When evaluating your SEO efforts, it’s often helpful to be able to see what your competitors are doing and how well it’s working for them. SEM Rush is a very useful competitive research tool that lets you do just that.

Aaron Wall of SEO Book has used SEM Rush for years, and offers a thorough review at “SEM Rush Review & Free Trial SEMRush Coupons.”

So how does SEM Rush help you spy on your competitors?

First, it helps you find them. It will display a list of sites that rank for the same keywords as you do. You can see:

• How many keywords you have in common
• How they compare in traffic and keyword value (Traffic*CPC)

You can get more detail on how a specific domain compares to you, including:

• Which keywords you have in common
• How you each rank for those keywords
• Estimated traffic volume for those keywords
• Cost-per-click (CPC) estimates for the keywords

You can also compare AdWords and organic search between sites, which is a unique and useful metric. You can find sites that are ranking organically for keywords you are buying and sites that are buying keywords that you rank for organically.

SEM Rush pulls its data from Google’s Traffic Estimator and AdWords keyword tools. This data is not real-time, but you don’t need real-time to make comparisons between sites.

SEM is not free, but the $69 to $79 per-month cost is reasonable considering the wealth of valuable information it supplies. The company now offers a 14-day free trial, so you can see for yourself how it works before risking any money. Aaron Wall’s post includes a code for your free trial.

Information in this post gathered in association with Santa Cruz Personal 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.

Creating social connections is becoming more and more important to SEO efforts. Social media sites were once a novelty with no obvious use. Today they can provide significant SEO benefits, and a good example involves building links with Twitter.

In Casey Henry’s recent post, “Yes, You Really Can Build Links With Twitter – Whiteboard Friday” SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin presents eight tactics for you to try. Here are five that can provide quality links quickly.

Offer to help:

When someone tweets about a problem you know you can help with, offer to do so. Do it well and for free, and most people will tweet about it and link to you.

Create story summaries:

Stories on social media sites tend to be fragmented and get lost as time passes and the posts are mixed with other stories. Curate them, create a cohesive story and then tweet about it, with a link to your summary. Summify is a good tool to help with this.

Give link suggestions:

If someone has written a post that misses some point that you’ve covered, suggest that he or she add that information, and provide a link to your post. This works best when you already have a relationship with the person.

Answer queries:

When you see the same question popping up repeatedly on social media sites, create content that covers the topic thoroughly and then point askers to it.

Offer testimonials:

If you’ve written a blog post praising someone’s product or service, tweet or direct message the person with a link to it and an offer of a testimonial to use on his or her website.
Check out Rand’s video for his other tips, as well as additional ideas on how to accomplish all of his tactics. Try at least one and see how it works for you.

Information in this post gathered in association with a New York injury attorney.

You know it’s important to rank well, preferably #1, for your main brand, but in your efforts to maintain this rank, you may be neglecting extended brand keywords. Ranking well for these terms can help you guide the perception of your brand.

Richard Shove discusses this topic as part of his post “Big Brand SEO – Campaigns, Integration and Extended Brand Keywords.” As he points out, a brand’s website is sometimes outranked by other sites for certain types of searches, even when the brand name is included in the search. Some things to consider:

Complaints/reviews:

While you certainly don’t want to rank highly for actual complaints, the fact is people investigate companies and products by looking for reviews before buying. And review sites like Yelp regularly outrank the brand for these searches. Include a page on your site detailing your commitment to the customer and explaining how you handle complaints. Use the word “complaint” in the title and URL, and you should rank at #1 for the term.

Discounts:

Affiliate sites offering voucher codes often rank at the top of SERP for price-related searches. Consider creating your own landing page for discounts and voucher codes. Link it to a PPC or other paid search campaign.

Product names:

These are also brands, and if they’re well-known, they can outrank the parent brand. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the product has its own site, but you can still increase your main brand’s visibility with a page on the main site dedicated to the product.

Review your own analytics to get ideas of what other related or extended brand terms might be sending traffic to your site. Then see where you rank for them in SERP. If you’re not at the top, consider adding a page or section on your site dedicated to that term.

Information in this post gathered in association with Atlanta Injury Attorneys.

In Day 3 of the SEO in 30 Days series we explained how to conduct basic keyword research to determine which phrases would benefit you most in terms of bringing the most qualified traffic to your website. In Day 4 we outline two common mistakes companies make and why they are detrimental.

Avoiding common mistakes when determining the keyword focus of your website

Being effective in your keyword research isn’t easy. This is one of the most important steps in any search engine campaign, and can help ensure that relevant visitors get to the best pages on your site for their specific queries. There are several common mistakes that often happen during the keyword research process. Here are a few effective keyword research techniques that will get you on the right track:

1. There is a tendency to focus too much on your company/firm’s name. Don’t do it! Search engines can easily understand your company/firm’s website; branding is essential, but shouldn’t be the priority. Typically you won’t have much trouble ranking for your own company name. Keep page elements and copy focused on your selected, researched legal keywords instead. For instance, the target keyword should be positioned at the front of the title tag while branding follows at the end.
2. Oftentimes, keyword research prompts the use of high-volume, “generic” keywords for your website and landing pages. It’s easy to get caught up in the numbers game, but that isn’t the most effect keyword research technique. Instead, we are looking for relatively high search volume terms with concentrated legal modifiers that can help draw in the right crowd. For instance, instead of optimizing an important landing page for merely “law firm,” use high-volume and highly relevant modifiers that describe your practice such as “truck accident law firm” or, even better, “Chicago truck accident law firm.”

In Day 5 of the SEO in 30 Days series we’ll continue our discussion of keyword research: organizing your keyword list.

Use basic SEO principles when setting up your Twitter account

These days, with the prevalence of mobile devices, a smart, forwarding-thinking law firm should consider creating a “brand” or presence for itself within the social media sphere. Twitter.com is a popular player in that space, so let’s take this opportunity to discuss Twitter, SEO and branding your law firm through social channels.

Social media is defined by SearchEngineWatch.com as

A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.

One of the brightest and biggest stars in the social media sky is Twitter, where users send out short messages to their “followers” describing anything from what’s on their minds to what’s for dinner. Messages, or Tweets, can be sent from a mobile phone or computer. Users can amass hundreds, even thousands, of followers who receive the users’ tweets on their respective phones or computers. Followers can respond back to the user with their comments or questions, thereby opening up an exchange or dialog on the subject at hand.

Maybe you view Twitter as a passing fad for the self-involved, or perhaps it seems too “tech-y” and confusing to get your head around. Whatever your issue is, it’s time to get over it. Twitter is a direct means of engaging with your clients or customers, and a way to get your name, information about your services, and your philosophies or thoughts out to potential and existing clients.

SEO expert P.J. Fusco, in her article Twitter 101: Tweetable SEO, lays out the importance of Twitter as part of a strong SEO marketing plan: “Twitter is about people, participation, and persuasion. Grasp this one concept and you’ll be able to surpass your online rivals to lead your niche in online marketing, brand buzz, and reputation management.” Set up a Twitter account today and you can be one of those who’s one step ahead of the competition.

Taking baby steps is OK. Your first step: sign up for an account. Go to Twitter and click the “Get Started – Join” button. Choose a user name (14 characters or less) that is easy to spell and remember. If your firm name is The Law Office of Caleb Kershner, a good username for your firm account could be ckershnerlaw.

Now enter something about yourself in the profile settings. Upload a photo, your company or firm logo, and a link to your website. In the “Bio” field include information of use to potential and existing clients, limited to 160 characters, and (like with your other SEO practices) include primary keyword phrases that would attract your targeted users and the search engines. If you focus your practice on criminal law, your description could read “I’m Caleb Kershner, criminal lawyer in Leesburg, VA and formerly a prosecuting attorney for Loudoun County. I handle DUI, traffic violations, and felony cases.”

Next, tweet something. Start with information about yourself, your practice, or a useful tip on an aspect of law. Post around 10 tweets over the course of a day or so that give potential followers an idea of what to expect from you. Use keywords within the posts to attract followers that could be searching on those terms.

Now that your account is set up and you’ve tweeted (congratulations!), you’re ready to search for people to follow. That will be our next topic. For now, set up a reminder in Outlook or on your mobile to tweet something at least once a day, so that you’ll get in the habit of tweeting. Keep your tweets informative and ask questions. Soon you’ll have followers who may answer back, opening up a dialog and maybe resulting in a business lead or client.

Photo courtesy of sqback

On February 7, 2010 an explosion ripped through the Kleen Energy power plant in Middletown, Connecticut, killing five workers and injuring a dozen more. The blast, determined to have occurred while workers were purging a natural gas pipeline, caused property damage to the surrounding communities, and was heard as far as 20 miles away from Middletown, a southern suburb of Hartford.

Local police, fire fighters, search and rescue teams, and emergency crews were the first to respond, followed by forensic scientists, OSHA and other groups. This is fairly standard. But another, now-standard response also began – the response by some Hartford-area personal injury and workers compensation lawyers.

While more traditional methods of speaking with the families of victims and the injured were employed by the local attorneys, two Connecticut firms utilized online marketing to reach out to potential clients. How?

A search on Google for “Middletown explosion” brings up a local firm’s ad via Google’s “pay per click” keyword-driven advertising system. The ad headline: “Gas Explosion Cases – CT.” Clicking on this ad brings you to the personal injury law firm’s website.

Another firm created a series of eight videos about the explosion and posted them on YouTube. The videos are set up like news interviews, with the law firm partner answering questions on filing workers compensation claims and other related topics. Links to the law firm’s website are next to each video.

Without being able to see the number of click-throughs the ad is getting or knowing how many clients (if any) each firm has acquired as a result of these activities, we can’t know the specific outcomes of these firms’ online marketing efforts. The number of views of the videos on YouTube is not all that high, but, according to a Small Firm Business article, the firm does claim to have gotten one client via the videos.

Regardless, these attorneys have the right idea: a powerful way to reach the maximum number of people around a specific topic is under your fingers. Millions of searches are performed daily. For the cost of a few videos, or a modest budget for a pay-per-click ad, you can get your firm’s message out to hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people. Even if it doesn’t result in a client right away, it does give you and your firm exposure, and a stronger online presence.

When working on a law firm SEO campaign, one of the trouble spots can sometimes be finding content. A lawyer’s time is valuable and, as a service provider, my team can’t spend all day with an attorney asking him/her for details of the practice. So the challenge becomes creating quality, easy content about a law firm without disturbing the firm more than necessary and without having to cite case law itself.

There are a number of content creation methods but let’s look at one example of low-hanging fruit: video. Yes, yes – everyone knows that online video is great and YouTube results get good rankings in Google. But what I’m talking about is using a lawyer video as the source of text content for the firm’s website. A prime example of easy content can be found on the website from Phoenix criminal lawyers Billar & Donald. The firm presents good information within the video… let’s use that on the website too! Take the time to transcribe the audio to text and include a few links in the text when doing so. Hey, maybe even experiment with publishing it as a PDF transcription. What’s great is that all of this can be done without having to produce new copy or pass the content in front of the powers that be for pre-publish approval.

In all, “easy content” can be produced as fast as you can listen and type if you use a video as the source. Sure, the search engines will eventually get good enough at understanding video to make this practice unnecessary, but as a content development technique – let’s say for accessibility – it’s a nice one to keep in your back pocket.

A quick search turns up a few service providers, for those not interested in doing the transcription themselves:

• www.videotranscription.net
• www.gmrtranscription.com
• www.transcriptionsservice.com
• www.transcriptionstar.com

P.S. It looks like Google has issued a standard for video transcripts.