Penguin vs. Panda Explained: What Lawyers Need to Know

Posted on April 22, 2013 by admin

One thing is clear, potential clients are using Google to search for lawyers. Maintaining a strong online presence that follows Google’s best practices is the only agreed upon way to at least have a chance at ranking organically in the search engine results page, or SERP.

How well someone’s website shows up in Google depends on how well they follow Google’s search algorithm. This algorithm is always changing. Google has consistently unveiled updates every couple months. Two extremely important updates that all lawyers should be familiar with are the Panda and Penguin updates.

What Is Panda?

The Panda update, first released in 2011, deals with the content on one’s website. Any duplicate or thin content is penalized. Google recognized that sites lacking rich, original content are ‘low-quality’ and do not deserve high organic rankings.

What is Penguin?

The Penguin update deals with another set of issues; links. A website may be penalized if they have a backlink profile with numerous links from low-quality sights. Google sees that as an example a of black-hat SEO and may issue a penalty.

Penguin also deals with keywords. Incorporating targeted keywords into one’s online content is perfectly acceptable. However, it must be natural. For example, if you include Basking Ridge Divorce Lawyer every time you write ‘lawyer’, Google may penalize your practice’s website.

Google constantly makes changes to its search algorithm. There are minor updates every few months. In order to combat this new reality, there is one maxim to live by; only publish thought provoking, original content. These are the signs of high-quality sites, according to Google.

Producing original content can take time and effort. Writing a blog and then posting it all over the web can sometimes hurt your law practice’s website. When publishing your content, it’s important to broadcast it across channels that can provide you with additional reach. At blog.lawyer.com, we provide our Lawyers with the opportunity to become contributors. These blogs are distributed across our social media channels and include valuable outbound links.

If you are interested on blogging or learning more about Google’s algorithm updates, feel free to contact Lawyer.com at support@corp.lawyer.com

LinkedIn for Lawyers (Part 2)

Posted on April 10, 2013 by admin

We have already established the benefits the necessity of making full use of a free LinkedIn profile here. Clients can learn more about your firm and you are establishing yourself as an authority.

Are there other benefits? Of course, maintaining a comprehensive LinkedIn presence has SEO benefits. Should a Lawyer have an existing name brand, LinkedIn profiles can take up valuable real estate in first page of organic results in Google.

Why Is This Important?

Your personal brand is extremely valuable once established. If there are potential clients typing your name as a keyword in Google, the last thing you want is to have a competitor’s listing take up first page real estate.

When executed properly, your LinkedIn profile should rank well. Take a look at what happens when you search for Lawyer.com’s CEO, Gerald Gorman. Right below his website bio is his LinkedIn.

What should a Lawyer do on LinkedIn?

Besides filling out all of your biographical information, it may make sense to create a page for your firm. This is dependent on the size of your firm. Check out an example of the Lawyer.com company page.

LinkedIn also serves as a great tool to network. Join the Lawyer.com Legal Marketing Group and connect with Lawyer.com’s CEO, Gerald Gorman.

If you have any questions about how to best optimize your LinkedIn profile, feel free to contact support@corp.lawyer.com or call 800-820-0900.

LinkedIn For Lawyers (Part 1)

Posted on April 1, 2013 by admin

With 200 million users and counting, LinkedIn is one of the most prolific social media networks. What makes LinkedIn so unique is its focus on career and professional development. This feature makes a LinkedIn presence a key component of a Lawyer’s overall marketing campaign.

LinkedIn is primarily composed of professionals across all industries. These are all prospective clients with resources to support your practice. This is especially true for Business, Employment, & Corporate lawyers. The client likely has a presence on LinkedIn and having a comprehensive profile will increase the likelihood that relevant clients contact your practice.

Understanding the importance of LinkedIn, here are few tips for lawyers:

By default, LinkedIn users have a long URL for their profile. This is not very SEO Friendly. Follow the above steps to change your URL to something along the lines of LinkedIn.com/ln/johndoe. I recommend that the custom url be the same as your Twitter handle. In the case the lawyers Twitter handle should be @johndoe

Add As Much Content As Possible

Lawyers should enter as much information as they can on their profile. This includes their past employment and links to their website and other social media profiles.

Share Your LinkedIn Profile

At the same time, it’s important to share your LinkedIn profile on your website (along with your other social media profiles). One can even include these links in their email signature.

This establishes your brand as a market leader. Lawyers should look for as many ways as possible to remain connected to their clients and have a presence where new clients can be found.

Social media is still fairly new when it comes to its applications in business, especially for its use in the legal marketing space. As this technology becomes more mainstream, lawyers who embrace its benefits will be uniquely positioned to grow their practice.

Stay tuned next week for the conclusion of LinkedIn best practices for lawyers. We’ll discuss what to do on LinkedIn and how to create a firm profile for your practice.