Local search is becoming more and more competitive, and there is only so much real estate on Google’s 1st page to fit into. If you are showing up high in the listings, your visibility is still poor. Several things need to happen right off the bat, and then continually, in order to rank well in local search.

Complete your Google+ Business profile 100%. While staying within Google’s guidelines, be sure to complete the About section, add photos and videos, add hours, verify your website and choose a category. Give as much information as you can to achieve 100% completion.

Citations are other local business or law firm listing sources in your area. It is important that you list your business in as many high quality local directories that you can. Chamber, Newspapers and Event websites are a good start. Be sure your law firm info is accurate. Data such as Name, Phone and Address needs to always match. This will allow Google to make the connection.

Reviews are important as well. We advise putting a system in place for getting reviews from satisfied clients on G+. Positive reviews are like testimonials and show G+ that people like doing business with you. This can encourage Google to increase your local visibility to others.

Finally, be active socially on G+. Post updates on a consistent basis as the law firm. Add circles and followers. Make an effort to be involved in other posts both in your practice areas and local topics. This will increase your chances of growing followers and likes. In return Google may increase your local search visibility.

There are of course a lot more details to these tasks. There are little things to know and do that will optimize these tasks to help you rank for your target audience and specific keyword searches. We offer our clients a package in which we set up, verify, and manage on a monthly basis both Social Media and Local Search. Contact us today to learn more!

Encourage Reviews:

• Use an exit form while the client is in your office. Ask clients to give you a review on paper but be sure to get written permission to use the review on your website.
• While the client is in your office at the end of their case, provide computer access and guide them to your local profiles to give you a review online right then.
• Use social media to encourage reviews.
• Send email and snail mail.
• Call clients for a review. Make it easy and encourage them to use their mobile device so it’s convenient.

Recommended Online Review Sites:

• G+ Page Reviews
• AVVO Ratings
• Yelp Reviews
• Merchant Circle
• Four Square
• Facebook Checkin Deals

For more information about reviews or improving your local search visibility, contact us today!

Said Virtuoso Legal Marketing partner, Brad Hart, “I believe the new website does a much better job of conveying our message, which centers around gaining a competitive advantage through the use of aggressive online promotion. We also believe the website is easier to navigate and provides more value to our visitors.”

Virtuoso Legal Marketing is a full service provider of Internet marketing-related services of law firms. Originally an offshoot of its parent company, Work Media LLC, Virtuoso can help law firms through the complete Internet marketing cycle – research, website development, search engine optimization, local search optimization, paid search marketing, social media marketing, and most recently, mobile app development.

“It has always bothered us the way the big companies in this industry treat their clients. They think nothing of taking on dozens of directly competing firms in the same market, and they lock them down with unreasonable contracts. The kicker is that what they consider SEO is often nothing more than cross-linking their own clients,” said Hart. “That’s why we operate differently. We offer market exclusivity and we do things the right way. That’s why the tagline on our new website says ‘Complete Web Strategy Management’. Hopefully our new website effectively conveys these differences.”

About Virtuoso Legal Marketing LLC
Virtuoso Legal Marketing LLC, formed in 2010, is a partnership between the founding members of Internet marketing company, Work Media LLC, and other experienced search engine marketing professionals who have years of experience promoting law firm websites. The company differentiates itself from other Internet marketing companies in the legal industry by providing market exclusive, contract free service.

To learn more about the services that Virtuoso provides, visit www.virtuosolegalmarketing.com. The company may also be reached via email at info@virtuosolegalmarketing.com or phone at 800-281-2226.

Another BIG reason for using Google+ is that it can have an effect on search rankings. If you can expose your business or brand to a qualified market AND help drive up your Google rankings, that is a powerful one-two punch. So hopefully you are convinced of the need to be on Google+. But where do you get started?

Obviously you need a Google+ account. To sign up, visit http://plus.google.com. But you just don’t want to have a personal account. You want to have a business page for your firm or business. After logging into your account, you will see a bunch of grayed out icons on the left side of the screen (at least that is the way it is displayed at the time of this writing), one of which says “Pages.” If you don’t see one that says Pages, you may have to click the More button at the bottom.

Then Google will ask you what kind of business page you want to set up, as far as if it represents a local business, a brand, a company, a movie, or whatever. You will probably be using the Local Business option unless you are a nationwide company.

Google will attempt to locate your business. After “claiming” your listing, there is a verification process that Google uses to verify that you are the actual owner of the business. This makes sense because you do not want your competitors being able to claim your firm and making you look bad!

After logging into your business page, there are certain fields that Google requires be public in order for your page to represent a verified business. To know if your page is verified or not, just look to the right of your business name. If you see the word “Unverified” then you are unverified. Clicking on the unverified icon will display a warning that tells you any settings that need to be changed before your page can be verified.

Once you have satisfied Google’s requirements for verification, you will see a button that says “Verify now.” Google will present you with a list of businesses in its business directory that are likely matches for your firm. Remember, just because you do not yet have a verified Google page does not mean that your firm’s name and address aren’t already in Google’s database. You are just telling Google that a particular business listing is yours and you should have the right to control it.

Once you have selected a location or added your location, you continue the verification process. At this point, Google will require verification in the form of a PIN. Google will send you a postcard at the address in your business listing that contains the PIN. Watch your mail for this letter from Google! If you miss it, you will have to request another one, further delaying the process.

The postcard will have instructions that will tell you how to proceed to finish the verification process.

So that is how you go about setting up a Google+ business page.

So what is different at this point from just using a standard, personal Google+ account? Not much, but here is something you need to remember: businesses can add other businesses to their circles, but not people. People can add both businesses and people to their circles. So from your business page, you will want to locate other businesses in your market area (or who represent potential clients or referral sources for some other reason). Some of those businesses will in turn add you to their circles.

From your personal account, you want to add lots of other people as well as businesses to your circles, and you want to promote your business page in your updates. Hopefully some of the people who see your updates will add your business page to their circles.

This process must be repeated often, while you regularly update your account. If you go through this whole process – getting a Google+ account, setting up a business page, having it verified, etc. – but then don’t actually use the account, then you’ve wasted a lot of time. You gotta work it!

This has been a quick overview of getting started using Google+. If you use the Internet to promote your law firm or business, then it just makes sense to have a Google+ component to your marketing campaign. It not only exposes your firm or brand to potential clients or referrers, it helps improve search rankings. It’s a win/win!

Sure, you already know what SEO is. You’re probably even engaging in it yourself (if you’re not, then that is another problem to address). But local search optimization is different than standard SEO. It builds on top of standard SEO. For example, if you are a bankruptcy attorney in Little Rock, you should optimize your website for phrases such as “Little Rock bankruptcy attorney.” Properly optimizing your site for your geographically-targeted keywords is the first step in the local optimization process.

Once your site is properly optimized to begin with, then local SEO kicks in. With local SEO, you need to focus on getting your website properly listed in various local directories, which influences how Google positions your site in its own local listings. In recent years, as Google has placed more and more emphasis on results that are relevant to the searcher’s physical location, this local SEO process has become critically important. For businesses like law firms, that conduct business in specific markets, this is especially true.

So how does local search marketing work? For that, you’re going to have to tune into our free webinar that we are hosting on Wednesday, October 24^th. The webinar, entitled “How Local SEO Can Give Small Law Firms a Big Advantage,” will discuss in detail the steps that should be taken to improve a firm’s local search positioning.

Some of the topics we will be discussing include:

• Conducting local-focused keyword research
• SEO – the first step toward local optimization
• Getting your firm listed in local directories
• Making sure your contact information matches from one directory to the next
• What are citations
• Getting your friends and clients to help improve your local positioning
• The importance of Google+
• And much more!

There are a lot of pieces to the Internet marketing puzzle – SEO, PPC, social media, email, and on and on. But when it comes down to it, all you are really doing is making sure that your prospective clients in your geographic markets can find you when they need you. If a prospect needs a lawyer, chances are very high he will search Google. At that point, he will either get in touch with you or one of your competitors. If you leave it up to chance, you will NOT get that lead. So be proactive, and take steps to make sure YOU are the one that person finds.

This webinar is free because we know there is going to be at least one attorney listening who knows he should seek help with this process. And hopefully that person will call us.

I should point out here that we do not accept business from any firm that competes against one of our existing clients. That is partly why you have received this letter. At the moment, we have no conflict.

To sign up for the webinar, happening Wednesday, October 24^th, visit the following URL:
www.virtuosolegalmarketing.com/webinar2

There is a limit of 100 callers on the webinar, so I advise you to sign up today before all the spots get filled. If time allows, we will accept questions from listeners through the gotowebinar.com interface, so there will be an opportunity for you to ask specific questions if you have them.

Generally, when one links to other websites they are going to link the name of the website or company, or the URL itself. So recently, SEO companies began adjusting their strategies to use fewer keyword links. This is probably a good idea. But something that you may want to think about now are the words in the text around the the link to your website. For example, if you are a Boston personal injury law firm, then links that you create to your website should mostly be your firm name or URL, but have keywords such as “Boston personal injury law firm” in the words around the link.

This is a strategy you should begin adopting for much of your link building, although certainly not always. And continue to vary the keywords around your links. This is one way to adapt your link building the strategy to conform to the new rules of Google. You’re not directly linking with keywords…just using the keywords around your links to tell Google what your website is about in a more subtle way.

As with most things related to SEO, the key is to mix it up. We’re not saying you should never use keyword links, or that all of your linking should always be done as described here. But if you are still in the mindset that ALL of your links need to contain keywords, you are stuck in the past. Success with Google or any search engine requires that you keep moving – keep adapting your tactics. We do, however, recommend that you keep keyword links to a maximum of 40% of your links. Less than that is probably better.

Call or e-mail Virtuoso Legal Marketing today to discuss how we can help you engage in an effective SEO campaign for your firm.

So, first off: what is remarketing? This is the act of displaying an ad for your firm on other websites to people who have already visited your website. Why would you want to do this? It has been shown time and again that for a marketing message to be effective, it needs to be received by its intended audience multiple times (seven times is sometimes used as the minimum number of times). So a remarketing campaign allows you to continue putting your name/brand in front of people multiple times, even after they leave your website. As previous visitors to your site continue to see your firm’s name in ads shown on other websites, some of them may finally decide to return to your site or get in touch with you another way.

I will now provide you with instructions on how to set up a remarketing campaign in Google AdWords.

1. Set up a content network campaign. Remarketing is only applicable to content ads, not search ads.

2. Click on the Display Network tab.

3. Click on the Interests & Remarketing sub-tab.

4. Click the green + Change display targeting button.

5. Select an ad group, if one is not already selected.

6. Beneath Interests & Remarketing, click the Remarketing Lists tab.

7. Click the Create and manage lists link.

8. Click New Audience / Remarketing list.

9. Give the list a name and a duration. Duration is important because you don’t want your ads to follow people around too long. The default 30 days is probably good.

10. Click Save.

11. Click All online campaigns, then click back into your remarketing campaign.

12. You should arrive back at the remarketing screen. If not, click back into it. Click the blue Save button.

As of today, June 26th, 2012, that is how you set up a remarketing campaign. However, if you are reading this blog post on June 27th or later, then chances are very good that Google has already changed the way it works. Just a remember that the process involves a couple of major steps: you set up a content campaign, set up a remarketing list, and then add the list to the campaign. If you find that the specifics of doing it have changed, just Google it.

Remarketing may or may not make a huge impact on the effectiveness of your paid search marketing, but it is one more technique to try. And that is what direct marketing style PPC is all about. Testing, testing, testing until you find what works. Setting up a remarketing campaign is easy, so there is no reason not to add it to your arsenal of tactics.

Contact Virtuoso Legal Marketing at 800-281-2226 if you could use some help fine-tuning your Google AdWords campaign.

If you use Google Analytics, you may have seen its site overlay function where it will show you a picture of a page of your website with additional graphics showing you how many people clicked where. However, there is a major weakness in this type of mapping, and that is that if there are multiple links on a page linking to the same destination, each of those links will be credited for all the clicks from the page to its destination. So if there is a link at the top of the page and a link at the bottom of the page that go to the same place, both the top and bottom link will be credited with all clicks. That really doesn’t help optimize your law firm website. But what you really want to know is if your visitors clicked the link at the top or the link at the bottom. Google does not break the data down this way.

To get a more accurate picture of where your visitors are truly clicking, you need to use dedicated heatmap software. Crazy Egg is one such application that is very popular. To use it, after signing up for account, the site will give you a JavaScript script that should be placed on every page that is to be mapped. Then you just have to wait long enough to generate enough data from visitors to your site to have an accurate picture. Obviously, the more traffic your website gets, the sooner you will get results. For this reason, if your site is brand new or just has not been marketed enough to have much traffic, then you will probably want to hold off before doing a heatmap analysis.

So once you’ve got heatmap software running and generate some heatmap data, what do you do with it? You are going to use it to try and improve the users’ experience by laying out your website so that the information they are most interested in is presented to them the soonest.

Example: Let’s say your website has a side menu with ten links. If you notice that one or more of the links near the bottom of the menu are getting more clicks, then you should move those links closer to the top. That’s the general idea – whatever it is that people are clicking on, move it closer to the top.

Looking at our image above, for this website, there are some menu items on the left that received almost no clicks, so we would probably want to move those guys down.

Another example: Crazy Egg has a scrollmap feature that shows how far down a page visitors scrolled. If there is a page with critical information, or a contact form, or any other important piece of content, that is not being read because visitors are not scrolling far enough, then you will know that you need to move that content closer to the top, in the scrolled range that the data shows your visitors used.

A common use for heatmap data is figuring out the best location on a website for ads. I do not recommend that you place ads on your firm’s main website, but I still think you should give heatmap technology a try. Combined with your analytics, it will provide a more complete picture of what the visitors to your website do when they get there, which will help you improve their experience, and hopefully generate more leads.

You should study what these people do.

Think none of that affiliate marketing stuff is relevant to you? Guess again. A lot of it deals with obtaining high Google rankings for a broad collection of long-tail, often product-specific keywords. This is a concept you can apply to your law firm website marketing. Let’s look at a hypothetical example, but using real Google data.

Let’s say you are a personal injury lawyer in Miami, Florida. If I run a keyword research report in Google using a couple of seed keywords related to that, I get a whole bunch of results, including the following (all search data set to exact match, American searches; competition is based on the number of “allintitle” search results returned by Google):

miami personal injury lawyer: 720 searches per month; 7,050 competing sites

miami personal injury attorney: 590 searches per month; 4,930 competing sites

miami injury attorneys: 36 searches per month; 18,200 competing sites

miami car accident lawyer: 210 searches per month; 1,500 competing sites

car accident miami: 170 searches; 5,220 competing sites

car accident attorney miami: 91 searches; 960 competing sites

car accident in miami: 46 searches; 687 competing sites

The typical law firm marketer who would probably be immediately inclined to target the first two keywords above, which are the highest traffic keywords. And you should definitely take a stab at getting those high volume keyword rankings. But notice how competitive those keywords are. The third keyword is a weak choice because it not only has low search volume, it is the most competitive keyword on the list.

Someone with an affiliate marketing mindset is going to look for opportunities to exploit where they can capture some traffic that is in a minimum competitive situation. The last two keywords in the list, “car accident attorney miami” and “car accident in miami,” look the best from this standpoint. There are about 91 searches and 46 searches, respectively, for that exact search term every month, with under 1,000 directly competing websites.

So how would you go about achieving a high search engine visibility for the keyword “car accident in miami.” Still thinking from an affiliate marketing mindset, you want to try to get a page from your own website ranked on the first page of Google, a page on a Web 2.0 site such as Squidoo, and maybe even run a paid search ad for the keyword. If you accomplished those three things, you would have two website listings and a paid search ad on the same search results page for the target keyword. That is good shelfspace, my friends.

More specifically, you would do something like the following:

• Create a webpage on your site about car accidents in Miami, with a title like “Car Accident in Miami? Call Jones & Jones, Injury Lawyers” and something similar in a header <H1> tag on the page. Then you need to flesh out content on the page with at least 500 words, sprinkling in variations of the key phrase for the page.
• Get some links to the page, but don’t go overboard. It would also be a good idea to get some Google +’s for the page. We won’t go into the specifics of how to get links and +’s in this post.
• Set up a Squidoo page with a title something like “Car Accident in Miami Statistics and Information.” Use the various Squidoo modules to flesh out the page with content.
• Get some links to the Squidoo page.
• In your Google AdWords account, bid for a first page ad position for the exact match keyword “car accident in miami.” Run the ad in a highly specific ad group related to Miami car accidents.

Piece of cake, right? Well, there are a lot of little details related to things like getting links and Google +’s, but the whole key is specificity. Pick SPECIFIC keywords and then use Internet marketing techniques like described above to promote specific pages of your website for those keywords.

Here’s another thing to keep in mind. If you do all of the above for the keyword “car accident in miami,” you could expect in any given month for 46 people to use that search term and see the Google search results page with your three listings, which gives you an excellent chance at getting that click. You only need one of those clicks to convert for the campaign to be successful. However, remember that our search data is based on exact match searches. There are likely hundreds of searches that are nearly identical, but not quite. So if you get your website positioned for the exact match term, it will likely show up for many very similar searches as well.

So there you go. You have probably scoffed at the affiliate marketing idea, but those people often know a thing or two about generating search engine traffic. Learn from them.

So…when your ad is displayed on a Google search results page, you want people to see and click your ad. One way to help your cause is with the use of the Sitelinks ad extension.

You’ve seen sitelinks before in organic search results. They are the links to sub-pages that will sometimes appear beneath a listing in Google’s organic search results. Now anyone can display sitelinks with the use of the sitelinks ad extension. And why is having sitelinks shown with your ad an advantage?

BECAUSE IT MAKES YOUR AD BIGGER!

Showing sitelinks can make your ad physically take up twice as much room on the search results page. That is what you want. You want to take up as much room as possible, so you push lower ranked ads a little further down the page, and so that people are more likely to click your ad.

Adding sitelinks to an ad is very easy. From the Campaign view in your AdWords account, click the Ad extensions tab. Then, in the View: dropdown, select Sitelinks Extensions. Google will then give you text boxes for setting up four sitelinks, but you can add up to ten. You get 35 characters for the text for each sitelink, but about as much room as you could possibly need for the actual URL.

Examples of pages on your website that could make good sitelinks include your About page, Contact page, and Practice Areas page. If you can customize the links for the particular campaign, then that is even better. For example, if the subject of the campaign is auto accidents, then you could have sitelinks to pages on your website that deal specifically with auto accidents.

Is there a disadvantage? There could be if your ad destination is a landing page that does not use your full site menu. This is a strategy that is sometimes used in order to minimize the number of choices that the visitor to a website has to make. So if you use that kind of standalone landing page, then sitelinks might not be a good idea. But if that is not an issue, then I recommend using the Sitelinks extension to make your ad bigger, thus likely improving your click-through rate and helping drive down your click costs.