Solo Discusses Advertising: What Works & What Does Not

Did you know? Approximately 89% of the first page seach engine positions that your law firm is competing for are not at all true natural search results?  The truth is that these rankings or positions are being manipulated by search engine optimization or (SEO).  In fact, there are very few SEO experts that specialize in working with EXCLUSIVELY for law firms and provide specialized services such as law firm search engine optimization or Law Firm SEO for short.  Our Law Firm SEO company has been specializing in SEO for over 10 years has developed the best law firm search engine optimization program available.

Does your prospective SEO firm understand your practice, lawyer rules of ethics and how your client searches for legal services online?  Put our 10 years of experience to work for you.  Experience makes the difference.

Law Firm SEO Experts and Consultants

We start out by interviewing your firm to understand which types of cases you desire and in which municipalities your firm willing to take cases from. Then, we use the latest web traffic reporting tools in order to research the best and most frequently used keyphrases that are used in your local market.  This ensures that your website is positioned in the major search engines for the specific types of cases that you desire and that your lawyer website is generating  the highest amount of web traffic possible.

Key word selection is the absolute most important part of the process to obtain high rankings and quality website leads to your law firm. Again, each set of search phrases are carefully researched based on relevance and traffic volume in order to generate maximum cases.

Then in order to receive a top 10 ranking in major search engines for the target key phrases, we highly optimize your law firm’s website for those high value keyphrases througout your website. Our websites acheive a 100% search engine optimization score for the target keyphrases.

Law Firm Search Engine Optimization – Here is the PROOF

It is pretty simple to make claims about generating high rankings, but what is most important to you is the proof that we can deliver the results you desire. The answer is yes. Here are the websites that we have optimized for the most competitive keyphrases and how well they are positioned.

LawyerSuccess.com is the parent company of LawfirmSEOexperts.com.  Click here to view

Sedwicklaw.com – #1 on Google for “Indiana Car Accident Lawyer” and many others.
Kwlawbr.com – #1 on Google for “Louisiana Car Accident Lawyer” and many others.
Nstlaw.com – #1 on Google for “Tennessee Car Accident Lawyer” and many others.

The bottom line is these clients are signing up multiple numbers of high valued clients consistently each and every month because we have these law firms well positioned for the “right” key phrases.

Targeted SEO for Best Results!

Why not just buy ads on Google, Yahoo or MSN to be listed on the 1st page?

First of all, paid ads only attract about 3-5% of the clicks from potential clients. So volume is an issue with paid ads. Second, web searchers today feel that those lawyers positioned within the organic search engine results have established credability. Third, it costs and average of $10 to generate one website visit from pay per click. Figuring our average client generates 2,000+ unique visitors per month, that would cost your firm $20,000 to generate the same amount of web traffic monthly.

Services customized to you needs or full service SEO:

• Manual Link Building
• Manual Keyword Tracking
• Site Analysis
• Site fault analysis
• META Tags – Title, Keywords, Description, ALT tags, H1-5 tags, Link Tags
• “Search engine friendly” SEO content writing
• Website inner linking and descriptive linking
• Manually client competitors tracking and research
• Monthly SEO reviews with your firm
• Social Networking Integration
• Search engine content feeds
• and many more SEO activities.

Google’s new Panda algorithm update and last year’s Caffeine algorithm have placed further emphasis on ranking law firm websites that offer Editorial Content especially content content with unique topics, niches and relevancy of content. Originality of content was the most critical ranking factor added to Google’s Panda update.

Here are 3 more tips for 2011 that Google insiders are saying is critical to increase rankings in 2011.

1. Optimize your lawyer website for speed
2. Fix 404 errors or missing pages
3. Increase your Social Media Marketing presence on Twitter, Dig, Reddit, StumbleUpon in order to increase your traffic and obtain natural links for PageRank.

The idea is that mobile devices like Blackberry and iPhone have become very important for web search “on the go.”  Google and other search engines see this a very pivotal time to gain market share by moving those fast loading websites with authority closer to the top of the search results page.  Many analysts are saying this speed issue on web pages results in a 30% jump on the 1st page of Google.

Again, Google is not denying that links play a big part of the algorithm. Google has done a lot to remove link farms in the Panda update.  Google admits that 12% of the websites in their database were removed in February.  Content thieves and those who reuse content seems to be the target of this past update and it appears Google is trying to “save room” on their servers by stripping out websites that rely mostly on reused or rewritten content.

Ouch. I hope you have a good content writer.

For more free advice, call (769) 218-6099 to speak with a proven Law Firm Seo Expert and not a sales representative.  Click here for writers for law blogs.

Painful though they may be, proofreading and editing are absolutely necessities if you want your legal website’s content to rise above the rest. Even when the copy appears to be well-written, overall, the message you are trying to get across may be lost entirely if your copy has not been thoroughly proofread and edited. Of course proofreading and editing cover basic grammar, spelling, typos and general readability, but their importance really cannot be overstated. Even one small typo or grammatical error can leave your potential clients frustrated, annoyed, and….gone. Your potential client may see a misspelled word, and decide your firm does not pay attention to detail in other areas as well. Perhaps even more so than other genres, legal websites should always be error-free and should never, ever have any factually incorrect content. It is imperative that the copy is clear and concise and flows in an easy-to-follow manner.

Some General Proofreading Tips for Your Legal Copy

• Always take your time—the time spent will pay off in increased website traffic and more clients for your firm.
• Use your word processing program’s spell check, but don’t rely 100% upon it; the human eye can often catch mistakes your program didn’t.
• Read your web copy out loud to yourself—or someone else, and read from a physical copy rather than your computer screen. You will be amazed at the errors you will catch from a paper copy as opposed to a computer monitor.
• Forget your’re an attorney, and pretend you know nothing about the topic. Do you understand what you’re reading from this new viewpoint? Does it make sense?
• Once you’ve read, re-read, and re-read again from your paper copy, ask yourself if the content conveyed your intended purpose from a legal standpoint.
• Don’t forget to proofread important areas such as spelling of names or legal citations; these are often overlooked on legal websites, but remember that your clients are savvy and will likely catch mistakes you might not expect them to—don’t take any chances!

Don’t Forget!

Additionally, in order to maximize your legal SEO results you must always remember that reading on a computer screen strains the eyes. When we read online our tendency is to jump from heading to heading and scan text in order to find relevant and pertinent information. Your legal clients will be looking for user-friendly language, paragraph titles, bulleted lists and summaries—anything that makes their research to choose an attorney who best suits their needs easier, faster, and less painful.

Perception is Everything

Your legal website copy is of utmost importance in the overall perception of your law firm. Potential clients will look at your website and determine whether or not they want to pick up the phone and call your number. If those phone calls are important to your law firm, proofreading and editing are key elements to ensuring your potential clients comprehend and perceive your law firm’s website in the way you want them to. Your number one goal is to educate and inform your potential clients, then entice them to become your newest, most satisfied clients.

While the initial design of your law firm’s website may seem like the fun part, never underestimate the seriousness and importance of this first step. Thanks to the newest web design programs which are easier to use than ever, web design disasters are less common than they once were, however don’t think you are off the hook just yet! Perhaps more for legal firm’s than many other businesses, it is absolutely essential that your website conveys professionalism and inspires trust from your client’s very first click.

Basic Layout Rules for your Legal Website

In order to get your website noticed—in a positive way—the overall impression of your website is critical. Keep the following design rules in mind when creating your website:

• Reader satisfaction is definitely influenced by layout of headers, indentation and whitespace; in fact use of whitespace between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increase comprehension by almost 20%.
• Although black links have higher visual contrast, blue links are easier for your clients to click.
• Consider your users when you have a choice between icons or links; it has been shown that users generally prefer links when navigating a website.
• Potential clients surfing legal websites that have clear labels and prominent navigation options tend to browse longer and read more copy.
• Your client’s ultimate decision on choosing your law firm may be driven by perceived security, privacy and quality of content and design. Remember this when designing your legal website.

For Optimum Legal SEO–Never, Ever, Make These Design Mistakes

1. Non-scannable text can be deadly for your website besides being boring and difficult to read. Remember you are not writing for print, but for online, so to draw your potential clients into your text, use subheads, bulleted lists, highlighted keywords, simple writing style and short paragraphs.

2. Links are a key factor in the navigation process, allowing your potential legal clients to exclude links that were not helpful to them, or to revisit links that piqued their interest or spoke to their particular issue. Changing the color of visited links is critical to this process, ensuring your visitors are guaranteed the easiest navigation of your legal website possible.

3. Avoid designs that even remotely resemble advertisements. It has been shown that Web users have quickly learned to ignore anything that interferes with their goal-driven search. Your legitimate legal copy can be essentially lost if it even subconsciously reminds your client of an advertisement, whether it is in the form of a banner, pop-up, flashing text or animation. Be very careful when incorporating any of these particular designs into your legal website.

4. In the legal profession, not answering your client’s questions can be a critical mistake. On the Web, we are highly goal-driven beings—we visit a particular legal website because there is something we need to accomplish or find. If your legal website fails to answer your potential client’s questions quickly and thoroughly, they will soon be clicking onto another law firm’s website which is more relevant to their immediate needs.

5. Finally, page titles with low search engine visibility can truly be the kiss of death for your legal website. For maximum legal SEO, remember that search is the way your potential clients both discover your website and find their way around it once they are there. Your page title is the most important tool you have to attract new clients from search listings and help them find the specific page they need.

When your clients bookmark a site, your page title is also used as the default entry in the Favorites list. For your legal firm’s homepage, be sure to begin with your law firm’s name, followed by a brief description of your website. For other pages, start the title with the very most important information-carrying words that describe exactly what your clients will find on that page.

One of the most commonly asked questions we get is, how do I beat my competitors on Google?

As a client of Law Firm SEO Experts,  one the first steps we take to help you dominate the search engines is to perform a thorough law firm SEO analysis of your website and the law firm websites that are performing the best in your market in order to determine the cost and strategy needed to beat their rankings.

Here are a few things we will look at when we perform a competitive analysis of the top ranked law firm websites in your market.

#1 – We look at their selection of keywords and their use on the web pages throughout the website.

#2 – We evaluate the Meta Titles and Meta Description text and review their keyword phrase selection.

#3 – We check on Google Search, how many pages of content the competing law firm websites contain.

#4 – We look at the number and relevancy of the backlinks to the law firm competitor’s website and review the keyword phrases used in the anchor text of the links.

#5 – We review the rest of the law firm seo techniques (law firm search engine optimization) used throughout the Home Page and the internal pages.

These are just a few of the steps we take in the beginning phases of your law firm SEO campaign. This will help us to determine how to best strategically position you for optimal placement in the search engines.

If you would like a free law firm seo website review or a quote for our law firm SEO services call 7 SEO MY SITE or (773) 669-7483  for a free consultation.

At Law Firm SEO Experts, we help you find the best converting keywords most relevant to your practice!

The main concept for successful law firm seo is the very basic understanding that search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask and AOL always read and index text.  So it is very important that you select and use the type of text that is most relevent to the area of practice that you provide legal services for, the geographical reach of your law firm and some of the most commonly used terms people use to find your law firm.

This is why it is very important that you use the most relevant text through out your website.  In the law firm search engine optimization industry we call this text keywords and keyword phrases.  Law Firm SEO keywords and keyword phrases used properly through out your law firm website will improve your online visibility through top search engine rankings and positioning on all major search engines result pages or SERPS.

How important are search engines for generating web traffic over attorney directories or social media sites such as Twitter, FaceBook or YouTube?

This is an excellent question that we often field while providing a free law firm SEO review for prospective clients.  The answer will vary depending on the volume of search engine traffic a particular law firm website receives.  A well optimized law firm website should generate between 4,000-15,000 unique visitors per month.

• We have found that Twitter and Twitter Mobile provide about the best click-throughs (although they do not translate in to much new business) of all the social networking websites.
• YouTube and Law Firm Video SEO services offer great results in attracting and generating new law firm clients.
• Attorney directories tend to offer decent, pre-qualified web traffic but even if you listed in the top 4 legal directories, combined they would only offer about 1% of your total law firm website traffic.
• The worse of all law firm website traffic results come from the online versions of the major yellow pages companies. It is surprising how little traffic these sites generate to law firm websites.

Intelligent keyword and keyword phrase choices are the most essential part for reaching the best clients for law firms.  Our law firm SEO experts take the guess work out of selecting the best keywords and keyword phrases for new client conversion. Or SEO professionals will perform extensive keyword research to identify the best possible keyword phrases to target.

Our law firm search engine optimization experts also take into account your current keyword lists and will help you to expand upon it so that you have a very comprehensive and effective list of  keywords that will generate many new clients for your law firm.

If you would like a quote for our keyword research services or law firm SEO services call 7 SEO MY SITE or (773) 669-7483  for a free consultation.

Law Firm Video SEO is an effective way to reach and convert new law firm clients.  The reasons are many as people are becoming more familiar with using video search engines and video social media sites like Youtube.com. YouTube generates 2,000,000 video views per day. There are also hundreds of thousands of new videos uploaded each day.

Also, YouTube.com is owned by Google. That means Google promotes and will continue to inject the videos in their search engine results page. If properly managed, a law firm video SEO campaign can generate enormous amounts of clients for your law practice.

We have the experience to assist you in writing an effective script, consult you with the type of keywords to use for SEO purposes, prepare your video for search engines, place on your website, place videos on legal video directories, and social media websites and even produce your video at you office.

Do not make the mistakes that will cost you business everyday when you use your own video equipment or hire an inexperienced law firm video SEO expert.  Don’t turn away serious profits by trying to cut corners or to keep your cost down.  In fact, you would be pleasantly surprised to learn how affordable our law firm video production and/or law firm video SEO services are.

We offer two different services. We offer law firm video production and law firm video SEO. That means if you already have a law firm video, we can help you market it effectively on search engines, law firm video directories and much more.  Also, we can shoot your video inexpensively at your place of business through our network of 10,000 freelance web video production teams.

CALL US TODAY AT  7 SEO MY SITE or (773) 669-7483 for a free consultation.

So you aren’t having any luck with your law firm SEO consultant. Well how do you know? Is your website traffic increasing month after month or is it staying the same or worse decreasing?

I have personally worked on 7 of the top 10 legal website on the web and I know that being the top website is not always best. In most cases, it is better to be found on the 1st page of Google for 1,000s of different keywords then to be #1 on any particular search.

So as long as your traffic is climbing by 10% or more per month, your law firm SEO consultant may be doing a great job.  But how do you know for sure and if you need to fire your law firm SEO consultant how do you do it without hurting your website’s rankings thus far?

#1 – You should speak to two or more law firm SEO specialists and have them review your website’s SEO. Ask them for their top 2-3 suggestions and see if there are any common issues.

#2 – Select a law firm SEO consultant based on results and not price. Any good law firm SEO consultant is not cheap because they get results and their clients probably refer them a ton of business. Plus they are going to spend a lot of time on your website. Make sure they have attorney content writers on staff to writer your content as content plays a ke role in generating superior SEO results.

#3 – Create a plan of escape. Ask your current law firm SEO consultant to send you a complete back up of the website on a disc or access to the web server to download the site locally. This should be done in case something should happen to their company or their web server.  It is always good to have a back up.

#4 – Get control over your law firm domain name. If you do not have your domain registered in your name or access to the account in which the domain is hosted, get control and possession over your domain promptly.

#5 – Sign up with a new law firm SEO consultant ASAP.  Make sure to get references and look at their law firm SEO examples. Run many searches and see how they fair in the search engines. Inquire about the monthly unique visits their sites typically get. Do their clients sign up cases? How long have their clients continued with the service. Also ask about how long they have been in business to avoid signing up with a company that may not be around tomorrow. Having a new law firm SEO expert ahead of time will make moving the site, setting up a server account and pointing or transferring the domain for you a simple process. This is a royal pain in the neck so having a law firm SEO expert can manage this process easily for you.

For more information about our 10+ years of law firm SEO experience please call (769) 218-6099 for more information. We can help you in this difficult and technical transition.

Law Firm Search Engine Optimization or law firm SEO is one of the most effective, economical and proven methods of web site promotion on the Internet.   The bad news is there are a lot of unscrupulous “law firm seo experts” out there including some of the well known brands who will take you on a very expensive ride. We recently picked up a law firm client who used a very well known company (L.N.) to design there website and perform search engine optimization on the website to generate new business.

When we looked over the code we found that they had completely forgotten to add the Meta Description tags to the web pages. How important is it you say? Well, when you run a search on Google you will see two pieces of information. #1 – the title of the website and #2 the web page Meta Description tag.  So this was a very big mistake. The website was not even finished and had lots of those nifty “Coming soon…” web pages which is another big favorite of the search engines.

I also noticed in the Title tags had just a bunch of keywords randomly placed as a page title. Title tags are probably the most important part of the website SEO need to have specific keywords especially ones that people actually search for instead of just adding a few random keywords.

This raises an important question for lawyers, who can I trust to perform our law firm website SEO?  We all know that an attractive website plus excellent SEO delivers an enormous amount of high quality clients and cases.  But after you have been burned a few times, it seems like real high results oriented law firm SEO is just an urban legend.

Almost all webmasters and law firm owners with a successful SEO strategy consider SEO as their prime tool for business promotion. Unfortunately since most lawyers possess very little SEO knowledge and that’s the main reason why they fail to select right SEO Company to optimize their websites. They are either trapped by Black hat SEO companies who attract them by attractive slogans like “Guaranteed 1st position on Google” or “Guaranteed top ten rankings in Google and Yahoo”.

These statements are attractive and lawyers will then outsource their SEO tasks to these companies. These SEO companies (not all) use black hat/ spam SEO techniques to generate quick results, get payment and run away, leaving law firm website owner with black listed website on Google and other Search Engine as a result of using spam SEO techniques.  This costs the law firm a lot of wasted time, expense in having to change their marketing collateral to reflect a new domain name, and lost revenues because they are no longer in the search engines for referrals searching their law firm name or new clients to finding them by keyword searches.

Another attraction for law firm website owners is the SEO price; some law firm SEO freelancers offer their services at an unbeatable price. These so called law firm SEO experts know very little about SEO for lawyers and either fail to produce to desired results or they do something unethical which is picked up by the search engines as spam and end up in getting attorney’s website  penalized for 6 months or so, banned or even in some cases the websites are black listed by search engines permanently.

Experience law firm search engine optimization experts like us will personally experienced this many times while quoting SEO price to law firms. Many times we couldn’t get many projects due to a price difference between our law firm website SEO quote and other SEO freelancers as our SEO price is based on result oriented SEO not just out of the box SEO package which normally includes certain number of optimized web pages and submissions etc.

A recent survey of law firm and non-law firm SEO companies offering their SEO service through their websites and marketing their SEO service on the Internet and able to categorize SEO companies as under:

1-Big and trusted law firm SEO Companies: These SEO companies normally based in the United States and offer their SEO service worldwide. They are hardly affordable by small to medium sized law firms as their law firm SEO price is usually out of marketing budget of a small or medium size business. These law firm SEO companies normally offer fixed SEO packages and customized SEO service/ package. They never use black hat or Spam SEO techniques.  They offer very little one-on-one with the customer. Only the biggest law firm clients get the most attention.

2-Small to Medium Size law firm SEO companies: These types of legal SEO companies are based here in U.S. and are also reliable but have limited capacity. They usually work on static websites and can handle limited number of clients. They also avoid spam SEO techniques and they are affordable for small to medium size businesses.  They typically work a lot more closely with each customer to ensure their client is satisfied.

3. Freelance or Cheap Law Firm SEO companies or individuals – These firms usually get most of the business because of their low cost. However, buyer beware as these shops usually cut a lot of corners in their SEO techniques. They also do not provide a lot of support and they end up ruining your domain name with the search engines because they either lack the experience or simply do not care.

Now it is important that being a law firm owner that you understand the factors you should consider while selecting a law firm SEO company for your law firm’s website optimization needs. You should consider following factors:

1- Your Industry – Does the SEO company or your friend have a working knowledge of the law and lawyer advertising rules? Do they specialize in the legal industry or do they work with other businesses as well? Working with a specialist in law firm SEO will produce far better results because they understand your business and the client you are trying to retain.
2- Do they have examples of their law firm SEO successes?
3- Do they have other lawyer/client references?
4- Do they work within your budget?
5- Do they stress the importance of building web content as part of the strategy?
6- Do they have attorney writers on staff to help write content for the website?
7- How long have their references been using their service?

After this simple analysis, you can decide what type of law firm SEO Company you need. If you would like to speak with an experienced and expert law firm SEO consultant, please call: 7 SEO MY SITE or (773) 669-7483 today.

What is Keyword-Enriched Content?
In short, keyword enriched content is the content on your site that has been optimized and includes the same keywords that your prospective clients will type into a search engine to reach your site. Keyword-enriched content can bring more clients to your law firm, and the clients it brings will be a more focused, better-targeted group because of your improved rankings and visibility in search engines. Your clients are much more likely to visit (and stay and read) your website if it contains the same keywords they typed into their search engine. If your law firm’s website is optimized with high-performing keywords, it will naturally appear higher in the search result pages. Don’t forget that keyword content includes both the number of keywords as well as their positioning on each page of your firm’s website.

Why is Keyword-Enriched Content Necessary to Legal Websites?
In today’s world when someone desperately needs an attorney for any of the myriad of reasons that we humans need attorneys—injured in an accident, wrongful death of a loved one, negligence of another person or entity—they most likely turn to the Internet. If your law firm does, say, personal injury cases in Atlanta, then when that person types in “Atlanta personal injury attorney” you most certainly want your law firm’s website to appear before them. It can be almost like magic when they click on your website, soon becoming your brand-new client—or do they? Is your law firm’s website full to the brim with keyword-enriched content for search engine optimization? Does your website immediately appear once keywords are typed in? Just as importantly, once clicked on does your legal website grab and hold your potential client’s interest?

Adding Content Without Compromising Your Website
Many times when planning a legal website you may wonder how to add content without compromising the quality and straightforward nature of this particular genre. When searching for an attorney the average person wants clear-cut copy, easily searchable information; in short, the ability to find exactly what’s needed in the shortest amount of time possible. Adding quality content on an ongoing basis can be as simple as adding a “newsletter” section to your website. The team of attorneys at your particular law firm could take turns writing for this section, adding additional content that is rich in keywords. After all, nobody knows all the special nuances of your business like your own attorneys—and no one has your particular business at heart like the lawyers in your firm.

Specifically….
1. While your home page is naturally considered the most important page from a search engine point of view, all linked pages should aim to build up traffic so the search engines will begin to consider the links as home pages in their own right.
2. Your law firm’s website should have a central theme which is based around great content-rich copy. That copy should contain your selected keywords and phrases, should be interesting, engaging, readable, and, above all, correct.
3. There are services on the Internet that can provide you with a list of the most popular keyword searches on search engines at any particular time. If you incorporate these keyword search terms into your website, into your law firm’s articles, you increase the number of potential clients who will visit your website.