Acquiring extra visitors to your law firm’s website is just half the battle. Being confident that they are calling you when they arrive is seriously important. Here are several ideas you can easily employ to produce more interaction through your law firm’s site:

1. Make certain your telephone number is shown prominently on each and every page of your website - This may seem to be obvious, but it’s important. You shouldn’t make visitors have to click through to your contact us page. Showing your phone number inside the top part of your firm’s website, adjacent to the firm’s logo or towards the right side, is a good spot. Just help make sure it can be easily found.

2. Include a submission form on each and every page of your site – Not every potential client wants to speak via telephone. For people that would prefer to email the firm, provide them a form to do so. Better still, make sure that form submission is accessible on every page on the website.

3. Offer a free whitepaper a potential client can get in exchange for their contact details – This not only permits you to have interaction with your website visitors, it even allows you to build trust and establish your firm as an authority. Here is an example of this strategy in action on our very own site.

4. Present a newsletter sign-up – Constructing a list of interested readers is a excellent method to market your law firm. Make certain you are following up by sending out a newsletter at the very least once a month.

You can download our Complete Library of Guides for Lawyers here. The guides are filled with helpful tips and examples so you can get the most out of your online marketing.

Attorneys regularly inform me that while they put out the hard work to craft and maintain a blog, they find it difficult to get more readers. I have made up a list of several strategies that with minimal effort, will help to give further publicity to your firm’s blog.

1. Distribute the blog to applicable web directories. Even though this should seem obvious, I am stunned at how many lawyers neglect to actually do this. Distributing your firm’s blog to directories can help to give men and women looking for your blawg content the potential to discover it. The following is a checklist of a few blog directories to get you started: Blawg, Technorati, MyBlogLog, and ABA Blawg Directory. There are countless others as well. Just conduct a search for “Legal Blog Directories” and start submitting.

2. Use Twitter to send out your blawg posts. The significant thing about Twitter is that like-minded people can come across one another and share thoughts and content. You can implement a program, for instance twitterfeed, to automatically send out your content as you publish them to your blog.

3. LinkedIn Groups and Facebook. Spreading your articles and thoughts with fellow law firms and group members through LinkedIn and Facebook is a very good means to get additional exposure. Start by subscribing to appropriate LinkedIn groups such as Legal Blogging, Lawyer Marketing – Grow Your Practice, Legal Marketing, and any others that may be more practice specific. Share your posts with the LinkedIn groups. If you produce useful material, people will visit to read and subscribe.

4. Comment on other Attorney’s blawgs. The very dynamic of blogging lends itself to engaging and conversation. Take time to browse other interesting blog articles and remark on these, expressing your thoughts. DO NOT SPAM. The idea of this exercise is to include yourself in the blogging community and participate in the discussion, not spam others.

5. Take advantage of social bookmark sites to submit your most effective legal blog posts. Uploading a great post to sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and Delicious will drive readers to your blawg. If others like the articles you write, they will “vote” for it. This can bring new eyeballs to your posts.

Law firm web marketing begins with a built-in difficulty concerning the content you are writing for the website. It is because the subject material is sophisticated, comprehensive, and requires an advanced degree to understand completely. The content on your website is confronted with the unenviable task of describing, in layman’s terms, very intricate subjects while at the same time struggling with the short lived focus of internet users.

It is essential to recognize that authoring content for the web is unique and must be handled differently than other kinds of traditional writing.

Effective law firm internet advertising involves being familiar with how to craft internet copy

I am going to address writing website content from the perspective of usability and engaging your visitors. Even though it is also valuable to have an understanding of how to craft website content for seo,I will reserve that issue for another post.

The following are a few ideas to keep in mind when writing copy for your legal website and/or blog:

• People visiting your website glance over the web pages…they don’t read them – Keep your paragraphs and sentences simple. Make use of headlines and bolding that highlight your main messages.
• Utilize bullet points - Consumers enjoy lists on the web. Any time lists and bullets are applied correctly, a customer can more easily scan and process the points you address.
• Be conversational, less “marketing speak” – I consistently point out that people prefer to purchase from other people, not faceless law firms. This is particularly legitimate when offering professional products and services. Be sure you compose with your style, while keeping a professional tone.
• Stay away from legal writing – Not only doesn’t the average person have an understanding of it, but these people will quickly write off your material and proceed to another site. Focus is fleeting on the internet, if a prospective customer does not understand what you are stating, they will quickly go somewhere else.
• Employ pictures, video, and designs in your content (where applicable) – This makes your content more visually attractive and pulls the readers in.

A fantastic book to read on the subject is Net Copy by Nick Usborne. It is a easy read that discusses how to approach writing content for the web.

Taking a deeper look at the content on your website will boost the effectiveness of your lawyer internet advertising.

Getting your firm found in local search results is becoming increasingly important. Roughly forty percent of all search requests executed every month have some type of local intent (for example: city or state name, zip code, community, and so forth.). There are certain methods and factors that are influential in helping your law firm website perform well for local searches.

1. Categorize Your Firm The Right Way

Picking the proper categories for your firm in local listings is quite important. Quite a few firms do not devote adequate time thinking about which category labels to use. They dismiss this as a trivial step. When your potential clients are not looking up a specific law firm by name, they first find firms by category. If you don’t associate your firm with the category they are seeking, you won’t be found.

2. The Value of Backlinks and Citiations

Hyperlinks From Other Websites: Backlinks are the currency of the internet. A link to your site is like a vote for your site in the eyes of the search engines. All else being equal, a lawyer site that has additional backlinks from local and pertinent sites will acquire more presence in local search results.

Citations: Citations are references to your firm name, address, and telephone number on various other web sites. These references do not have to include a link to your web site. A good example of a citation might be an online attorney directory where your practice is listed, but not linked to. Another would be a local yellow pages site.

3. The Title Of Your Firm

Your law firm title (ie: the name of your firm) is a very important factor for ranking well in the local search engines. You want your title to be consistent across the listings as well as having it include related phrases to your law firm’s practice. Having uniformity helps your practice create confidence in the eyes of search engines. Integrating appropriate phrases in your title helps your practice get better placement when individuals perform queries. As an example, The Law Offices of Joe Smith, based in Chicago, could create a title called Law Offices of Joe Smith | Chicago Criminal Lawyer. Just keep the title consistent and uncomplicated. Do not attempt to stuff too many keywords into your title.

Websites, when done properly, can be very effective advertising for lawyers. Today I will focus on why you need multiple calls to action on your law firm’s website.

Depending on the prospect that arrives on your site, you will see a variety of ways they choose to interact with elements on your web page. This is why it’s important to provide several means of getting them to take a desired action.

When designing our website, we can’t really tell how others will respond to the design since we all have unique tastes. Just because we like it does not mean someone else will. This is the reason that we offer different ways to contact our law firm.

As an illustration, say I want to write a guide that appeals to people with legal problems in my field of practice. What I need to do is display a professional looking graphic of the guide which also is a link to download page where a prospect receives the guide in exchange for contact information. In addition, I will write a short sentence underneath the graphic which links to the same download page. This way, I will capture people that wish to click on the picture as well as the text.

If you were to place another picture with an offer to get a free consultation, as well as a text link for the same thing, and include your firm’s phone number you will appeal to prospects ready to talk now. Some potential clients will want to download a free guide while others are ready to talk today. Giving multiple ways to get in touch with you will increase the chances of visitors to your site converting to prospects.

“If a prospect wants to contact me they go to my contact us page!”

Even though you should have a contact us page, you need to offer value to your site visitors. Put yourself in their shoes. What reasons do they have to get in touch with you? When you provide value in the form of a free guide or free case evaluation, you are giving them a great reason to call or submit their contact information.

By implementing these ideas on your website, you will see how effective advertising for lawyers through the web can be.