It always pays to be ahead of the competition but the question is: how to get ahead? The laws of internet marketing are different from newspaper, magazine or television advertising. Hence, your law firm’s strategy should incorporate the elements that play an important role over the internet and can get targeted traffic or prospective clients to your website.

There are two important elements of internet marketing: SEO or search engine optimization and PPC or Pay Per Click. Now there are many internet marketing professionals who feel that PPC is better than SEO or vice-versa. The truth is that both are effective ways of increasing your firm’s visibility over the internet. Pay Per Click is a good option for short-term benefits while SEO is good for long-term benefits. The crux of the matter is that you should use both PPC and SEO to gain maximum benefit. Ultimately, the people that have implemented PPC and aren’t happy, haven’t implemented it properly or hired the right help. The same is true with Search engine optimization.

Let us take a look PPC and SEO in greater detail:

PPC: PPC or Pay Per Click, classified as paid advertising, is a very important element of search engine marketing. Lawyers and attorneys should opt for PPC to start with as it will offer you an instant way to reach qualified prospects. The top players in PPC include Google AdWords, MSN adCenter, and Yahoo Sponsored Search. There are also a large number of internet advertising agencies that offer pay per click, par per acquisition, affiliate programs, pay for performance and more.

The areas that you need to focus on while employing PPC include:

Keywords – First things first, you will need to compile a list of keywords and keyword phrases that are fairly popular and used more often by an internet user. For example: Washington lawyer or Kentucky attorney etc. Often times more elaborate phrases are just as effective, but provide a lower cost per click price. Keyword research often times determines whether a pay per click campaign will succeed or fail from the start.

Ad Groups – Your main goal should be to divide the keywords into different groups so that each of them can be used effectively in a particular ad. For example: you can use the keyword criminal attorney in one ad and Washington lawyer in another.  Ads with higher click thru rates obtain higher rankings at the same cost per click – therefore you can grab those top rankings without the top pricing. Review our PPC guide for tips on improving performance.

Ad Copy – The ad copy has to be crisp and relevant and should create the necessary impact. It should have a call to action so that an internet user looking for a lawyer or law firm clicks on your ad.  You should include the keywords being searched for in the ad copy and use a verb to initiate impulse to click the advertisement.

Keyword Conversions – Once you are on your road to success with Pay Per Click, you need to begin finding out what keywords are converting in to emails and phone calls. That way you can determine where to increase your budget, and where to skim off some wasteful spending. Constantly improving your campaign will eventually lead to an amazingly successful campaign and bring in business and saves you money.

SEO: Search engine optimization is a process of increasing the organic search engine listing rankings, to increase organic traffic. These rankings are determined by the search engines and cannot be bought. Using this method will help you increase your law firm’s website visibility and also help drive quality traffic to your website. The SEO services process uses organic search engine results to drive traffic to a website.

Here is a SEO checklist for attorneys and lawyers who want to improve their search engine rankings through changes on their website:

• Use the name of your local cities and your state that you will target in your website content, meta tags & titles
• Mention the various specializations or areas of practice for targeting the right audience.
• Keywords used in the website content should include your GEO or state/city + AOP or area of expertise + attorney or lawyer. For example: Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney or Kansas City DUI Defense Lawyer
• Use your necessary keywords in your page URLs, Titles & Meta Tags.
• Make the content interactive, informational, and relevant to create an impulse to obtain sales and inquiries. Regularly add more information regarding your practice areas and provide business updates to improve your relevance and trust with the search engines.
• Build incoming links to your law firm’s website from relevant and popular websites. Obtaining links from other websites pointing to your website will make a major impact.

Using both PPC and SEO tactics will help build a solid client base for you over the internet.

Implementing these two tactics can create a drastic improvement in search results which can lead to valuable clients and cases that help grow your business.

Joel McLaughlin
Dataflurry Professional law firm internet marketing