CaseDetails.com - Internet Marketing for Law Firms

Woohoo! A short note today - I’ve seen this in the past but have never commented on it. CaseDetails.com is #1 in Google for “lawyer SEO” and #7 for “attorney SEO”. Are they high-volume targets? Nope. Are they high-yield targets? You betcha.

Seeing how I haven’t really tried too hard to linkbuild for these keywords, this is a good example of how accurate META tagging and good content can sometimes be enough to achieve good search engine rankings.

[update 102907 - well, the only constant is change. I'm back down to #4 on lawyer SEO. Maybe this post offended them. *L*]

Technorati Tags: SEO, search engine rankings

An XML sitemap is a simple way to “spoon feed” your page locations and other info (like page importance, update period, etc.) to the search engines. Through the recently-adopted Sitemaps.org XML sitemap standard, one file can serve the top 4 search engines. Most webmasters know about Google Webmaster Central and Yahoo! SiteExplorer, but those XML sitemap submission methods are cumbersome. Here’s the short way to tell search engines about your XML sitemap:

Ask.com:

Google:

Yahoo!:

Live.com/MSN.com is still the odd man out. To submit your sitemap to them, (as per Livesearch.spaces.live.com): modify robots.txt to include a line for Sitemap: <sitemap_location> where <sitemap_location>; is the complete URL of your Sitemap Index File (or your sitemap file, if you don’t have an index file).

My advice, use www.xml-sitemaps.com to create your sitemap, upload it to your root directory and use the methods above to submit!

Technorati Tags: XML sitemap, sitemaps

You may have read but over the July 4th holiday, Google posted some subtle changes to their algorithm and rankings. I’ve seen a few notes about website age being one of the most noticeable factors in the changes. It’s a long story, but I’ve turned up pretty clear indications that they also rolled another feature into the new algorithm: Google is now indexing project titles and links within Flash SWF files. I’m still testing to see if they’re also spidering text content found inside SWFs but I can say with 99% certainty that they picked up URLs that exist only inside an SWF I previously had online. What do you think?

Technorati Tags: Google, algorithm, Flash, SWF

I ran across an article on microsoft.com (of all places) on How to Write Web Content for a Busy Audience the other day and it prompted me to organize my thoughts on how to write/modify legal content for online distribution. Of course, the primary goal will be to get rankings for those keyphrases that people are actually searching for rather that what you may think people are searching for. A perfect example: I sometimes encounter lawyers who focus on Matrimonial Law, to the exclusion of all other keywords. Family law, divorce, settlements, etc. are far better choices. Similarly, attorneys occasionally obsess over being ranked for Somewhere County injury attorney. Other than a very select few US counties, this personal preference to think about a firm’s practice within a county-based keyword set ignores the fact that better targets like CityName StateName injury attorney, CityName StateName attorney and CityName injury are more appropriate. So how does an copywriter or web developer decide these things in the online legal market place? Download the PDF on Targeting Legal Content for the Web to find out more…

Technorati Tags: web content, copywriting

You may have heard the buzzword “Web 2.0”. You may also be familiar with “bookmarks” in your Internet browser and even “viral” web marketing. I want to focus on one particular element of Web 2.0 that lawyers can use to promote their websites: social bookmarking.

First of all, what’s “Web 2.0”? Simply put, web 2.0 references online systems that support contribution of multiple users. The Wikipedia is a good example of “Web 2.0”; it has an open structure where many users can contribute and edit content. The “Web 2.0”” expression of a search engine is “social bookmarking”. Imagine this: instead of a search engine deciding who should be #1 by itself, wouldn’t it be great if they could get the input of thousands of users like me and you? Sites like Del.icio.us, Shadows.com and Furl.net are (free) social bookmarking sites where end users can bookmark their favorite sites for others to see. Those bookmarks are also associated with tags (like keywords) that describe the site’s content. (So, when bookmarking a legal site, tags used would be lawyer, attorney, law firm, litigation and other area-of-practice specific terms.) When many, many people set bookmarks for a site or article, they rise in the rankings of the search system’s results according to their tags.

So who notices? Yes, you’ll get some traffic from the sites themselves… but traditional search engines like Google also notice – and that’s what’s important. Social bookmarking your own site (and encouraging your colleagues to do the same) effectively “reminds” Google that your site is worth reviewing. My suggestion: go to the three social bookmarking sites listed above, sign up and bookmark your site(s)… bookmark sites you find useful… and bookmark any new page or article you have published. Create one account at home and one at work, if you’d like. As part of a larger online marketing campaign of on-page optimization, link building and PR, social bookmarking can be a useful tool.

Technorati Tags: social bookmarking, bookmarks

Just wanted to say hello to LawRex.com - nice looking site! I’m looking forward to seeing how the attorney directory works out. The Internet Marketing section already has some interesting articles as well.

LawRex.com - Lawyer to Lawyer Referrals