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.

Formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA®), AAJ held its 2010 annual meeting July 10 - July 14 in one of the world's premiere cities, Vancouver BC.

Lawyers from all over the US, Canada and beyond converged to attend more than a hundred section and litigation group meetings and events that took place at the Vancouver convention center.

Sessions included a broad range of subjects like pharmacy and products liability litigation, several different types of accident and transportation law; bicycles, motorcycles, cars, railroads, trucking, aviation and maritime, employment, housing, criminal, civil rights and more. There was even a group meeting to discuss electrical blankets and heating pad accidents along with the Gulf Coast oil spill and pending litigation (good news to hear its been capped and is not leaking!)

Since Vancouver is such a fantastic destination for so many people from around the world, it seems that most of the attorneys spent most of their time outside of their sessions,outside of the convention hall.

Despite the lower-than-expected traffic to the exhibit hall, we connected with several good attorneys from key markets where we need help like New York, Seattle and Southern California.

Nolo representatives Catherine Berryessa and Greg Roden headed from Berkeley to Orlando, Florida for the 2010 National Association of Elder Law Attorneys (NAELA) annual meeting - "Planning for Change." There were more than two hundred member attorneys who focus on elder and special needs law attending general sessions, CLE's, networking mixers and more throughout the week. Nolo was very well received and we gave out more than 150 elder law related books to attorneys interested in becoming Nolo members.


Most of these attorneys were focused on estate planning, conservatorships, special needs trusts and general "end of life" planning. Many NAELA members we spoke with shared how the field is growing past just wills, trust and estate issues to encompass inter-disciplinary areas of law including family law, tax planning, social security, and medicare / medicaid issues.


Attorneys who know Nolo were pleasantly surprised to see us in attendance, and were very interested in learning more about how they can partner with us. We gave out a lot of books that were a hit with attorneys, including Long-Term Care, Special Needs Trust, and the 15th Edition Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions.

We look forward to attending the fall NAELA conference in San Diego in November and thank all of the attorneys here in Florida for the warm welcome to our first-ever NAELA annual meeting!

This year proved to be the largest NACBA show ever with more than 3,000 bankruptcy attorneys in attendance for CLE's, seminars, networking and more in downtown San Francisco.

Many of our Lawyer Directory team came out to distribute Nolo's popular bankruptcy books to qualified attorneys across the country.

Only a couple of months old, our newest title, Bankruptcy for Small Business Owners, was a big hit. Co-author Steve Elias was on-hand Saturday and Sunday to answer questions and sign copies of his books.

We also debuted another  title - The Judge Who Hated Red Nail Polish - humorous stories from the courtroom and beyond which also went over well with the attorneys in attendance.

Tom Foley, Nolo's Lawyer Directory NACBA specialist says, "We always enjoy meeting NACBA members from all over the country.  It was great to have them visit us on our home turf."

As a thank you to our Lawyer Directory members, we treated a group of NACBA attendees to a sunset Bay cruise aboard the Adventure Cat II out of Fisherman's Wharf. Check out Tom Foley's pics here.

Did you know that Nolo books are often the most frequently stolen books from US public libraries? Yes, it's true.

Nolo and libraries go hand-in-hand, as libraries remain the ultimate depots for user-friendly information.  Nolo is all about helping the public sort through their legal issues and deciphering the law.

The good news is that we regularly replace these stolen books for our library customers free of charge.  Librarians love Nolo too, and consumers regularly ask for Nolo legal guides by name. Talk about the power of the Nolo network!

To help celebrate National Library Week, show your support by visiting your local public library, write your representative in support of library funding, make a donation, or at a minimum, read a book!

Strategic Online Partnerships

In our efforts to provide more exposure and online visibility to Nolo member attorneys, Nolo has partnered with a few key legal websites to form the Nolo Legal Network.

Meet Justia

Former CEO and co-founder of FindLaw, internet legal guru Tim Stanley now heads up Justia, providing premium web sites, blogs and online marketing solutions to law firms. Justia also works with organizations like Nolo that provide free legal information to the online community.  All Nolo member attorneys receive a free enhanced placement listing on Justia's lawyer directory as well as a 'verified by Nolo' badge. Through Justia and its strong web affiliations, Nolo is able to connect its member attorneys with some of the best legal sites on the web.

Cornell University's Legal Information Institute (LII)

The leading provider of free public legal information, Cornell created the Legal Information Institute, the first legal website on the Internet back in 1992. Known for listing all opinions handed down by the United States Supreme Court since 1992, together with over 600 earlier decisions selected for their historical importance, Cornell also lists attorneys--including Nolo member attorneys--as a service to members of the public with questions about the law.

OYEZ - US Supreme Court Multimedia Archive

"Oyez aims to be a complete and authoritative source for all audio recorded in the Court since the installation of a recording system in October 1955. The Project also provides authoritative information on all justices and offers a virtual reality 'tour' of portions of the Supreme Court building, including the chambers of some of the justices" (from the Oyez website).

These are just a few examples of the growing list of leading legal information providers that Nolo proudly calls its partners. Find out more about becoming a member of the Nolo Lawyer Directory today!

Please introduce yourself: where are you from, where did you grow up or go to school, are you married, any kids, pets?
I grew up in Chicago and attended Francis W. Parker School for 14 years. Went to school in California but then back to Chicago, where I worked at a progressive rock radio station. I then moved to CA in 1986 and am now married; our teenaged daughter is a dedicated softball pitcher.

Tell us a little about your sales background? Any previous experience that lends itself to talking with attorneys?
After 35 years of selling media, including radio, print and internet, I have an excellent grip on marketing. I've worked with major retailers, professionals, event advertisers and food brands. Marketing is universal - how to best reach your target. That's why I'm happy to be working with Nolo's Lawyer Directory.  It's so amazingly focused. I have forsaken all other media for internet because it is the marketing of the present and the future.

What are the most important things an attorney can do to get the word out to generate more clients?
Besides a Nolo profile, networking with other attorneys is important. Also, do a good job so that your clients will send you referrals. Make sure someone is answering your phone. Put good content on your website!

What do you like the most about working here at Nolo?
I love the environment and the casual atmosphere. I strongly believe in Nolo's mission - informing people about their legal problems - and it's easy to sell a product that you believe in, in which you have confidence.

Tell us something about yourself that most people don't know or wouldn't know?
Besides being a softball Mom, I love the end of the day when I get to walk my dog Rocco, a jumbo dachshund, in the beautiful Oakland hills.

What do you like to do when you're not working? Personal interests, hobbies, secret obsessions?
I play golf with my husband; I like going to movies and reading the New Yorker cover to cover, and love long novels. I'm a subscriber to the Berkeley Rep and am always amazed by their creative stage work. I've traveled a lot and seen many beautiful places, but my favorite is the tiny hamlet of Inverness in West Marin.

NACBA 2010 - San Francisco

This year's annual NACBA -- The National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys -- meeting will be held in San Francisco starting on April 28, 2010. Nolo will be out in force for the show and will also be taking a small group of Nolo-NACBA member attorneys out to sea on a sunset bay cruise aboard "Adventure Cat 2",  a luxurious 65-foot catamaran.
NACBA bankruptcy attorneys attending the San Francisco meeting are invited to join Nolo, Captain Hans and his crew aboard the beautiful Adventure Cat for this hour-and-a-half long sunset cruise.  Our cruise will take us around Alcatraz and under the Golden Gate bridge (check out this cool video)!

We will be departing from Fisherman's wharf at 6:30 p.m. sharp on Saturday, May 1, 2010.

There is no cost for qualified attorneys to participate, but space is limited so sign-up today by calling 1-877-NOLO-LAW or email Tom Foley directly at tfoley@nolo.com.

Nolo Member Attorney Interview with Blackie Burak

Nolo catches up with busy Walnut Creek, CA DUI attorney Blackie Burak on why he became an attorney, best practices for lawyers just starting out, as well as tips on what makes a good DUI lawyer.

Blackie Burake Interview_edit.mp3

Are you one of the shrinking-but-still-confused group of internet users that are still uncertain about the widely used terms natural or organic when it comes to search engines and search results? Let's take a look; it's actually a lot simpler than you might think.

The internet is currently dominated by three major search engines; Yahoo!, Bing and of course Google. According to Nielsen data from August 2009, Google still has the lion's share of domestic queries at 65%. Yahoo! comes in a distant second with 17% of all search traffic and Microsoft's Bing, growing at 22% month over month now accounts for 10.7% of all Internet searches.

One way to look at it is basically the difference between paid vs. non-paid advertising online. Let's face it, most everyone wants to be on the top of the first page of results when users are searching for specific key words or phrases. The easiest way to do this is to pay for terms that people are searching for, usually on a bidding system, so that your website will show up higher than your competitors for a given search result. The second way to look at it is that websites with the most relevant content matching the terms that users are searching for show up higher than those with less relevant content. Part of the recognition for relevancy is also represented by how many inbound links there are to your site from other sites. The more that people point to you, the more of an authority you must be is the basic logic but we'll save inbound and outbound linking for another post.

Let's look at Google as an example. When you type in a term like 'Bankruptcy' into Google, the first thing you'll see in the results at the top left of the page is Sponsored Links, typically three listings in a lightly shaded yellow box. If you look to the right of the page,you'll see in the vertically shaded column additional Sponsored Links as well. (Click on the chart to see a larger version.)

The Sponsored Links both across the top and down the right hand side are all paid advertising. The organic or natural results are then listed below on the left hand side. In this case, the news results for this search are pointing to a Wall Street Journal which mentions bankruptcy and then the US Bankruptcy Court page is next.

Check out an earlier post about Search Engine Optimization basics here. You can also read more about Google's recommended SEO practices here.