Many firms are excited when they launch a flashy new website and they follow all of the basic SEO strategies but often they become victims of their own website success. They have so much business from their marketing efforts that they stop taking the steps that helped to make them successful in the first place. They don’t post any blog entries and they fail to send out regular newsletters, losing touch with many referral sources. Over time, they wrap up the cases that kept them busy early on but they don’t have nearly as many coming in. They look to their website and can’t figure out why it no longer yields the same results it once did.

Turns out that while the firm was busy working on the “billable” stuff, a few firms opened in town with new marketing vigor and they now dominate in the search engine results. Some visitors may still trickle to the site but once they get there, they quickly notice that the last blog post was 5 months ago and wonder if the attorney is still in practice.

So how do you avoid this tragic, yet all too common, cycle. The solution is rather simple: never let marketing take a back seat. It’s crucial that even when your firm is bursting at the seams with clients that you take time to market your practice. We know, we know; there aren’t enough hours in the day. But since you’ve seen such an influx in business, you might consider hiring someone, at least part time, to help write and update the site. Or if you can’t yet afford to bring on a dedicated marketing consultant, look for a professional content solution like Insight in Motion which provides you with an extensive (and regularly updated) library of articles which can be edited and posted to your website in a matter of minutes

There is no shortage of attorneys in the United States and no shortage of competitors to snatch up prospective clients if you fail to put in the time or energy to showcase your expertise. Make certain that even during your busiest months, you have a sound content strategy to build upon your initial website success.

A landing page is generally classified as a one or two page site which specifically requests a certain action from a visitor, also known as a “squeeze page”. In the case of a law firm’s site, a landing page may have its own unique URL with content devoted to a specific practice area and perhaps even house a free report that a visitor may request by entering their contact details. The rationale is that upon arrival, a visitor is guided exactly as to the next action which should be taken (call your firm, request an appointment, etc).  And while the existence of a landing page won’t harm your main site, you must carefully consider whether or not you want a visitor to be directed to that instead of your main website through organic search results (although they rarely rank well given the limited amount of content) or through Pay Per Click campaigns.

Legal services by their nature tend to be complex and consumers are looking for an attorney that has a lot of expertise.  A landing page, while focused on a particular set of keywords, won’t convey a strong sense of credibility to a potential client. Web users want to see content, articles, success stories, testimonials and detailed practice area information. Knowing you might only have one chance to make a good impression, it’s wise to focus your energy on a single website which serves a focal point for comprehensive information on your firm. If you do specialize in very different areas of the law, rather than creating two different landing pages with a few paragraphs of content on each, go the extra mile and create a unique website for each practice area which includes a great deal of specialized content to adequately display your expertise.

When most think of a webmaster, they think of a middle aged man sitting in his dark office working feverishly on HTML code. With the advent of user-friendly content management systems, law firms no longer need this type of support and a paralegal or attorney can easily take on the part-time role.  By having just one point of contact for all website changes, you can ensure that team members are not overriding each other’s efforts and most importantly, that someone in your office takes ownership over the project. Now we’re not saying that this person should necessarily be responsible for writing all new copy for the website, simply that they be in charge of making any changes to the site.

The Selection Process
In selecting your pseudo webmaster, make sure the individual you choose is a staple in the firm and isn’t going to leave anytime soon. A big mistake that many firms make is having the receptionist or legal assistant take on the role (since they are lowest on the seniority totem pole) but these positions tend to have a high turn-over rate and far too often the firms are left without a clue on how to proceed after the individual leaves. This forces the firm to start from square one and can leave the website unattended for months as a new employee steps into the role.

Your webmaster does not have to be a tech genius but they should have a basic comfort level with the internet and have a grasp on what your firm’s marketing goals are. They also need to be organized, ensuring that weekly updates are made and sending out reminders to the office when new copy is needed.  

Updating Your Site
Once you select your webmaster, make sure he or she can designate one hour each week for making any changes. To make updating the site more efficient, be sure you have a clear plan of action when it comes to new content and who is responsible for writing it. At the start of each month, have a staff meeting where you can create an editorial calendar and assign due dates for each addition, whether it be a new blog post or details for an upcoming seminar. Treat these due dates as you would court deadlines; they’re not flexible.

With a defined course of action and a dedicated webmaster, you can be sure that you won’t have too many cooks in the kitchen and a shared team vision for website success.

Put on Your Visitor Cap

When developing any type of marketing messaging, it’s important that you step back and take a moment to think about your intended audience. Are you trying to appeal to prospective clients or are you looking to network with other firms in the area that might refer certain clients your way given your unique experience? Determining who you are writing for is an important first step in drafting an effective bio.  

Once you’ve pinpointed your audience, think about your professional profile as a story which should resonate with your readers. If you are an estate planning attorney whose specialty is special needs planning, be sure to explain why. Perhaps you witnessed the struggle that many families face firsthand when your nephew was diagnosed with autism or you volunteered at a local children’s hospital while you were in law school. For parents coming to your site, the knowledge that you actually have first-hand experience and an understanding of their concerns is incredibly valuable. Do not be afraid to be personal with website visitors. By the same token, don’t be afraid to be a little cocky. Here is your place to shine. Don’t refrain from listing accomplishments in fears of looking boastful; at the end of the day, visitors are evaluating whether you’re worthy to be their trusted advisor.

Outline

Whenever you embark on a new writing project, it’s important that you create an outline. It doesn’t have to be very thorough but it should have the major points you want to include. There is nothing worse than when you draft a compelling bio and then realize you forgot a very important piece of your career puzzle.

Call On Your Team

If you’re still struggling to begin, consider making this a group activity in the office. Have each staff member create a list of questions and put everyone’s name into a hat. Have everyone pick a name and interview the person they’ve selected. When being interviewed, people tend to be more candid and exhibit less hesitation in talking about themselves. This is a good team activity as you get to learn more about your colleagues and can help you pinpoint key information to include. If you have a skillful writer in the office, you may turn over the results so she can work on putting the answers into paragraph format and ensure that each profile has a consistent voice. Or if you’re trying to differentiate your website from the average attorney site, you might even consider including your profiles in interview format.

Create Your Own Focus Group

Most writers agree that it is difficult to evaluate their own work with an objective prospective. Keep in mind that your profile is intended to teach a complete stranger about your experience. Once you have your profile drafted, send it to trusted contacts and ask them what they think. Of course, you know your contacts but that doesn’t mean they know all about your practice or the exact nature of the cases that you handle. Call upon these people to serve as a focus group to review and evaluate your website.

Revisit Your Profile Often

When you post your bio to your website, keep in mind that it can be changed and in fact it should be changed as your career evolves and you acquire more feathers in your cap. Schedule a time twice a year where you thoroughly review your profile page and make any necessary updates.

On our blog, we spend a lot of time highlighting ways you can help your website but equally important is an understanding of the tactics that can actually harm your site. Here are some top Black Hat strategies that you need to be weary of if you are working on your site or hiring a professional to assist you with optimization:

Keyword Stuffing: Yes, keywords that web users might use in a search query need to be included in your site’s pages, but be careful not to overstuff your content with these words. As a general rule of thumb, you should not use a keyword more than 25 times in one page of content (about six paragraphs long).  In fact, high keyword density is no longer perceived as a significant signal for relevance with the latest search algorithms.  The ultimate test, however, should be done by reading the content. If it sounds repetitive to you, it will probably raise warning flags with the search engines.

Unnatural Links: As we’ve already mentioned, the search engines want to make sure that sites that link to your firm’s site are actually endorsing your work. While a few links from topically irrelevant websites will not get you penalized, if such links are excessive and disproportionate to more “natural” inbound links from websites that are thematically related, they may trigger unfavorable action from search engines.  Search Engines are incredibly sophisticated and can pick up on this kind of suspicious behavior which is why they’ve taken a firm stand against link schemes and unnatural linking. If you hire an outside consultant, make sure that they present you with a full list of the sites where they intend to add your link. If it’s not a relevant site, cross it off the list and most importantly, get rid of your SEO guru who is taking actions which may hurt you.

Same Site, Multiple Domains: People think that if they have multiple sites, they have a better chance of showing up on the top of the SERPs. To an extent, this can be true but only if each site has completely unique content and focused keywords. For attorneys who have several specialties, it can be effective to have one site devoted to each practice area.  Unfortunately, many attorneys get conned into purchasing multiple domains pointing to the exact same content. Once again, the search engines can pick up on this as duplicate data and will not index the redundant “website”.

Along these same lines, it’s important that the content on your site be original. While adding RSS feeds to outside news feeds will certainly get new content on your site often, it’s not original content and Google has changed their system of evaluating sites to ensure that “content farms” are not rewarded for duplicate content.

Doorway Pages & Invisible Text: Some SEO consultants may convince you to add a page filled with keywords or links to outside sites. Since these pages aren’t ones that you will want the public to be able to see, they assure you that the page will be hidden meaning that the visitor can’t access it through the site page but the search engines can still read it. These pages are known as “doorway pages” and are another common trick that search engines have become wise to. If you wouldn’t want a visitor to see it, there’s no reason that Google would want its users to see it either. The same goes for invisible text. Don’t ever change the text color to match the page color so that the words are in there but just not apparent to the visitor. This is Black Hat 101 but unfortunately, it is still a very common, and inexcusable, tactic employed by inept SEO “experts.”

Some of the strategies above may help your site to perform better with search engines for a short period, but in the long-run, they have absolutely no chance of success. Our clients are often shocked as we explain how advanced the search engines have become in detecting black hat techniques but when you think about it, they have to be. Their business model is dependent on delivering accurate results which are most relevant to a user’s search. If Google, or any of the major search engines were to let the above strategies take hold, their results would be dominated by websites who most aggressively take advantage of their vulnerabilities, as opposed to those that are most relevant and would quickly lose their reputation and jeopardize their commercial success.

Online Reputation Management
Even if your firm is not fully embracing the web, other businesses and individuals are utilizing its many benefits. Each day there are new sites on the web devoted to local reviews so consumers can make the best decision when hiring a service provider. You have no control over whether you firm is reviewed and more importantly what reviewers say about your work. You do, however, have control of the online presence that you create. A well-optimized site will help to ensure that Google users are led to a place that you’ve created with accurate information about you as an attorney and your practice as a whole.

Not wanting to attract new clients is no excuse for not having a good site. An experienced website developer can help you create a site that showcases your experience and practice without soliciting new business.