This post is looking into how you can implement the like button on your website and blog. Further, I would like to start the conversation about the perceived or real benefits the like button can have for the lawyers and law firms.

Implementation of the Facebook Like Button

Implementing the facebook like button on your website or blog is very easy. For implementation on your blog, it can be as easy as installing one of the many new like button plugins. When implementing the like button on your website, you will need access to the source code of your site. With access to your pages source files, you can implement an iframe into the html file of your page, which will display the like button you your site. You can obtain the iframe code from the Facebook Developer page at http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like.
Simply select the parameters (you can play around with and see what fits your website best) and copy the iframe code the tool is spitting out and paste it into the html code of your website at the location you would like to show the button (usually at the top or the bottom of your page).

Why do I need a Like Button on my website or blog?

Well, the short and simple answer is: To harness the power of facebook’s viral media qualities.
If you do have a blog, which AdVolt Media highly recommends for your legal practice, you should definitely implement the Like Button on with each blog post (through either the plugin or manually). You might already have some social media plugins installed on your blog, including the facebook Share button, and you might wonder why you need to add another facebook feature to your blog. In my opinion, it is much easier to click on a Like Button, than to Share a blog entry or website. The like button essentially makes it easier for facebook users to spread the word about your latest article.

Finally, I would like to ask all readers to post a comment on their take on the Facebook Like Button.

• Will you implement or have you implemented the Like Button on your website (and, or blog)?
• Do you engage in any social media optimization (SMO) practices for your website?

I look forward to your responses!

If you have a LinkedIn account, and every professional should have one, make sure your public profile accurately represents you, your law firm and your specialization. Most importantly, ensure that your public profile links to your blog and to your website (or that of your law firm). Building a strong network and community on Linkedin will raise the SEO value of your public profile, from which you are linking to your own blog and website. Many seasoned public profiles on LinkedIn already have a Page Rank of 2 or 3, which is a great source of SEO juice. Naturally, the effect is even greater once you get every member of your firm to do the same: maintain a representative public profile on LinkedIn, point outgoing links from the profile to your law firms website and blog.

There is probably more written about keyword research in a PPC context. In this article, however, I would like to stress the importance of keyword research for SEO, as part of your legal marketing strategy.

Here is a short check list to get started:

1. Which (if any) keywords are listed in my meta tags?
2. Which (if any) keywords drive the most inquiries through your PPC campaigns?
3. Which keywords are listed in my direct and closest competitors meta tags?
4. Which keywords are my closest competitors bidding on? (In order to identify the keywords your competition bids on, you can use SpyFu, a keyword research tool.)

These three points will get you started on building your own SEO keyword list.The final list you are about to compile will be the list of keywords most likely to be used in search queries for your services and are thus the terms you want to rank well for in Google, Yahoo and Bing.

This is a good point to conduct a first analysis of your ranking for the keyword list you have compiled thus far. In order to conduct an accurate analysis of your rankings across Google, Yahoo and Bing you should use the free Rank Checker from SEOBOOK. Record your rankings for the day and keep checking every week.

Meta Tags: The top keywords on your list should appear in your title tag and your description tag. If you do decide to have a keyword meta tag, and it doesn’t hurt to have it, it should include your top keywords as well.

Keyword Density: As a next step, you should take a look at the keyword density on your website. There are several free tools available for that, for example the SEOBOOK Keyword Density Analyzer Tool. In my opinion, your goal should be to achieve a keyword density between 2% to 5%. Unfortunately the search engines haven’t published the exact percentage in keyword density they are looking for, so this is just a suggestion.

In order to conduct additional keyword research you can use this list of 11 keyword tools:

1. Google Keyword Tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal (Free)
2. Word Tracker http://www.wordtracker.com/ (Subscription based)
3. Keyword Country http://www.keywordcountry.com/ (Subscription based)
4. SpyFu http://www.spyfu.com/ (Free Basic/Subscription Premium)
5. WordStream http://www.wordstream.com/ (Free Basic/Subscription Premium)
6. ADGOOROO http://www.adgooroo.com (Subscription based)
7. Web CEO http://www.webceo.com/ (Free Basic/Subscription Premium)
8. Yahoo Search Marketing Desktop http://advertising.yahoo.com/desktop/en_US (Free)
9. SEOBOOK http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/ (Free)
10. Wordze http://www.wordze.com/ (Subscription based)
11. Keyword Discovery http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/ (Subscription based)

For more help with your keyword research, feel free to contact AdVolt Legal. If you have used keyword tools in the past that aren’t listed here, please feel free to share your experience in the comments section of this post.

Why do lawyers need web analytics?
Having decided that it is beneficial to your business to have a presence on the web, it only makes sense to measure the effectiveness of your website as a means to:

• generate new business.
• represent you and your business the way you want to be perceived.
• enable new and existing clients to contact you.
• make it easier for new and existing clients to find your physical office.
• communicate information about your business or your work.

Believe it or not, you will need some form of website analytics tool to find out how your website lives up to the expectations you have set forth, however limited these might be. For your information, I’ve put together a short list of web analytics tools and providers:

• Omniture SiteCatalyst
  Probably the most comprehensive suite of web analytics tools on the market comes from Omniture. Omniture has been the preferred partner to many of the large online retailers. It’s price and the complexity of the tools it includes make it unsuitable to the legal market, particularly to small and mid-size law firms. However, the customer support provided and the robustness of the analytics tools make it an outstanding product for large e-commerce sites.
• Google Analytics
  A free and very easy to set up and use web analytics tool. It serves basic SEO purposes and integrates with Google’s AdWords and can also be used to track any other online marketing campaign.
• Piwik
  Piwik is a free open source web analytics tool. Unlike any of the other tools listed in this post, this tool requires a server installation. Piwik reports in real time, which is great. The greatest benefit in my eyes is that you’re not sharing your web stats with anyone.
• GoingUp
  GoingUp is free and differentiates itself as a an SEO-Analytics tool.
• VisiStat
  VisiStat offers a free seven day trial, with monthly subscriptions starting at $29.95 per month.
• Clicky
  Clicky is a free web based analytics tool supported by ads.

Take a look at these services and compare them to what you are using today (in case you are already using a web analytics tool). At AdVolt Legal, we can help you find the right analytics tool for your law firm, whether you want to engage in SEO, PPC, both or neither. Feel free to contact us with any questions you might have. Also, please share your experience with web analytics tools with us in the comments section.

1) Google Conversion Optimizer
2) Acquisio
3) Efficient Frontier

Managing all your legal marketing activities online can be time consuming: blogging and commenting, building links to your home page, maintaining your Web site, and last but not least, managing your PPC campaigns in Google, Yahoo and Bing. The world won’t end if you’re too busy to work on your blog, your website or your SEO campaigns for a few days… you will just take care of it when you get to it. That’s not really an option with PPC campaigns, as they will cost you money, whether they are running effectively or not.

Thank god for automated bid management (or not?). Automated bid management software takes care of your day-to-day PPC campaign management after you have initially set up your campaigns. Today, I want to introduce you to three very different bid management tools to give you an idea of what’s out there. Knowing the market will help you when talking to an advertising agency and broaden your legal marketing horizon.

Google Conversion Optimizer

Google’s own PPC management software is free to use to anyone advertising on Google AdWords. It’s amazingly powerful considering that it’s free. Naturally, it’s not going to be the best option 100% of the time and human supervision is still recommended, but it does a very good job in most cases.
In Google’s own words:

On average, campaigns adopting the Conversion Optimizer achieve a 21% increase in conversions while decreasing their CPA by 14%.

As account manager, all you need to do is define campaign goals: “Optimize to generate the maximum number of leads at $15/lead” is an example for a typical legal marketing campaign goal. The Google Conversion Optimizer will need some time and volume to “learn” before it can effectively manage bids and Google’s conversion tracker must be enabled. Click here to go to Google Conversion Optimizer.

Acquisio

Acquisio is a small but smart bid management company from Montreal, Canada, which started out primarily targeting agencies as their clients. Acquisio works with Google, Yahoo and Bing, and makes it extremely easy to port campaigns from one search engine to another. A lot of the functionality at Acquisio will remind you of the AdWords Editor. Until recently, when Yahoo! released Y!SM Desktop, the mere fact that it brought “AdWords Editor functionality” to Yahoo! and Bing was one of my favorite aspects of their software.
Acquisio charges their clients a percentage of what they spend when your budget exceeds $30k/month. For advertisers with smaller budgets, as common in legal marketing, they offer fixed fee service agreements.
Acquisio is absolutely great with just one disadvantage: you have to write your own bidding rules and algorithms. A lot of PPC managers, and in particular agencies, are extremely happy about this feature as it allows them to differentiate themselves from competitors using the same software. If you are not a bid management expert yet, you can still use Acquisio’s rule template and simply enter your CPA target. Click here to go to Acquisio.

Efficient Frontier

Efrontier works with Google, Yahoo and Bing. Efficient Frontier uses portfolio management theory, a predictive modeling approach, to set and manage bids. In my experience, this tool is most efficient when managing very large campaigns with thousands of keywords and very large budgets. It probably isn’t suited for legal marketing campaigns but I still wanted to introduce it here to give an overview of the products out there.
Just like Acquisio, Efficient Frontier charges advertisers on a percentage of spend basis. Other than setting up your accounts and campaigns, you don’t get involved in setting rules. Similar to Google, Efficient Frontier needs some time to “learn” the market before it can optimize bids effectively. Another similarity to Google is that you only specify the goals of your campaigns. You don’t have to set your own algorithms or rules. Click here to go to Efficient Frontier

There are several other very effective bid management tools on the market, some more some less useful in legal marketing campaigns. The three programs mentioned here are just a selection to give you an overview of what the market looks like. If you have experience with bid management software feel free to share it in the comments section.

For those who are interested to learn more about PPC please use the contact us section at the bottom of the page.

For all of you, ad:tech San Francisco is just around the corner. If you act now, you can get a $200 discount on conference passes. But you need to hurry as the discount expires on March 19th.

Register here and use discount code LINKEDINSF.

Please comment if you have problems using the discount code.

I used the term “investing” deliberately, as I believe that SEO (while certainly being an expense in your marketing budget) should be looked at as an investment. SEO is an investment into your law firms mid- and long term presence on the Web.

• A dollar spent on PPC advertising is unlikely to generate new business more than once.
• Similarly, your subscription ad in the Yellow Pages won’t get you any new clients next year unless you renew your subscription.

Don’t get the wrong idea: SEO isn’t something you can do once and it will return clients forever. Rather it’s a process that requires some maintenance after an initial set up. However, the power of SEO is in that it generates visitors, clients and helps build a reputation. Building a positive reputation on the web through paid advertisement is almost impossible as consumers and business clients are fully aware that it was you who paid for the ads.

SEO for lawyers allows small law firms to compete with larger law firms with a much bigger marketing budget and an entire department of legal marketing professionals.

That is why it is important that you learn more about SEO for lawyers, the most cost effective way to generate new business on the Web!

If you have experience with SEO, please use the comment section below to share your thoughts. If you would like to learn more about SEO for lawyers you can contact the legal marketing team at AdVolt Legal for more information.

Please also take a look at our friends at fpld.net: Articles Directory
and Free web directory.

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) informs us that the Internet has grown to more than 80 million dot-com domain names over the last 25 years.

According to Hamilton Consultants and the Harvard Business School:

The impact on the U.S. economy of the Internet sector is estimated at $300 billion or about 2 percent of the total…

In marketing your law firm online, your domain name is a basic element that can contribute or hinder your success. I wrote a short article about domain names a few months ago, outlining the key points to consider when choosing domain names and developing a domain name strategy for your legal marketing mix.

If you are interested in learning more about domain names and what the right domains for your legal marketing strategy are you can contact your legal marketing team at AdVolt Legal.

As an attorney, you already have this knowledge. Having practiced for a while, you also know the key questions and concerns consumers have before and after contacting a lawyer to work on their behalf. So, why not provide a section on your website to address some of the frequently asked questions your clients might have?

How will this help your business?
Your business will benefit in several ways. First, adding relevant content to your website will improve your search engine ranking and the relevance of your site for general search queries. More specific search queries might yield even better results. Long tail keywords, such as full questions, might even return your pages near the top of SERPs. Consumers who find come to your website through a directory or any form of paid advertising are less likely to navigate away from your website. As a result, your ad expenses will yield a higher ROI.

Amy Campbell has posted an article almost a year ago on how you can update your law firm’s website on the cheap:

Add an Informational Offer. Give away some free information that will help establish or confirm your expertise in a given area. For instance, a booklet on “Questions and Answers on Trademarks,” an online quiz on “Licensing for Video Game Developers,” or a PDF pamphlet on “What You Need To Know About Medical Malpractice Law in Vermont.” Doing so engages the visitor, and brings them one step closer to doing business with you. And once you have developed an informational product you can then leverage it in your print advertising and other integrated marketing programs.

Are you ready to enhance your web presence with an FAQ section that improves ROI on your ad spend and your organic search rank? Contact AdVolt Legal today! We provide you with the content solution best suited to your needs.

Anyone who finds the Google AdWords Editor usefull will love this tool. Actually, anyone who uses the AdWords Editor has probably been waiting for this! The question that most advertising professionals are probably asking themselves is why is Yahoo! is releasing this tool now, less than one year before the merger of search marketing services with Microsoft is to go into effect. Feel free to post your thoughts on that or links to articles related to this question.

As legal marketing professionals, the AdVolt Legal team is here to help answer your questions about the various campaign management tools, including Yahoo and Google.  If you are an attorney looking to grow your legal practice using Search Engine Marketing, contact us for a free consultation!