Law Firm Internet Marketing | Have Keywords, Now What?

Hopefully you read the last post about law firm internet marketing and have taken the time to research your keywords and have made a list of 7-8 keywords you think people are using to find your law firm on the internet. That is step one. Step two is setting up a system so you can make sure you are distributing those words in a manner that Google likes.

To begin, open up an excel spreadsheet. You are going to want to have a sheet for each level of your law firm internet marketing system. For example, I have three sheets, one for the lowest level of blogs I have, one for my primary blogs, and one for my websites. In the left hand column, make a list that says "link to." Under that put in all of your blogs that will be linked to.

Across the top, put in all of the sources of links for that site. For example, for me, I have a list of all the blogs in the chain below it and a list of the article directories I use primarily (ezine, the keyword academy, goarticles, posturown, lawfirms.com). After that, across the top, I put in the keywords I'm going to be using for the site.

Here is the important part of this. The first keyword in the list should be your target keyword, the one you want to be on the first page of Google for sure (for me this is Seattle DUI attorney). You are going to want to link to this keyword 25% of the time. The second keyword should be the title of your website or blog. You are going to want to link to this 50% of the time. The other 25% of the time you are going to want to use the other links in your list.

Now, going forward, every time you put a link in a blog post or article to a site up the ladder (and in your site), note that in your spreadsheet. This will let you keep track of the number of links and the keyword of the links getting thrown around.

Up next - Less Reading, More Doing.

And, to end, an update on my marketing efforts. Here is what they were last Monday (google search rank):

#1 - 31
#2 - 27
#3 - 39
#4 - 26
#5 - 15

As you can see, we are moving up the ladder.

Related Posts:

Law Firm Internet Marketing | Keywords

Law Firm Internet Marketing | Walk Before You Run

Law Firm Internet Marketing - Choosing the Right Keywords

I know this stuff isn't easy. I know it doesn't make much sense. But law firm internet marketing is something you can master if you take the time to learn a few basic lessons. And coming to the law firm internet marketing blog is a great first step. Today we are going to talk about a basic lesson of website SEO - choosing your keywords.

Keywords, if you didn't know, are the things that people use in Google, Bing, and Yahoo to find your law firm. And, contrary to popular belief, people are not looking for you by name, for the name of your firm, or anything else that has to do with you specifically. And if they are, you don't have to worry, because most likely the only things that are going to show up with a Google search of those things is your law firm website (which you better have).

The kind of keywords you are going to have for your firm depends on where you are at and what you do. For example, I'm a Seattle DUI attorney. For me, my keywords are things like Seattle DUI attorney, Seattle DUI defense attorney, DUI attorney Seattle, etc. These are the types of things people are actually typing into the search engines to find you. They are gold to you. And you need to know what your keywords are.

So, how do you find out what your keywords should be? Easy, go to Google adwords and they will tell you. Google adwords is the tool Google uses to price out the pay per click ads you see pasted all over Google. The prices of these ads are based on the keywords you use in the ads. And they have to keep track of who is searching for what to know what to charge everyone.

To start this process, Google "Google adwords keyword tool" and click on the link. Where it says enter your keyword phrase enter in whatever you think your customers are searching for to find you. For example, if you are in bankruptcy in Atlanta, your term would be "Atlanta bankruptcy lawyer." Put in the letters and see what comes up. Before you pick your words you need to make a couple of modifications to the results.

First, on the right side where it says match type, change broad to exact. Second, where it says choose columns to display, pick "show estimated cpc (cost per click" and hide the advertiser competition figures. Now you have a list of hundreds of potential keywords to use for your business.

But you only need five. Pick the five that are most relevant and have a high cost per click cost (that means people are actually searching for them. In the Atlanta bankruptcy lawyer example we might have "atlanta bankruptcy lawyers," "bankruptcy lawyer in atlanta," "atlanta bankruptcy attorney," and "atlanta bankruptcy attorneys."

Now that you've got a list of keywords to use for your law firm internet marketing campaign you have to know what to do with them - that comes next.

Related Posts:

Law Firm Internet Marketing - Optimize Your Blog Posts

Law Firm Internet Marketing - Law Firm Blog Settings

Law Firm Internet Marketing | Outsource Your Content Outsource Your Reputation

I know how many people read this blog, and right now, it isn't many. But for those of you that do read this, this post could be one of the most important you will read on here. It is very important for a couple of reasons. First, it will help you do what is actually effective in law firm internet marketing. Second, it will help you hold onto the reputation you've been building for yourself and will want to continue building into the future.

The lesson of the day - Don't outsource your law firm internet marketing

Before I go to far, I need to clarify what this means, as I don't want it to sound like I am talking out of both sides of my mouth. The kind of law firm online marketing I'm talking about here is not adwords or adsense type of stuff.

From my point of view, this is not online marketing but online advertising - you are not trying to increase your google web presence organically with that kind of stuff. You are simply posting an advertisement much like you would in a magazine or newspaper.

What I am talking about is the type of marketing the law firm internet marketing blog deals with - working to get your law firm website to number one on Google. This includes writing articles, writing blog posts, and getting backlinks to your site. This is the type of stuff that looks like you did personally and therefore carries a much higher degree of intimacy (and a much higher degree of disgust when people find out you are cheating the system).

A great example of this comes from someone I know personally - Bradley Johnson Attorneys in Seattle. He is a criminal defense attorney in Seattle and he outsources a lot of his marketing to other people. And lately he has found himself in a lot of hot water out there for posting spam comments on some predominant legal blogs. The comments usually say something like "Great post. I can't wait to learn more." The name of the comment usually is a keyword the spammer wants to rank highly for.

And you know what the thing is about the comment? It doesn't help your online SEO marketing efforts, and it just pisses people off. And when people get pissed off they start writing about you. For example, here are a couple of the posts written about Bradley Johnson, entitled, W-T-F? and Bradley Johnson, Seattle Spam Lawyer.

The thing is, these bloggers posting about this stuff know what they are doing, and they can put a major dent into the online marketing work that you are doing. For evidence of that all you have to do is search some things about Bradley Johnson, these posts are already showing up high in the search engines where potential clients might see them.

In the end, the best thing you can do is take the time to do your law firm online marketing yourself. The worst thing you can do is outsource it to someone. If you do have to outsource some of your efforts, make sure you retain the right to review and approve everything before it is done, and don't let them do stuff that is just going to get you blogged about badly.

Related Posts:

Law Firm Internet Marketing | Backlinks

Law Firm Internet Marketing | Walk Before You Run