Many blog platforms lend themselves to exceptional organic search engine rankings. In our opinion the WordPress platform has the best infrastructure and features to increase existing organic phrases as well as introduce new phrases to the search engine results pages.
The Purpose Of Blogging:
The majority of the time our tendency is to write blog articles with Google and the other search engines in mind; this is mistake number one. The true purpose of blogging is to share your thoughts and expertise on a given topic. Journalists do not write articles just to fill up pages, they write to inform and educate.
Basic Blog Article Parameters:
Blog articles can be long or short. If there is something relevant to your law firm or an area of law your firms practices in the local or national media you could link to an article or video with a few lines of commentary. Oppositely, if you just wanted to share your thoughts on a current issue or topic, or perhaps you wanted to educate people on a particular process or procedure your article could be roughly 200 or 250 words in length. It is good to vary the length of articles, but in general do not exceed 250 words.
Link to other pages of your website for additional information. For example, if you make reference to chapter 7 bankruptcy or a particular taxation law and you have a page that explains these areas in more depth make the text ‘chapter 7’ a link to the chapter 7 page. The link text should correspond to the text on the page you are linking to. If your link text says California Taxation Laws Click Here but the page you are linking to talks about New Jersey Social Security Law, you are likely to have wasted a linking opportunity.
It can also help to create links that go to other websites such as NYTimes.com, Wall Street Journal, CNN and other mainstream media outlets.
Photos & Rich Media:
Adding photos, sound clips and YouTube videos make the article more engaging for a user but do not necessarily help with search engine rankings. Again, we are writing the articles for humans to read, not for search engines to index and catalog.
When preparing your blog post ask yourself if you would take the time to read the article – is it engaging, informative, interesting, or is it plain old boring?
You’re The Expert:
There is a reason you have a blog. It’s not just because you want to get to the top of Google or Yahoo, it’s because you have a wealth of knowledge that makes you an expert. Write articles that prove you know what you are talking about. However, write the articles with your reader in mind. Try to avoid using too much legal jargon that the average person would not understand. You want to relate to your readers by explaining the laws, processes, procedures, pros and cons in a language that anyone can understand.
Blog articles are not an advertisement for your firm. There should not be any plugs for your firm, free consultations, mention of your success rate, etc. Simply provide good, relevant, high-quality information.
Choose Your Keywords Wisely:
When starting to write a blog article have a couple keywords or key phrases in mind. For example, if your firm specializes in Personal Injury you might want to write an article on slip and fall injuries. Even better would be to include your local city name and state. A good sentence might be:
“In Raleigh, North Carolina, Slip and Fall injuries have risen 25% from 2008.”
Or another good option might be…
“Slip and fall injury attorneys in the Raleigh, North Carolina area have seen an increase in xyz.”
Your keywords should be phrases that people might search to find a solution to their problem. If their problem is overwhelming credit card debt they might type: eliminate debt, file bankruptcy, how to eliminate credit card debt, how to reduce debt, etc.
The general rule of thumb is to repeat your keywords or key phrases 4 times per 100 words (4%). If you exceed 7% or 8% you could suffer the consequences of Keyword Spamming (trying too hard).
National Vs. Local Geography:
Competition is strong for almost all types of law therefore you must be as specific as possible. Writing an article about divorce law will not help you find clients. Writing an article about choosing a divorce attorney in Buffalo NY will help you find clients. Not all articles have to be tailored to local geography but the majority should be.
Duplicative Content:
This is very important… Do not ever repeat, copy exactly or duplicate an article on more than one website. It is perfectly acceptable to cite a couple links and link to another article, but never duplicate. This is true if you have more than 1 website, you have to write unique content for each site. You can write an original article and then re-write that article for your other site but be sure they are not duplicative.
Relevant Categories:
When posting articles to your blog they should be tagged and categorized. If the article relates to recent bankruptcy law changes you could tag it as December 2009, new york state, bankruptcy law change. You might file the article under: New York Bankruptcy Law or Bankruptcy Law Changes.
It’s not wise to create a new category for each article. If a user wants to view all articles posted in a given category they should see multiple. Organize your articles wisely.
When creating categories the keyword structure is important. Everything should correspond and relate to each other. Below is an example of an article title, category title, tag and a few interior article links.
Article Title: How to Choose your San Diego Bankruptcy Attorney
Category: San Diego Bankruptcy
Tags: san diego, bankruptcy, attorney
Interior links: San Diego Bankruptcy (link to a bankruptcy information page), Bankruptcy Attorney (link to a bio page that provides information on a particular attorney within your firm). Experienced San Diego Bankruptcy Attorney (link to another blog article that talks about why you should use an experienced bankruptcy attorney rather than go through the process yourself.).
Last, but not least:
Be genuine, do not be wordy, do not use too many technical terms or lingo, repeat your phrases at a rate of 2% to 4%, post relevant content, link to good content that is relevant (both on your own site and on other sites), ask yourself if you would take the time to read the article – do not duplicate content.
When your telephone rings do you know where the caller originated from? What campaign, what made them call and what is the probability they will purchase?
More than ever before, tracking advertising efforts has become incredibly important. In today’s economic times you do not have the ad budget to hope for the best. In general, advertising is very uncertain. You allocate funds where you *think* the best returns will be. However, you rarely know how many phone calls or website hits you receive from a single ad campaign.
New technology allows us to track our ad campaigns in a way that removes virtually ALL THE UNCERTAINTIES of advertising. If you know where your revenue is coming from you can better maximize the benefit from that ad campaign.
Imagine having a Google Pay-Per-Click campaign with 200 phrases. Your total budget is $1000 per month. You spend on average $4 per click and get about 250 clicks per month spread between 200 phrases. Currently you only know that the campaign gets clicks and brings traffic to your site – perhaps you track how many people submit email forms for more information. Ad Track allows you to accurately and effectively determine which of your 200 phrases are bringing the most phone calls that ultimately turn into sales.
After running the Ad Track system for a couple months you would have enough data to eliminate a portion of your 200 keyword list, freeing up more dollars for the phrases that produce sales. Imagine if your list went from 200 to 25 high producing phrases – you would now get almost 10 clicks per phrases (before you were getting 1.25 clicks per phrase). Where you were getting 1 phone call you could be getting 10.
What if you could track phone calls that originated from various Internet Marketing campaigns?
What if you could record the call to better anticipate and prepare for pre-sales questions, aid in sales training efforts and much more?
What if you knew 80% of calls from Google Organic lead to sales and 60% of calls from Google Pay-Per-Click lead to sales – or vice versa?
What if you knew phone book advertising only brings 10 calls per year and only 20% turn into sales?
Would this information change the way you spend your advertising budget?
We like to call it Advertising Accountability and Advertising Forensics.
The time is now to start strategically measuring the performance of virtually every advertising campaign you deploy.
Lawyers increase Internet marketing to gain clients
An article that was recently published, both in print and online, explains the potential implications for law firms not engaging in strong, tactical and strategic internet marketing campaigns. The article discusses how new bankruptcy law firms are forming as a result of larger firms downsizing.
Axis Creative Group, an Internet-marketing firm based in Manheim Township, Lancaster County, is focusing a lot of its energy on the attorney market and specifically bankruptcy attorneys, said Zach Walker, an Internet marketing consultant.
Axis is working with several New York-based lawyers to increase their business through Internet marketing, Walker and founder Michael Canarelli said.
Increased use of the Internet to find lawyers is also generational, Carr said. Young, tech-savvy business people are comfortable with the expanse and pace of the Internet so they’re more likely to use it to find services such as legal counsel, he said.
Running a successful Philadelphia law firm requires many things, including solid business acumen, keen oversight of billing and accounting procedures, and strong managerial skills (as well as all of the prodigious legal knowledge you possess that is at the heart of your business.)
Having to spend time on things other than legal matters can initially seem like a poor use of time – that is until you consider the opportunity cost involved. Every potential client you miss reeling in is – cha ching – another dollar in your competitor’s pocket. Framing it in that context, suddenly marketing doesn’t seem like such a waste of time, does it?
Many companies say they know marketing, but Law Firm Marketing is a beast of a different nature for several reasons (including the fact that many clients are intimidated by the legal process, or are reluctant to discuss private financial or personal information with a stranger.)
Additionally, the legal profession requires a diverse spectrum of marketing strategies, because while some specialties (such as Business Law) yield consistent, repeat business, other specialties (such as Bankruptcy, Foreclosure, or Divorce) are situation specific, and hinge upon events that occur infrequently in a client’s lifetime.
Because of this, it’s imperative that you work with astute marketing experts — ones that won’t pigeonhole you, or lump you into one all-encompassing legal marketing niche – “Attorneys.”
That’s where we come in. We’re the Legal Marketing specialists of Axis Creative Group, and we can help you plan marketing campaigns for maximum efficiencies at your specified pricepoint. From Philadelphia, to West Chester, to Exton, we have a proven track record of helping attorneys across a broad spectrum of subspecialties all boost their bottom lines via our array of innovative legal marketing strategies.We take extreme pride in custom-tailoring legal marketing solutions unique to your specialty and your practice or firm.
Whether you seek to increase conversions (turn prospects into paying clients), expand your market share, improve client acquisitions, or increase your ROI, the legal marketing analysts at Axis Creative Group are here to help. Not only are we cognizant of the complexities that legal marketing for attorneys requires, we are experts at integrating the many dynamics necessary to help you achieve success.
So call today, and let the pros at Axis Creative Group put our legal marketing muscle to work for you in Philadelphia and beyond. Just because the scales of Justice are balanced, doesn’t mean the competitive legal field is. You need a way to set yourself above the competition, and Axis Creative Group can make that happen.
As an attorney, your days are full enough already, and any time spent on internet marketing is time you could be spending on billable activity – consulting with clients, courtroom appearances, or reading, writing, and filing legal briefs.
Your revenue is directly proportionate to the number of clients your service!
Many experts say it costs five times more to get a new client than to keep an existing one. For lawyers specializing in Bankruptcy, Foreclosure, Personal Injury, and other situational-specific specialties, few of these clients will offer the opportunity for repeat business. The question then becomes – how do you maximize revenue from existing clients, while attracting new ones in the most cost-efficient manner?
From a business standpoint, your advertising dollars and lead-generation tools need be maximized for optimal impact, and let you concentrate on truly qualified leads – not waste your valuable time on less serious prospects.
That’s where Axis Creative Group can help. We offer a variety of services, including Pay-Per-Click Advertising, Search Engine Optimization, Social Networking, Quality Web Content and Targeted Lead Generation, along with a variety of other effective marketing strategies. These services not only direct you to ripe prospects who are ready to purchase your services, but today’s evolving technologies also allow you to track each of your marketing campaigns to ensure maximum ROI.
Using some simple math, we can illustrate how easy it is to lose money on poorly implemented and managed Internet Marketing campaigns:
The numbers used in the illustration are not necessarily indicative of the specific traffic or yields you will experience, but the principle holds true. Depending on your target audience and your perception of what the ideal client is, a professional internet marketing firm can help you analyze your monthly budget, re-allocate funds towards more effective campaigns, and thus maximize your cost per new client.
At the end of the day, it really comes down to the number of new clients you gain and the cost it takes to acquire those clients. All too often, a budget is determined solely on perceived expectations of what one can afford. However, the truth is that when efficiencies are factored in, your budget may be set too low – or too high. Once our clients start tracking their true efficiencies, they often see that the money they spend on targeted marketing campaigns is brought back to them tenfold. Our innovative tracking technologies and strategic marketing can help you attract an influx of quality, ready-to-do-business clients.
At Axis Creative Group, we can help maximize your advertising dollars with a variety of custom-tailored strategies. From reducing PPC bid amounts, limiting or targeting specific geographic boundaries, and using negative keywords, we can help you generate more qualified leads and reach more clients.
Bankruptcy Lawyers, Foreclosure Lawyers, Personal Injury Lawyers and all other attorneys and law firms should add strategic Internet marketing to their advertising mix. By working with a highly qualified, professional Internet Marketing firm, you’ll assure that your advertising investment will produce the maximum ROI, because the potential for poor results and lost revenue opportunities is far too great to leave to chance.
So contact Axis Creative Group today, and leave the marketing headaches to us. We’ll focus on what it is we do best – implementing strategies that let you gain the most qualified leads and ripe prospects. You’ll then be free to concentrate on what it is you do best – providing quality bankruptcy, foreclosure, personal injury, and other situational legal services to the clients who so desperately need your help.
