Archive for August, 2009
Writing Good Content for your Legal Website
Good Content
A website is only as good as its content. You may hire an SEO expert to write page titles, keywords, and meta tag descriptions which target your location and area of practice, but without valuable content all the SEO work you do will be for nothing. The benefit of good content incorporated with SEO guidelines will improve your rankings in search engines.
What do I write about?
Of course you can’t jam your whole entire law practice into one website. However, you can map out the important areas and what you want your readers to know about you. You can start with about ten pages, and then add articles and newsletters at a later time.
Types of Content Pages
Most lawyer websites have standard pages, which are:
Home Page
About our Law Firm or Mission Statement
Attorney Profiles
Areas of Practice
Contact Us
Directions
Areas of Practice Pages
If your law office handles multiple areas of practice such as real estate, wills and probate, and business, separate pages should be written for these topics. Then, these areas of practice can be further broken down into additional pages such as residential real estate, commercial real estate, wills, probate a will, forming a business, and bankruptcy. In this scenario, nine pages of content were added. They are:
• Real Estate
o Residential Real Estate
o Commercial Real Estate
• Wills and Probate
o Wills
o Probate a Will
• Business
o Forming a Business
o Bankruptcy
Elements of Good Content
Content should be unique and not duplicated from another internet site or another page on the website. The writer needs to be aware of writing for search engine optimization and use headings which include target location and area of practice. There are tools provided by Google which would show the value of certain keywords for a certain area of practice. Valuable links can be incorporated into the content from reputable government or educational websites, which would give your content more value to a search engine. Pages should be at least 300 words and include a paragraph with the law firm’s contact information.
After the content is written, a good practice would be to check it for spelling, grammar errors, and plagiarism. You certainly wouldn’t want to seem unprofessional if a reader read a slew of typographical errors, and you wouldn’t want to be sued for duplicating another website’s content.
It is easier to outsource the content writing unless you have a professional writer on staff that can use the SEO practices to create good content.
Remember, gaining in rankings will not take overnight.
Microblogging Tips and Tricks for Lawyers – Best Legal Marketing
Networking is an important practice for those in the legal profession, so it is no surprise that many lawyers find social networking and social media sites very useful. Microblogging is a fairly new concept and may be a little confusing at first, but once you learn a few tricks you’ll be able to get out there and make new and valuable contacts with ease.
We’ve included a list of tips below for you to follow which serve as an introduction to microblogging; and if you’re already a seasoned pro, you might find something new and useful here as well.
“Hashtags”
These are keywords established for specific groups of information. Simply use the # sign before a key word or phrase in your post, and that post will show up for other users searching for information on the same subject. For example, you can use the #law tag for any general law-related posts. A quick search online can reveal already established hashtags that you can utilize in your posts.
These tags can be likened to the keywords you enter into the “tags” section of your law blog posts.
Following and Followers
When following other posters and considering your own followers, include people you already know and try to facilitate new, geographically local relationships. While it is nice to have a group of international professional contacts, concentrating on more local interactions can yield more positive results in terms of client leads and professionally beneficial communication.
Avoid Spamming
The purpose of blogging and microblogging is not to directly sell – this will damage your community credibility with many contacts. Attempting to sell your legal services in this manner will turn off many of your peers and potential clients. You can, however, provide a link to your firm’s website in your profile information, for example.
Use your microblog posts to share pertinent legal news and information, details of useful professional conferences, and encourage discussion by asking questions and sharing concerns with your peers. It is also acceptable etiquette to provide a link to a new and relevant blog post you have written in your microblog feed.
A Learning Opportunity
While you may be tempted to just focus on putting out your own content, there are many useful resources available through popular microblogging sites that allow you to keep up with various topics relevant to your interests. Engage in conversation with the other professionals you follow, and use the many features available to stay up-to-date with government and court sources. You might learn something!
The Power of a Good Domain Name
The Power of a Good Domain Name
URLs and domain names – these aren’t terms you typically run into during the daily operation of your legal practice, but they are important in terms of branding and marketing for your firm to generate new client leads and help your existing and potential clients find you more easily on the web.
A domain name, or simply “domain,” is, in a sense, your online identity. It is the main part of your website’s URL (uniform resource locator – the links that people follow to arrive at your site’s pages) and appears like this in browsers: http://www.yourpractice.com.
Branding with Your Domain
If you want to build your practice’s name as a brand, use that as your domain name. The fictitious law firm of Smith & Doe might choose the domain “www.smithanddoe.com,” for example. You can then focus your marketing efforts on your firm’s name as a brand, and clients will be able to find you by searching for “Smith and Doe” or simply typing “smithanddoe.com” into their browser’s address bar.
More clients and web users in general than ever before are navigating directly to the sites they want to visit by typing a brand name into their address bar rather than searching for a company or name in a search engine, so this is a very good practice to incorporate.
SEO and Domain Names
Some practices choose to utilize SEO keywords in their domain. This involves choosing your target keyword and working it into your domain name. Suppose the Smith & Doe firm is the premier personal injury firm in Dallas; they may choose a domain name like “www.dallaspersonalinjurylawyers.com.”
You can combine both of the above approaches as well, by taking keywords into consideration when naming individual page files. In the Smith & Doe law firm example, they do want to target Dallas area clients looking for personal injury lawyers, but also want to claim their firm’s name online and use it for branding purposes. They could name their Area of Practice page like so: “http://www.smithanddoe.com/dallas-personal-injury-lawyers.” This ensures that both their keywords and their brand name will show up in organic search results via their URL and give them the dual visibility they’re looking for.
Vanity URLs
Another way to incorporate the concept of branding into your online marketing efforts is to utilize the concept of vanity URLs and social networking URLs. These URLs are easier for potential clients to remember and can be provided with other marketing materials to help drive traffic to your site for specific promotions or target offers. The Smith and Doe firm could use a vanity URL as part of an “Ask a Dallas Lawyer” mailing, instructing clients to visit “askadallaslawyer.com.”