Law Firm Internet Marketing | Law Blog Settings and Layout

In my last post I discussed the advantages of having a law firm blog, both for your own establishment of expertise, and for maximizing your law firm internet marketing presence. In that post I just gave you the basics of starting a law firm blog. Today I'm going to tell you how to set up your blog to make it an even more powerful tool for your law firm internet marketing plan, increasing your business while costing nothing out of your marketing budget.

Hopefully you've already set up a blog and thrown up a couple of posts. What is important for posts is that they are relatively long (300-500 words), are on topic, and are of good quality (your potential clients, after all, will be reading these posts).

Good blog posts can often be written off of a news story or client's story. Search the news and flag potential stories and think about making your client's cases vague enough that no confidences are broken. There is plenty of content out there, you just have to get used to looking for it and writing about it.

Blogger Settings and Your Law Firm Blog

Now, on to law firm internet marketing (making it so Google loves it). First, it all starts with the settings. Click on that tab, and start going down the list. The title section should already be set up, and it should not be the name of your law firm! Make the title the subject area that you are going to be covering. Make sure your location is in it too.

For example, I set up a Seattle criminal defense blog, and the title is exactly that. Google doesn't know what you do, but it knows what the words "Seattle criminal defense" mean. In the description, describe the services you provide, using as many keywords and phrases that you think your potential clients will be using when search for a lawyer. The key is to get people to find your site, where they will find you. In my example, I would use Seattle criminal attorney and lawyer, theft, DUI, assault, malicious mischeif, etc. Everything else on the basic setting should be left the same.

Blogger Publishing and Your Law Firm Blog

Next, on to publishing. You will see that it is short and shows the name you used when you signed up with Blogger. Leave this for now. In the future, if you secure your own personal domain name (seattlecriminaldefense.com, for example), you would go here to turn on that domain to this website. For now, it is not important, and you may want to leave what you have. Also, there are a lot more blogspot.com names available than .com names. I've looked at this, and nobody cares if blogspot is in your name. Most people don't know what it means, and Google doesn't pay any attention to it.

Getting your law firm website to number one on google will not be hindered by keeping the blogspot address, particularly if your keywords are in the web address.

Blogger Formatting and Your Law Firm Blog

Formatting is next. First, change the posts per page from 7 to 1. This allows you to instantly create more content (by having more pages) and makes your blog easier to read. All of the date and time stuff you can customize to your preference. There is no law firm website search engine optimization involved in choosing a date and time stamp. The only other thing to change on this page is the show link fields. Change this from no to yes.

Link fields does is allow you to make each post it's own personal little website. This is very helpful because it allows Google to recognize each of your posts individually, and then optimize them separately. After time, if you do a good job of optimizing your site (which includes sending backlinks to your individual pages) you will soon see that several of your individual posts are recognized by Google.

It is possible that over time you could occupy all ten spots on the first page of Google with your blog(s) and website! Think about the phone calls that would generate! After you do this, when you are posting, you will see a link field under the title field in your posts. Simply place your blog address in there, and Blogger will do the rest (that is why this page will not just be lawfirmwebsiteseo.blogspot.com, there will be something after that).

And if you want something to be placed automatically at the end of each post, you can fill in the post template at the end of the formatting options. You might see that on here someday, when I think of something to put in.

Blogger Comments and Your Law Firm Blog

The comments section you can customize however you want. Comments are great for getting your site indexed and ranking high on Google (Google will come check you out each time someone leaves a comment). The only thing I would suggest here is that you moderate all comments. This will prevent comment spam (being inundated with comments) and save you a lot of time. In the end, if your blog is specific to your law firm, you probably won't have a lot of comments. At the beginning it will be particularly slow.

Archiving I would leave alone. Site feed you can use if you want people to be able to put your site in a reader, updating them every time you post. It's not a bad idea and doesn't take long to do. Just go to feedburner and register. They walk you through everything. Some people also thinks it makes your site look more legitimate, increasing your law firm web site marketing SEO.

The rest of the categories you can just leave alone, unless you want to tinker with them. They just amount to personal preference.

Sometime soon, go through and do this, and later I'll check back in and help you with some minor tweaks to your layout that can make a big difference when Google checks your law blog, getting more people to your law firm website, and hopefully getting more people in your office.

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Law Firm Internet Marketing Step 1 | Your Legal Blog

Whether you are a small firm solo lawyer trying to make it in the big, bad city or a big firm lawyer sawing wood everyday in high stakes litigation that will never conclude (that is my passive aggressive jab at biglaw - really I'm just jealous), you need to be constantly doing two things to make your career successful: (1) law firm internet marketing and signing up new clients; and (2) building your expertise and reputation as an expert in your respective area of law. In today's world, particularly today's economy, the market for legal services is cut throat. Potential clients are looking for expertise, for value, and for honesty, and there is no better way to do that than on the world wide web.

Why is law firm internet marketing so great? I'll tell you.

First, it is the number one spot anyone under 60 years of age is going to get information on prospective attorneys, mechanics, doctors, dentists, and any other service they need. And the reason they are going there is because there is so much information available on almost every person out there. So it really pays to have your law firm website on the first page of google.

And even better than that, if there is anything negative about a lawyer or mechanic a potential client might want to use, chances are someone has written about the bad lawyer on the internet (example. So, for people to find your law firm, you need to be on the internet, and you need to be current on the internet (i.e. your static law firm website just isn't enough today, and certainly won't be in the future).

The second reason the internet is a great place to market your law firm website is because you can control a lot of the content about you that people see. Now, as I alluded to above, if you do a bad job, are untrustworthy, and make people mad, the chance is decent that someone will write about that on the internet.

But you aren't like that, right? So, instead, you get to be the primary voice for every potential client to learn about you, to learn about your law practice, to learn about your interests, to learn about the great clients you already have and the success you have achieved, and what you think about current developments in your area of legal practice.

And the way to kill all of these birds with one (or two) stones? A blog. If you have been living in the dark ages, or under a rock, a blog is a website you create that is easily updatable and filled with whatever you want it to say (in this case, great legal content). You are reading one right now, as a matter of fact. And as you can see, it is a great way to discuss things you think are important and relevant to what you do.

Before you start worrying about getting a bunch of people to your legal blog, just start one and start writing on it. You don't necessarily have to post every day, but you probably want to post at least twice a week to start out. And take the time to write pretty long posts. Discuss and analyze the hot legal topics you are interested in, and give the reasons why you have reached the conclusions you have. Not only will the search engines like it better, but so will your potential clients and those interested in your practice area.

Okay, so you've decided you want to start a legal blog to complement your legal website and eventually get your law firm website ranked number one in Google for your practice area. Now what?

The first thing to do is choose a platform from which to blog. For me personally, I like Blogger. And Blogger is great for three reasons:

(1) it is free;

(2) it is extremely easy to use; and

(3) it has the keywords you will want to put in the name of your blog.

First, free. I am a small law firm guy. I am in the process of opening my own practice as I write this. Cost, at this point in time, factors into everything I do. Blogger by far gives you the most bang for your buck.

Second, ease of use. All you have to do is follow the simple prompts to set up your blog. It takes literally ten minutes and you can have your first post on Blogger. In my next post I'll tell you how to set up your blog to maximize its attractiveness to Google (and thus get it ranked higher on Google faster), but for now you can set it up and begin writing, just to see if you like it.

And finally, keywords. If I were you, I'd create a blog for each of your primary practice areas. For example, I have a Seattle DUI attorney blog and a Seattle criminal attorney blog, as they are my areas of expertise. I don't group them together into one because they aren't the same subject area, and people looking for eminent domain services don't want to go to a website with criminal law in the name.

By creating a law blog (some people call them blawgs, but I just haven't bought in) for each area of your legal practice, you can begin to build an expertise and eventually get very targeted links to your static law firm website (making it more attractive to Google). And, with Blogger, you can (and you should) name your site with whatever your practice area is (for example, I have a Washington eminent domain law blog with exactly that in the name of the blog - Google sees this when searching around and likes it).

So, your number one task for the day is to go to Blogger, set up some practice area blogs, and poke around to see how everything works. You can't mess anything up, and you will soon see how easy to use (and free) a blog can be.

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Welcome to the Law Firm Search Engine Optimization Blog

Welcome to the Law Firm Search Engine Optimization Blog the blog that will be devoted to getting your law firm website to number one on Google for your desired keywords. I have started this law firm internet marketing blog for one very personal reason, to see if I can get this site to rank number one in google for law firm website SEO. I figured while I was at it, I'd share some tips and tricks others in the internet world use to get their legal websites ranking high on Google.

SEO, if you were unaware, stands for search engine optimization. It is the holy grail of internet search engines, and describes the techniques and tricks used by internet gurus to get their legal websites ranking high on Google. By taking advantage of even the most basic SEO techniques, you can dramatically improve where you end up on a google search. In the end, this should mean more money in your pocket.

For this first post, I think I might just try to explain how google determines which law firm website should be number one for a search term like, "Seattle DUI attorney." Simple enough, right. If you type in Seattle DUI attorney right now you reach the website of Callahan Law Firm. They seem pretty legitimate, have a nice website and everything like that. But how did they get to be number one in google for the term "Seattle DUI attorney."

Before we analyze this site, understand that there are two basic types of SEO: (1) on page; and (2) off page.

On page is the one everyone can see and comprehend, and is the one we'll discuss first.

Off page is the one hardly anyone understands (at least in the legal world) but has the highest bang for your buck.

On Page SEO for your Law Firm Website

From the moment you begin your quest to reach the top of google with your law firm website, you need to remember one thing - no one is going to search for the name of your law firm. People search for what they need and want, particularly when it comes to legal services, not a specific legal service provider. So, if you want to be known as a Seattle DUI lawyer, you need to get those words recognized by Google as early and as often as possible.

The site we are discussing does this perfectly. The name of their site is kirklandduilawyer.org. It has everything you need in there to let google know what your site is supposedly about. That is step one. Although if you are like me, you probably have your law firm website name with either your names or initials in it - don't worry. All is not lost.

After that comes the internal links. Every time you want someone to go somewhere else on your website, don't say learn more about Seattle DUI lawyers here, and then put the link on the "here." Google doesn't like that, and thinks the page that link is pointing to is about here, not Seattle DUI attorney info.

In fact, the last 4 words of the last sentence would be the perfect link language to use to get to that page on your site. Why? Because Google analyzes the links on your site and assumes that the words used to make up the link describe what is on the page.

You have to know and remember at all times that the Google employee reading and evaluating your website is not a person, it is a computer program. Because of that, it must adhere to strict variables when deciding what your legal website is about, and how important your website is on that specific topic. One of the ways it determines the credibility and expertise of your site is the links and keywords that make it up. So, whenever you have any internal links anywhere, make sure they either accurately describe where the link points to or maximizes the keywords you want google to identify with your law firm web page.

Going back to this wonderfully optimized Kirkland DUI criminal defense lawyer website, I just read the home page looking for keywords and found that DUI or DUI defense is in there 11 times (not counting the legal website name itself). This type of keyword density, written in a way that makes sense, is the type of action you must take to get your law firm website ranked number one on google.

Off Page SEO for your Law Firm Website

The most important factor in getting a great Google web page ranking is letting Google determine that your site is the most credible, the most knowledgeable, and the best source of information on your topic. Again, because Google has a computer program reviewing these web sites, it has come up with a formula to determine which site is the best, and it is called backlinks.

Backlinks are all of the links out there in the world wide web that point to your site. Whether it's from your brother's blog about his life or from the King County District Court identifying you as a great DUI criminal defense attorney, each backlink is counted and given weight based on... the link that come in to that site linking to you.

The reason for this is that Google theorizes, probably correctly, that people wouldn't put links on their legal web sites to your web site unless they thought it was good enough to point people to. This outside recognition is given tremendous weight by Google because in theory each link is coming from an independent source.

Now, to go one step further, having a ton of backlinks from relevant sites is great, but if you can get those links to be keyword rich (have the keyword you are looking for - in our example it would be Kirkland DUI lawyer), Google gives you even more weight for that particular keyword, bumping you up the search rankings even more.

So, in short, getting your law firm ranked number one on Google for your practice specialty is easy. Just optimize your site so it looks great to the Google "bots" and get a ton of keyword rich backlinks to your sites. If you couldn't tell, the first part is easy, the second part is not so easy (which is why it is given such great weight).

But all is not lost, my friend. I'm going to show you how to both get and create those great backlinks to your site, and hopefully in time your law firm website will be ranking high and the clients and money will come pouring in.

Update - October 2009

Obviously this site has not hit number one on google, or even the first page of google, for that matter, on how to get your law firm website ranked number one for google, even though that is a ridiculously long keyword to be trying for. And the reason for this is simple - I haven't done anything with this blog since April. Truth be told, I got busy working and let this fall by the wayside.

Well, I'm back, and I'm here to get started again, and to help you get started. And this time, I'm going to chronicle my attempt not to get this site to number one on Google, but to get my actual website to Google. Hopefully it works!

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