There is no doubt about it, the internet is replacing the traditional advertising attorneys used to do like yellow pages, newspapers, billboards & even television in some markets. The good news is that if you haven’t started advertising on the web yet, you haven’t completely missed the boat. Here are three tips for you to get going:
SEO, SEO, SEO. Start to optimize your website. You need to be found on Google, Yahoo & Bing. Not just when someone types in your name, you need to show up on the first page when someone types in Personal Injury Attorney Las Vegas. Instead of reaching for the phone book, people are now going to search engines to find local attorneys. It doesn’t matter what market you are in, there are literally thousands of searches every month for a local attorney in your practice area. Don’t you want to be found by the people that are actively looking for you! Search Engine Optimization (SEO) does that for you.
Don’t try this at home – Yes, there are many things that you can do on your own to help your cause, but there is only so much tweaking of your title tags, description tags, keyword tags, headline optimization, bullets, and other simple SEO techniques you can do yourself. Whatever money you spend on a competent SEO professional is a bargain compared to 1) What it would cost you to hire an in-house SEO expert 2) What you bill out on an hourly basis. Even if you work at it for 4-5 hours a month (which isn’t nearly enough),what you could bill out at your hourly rate will more than pay for an SEO Professional. And their time will be spent on Off-Page Optimization such as link building & other more powerful techniques.
Speaking of Linking – Get familiar with Social Networking – If you aren’t familiar with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, del.icio.us & others, there’s no time like the present. Use these tools to communicate with others in the legal field, keep in touch with your former clients, and just keep relationships warm while cultivating new ones. You shouldn’t look at it as advertising, look at it as relationship-building. Those same people will be a good source of referrals in the future, and you will also establish yourself as an authority in your field.
Bonus Tip – Blog – Blogging is a great way to keep fresh content on your website & another way to give simple free tidbits to add value to your services. If you blog, do it no less than 1 time a week, preferably 3 times a week. You don’t need to write a novel each time, just between 300-500 words, about 2-3 paragraphs. If you go above & beyond of what you say you’re going to do, then people will appreciate it. Like we hope you do by giving you a bonus tip here : )
We encourage your feedback & input. Do you know of any other ways to generate more business from the internet?
