Everything About Blog Advertising Rates

Studies show that because blogs are so much more targeted than other types of websites, blog advertising results can be up to 50 percent better than results for advertising on social media sites like Facebook.  Keep reading this guide to find out more about the kind of law blog advertising rates that you can expect to charge for people wanting to advertise on your blog, and how to get the best blog advertising results when you start to use ads on your website.

A Word of Caution: Things To Avoid

When some bloggers hear that they can start seeing money from blog ads, they set their blog advertising rates and just accept anyone who can pay them as an advertiser.  Law firm blogs need to be especially careful to maintain a professional image when accepting advertisements.  

While ads from other law firms in different geographic areas might be a good idea, there are some types of advertisements you should avoid at all costs.  Try to keep politics and political campaigns off of your blog, even if they are offering to pay your full blog advertising rates.  Campaigns can see great blog advertising results, but will all of your readers want you to take a side on political issues?

You should also ask to see any advertisements that will be placed on your website.  Your blog advertising rates should generally be set high enough that get-rich-quick schemes and belly fat advertisements stay off of your blog, but you'll also want to avoid any ads that could be potentially disturbing to the intended viewers of your website.  

For example, if your blog is about drunk driving, you shouldn't accept any advertisements from liquor or beer companies.  If your blog is about stillbirths or maternal death, your blog advertising results for maternity clothing could be not just dismal, but also generate complaints to your firm.

Setting Your Initial Blog Advertising Rates

Typically, the amount that you will be able to charge for blog advertising depends on the number of page views that your blog brings in in a typical month.  The term that you'll see repeated a lot in discussions of blog advertising rates is “cost per mille” or CPM.  This refers to how many thousands of page views an advertisement gets.

If advertising on your blog brings in great blog advertising results, you will be able to charge a higher CPM.  Blog advertising rates on typical blogs right now are less than $10 for a thousand page views, and often less than $5.

Because blog advertising rates can vary significantly from blog to blog, you may want to ask other law bloggers in your area what kind of blog advertising results they've seen and what you should charge initially.  The trend in recent years has been for CPM to steadily decrease, so you should make sure not to charge rates that will strike advertisers as too high for the level of blog advertising results they can expect.

Adjusting Your Blog Advertising Rates

As your blog grows, changes and becomes more popular with your intended audience, it's likely that blog advertising results for your advertisers will change.  When this happens, you need to be able to adjust your blog advertising rates to continue making as much as possible from your blogging efforts.

Don't ever move your blog advertising rates too much at once, as this is likely to scare away your existing advertisers and make it difficult to find new ones.  If you want to increase what you're charging, you'd better be able to show your advertisers blog advertising results that are really different—keep in mind that for many blogs, ad rates are currently decreasing.

If you're not getting enough advertisers at your current blog advertising rates, you may need to consider decreasing them.  However, before deciding that your rates need adjusted, you may want to ask a professional marketer for help—they may be able to help you improve your website and make changes that can help you improve blog advertising results so that your rates can stay the same or even increase.

How to Improve Your Blog Advertising Results

The single best way to improve the results of the ads on your blog is to make sure that your blog and its advertising are relevant to each other.  Does the same group of people want to read about the topics in your blog and the topics being mentioned by your advertisers?

If you're not having a mismatch, perhaps the reason that your blog advertising results aren't what you want is that your content isn't keeping people on your blog long enough.  Consider using some new techniques to bring new viewers to your blog and keep them there longer.  For example, you may want to get some new guest bloggers to write engaging posts about areas of the law you personally aren't as familiar with.

Analyzing Your Blog Advertising Results

If you want to be able to change your blog advertising rates for your existing advertisers, you'll need to start using analytics tools to make sure that their results have been great.  Google Analytics allows you to look closely at web traffic, including the route that people tend to take through your blog.  

Using analytics can help you decide which advertising positions are most valuable and which may need to be revised so that they aren't wasting your advertisers' money.  Often, analytics will give you some valuable clues for redesigning your blog in a way that makes visitors more likely to stay longer and participate more—both of which are likely to improve your blog advertising results.

If you're not sure how to use analytics tools, it's a great idea to talk to a company that specializes in web analytics.  These companies can analyze your traffic so you don't have to, and give you a report about your blog that helps your firm decide what it's doing right and what it's time to change.

 

 

Everything About Advertising on Blogs

Once you've started a blog for your law firm, you may start to hear family members, colleagues, and friends start to talk about other ways to monetize your blogging.  With over 156 million blogs currently operating, though, you may wonder how to get advertisers on your blog, or whether you can really differentiate yourself.  Keep reading this guide to find out ways to encourage advertisers to advertise on blogs for your firm.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Critical Mistakes to Avoid

Many companies now advertise on blogs every day.  While it can take months to get advertising on blogs working for you, you need to know right away that it's much easier to scare advertisers away than it is to attract them.  The first thing to remember when you're considering how to get advertisers on your blog is that you're not the only game in town: with so many other bloggers eager to have companies advertise on blogs, one major mistake can wreck your advertising strategy for a long time.

The biggest gaffes related to advertising on blogs involve bloggers who aren't thinking about what kind of advertising content they're getting.  You can't let people advertise on blogs that your law firm is sponsoring if they're advertising unethical products or products that seem very disconnected from your practice.  Political advertising should also usually be avoided when you are accepting advertising on blogs, because not all of your readers will agree with a political message and this can turn viewers off.

Any discussion of how to get advertisers on your blog would be incomplete without a few words about transparency.  While the line between advertisement and organic content has blurred on a number of websites, you should always make sure that advertising on blogs for your firm is clearly delineated.  If someone wants to advertise on blogs without divulging that their product is being given paid placement, you should turn that offer down—transparency is key to building a loyal audience.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Setting Your Own Rates

If you're a do it yourself kind of person, you may want to let people advertise on blogs you own by selling your own ads.  Because blogging advertising rates are changing all the time, you'll need to research current average rates for advertising on blogs like yours.

This is really only a great way to get advertising on blogs if you already know how to get advertisers on your blog.  If, for example, you already have people who have asked to advertise on blogs for your firm, or if you have an email list of people you suspect would be interested, you might try setting your own rates and placing your own advertising on blogs for your site.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Using Networks

Not everyone knows how to get advertisers on your blog just by soliciting ads directly.  If you are having a tough time getting companies to advertise on blogs by your firm, you can use advertising networks that will find advertisers for you.  Ad networks are responsible for most advertising on blogs today, because they take away ad billing responsibilities and let you focus on running your website.

Every blog network varies in how much you'll be paid per thousand impressions of an ad.  Advertisements on blogs can usually be vetted so that you can ensure no ads would appear that make your firm appear unprofessional.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Use E-Mail Lists and Social Media

If you have a list of clients or any other mailing lists for your law firm, you may consider sending those email addresses a brief email about advertising on blogs for your site.  This is usually only effective for B2B advertising on blogs.

You can also post to your Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn feeds that you now have space available for advertising on blogs for your firm.  You should have your rates ready before you ask for people to advertise on blogs—uncertain rates or last-minute changes can cause potential advertisers to look elsewhere.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Adjusting Your Prices

If you've been trying to get people to advertise on blogs for your firm for several months without much success, you should probably focus first on developing content and a larger reader base.  It will always be easier to find people to buy advertising on blogs that have a great deal of traffic—if you're only receiving a few visits an hour, it may just not be worth it for most advertisers.

Once you've built your readership up by presenting great content and getting your name out in any way you can, you'll have an easier time asking people to advertise on blogs for the price you want.  You may want to start with promotional pricing to get advertising on blogs initially.

How to Get Advertisers on Your Blog: Keeping Your Advertisers

Once you have learned how to get advertisers on your blog, the next step is keeping them!  This next section doesn't apply so much if you use ad networks, but if you're personally approving advertising on blogs, you should keep communicating with your advertisers.  Just a quick phone call with some questions about how a campaign is going can make a big difference to whether an advertiser stays or goes.

If your advertisers aren't getting the kind of results they want from advertising on your blogs, you can dig into the meat of your analytics.  Analytics can help you figure out whether it's the content of your blogs or the design or placement of an advertisement that is leading to less than optimal performance.

When campaigns are going well, don't just settle for “good enough.”  Keep up with trends in advertising—consider allowing targeted video ads to run on your website, for example, to bring in more conversions and more value for your advertisers.  In an increasingly competitive blog market, you can't afford to lose the advertisers you've already developed a business relationship with.

 

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.

 

 

Today, social media marketing is the fastest growing area of internet marketing.  Most law firms have stopped sending a lot of direct marketing e-mails and have instead replaced them with pages on social networks and internet directories.  If you're looking to improve your social media ROI, you've come to the right place.  This guide will teach you ways to really get more for the money you're spending on social media marketing for your law firm—and all without sacrificing your reputation for the sake of getting new clients in the short term.

 

#1: Don't Waste Money on “Bad Fit” Social Media

 

One of the mistakes many firms make when they're new to the world of social media is getting into every new social trend without really evaluating whether that trend is relevant to their typical client base.  Let's say that you're an attorney who primarily works on wills and estates for older people in a small town.  If that's you, using a service like Foursquare—which trends toward younger and more urban people—is probably not going to generate the social media ROI you were hoping for.

 

Instead, make sure that the customers you're trying to reach really do exist on the social media sites you're using.  Keep in mind that your social media ROI for a particular website can vary significantly depending on where your law firm is located, so don't just assume that because a few law firms have had success with a social media platform that it's the answer you've been looking for.

 

#2: Target Customers, Don't “Shotgun” Advertise

 

If you want to give yourself the worst social media ROI possible, the best way is to waste money on paid impressions that will only be seen by people who have no interest in what you're offering.  Many attorneys who are new to the social media advertising game decide to show their ads to people indiscriminately.

 

One of the best ways to target clients on social media websites in order to get the most out of your social media ROI is to use features allowing you to market exclusively to people who are connected to your already-existing connections.  That means that when your advertisement is seen by someone, they'll also see that a friend of theirs has already connected to you—which makes you seem much more trustworthy.

 

#3: Don't Try To Be Something You're Not

 

Too many companies try to do things that really don't play to their strengths in the hopes of enhancing their social media ROI.  If you aren't a particularly funny place and don't tell a lot of jokes in your office, that's a fine way to be—but you probably shouldn't attempt to make your comedic debut in your Twitter statuses.  If you're a place that trends younger and has a tendency to be more laid-back, don't try to dress up your language so that you sound more like what you think an attorney should sound like.  Keep it professional, of course, but don't make yourself sound stilted.

 

#4: Engage With Customers Through Free Techniques

 

Not every way of marketing through social media costs any money at all.  One of the best ways to increase your social media ROI is to make the most of the ways you're able to get in contact with people for free.  Consider monitoring Twitter and Facebook for mentions of your firm, and responding (always politely) to people who give you a mention.  This can be a great way to nip potential public relations problems in the bud—responding thoughtfully to criticisms without being peevish or unapologetic can increase the level of respect you get in the web world.

 

#5: Network With Other Attorneys Through Social Media

 

Maintaining a high social media ROI is even easier when you don't constrain your social media presence to one that's all about consumers.  While consumers should definitely still get the bulk of your social media marketing, you can also talk to attorneys in order to get more client referrals sent your way.  Some networks, like Facebook, allow you to only make some updates visible to some lists.  When someone connects to you on Facebook, you can classify them as a consumer or as an attorney, and make sure that the updates they see from your firm are the right ones for them.

 

#6: Keep In the Loop About New Advertising Trends

 

The cheapest time to jump on a new advertising bandwagon is before everyone else has done it too.  After markets become oversaturated, it's much harder to generate a high social media ROI from a particular strategy.  That means that to get the best return on investment in the social media world, you need to do your homework.  If you're not learning about trends in new websites, new features, and user statistics, you aren't doing enough to increase your social media ROI.  Social media is a fast-changing universe—take Myspace, for example.  Years ago, its meteoric rise was followed by an equally rapid fall.  You don't want to be the person still spending money on a social network after everyone else already knows it's played out and has left.

 

You can keep up on the newest trends in increasing your social media ROI by keeping up with the articles here at lawfirms.laws.com, or by reading blogs or listening to pod casts about the types of social media advertising and marketing you're interested in doing.

 

#7: Learn from Your Competitors

 

While it's not a good idea to duplicate a competitor's strategy in social media—you should find your own voice instead—there's no reason to ignore them.  Paying attention to what your competitors are doing right and what they're doing wrong can give you a better idea of how to do a better job for your clients and potential clients in the future.  If you notice that your competitor's Facebook page has been seeing more comments than usual, check them out—maybe they're using a new strategy for developing topics, or are helping to keep conversations going.  If you see people outraged about something a competitor (or any other company) has done with their social media presence, you need to find out what they're mad about and think about how to avoid a similar scenario for your law firm.

 

Everything About Search Engine Marketing Blog

One of the most powerful tools for driving new traffic to your law firm's website is a search engine marketing blog.  Search engine marketing blogs are now maintained by over 60 percent of America's largest law firms.  Whether your law firm is large or small, this guide can help you get started with blogging and avoid some of the pitfalls faced by owners of search engine marketing blogs.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #1: Be Prepared

Some of the biggest problems with search engine marketing blogs are caused by a simple lack of preparation.  When you decide to install your blog, you should discuss the impact of a search engine marketing blog on your web traffic with your web hosting provider.  

Because search engine marketing blogs can drive a great deal of traffic to your domains, it's critical to have a web hosting solution that will fit your needs.  If the new traffic is too much for your hosting, you could suffer from downtime, and depending on how your search engine marketing blog is designed, this could take down your main website as well.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #2: Participate in Other Blogs

Too many people who start search engine marketing blogs just write in their blog without thinking about commenting on other people's blog entries.  One of the best ways that you can improve your visitor count is to comment on someone else's search engine marketing blog periodically.

When you comment on other search engine marketing blogs, don't just post an advertisement for your blog.  This will lead to you being perceived as a spammer, and your search engine marketing blog may be dismissed as spam.  Instead, try to find search engine marketing blogs that are talking about topics that interest you, and make comments that engage you in the blog's conversation.

Commenting on someone else's search engine marketing blog may not deliver results right away, but often, this person will look at your blog and may link it in a later post.  This is one of the best ways to network with other people who maintain search engine marketing blogs like yours, and linking to other people's blog entries is also a great way to get reciprocal links.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #3: Get Your Message Out

When a search engine decides what page rank various search engine marketing blogs should have for different queries, it's relying on several things to make that decision.  One of the biggest factors in search engine rankings is the number of inbound links you have, and whether those inbound links are from websites that are, themselves, popular and well-respected.

When you write a great entry for your search engine marketing blog, you should try to make that entry appear in more places than one.  Owners of some search engine marketing blogs have found that their search rankings improve when they post blog posts, with links back to their blog, to press release or article submission websites.  These websites help you build large numbers of inbound links quickly.

The other way to build inbound links for search engine marketing blogs is to use social media.  If people in your social media contacts like your search engine marketing blog entry, they'll link to it.  Using this method means that you'll have to be very careful to keep your keywords looking like natural language—but for optimum search engine results, you'll want to do that anyway.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #4: Facilitate Conversations

The best entries on search engine marketing blogs are often the ones that leave room for discussion and questions.  You can facilitate conversations on your search engine marketing blog by asking open ended questions at the end of your blog entries.  

For example, let's say you're using your search engine marketing blog to market to other attorneys.  You write a great article about handling difficult clients, and you think that your methods definitely work.  You can either end the article with your observations, or by opening the floor: “This has worked for me, but what works for you?  Tell me your best strategies for helping clients who aren't easy to work with.”

If you want your search engine marketing blog to be conversation-friendly, you'll need to keep an eye on comments to delete anything that involves name-calling or spam.  Don't delete comments that just involve a vocal disagreement—search engine marketing blogs that do this are stifling conversation, not encouraging it.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #5: Make Your Blog Mobile Friendly

In just a few years, traffic from mobile devices like smartphones and iPads will be more common than traffic from traditional laptop and desktop computers.  What does this mean for search engine marketing blogs?  

Well, for one thing, it means that you need to make sure that your blog install displays correctly on mobile devices.  If your blog is jumbled or squished with impossibly tiny margins whenever it's displayed on an iPhone, you'll lose out on that traffic.

You should also try to keep at least most of your blog entries relatively short.  Because it can be a pain to scroll a lot while using a mobile device, search engine marketing blogs with short, concise posts that still show insight will be most successful in the mobile market.

Search Engine Marketing Blog Tip #6: Experiment!

If something isn't working, many owners of search engine marketing blogs make the mistake of just stopping their blogging experiment.  Before you shut it all down, consider changing up what you're doing with your search engine marketing blog.  Sometimes, search engine marketing blogs just need to change who they're marketing to, or what their posts are about.

Whenever you experiment with your search engine marketing blog, you should give your experiment some time to work.  Changing the focus of a blog repeatedly can give your existing readers whiplash, and you want to maintain a core of readers who are promoting and linking your entries.