new Twitter feed about your law firm's results—has paid off.  When you use advanced web analytics, you can produce a custom web analytics report that details exactly how much value each Twitter or Facebook click has had for your firm.

When you're using custom web analytics reports, it's much easier to keep your goals in mind at all times.  A narrowly tailored web analytics report can give you much more granular information much more quickly than using basic reports, so remember to use advanced web analytics techniques instead of just using what Google or Yahoo provides.

Using Advanced Web Analytics for Redesign

Once you've got your custom web analytics reports, you may want to look into redesigning your website for better traffic flow and increased conversions.  You may, for example, want to use a custom web analytics report that shows which of your pages are generating the most conversions and which are driving clients away from your website.

Next, you can begin to analyze the differences between those pages.  A key part of advanced web analytics is getting inside the minds of your clients by looking at which pages drive your traffic.  If a particular type of content—for example, video—seems to keep people looking at your website for longer according to web analytics reports, you may want to include more video.

Keep in mind that once you've redesigned your website, you shouldn't stop using advanced web analytics.  Using the same type of custom web analytic report can keep you on top of trends that are affecting your client base.  By being proactive with your advanced web analytics, you'll be able to anticipate changes to demographics and site traffic before your competitors using standard web analytics reports even know what's going on.

 

 

Everything About Hosted Web Analytics

With over 50% of Fortune 500 companies using hosted web analytics tools, you may have begun to think about what kind of web analytics you need.  There are a wide variety of hosted and self-hosted solutions that can help you track and analyze visitor data, but trying to figure out which tool you want can be a hassle, especially if you're not familiar with the basics.  There's no one right solution that works for every firm—this guide will help you understand the strengths and weaknesses of hosted and self hosted web analytics so that you can make the call that will work best for your clients.

What's the Difference?

The terminology surrounding web analytics and hosting can be a bit confusing.  In general, web analytics refers to tools that gather data, analyze your website traffic and make changes based on the data you've gathered.  Hosted web analytics are the most common type of tools available for the novice analyst.  These are tools that are “hosted” on another website, like Google or Yahoo.  In order to work, these tools need your computer to be connected to one of their host servers.

The opposite of hosted isn't non-hosted, it's self-hosted—in other words, a piece of software that you run on your machines.  Self hosted web analytics are software packages that don't require you to be connected online at the time when you use them, and they keep your data on your machines instead of sending it elsewhere.

Hosted Web Analytics: Pros

There's a reason that the majority of companies use web analytics software hosted by other companies.  Google and Yahoo each have significant market shares for hosted web analytics because these search engines have already put a great deal of work into making search results better.  Helping content producers create better, more user-friendly content is in the best interest of these websites, and they can use the data to make the search user experience better.

One of the biggest advantages of using hosted web analytics is cost.  It may sound too good to be true, but the vast majority of these analytic tools are actually hosted completely for free.  You won't have to pay for expensive software licensing if you use hosted web analytics, and it's also free to upgrade when these web analytics tools get new features.

These tools often offer the widest range of standard reports.  If you're new to using analytics, hosted web analytics can be your best bet because they give a tremendously wide range of data.  There is also more training available for this type of analysis software—not because it's more difficult to use, but because it's so much more common than using self-hosted analytics.

Hosted Web Analytics: Cons

While using another company's hosting has benefits, it also can present problems depending on what your firm's goals are.  An increasing number of law firms don't want a company like Google or Yahoo to have access to all of their data, fearing that it could actually help competing firms as much as their own.

While the range of information available through hosted web analytics can be intoxicating to a new analyst, people with more experience often find that a wide range of standard reports just creates vast amounts of irrelevant data.  Creating custom reports using hosted web analytics can sometimes be difficult, and will usually require additional training.

Self Hosted Web Analytics: Pros

If you choose to use a self hosted analytics application, you can get software that includes a “dashboard” of basics like Google or Yahoo, or a very narrowly tailored program that works on specific types of custom reports.  This flexibility lets you choose analytics that are designed to work for problems exactly like yours.

Self hosting also eliminates any problems with giving up your data.  Instead of having your website traffic data stored off-site and being analyzed by search engineers, you can maintain total control over your information.  The value of maintaining your data depends on what you expect that it will be used for—many law firms simply don't believe their reports need to be kept in-house, and are quite comfortable with using hosted web analytics.

Self Hosted Web Analytics: Cons

If you're using a self hosted solution, you should probably already have a grasp on what metrics are important for you and what your firm's website traffic and conversion goals are.  That's because most self hosted web analytics software costs money—and sometimes a lot of it.  Because analytics are a long term, ongoing process, choosing the wrong tool for your analysis can cost a lot of time and money.  You will want to carefully research reviews of any self hosted web analytics software before you make a purchase.

Because your data is only being stored on-site, you'll need to take special care with backups if you are self hosting.  Hosted web analytics are substantially less likely to experience major data loss problems.  Give some thought to what you'd do even in the unlikely event of a natural disaster, and consider secure off-site data storage or cloud storage.

Which Hosted Web Analytics Software Is For Me?

Everyone's preferences are a bit different when it comes to web analytics.  While Google Analytics is sometimes considered the gold standard of hosted web analytics, other hosted services offer great all-around analytics and specialty analytics as well.

The best way to find out what software you like best is to simply experiment.  Just as the process of analyzing and editing your website involves trial and error, feel free to try out several different services until you find one that you feel comfortable with.  You may find that the graphical interface of one dashboard seems more intuitive and easy to use, or that the tools of another are particularly robust for letting you look at a particular interesting metric.  Because upgrades to hosted web analytics software occur all the time, you may also want to check out different tools periodically just to see if they have anything new and useful.

 

 

Everything About Online Web Analytics

 

 

The first online web analytics started almost with the dawn of the World Wide Web.  In 1996, a new service, “Web-Counter,” started counting the number of hits a website received—the first web analytics metrics that could be seen and analyzed by site owners.  These hit counters gradually became more complex, and several services started looking deeper into the data.  

 

 

As the web has evolved, the online web analytics industry has exploded.  Hundreds of companies have sprung onto the scene, all designed to help companies analyze their web traffic and make modifications to their content and marketing strategies based on their traffic data.  Online web analytics have been a boon to law firms who know how to use them—if you want to know more, keep reading this guide.

 

 

Everybody's Got A Story

 

 

When you start working with online web analytics, you might find one curiously gross term mentioned by analytics gurus: “data pukes.”  This refers to the fact that when you use standard reports and web analytics metrics, you often end up seeing large quantities of data, but that data might not hang together.

 

 

Every potential client who visits your website has a story and a reason for landing on your site.  If you're too busy looking at the web analytics metrics in standard reports, your online web analytics may lack a sense of this story—you'll see a lot of numbers without knowing what brought people to your site or how to keep them there.

 

 

That's why good online web analytics can be customized and adapted to answer your questions about your website.  If you're not sure why one keyword is working and another isn't, remember that your visitors aren't just numbers, they're people with needs and desires.  Experiment with different keywords and content, and keep your eye on web analytics metrics the entire time.  As you become more experienced, you'll start to understand how numbers can represent the story of your site visitors.

 

 

The Forest and the Trees

 

 

With thousands of different report types available for your viewing, and hundreds of separate web analytics metrics being examined, it's critical to keep your goals in mind.  If you aren't goal-oriented when doing online web analytics, you'll have knowledge about the reports themselves, but not the wisdom to improve them.

 

 

One of the easiest mistakes for people to make when they're not experienced with online web analytics is to get swept away in the sheer quantity of information that is available.  After hours, days, or even weeks of looking at web analytics metrics, though, you may find that you're no closer to your goal than you were before you started—and that your brain just can't handle more numbers.

 

 

Any time you look at a report, keep asking yourself: “Does this get me closer to my goals?  How?”  Not all web analytics metrics will be relevant for your current project.  If you see something odd while doing online web analytics, follow your hunch—but don't keep heading down dead-end paths.

 

 

Zeroing In On Differences

 

 

You have two landing pages that couldn't be performing more differently.  One is attracting new clients on a daily or near-daily basis, keeps visitors on the page for several minutes, and shows high levels of engagement.  The other is showing a bounce rate of over 50 percent and hasn't yet converted a client.

 

 

A talented beginner to online web analytics changes the second landing page to look more like the first, in whatever ways they can.  Change the site, change the traffic—right?  An intermediate user adds in some other research, making sure that pay per click keywords were well calibrated for the landing page, and that the text of a sponsored ad link looks properly targeted.

 

 

All of these actions will probably help you to make your web analytics metrics for the second site look more like the first.  But if you're the kind of advanced online web analytics user who wants to know not just what works, but why it works, think scientific method.  Try changing just one aspect at a time to find out which alterations change which web analytics metrics.

 

 

This kind of experimentation takes longer, it's true—but the online web analytics data you'll get will be much more useful for revising your site in the future.  This kind of experimentation is key if you want to beat your competitors in key web analytics metrics, so you should try to get comfortable with slow, steady changes and constant monitoring.

 

 

Finding Your Blind Spots

 

 

One of the best ways to increase your client base is to figure out where your website is currently weak.  In order to do this, you may want to look at web analytics metrics not for your own firm, but for the firms of your competitors.

 

 

If your competition has seen huge increases in web traffic and client conversion through a website that includes a great deal of video, you need to know: this kind of research can help you know what hypotheses should be tested next when you work on your online web analytics.  You may also find a new way to leverage social media websites by looking at a competitor's Facebook or Twitter feed.

 

 

Keep in mind that researching your competition doesn't mean you have to become more like them in every way.  The best way to attract clients is to differentiate yourself from competitors, and your web analytics metrics are likely to suffer if you become too similar to another local law firm.  Competition research can help you to know where your competitors are weak, so that you can take advantage of any weak spots in their web marketing strategies.

 

 

Looking Ahead

 

 

Your data will be most effective and illustrate broader trends when you keep monitoring web analytics metrics over a long period of time.  The goal of online web analytics for your law firm should be continuous improvement, not a one-time redesign.  By maintaining constant monitoring of your website's traffic trends, you can keep your marketing strategies fresh, current, and always data-driven.

 

 

 

Everything About Web Marketing Analytics

With two thirds of legal clients using the internet to find a lawyer, and web traffic diversifying into social media and mobile websites, it can be hard to know what marketing strategies are working for your firm.  Fortunately, there's no need to guess.  Web analytics marketing can give you solid, reliable information about your web traffic so that you can understand where your clients are coming from and how to get more business for your firm.  If you're new to web marketing analytics tools, read on to find out how to make the most of your data—usually without spending any money on software.

Why Should My Firm Use Web Analytics Marketing?

Whenever someone visits your law firm's website, they leave a digital trail.  Think of a web marketing analytics tool as an experienced tracker, following those trails to find out where your site visitors go and what they do.

A decade ago, technology for web analytics marketing was still in its infancy, and many sites only kept track of how many visitors their website had. Today, web marketing analytics tools have become a huge industry, with thousands of available reports that look at various aspects of your web traffic.  What has become clear for most firms is this: the “old” metrics of site visits and pages visited are not useful for understanding how your website can better help you meet your goals.

Instead of focusing on irrelevant statistics, web analytics marketing helps you figure out what parts of your website are generating clients and which parts are underperforming.  The best part about using web marketing analytics is the immense potential for customization: no matter what your needs are, you can generate reports that tell you what you want to know.

Web Analytics Marketing: An Ongoing Process

When firms start looking into web marketing analytics, they may have a clear one-time goal in mind, like a website redesign.  For example, let's say your website hasn't been updated regularly or redesigned since 2008.  Some parts of your site may still be working and drawing in traffic, and you need to know which parts those are and why they're working in order to make the best possible redesign.

Having this kind of short term goal for your web analytics marketing is fine, but it's important to understand that this type of marketing is always more effective when you use it continuously over a long period of time.  Web marketing analytics tools provide you with a valuable way to see trends as they happen, and there's no reason to ignore your analytics just because you achieve one or more of your marketing goals.

When you start to budget for web analytics marketing, then, consider it a permanent part of your business.  The internet certainly isn't going away any time soon, and if you're not monitoring your web traffic and analyzing it appropriately, you could miss the next big trend while your competitors capitalize.

Reports and Dashboards and Tools, Oh My!

One of your biggest choices in web marketing analytics is whether to hire a marketing service to handle your analytics or whether to have your own personnel working on analyzing your web traffic.  While there are advantages and disadvantages to both routes, the smallest firms may not be able to afford either a full-time web analytics marketing specialist or an outsourcing solution.  Solo practitioners may find themselves having to do their own web marketing analytics with very little guidance.

If you do choose to do your web analytics marketing in house (a good choice if you want to keep control over your data and custom reports), but don't have a full time analytics staffer, you can take web seminars on analytics tools and reporting.  Seminars can be a great way to familiarize yourself with new reports and creating custom reports.

Making Sense of Your Data

Once you've got the data from your reporting tools, web marketing analytics depend on thinking like a client.  The numbers you find are only a small part of your web analytics marketing solution: what you really need to understand is why those numbers are happening and what's making your clients leave your site or come back for more.

For small law firms, figuring out how clients work with your site can be difficult.  If you're having problems seeing why one web page is working while another isn't, try asking a non-lawyer acquaintance to enter your site at a landing page that isn't working and tell you what they see.  Alternately, just try something new, or even several new landing pages, and see which works best.  Continuous experimentation can lead to great web analytics marketing data.

Deciding Your Marketing Strategy

Your web analytics marketing tools can also help you decide what marketing techniques you can still tap into.  For example, if you're getting very few visitors from social media websites, you may want to integrate more social media content into your site.  If video search engine optimization seems to be working well for your website, you may want to include more videos or even start making a video blog series.

One of the biggest decisions for law firms is whether you want to emphasize pay per click (PPC) or SEO (search engine optimization) traffic.  While up to 80 percent of web traffic for law firms depends on organic search results, paid search may be more effective for your firm in particular—and your web marketing analytics can tell you exactly what the situation is..  You should use web marketing analytics to learn more about where your search traffic is coming from, then decide whether to concentrate on playing to your strengths or improving on your weaknesses.

Remember that you can always change your strategy if your web analytics marketing doesn't seem to be effective.  No matter what, though, you should give any new strategy some time to work: search engine optimization strategies, in particular, can be slow to pick up steam.  Being too impatient could lead to abandoning what might have been a successful strategy if you'd simply stuck with your first web marketing analytics solution.

 

Everything About Web SEO Analytics

Most website visitors—up to 80 percent—find law firms using organic searches, not paid results.  If your firm is considering switching from pay per click advertising to search engine optimization marketing, you need SEO web analytics to make sure that your strategies are working to deliver the clients you need.  This guide will help you get started with web SEO analytics and enhance the quality of your website's search engine optimization strategy.

Taking Your Time

When you start using SEO web analytics tools, you'll need to give the tools some time to gather data about your website.  Results from just a few days for a new website won't give you good data, and could lead to making big web SEO analytics mistakes.  Even though you may be excited to see whether your new strategy pans out, the first step is always hurry up—and wait.

Once you've gotten a large enough amount of data to do SEO web analytics (you'll want data for several hundred visitors, at a minimum), you'll have a better view of what visitors to your website are actually doing and how they interact with your content.  If you know from past experience that your visitor count varies strongly depending on the season, you may want to let your data accumulate for several months or even a year before doing web SEO analytics.

Which Tool Should I Use for SEO Web Analytics?

Before you can even begin to gather data for your web SEO analytics, you'll need to decide on what tools you want to use.  The most commonly used tools for SEO web analytics are made by Google, and are called—quite appropriately—Google Analytics.  If you're new to analyzing web traffic, using Google's services can be a great place to start.  Not only are these tools relatively robust, they're also free, and many tutorials online can help you get started if you're stuck.

Other search engines, like Yahoo (recently merged with Microsoft's Bing), also offer web SEO analytics tools.  You can also find SEO web analytics tools designed by other third party companies.  Often, these latter tools are specialized for some particular aspect of web SEO analytics: for example, some tools focus very strongly on conversions and landing page optimization, while others focus on keyword performance.

Because of the abundance of SEO web analytics software, it's critical to keep your goals in mind when shopping for your software solution.  Don't feel like you're confined to just using one web SEO analytics tool, if the one you've been using hasn't worked as well as you wanted.  While every additional tool you use will require additional training and time to use correctly, you may find that several tools in tandem can provide a much better solution than just using one piece of software.

Outsourcing Your SEO Web Analytics

If you feel unprepared to handle your own web SEO analytics, you may want to start talking about outsourcing.  For many law firms, outsourcing SEO web analytics is a much more attractive solution than doing analytics in-house.  Nearly anyone can use basic reports with analytics software, but really achieving your goals may require advanced web SEO analytics and custom reporting.  This can require the touch of a programmer, not a marketer, to get right.

If you do decide to outsource your SEO web analytics, try to find a service that lets you keep any data that you accumulate.  This may not seem important if you're not sure what to do with your data, but keep this in mind: the company you hire to do your web SEO analytics now may not be our outsourcing solution forever.  When you switch outsourcing companies, you want data continuity and a streamlined transition—and you definitely don't want to have to start gathering your data all over again.

Targeting Keywords

One of the biggest uses of SEO web analytics is figuring out which keywords are working for you.  If you're using search engine optimization, you're probably already paying a lot of attention to which keywords are driving traffic.  What web SEO analytics can do is help you figure out which keywords are actually getting you new clients.

You can engineer custom reports with SEO web analytics tools that show you not only which keywords are working best, but also what keywords are similar enough to generate more traffic.  Finding a keyword family can make your website copy more readable and less repetitive than simply sticking to a few simple keywords.

Making Your Website Engaging

No matter how good your website is at drawing search engine traffic, you need to drive conversions.  To do that, you need to keep your clients on your website—but what way is best for your particular firm?  What works for one firm might not work for others, so you will want to do real, data-driven web SEO analytics to make sure that your strategies work.  Here are a few strategies you may want to try to increase visitor engagement:

• Calls to action can often turn visitors into clients—you can experiment with SEO web analytics to figure out which calls to action are working and which are falling flat.

• Videos can make your clients up to 60 percent more likely to contact your firm.  Whether you're new to video marketing or already have a lot of videos on your site, you can use web SEO analytics to make sure that your videos are drawing in clients instead of sending them away.  You can also identify topics that would be good for future videos.

• Mobile traffic will account for up to 25 percent of web traffic by 2016.  This means that if your site isn't mobile-friendly, you could be losing clients every day.  SEO web analytics tools can see whether your mobile traffic stays or goes.

• Social media is the name of the game for marketers today, and you need web SEO analytics to make sure that your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts are doing what you want them to do.  SEO web analytics can also help you manage your reputation and ward off potential public relations crises within social media circles.