Website Design and SEO Techniques SEO Techniques Everybody wants to be listed at the top of all search engines. There are thousands of law firms in Los Angeles, California. If you do a Google search for law firms in a city such as Los Angeles, only 10 or so will show up on the first page. If 100 firms paid $200 per month to the same company for search engine optimization, how could all 100 show up on the first page of Google search? Impossible. How do you get your page moved up in rankings for search? You need to start by using your domain name. Put your domain and your Email address on your business cards. Use your domain Email address with your domain name. Your website is not going to get traffic if you have a domain and you use a Gmail Email account. Stop using Gmail or Yahoo and start using your domain Email. The content of your website must be concise and relevant. The website that discusses and addresses a particular topic is more likely to move up in rankings than a shotgun approach website. If you are selling yourself about family law, divorce then you need to have content on your website about family law and divorce. If you are talking about handling simple misdemeanor cases and drunk drivers and collections, Google won´t find your site to be relevant. It is ok to have those pages but the more content on the area you want folks to find is how you get found. Your business must be listed on the following websites. It takes time and patience. Find your business on Google maps or locations. Edit the information to include your domain. Add information. The more information you provide, the better your chances of moving up in rankings. LawTrust Software at www.lawyertrustaccount.com is one of our websites. If you do a search for Lawyer Trust Account or Lawyer Trust Software, you will see that LawTrust is at the top of the heap. Why? Because the website contains relevant information. It is all about lawyer trust accounts and software to manage same. The website has been up since 1994. It has been updated with information. It gets traffic. Google Places Bing Yahoo Local DMOZ Iowa Law Firm We highly recommend your buying into the Google Adwords program. Get Started. Best money you will spend on advertising. Hands down. Get your business on Social Media Websites There are several components to Internet social media. What you may have heard the most about are: (1) Twitter® micro-blogging; (2) Facebook® pages; and (3) LinkedIn®. Twitter® Twitter® is a free service where members follow the conversations of others, which are built on short 140 character bursts of information known as “tweets”. Law firms, law organizations such as the ABA, law firm practice groups, and solo attorneys are all taking advantage of the growing web presence of Twitter® and what it has to offer. While there are services such as Tweet Deck which help to organize Tweets by topic, the real jem of the Twitter® service from a law firm marketing perspective is the ability of a reader to search for a topic and find the firm’s tweets discussing that topic. Readers may also search for the law firm and read through the tweet history that the firm has built. It's a great marketing tool. More than a blog and much more than a web site, Twitter® searches provide the potential client or referring attorney a detailed and cohesive overview of not only the firm’s depth of knowledge and expertise in a certain area, but also the personality of the law firm. It would be wise to take advantage of what Twitter® has to offer. Facebook® Law firms have been slow to use Facebook®. It could be the ease of use or the proliferation of “friend” pages of an informal nature on Facebook, which tends to dissuade law firm professionals from participating in Facebook®. There is another option at Facebook called the “fan page.” Communication is more tightly controled. As such, law firms are beginning to include Facebook web pages in their social media marketing plans. We recommend that law firms on Facebook® choose a “business or fan” site instead of a “friend” site. Facebook® allows members to join as “fans” of the law firm, and the firm can connect with other sites to build connections. This also expands the likelihood of your being found through a search engine. LinkedIn® LinkedIn® began as a free marketing service designed to help its members find new jobs or new hires. Over time, LinkedIn® has evolved to building an expanded web presence of professional connections. This has resulted in most larger law firms and legal professionals having a LinkedIn® membership. LinkedIn® is a premier professional networking site but it is not primarily used for chatting or disseminating information. Usually, information such as Specialties, New Hires, Firm Size, Firm Revenue, and individual resume pages of firm partners and associates are provided for marketing purposes via LinkedIn®. Time? To effectively tweet or post, several entries should be made each day, every business day during the year. The problem is time, right? Wrong. Find a way. Assign the duty to an employee to tweet or post daily, or hire someone whose job is to tweet or post and to oversee your social media tasks. There are ways you can maximize your tweet/post presence with a small of investment. There are even free services such as HootSuite.com or SocialOomph.com that allow posts to be written in a block and then scheduled to appear on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn combined and at staggered times. We can help! We would be happy to get your started. Call: 515-822-0203 Home  –  Plans  –  Get Started  –   Services  –  SEO Advertising  –  Payment Center  –   Links  –  Contact