Blogging for Lawyers

Blog blogging wordpress, by pixabay user Sophieja23, licensed by Creative Commons.In the digital age, building an online presence is a must for lawyers and law firms.

For most lawyers, blogging is one of the easiest, fastest, and most effective ways to get in front of the digital audience. A short-term benefit is the instant exposure that you’ll get. Blogs (and the internet) transcend geographical boundaries, which means that your name will reach a wide audience. Blog consistently, and you will soon establish yourself as a thoughtful, expert attorney whose advice people value. A major advantage of blogging is that unlike paid advertisements, it brings potential clients to your site for free. Read more

Matching Online Authority with Law Firm Capabilities

Matching Online Authority - Lawyer.comLaw firms use a number of different techniques to differentiate themselves from others. Some attorneys boast case victories or superior law school credentials, while others use testimonials or awards as external validation. Understanding attorney competition is rather complex – firms compete across many different geographies, demographics, and practice areas.

The most concrete venue in which law firms compete is practice area. A firm that focuses on a specific practice area will devote attention towards mastering the law, the business, and the courts – just to handle matters in that area. Once the capabilities are established, the attorney or firm then must compete for clients with those particular matters. Using online marketing is a great first step in ensuring that the firm’s online authority matches the law firm’s capabilities. Read more

Google Algorithm Change 2014 Year in Review

2014 by pixabay user bykst, licensed by Creative Commons

Year in Review

With 2014 coming to a close it is safe to say it was a wild and crazy ride for many legal websites. The year started slow but late May introduced us to Panda 4.0 which continued to push website owners to produce quality content. Any type of thin content that has been repeated across multiple domains and networks was neutralized and sometimes penalized. Creating quality content that is 100% original is imperative for any law firm looking to rank near the top of Google search; especially with each subsequent Panda update. Read more

Evolution of Online Search

Garnisonen i Sør-Varanger binoculars by Wikipedia user Soldatnytt, licensed by Creative Commons.

What once was lost now is found

With the popularity of the Internet, more and more consumers are searching online for products, businesses, and lawyers. As such, a key skill in legal marketing success is understanding how to find new clients on the web. Today, search engines (such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo) dominate online marketing.

Let’s take a look at 4 main elements that have shaped the evolution of online search: Types of keywords, the paid search marketplace, location-based results, and new conversational search. Read more

Increasing Your Caseload by Tracking and Targeting Clients

Target, by flickr user Erika, licensed by Creative Commons.

Bullseye!

How great would it be if you could hand-pick the most qualified clients for your practice? The main goal of legal marketing is to increase the number of qualified people who are interested in retaining you as a lawyer. Expanding your online marketing presence involves two important elements that you should be aware of: tracking and targeting. Optimizing tools to track where your clients come from is a pivotal step. Additionally, there’s an entire pool of new business that you may not even be aware of, and gathering all of this data can help you learn how to gain more clients, and also put you ahead of your competition. That said, let’s look into a few different ways to get the most bang for your legal marketing buck. Read more

Transforming Your Website Visitors into New Clients

This article is based on my presentation at the PILMMA Summit in Chicago in July. You can get a copy of the slides I presented at the bottom of this article.

Let me share what I’ve learned since I started blogging 10 years ago. Using the tactics I am about to describe, my blog at Larrybodine.com has gotten 1.2 million visits. When I was editor in chief of Lawyers.com we built the traffic up to 4 million visits and 7 million page views per year.

content marketing larry bodine

It’s true that the more you blog, the more clients you will get. A law firm website should be updated 2-3 times per week with articles running 300-400 words long.

We all know that the #1 way that consumers search for a lawyer is on the Internet, and a Hinge survey proved that this was true. However lawyers focus at the wrong part of the sales process — trying to increase the number of leads and visitors they get with PPC and SEO techniques. Instead you would be smarter to pay attention to the prospects and visitors who already come to the site, and turn them into clients.

For starters, law firms must have five visitor conversion basics in place:

• A chat feature to talk to clients live.

• An online form to contact the form.

• A toll free number displayed at the top of the page.

• Videos about settlements and verdicts.

• Lawyer bios that discuss client service, that is, how well you explain legal options to clients. Read more

What Google Hummingbird Means for Your Legal Marketing

Search engine optimization (SEO)Google likes to keep their mechanics under wraps, but new information about their latest update has come to light. Google recently upgraded its search algorithm in order to provide higher quality search results to its end users. Rather than traditionally targeting keywords in searches, the new algorithm focuses on answering the searcher’s questions and better determining the intent behind their search. A focus on “conversational search” is what drove the recent major upgrade. However, it is up to the lawyer or law firm to create fresh website content that will tell Google to bring searchers to that specific page. Read more

Google AdWords 101 by Lawyer.com

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Shop for New Clients!

Lawyer.com is committed to help our clients enhance their overall online presence. A great way to extend your reach is by using Google AdWords, which is the only way to guarantee being listed on the first page of search results (depending on your budget!). AdWords is often referred to as “leads on demand”. When starting this type of search engine marketing, you want to make sure you are directing the person who clicks your ad to a sensible location; a good idea would be right to an optimized website. Here’s a rundown of how AdWords works and how you can get started right away! Read more