Archive for December, 2009
Common Legal Marketing Mistakes – Part II
6. Don’t assume your clients know about all of the legal services your firm offers. Oftentimes if prospective clients are unsure what services a firm offers, they reach out to other lawyers who outline their services more clearly. That’s an easy and avoidable way to lose business. Make sure your website outlines in detail all of your firm’s areas of practice and all legal services that you offer.
7. Don’t assume potential clients and your current clients will contact you if they have questions. People sometimes hesitate to call, especially if you haven’t developed any sort of relationship with them. In an effort to get more business, take it upon yourself to reach out to your clients and any prospective clients who may need your services.
8. Don’t use vocabulary that the average person wouldn’t understand. It’s important that clients can depend on visiting your website and get most – if not all – of their questions answered. If there are terms and legal phrases that are confusing to the average person dispersed throughout your site, clients are going to want to find a lawyer who outlines their legal services and practices using layman’s terms.
9. Don’t leave your picture off your site. It may seem like a simple thing, but having your face on your website could make the world of a difference. When a new client visits your website to see what services you offer, they get a chance to see your face and see you on a more personal level. It will give them a closer look into who you are before even speaking with you. If you look personable and inviting, chances are you’ll be contacted.
10. Don’t assume everyone understands your busy schedule. Everyone knows attorneys have hectic schedules. One major complaint among clients is that their lawyer doesn’t return any phone calls or emails and they are hard to reach. Use that notion to your advantage. Get back to your clients in a timely manner. It will increase your credibility more than you realize.
On-page SEO Best Practices
Too many people jump into SEO without truly understanding the very basic principles behind a sound website as it relates to search engine spiders/bots. While off page optimization and link building campaigns are certainly an indispensable asset to your overall SEO campaign, on-page optimization needs to be at the forefront of more minds.
What do I mean by on-page optimization? No I am not merely referring to meta keywords and keyword density (these being whole separate articles in their own right), rather I am referring to site architecture, clean source code, and proper internal linking.
Site architecture is often overlooked due to a website owner’s desire to have all pages reside in the root directory of his/her site (www.domain.com/pagename.html). A more appropriate, and search engine friendly, site architecture should contain multiple levels of paths (www.domain.com/category/pagename.html). Think of it as an outline of information and how that information needs to flow in order to make sense.
Clean source code must be one of my biggest pet peeves. While there are overabundances of source code disasters, here are some best practices to adhere to:
- External file use of CSS and javascript code.
- Properly structured title, description and header tags.
- Include target keywords contextually where it makes sense to do so.
- Internal link pages to allow spiders to better crawl and enhance the flow of link equity.
- Use strong, emphasize, and bulleted/ordered list tags (a great example is found on this Alabama social security disability attorney website).
- Cardinal rule: cater first to your visitors, and search engines second (proper on-page SEO yield these as one in the same).
While there are many elements to take into consideration when optimizing your website, the points listed above are the tip of the iceberg. I might also add that one must be sure their site is not utilizing the noindex tag by accident! Learn more about the noindex tag.
Common Legal Marketing Mistakes
Many attorneys tend to make a number of marketing mistakes and it’s important for all law firms to try to be aware of them and avoid.
1. Don’t focus marketing only on current clients and not potential new ones. A lawyer’s existing clients are of course important, but referrals and new clients are equally or more important.
2. Try not to push any marketing effort to the side when you get too busy. Attorneys are always busy – that’s a fact – but it’s no reason for them to abandon any marketing effort to boost their firm’s reputation and get more clients.
3. Don’t ignore social media. As all social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Linked In are becoming more and more popular and a part of almost every business’s marketing strategy, it’s important law firms take advantage of such tools as well.
4. Don’t have an unplanned unorganized marketing plan. As far as successful marketing goes, it’s always important for every type of business to develop a strategic and carefully thought out marketing plan. The more time and effort put into a marketing plan, the better chances of gaining more clients and making your firm more well-known.
5. Make sure your marketing strategy is focused on your firm’s uniqueness and what sets you apart from the rest of the attorneys out there. Stay away from the typical legal jargon posted all over lawyers’ websites and get clients to want to know more about your practice.
To be continued.
Are Law Firm Blogs a Good Marketing Tool?
Many businesses – small and large – have adopted blogging as a more popular marketing strategy. Law firms have also adopted this tactic in order to reach out to their clients on a more personal and casual level.
Along with marketing their practice using various social media channels, many lawyers have hopped on the blogging train in an effort to outline to clients the successes of their firm, present helpful information regarding their area of practice or provide updates and recent news regarding the legal focus of their firm.
Unfortunately, a number of law firm blogs out there are not properly organized, updated or even well-written. Well-developed blogs, however, can be a very effective way to market your firm’s legal services and get more clients to explore the firm’s ideas from a different angle.
For lawyers considering developing a blog, it’s important to ask yourself a few questions:
- Do you have enough time to develop a blog?
- Will you be able to update it frequently?
- What are your goals with the blog?
- What will be the primary focus of your blog?
…..Will YOU start blogging?
Multiple Attorney Websites
Often times attorneys will have multiple websites representing unique areas of practices that may or may not otherwise compliment each other if placed on one single website. This of course is the primary and somewhat understandable reason for a law firm to take this route, however some cases can be a bit more devious.
Let’s assume the primary goal of the multiple sites is honest and intended to promote good will. We’ll also assume we are talking about a mesothelioma lawyer who wants to market the intellectual property side of their practice by means of a secondary website. Mesothelioma law and intellectual property law certainly would not compliment each other if placed within one website on one domain. But if we were to create a sub domain of our primary domain (ie. Iplaw.mesotheliomalawyer.com), we can reap a few benefits.
First, we get to piggyback off our existing, primary domain that has accumulated age, trust, and authority in the eyes of the search engines. It also should have accrued some degree of link equity since its creation that can be very beneficial for your new sub domain. The engines will also most likely crawl and index this new content much faster than if it resided on a separate domain.
The second benefit we need to consider is the idea of user experience in terms of site/firm identity that will ultimately affect trust levels. This is more of a traditional marketing idea to form a united approach in your marketing efforts.
Of course there is some debate over whether one should use sub domains over additional sub directories (domain.com/Iplaw/), though it should be quite easy to determine which method to utilize. Ask yourself, “Are these two sets of content/material (mesothelioma and intellectual property) so different from each other that they should not be on the same website?” If so, sub domains are your answer. If however we are talking about personal injury and car accidents on the same website, then we take the sub directory route as these are complimentary practice areas.