Lawyer Content Marketing Blog

Seasonal SEO Pointers

Adding a little seasonal flavor to your Web content is not only fun but practical too! We Do Web Content knows that using seasonal and geo-specific terms in your content can help you be found on search engines. For more tips and help with your SEO content, contact us today! 888-521-3880

Broad Websites vs. Niche Websites

Before you even begin developing your website (and of course your SEO content), you need to have a clear picture of what your website will be. This means establishing your goals, taking into account your time and technical limitations, and deciding what areas your website will focus on. This then begs the question, should I go big and cover everything or go niche and focus on one small area?

Your Legal Content Questions Answered!

Recently, Yvette Valencia, the Co-Founder of We Do Web Content, spoke at Ben Glass's Great Legal Marketing Conference about the many benefits of SEO Content and had the opportunity to speak to a lot of attorneys that specialize in many different legal areas. Below we've included the answers to some the questions we were asked the most!

10 Tips for Great Legal Blogs

Starting a blog for your website is a great way to draw traffic, increase your page views, capture your target audience, and improve the search engine rankings for your website. As a lawyer, you'll have specific benefits and complications when it comes to maintaning a successful blog. Below we've compiled our top 10 hits for great legal blogs to help you get started.

Creating an Internal System to Support Web Leads

Even before you start posting all the new SEO content for your website, it's important to organize and establish and internal structure designed to quickly respond to and track the leads your website will bring in.

Legal Content Tips for 2010

It's almost a new year which means new possibilities to grow your legal website and attract new clients through your website. Part of this growth will entail creating legal web content that connects your practice to your target audience and helping that legal content appear in organic search engine results with SEO keywords and techniques.

The Key To Conversions is Clear Directions

Creating and optimizing your landing pages, content, and blogs usually has an end goal in mind -- conversion. In order to convince your readers to contact you for your information about your services, you need to convey the specific action you want them to take and explain exactly how to do it.

Legal Content Writing: Are You Staying Current?

SEO content should always be fresh, relevant, and current in order for your customers to want to find and read what you have published on your website. If that information is too out-dated, it's time to step in and write more current material. After all, no one cares about car accident statistics from 2004 when it's almost 2010.

Keep Your Website Accessible

The look and feel of your website, from the colors to the content should have one goal in mind -- your customers. Part of achieving a website that can provide valuable information is keeping your website accessible to as many potential customers as possible.

How to Increase the Power of Your Law Firm's Brand

Building a brand means more than just starting a business. Your brand is what separates your law firm from the dozens of other similar law firms in your area. To create a successful brand, you to actively promote and market the qualities and value of your firm as an expert entity.

How To Use Social Media to Extend Your PR Reach

November 16, 2009 - Social networking is a great opportunity to extend your public relations as well as drive traffic to your website when leveraged properly. Below we'll discuss how incorporating social networking into your PR can help solidify and expand your brand.

1. Get the word out - press releases are wonderful for getting the word out about your company. When you expand your audience through participating in social media, you can reach more potential clients as well as the journalists and bloggers looking for stories online. Unlike the natural course of most press releases -- you write and publish a press release then a journalist reads it and then maybe writes a story -- you are communicating directly with the people you are trying to reach and initiating conversations with them based on your PR material, which can lead to more conversions.

2. Build a brand - Social media helps to create a personality for your brand and helps put a face and a voice on your company. With advances in communication and the way we interact online (due in LARGE part to social networking websites), consumers expect more from the companies they choose to do business with. Internet users look to their friends and family for recommendations, and then they search and compare websites to find the best fit for their legal needs. If you are out there participating in the conversation and changing the image of your law firm from anonymous online lawyer to a lawyer who is available online as a personal resource, Internet users will come to you for this information and then contact you about your services.

3. Continue your SEO efforts - Your keywords should be used whenever possible to help promote your website and expand your online presence. You can and should use your press releases as well as your social networking to help your SEO efforts by incorporating those keywords in your releases and posts. These are searchable terms, and when your online press releases, social networking posts, and blog entries all show up for those keywords in organic search engine results, you are working towards greater exposure while giving credibility to your brand and law firm as an "expert source".

For more tips on how to get the most out of your SEO content and drive more traffic to your website, Contact We Do Web Content today!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880. 

Resources for Emailing Online Newsletters

November 12, 2009 - Part of any successful email newsletter campaign is figuring out how to send your emails and which services are out there to help. At We Do Web Content, we think online newsletters are a very important opportunity to stay connected with past clients and form relationships with all of the new contacts you have generated through your website.

You can also visit our library to learn more about how to write an online newsletter.

There are a lot of different options out there when it comes to how you can email newsletters to your lists. For example:

Feedblitz is a popular service for bloggers, but it also allows users to convert RSS feeds and blogs to email in addition to allowing you to email newsletters. Likewise, Feedburner is a very popular RSS feed management tool that is often used to track the amount of readers for a blog, but it also provides support for emailing newsletters. If you have a blog you may already be using these services without knowing they have built-in online newsletter support.

When it comes to newsletter resources that help you build your email lists and track your email campaigns in addition to sending out your actual newsletter, popular services include:

Aweber.com, which allows users to send unlimited HTML emails

BenchmarkEmail.com, allows users to build email lists, design their own emails or use their pre-made templates, and even test the emails for speed

Graphicmail.com, this service is easy to use and includes a feature that lets you track who is reading your newsletters

Icontact.com, lets you can create newsletter and email campaigns as well as track their progress

MyNewsletterBuilder.com,  just like it sounds, this service helps you build full color newsletters using your own design or their pre-made templates

Shoutlet.com, create, customize, and track your newsletters from start to finish

So what are you waiting for? Get your newsletter started today and start connecting with your clients ASAP! Of course, if you need help writing and putting together a newsletter for your law firm, We Do Web Content is here to help!

For more tips on how to get the most out of your web content and drive more traffic to your website, Contact We Do Web Content today!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Editing Your SEO Content for Scanners

November 11, 2009 - When planning the content development of your website, it's important to pay special attention to the way your content is edited for Internet readability.

In previous articles we've discussed the importance of how people read on the Internet and how that translates to the way your content needs to be presented in order to engage your audience. Part of this reason has to do with the simple fact that so many Internet readers are actually "scanners" who don't take the time to read an entire article but instead scan the piece quickly for the information they are looking for.

Experts estimate that the average Internet reader will spend approximately 4 seconds scanning a web page in order to determine the page's relevance and decide whether to commit to reading the article or move onto another page (or back to their original search). This means you need to create an article that immediately jumps off the page and captures your reader's attention.

So what can you do to make sure your article survives the 4 second scan?

The best thing you can do tohelp ensure that your SEO content gets read is to edit your content appropriately for the web and make sure your articles, landing pages, etc. are relevant, well written, and include the information people are looking for in connection to the keywords they used in their search.

Since people will be scanning this web content, it isn't enough to have the information buried in a long paragraph. That is why we suggest making use of bold highlighting to draw special attention to important facts and statistics, using bullet lists instead of listing the items in a paragraph, and making excellent use of subheadings to clearly identify what information is being discussed at that point in the text.

For more information on the 4 second rule, visit our library.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have a first page search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

SEO for Lawyers: Keyword Density and Keyword Positioning

November 11, 2009 - As any SEO content expert will tell you, correctly infusing keywords into your web content is imperative in optimizing your website for search engines; however, translating that into how many keywords to use (keyword density) and where to place them is the key to your success.

Keyword Density

There are a lot of theories about the correct percentage of keyword density, meaning the amount of times you incorporate a keyword into the body of your text in relation to the other words that make up your content. If you try to use the same keyword or phrase too many times, it may look like "keyword stuffing" to a search engine scanner, which won't help your efforts. On the other hand, only using a keyword once in the text will not help boost your search engine results either. A good goal to keep in mind is to aim for a keyword density of about a 2-6%, meaning that if your article is 300 words, your targeted keyword or phrase should appear about 6-12 times.

To increase the effective use of your keywords, try to use them throughout the article, but make sure to include them specifically in your page titles, article titles, Meta description, and in the very first paragraph of your text. These are the areas that the search bots pay special attention to when determining relevancy.

Keyword Focus

It's also important to keep your keyword use focused. Trying to manage 4 or 5 keyword phrases into a single piece can be a bit overwhelming. Use an individual blog or article to focus on 1 to 3 of your targeted keyword phrases. This will keep your content sounding natural and help you get the most out of your keywords and the overall message of your web content. Remember, you are writing your content for people first, search engines second, and that your web content should incorporate your keywords in a way that sounds natural in the text.

If you do not have the time or the skills to write search engine optimized content for your website, contact We Do Web Content today and ask about our SEO copywriting services!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have a first page search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Marketing Tips for Lawyers: Newsletter Content

November 10, 2009 - Newsletters are a fantastic opportunity to reconnect with current or past clients as well as start new relationships with the potential clients who have contacted you through your website. When planning out the content for your newsletter there are a few important factors to keep in mind:

1. Length - Newsletters shouldn't be very long, 2-3 pages is fine. More than that and you may lose readers along the way instead of ensuring that your best content is being read by your target audience.

2. Format - Newsletters don't have to look as fancy as a web page but your layout is just as important. Look at newsletters that you find stimulating to get a sense of how to place your content as well as how to use color blocks, images, fonts, etc. to break up the text to create interest and allow readers to easily identify one complete article from another.

3. Cover your bases - Don't include several articles in your newsletter that all basically say the same thing. Not everyone on your email list will have the same type of lawsuit, so include valuable tips and information on a variety of the type of cases you specialize in.

4. Get personal - Newsletters are a great opportunity to get your clients informed about your practice. If you have added a new lawyer to your firm, won a significant case, received an award, or were involved in a successful charitable event, make a note of it in your newsletter. These don't have to be 300 word articles and they go a long way in helping to put a human face on your law firm.

5. Stay seasonal - You want your newsletter to sound as immediate as possible, so when planning out your content, think about what is happening in the world at the time you intend to distribute. For example, a newsletter sent in Nov/Dec can have an article about how to drive defensively around drunk drivers or the importance of going to consumer websites to look for toy recalls and other hazards. Of course the information should in some way correlate to the type of law you practice, but you also want to include information people want to read, so think outside the box! If you are sending out a newsletter near an important election, you can discuss what new/potential laws (if any) may affect your clients and how.

6. Start with your website - If you constantly produce new content for your website (including blogs!), these are fabulous resources to look at first. Many of the people on your email lists have not seen every piece of content on your website. If you have written a great article (or several), publishing that content in an online newsletter is a great way to get that information to your target audience. The best part is that since you are emailing this newsletter and not publishing it online, you can safely pull your already published content without worrying about creating a duplicate content situation.

For more tips on how to get the most out of your web content and drive more traffic to your website, Contact We Do Web Content today!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Conquer Local Search By Focusing on Geo Specifics

November 6, 2009 - As a lawyer, unless you are licensed and practicing in several states, the vast majority of your clients will be confined to a specific geographic region. Needless to say, this focus should have you naturally going after a targeted presence on local directories, but you should also extend your local search efforts to your SEO content by creating state specific web content.

Focus On Your Region

For example, a lot of people may be searching for information on truck accidents, but for your marketing purposes, your SEO content should discuss the specifics of truck accidents in the state where your law firm resides. People in Arizona may be mildly interested in national truck accident statistics, but you can bet if given the option they would much rather hear about the chances of being in a truck accident where they live.

Provide Expertise on State and Local Laws

Your state specific laws and procedures also have an important place in your SEO content. People looking for legal advice in Maryland for example, would be much more interested in reading an article titled "How to File a Personal Injury Lawsuit in Maryland" than an article titled "Personal Injury Lawsuits". By focusing on the region where you practice law, you are helping to drive organic searches by potential clients in your region and making the most of your SEO content efforts by targeting your local audience.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have a first page search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Marketing Legal Websites: Clarity Builds Credibility

October 30, 2009 - Building your legal practice, and your website as a credible source of information means being open, honest, and clear about your purpose and intentions. When designing the look of your website as well as planning the content that will appear on your website, transparency is the key to credibility.

You are a lawyer maintaining a website that focuses on legal services. When you design your website, it should be abundantly clear that you are a lawyer and that your website covers legal topics that relate to your specific practice. Trying to hide that you are a lawyer, or producing content that focuses on unrelated topics to your law firm just to draw visitors will not help your bottom line. No one who is "tricked" into landing on a legal website when in search of different information is suddenly going to realize they need or want your services. People don't like getting tricked, especially by a professional in the legal field that should know better.

Everything about your website should focus on you, your legal niche, and serving your clients. If the content or design does not focus on these elements and promote clear and obvious navigation, ease of use, and helpful information, then your website has failed in its purpose and needs to be redesigned ASAP.

Advertising and Blogs

The concept of transparency also extends to advertising. Do not buy into a PPC campaign or other online advertising medium that does not focus on the type of law you practice or pretends to link to something other than a legal website. If you have an external blog that hosts web content that covers a variety of legal and non-legal issues, i.e. - a blog that covers car accidents as well as the latest car designs, car shows, car accessories, and the like, you can promote that blog as a car blog and not just a personal injury/car accident lawyer blog. However, on that blog you also need to make it perfectly clear that you are a Personal Injury Lawyer and this blog is an extension of your practice.

Tricking your blog readers into clicking on your personal injury website when they think they'll be directed to more information about car parts or the like is shady, unprofessional, and will result in complaints instead of conversions.

Be proud of your practice, share your valuable information with the world, and always be clear about your law firm and your intentions.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

SEO Content Ideas: Mix Keywords with Desire

October 30, 2009 - Creating quality, relevant SEO content for your legal practice can be a little tricky. Sometimes it's difficult to think of topics to write about or how exactly to approach those topics.

That is part of the reason why SEO keywords are important. When you can identify the keywords that are aimed at your target audience, you can begin to understand what people are searching for online. This however, is only half the equation. After you have identified the keywords that audience has searched for you need to determine how those keywords and phrases relate to content and what type of the information people are seeking in conjunction with those terms.

For example, if "car accident injuries" received 3 million hits last month, what information about car accident injuries are people searching for? Are they looking for information about common injuries? Treatments for common injuries? How to sue someone for neglect after sustaining car accident injuries? You can look at similarly popular keywords to try to determine the overall search intention (at least generally), but looking at a keyword or phrase from this perspective is imperative in creating the type of content that people are looking for that happens to incorporate that term effectively.

In some situations this is easier said than done, and it is never a bad idea to write several articles around a popular keyword or phrase that dissects the topic from a variety of angles. You can then track the popularity of those articles through Google Analytics or any other tracking program and determine which articles are getting the most traffic, page views, reading times, etc. and use that information as research to determine what topics to focus on in the future and which to skip over.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

SEO Tips for Attorneys: Regain Value From An Old Website

October 29, 2009 - When search engines like Google scan websites for relevant placement in search engine results, one of the factors they consider is age. The age of a website is a minor, but still accounted for, factor when Google looks at what websites are deemed trustworthy. This concept of a website's age equaling some level of trust applies to your inbound and outbound links as well.

The concept of age can work in your favor, even if your website is outdated and static (meaning you haven't added new content in a long time). By optimizing your pre-existing website you can get the benefit of age and the benefits of SEO by applying SEO content and optimization tags and techniques. Unless your website was built on a terrible platform or there are other technical issues that would make search engine optimization more of a burden than a blessing, it is almost always a better idea to optimize the website you have owned for several years instead of scraping your domain and starting all over again.

Of course, every website should be looked at on a case by case basis, but search engines scan websites constantly, so even flooding your older website with a weekly influx of targeted and optimized SEO content can have you see a large boost in organic search engine results and traffic without having to start everything over from scratch. If your website has a lot of errors on it, i.e. - tons of broken links, duplicate content, dead end pages (without redirects), and other technical issues, it is imperative to get those problems fixed, or your new SEO efforts won't get much recognition by search engines since they will still be penalizing your website's navigational flaws.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Marketing Tips for Lawyers: Creating a Contact Form

October 28, 2009 - The main point of creating a website for your legal practice is to introduce your legal services to new customers and entice them to contact you. Displaying the physical address, phone number(s), and email addresses of your law firm prominently on several areas of your website (including your Contact Us) page is no-brainer, but what about a contact form?

There are several important reasons to provide and manage a contact form on your website.

1. Get the information you want and need - When potential customers send you an email asking about your services, they almost never give you all of the information you need. By creating a custom contact form you can ensure each lead you generate through your website gives you all of the information you require including their full name, address, email, phone number, the basics of their case, how they found your website, and whatever other information will be helpful.

2. Tracking Your Leads - You can design the contact form on your website to track how your lead entered your website, what keywords they used to find you, and other information that helps track the success of your website. This can lead to your website content development and other useful information to improve the quality of your web pages.

3. Helpful for clients - A contact form is simple and clearly instructs your reader what information to provide and further ensures that their information gets to a lawyer just by clicking a button. Filling out a few empty fields is easier for most people than constructing a long email, and the visitors to your website will appreciate that fact you provided an easy form to make the process easier for them.

Basically, contact forms are a win-win. It helps you organize and track the information you need from potential clients and helps those clients contact you easily and efficiently.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Internet Marketing for Lawyers: Why You Need SEO Content

October 27, 2009 - Creating a great website for your legal practice means paying close attention to a lot of details, including the layout, look, usability, navigation, and overall content of your website.

If you've taken the time and energy to design a professional legal website with the right images, navigational tools, layout, and maybe even a few well-written articles, why would you need SEO (search engine optimized) content?

Unfortunately computers, and even Google aren't perfect. You could write the most compelling and worthwhile article in the history of the Internet about personal injury lawsuits, but if that article does not contain the right SEO Meta Tags and keywords, it won't show up in search engine results, and no one will ever see it.

Search engines pull and sort web content based on their algorithms. They use search bots to scan your web content for relevant keywords, links, certain Meta Tags (such as Page Titles), duplicate content, and other factors to help determine its "relevancy" and eventual placement for any given search term. If your web content is lacking in these features, the 10,000 other similar articles that do contain those optimized features will appear before your article in organic search results.

The way people search online is also a major factor to take to heart. The vast majority of Internet users do not look past the first page of search results for any given query. That means if your article doesn't show up on page 1, the chances of anyone finding in through organic search are slim to none. When people optimize their website and web content for search engines, they often control several spaces on that first page of search results, meaning your articles and website are pushed even further back into oblivion. 

Creating a working website just isn't enough to compete with the hundreds of other law firms in your geographic area fighting for those top search engine results on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. You need to make sure your website is working for you to the best of its abilities by giving the search engines all of the information they need to place your web pages as close to the top as possible for your most sought after keywords.

If search engine optimization was a bonus a few years ago, it has since become a must-have feature for any website looking to generate online traffic and produce new leads online.  

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Online Marketing Tip: Social Media is Searchable

October 27, 2009 - We've talked a lot about why social media is such an exciting opportunity for lawyers to expand their web presence and generate traffic for their website. Part of the reason why this is successful is because social media is searchable, meaning it can and will appear in search engine results.

Because of the searchability factor in social networking, it is important for attorneys to carry their SEO efforts into their social media expansion. For example, after you have created a profile for your Facebook Fan Page and achieved a certain amount of fans, you will have the option of creating a customized URL. This is especially important for SEO purposes as a name with your keywords in it will appear in search engines for those keywords. For example, a custom URL with your law firm's name will appear in the search engine results for people typing your practice into Google or Bing. If you choose a name with SEO keywords like "Miami Medical Malpractice Attorney" / "your law firm name" you can get picked up for both your geographic keywords and your practice.

With the introduction of Google's Social Search as well as recent search agreements between Twitter, Google, and Bing to allow relevant "tweets" to show up alongside relevant search results, there has never been a better time to get involved in social networking, expand your brand, and increase your organic search engine results!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

Online Marketing Tips for Lawyers: Avoid Link Building Scams

October 26, 2009 - Creating a network of quality, in-bound links is a fantastic way to drive traffic to your website as well as build your online reputation and increase the page ranking of your website for search engines like Google. Of course, when it comes to link building a lot of people want to take short cuts which has given rise to one of the most pervasive SEO scams out there, the link building scam.

The truth is, there are more scam link building services out there than legitimate ones. If a company contacts you and says they can get you hundreds of "high authority" inbound links each month for $200, they are a scam. If they promise to submit your website to "thousands of directories" and the like, they are a scam that at best will only get you low-quality back links that can cause search engines to penalize you, zap your page rankings, and in some cases, cause irreversible damage, meaning you will have to scrap your entire website and start over again.

Yes, it can be that bad.

These link building scams take your money and then either create free web pages on multiple social networking websites (usually with duplicate content) that link back to your website (these pages have no rankings and hurt your website, not help it), and/or create back links to your company through other ineffective, illegal, and low-quality web pages that have nothing to do with your legal practice or geographic area (which also penalize your website).

Quality inbound links come from websites that  #1 - have a decent page rankings, and #2 - are in some way related to your website's purpose.

For example, let's say you are a personal injury lawyer with an article on your website about common injuries and treatment options for car accident victims. A good inbound link would be from a local physical therapy office that treats victims of car accidents. A bad inbound link would be from a company in India that sells gardening supplies. There is no reason why an international gardening supplies website should back link to an article about car accident injuries, but when you invest money in link building scams, those are the sort of backlinks that you get (if you get any).

As a lawyer, you know that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. Link building takes a lot of time and resources, which can be a pain; however, throwing away money on a scam that will only cost more money in long run to repair all of the damage is much, much worse.

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your online marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

5 Common Mistakes on Legal Websites

October 22, 2009 - Great websites don't just happen, they are made that way. While there are multiple strategies to getting a website just right, sometimes it's a little to easier to begin that process when you know what not to do. So with that in mind, we're presenting the 5 most common SEO content mistakes we've seen on legal websites. By avoiding these traffic-killing blunders, your website can begin to work for you, not against you.

5. Minimal web pages - If your legal website consists of 10 web pages, you are not only limiting your visitor's user experience, you're basically destroying any traffic-generating opportunities you can create through organic search traffic. A website isn't an advertisement. Creating a few pages that say, I'm a lawyer and these are basic areas of law that I practice, is just not enough information to build a relationship with a web user.

4. Hiding contact information - Web users need to know who you are, what you do, and where you are located. Hiding your contact information will have visitors on your website looking for another lawyer ASAP. The geographic region you are located in, as well as your office's physical address, phone numbers, directions, and a contact form should be prominently displayed throughout your website as well as clearly organized on a very visible and accessible Contact Us page.

3. Flash, Image, or Video Heavy Pages - Web design is a lesson in moderation. Creating webpages with giant, page consuming flash, too many pictures, or pages with just online videos can be overwhelming, difficult to load, or just too loud and distracting for your website's visitors. Keep the flash (if you must have it) light, make sure not to clutter up your web pages with too many images (especially if you are hosting ads in your sidebar), or include video after video with no text on the page. These types of web pages are not ranked well by search engines looking for relevant content and they diminish your visitor's experience.

2. Not editing for the web - People do not read online content the same way they read printed books or even newspapers, so editing your web content the same way you would edit for a print medium just doesn't work. Very long articles MUST be broken up into sub-sections and multiple pages if you want anyone to actually read them from beginning to end. Using subheadings, short paragraphs, bold to make key phrases pop on the screen, and other formatting considerations are critical in ensuring your reader actually reads your web content.

1. Not writing for your audience - The web content on your legal website needs to appeal to your target audience. That means first determining who your target audience is, and then creating articles, blogs, FAQs, and the like that speaks directly to them. Part of this means avoiding legalese and writing in a language they will understand. It also means writing about the topics that interest them the most in a voice and style they can identify with and that engages them. Writing dry, boring content won't win you any customers, nor will writing complex legal articles no one can understand or focusing on topics no one is searching for. Do your research first and write web content that matters to your potential clients.

Visit our library to get more information on common SEO mistakes for legal websites.

Learn more about We Do Web Content's SEO and marketing services for lawyers!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.

SEO Content Tip: Don't Expect Overnight Results

October 21, 2009 - In an economy where time literally equals money, it can be hard to step back and look at the bigger picture, but when it comes to SEO, that's exactly what you have to do.

It's impossible to say exactly when you will start seeing results from your search engine optimization efforts. If you are adding a good amount of SEO content every week, you should start seeing bumps in your traffic after the first few months, but that is a general guideline. You may start seeing results immediately and you may not notice significant traffic for a while and then all of a sudden it starts pouring in. The results of how quickly your SEO efforts will take effect will vary from case to case and depend on several different factors, some of which you can control and some that you cannot.

No one can "guarantee" that you'll start seeing fantastic results within an extremely short timeframe unless they are doing something unethical that might give you a strong initial burst before Google catches on, fixes the loophole, and penalizes your website.

SEO isn't a get-rich-quick scheme, it is a process that takes time, testing, tracking, and tweaking to make sure your website is performing the way it should for constantly evolving algorithms. This holds true for both the back-end efforts of your website's SEO as well as the front-end SEO content that We Do Web Content offers our clients.

Learn more about We Do Web Content's SEO and marketing services for lawyers!

Having search engine optimized copy makes it easy for search engines to find your Web pages. If your website doesn't have the top search engine ranking on Google, We Do Web Content can help boost your web marketing goals. We Do Web Content takes pride in producing high-quality and affordable SEO web copy that is clean, consistent, and formatted for Internet marketing. We get excited when your website's search engine ranking climbs and YOU ARE FOUND. Get started today - 1-888-521-3880.