Nolo's Lawyer Blog

Lawyers: Learn how to increase your online visibility, generate more traffic and get more clients from your website with these top ten tips.

This is the first in a series of posts on the most important things attorneys can do to optimize their websites and increase bottom-line results. Learn how to rank higher in major search engines and drive more qualified traffic to your site by following these simple top ten tips. Here are the four major goals for improving your website:

• Search: Get listed higher on major search engines like Bing, Yahoo and Google
• Traffic: Increase qualified traffic to your website
• Visitors: Get more people to your site and keep them browsing longer
• Convert: Convert site visitors to clients

People search online for good, relevant information, so the most important element of your website would be good, relevant content. Using search-friendly text and key words that help inform potential clients about you and your practice are critical . But what is the best way to create that content and what do I do after I've got all of my information ready?

For now, we'll start with important tips to improve your website, with more detail on each in our upcoming blog posts.

1. Strategy Overview: Do a basic review of your website and online marketing strategy and set realistic goals for improvement.
   
2. Website Analytics: Implement some basic tracking capabilities on your site to measure visitors and traffic, like Google Analytics.
   
3. Website Content: Create good, relevant content and topic-specific articles for your site.
4. Blogs: Create a blog to keep your site fresh and current.
5. SEO: Optimize your site's page titles with relevant keywords so that search engines can better find you.
   
6. SEM & PPC: Consider search engine marketing and Pay Per Click (Google Adwords) advertising.
7. Link Building: Let other sites know you exist and have them link back to your site.
8. Email Marketing: Invite your visitors to join an email list for periodic newsletters about your practice.
   
9. Social Networking: Learn to utilize Linked In, Face Book and Twitter to help drive traffic qualified traffic to your site.
10. Client Intake Form: Convert site visitors to paying clients by adding a simple intake form.

Online marketing, like any form of marketing, is a step-by-step process. Check back with us next week to learn more about how you can improve your online strategy.

Check out Nolo attorney blogger Carolyn Elefant's most recent post on her My Shingle blog on the joys of small law practice.

"Back when I worked for others, my heart was tight and mean.  My cramped vision of the legal profession as a zero sum game left little space for generosity or good will towards my colleagues.   Each time I learned that one of my classmates made partner at a big firm, or that another lawyer at my agency received a promotion or that a fellow associate would first chair a hearing, I seethed with envy.  I bad-mouthed my bosses and cursed the fates that consigned me to jobs where I couldn't thrive. 

I never questioned my behavior.  After all, I was surrounded by colleagues who acted the same way.  I simply assumed that living in a perpetual state of resentment came with the territory of being a lawyer or was part of growing up and growing jaded.

After I'd been practicing on my own for a couple of years, I noticed a surprising change (read more).

Nolo Blogger Carolyn Elefant has a new blog entry up over at MyShingle:

Opening a law firm by choice or by circumstance offers a chance at a fresh start.  However, it's all too easy to tarnish that bright, shiny new beginning with a nasty ending at your former position.   That is what appears to have happened with Jim Driscoll's departure from St. Louis law firm Brown & Crouppen, as least as described in this article...

Continue reading Don't Tarnish Your Fresh Start With a Rotten Ending.

Where do I go to start blogging?

Let's say you've got your website up and running with all of your practice categories listed. You've also got your bio with a good profile photo and background pages along with your contact information on the About Us page too. Maybe you've even got some good articles or content for visitors when they come to your website to help them decide if your services are the right solution for them.  The next step is to keep that content frequently updated, a very important aspect to keeping your site current and relevant with the major search engines.

One great way to keep your firm's online profile up to date is a blog, also known in the legal blogosphere as blawgs. Before we go into blogs though, you might want to do some research about the best platform for hosting and posting your legal blog. Whether you're going to write a humorous blog like The Anonymous Lawyer or a helpful and informative blog for Solo Practitioners like Carolyn Elefant's My Shingle, the choice is yours. Here's a good article you can download that gives a great break down of various competing legal blog options, from basic and free to deluxe and expensive, conducted by Steve Matthews & his Law Firm Strategy Blog for the Legal Industry. We will continue to post more helpful 'How To's' and Tips for legal bloggers soon, so stay tuned!