Is a blog considered advertising? The Virginia State Bar seems to think it is, and has brought misconduct charges against attorney and blogger Horace Hunter for refusing to include a disclaimer. Most state rules regarding attorney advertising are similar to Virginia’s, including the requirement of a disclaimer on advertising to avoid misleading the public. So if you have a legal blog, you might want to consider whether your blog is legal.

Blogs fall into a bit of a gray area, because, in many cases, bloggers are not directly selling from their blogs. These bloggers—Mr. Hunter claims to fall into this category—are simply imparting information and offering opinions on news within their field and about themselves or their company.

On the other hand, bloggers also often hope their blogs will encourage readers to hire them at some time in the future. The Virginia State Bar says Mr. Hunter falls into this category, arguing that discussions of past cases on his blog suggest he is using the blog to attract new business.

Unfortunately, the main criterion for labeling a blog as advertising seems to be intent, which is a notoriously slippery beast, since content can be interpreted in multiple ways. For example:

• Do you intend for your article to help your readers understand the implications of a recent ruling, or are you hoping it will demonstrate to them that they should hire you for similar cases?
• Did you announce your promotion because you are proud and excited? Or because you are hoping it will encourage more people to hire you?

Gyi Tsakalakis analyzed this issue in more detail, including defining “blog” and “advertising,” in “Legal Blogging vs. Advertising & Marketing.”

If you write a legal blog, it’s worth considering how your local bar association will interpret it.

Information in this post gathered in association with Chicago Business Lawyers.

Do you know what a one-sheet is? Do you know that having one can help you market your law firm? A one-sheet is a one-page marketing piece used by music bands. Other industries use a similar document, too. And you can use a one-sheet as an easy way to market your law firm to potential clients and even boost referrals.

The advantage of a one-sheet, as opposed to other types of marketing materials, is that it’s short and to the point. People are more likely to read something short. If they’re interested in your firm based on the one-sheet, then they’ll be more motivated to look for more detailed information.

Kate Battle discusses how to structure a one-sheet for a law firm in “Creating a One-Sheet for Your Law Firm.” Here’s an overview of her format:

1. Create a header, similar to a letterhead, with your firm’s name, the names of your attorneys and their practice areas, and your main contact information. Also include your fee structure.

2. Next, write one paragraph with a brief overview of your firm’s history and your unique selling proposition.

3. Then get more specific, with information about your attorneys and their achievements.

4. Next, share one or more tidbits of newsworthy information or testimonials from happy clients.

5. Finish by providing URLs where people can find out more about you. This could be a list of recent articles or publications, events your law firm is holding, or even social media profiles of your attorneys, as long as they are professional profiles, like those on LinkedIn.

Remember, keep it to one page. Then print some hard copies and keep the digital file easily accessible for attaching to emails. Now you can provide potentials clients and referral sources with a snapshot of your services.

Information in this post gathered in association with a Boca Raton divorce lawyer.

If you’re using videos to market your legal services, you may be wondering if the time and effort are actually worth it. Or maybe you’re wondering if you should jump into this marketing channel. Video can be very effective, and now a new reporting tool, YouTube Hot Spots, can help you improve your attorney videos.

Dustin Ruge explains this new tool and how to use the data in “Using YouTube Hot Spots to Help Improve Your Attorney Videos.”

Hot Spots isn’t a new report, rather it’s a new section of the YouTube Insight report that helps you see how viewers respond to your videos. According to Ruge, you need to have at least 300-600 views before the data will be useful. So if you have multiple web properties, embed it everywhere it is relevant.

Ruge also shares some conclusions he has drawn after evaluating Hot Spot data for several attorney videos:
• Use images and other visuals. These types of videos tend to get more views than a video of a person talking.
• Viewers seem to prefer shorter videos, based on increased viewership at the beginning and ends of videos.
• Based on the previous observation, calls to action belong at the beginning and end of a video.

One thing to keep in mind is that Hot Spots compares the metrics for your video to other YouTube videos of similar length, but not necessarily similar content. In other words, your 60-second attorney video is likely competing with 60-second cute kitten videos.

Hot Spots is still a new metric, so it’s likely to undergo some tweaking over time. Hopefully comparing similar types of video will be one of the upcoming changes. Even with the current limitations, though, Hot Spots data can help you improve your attorney videos and online marketing.

Information in this post gathered in association with Chicago Injury lawyers.

Most linking advice focuses on securing inbound links. Less mention is made of linking out, and in fact, when outbound linking is mentioned, it’s usually to advise against it. The reasoning seems to be that inbound links increase your authority with the search engines, so are good; but outbound links “leak” PageRank, and so are bad. This thinking is short-sighted.

A San Antonio personal injury lawyer with The Bates Law Firm has assisted the CaseDetails editorial team in identifying topics of importance to readers of this blog.

Rob Chant agrees, and has written an enlightening column on Why Small Businesses Should Link Out.

Google rewards sites that link out

None of the search engines explicitly admit it, but most of them probably use outbound links in ranking calculations. Given that their goal is to send searchers to sites offering valuable information about their topic of choice, it makes sense for linking out to count as a plus. As long as you’re not linking to spammy sites, your outbound links add value to your site.

Trust also counts in rankings, and linking to other valuable and trusted sites implies that yours is also trustworthy.

Outbound links benefit visitors

You know you can’t cover every aspect of a topic in a single page or even a series of blog posts. And other writers may offer a different perspective. This additional information will be useful to many of your readers.

Link out from every post at least once. Readers who know they can count on your links to provide extra value are more likely to come back to read more. You might even be able to get links back from some of the sites you link to, but don’t link out only for its potential benefits to you. Link out because it’s the right thing to do for your visitors.

Some ideas for outbound links from a law firm’s website would be to pro bono legal organizations serving your geography or area of practice, links to area law schools, or links to legal organizations with whom the lawyers at your firm are affiliated.

If you’re not currently linking out, try it and see if it doesn’t make you and your readers happier.

Good search engine optimization (SEO) is important for attracting search engines, but it’s even more important to attract and engage human visitors. They are the ultimate clients and they like easy-to-use websites.

A well-designed navigation system makes a website easy to use. It shows visitors right away which page they’ve landed on and what it is about. It also tells them what else the site has to offer and which pages they’ve already visited.

Larisa Thomason’s Web Site Usability Checklist offers tips on what a good navigation system should offer.

Consistency: Keeping the navigation bar identical on every page ensures that visitors know how to get around your site without guessing. A single file containing all your navigation elements—called a Server Side Include (SSI)—that every page can access and load makes this easy to accomplish.

Self-explanatory links: Home, About and FAQ might be boring, but it’s crystal clear where they lead.

Text links: Not every visitor may be able to use a menu created with a dynamic scripting language (such as JavaScript). If you use a dynamic menu, be sure to also include basic text links, at least for your main links.

A site map: This can make the difference between lost visitors leaving in frustration and finding what they were looking for. Make it a simple list of text-based links and link to it from every page.

Lake County personal injury attorneys at Thompson & Evangelo, P.A. have assisted the SettlementBoard editorial team in identifying topics of importance to readers of this blog.

A home page link: Remember that people may want to go to your home page from an internal page. Make it easy for them.

A second home page link: From your site logo. Many people expect this and will click your logo before looking for a separate home page link.

A clear navigation system, with built-in redundancy for confused visitors, will improve your site’s usability and is likely to keep your visitors happier. To read all the checklists, start with the checklist for branding, the checklist of content, and then the checklist on feedback.

Making it easy for visitors to provide feedback can turn them into clients.

With the rise in the popularity of social media, many Web users expect all websites to have social elements, even law firm websites. They want to be able to ask you questions or offer comments about your legal services. Providing an email address is one popular option, but an even better idea is a feedback form.

As explained in Larisa Thomason’s Web Site Usability Checklist, a form gives you some control over the format and content of the communication. It also protects your email address from the spiders that extract addresses from websites.

Feedback forms are convenient for you, but you also want them to be convenient for your visitors. If they’re too hard to use, they might not bother, and you could lose a client.

Design your form with these tips in mind:

• Be short: Long forms scare off prospective clients, especially those who’ve never done business with you.
• Only require basic information: One way to keep a form short is to require only information necessary for you to reply, like name and email or phone. If there’s information that you’d like to collect but isn’t critical, make it optional. This also helps international visitors, who may not have a ZIP code and wouldn’t be able to submit a form requiring one.
• Highlight required fields: Make it obvious which fields are required. Common ways to do this include a red asterisk or using a different background color.
• Include other ways to contact you: Most people will probably use your feedback form, but some people still prefer the phone or even a formal letter. So make sure your phone number and mailing address appear clearly on the page.

A feedback option is an important, but often overlooked, element in a successful website design. For more information on other elements of design, read the content checklist and branding checklist. Coming soon: one final checklist on website navigation.

Generate leads by answering visitors' questions

If you’ve already optimized the obvious—and easy—areas of your website to improve its visibility, your next step might be to try to boost your site with Q&As (Questions and Answers), either by answering questions on Q&A sites, or by creating a Q&A page on your own site. These Q&As are of particular value to law firms and those seeking legal advice, due to the number of questions the average person has about matters of law.

As reported by Pavel Israelsky in his SEOmoz post entitled “6 Reasons Why Q&A Sites Can Boost Your SEO in 2011 (Despite Google’s Farmer Update)“, Q&A sites’ popularity has been growing as people get more comfortable with using online social interaction to gather information. They also rank well in search results. Some less-authoritative sites were felled by Google’s Farmer update, but the stronger sites are still doing well.

You can use Q&As two ways:
• Answer questions on already established sites
• Start your own Q&A site or section of your current site

Answer questions
The simplest way to start is to find open questions related to your area of expertise as showcased on your website, and answer them. Most Q&A sites allow you to put links either within the text or in a sources section. Link back to appropriate pages on your website or blog to boost your inbound links. Two popular Q&A sites are Quora and Askville (operated by Amazon).

Start with questions related to your main keywords – the phrases you are targeting on your website (Read more about keyword selection here). Once you have a good link profile for these, move on to secondary keywords. Do this slowly to avoid Google becoming suspicious of a sudden influx of links.

Most Q&A sites’ links are nofollow and don’t help PageRank. But Google still sees them, and they still drive highly targeted traffic to your site.

Set up your own Q&A pages
Create a subdirectory on your website for your Q&A pages, and post some relevant questions for people to answer. To gain better authority and visibility, keep your Q&A pages tightly focused on your niche. If you want to branch out, create a new site.

Your Q&A section can boost your entire site’s credibility as more people visit to ask and answer questions.

Information and data contained in this post gathered in association with Chicago Brain Injury Lawyers at Phillips Law Offices.

When redesigning your website don't forget SEO

Are you looking to update your firm’s website? Don’t forget to consider SEO in your website redesign. Making your site user-friendly and appealing depends a lot on SEO. Mark Jackson, in an article on Clickz called Redesigning Your Website? Don’t Neglect SEO suggests the following.

Avoid common SEO mistakes by keeping these tips in mind:

Do Your Keyword Research. This sounds elementary, but it’s crucial to having your site perform well in SEO. Use keyword tools such as Google AdWords, Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery. Consider looking at existing paid search campaigns for click-through rates (CTRs), time spent on site and conversion rates.

Determine How to Be Competitive. Choosing good keywords is only half the battle as only a few of them will be competitive. Figure out which ones are competitive by doing a Google search for your target keywords. Take the top-10 ranking sites and analyze them to look for content patterns, best practices, etc.

Build Your Information Architecture. This is an important SEO factor for website redesign. Make customers want to visit! Your site should be appealing, search engine friendly and have content that adds to the user experience.

Review Your History. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, right? SEO for website redesign requires that you determine where you were getting your traffic. Keep elements that were working for your firm in the new site.

Include Redirects. Use a 301 redirect from every page of the old site to the new site. If you can keep the same URL during the relaunch, great. If you can’t, however, your URL structure is going to change. The 301 redirect will automatically connect the user to the new site.

SEO for website redesign is key to the success of your site update. Figure out how to make SEO work for your firm’s new site. Keep checking in at CaseDetails.com for information on link building, adding video to your website and more!