Get Your Googlejuice

Googlejuice is the “magic elixir” when Google favors your website, according to “What Would Google Do?” author Jeff Jarvis.

Here are eight steps Mr. Jarvis recommends to increase your search engine marketing efforts:

1. Post lots of descriptive data about your firm on the web, and make sure it can be easily found by the search engines.

2. Write for both man and machine using clear language.

3. Keep web pages simple, with minimal use of moving parts.

4. Avoid hiding information in database-driven content management systems that are not readily available to search engine spiders.

5. Give all web pages a static “permalink” to serve both current and long tail searchers.

6. Create separate pages for separate topics. In the legal market, this translates to one page per practice area, attorney, office location, etc.

7. Encourage others to link to your site, and make it easy for them to do so.

8. Brand every page on your site, since you never know the entrance point for traffic coming to your site from the search engines.

I will add two more tips to round this list up to 10 tips for search engine marketing:

9. Know the keywords that searchers use when looking for your services. You can find keywords in your web logs or search tools like the Google AdWords Keyword Tool.

10. Add fresh content to your site once a week if possible. This gives the search engines a reason to return often.

Implement these steps and you will see your website visitor traffic increase gradually over time.

Please offer other suggestions via comments to this post.

Do Lawyers Really Need to Know about Widget Networks?

On more than one recent occasion, I've sat across from a lawyer who is talking about Google and not the law. This is both good and bad!

It's good news that attorneys understand the importance of search engine marketing in today's competitive business environment. Whether it is having the right meta tags or focusing on keyword density, the law firms that optimize their website for search engine performance will benefit from increased lead generation.

The bad news is that Internet marketing technology changes so rapidly, an attorney can get distracted from the practice of law. Spending time figuring out how and where you should be on Twitter and other social media may be important, but not more so than serving your clients.

What is the right balance? Client service comes first, followed closely by business development. A good first step is to determine how you can use Internet marketing techniques (email marketing, LinkedIn, blogs, etc.) to stay in touch with your current clients and existing prospects. These are the BEST sources for new revenue fast.

Pick some successful attorneys or law firms in your field of practice who you know are good at both rainmaking and using the Internet. Observe what they do to increase their visibility online, and emulate some of their best practices.

If you are not technically inclined, find someone who is to help you efficiently identify the search engine marketing techniques that are right for your firm.

By the way, there really is such a thing as "widget networks." More on this topic at a future date.