Creating the book should be a pretty easy process. The hard part is sitting down and banging out the content. But once the thing is written, all you have to do is use Microsoft Word to format it. I suggest that you do two versions. A highly formatted version that will be used to create the print and PDF version; and a simpler version with much less formatting for a Kindle / ebook version. This is a slight headache I know, but if you are going to create the thing, you might as well expose it via as many mechanisms as you can.

Once you have the book written, create a form on your website where your visitors can download the book by giving you their contact information. The downloadable version will be the highly formatted PDF version. Then sign up with CreateSpace, a print-on-demand company owned by Amazon.com, and submit your book. If you don’t want the book to be sold on Amazon.com, you can just make it available via your CreateSpace store. Then order a bunch of copies for yourself to have on hand for anyone who wants a print version, to give away at events, or whatever you want to do with it. But get it in as many hands as you can in your market area.

Then sign up with Kindle Direct Publishing at http://kdp.amazon.com to publish the book as a Kindle article. You can sell it for a small price, such as $.99, or make it free. You might actually distribute more if you give it a price. Again, the main thing is just to get it in people’s hands.

Now that you’ve got a valuable, information-packed consumer guide, you have a hook to use to drive visitors to your website. Do a broad distribution press release about the guide, with links to your website, or to a page specifically about the book. Discuss the book in your social media accounts, especially Google+. Try to use it to get pluses for your website. If you do mass media, such as radio or TV, use the book as the focus of your marketing there. This is very much a direct mail, list building type of strategy. But that’s just sound marketing. There is much value in a list of people in your market who have requested something from you and given you their contact information.

This type of marketing is a level above just throwing money against a wall. This is strategic, direct offer-style marketing. It’s the type of marketing that will help you win the battle for clients and cases.

Virtuoso Legal Marketing would welcome the opportunity to work with your firm on a strategy like the one discussed here. We don’t just preach it – we live it. We’ve just released a new book, Strategic Law Firm SEO, that is a major update of a book we released a few years ago, The Law Firm Internet Marketing Book. This stuff works.

• Stay away from paid links. Google see’s paid links as trying to manipulate organic rankings and can penalize or devalue paid links. Of course, what Google wants is for you to pay them through their AdWords service.
• Keep links relevant. Links from low quality and irrelevant sources can do more harm than good. Watch out for links from sites identified with spam or malware.
• Diversify anchor text. Be careful not to over link the same exact match anchor text. Google may identify it as spam. Mix it up.
• Keep it natural. Don’t obtain links through software or 100′s at once. Obtain links slowly over time.
• Be sure not to over-optimize your website. It’s advisable not to utilize all on-page elements on every page, every time.
• Do not publish duplicate content. Be sure your content is unique and original.
• Take advantage of social media pages for your business. Google+ would be my first concern. Facebook, Twitter and the rest can follow. Make an effort to keep your page active. Do not over post but once a day is a good rule to follow.
• If you rely on an internet marketing service to promote your law firm, be sure their techniques are within Google’s guidelines.

Here at our office we seemed to have gained from the update. Rankings for our law firm SEO clients are up since the update so we must be doing something right. Word on the street is this update targeted keyword stuffing in anchor text, cloaking and duplicate content. It was first titled ‘webspam algorithm update’. The previous update affected page layout and targeted sites with too many ads above the fold.

While these updates keep coming, causing many sites to lose their rankings, it still appears that if you practice white-hat SEO techniques, you most likely will not be affected or better off. Today more than ever it’s important that your SEO team knows what it is doing and not cutting corners that may eventually hurt your rankings.

www.lawfirmseo.biz – In the third video in the Strategic Law Firm SEO video series, we discuss the form that links to your website should take, as well as why you should links pointing to different pages of your law firm’s website, and not just the home page.

www.lawfirmseo.biz – In the second video in our new series based on the new book, Strategic Law Firm SEO, we discuss keyword research and how to use your keywords to optimize the pages of your website.

The introduction to a new series of videos focusing on law firm SEO, based on the book Strategic Law Firm SEO. This introductory video discusses the major components of a law firm SEO campaign.

• Avoid splash pages. There is nothing that screams “out-dated” more than a splash page. People don’t care how cool your graphics or multimedia are. Maybe there are some industries where you can get away with this. If you’re selling video games or promoting a band, that might be the time. But if someone is looking for a lawyer, he wants to find the information he is looking for as quickly as possible. Not only it is bad from a visitor standpoint, but you risk killing any chance at obtaining high search engine visibility.

• Break out information such as practice areas into separate pages. Again, it is useful to both the visitor to your website and the search engines if each of your practice areas is discussed on its own page of your site.

• Make it very easy to get around your website. Navigation is critical. Any page that is important for your visitors to find should not be more than one or two clicks away from the home page. Have a bold, clear menu that is easy to follow.

• Video can be very effective, but it might be best to avoid auto-starting the video. It goes back to the idea of designing for the least common denominator. Do not assume that your visitors have high speed Internet. Give them the option to watch your video, but don’t force them to wait for it to load.

• Make it very clear how to get in touch with you. I recommend placing your firm’s phone number at the top of your site. It can also be helpful to have a short contact form right on your home page. Also make sure your physical address is in your footer of every page, if not elsewhere.

• Put your picture on your website. The more people know about you, the better the chance they will call you.

• Use credibility builders. Chamber of Commerce and Better Business Bureau badges, top lawyer icons, and similar security symbols can increase the sense of credibility to your website.

Let’s say you practice personal injury law in Little Rock. If you write an article and distribute it with a link back to your website in the author box that says “Little Rock personal injury attorney”, that will help boost your law firm search engine rankings for that phrase. You would not get quite the same boost if all of the links simply had your website address.

Examples:

Weak Link
<a href=”http://www.LawFirm.com”>Howard, Howard & Fine</a>

Better Link
<a href=”http://www.SomeLawFirm.com”>Little Rock personal injury attorney</a>

It’s also not a bad idea to have some kind of call to action in your article resource box. Here are some examples:

• Free book.
• Free consultation.
• Free seminar.

So if you combine the keyword link idea with the call to action, you get something the following.

Good Article Resource Box Example

Howard, Howard & Fine is a <a href=”http://www.SomeLawFirm.com”>Little Rock personal injury attorney</a> specializing in automobile accidents and head trauma cases. If you’ve been injured in a <a href=”http://www.SomeLawFirm.com/automobile-accidents/”>Little Rock automobile accident</a>, call 888-123-4567 for a free consultation with a lawyer.

Example of Article Resource Box with Author Rel Link

<a rel=”author” href=”http://articledirectory.com/?expert=Frank_Howard”">Frank Howard</a> of Howard, Howard & Fine is a <a href=”http://www.SomeLawFirm.com”>Little Rock personal injury attorney</a> specializing in automobile accidents and head trauma cases. If you’ve been injured in an automobile accident, call 888-123-4567 for a free consultation with a lawyer.

Circles

Circles are groups of people you follow in Google +, just like with Facebook, Twitter and all the rest. The thing that makes circles different is that they are categorized lists of people. So for you lawyers, maybe you have one circle of other lawyers you follow, one circle of non-lawyer friends, another circle of other business associates, etc. Having the ability to categorize your friends into groups is one advantage that Google + has over Facebook.

Hangouts

One interesting feature of Google + which could have business implications is the “Hangout” feature. This is a video chat feature whereby you invite other Google + users to…you guessed it, hang out. It requires the installation of the Google Voice and Video plugin in your browser. Most modern computers have web cameras built in, so this is an easy feature to use. If you don’t have a webcam, they are cheap to purchase. So this feature is a cheap and easy way for you to conference with clients, business associates or other lawyers. The Hangout feature also has a Screenshare function which could be useful. It allows you to show the people you are hanging out with what items that are on your screen, such as a spreadsheet or Word document.

Pages

Google + also allows you to create “pages,” which are a way to promote your law firm specifically. This is very similar to the Facebook Page (capital “P”) concept, but more straightforward. If there are multiple people at your firm who should be able to update your page, you can add them as managers. Pages have their own profiles, photos, etc. Our thinking is that, as with everything Google, the more “stuff” on your page, the better. So take the time to add photos, videos, information about your firm, and links to other high quality resources.

Effect on Search Rankings

If you’re like me, your first reaction to using Google + was (or is) “oh no, not another social media site.” If it was just about the social media part, then I would say don’t worry about it. However, it seems that things happening in Google + can affect your search rankings. Not just your search rankings, but other search rankings as well! Your Google search results will be influenced by what the people in your circles are doing, and vice versa. So it cannot be ignored. Even if you are on Facebook and Twitter, you must find time to use Google + as well.

Because Google + activity affects the search results of those in your circles, you should follow any other person, law firm or business who is a potential client or source of business. By default, many of the will follow you back. Which brings us to our last point: you should consistently update your Google + account with interesting updates. Look, it’s just like what you should be doing with Facebook, Twitter or any other social media site. When you find something interesting on a website, post it to your account. If something interesting happens at your office, update your account with it. Look for reasons to update your account.

Everybody gives lip service to search engine rankings. But do you really know why high search engine rankings are so important? And do you have any idea how to get those high rankings?

To answer the first question, there is tangible, hard evidence that there are significant differences in how much click-through traffic websites receive at different search engine rankings.  For instance, a study conducted at Cornell University resulted in the following data regarding the percentage of clicks that the top ten search results on a Google search results page received:

Position 1: 56% of clicks
Position 2: 13% of clicks
Position 3: 10% of clicks
Position 4: 4% of clicks
Position 5: 5% of clicks
Position 6: 3% of clicks
Position 7: < 1%
Position 8: 3% of clicks
Position 9: 1% of clicks
Position 10: 3% of clicks

In other words, this data says that you can expect the top-ranked website to receive FOUR TIMES more traffic than the second ranked result, and the second ranked result to receive three times more traffic than the fourth ranked result, and the fourth ranked result to receive over four times more traffic than the seventh ranked result.

So now do you see why high search engine rankings are so important? We have published a new article on the Virtuoso Legal Marketing website about this and a concept called Keyword Relative Value, which is a way for you to have a true gage on where you stand with regards to search engine visibility, either independently or relative to your competitors.

If you want to know how to fix your search engine rankings, you first need to know where you stand. Then you can take action to correct the situation, with that action being a well-thought-out search engine optimization campaign. So use keyword research tools to decide exactly for what keywords your website should rank, check your ranking for those keywords, and then use the KRV formula discussed in our blog. Your rankings likely won’t improve on their own if you don’t take strategic action.