Legal Internet Marketing Blog

As you’ve probably heard by now, Google finally released their own version of Facebook’s Fan Page, simply titled Google Pages (not to be confused with Google Places). While Google’s new product may not have as much functionality as Facebook Fan Pages (at least not yet), the potential it has for being an effective marketing tool is unmistakable. Although Facebook is still king as far as business specific profile pages are concerned, it may not be long before Google Pages become not only a necessary part of any legal Internet marketing campaign, but the desired platform for businesses to represent themselves in the world of social media.

For anyone familiar with Google+ profiles, Google Pages basically follow the same format. There are four sections that a business is able to utilize in order to market its brand, with one of those areas set aside for businesses to interact with other Google+ users (very similar to Facebook in the sense that it takes on a newsfeed type format and is ordered with the most recent postings of not only the company but also its followers). In the remaining three sections, businesses may upload videos, photos, and fill in information about their brand. The information section, otherwise known as the “About” section, is the most versatile in that it allows users to link back to their website, practice area pages, biographies, etc. and can include keywords to help the page rank.

Other than the profile itself, the other aspect of Google Pages that you should pay particular attention to reveals itself during the initial setup process. You see, Google Pages can be associated with Google Places pages, which are widely used by businesses everywhere to help establish a foothold on Google Maps and improve their search result rankings. While the connection between Google Pages and Google Places is relatively small at this point in time, with the only evidence of such being a link to a Google Map associated with the businesses address, it may prove extremely significant down the road. And if Google Pages find themselves intertwined with Google Maps search results, the edge in the “page” wars between Facebook and Google may shift to search king Google, leaving social king Facebook in the dust.

Gratitude can be underappreciated. We get caught up in our busy lives and spend more time complaining than being grateful for what we already have. Being ambitious is important, but undermining your present accomplishments and focusing on the negative can put you in the wrong mind-set.

To help channel positive thinking for growing your business online, here are our top five link building strategies to be grateful for:

1. Blog Comments – When done in a legitimate and effective way, leaving a comment on a blog is a great opportunity to not only join in on a discussion, but also include a link back to your site.


2. Free Article Directories – First of all, they are free. Secondly, there is a free article directory for practically every niche, leaving you no problem to submit a relevant, focused article pertaining to an area in your field.


3. Press Releases – Free and paid; paid is usually worth it for extensive social media distribution and more effective, customized search engine optimization (SEO). You can include a link back to your site in the release and if your content is engaging enough, others will link back to it or redistribute it on their sites.


4. Local Directories – Having your business information and links to your site(s) in local directories offered through Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others, is an essential part of any basic link building and SEO marketing strategy.


5. Business Relationships – If you want a link back to your website, it doesn’t hurt to ask and return the favor. Why not do guest blogging or interviews with others in your field?

In a competitive world, Internet marketing is definitely one thing for law firms and various businesses to be grateful for. Unfortunately, it happens to be one of those things we may find ourselves complaining about if we lose focus of our goals and strategies. One major thing to be grateful for in regards to Internet marketing and generating leads is link building. The process of getting other sites to link to your site is invaluable. Even with Google announcements and the Panda update, Google still ranks websites based on links. However, Google has sifted through major content distributors where building links was overused, making those links much less powerful.

For over 11 years, the legal Internet marketing team at SLS Consulting has been providing law firms and attorneys with custom website design as well as content, blog, and social media development. To learn more about how to grow your business online with link building and other search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, contact SLS today. Call (323) 254-1510 for a free growth assessment.

Where would content on a website be without search engine optimization (SEO)?

Probably lost in cyberspace.

What role would SEO play if it wasn’t associated with relevant, informative content?

Most likely a nonexistent one.

What I’m hinting at here is the balanced relationship between content and SEO for desired search engine results, online success, and lead generation.

With so many Internet marketing strategies out there, it can be confusing as to which tactic is the most effective and worthwhile when it comes to a business’ goals and marketing budget; a thought on pretty much every company’s mind as 2011 quickly comes to a close.

SEO Paves the Way for Online Success
According to a recent SearchEngineLand article, SEO is the anchor of lead generation, which is the process of having visitors to your website inquire about your services or provide you with their information through a contact form. After surveying over 500 U.S. online marketers in August and September in its 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, California-based online marketing agency Webmarketing123 concluded that SEO is the top way in which business-to-company (B2C) marketers and business-to-business (B2B) marketers obtain leads. These results also demonstrate that SEO outruns pay-per-click (PPC) and social media marketing for lead generation.

Interestingly, more online marketers surveyed stated that they anticipate raising their social media marketing budgets in 2012 over SEO and PPC. The main reason behind this seems to be that 68 percent of those surveyed generated leads either from Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn, and 55 percent closed deals from social media deals. However, overall, both B2B and B2C marketers stand in agreement that SEO has the biggest influence over lead generation with 57 percent of B2B marketers and 41 percent of B2C marketers stating that SEO is their main source of lead generation.

Here are some additional statistics from the study:

• 46% of B2B marketers surveyed report their most important objective as generating leads.


• 53% of B2B and B2C marketers surveyed consider SEO to have the largest influence on generating leads, followed by 28% for PPC, and 19% for social media.


• 75% of B2C marketers surveyed report participating the most on Facebook, followed by 8% on Twitter, and 6% on LinkedIn.

B2B marketers surveyed are active more equally on all three leading social networks: 34% Facebook, 26% Twitter, and 25% LinkedIn.

Keeping Your Balance
With these numbers in mind, don’t jump ship right away on other Internet marketing tactics you may currently be using. With Internet marketing, it’s all about keeping a balance. What helps your online presence from teetering is effective, well thought-out SEO.

For assistance with your Internet marketing endeavors, contact Legal Internet marketing firm SLS Consulting for a free growth assessment. We have dedicated over 11 years to custom website design, content development, social media marketing, lead generation, and other strategic tools for law firms and attorneys throughout the U.S. Call (323) 254-1510 today.

There is no shortage of legal Internet marketers out there. Some of them are good, and have the track record to prove it, while others are inexperienced, and don’t necessarily have the know-how to produce successful marketing campaigns. In Part One of our two-part series, we discussed less than savory sales tactics that some marketers employ to retain new clients. In Part Two, we will discuss the use of vague business terms that typically elicit more confusion than confidence.

While the mere mention of poor or declining rankings (whether this is true or not) is probably enough to, at the very least, grab your attention. These companies use scare tactics to get you to bite. Attorneys and law firms should beware of another common sales tactic: the buzz word. Is your ROI consistent with that of your competition? Do your profit margins accurately reflect your marketing efforts? Do you and your current marketing company have synergy? Any company that uses phrases like this during a sales pitch is clearly doing one of two things:

1. They don’t really know what they’re doing, are only interested in making a quick buck, and are displaying to you their true lack of know-how


2. They’re trying to confuse you with vague terms that don’t mean much, primarily because they don’t respect your marketing savvy and feel as though they can take advantage of your trust and get your money

Either way, you shouldn’t necessarily discredit a company that uses terms like these. You SHOULD, however, be very cautious when it comes to entering into agreements with such a company, particularly since the use of buzz words and scare tactics supplants talking about actual industry knowledge and marketing strategy.

Buzz words may sound pretty legitimate and official, but they often don’t mean much. Keep in mind that the sales team is trained to SELL, they don’t do the work.

When choosing a new Internet marketer, don’t let marketers scare you with false information about your search result rankings, and don’t allow them to confuse you with buzz words. If something doesn’t make sense, ask a question specifically about what doesn’t make sense. If the answer you receive from your would-be marketing partner includes even more buzz words, be wary. If they won’t provide references, take that as a sign that the work provided to past clients was never satisfactory.

Ultimately, success speaks for itself. If a marketing company hasn’t regularly achieved success for its clients, what’s to say that it’s going to start now with your legal Internet marketing campaign?

There are a lot of marketers out there, many of whom acquire new business through solicitation, primarily cold calling. Law firms are very susceptible to this, particularly since the competition amongst attorneys in most areas is extremely fierce. If you’ve been on the receiving end of one of these calls, you’ve probably heard something like this before: We’re offering page one placement to only a select number of attorneys in your area… or I’m searching for your business here on Google and…wait a second…I can’t seem to find your company…oh, here you are, on page FIVE… or even We can GUARANTEE 20 unique leads, delivered to you, each month for the low price of [fill in the monetary amount, typically in the hundreds, even thousands of dollars].

To be perfectly honest, some of these companies can deliver on certain promises they make, but the circumstances under which they do so beg to be examined. In this two-part blog series, we will examine false promises and buzz words, and how unscrupulous Internet marketing companies use both to net new clients. Part One will discuss how some marketing companies provide unsuspecting attorneys with inaccurate information in order to persuade them into entering into new marketing agreements that are entirely unnecessary.

First of all, most Internet marketers who do cold calling only contact companies that already have sound marketing campaigns in place. These companies look on page one of Google to find their targets! Many of our clients, all of whom already have page one placement on major search engines such as Google, receive cold calls on a weekly basis. The majority of these calls are filled with promises of even BETTER search engine rankings, even when better rankings can’t or don’t necessarily need to be achieved. Frankly, these companies are trying to capitalize on the success of your current legal Internet marketing campaign, regardless of whether that campaign was spearheaded by you or another marketing company. A lot of persistent marketers simply want to maintain your current marketing campaign (which isn’t that hard to do), and take credit for work that they didn’t have to do in the first place.

Remember to make sure that you have all the facts about your current marketing campaign straight BEFORE entering into a new contract. Check with your Legal Internet marketing company to fact-check your existing rankings. If you’ve already obtained strong search rankings, the marketing company you’re currently retaining will have no objections to providing you with these results.

Visit our blog again later this week for more on how marketing companies will try to reel you in.

What is your company doing on Twitter these days?

If you’re posting about your industry, talking about industry events you’ve attended lately, or regularly interacting with other Twitter users while acting as an authority in your industry, you’re on the right track. However, have you ever thought about other ways that you can utilize the micro-blogging service to help promote your business?

There are a variety of ways that a business can use Twitter to help promote their brand. Just like on other social media sites, photos and links to videos can be posted to your Twitter feed. Generally speaking, both photos and videos are clicked on and viewed more often than posts merely containing text. However, posting links to specific pages on your website or new blog posts is also a popular strategy. By directing people to your primary branding source (your website), you are not only exposing them to more information about your company, but are increasing the likelihood of retaining new clients via interaction initiated on one of your social media sites (Twitter).

Another strategy that you might want to try out is the Twitter-View, an updated take on a traditional interview that can help highlight the accomplishments or biographical information of one or all employees at your company. By posting a Twitter-View on your Twitter feed, you are accomplishing two important things:

1. You are promoting your brand through an individual employee, hopefully linking back to that employee’s other company related social media profiles; and


2. You are being an active Twitter user, populating your Twitter feed with posts and showing your followers and potential followers that your account is worth paying attention to because you regularly post to it.

A Twitter-View can utilize a unique hashtag in order to be easily searched within Twitter, and is a slightly different approach than the traditional 140-character post.

Continue reading " Can We Twitter-View You? " »

Have you read the content on your website lately? Whether you’re updating your current website or building an entirely new one, you have to remember one thing: content is king.

If your content is old and outdated, it may be time for an edit or two. And if you want your website to rank well with search results, you need to have original, well-written content that accomplishes a couple of things.

For starters, you need to make sure your content is interesting. While a well designed website is certainly going to keep site visitors exploring your webpage (at least for a short while), it’s the content that is ultimately going to be the primary selling point. Content needs to educate its audience about your business, particularly your specialties, but must do so in terms that can easily be understood. Furthermore, your content not only needs to be easy to read, but it needs to be WORTH reading. That is, it needs to provide some sort of value to your readers, while at the same time showing them that you are both an authority in your respective field and that what you have to say should be considered valuable.

Regardless of the industry you’re in, your content needs to be readable if you want repeat visitors to your website. If you don’t have time to write original content on your own, it’s definitely a good idea to work with a professional writer at a respectable marketing company. This way, all content can be written on your behalf and posted to your website upon your approval. Hopefully, this content will then reach your target audience, thus increasing the likelihood of converting site visitors into new business opportunities.

From a search engine optimization standpoint, you also need to make sure that your content is properly utilizing search terms that you want your website to rank for. You can accomplish this by first taking a moment to think about the search terms that your potential clients/customers might use if they were to search the type of products you sell or services you provide. Next, make sure to use those keywords, but only do so in a natural way. Forcing keywords into your content not only makes your content read as unnatural, but is very frowned upon by search engines. If you write interesting content that flows well, your keywords and phrases should fall into place without much additional effort. If they don’t, you might want to consider a re-write, particularly since it’s a lot easier write new content keeping keywords in mind than it is to keyword-stuff existing content and run the risk of sounding too sales-pitchy.

At SLS Consulting, content development for lawyers is one of many ways in which we obtain successful search engine results for our clients. As a leading Legal Internet marketing company, we are committed to exceeding our clients’ expectations to take them to the top of search and keep them there! To find out more about how we can assist you in your online endeavors, call (323) 254-1510 or visit our website at http://www.legalinternetmarketing.com.

Have you ever used your phone to search the web? With the ever-expanding mobile market growing with each passing day, it’s important for businesses to realize that having a mobile website to help promote their brand is becoming more and more of a necessity. Aside from the obvious task of making sure that your mobile site properly loads on multiple mobile platforms (typically Apple’s iOS and Android operating systems) and even tablets (such as Apple’s iPad), there are a couple other things to keep in mind when building a mobile site.

For starters, remember to keep your branding consistent across all sites. If you have a logo, be sure to include it somewhere on your mobile site. If all of your websites use the same color pattern, be sure to emulate that pattern on your mobile site.

Basically, you want to make sure that visitors to your mobile site clearly recognize its connection with your other branding sites. In addition, be sure to connect your mobile site with your social media sites.

Applications for the most popular social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, often come preinstalled on smart phones. Be sure that these profiles are up-to-date, and that all information, particularly contact information, is consistent here as well.

As far as the content of your mobile website is concerned, be sure to set in place a content management system that will allow you to keep track of updates and easily make edits across all sites. Such a system will come in handy especially if your company moves offices or changes its phone number. By keeping track of all content under one management system, you can affectively ensure that content across all branding sites doesn’t unnecessarily repeat itself and remains consistent with your company’s message.

Having a mobile site may not seem like a necessary expenditure when it comes to mapping out your online marketing campaign, but it’s certainly something worth looking into. While your current website can certainly be accessed on a mobile phone via any online browser, it more than likely isn’t going to load properly, is going to be cumbersome and difficult to navigate, and is probably going to turn off potential clients. Commission your Internet marketing company to build out a mobile website that represents your brand, and you’ll have a leg up on your competition in the years to come.

Sipe & Associates, Inc., d.b.a. SLS Consulting, is proud to announce being ranked within the Top 200 on the Lead411 Technology List for 2011. We are so grateful for this recognition and to all of our clients as we jump from the top 500 from last year to the top 200 this year!

The competitive nature of being given a spot on the Lead411 Technology Top 200 List for 2011 is no joke. Rankings for finalists were based on the highest revenue and growth among all tech businesses that applied. The final rankings reflect the fastest growing tech companies in the United States who stay ahead of the game and utilize the latest trends in the technology industry.

To qualify for a Lead411 ranking, a business has to be privately-held, operate in the U.S., and must have earned over $1 million in the past year. A company’s ranking is calculated based on its two-year percentage of revenue growth from 2008 to 2010. Among other companies included in the Lead411 list, SLS Consulting is recognized for its accomplishments in Internet and Consulting. Other areas of recognition for tech businesses on the Lead411 list include Software, Media, Telecom, Wireless, IT Services, Hardware, and eCommerce.

By providing businesses and employees with awareness of the different ways in which a company can be profitable, the Lead411 Technology List is one way in which the organization offers corporate information, company news, and awards for up-and-coming businesses.

In being selected as a top 200 tech businesses for its achievements as a Legal Internet Marketing consulting group, SLS Consulting is excited for what the future holds!

To learn more about the many achievements of SLS Consulting, please visit http://www.legalinternetmarketing.com/ or call (323) 254-1510 for a free growth assessment of your law firm or business.

Do you oversee your own marketing campaigns, or do you employ a marketing professional to do it for you? If you rely on someone else, how many other people have worked on your local listing campaign? In Part 1 of our two-part series, we talked about making sure your local listing campaign encompasses more than just a Google Places listing. Now, in Part 2, we will discuss the importance of staying on top of your local listing efforts, particularly if your business employs the services of a consultant to help manage your legal Internet marketing campaign.

One of the most common scenarios we encounter involves the past hiring of multiple marketing firms, each of which took it upon itself to create a unique set of listings for an individual company. Usually, the problem here is that login information is lost during the transition from one marketing company to another, which often results in confusion and frustration when the new marketing company is initially incapable of editing previously created listings. So, while it may be easy to rely solely on your current marketing company to safely hold onto all login information, it really is a good idea to ask for all login information to keep for your own records prior to hiring a new company.

But remember, just because you have the login information doesn’t mean that you should take it upon yourself to continually log into your account and make edits to your listing. There are a number of ways that a listing can violate terms of use, possibly resulting in the listing being suspended and your local listing campaign taking a negative hit. If you employ an outside company to oversee your local listings, feel free to ask as many questions as you want, but leave it to the company to make edits (after all, that’s what you’re paying to have done).

Aside from holding onto all login information, be sure that your listings are consistent from one site to another. Be sure that multiple listings on a single site are consolidated into one to eliminate the possibility of violating terms of use. And, most importantly, make sure that your listings are properly optimized so that you are found in as many web searches as possible.

To learn more about how to create effective local listings and integrate other Internet marketing strategies, contact SLS Consulting today by calling (323) 254-1510.

Have you Googled yourself lately? What did you find? Was the information up-to-date, or old? Was your information even accurate in the first place? Unfortunately, for many companies out there, local listing sites sometimes have company information so muddled that it may seem nearly impossible to clean them all up. However, with a little bit of perseverance, a whole lot of patience, and time, your listings can be corrected, and your search engine rankings will undoubtedly benefit as a result.

For starters, Google isn’t the only listing site that businesses need to concern themselves with. In fact, if a company devotes all of its efforts solely to ranking well on Google, it may be inadvertently neglecting many of the local listing directories that Google obtains information from. Unless companies adopt well-rounded local listing site practices, their organic rankings will never flourish the way they should, which will directly affect the number of clients retained and ultimately affect the company’s bottom line.

So what does it take to rank well on Google and other local listing sites? First of all, you need to familiarize yourself with the submission process, particularly what type of information is allowed in the listing. Different sites have different terms of use, and making sure you don’t violate terms of use is essential in creating a strong local listing foundation and moving towards page one placement.

Second of all, pay attention to which sites other sites obtain information from. For example, if you’re an attorney and you have inaccurate information on your Google Places listing, and that incorrect information was originally gathered from your Avvo profile, then you have to not only correct the information within Google Places, but you also have to update your Avvo profile. Otherwise, Google will continue to assume that Avvo is a trusted citation source and the inaccurate information will continue to pop up on your local listing profile.

In Part 2 of our two-part series, we’ll talk more about local listing site strategies and how to get the most out of your local listings.