So, you’ve claimed your Places page and filled in your business name and location. What’s next? Making your law firm’s listing as complete as possible comes next, in order to help Google determine your page’s relevance. Many of the basic information fields are required, so you can’t skip them, but make sure you fill them in correctly, along with all the optional fields.

A Kentucky auto accident attorney with Bullock & Coffman has assisted the CaseDetails editorial team in identifying topics of importance to readers of this blog.

Dave Davies does a good job of explaining what Google wants in Improve Your Organic Rankings With Google Places, Part 2.

Location: Either include your full address, so customers can find you, or specify a service area where you’re willing to travel.

Description: Use as many relevant keywords as possible while keeping it readable.

Hours: Customers need to know your office hours. If you change your hours, such as extending them for a holiday, make sure you update your Places page.

Payment options: Let potential customers know what to expect before they retain your services.

Photos and videos: Remember, pictures can entice searchers to click on your listing. Just make sure they’re appealing and relevant. As your click-through rate increases, so will Google’s trust in your business. You might also consider creating a YouTube channel for your business and linking to it from your Places page. People love video, and it often ranks well in the search engines, too.

Your website: Yes, your business website is an important part of your Places page. The field isn’t required, but why wouldn’t you want to send visitors to your website for even more useful information? Make sure your site is as optimized as your Places listing, or the discrepancy could lower your ranking.

Your Places page is just as important as your other online activities. The larger your presence on the Internet, the higher you’re likely to rank in the search engines.

If you haven’t claimed your Google Places listing yet, it’s time to do so, especially if you’re a law firm wanting local clientele. According to Google, over 20 percent of searches include a location modifier, and now that its search results include Places results in the organic listings—rather than in a separate section—it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re listed.

Dave Davies has written a series of posts to help you make the most of your Places listing, and in Improve Your Organic Rankings With Google Places, Part 1, he covers how to set up your Places listing and which information is most important to include.

Claim your Places page

Log into Google Places using your Google Account.

Enter your basic information, including business name, address and hours.

Verify your listing; SMS is quickest, but you can also choose email or postcard.

Optimize your Places page

As with all SEO efforts, you’ll want to appeal to both Google and humans.

For Google

The more information you put into your Places page, the more data Google has to use in determining your page’s rank. A complete Places page also implies to Google that you’re a legitimate business with real product and service offerings.

Impress Google by filling in as much optional information as you can. Include your areas of practice in the optional fields.

For Humans

A high ranking does little good if visitors don’t click on your listing. Improve your click-through rate with a good description and pictures. Make sure pictures are representative of your business and visually appealing. Google often uses these pictures in SERP, where they may entice searchers to click.

Keep visitors interested with an easy-to-read description and additional information about your products, services, hours of operation and contact information.

We’ll explore more ways to improve your Places page in future posts.

Information and data within this post gathered in association with New York family lawyer Berkman Bottger Newman & Rodd, LLP

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.

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.

You’ve put significant effort into improving your website’s SEO, so it’s only natural you want to know which keywords you rank for. But keep in mind that you don’t need to know every keyword, just the important ones.

In his blog post entitled “What Keywords Do I Rank For?” Dr. Pete says the essential keyword information you want to dig up includes:

• Which relevant keywords you rank for
• What position you hold for those keywords
• How they are performing for you

The following sources can help.

Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)
Under “search queries” within “your site on the web,” GTW will display a table with:

• Queries for which your site showed up in search results
• How many times your site showed up (impressions)
• The number of times searchers clicked your link
• Your average position for queries for which you got at least 10 impressions

Information and data within this post gathered in association with Pittsburgh medical malpractice lawyer John A. Caputo, Attorney at Law

Analytics
Your own analytics program, such as Google Analytics, can compile a report listing the keywords people searched to get to your site. This is different from the GWT data because it includes only keywords that actually resulted in a visit and contains sources other than Google.

This report also helps you see how effective these keywords are for you, including:

• Number of pages viewed
• Time spent on site
• Bounce rate

This is important, because if visitors don’t spend time on your site, these keywords don’t benefit you.

Anchor text
When other sites link to you, they often use words they consider relevant to your site as the link’s anchor text—the words that are “clickable.” Online tools like SEOMoz’s Open Site Explorer can show you:

• Which keyword phrases are linking to you
• Who’s using those phrases
• The number of links using each phrase

Use these tools to find out which keywords you rank for, but don’t lose sight of your real goal: providing relevant, useful content that will keep your visitors interested.

As an online marketer, you understand the value of links pointing to your website. They bring traffic and build authority with the search engines. But far too many companies focus on only one or two sources of traffic, all pointing to their respective homepages.

A better strategy for strengthening your position, says Rand Fishkin in his article Traffic Source Diversity is Essential for Successful SEO is to take advantage of a variety of links. Fishkin goes on to explain the following.

Search engines want to provide the most relevant search results, and inbound links provide useful clues about the value of your site. The most beneficial links are:

• Relevant
• Given freely
• Clicked often
• Pathways to a variety of internal pages

When those links are also from multiple high-quality sites, the search engines view your site as higher-quality as well. This can translate into improved search result rankings.

Information and data within this post gathered in association with DUI attorney in Virginia Beach Kristen M. Shannon, P.C.

In addition, having a variety of links provides you with more opportunities to reach your target audience. Search engines still drive a lot of traffic, but people are turning more often to other sources of information, like:

• Facebook
• Yelp® and other review sites
• Social bookmarking sites, like Reddit
• Twitter
• Blogs

With links from all these sites, your reach expands greatly.

• Insulation against a huge drop in traffic: If you rely on one or two sources for all your traffic, it could be decimated overnight, due to changed search engine algorithms or other disruptions to your source of links. You might not recover for months, if ever.
• More satisfied visitors: Visitors who click through to a relevant internal page have a better experience and are more likely to return for more information later.

Savvy marketers have always diversified their advertising channels, and link-building is no different. A variety of links strengthens your position and is worth pursuing.

Social media, and Facebook in particular, have become important ingredients in many brands’ marketing mix. They are also also particularly effective tools for connecting with the online Latino community.

In a Clickz article titled “Facebook: The Latino Way” Gustavo Razzetti reports that more than half of Latinos visit Facebook once a week or more often, and they spend more time there than non-Latinos. But for marketers looking to build their online brand with Latinos, it pays to remember that culture and community are especially important to Latinos.

Hispanics, whether foreign-born or U.S.-born, maintain a solid connection to their roots. The most successful marketers tap that sense of community to really connect with the Latino consumer. They also recognize that the Latino community is not homogeneous, and Hispanics on Facebook might be:

• Foreign-born and preferring to consume media in Spanish
• Foreign-born and bilingual
• U.S.-born and bilingual, often preferring their media in English
• U.S.-born, speaking and reading predominantly or exclusively English

The Latino Facebook campaigns from brands like Pantene and ene.be.a—the NBA rebranded to appeal to Latinos—understand these differences as well as the similarities within the community. And they are successful because of it. Instead of just translating content into Spanish, they listen to their fans. For example, the video highlight clips on the ene.be.a page are in English, because that’s how the fans prefer it. Law firms wanting to target the Hispanic community should be aware of these differences when running a Facebook advertising campaign or setting up a Facebook page.

These successful campaigns suggest that Latinos on Facebook want:

• A conversation: But not about your brand. They’d like information useful to them and will be loyal to a brand that provides it.
• To be heard: Fans are loyal to brands that listen and respond.
• Passion: They want to connect with brands, information and activities that really matter to them.

In the end, brands that truly understand the Latino consumer will have the most successful Facebook campaigns.

Tampa real estate attorneys with Westchase Law P.A. contributed resources to the creation of this article.

If you’re looking to improve site traffic and pull in customers to your firm, harnessing traffic from local search for mobile may be the key.

According to Greg Sterling’s article “Google’s Eric Schmidt: ‘2011 All About Mobile,’” Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that Google will be putting a heavy focus on local mobile search in 2011.

Why focus on mobile?

Google reports that mobile search volume is up 130% year-over-year. People have access to the Internet anytime, anywhere. They’re using their phones to get the information they need when they need it.

How can this help with local search?

An increasing amount of mobile search is local. In fact, in another article “Microsoft: 53 Percent of Mobile Searches Have Local Intent,” Sterling states that one in three Google mobile queries and 53% of Bing mobile queries are local. People are using their phones to find products and services in their area.

How does this apply to law firms?

People are searching for everything from their phones. The woman who wants to plan her will might be researching estate planning attorneys on the train to work. A man whose wife was hurt in an accident might be searching for a personal injury lawyer from the hospital.

How can I get mobile keyword data?

Until recently, businesses were hesitant to jump into local mobile search campaigns. There wasn’t a way to collect data such as average CPC and competition level on mobile search, making it a bigger risk.

This all changed when Google announced a new Mobile Keyword Tool designed to help marketers develop keyword lists that better target mobile searchers. The Mobile Keyword Tool can be accessed via your Google Adwords account, in the “Advanced Options” tab.

In his article, “Why Google’s New Keyword Data May Actually Make 2011 ‘Year of Mobile Marketing,’” Brian Klais explains the new tool allows marketers to get keyword information for mobile search, which can be filtered just like the desktop search data. Klais offers a quick tutorial for the new tool in his article.

The search landscape is changing and mobile user demand will continue to grow. This is a good time to start working on a local search plan for mobile. Thanks to Google’s new tool, you now have the ability to collect the data you need to move forward with your firm’s campaign.

Keep checking in at CaseDetails.com for more information on local search for mobile, and check out our Local Search in 7 Days series.

Arizona bankruptcy lawyers of Clint W. Smith, P.C. have contributed resources for the development of this content.