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.

 

 

 

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 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.

 

Everything About How To Advertise Your Blog

Over 100,000 blogs are being created every day, and lawyers are six times more likely to be bloggers than the average person.  In this sea of newly created blogs, you'll need to figure out how to advertise your blog if you want to stand out.  Keep reading this guide to find out handy tips that can help you advertise your blog.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Word of Mouth

The most old fashioned way to advertise a blog is just to tell someone you know.  Of course, in the modern world, word of mouth has transformed.  You can use targeted small email lists to send out links to your blog entries when you think that an entry might be of interest to a particular subset of your friends, colleagues, or acquaintances.

Don't discount face to face interactions when thinking of how to advertise your blog.  You can advertise a log simply by including a blog URL on your business cards.

If you want to advertise your blog with word of mouth, you should get a URL that is short and to the point, and easy for people to remember.  It will be much harder to advertise a blog if its URL involves several slashes, numerical sequences, or long phrases.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Social Media

You can advertise your blog more easily if you use social media contacts.  By posting links to your blog in Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, you'll advertise a blog to some of the people who are most likely to strike up a conversation or post a link: the people you know.  Think of social media as a way to extend traditional word of mouth strategies.

Even though you want to advertise your blog with social media websites, don't make your links sound overtly like direct advertising.  You want to make posts with value to the people you're connected to—that's how to advertise your blog most effectively on any social media website.  

Clicks aren't worth anything if they don't take your visitors to quality content.  Think of making your content available to your closest professional colleagues and people you know more distantly—in addition to making it easier to advertise your blog, this can keep your content high-quality.  You'll be less likely to skimp on quality in favor of search engine optimization if you advertise a blog consistently in your Facebook or LinkedIn feed.

Other blogs are another form of social media you should use to advertise your blog.  It's easy to advertise a blog by making comments in other people's blogs.  If you're linking to a post you've made, don't make it look like an ad: instead, you need to learn how to advertise your blog subtly, with posts that contain real, relevant information and not just buzz words.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Joining a Blog Network

Reciprocity is key to understanding how to advertise a blog on the internet today.  One of the best things you can do to advertise your blog is to join a network made up of blogs with similar themes.  If you advertise a blog from your network, they will generally respond by offering you similar advertising for your blog.

Let's say that you offer a guest blogging spot to a blogger who writes about a related legal area to the one you cover in your blog.  If they're in a blog network with you, they can offer to reciprocate by letting you do a guest entry for their blog.  This reciprocity extends your reach as a firm and can help you build the inbound links that are the foundation of good search engine optimization for your law firm website.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Blog Directories

One of the first steps you should take to advertise a blog when you've just started posting is to get your name into as many blog directories as possible.  This requires practically no computer knowledge, and most blog directories make this way to advertise your blog quick and intuitive.

After you learn how to advertise your blog more effectively through other channels, it's likely that blog directories will bring in less traffic to your blog than advertising your blog with other methods.  This doesn't mean that it's a step you should skip if you have a long-term strategy—just that it's only a first step.

Some blog directories may not allow just any blog.  To advertise a blog on these directories, you'll need to have a history of quality posting, preferably with other qualified attorneys linking to your entries and discussing them.  In general, you'll get more quality hits when you advertise your blog with these more selective directories.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Paid Advertising

Readers of other law blogs may be interested in posts like yours, so other attorneys you know may have blogs that are a natural place to advertise your blog.  You may want to ask some blogs you like whether they have advertising rates available for new advertisers.

If a blog has an audience with demographics you want to capture, you can start advertising your blog there.  Learning how to advertise your blog with paid advertising can have a bit of a learning curve: it can be much more expensive to advertise a blog on some websites than others, and it can be confusing to figure out where you're getting your best traffic from.

How to Advertise Your Blog: Mobile Advertising

If you want to advertise a blog that has mobile friendly content, you may want to send direct SMS advertising that links to your blog posts as part of your blog advertising strategy.  Advertising your blog this way will yield the best results when you use targeted lists of mobile numbers.

It won't do any good to advertise your blog with mobile direct ads if your blog's formatting appears off when it is visited with Android or iPhone devices.  Keep your blog entries short and to the point, easy to read during someone's commute or a quick break when you send an ad by SMS.

 

Everything About Blog Ads

Ads for blogs are nothing new.  Today, blog ads can help you earn about $50 to $750 every month if your blog gets about 100,000 visits.  Keep reading this guide to learn several techniques for how to get ads on your blog.  You'll learn how ads for blogs work whether you decide to handle your own billing for advertising or not.

How to Get Ads on Your Blog: Doing it Yourself

If you're experienced with ads for blogs, you may want to handle your blog ads all by yourself.  Certainly, this route has some advantages.  If you don't know how to get ads on your blog and use a blog network instead, you'll have to pay a cut off the top to the network that is handling the billing.  When you do the work yourself, you get all the money—but you also have to deal with all of the problems.

Usually, before placing blog ads, companies will want to see some hard numbers from your website about the amount of traffic you usually get.  Ads for blogs usually cost more when the demographics reading your blog are more impressive.  If your blog has already established an audience of prominent lawyers and judges, you won't have to worry as much about how to get ads on your blog as a new blog for a solo personal injury lawyer.

How to Get Ads on Your Blog: Using Ad Networks

The work of finding blog ads isn't always worth it.  You should ask yourself before looking for ads for blogs: how much can you really expect to make?  While most blogs from small firm lawyers are attracting new business, can you really say that your articles see enough page views to make it worth learning how to get ads on your blog yourself?

If the prospect of saving a little money doesn't sound like it would be worth it, and you'd just like your blog ads to bring in some spare cash, you can sign up with a blog network.  Odds are, unless your blog really hits it big, ad networks aren't going to be a gigantic revenue stream.  However, you can make a modest amount of money consistently while doing very little yourself.

Ad networks can teach you how to get ads on your blog quickly, and will take care of all billing and analytics so that you don't have to worry about anything.  You can get ads for blogs running in a matter of days when using a blog network, and don't need to worry about blog ads taking over valuable time that you need to use growing your business in other ways.

How to Get Ads on Your Blog: Sponsored Blog Posts

Increasingly, sponsoring a blog post directly is considered a great way for companies to advertise products and services.  Some sponsored posts are ads for blogs—perhaps with a guest writer.  Other times, a company may offer you a free product or service in exchange for your discussion in your blog ads.

When writers don't make it obvious that sponsored blog posts are blog ads, readers can feel betrayed.  This is why it's important to note when a post is sponsored, so that people know that they're reading ads for blogs.  If the content is interesting enough, people won't skip over a sponsored post.  Just make it interesting and make sure that it looks more like your typical content than it does like typical blog ads, and you'll be well on your way to advertising success.

How to Get Ads on Your Blog Without Scaring People Away

When you start selling ads for blogs, you may try leveraging your personal and social media contacts only to find out that you're losing friends without getting more blog ads sold.  This is definitely one of the reasons that many law firms choose to outsource their blog advertising needs, but you can still learn how to get ads on your blog without an ad network and without alienating people that are close to you.

Don't use a hard sell approach for selling your blog ads.  Instead, make the rates for your ads available publicly on your blog and send a link to people who indicate an interest.  Ideally, you'll learn how to get ads on your blog by just getting people to click on your entries.  It's much better to get people interested in your ads for blogs by making quality content than by trying to engage in direct sales, especially if you've never done this type of marketing before.

How Much Will Blog Ads Make Me?

Unfortunately, the truth is that ads for blogs no longer make as much money as they used to.  If you learned how to get ads on your blog several years ago when law blogs were relatively new, you may have gotten a better rate on return.

Today, you should only expect ads for blogs to generate a large amount of money for your law firm if you're able to attract a huge audience.  There's no reason not to shoot for the stars, but you should realize before you get into the blog ads business that most legal blogs aren't going to be great advertising moneymakers.  

Your best chance for monetary success is to try to develop a great community for discussion.  You may want to consider a group blogging effort with several lawyers from your firm, because these kinds of group blogs lend themselves very easily to informed dialogue and discussion.  When you get more readers participating, commenting, and staying longer on each page, you'll be able to charge more for every blog ad impression.

Analyzing Results of Blog Ads

In order to get high-paying ads for blogs, you'll want to show that you can generate not just clicks, but high quality, high-conversion traffic.  Having good web analytics can help you to show advertisers that advertising with your blog is worthwhile.

You should take as much time, in general, analyzing a new campaign with web analytics as you did planning the campaign.  It's possible to learn a great deal from your existing web traffic—don't ignore it!  Too many firms waste data that could be shedding light on the best new ways to market your firm on the web and beyond.