Welcome back! If you read step 1 of this three-part series, you know that it really is possible to make your boring business exciting enough to generate social buzz. But you need multiple tactics to sustain your social SEO efforts long-term, so we’re back with more ways to create exciting social SEO.

Step 2 also comes courtesy of “3 Steps to Social SEO for Your Boring-Ass Clients” by Ross Tavendale, and once again we’re going to produce great content. This time you are going to convince other people in your industry to share it.

How do you do this? Become the go-to news site for your industry, and share the content of other people along with your own. So:

• Recruit your best writers to create at least one piece of unique content to post each day. Then add value by pulling in news and information from other sources.
• Add widgets to stream your recent Twitter and Facebook activity on your site. This allows your site visitors to see your social activities and might encourage them to follow you there.
• Find top content producers in your industry and ask for contributions or see if they’ll add you to their Twitter list or blogroll.
• Subscribe to top blogs in your industry through a blog reader. Then tweet about your favorite posts each day. Schedule tweets spaced throughout the day with a service like Hootsuite or Buffer. Make sure you mention the author’s Twitter name.

It takes a while to get all of this set up, but once you do, it should only take you a few minutes each day to post content, scan your blog reader and set up your tweets for the day. Soon your followers will increase and so will your retweets.

See? You’re not quite as boring as you thought.

Information in this post gathered in association with a Long Beach Expungement Law Attorney.

Is your business boring? Of course it is. Legal dramas play well on TV, but in real life, people generally find legal proceedings dry and boring. Does that mean you can’t take advantage of social media to boost your SEO? Of course not, it just means you need to be more creative. You can be exciting and social even if your business is boring.

Ross Tavendale discusses this topic in “3 Steps to Social SEO for Your Boring-Ass Clients,” and explains how he implemented exciting social SEO for a client in personal injury claims. You can use similar techniques for your own boring business.

The key to social SEO is producing great content, and that’s the main theme in Tavendale’s plan. Great content catches your visitors’ attention and makes them want to come back for more.

How can you create this great content? Get others to do some of the work for you. For example:

• Make a Q&A section for your site. People can ask questions and you can answer those questions. Short video answers add excitement. People love online videos.
• Have a contest. Tavendale had college students create blog posts on topics he picked and then promote the content to their friends, asking them to share it, too. The winner (with the most shares) got a summer job, so they were motivated. He got the universities and industry bloggers involved in creating press as well. All this garnered a lot of backlinks and social shares for the business.

Think your business is too boring to even do this? Think again. People who buy your product or service will have questions about it. Take advantage of that. And everybody loves contests. Just make sure the prize is something worthwhile.

Stay tuned for the next steps you can take to make your social SEO more exciting.

Information in this post gathered in association with a Bankruptcy Lawyer in Albuquerque.

Google Plus made a big splash when it landed a few months ago, and its user base exploded into the tens of millions, even while it was still in beta. Now users everywhere can +1 things they like and see what other people in their social circles have +1′d. So can Google Plus help your law firm’s online marketing efforts?

As Dustin Ruge argues in “Will Google +1 Help Attorneys?,” the answer is maybe. But don’t count on it. Google Plus, the social media site, is growing quickly but still lags far behind Facebook’s 750 million, Twitter’s 200 million and even LinkedIn’s 100 million users.

The +1 button, Google’s answer to the “like” button, appears both on websites and next to search results. However, it’s not clear that people actually see any value to Google+ right now. It’s likely they’re simply grabbing onto the latest “next greatest thing.”

Even worse, Google is severely restricting how it defines your “social connections” by including only users of other Google properties. In other words, people:
• In your Google Contact list
• In your Google chat list
• In your Google+ Circles
• You follow in Google Buzz (which Google just announced that it is discontinuing)
• You follow in Google Reader

Sure, Google properties are popular, but how many people really keep all their contacts in Google? Who cares what people from their RSS feed (Google Reader) like? And as for Google Plus circles, the user base needs to be much larger before it can provide useful data.

Until that happens, or Google includes other social connections in its data, Google Plus isn’t likely to be very useful for law firms’ online marketing. On the other hand, Ruge thinks it could provide attorneys with some interesting legal challenges in terms of privacy and how Google uses the +1 data. What do you think?

Information in this post gathered in association with a Los Angeles employment 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.

Search results rankings are based on many factors, but they largely boil down to how authoritative the search engine considers your website. Your link profile is a large part of that, so you will want to build your law firm’s link authority. This means getting inbound links from other high-quality, authoritative sites.

In “Law Firm SEO 101: Tips to Build Your Law Firm’s Link Authority Online & Improve Its Search Rankings,” Pete Boyd offers 10 ways to get those high-quality links to your law firm’s website. Here are eight of them.

Social media:

You need accounts on at least the big three: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Google+ is still growing quickly, so you should probably consider it, too.

Free directories and local citations:

The key here is quality directories, like the Open Directory Project, Google Places, Bing Local and Manta.

Paid directories:

Again, make sure they are high quality, authoritative sites. Boyd recommends Universal Business Listing, Cornell Legal Information Institute and HG.org, among others.

Press releases: Whenever you have something to announce, write a press release and submit it to news sites and press release sites, like PRWeb. Make sure it’s SEO-optimized and includes a link back to your website.

Your customers and vendors:

If they’re happy with you, they’ll often be willing to link back to you.

Guest blog posts:

Many sites are looking for high-quality, informative articles. Include a short, SEO-optimized bio section and a link to your website.

Pursue competitor links:

Research your top online competitors (those ranking highest for your target keywords), and see if you can get some of the same links.

Post link bait:

This is informative and/or entertaining information that people will want to share and link back to.

Most of these are fairly simple to do but can provide big returns. Try them today.

Information in this post gathered in association with Mesothelioma lawyers.

Are you taking full advantage of Twitter’s ability to help you attract the right clients? If you’re like many people, you may not be quite sure how best to use those 140 characters to say something useful. But as the search engines place more emphasis on social media in search results, now might be a good time to learn.

Personal injury lawyers in Chicago with The Healy Law Firm have assisted the CaseDetails editorial team in identifying topics of importance to readers of this blog.

SEO isn’t just for websites anymore. In fact, it hasn’t been for quite a while. SEO strategies apply equally to all of your activities across the Internet. Incorporating relevant keywords into those activities—including Twitter—is important to help you stand out. Use keywords in:

• Your profile: Twitter may not have started as a professional networking site like LinkedIn, but plenty of professionals are using it as such. Using relevant keywords in your profile will help people looking for your areas of expertise to find you. Google might even use your bio as the description in search results.
• Hashtags: These crosshatch symbols next to keywords help identify the subject of a tweet and help them appear in search results. Create your own tags for your company events or as a branding tool. Use industry tags to add your tweets to broader conversations. Remember, you can use multiple hashtags in one tweet.
• Custom URLs: Some URL shortening services now allow you to add your own custom end to the shortened URL. Use this to add a keyword phrase to the URL you’re sharing.

Kelsey Jones explains these tips and others in more detail in How To Find Hidden SEO Opportunities On Twitter.

Social media for business is still a relatively new space, but it’s not going away, so it is to your advantage to learn it and use it.

Creating and optimizing a Google Places page is only one small part of your overall SEO strategy. It’s unlikely to give you huge ranking benefits on its own, but few online activities do. You still need to do them. The important thing is to link your various online activities together, creating a cohesive presence.

Palm Beach personal injury lawyer with Clark, Fountain, La Vista, Prather, Keen & Littky-Rubin have contributed resources for the development of this content.

In Improve Your Organic Rankings With Google Places, Part 3, Dave Davies discusses how much effect you can reasonably expect from your page, and which components may have the biggest impact. He also cautions that the boost supplied by a Places page may depend partly on your industry. In a highly competitive space, it may not do much, other than help you build a strong foundation for continuing SEO efforts. If you have little competition, it could make a big difference.

A few things to remember:

• Images matter: Google may pull images from other sites that mention your business if you don’t have any on your page. Control what searchers see by including a few high quality, relevant pictures.
• Location matters: And sometimes that’s a problem. In large cities, Google tends to limit the area from which they pull results. If your address is outside that area, you may not show in local results, no matter how good your page is.
• Reviews matter: They help your ranking and humans love them, so encourage customers to post reviews on review sites or even your own site.

Google Places is still a relatively new addition to your SEO toolbox, but one worth investing in. Get your page and optimize it now, so you’re ready no matter how much weight Google gives it in the future. Just be sure you update it as needed. An outdated Places page could be worse than no Places page.

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.