Google, with its nearly 67 percent market share, is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the search engine marketing world.  It's no surprise, then, that Google profile directories are some of the biggest and most relevant directories for law firms to become a part of.  If you're not already using the Google profile directory as part of your marketing strategy, there are several reasons that you may want to change that.  Keep reading to learn more about how Google profile directories are already helping attorneys across the United States, and how you can get onboard.

What the Google Profile Directory is For

Google's goals involve becoming a market leader in a huge variety of tasks involving information gathering.  Google profile directories were made in a way that makes them scalable all the way up to becoming a sort of giant global telephone book.  By creating a Google profile directory entry, you make your business more easily searchable by people looking for you.

Google profile directories also are a valuable source of link juice for many businesses.  Because Google's own pages are often relatively high Page Rank pages, and because the search engine ranks its own pages higher in its search results, you can give yourself a search boost by becoming part of the Google profile directory.

Local Search and the Google Profile Directory

One of the most innovative aspects of the Google profile directories is that they allow businesses not only to include their location, but also to have those location results displayed on a map.  This means that Google profile directory users can find the businesses that are closest to them and that would be most convenient for them to drive to.

Currently, Google profile directories including Google Places have been renamed to Google+ Local.  However, Google+ has not been as successful as the tech giant had perhaps hoped.  This means that there's a strong possibility the Google profile directory could go through another name change in 2013 in order to better reflect the ways users are actually using the site.

Local searches now represent about 30 percent of overall searches, and a higher percentage of searches for attorneys.  You're much more likely to get conversions from clicks you get through Google profile directories and local search than from clicks you get from traditional search engine rankings.  This means the Google profile directory is a great time investment for any law firm that primarily draws its client base from a small local area.  Firms that have a very specific legal field but nationwide geographic practice focus may have a harder time drawing in users from Google profile directories.

Creating Your Profile

When you create a profile on the Google profile directory, you'll be asked for a substantial amount of information.  There's always a temptation to put in only barely as much as is required and say “we'll come back to it later and fill it out more completely.”  However, that's not really putting your best foot forward, and this kind of short-sighted thinking is no way to get started on your search engine marketing campaigns.  Fill out all the information in a way that makes your website inviting for potential clients to click on.  You want to portray yourself as informed and professional, but not too stuffy for people to contact freely.

Also, this should go without saying: double check all of your data before you submit the profile to Google profile directories.  You don't want to have your Google profile directory entry accidentally direct people to an incorrect phone number or address.  If people make a mistake based on the entries you've placed in Google profile directories, they're unlikely to become a client of your firm—who would want an attorney who wasn't detail oriented?

Maintaining Your Profile

If any aspect of your law firm changes, from the name to the phone number to the focus of your niche marketing efforts, you should update your Google profile directory entry.  Google profile directories aren't somehow updated automatically, and you will need to manually input any changes to your firm in order to make sure that your directory entry stays current for prospective clients.

Monitoring Reviews in the Google Profile Directory

One of the more interesting aspects of Google profile directories is that business profiles allow people to actually write reviews about businesses they've patronized in the past.  You should check your reviews in the Google profile directory at least once a week after you have created your directory entry.  Keep in mind that even one or two negative reviews, if they're particularly harsh, can make it much more difficult to get clients.  People today have a tendency to look for reviews before purchasing any products or services, especially when those services are expensive.

There's always a chance that some or even all of your negative reviews are not written by disgruntled clients, but rather by your disgruntled competitors.  If you suspect that a review is not actually from a customer, you can report the review.

Keep in mind that not all negative reviews are just from the jealous competition.  Be smart enough to respond in a positive and optimistic way to genuine negative reviews.  There's nothing that looks worse for a company than loading off all of the blame onto a client who had a bad experience.

Incorporating Google Profile Directory With Your Marketing Campaign

One of the smartest things you can do with Google profile directories is encourage your best past clients to post reviews.  If you've received negative reviews from real clients, this is your best way to make those reviews irrelevant.  Enough positive feedback will start to overwhelm the negative reviews until prospective clients simply don't listen as much to the negativity.  Ask your social networking contacts to give you a positive review if they've had a good experience at your firm—this can be a great way to help you generate inbound links and great reviews.  You can re-post the call for reviews every few months, so that new followers see it.
 

Everything About Web Analytics Strategy

Up to 90 percent of law firms today have web analytics available for their use.  Getting the most out of web analytics reporting, though, requires creativity and experimentation.  Designing your firm's web analytics strategy can help you to get more clients and a better overall return on investment for your marketing budget.  In this guide, you'll find out how to use web analytics reporting to change your firm's website, and how strategies for web analytics have changed over time.

Web Analytics Strategy: An Art Becomes Science

The first websites ever designed were implemented in the early 1990s.  These primitive websites contained mostly (sometimes exclusively) text, and had very few ways of tracking visitors.  By the mid-1990s, traffic counters had begun to track how many hits a website had received, but the science of web analytics reporting was still in its infancy: usually, all that a website owner knew about his or her site was how many visitors had arrived in the last month or even year.

Because so few statistics about visitors were tracked, trying to figure out what made one website successful while others failed was considered more of an art than a science.  Websites were viewed as creative projects, and heavy data analysis and number crunching were nearly absent.  However, as search engines became more robust, a number of web analytics reporting tools became useful.

Perhaps the biggest change to web analytics strategy came when Google announced that it had bought a web analytics reporting company and would now host free analytics software for websites.  Google Analytics brought hard numbers to websites that had previously been designed based on guesswork, and within a few years, hundreds of other web analytics companies had sprung up all over the world.  What had once been a purely artistic endeavor now required statistical analysis to understand.

The Scientific Method and Web Analytics Strategy

Because web analytics reporting has, indeed, become a science, it's critical to look at your website in the way a scientist would: hypothesizing, then testing hypotheses.  When you develop your web analytics strategy, it's not enough to just look at your most successful pages, then designing the rest of your website to look more like them.

When you're doing scientific experiments, it's absolutely critical to change only one variable at a time.  When you change more variables, you might change the result, but you won't know why.  Learning why one part of your website works while another doesn't is the most important part of web analytics strategy. 

Your web analytics reporting tools can only go so far—if you change too much, too fast, you won't be able to identify what made the biggest difference.  While it may be hard to wait for results, the best web analytics strategy involves making slow, gradual changes and carefully analyzing what works.  Keep in mind that even if one of the hypotheses you develop doesn't work, you still know more than when you started.  Not every experiment pans out—that's part of the science of web analytics reporting, and it's perfectly okay.

Strategizing for Continuous Improvement

Every experiment you do can help you to optimize your web analytics strategy.  If the results of a test show that a new type of landing page is dramatically lowering your bounce rate and you've done your experiment right, you'll be able to duplicate the results with several different landing pages.  Once you've got the bounce rate down, though, what about conversions?

Whenever you've hit one goal, it's time to revise your web analytics strategy to seek new goals.  What's critical about these new goals, though, is that they directly relate to the results of your previous experiments with web analytics reporting.

Web Analytics Strategy For Visitor Segmentation

Your web analytics reporting may reveal some interesting things about your website visitors.  For many law firm websites, different types of visitors are looking for very different things.  If your attorneys have several different practice areas, for instance, the content that would be relevant to a visitor looking for an attorney to represent them in divorce proceedings would be quite different from what a prospective adoptive parent would be looking for.

When two groups of clients want two different customer experiences, you can use web analytics reporting to figure out traffic flow and keep them looking at different pages.  This web analytics strategy is called visitor segmentation, and may even involve creating multiple websites for different aspects of your law firm.  Visitor segmentation isn't just useful for large firms—you may be able to increase key performance metrics for your web analytics reporting even if you're a solo practitioner, just by making sure different types of clients see different sides of your practice.

Web Analytics Strategy For Mobile Content Development

One way to get ahead of competitors in today's web searches is by developing a mobile-friendly website.  Many law firm websites are not easily viewable by visitors using smartphones, and if your site requires a potential client to scroll or zoom for good information, it's likely that they'll fly directly into the arms of your competition.

When you check out your mobile site, it's important to make sure that it's compatible with all types of phones.  Remember that you can redirect mobile users to a separate, mobile-friendly site, so there's no need to abandon your main website if it's meeting your current goals.  You may want to engage in different web analytics strategy for your mobile site, especially because it can be much easier for mobile users to make a phone call than to fill out an online form, making it harder to keep track of conversions.

Listening To Your Clients

Don't get so wrapped up in the website analytics reporting numbers that you lose sight of your clients and their stated needs.  Some of the best website analytics strategy can come from really listening to client feedback about your website.  For example, if you keep hearing that clients want more information about a particular topic before they call, you may have a new experiment to try.

Yelp is one of the biggest websites for posting reviews of services all over the world, with over 50 million visitors a month visiting the site to check reviews while researching their purchases.  Yelp for lawyers can help with your law firm marketing and make it much easier to get new clients converting just based on your web presence.  This simple guide will help you understand some basic things to do and things to avoid when you're becoming part of the Yelp lawyer listings for the first time.

DO Take Charge of Your Own Yelp Destiny

Keep in mind that even if you're not among the legions of attorneys who have already become Yelp lawyers, clients can still post reviews of your firm on Yelp.  If you are a Yelp lawyer, on the other hand, with a full profile, you'll be able to check your reviews more easily and make sure that any reviews you get are the genuine article.

Don't let other people get to your profile before you do.  Yelp for lawyers works best when attorneys are taking charge of their pages and making sure that they contain correct information.  Yelp lawyer listings should be updated on a regular basis if your firm has any changes that could affect the accuracy of the information already contained in your profile.

DON'T Ever Post False Reviews on Other Profiles

When first using Yelp, lawyers often notice that some reviews are posted that don't appear to actually be from real clients.  This is one of the most deleterious parts of Yelp lawyer listings for attorney marketing, and you may think that posting reviews like that for your competitors would help you get ahead.

However, if you're found to be posting fake Yelp lawyer reviews, you could face severe disciplinary action from your state bar association.  This kind of conduct is considered extremely unethical, and on Yelp lawyers are expected to work only on their own profile rather than on profiles belonging to other firms or attorneys.

DO Solicit Reviews for Your Services on Social Networks

If you're already using LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, you probably have some friends and followers who will click on just about any link you post.  If this is the case, try asking your social networking friends whether they'd be willing to contribute a Yelp lawyer review for you.

Often, the people you're connected with on a social network will be more willing than other clients to help you by giving positive reviews to help you better compete with other Yelp lawyers.

DON'T Solicit Reviews from Non-Clients

Even though your great aunt Sally and your roommate from college want very much to see your legal career succeed, it's never a good idea to solicit reviews for your Yelp lawyer profile from people who've never actually been on your client list.  Make sure that it's clear when you make your social network call for reviews that you're only looking for reviews from real clients who can speak to your legal decisionmaking abilities.  Yelp lawyers who knowingly allow positive reviews from non-clients to continue being posted on the website may face disciplinary action, the same as if they had created the reviews themselves.

DO Ask for Misleading Reviews to Be Deleted

If you have received a negative review that sounds like it's not from any client you've ever had, you can immediately notify Yelp to let them know that someone has posted a false review.  Yelp lawyers find that this happens relatively frequently, and it's often difficult to track down which Yelp lawyer posted the negative review to defame you.

Generally speaking, the best way for Yelp lawyers to deal with receiving a false negative review is to report it, have it removed, and move on.  Trying to get a competitor disciplined is a waste of time unless you have very good proof of who created the false Yelp lawyer reviews for your firm.

DON'T Respond Unfairly to Real Criticism

When you see something negative said in your Yelp lawyer reviews, some attorneys have a tendency to get defensive.  But when reading reviews on Yelp, lawyers should look at negativity as giving an opportunity for improvement.  If you comment on a negative Yelp lawyer review, your comment should be constructive and contrite, rather than defensive or aggressive toward the reviewer.

If potential clients see that someone is giving extremely vitriolic feedback to negative reviewers, they won't be very likely to contact your firm.  The best web presence for Yelp lawyers is to look collected and professional, even if someone's saying things about your law firm that are deeply negative and hurtful.

DO Monitor Your Reviews Frequently

By finding that your Yelp lawyer profile has received a negative review early, you can do a lot to mitigate the damage.  You can, as many of the best Yelp lawyers do, respond in a thoughtful and kind way to the negative review, which will improve audience perception of your practice.  You could also make sure that you now solicit positive reviews from some of your best clients, in order to drown out the voices of the disgruntled clients who had posted a review.

DON'T Panic Over One Negative Review

It's easy for Yelp lawyers to become panicked at the idea of a negative review if they've never received one before.  Some attorneys with Yelp lawyer profiles have even gone so far as to sue for defamation.  However, as long as the reviews were posted by actual clients, it's very hard to collect on this type of suit.  Most businesses, including law firms, that have tried to sue due to Yelp reviews have had the case thrown out and been forced to pay the attorney fees for the defendant.

Use positive techniques to regain trust from your internet audience if you've lost some of it due to a negative review.  Suing typically just makes it so that the lawsuit is forever a part of the Google results when someone searches for your law firm.  That's not what any firm wants on the front page.

Today, the biggest catchphrase in link building is “one way link building.”  One way links are considered to be the highest quality links available, and these “backlinks” can help you to market your law firm and get to the top of searches.  Of companies that have recently begun using a formal SEO process, only 37 percent are currently doing any external link building at all.  Keep reading this guide to find out whether you need a one way link building service.

Reciprocal Links and One Way Links

Before we can really talk about the nitty gritty of one way link building services and whether you should even use a one way link building service, we should get some terminology out of the way.  There are two ways that websites can be linked by another website: reciprocal linking, and one way linking.

If someone links to your website and you don't link back, this is called a one way link (or, sometimes, a backlink).  If, on the other hand, you're linking to someone's website and in exchange they're linking to yours, this is called reciprocal linking.

The History of Reciprocal and One Way Links

In the earlier days of the internet, there were a lot of different reciprocal linking schemes to improve the search results of websites.  As these became more and more common, reciprocal links stopped being a very good indicator of whether a website actually had quality content or not.  To acknowledge this change, changes were made in search engine indexer algorithms that basically punished websites that overused reciprocal linking.

Enter the one way link building service.  As soon as one way link building was the next big thing, it seemed like every marketing company on the web was offering one way link building services.  However, for every one way link building service that was doing innovative, ethical, organic link building, ten more sprung up that were promising only links—in great quantity—and nothing more.

As those kinds of one way link building services became common, it created the same kinds of issues that reciprocal linking had previously caused.  Every time a one way link building service posted a link to a totally unrelated website, they lowered the quality of the web as a whole.  

Google's response was to release changes to its search functionality, mostly involving the weighting of inbound links by source quality.  This means that the business models of many of the one way link building services have recently become untenable—their results are now neutral at best, negative at worst.  Not every one way link building service uses these methods, but it's something you should keep in mind when you look for someone to provide one way link building services for you.

Developing One Way Link Building In-House

Finding a reliable one way link building service may sound tough enough that you'd rather do it yourself.  If you're going to be handling your own one way link building services, you'd be wise to take a hint from the Beatles and get a little help from your friends.  If you can ask friends, colleagues, family members, and neighbors to post links to your content on their blog or website, you'll be able to avoid hiring one way link building services while still getting all their benefits.

If you let people in your life know various topics that you'd answer questions about online, you never know who might have a blogging or podcast interview opportunity that could lead to one way link building.  These kinds of venues are becoming increasingly common, and what's more, they'll appear as a very high quality link—probably better than you'd get from one way link building services.  Social media can also help you find backlink leads, often better than a one way link building service.

Using One Way Link Building Services

If the idea of working on your own for every new backlink makes you want to stay home from work tomorrow, you may want to just hire a one way link building service to help you with your one way link building needs.  As long as you're careful about vetting your one way link building services (by asking them to provide references and case studies), you can usually improve your one way link building efforts.

Because there are so many different ways to engage in one way link building, every one way link building service emphasizes different aspects of creating backlinks.  Some may be blog-focused, while others look at social media or social bookmarking sites for backlinks.  You should, generally speaking, use a one way link building service that already has strong experience doing one way link building for the legal industry.  Without this industry experience, they may make missteps or even land you in hot water with the state bar association by violating advertising ethics guidelines.

Resources for One Way Link Building

Whether you're interested in doing your own one way link building services or hiring a one way link building service to do the work for you, it's good to know about best practices.  One of the most crucial documents for marketers on the web right now is found at https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=66356.  This document is part of Google's content guidelines.  It outlines what Google currently considers a “link scheme” that could be found to be in violation of the terms of service or Webmaster Guidelines.

Every search engine that your website will appear on has some kind of content and quality guidelines, but Google's guidelines are typically the gold standard for ethical one way link building.

You should also use local community resources for one way link building.  Think your community doesn't have any?  Think again: check your local chamber of commerce and see if they do one way link building by listing your firm's name and contact information, as well as its URL, on their online directory of local businesses.  These local directories are used by Google when choosing which results to offer people who have made searches with geolocational terms.

Understanding Google page ranking is critical for any search engine optimization work at a law firm.  Knowing how to check Google Page Rank and what a PR value actually means can make your job much easier when it comes time to decide on marketing plans. You'll find out how to check your Google Page Rank, and how to use your knowledge of Google page ranking to your advantage.  One of the best parts of Google page ranking is that these ranks are publicly available—you'll also learn about using a Google Page Rank checker on your competition.

Why Should I Check My Google Page Rank?

Is using a Google Page Rank checker overkill?  Some people certainly think so.  Google itself has gone on record saying that Page Rank is no longer really all that important.  This is something of a misrepresentation.

While Google has maintained for some time that search engine results do not depend on Page Rank, scientific studies involving linear programming for many variables showed that in fact, your Google page ranking is the #1 most correlated factor with where your results are displayed in searches.  This means that it's absolutely critical to check your Google Page Rank, at least periodically.

You should also check the Google page ranking for your competitors in your market.  It's a good thing to know what you're up against and how far you'll need to raise your PR to be truly competitive with their search engine rankings.

Google Page Rank Checker Software: Google Toolbar

The tool that most people start with to check Google Page Rank is the Google Toolbar.  Because this toolbar is created by Google, you can expect a user friendly interface and excellent support and tutorials.  Using the Google toolbar as a Google Page Rank checker is actually incredibly easy.  All you need to do is hover your mouse over the Page Rank part of the toolbar, and you'll find out the Google page ranking of the page that you're currently on.

Of course, this may not be exactly what you're looking for in terms of functionality.  You may want to check Google Page Rank for several different pages, and using this Google Page Rank checker won't do that.  You may also want to compare the Google page ranking of your pages and your competitors' pages.  The toolbar isn't the Google Page Rank checker you need for these more heavy-duty tasks—it's more of an introduction to checking your Google page ranking.

Google Page Rank Checker Software: Other Toolbars

If you need a more robust tool to check Google Page Rank on many different websites, you should consider a toolbar that offers extensive SEO data.  Currently, no other toolbar offers quite as much information in a relatively easy to understand format as SEOQuake.  In addition to letting you know the Google page ranking of every website you search for, SEOQuake can tell you Alexa ratings and many other important details about a website's popularity levels.

Google Page Rank Checker Software: Non-Toolbar Solutions

If you don't want to have a toolbar taking up your screen real estate while you surf the web, there are other ways to check your Google Page Rank.  For example, let's say that you want to find out the Google page ranking of every different page on your website.  If this is the case, you should consider installing a Google Page Rank checker tool on your site.  Many different websites offer tiny variations on this theme, and which variation you prefer is largely a matter of personal taste and aesthetic preferences.

Check the Google Page Rank of Inbound Links

For a long time, the Google page ranking of the inbound links you built didn't actually matter very much.  Today, you should check your Google Page Rank first, but then you should turn your Google Page Rank checker on the pages where your inbound links are coming from.  Why?  There are two reasons.

First of all, Google actually bases your popularity and your search rankings on the overall link authority given to you by your links.  If you check the Google Page Rank of those links, you'll find that your “link juice” from each one depends on the page's Page Rank as well as the number of outbound links on the page.  For example, even a web page with a Page Rank of 8 (extremely high) would give very little link juice if it had 10,000 links on it.

Second, if you have too many inbound links coming from very low Page Rank sites, you could actually find your inbound links becoming valueless.  Google sees this as a sign of trying to game the system, often with automated link building, and your site could crash and burn in the rankings if you don't check the Google Page Rank of the websites you're using to build your inbound links.

Increasing Your Google Page Ranking

After you check your Google Page Rank, you may be disappointed in the results, especially compared to your larger competitors.  Remember, though, everyone had to start from somewhere.  If you want to increase your Google page ranking, you're going to need to start creating original content.  Original content is recognized as such by Google and is ranked higher in quality.  It's also more likely to get you quality backlinks.

Avoid trying to change your Google Page Rank through automated systems and “get PageRank fast” methods.  Often, these are scams or things that will work only in the very short term, but at great potential cost to your website in the long term.  Professionals like lawyers can't take chances with their reputations—it's better to have a more conservative strategy for link building that offers a better chance of lasting results.

It's also important to keep in mind that page rank simply isn't everything.  If you're still building quality inbound links and are able to build referral traffic through social networks, you may be able to do successful internet marketing even without increasing your Page Rank.  As you enhance your other marketing campaigns, your Page Rank will often go up even if you don't try to make it do so.