The Art of Keyword Development

One of the most critical, fundamental and effective (when done right) aspects of any SEO effort is the keyword research necessary prior to writing your content. Unfortunately, it's also a time consuming task that most people don't know how to do properly.
Too often lawyers, and anyone else marketing themselves online, focus on a handful of highly competitive keywords and nothing else. It's not there fault; I've seen some of the "keyword analysis" provided by legal marketing companies like FindLaw. To say that it wasn't very good is an understatement of English Mastiffian proportions. It consisted of a few head terms like car accident, auto accident and truck accident, followed by a list of "tail" terms like attorney, lawyers and law firms, then finally regional terms. The idea was that all you had to do was mix up the head and tail terms, sprinkle in the regional terms and viola: Your keyword list.
The results look something like this:
California Truck Accident Lawyer
San Francisco Car Accident Attorney
Sacramento Auto Accident Law Firms
Great. Now write some crummy content, stuff these keywords in the title, and watch the leads come flying in!

You have to be kidding me.

The fact that lawyers pay for this "keyword research" makes me cringe. First of all, trying to rank for all these regional keywords is a waste of time. Unless you have a serious, long-term, very well funded SEO effort, it's just not going to happen. Furthermore, local search is evolving rapidly, and search algorithms are treating regional search terms much differently than "normal" search terms. It's not about matching up title tags anymore.

A Primer on Keyword Development

To develop a great keyword list, and in turn, effective web content, you have to be able to find a breadth of contextually related keywords (or more specifically, search terms). Think about the English language as a map. Every word is connected to hundreds or thousands of other words. Instead of just picking five, ten, or twenty highly competitive keywords, focus on finding the thousands of keywords that are one step removed from the keywords that every other lawyer is stuffing in their title tags.
An interesting tool that I use a lot when beginning a new keyword library, is Googles "wonder wheel". Here is a good video on how it works. It's a great way to get started getting out the the same old keyword "rut".

Applying What You've Found

Once you've found some keywords that merit a page of content, begin by creating an outline of what you think would be a helpful, informative page for someone searching for the term(s) you've selected. In this outline, try to naturally include your search term in the title and subtitles of your outline.
Once you're happy with your outline, FORGET ABOUT THE KEYWORDS, and begin writing. We've all seen what a keyword stuffed page reads like. It's terrible. If you're going to bother writing content to generate consumer traffic, you should have something that impresses them once they find it right? The body of your content should serve the sole purpose of getting your idea across effectively, not just more keyword fluff. As long as your target keyword is in your title and subtitles, you're set. More to come in another post.

Ruf ruf

Effective Lawyer Content Marketing

When it comes to distributing legal content online, lawyers have a variety of options ranging from article syndication sites like ArticlesBase.com and Ezinearticles.com, how-to sites like ehow, legal oriented sites like Avvo and FreeAdvice.com, or blog platforms. Which of these provides the most effective distribution?

Defining "Effectiveness" of Content Distribution

How do you measure effectiveness of content distribution? Is it page views, unique visitors, SEO valued links or leads? It's all of these, but ultimately, the goal for lawyers is to get new people to find and see the value of their legal practice, and make contact.
In order to provide value, the distribution platform an attorney chooses to use has to drive traffic to the published content. To do that, the content pages must get linked to from other relevant pages, get crawled by the major search engines, and get ranked for relevant keywords. Alternatively, the platform itself can deliver visitors from it's existing traffic base by providing an easy way for them to browse or search for content.

Measuring the Performance of Content Marketing

Having access to page view and lead data is critical for any content marketing effort. Without it, there is no way to make decisions about what and where to publish. Whichever platform you use, make sure you have direct access to traffic and lead data.

Links and SEO Value

The other benefit of publishing content online, is the links from that page will provide SEO value to your profile page or website. For this reason, having your legal content published on multiple websites is best, in order to maximize the "global link popularity" of you profile page or website.

The LawFirms.com Network Delivers on all These Aspects

Law Firms has proven to be one of the most effective means of content marketing for lawyers, and now that more sites, like US Immigration Lawyers, Personal Injury Lawyer, Employment Lawfirms and Auto Accident Lawyers, have been opened up to LawFirms.com subscribers, it just got more interesting and more effective. Having content across multiple sites can deliver enormous value for attorneys looking to increase their business.
One attorney, Rodney Mesriani, has taken full advantage of this platform, with many pages published across several, relevant sites. Some examples:
Employment Lawfirms: Severance packages
Personal Injury Lawyer: Amusement Park Injury Claims
Auto Accident Lawyers: Liability in Multiple Vehicle Accidents
Law Firms: Common Workplace Issues
So far this month, his articles have received, 1,875 page views! More importantly, his effort has increased his business. One example of this starts with the amusement park injury article listed above. About a half hour after the page went up, the following inquiry was sent to Mr. Mesriani's inbox from his profile page:
"my son was on a ride at six flags (kong) and broke his back he was out of school for 3 months as a 10th grader. we had to pay for toutoring and online coarses to keep him with good grades. $6000 later and his back is still giving him problems. They never called to even see how he was doing. What can we do?"
There is no better example of how effective content marketing can grow a law firms business. This person was searching for help, found the page relevant to her legal problem, and clicked to contact the author. That's effective content marketing.

Ruf ruf

Great Content Starts with the Title

When writing content for the web, the first place to start is with the title. This is the single most heavily weighed on page aspect of SEO. Google and other search engines rely on the title as a big part of determining what the page is about, so it's important to think about your title from the perspective of a search engine. Better yet, when determining a title, think about the types of keywords for which you'd like to see your page show up.

Keep Your Title Short and to the Point

When choosing a title, try to keep it short, and include only those keywords you really want to go after. Better yet, use a phrase that you would expect someone to punch in to find what you're writing. As an example, if you want to write something on Why your Should Hire a Lawyer to Help with Foreclosure, think about how someone would use those terms in a search engine. They might search for "how to stop foreclosure", or "foreclosure help". It's actually pretty unlikely that that the term lawyer would appear in the most common search phrases, so incorporate those search term in the title. You can write something like, "How a Lawyer can Help Stop Foreclosure", or "Get Help from a Lawyer to Stop a Foreclosure". Alternatively, you can use a colon to help target an exact keyword phrase; "How to Stop Foreclosure: Get Foreclosure Help from a Lawyer".

Don't Forget Your H2 Titles

After you've got your title, make a quick outline of your article or guide. Use that to structure the flow of your article, and make sure you have subtitles (H2 and H3 titles) that are directly related to your page title. In the above example, your subtitles might be something like, "Negotiating with Your lender", "Legal Options to Prevent Foreclosure", "Bankruptcy and Foreclosure" and so on. The sub titles are another thing that major search engines will use as a guide to determine the relevancy of a page to a given search term. Subtitles also function as a great way to organize the content on the page and make it easier to digest for a researching consumer. One of the biggest mistakes we see lawyers make when writing content for the web is to write a long, unbroken string of text. While the content might be great, a webpage with nothing but long paragraphs can appear intimidating and "unfriendly" to many people. Web pages should be well organized an "scannable" so that people can find information quickly.

If You're an Experthub Contributor, We've Got Some Ideas for You

The SEO team at Experthub recently did some keyword research, as well as researching the keyword strength and page rank of pages on the Experthub Legal Network, and created a list of titles that would make for great legal guides, and have an excellent shot at getting indexed quickly, and generating more traffic to your profile. Take a look at our Wanted Page, and see if there is anything that you'd be interested in writing.
As always, these pages will get some SEO massaging and back-links from related, ranked pages to make sure they get indexed and ranked quickly, and get you more visitors to your profile page.

Ruf ruf

SEO is Easy

Just not for you.

I've overheard so many lawyers talking about spending thousands of dollars to pay some SEO firm to get their website ranked in google. Most lawyers don't even know what that means. Do you have to pay to be included in Googles search results? No. Will Google find your site and include it in it's search results if you don't do anything? Probably, unless there is absolutely no way for Googles spiders to find it. As long as there is one link on a page that is being crawled, your site will be indexed and included in the results page for relevant keywords.

What SEO is Not

All too many times I've heard lawyers explaining how, thanks to some SEO consultant, they're the #1 result for their firms name. This is not what SEO is all about. Showing up on page one when someone searches for your firm is just Google doing what it's supposed to do; Show people what they're looking for. Plus, if the search traffic coming to your site is composed of people looking for you, whats the point? Obviously they want to talk to YOU, or hire YOU already, so what purpose does your site serve other than to give them your number?

Real SEO Delivers New Traffic

The real purpose of SEO is to drive new people to your website that otherwise would never know your name. This consists of (1) designing an SEO friendly site, (2) publishing quality content and (3) promoting your site by getting good, relevant, inbound links from other websites. The first two steps are the relatively easy part. The hard part (and the thing that really gets Google interested in your content) is getting good quality, relevant sites to put up links to your content, with good anchor text.

Why SEO is Easy for Experthub and Hard for You

One of the things that Experthub does extremely well is get our lawyers' contributed content indexed, and ranked highly in Google for relevant search terms quickly. For example, this article on medical malpractice law in Maine ranks in the third spot for that term after only a month. The reason is all the lawyers on Experthubs network enjoy free SEO services in the form of optimization of, and inbound linking to, all their contributed content. This is that hard third part of SEO mentioned above. Owning an entire network of legal sites makes it easy to promote new web pages and get them noticed by Google quickly.
I overheard one attorney who was actually upset because he had spent a lot of money paying an SEO consultant to get him to the top of Google for his very specialized type of legal practice. After publishing a legal guide on Lawfirms.com about the subject, his site was actually pushed down to the second spot, and the top spot was taken by his contributed article published on our network. After realizing that he now owned the top two spots, he wasn't so upset.

Moral of This Story

If you're a part of Experthub, take some time to publish quality legal guides and enjoy getting even more traffic at no cost.

Ruf ruf

Coffee is for Closers

How many lawyers subscribe to law firm marketing services expecting clients to show up with wallets open?
One of the interesting things we hear from clients is that even though they're getting plenty of leads through their network subscription, they're not getting much actual business because other lawyers are beating them to the punch or "stealing their leads".

To Compete Against other Law Firms you Have to be able to Close

It's no different from other types of advertising in any other industry. Clients are not going to show up with wallets open asking for your help (well, ok, not ALL of them will). They're going to shop around, talk to different attorneys, consider their budget, feel out lawyers personalities, qualifications, etc.
If you're not making an effort to sell yourself, and show a potential client that you're their best option, another lawyer will.
Here's an interesting blog about selling your services to clients through a "consultative approach". Aside from all the "rainmaker" comments, it's a good read.
Not all lawyers are good at selling, but making an effort to, at the very least, talk to potential clients about their problem and offer some typical solutions used in previous cases is an easy way to develop some trust with your leads.

Meow meow

Optimize Your Online Marketing Spend with Offline Biz Dev

I overheard a phone conversation with an attorney who's taken a good approach to purchasing a large number of leads, even though many were not the type of case he prefers.
Often times, the complaint many lawyers will have with the results of their online marketing spend is they receive a large number of consumer inquiries regarding cases that they are not interested in pursuing.
One remedy is to focus your spend in such a way that you're only purchasing the types of leads you want. The problem is, when it comes to marketing anything online, the more constraints you put on your traffic, the more expensive it will be per lead.
Back to the phone call. This attorney was purchasing a large quantity of leads, even though many of the calls an online inquiries he was receiving were of little interest to him. But what he found, was that they were of interest to many of his colleagues.

Online Marketing Meets Old Fashioned Business Development

Every lawyer knows that a big part of an attorneys job, whether a solo practice or (even especially) at a large firm is business development. It's one of the things that's probably not taught in law school, but should be part of the curriculum.
In order to stay in business, a firm has to generate new clients. One of the ways attorneys or law firms do this is biz dev with other firms. Developing relationships with other practices, and throwing business both ways is a great way to maintain a steady flow of business.
If you're purchasing media online and developing business, why not refer those cases you don't want to another firm that does? Keeping up a varied circle of attorney "acquaintances", and sending business their way once in a while, is a sure fire way to convert unwanted leads into new business later down the road.
Don't forget to ask for referrals in return. Just a simple question, "if you ever get a case "x", thats my specialty", after referring some business to an attorney is all it takes. Keep tabs on the fruit of your relationships. If you find that some attorneys take your business and never return the favor, keep track of that and adjust accordingly.
By actively working offline and online to generate new business, you can maximize your ROI with very little time spent marketing yourself.

Ruf ruf

Treat Internet Traffic Like Foot Traffic

If I were to walk into your office and say, "I think I have a medical malpractice case", what would you do? Ok, you'd call animal control (or pass out because you think a dog is talking to you). But if it were a real live person, surely you would take the time to ask the right questions and explain how your firm could provide the services they would need to get compensated, yes?

Internet Traffic is no Different

It seems as though some lawyers still haven't come to the realization that the inquiries they receieve from interent traffic are actual people with actual questions or problems. I say this because after talking to a few of them, they seem to think that traffic coming from their website, or blog, or other online marketing efforts is all worthless.

Because of this mentality, these attorneys fail to act accordingly to close business. Perhaps because the medium of communication is new and different, there is not the same connection that's made when a potential client walks into their office.

In order to make your online marketing spend work for you, you have to service every lead. Read this post on converting leads now for an excellent breakdown of how to maximize the business you get from internet traffic.

Ruf ruf

Do Free Advice Sites Generate Business?

There are a few sites out there that allow consumers to post questions to be answered by lawyers. Avvo.com and FreeAdvice.com are the two biggest. From a lawyers business development standpoint, do these products provide any value?

Highly Scalable Traffic Generation

Both of these sites get quite a bit of traffic, and continue to grow at a rapid pace. The main driver of this traffic is a highly scalable content generation plan. Giving any visitor the ability to generate content (ask and answer questions) is a great way to grow traffic quickly. Community generated content sites like these, social media sites, forums, etc scale content almost exponentially, which drives an incredible amount of long tail organic search traffic. Not to mention, once visitors become involved in the community, they return, bringing the daily amount of traffic even higher. This is contrast to static sites such as lawyers websites, or profiles that tend to bring primarily new visitors.

How Valuable is this Traffic?

Considering the nature of the traffic, is answering questions on these sites, and building up a rapport with the community worth a lawyers time? Obviously, I don't have access to detailed traffic analysis of either site, but using some SEO tools available online, most of the highest traffic generating keywords are variations of "free legal advice". That can't translate very well into legitimate business for a law firm.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Avvo and FreeAdvice aren't good places to market yourself, by all means take advantage of these free services. I'm just wondering if a lawyers time wouldn't be better spent generating content that is timeless, helpful and will continue to provide value (for both consumers and the attorney) in the long-term. The kind of content that continues to function as a resource for anyone looking for legal information (not advice) online, such as an authoritative article, how-to, blog, etc.

Q/A type content certainly scales, and builds a lot of traffic, but is it valuable? It seems to me, a helpful, authoritative article like this one, while it requires more effort to generate, will continue to provide value in the long-term and establish to visitors that the author is an Alpha Lawyer.

Ruf ruf

Marketing your Law Firm in a Weak Economy

Money is getting tighter, and your retainers may be getting smaller, but that doesn't mean that lawyers should ease up on their online marketing efforts. If anything, now is the time to increase your exposure online.

Adapting your Online Content for the Economy

Normally, you would focus the content on your website or profile around the types of cases that you focus on. Nowadays though, it may be worthwhile to modify your approach a bit. One of the core shifts is to start publishing useful, informative content that actually allows potential clients to solve their situatiuation without hiring an attorney...

Why would a lawyer want to waste time publishing free advice?

The bottom line is, if someone can't afford to hire you right now, they're not going to. What they are going to do is spend some time researching online to find out what they need to do to solve their problem on their own. Whether it's immigration applications, bankruptcy forms, employment filings, etc, they're going to find out how to do it themselves. So why not help them by making some common problems easier for them to handle on their own?
Now I'm not talking about going on Q/A forums and posting answers to legal questions. I'm talking about publishing helpful, comprehensive how-to's, forms, process overviews, etc for searchers to find on your site, blog or profile page(s).

The Benefit for You: Branding

The economy will come back, and so will your retainer fees. If you've built up some trust/authority/likeability with consumers during the down economy, you will be rewarded when dispoable incomes return.
Whether they like it or not, branding works, and people want to work with a lawyer they like. If they've stumbled accross your site before, and stuck around long enough to research, your name will register. They may have even bookmarked the content they found so they don't lose it.
Sooner or later some of these visitors are going to have another legal problem, or a friend will. Since you've made that impression however many months ago, you'll have a leg up on everyone else.
Finding and choosing a lawyer is not easy, and if someone's already made a positive connection with your firm, it makes it much easier for them to choose yours over all the other available practices.

Just a little free advice, in case you ever have some extra income lying around for legal marketing services.

Meow meow

Sniff Out Every Lead

When someone throws me a bone, I take it every time. If you're paying a lead generation company to deliver you prospective clients, you should do the same right? 

I overheard a conversation in the Experthub office today regarding a consumer email concerning our service. "Jon" had found a few lawyers near him and elected to contact both of them regarding an immigration problem.

Attorney 2 (I'm working backwards on purpose) sent "Jon" an email with a quick overview of his firm, as well as a brief, personalized paragraph responding to his inquiry. Nothing too time consuming, just a quick 20 second response.

Attorney 1 (The first attorney to contact the lead) elected to send a completely generic email with absolutely nothing about the original inquiry. This email included the phrase "Call Me Now!" at the bottom. When "Jon" called, he was greeted by a secretary who insisted he couldn't speak with the attorney unless "Jon" gave her his credit card number for the $25 phone consultation fee. 

Instead of giving up his credit card  number, he waited for a response from Attorney 2. He soon got it, called, and hired Attorney 2 to help with his Immigration problem.

Now, both of these immigration lawyers have similar subscriptions, and pay about the same amount. They're getting the same number of leads, roughly the same number of profile visits, etc. So essentially, they should be getting the same amount of new business from their marketing spend. Which do you think is spending their money more wisely?

Now, I could be getting ahead of myself; maybe there is good money in phone consultation fees, but somehow I doubt it. Or it could be he has so much business that he doesn't need/want anymore cases. Then why pay for marketing services?

In a business where one or two cases can be the difference between profitable marketing spend or money thrown away, why wouldn't you spend at least a few minutes to ensure that each lead is serviced? It seems a waste to spend the money to get through all the steps of online marketing (traffic generation, lawyer impression, profile click, inquiry, completed lead) just to fumble a good lead at the last moment when it's in your lap.

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something. This is somewhat out of my area of expertise. Any lawyers reading? Want to fill me in?

At least Jon got what he was looking for.

Ruf ruf

Take Advantage of Googles Local Results

In case you haven't noticed, Google has been displaying it's own local results for a far wider array of search terms recently. Even search terms with no regional keywords will bring up Google's "Ten Pack". How is this going to impact how people find lawyers online? I played around looking for various types of lawyers, "traffic ticket lawyers", "immigration lawyers", "criminal lawyers", "medical malpractice lawyers" and so on. Almost every time I saw the Google ten pack in the fourth spot, with map, phone numbers and websites.

Claim Your Local Spot

If you haven't done so already, claim your local spot on google maps. It's a straighforward online form, and all you have to do beyond that is let someone from Google call you or reply to a post card, both designed to confirm you're actually a local business.
It's a great way to get some traffic from local searchers, but make sure your website is up to date and at it's best. It will be posted along side all the other local attorneys' sites, so a good first impression will likely be the biggest differentiating factor for this type of marketing.
If you don't have a website, or if your site is a bit dated, use your lawfirms.com profile page instead. You can update it with video, all the lawyers in your firm get their own page, you can add various bit's to build your "resume", include recent case results, your contributed articles... the list goes on. It's a rich page that will establish your experience at first glance, and give the local searcher what they're looking for.

P.S. If you try to replicate my searches, check out some of Experthubs other legal web properties while you're at it. They'll be easy to find.

Ruf ruf

PPC Rules, SEO Drools (New Contributor Intro)

Little Miss ExpertPup is on Vacation (actually, she's locked outside because she ate a sock, I'll never understand dogs), so I'm going to take this opportunity to shed a different perspective on this blog.
My name is Isabelle, and I'll be contributing to this blog here and there to add some variety and a different perspective to the topics published here. I'm an eight year old, three legged cat (long story, involves a car) and I've been transcribing all previous posts to this blog. Have you seen that dogs paws? The keyboard would have to be five feet wide.

Cats and Dogs

There are a lot of differences between cats and dogs. First and foremost, we're smarter. She ate a dirty sock fresh off the foot, 'nuff said.
Secondly, we're "energy efficient". Some people might use the term "lazy", but I prefer to think of myself as productively challenged. Anyway, enough about me, on to the point.

Generating Traffic for Lawyers: SEO vs. PPC

The one thing expertPUP and I agree on is that search traffic rules. This is espescially so for lawyers, or anyone providing services that are needed on an infrequent basis. You have to be available when a new client needs you (is looking for you).
However, going through all the effort required to generate traffic organically doesn't make much sense to me. You're going to have to pay someone to do it, so why not just buy it in the first place?
Buying search traffic gives you tremendous precision with regards to the people who visit your site. You specify exactly for which terms your ad is impressed, and exactly where the visitor will land. Not only that, but you can use dynamic landing pages that change depending on the keyword the visitor searched for. Try doing that via SEO.
If you don't have the time to manage keyword lists, you can use Google features such as Broad Match to let them do the work for you. Granted, you lose some of the precision control mentioned above, but you'll generate much more traffic.

Any Downside?

Not if you ask me, but there is the expense. Google's created one of the most valuable companies in the world by building a truly competitive marketplace. You'll be bidding against thousands of other lawyers and legal marketing professionals, but the effective cost per lead should be worth the expense right? Why else would they be doing it? That's how an efficient market works, it establishes the value of a good; In this case a lead. Plus, lawyers make a boatload of money anyways right?
PPC Rules.... SEO Drools, Literally

Meow meow

Establish Yourself as the Alpha Lawyer

Whenever two or more dogs meet, one of them immediately establishes him or herself as the "alpha". All the other dogs must submit to the alpha. The alpha eats first, then the others get whatever is left over. I eat first.

If your Law Firm has a web presence, you want to establish the same kind of authority online. You want visitors to your pages to immediately know that you are a highly experienced expert and you know how to help them with their legal problem.

Establishing "Alphaness" Online

Unlike a dog, you can't go around and physically submit other lawyers (though you may like to, I know I do). What you can do is develop a web property rich with your experience, knowledge and expertise.

You want visitors landing on your page to immediately get an impression of your authority. This is no time to be modest; Brag. Make sure visitors have quick access to information about you and your successes.

Recent Cases

This is a great way to show your experience. List out some recent successful cases and outcomes. Tell them what you've done for other clients that you could do for them.

Education

You spent a ridiculous amount of money for law school, throw it up there. If you graduated at the top of your class, put it up, if not, lie.

Affiliations

Let visitors know that you are active in the legal community, and acknowledged by your peers.

All of these things, in addition to a lot of helpful, authoritative content on the legal area in which you focus can help build the kind of web property that will show your visitors the value you can bring to their case.

If you've got a lawfirms.com profile, it's easy to build a rich, authoritative web property that exudes alpha.

Content Case Study Update

Following up on this post, I poked around in Analytics this morning and looked at some of the keywords driving traffic to the new article. Variations of "injured workers rights" are showing up on the first page of Google, between positions three and five. Additionally, it's getting traffic from 25 or so other longtail keywords. Not too bad, considering it's only been up for a week and a half.
There's no doubt, that leveraging the network dramatically decreases the time required for a new page to get search traffic.

Legal Web Content: Keep it Specific

For whatever reason, I see the a lot of same content on almost every lawyer website, blog, article, profile, etc... It always a very general, SEO (keyword) focused mass of text, attempting to cast as wide a net as possible in hopes of getting traffic from a wide array of higher volume, general keywords.

While this approach does get traffic, the wide net catches a lot of searches that are not really the kind of visitors you want. And if there are some potential clients (Someone researching for a lawyer) viewing your page, they've probably seen the same thing on ten other sites. So how do you set your content apart?

How about a narrow net approach? Instead of writing one or two pages of very generalized, faux-comprehensive content, why not write ten shorter, highly focused pages on the types of cases that are most valuable to you? Include one or two example cases in there as well.

There are three benefits to this approach:

1. You focus the type of traffic your content drives, to those people interested in your most valuable types of cases.

2. You can potentially drive a lot more traffic from search engines, because you will have (a) more content, and (b) more unique content. Everyone knows, search engines love unique content.

3. Finally, and most importantly, the visitors to your page are more likely to convert into a client if they find that you have experience with their particular problem. Especially when they read your example success case(s).

So whether it's your website, blog or experthub contribution, write a lot of unique, specific articles and get the traffic you really want.

Distributing Content: You Can't Beat the Network

When it comes to publishing legal content online, you have a lot of options. You can claim your profile on Avvo, publish a blog, create a website (or have someone else do it), use article syndication sites, etc. All of these are great ways to distribute your content, get traffic, and build a reputation online.

Ultimately the goal of this effort is to get people (potential clients) to read your articles, click your profile and call you; and it all begins with traffic. I don't think anyone will argue if I said the best type of traffic (at least for attorney marketing) is search traffic. If they did, I wouldn't listen. Whether it's organic or paid, capturing someones attention at the moment they're looking for you is critical for lawyer marketing, since people generally don't purchase legal services on impulse. Since my focus is organic search, let's talk about getting traffic to your content via SEO, and why Experthub's content contribution feature is such an effective way to distribute your content.

The Importance of Backlinks

Most people publishing content online understand that getting links on other sites, pointing to your content, is one of the most important (and difficult) parts of SEO. Search engines use these links like "votes", to tell them what content is credible. Let me break it down for you in my terms.

A Scientific Look at Links

Page A gets published.

Page B has been around for a while, is about a subject relevant to Page A, and gets organic search traffic (It's ranked).

Page B links to Page A = Page B smells Page A's butt and it smells good

Link Anchor reads "Legal Content" = Page B tells Google Page A smells of legal content

Google thanks Page B for the insight and Ranks Page A for "legal content"

Simple as that.

Why Experthub's Contributed Content Gets Traffic so Quickly

We leverage the network. Experthub manages a large network of legal websites, and we can utilize the credibility of "ranked" pages to help new content gain credibility quickly. By placing relevant, contextual links to our contributed content, on pages of a similar subject, new contributed content stands a much greater chance at getting organic traffic quickly. In some cases, I've seen new pages ranking in the top five for a relevant search term after only a week.

Now, I'm not going to say there aren't many other factors playing into this success, there are. The content is good, all on page SEO best practices have been performed, and all new content is displayed on the homepage of our hubsite, LawFirms.com.

But the thing that sets this program apart from other types content distribution is the power of the network.

A Case Study

Let's test how well this works in the real world with a piece of content that was just published yesterday.

This page on Workers Compensation was just contributed by one of our attorneys, and we've published it in the appropriate section of our resource center. It's also being displayed with other lawyers' content on our home page.

Most importantly though, a "featured article" block has been added to a highly relevent page on another experthub property here. Included is a brief intro of the article, as well as a link back with an appropriate anchor text.

This helps tremendously with getting the new content indexed and ranked quickly, as well as adding value for anyone reading the original workers comp page. It's the best kind of SEO, because it adds value to both pages.

I'll be coming back to this in the next couple weeks with the results. I'm sure you will be impressed.

Getting Free Organic Traffic in Ten Easy Steps

I get everything for free. It's great, I've never had a job and I never will. I get all my food for free, a roof over my head, entertainment, toys, treats, rides. I wouldn't know what to do with a dollar if I had one. I'd chew it up.
Since I've been blessed with the easy life, I thought I should share some free info with my loyal readers. All two of them.
In Response to this post, "SEO: Free Traffic That Isn't Really Free" I'm going to list out a ten step program for getting traffic absolutely, 100% free. And even better, getting that traffic to convert into actual paying clients.

Step One: Write Some Good Legal Content

This should be easy, considering all the education required to become a practicing lawyer. Your head is filled with laws, processes, past cases, helpful advice. Just pick a few topics that you focus on in your own practice, and write up some unique articles that you feel would help potential clients understand their situation.

Step Two: Get it Online

Since our budget is $0, we don't have a lot of options here, but there are a few easy ways to get it up.
1. Claim your profile on Avvo. This is an interesting product, and a great looking site. You can login, answer questions, and publish legal guides. The site gets a lot of traffic, and is growing at a tremendous rate. You'll have to deal with their algorithmic rating system, which is either a plus or a deal-breaker, depending on how the math treats you. I wouldn't expect anyone rated at less than a 9 to get any business this way. A consumer is going to trust that this rating is legitimate, so why would they settle for less than a 10?
2. Start a Blog. This is easy, and every lawyer should have one. You don't have as much control over the user experience as having your own site, but it's still a great way of building a reputation online, and gives you the freedom of writing in any tone, about whatever you like, whenever you like, on a property comprised wholly of your own content. Plus, it can be a great outlet, and is actually kind of fun.
3. Use an article syndication site. Eh, most of these are pretty terrible compared to the first two options, but it is another way. Ehow is pretty good though.

Step 3: Promote Your Content

In order to get traffic, you're going to want search engines to rank you. This requires that you spend some time promoting your pages. You're going to want other sites to talk about you, and link to your content. Find related web pages, and contact the owner. See if they will put links up to your site, with appropriate anchor text. This is hard, and you will need to devote a lot of time here, but it is absolutely necessary if you want any real traffic from search engines.

Step 4: Optimize Your Content

Add Google Analytics to your site, and spend some time getting familiar with it. It's an incredibly powerful tool, and will give you great insight into the kind of kewords you site is driving. Make sure this traffic is appropriate to your goal of getting new clients. You want people searching for lawyers, or keywords related to something they would need legal help with.

Step 5: Optimize Your Inbound Links

Now that you're getting better at promoting you content, do it some more. However, focus on highly credible, and related webpages with a lot of good content and few outbound links. Get past these types of sites. They suck.

Step 8: Manage Your Conversion Rate

Now You're getting to be a pro at analyzing your traffic. How is it converting? Are you getting many calls/business from your efforts? Do you know? Make sure you are able to track your traffic, so that you can continually optimize it to ensure you're not wasting your time.

Step 10: Be a Lawyer

You've become an expert at content generation, search optimization and lead management. Don't forget that your primary source of income is providing legal services. If you're doing all of the above steps at the level required to compete with professionally managed web properties, you should be spending quite a bit of time everyday to ensure you're getting business out of it.

Conclusion

Ok, I skipped a few steps. Sue me (Sometimes I forget who I'm writing for). It was beginning to get too tiresome for a blog post. Skip steps 2-10, and sign up for expertSYNDICATION. You're a Lawyer, do that. Let me do all the other stuff. I'm off, Dog Town is on Animal Planet.

Writing Squeaky Articles: Web Content 101

I'm laying on the floor under the desk in the office, in my usual spot, when the phone rings. It's another lawyer asking about Experthub's content syndication program. I've heard enough of these conversations that I've got the basics down.

Any SEO dog worth his salt will tell you it works just like a squeaky toy. Give a toy a few squeaks and I come running. It's the same with web content; an article that squeaks will get traffic, because it's what the readers want. Here are a few tips that apply to articles, web pages, blogs, anything that's published on the web.

Squeaky Tip #1: Write Unique Content

Posting previously published (say that three times fast) blogs or web articles to the expertSYNDICATION program won't get any traffic. This content has already been indexed by the search engines, and won't get indexed again, meaning it will get ignored.

Along the same tip, there are millions of webpages out there about legal topics. Having a page that is different will help it get ranked. You're a lawyer. You know the subtleties about your cases, so write about it. Instead of writing about the difference between chapter 7 and chapter 13 bankruptcy, give the readers what they really want; Details about what they're about to get into. Timelines, benefits, disadvantages, granular specifics, bankruptcy for animals, is my PetSmart tab exempt?... the kind of information that is not readily available with a quick search.

Squeaky Tip #2: Organize the Page

Once someone's landed on your page, give them an easy way to scan it to find out if it's what they were looking for. Nobody wants to have to read through 800 words to get to information, especially me, as I can't read.

Use headers, sub-headers, bulleted lists, top tens, fives, tables... Anything to break up the paragraph. Additionally, the text in headers and sub-headers is weighed more heavily by search engine algorithms than the text in the paragraphs, so have some keywords here as well.

Using this approach makes the page easily scannable, so readers can find what they were looking for quickly, making it more likely that they will "stick" instead of hitting the back button and moving on to the next search result.

Squeaky Tip #3: Meta Tags

There are three of them; Title Tag, Description and Meta Keywords. For lawyers submitting content to the Experthub network, these will be taken care of by an SEO expert, or a dog. So you don't have to concern yourself with these.

By far, the most important one is the title tag. This is the tag that will make your readers chase their own tail in excitement and beg to click on your result in the search engine's results page.

Why is this one the most important? This is the text that's displayed on the results page of all the major search engines. Even though it won't show up in the article itself, it's the number one driver of clicks to a search result (after a good ranking anyway). If you've got two other pages showing up above yours on a search results page, a good title tag helps it stand out. Keywords from the search query get bolded in the title tag, and stand out like a milk bone on the page, no one can resist.

After that comes the meta description. Like the title tag, this also gets displayed on a search page, below the title, telling the searcher what the result is about. Keywords are also bolded in this text, so make sure they're in there.

Finally, the keyword tag. This is mostly useless, so I won't waste my breath.

Sqeak....

Oh, I guess that's it for now. Looks like somebody got hung up on. I don't know why I'm getting yelled at this time, I'm just laying here trying to get this darn copper wire out of my teeth.

Getting new clients via Online Content

I'm in the office... again.

Everyone is talking about experthubs new content contribution program, expertSYNDICATION. Seems like a pretty good idea. Lawyers contribute unique articles about their area of practice, and these articles are massaged by an SEO expert, then published on the experthub legal network.

Initial results are impressive, with many of the early articles ranking well on google for relevant search terms after only a couple weeks. Consumers landing on these articles can view the profile of the author, and connect with them should they choose to do so, giving experthubs lawyers another way to reach new clients, without spending any money.

Additionally, contributors can log in and track the effectiveness of their efforts with a dashboard called expertSTATs, giving them data on article views, profile views and leads generated.

The expertSYNDICATION program is a good effort, but I'm not impressed. Let me tell you what WOULD be impressive.

I call it expertSNIFF.

Let me give you a scenario that happens all to often, and a target market that most lawyers are missing out on.

Let's fast-forward a few months. I'm now nine months old, and about 85 lbs. I'm minding my own business, lounging around in the yard, when an intruder tries to break into my house!

Naturally, I maul his legs, and tear that sky blue uniform to shreds. That'll teach him to nose around on my turf with his fancy uniform and bag of ... oops. I did it again.

Next thing I know, I'm slapped with an assault and battery charge, and I'm going to need some legal defense.

I log in to my experthub account, and I have all these lawyers to choose between. I could read their articles, and get a sense of their expertise, or... I could use the expertSNIFF program.

All available lawyers in my area for my case are bussed directly to me, and lined up facing a wall. I can now use a more civilized method for determining the most appropriate lawyer for my needs. All I have to do is walk down the line and give each one a good sniff from behind.

No articles, no spending time loading content. Just jump on the bus and give me a few minutes of your time.

Now THAT would be an impressive client acquisition program.

Let`s see if this thing takes off. expertSYNDICATION, or expertSNIFF. Spend some time writing content, or jump on the bus?

Yep, it's a no brainer in my book.

Introductory Post

For my first post, I thought it would be appropriate to introduce myself. My name is Sophie, and I'm a four month old American Bulldog (don't tell the blogger folks; apparently you have to to be at least 13 to use this thing. Even in dog years it doesn't work out).

Every once in a while I get dragged into the office by my owner, an SEO Manager at Experthub, and I've picked up on a few things about generating traffic online, and marketing legal services to consumers. After listening to everyone talking about their own blogs, I figured I'd start one of my own.

There are a lot of legal blogs out there, but I haven't found one written by a dog yet, so I thought I'd take up the challenge.

Anyway, that's it for now. More to come soon. I'm off to chew up someone's shoes.