*****************************************************************
Message delivered directly to members of the group:
internet_marketing_articleblaster@yahoogroups.com
*****************************************************************
Please consider this free-reprint article written by:
Henry Harlow
==================
IMPORTANT - Publication/Reprint Terms
- You have permission to publish this article electronically in
free-only publications such as a website or an ezine as long as
the bylines are included.
- You are not allowed to use this article for commercial
purposes. The article should only be reprinted in a publicly
accessible website and not in a members-only commercial site.
- You are not allowed to post/reprint this article in any
sites/publications that contains or supports hate, violence,
porn and warez or any indecent and illegal sites/publications.
- You are not allowed to use this article in UCE (Unsolicited
Commercial Email) or SPAM. This article MUST be distributed in
an opt-in email list only.
- If you distribute this article in an ezine or newsletter, we
ask that you send a copy of the newsletter or ezine that
contains the article to henryharlow[at]cfl.rr.com (replace [at]
with @)
- If you post this article in a website/forum/blog, ALL links
MUST be set to hyperlinks and we ask that you send a copy of
the URL where the article is posted to
henryharlow[at]cfl.rr.com (replace [at] with @)
- We request that you ask permission from the author if you
want to publish this article in print.
The role of iSnare.com is only to distribute this article as
part of its Article Distribution feature (
http://www.isnare.com/distribution.php ). iSnare.com does NOT
own this article, please respect the author's copyright and
this publication/reprint terms. If you do not agree to any of
these terms, please do not reprint or publish this article.
==================
Article Title: Law Firm Internet Marketing An Executive Summary
Using The Q&A Format � Part IV
Author: Henry Harlow
Word Count: 1618
Article URL: http://www.isnare.com/?aid=81179&ca=Marketing
Format: 64cpl
Author's Email Address: henryharlow[at]cfl.rr.com (replace [at]
with @)
Easy Publish Tool: http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=81179
================== ARTICLE START ==================
You mentioned �marketing packages�. How much should I be
spending on a marketing budget on my website in law firm
Internet marketing.
This is an �it depends� question. It depends on your particular
market place (are you in Peoria or Manhattan), your competitors
(your keyword competitors I mean) and how fast you want to see
results (slow build of traffic or faster build of traffic) with
your law firm Internet marketing. I can say this definitely �
don�t buy an Internet marketing website unless you are prepared
to market it at some decent monthly level right out of the gate.
Lets move on to the �it depends� part a bit more in depth. If
you want fast results out of the gate then you need to do Pay
Per Click (PPC) advertising. This is a unique skill set in
itself - people do this exclusively as a profession so it can
get complex. That said being that complex is unlikely to be the
case for a solo or small firm particularly in a less then major
market (major being Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, etc.).
If you are in a medium to small market you can handle this I am
sure on your own with maybe a little coaching since once you
set it up you can leave it alone for weeks or even months
before tweaking it. Your keyword research tells you what
keywords you will be bidding on with PPC law firm Internet
marketing. . You can read a couple of books on the subject from
http://Amazon.com and read all about it at Google, MSN, Yahoo
and ASK that all have sections of their site to explain how PPC
works on their site. You can begin ads at the either MSN, Yahoo
or http://ASK.com to get an idea of what you are dealing with
first since if you make mistakes there you won�t lose much
money like you can on Google. Google has almost half of the
traffic so you want to be on Google with your PPC law firm
Internet marketing but go to the minor leagues first is my
advice then go to Google. You can learn how to do this yourself
or give it to a trusted assistant to master. The only proviso is
if you are billing over $100 per hour your time is better spent
doing billable hours or better still managing other aspect of
the marketing process since you almost certainly can farm this
task out to someone with expertise for $100 per hour or less.
Now there is more to law firm Internet marketing of course than
doing PPC ads. You will need someone to submit your site to
secondary search engines/directories with Google Page Ranks
over 4. Never, ever buy a software package that promises to
submit you to hundreds or thousands of secondary search engines
� this can lead to the kiss of death from a search engine that
bans you for doing that. You are not doing this primarily for
the traffic but for high quality links to your site that raises
your page rank. You will want to write articles and submit those
to high page rank article sites - again for the high quality
links. Lastly, you will want to put out press releases at press
release sites as well for the quality links. Never, ever buy
links or get into reciprocal link plans since this also can be
the kiss of death for your site from search engines. So there
is more you can do to market your site that would cost some
time and/or money. It all depends on how fast you want to build
your law firm Internet marketing systems is my take. Overall you
need to take a long-term view and build consistently,
persistently over time and you will reap the reward. Once you
have built your page rank you can cut back or stop all of your
PPC ads. Think like a manager and entrepreneur here since a
website is an investment that will produce a return on that
investment if you do it well over time plus pay you again when
you sell it like a house is sold at a profit.
You said something about ��tell you that you also need a blog
with your website�. What is a blog and do I need a blog in law
firm Internet marketing?
A blog is defined by http://wikipedia.com as:
�A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a website
where regular entries are made (such as in a journal or diary)
and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer
commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food,
politics, or local news; some function as more personal online
diaries.�
The ABA reports there are 70,000 new blogs posted online each
day and that about 6% of lawyers have a blog. They do have
advantages of course in law firm Internet marketing. They are
cheap to build with little tech skills needed to write to a
blog. They are even free or low fee to host. Free is available
at http://blogger.com and a fee site is available at
http://typepad.com for $5 to $15 per month. If you are going to
have a blog you need to own the domain name, get a host and get
blogging software. From a law firm Internet marketing
perspective most blogs do not provide that much of a benefit in
support of a website (the main support is having a link from
your blog to your website � also you would not want a link from
your blog to your website if the blog had a lower page rank than
your website anyway) and they do not replace a website.
Additionally, if you are going to have a blog that has high
page rank be prepared to submit something of quality to it at
least 2 or 3 times per week. Yes, per week. Blogging experts
say you should expect to spend 2 to 4 hours per week on writing
for the blog. I don�t think this is marketing time well spent
for most lawyers. You could do much better building your
referral network with this time. Thus my answer is �no� to the
blog idea unless you are in a larger firm where several
attorneys are dividing the writing duties or you have
associates who are good at this type of writing work and have
no other way to contribute to the marketing process or even
better still some talented paralegals who could do the major
blog writing ghosting for you that you add the finishing
touches. You will need to buy some books on blogging for
business purposes to learn more about what is required in a
successful business blog which I am sure you can find on
http://Amazon.com. Additionally, blogs have more issues from an
ethical perspective so do check your state bar rules. Finally,
you might want to check out http://www.blawg.org. No I did not
misspell �blog� I intended �blawg� that is a way of putting
�law� inside �blog� to designate blogs that focus on lawyers
and legal issues. This site is a �search engine� for blawgs and
legal sites of all types. You could also check out
http://www.blawgrepublic.com/ as well.
What do I need to be concerned about around websites/blogs with
respect to bar rules and ethical considerations?
Yes indeed and it is all very confusing since it varies by
state. One of the Internet�s authorities (and an attorney)
Dennis Kennedy at http://www.DennisKennedy.com says the rules
for law firm Internet marketing are �impossibly confusing�.
Mainly you need to find out from your bar if the advertising
rules apply to websites or blogs and if there are specific
rules for websites or blogs. Finally, some states might even
require very specific disclaimers on the site. Bottom line you
need to check in your state. If you want to see a specific
disclaimer for a blog site go to Dennis�s blog at
http://DennisKennedy.com/blog/.
Where else can I read about implementing law firm Internet
marketing?
One place to look to learn more about implementing law firm
Internet marketing is at Google itself. Search engines do not
tell us all of the factors or details (called their algorithm)
they look at in determining page ranks on their search engine.
This is proprietary information for them. Google does tell us
in general what they are looking for in page ranking. If you
read what they say at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters
you will see what I have been talking about is indeed what
Google is looking for and if you do what Google wants you will
be right with all of the others almost certainly with your law
firm Internet marketing.
OK, we have made it to the end of our executive briefing. If
you follow what you find here your law firm Internet marketing
will get you new clients at a reasonable cost. Who could want
more than that? If you want to know more I found the following
books to be of value for �newbies� to the law firm Internet
marketing game:
The Ultimate Guide to Electronic Marketing for Small Business
by Tom Antion
Call To Action by Bryan Eisenberg and Jeffrey Eisenberg
Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing For Dummies by Peter Kent
Blogging for Business: Everything You Need to Know and Why You
Should Care by Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos.
About The Author: Henry has individually coached well over 500
attorneys. You can get more free, in depth and objective
information on increasing your revenue while reducing your work
hours available now at http://www.law-firm-marketing-coach.com
Please use the HTML version of this article at:
http://www.isnare.com/html.php?aid=81179
================== ARTICLE END ==================
For more free-reprint articles by Henry Harlow please visit:
http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=Henry+Harlow
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/internet_marketing_articleblaster/
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
internet_marketing_articleblaster-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
No comments:
Post a Comment