Articles Posted in Legal Marketing Tips

Is your Google Places listing accurate? Have you created a Google Places account, claimed your listing, and edited the incorrect information only to find that your listing information stays the same? If you’re like most marketing professionals who handle your business’s local listing accounts, chances are very good that you’ve encountered plenty of frustration when trying to correct information on a Google Places listing. However, while it may be time consuming, a Google Places listing can be edited to reflect a company’s most recent information, such as address and phone number, albeit in a relatively indirect manner. Allow us to explain…

The first thing you should realize is that while Google appreciates the information you provide it about your company, that information does not represent the end-all, be-all of data Google uses to create your listing (that’s right, Google creates your listing…not you). Google scours the Internet, searching for any information about your company it can find. The majority of this information comes from listing directories, so suffice it to say that, if you don’t have a well balanced legal Internet marketing campaign already in place, you’re going to run into roadblocks on your way to ranking well in Google Maps.
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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:
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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].
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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.
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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.
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In the world of legal Internet marketing, everyone is always looking for the next best thing, even if that thing isn’t necessarily a new concept. These days, one thing is clear: video is a good thing. Since Google’s Panda update, it’s no secret that the search engine giant loves video. In fact, including video on your website will not only make your content more interesting and interactive, but it may help you rank better in search results.

According to recent search data, YouTube is the second largest search engine (in terms of general searches made on the site each day). Think about it. When was the last time you visited YouTube? What did you do after you watched that first video? If you’re like most people, you probably didn’t just stop after that first one. You probably watched more than one video, maneuvering from link to link, not even realizing how long you’d actually been on the site. In short, the immense popularity of video could be linked to one simple concept. People like to be shown things. While reading through website content or a blog entry can certainly inform an audience, videos can help enhance the user experience, which results in users spending more time on your site and hence assisting your site in ranking better.
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In Part 1 and Part 2 of our three-part series on the legal Internet marketing cycle, we examined the importance of establishing a rapport with people via well utilized social media profiles, and then discussed how blogging should be used to really sell yourself as an authority on the particular area of law that you practice. Therefore, the third area of the cycle that we will talk about is your primary means of marketing yourself: your website.

When designing your legal website, it’s important to remember three things:

One, the site should be easy to navigate. This is extremely important for any website, and should not be ignored during an initial website design or even redesign. If it’s even slightly difficult to maneuver from one area of your website to another, visitors to your site are going to want to navigate away from it. The best way to ensure that your website is properly laid out is to retain the services of an experienced web design company who not only talks the talk, but has positive client testimonials to validate its work. If other attorneys have been satisfied with a particular web design company, chances are very good that you’ll be satisfied as well.
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