Law Firm Websites, SEO and Social Media Blog

With the news that the economic worth of activity on the Internet is set to spiral upward during the course of the next few years (indeed the web economy is set to double by 2016) we thought it might be an idea to give you a few of our tips for 2012.

Essentially, we have been working out our own strategy for customers and are happy to share this with you too. Of course, if you want us to help implement it for you, please get in touch on 0845 620 5664.

By way of background, our feeling is that the Internet is now moving at a remarkable pace and for those that keep up there are lots of opportunities. If you don't, you are going to get dropped....and quickly.

1. Stay Tuned

The Internet is run by geeks and geeks love to blog, comment and tell everyone about what is changing and the potential impact of this change. Using twitter, search engine blogs such as SEOMoz or Search Engine Land and smartphone apps such as Zite allow us to keep abreast of developments quickly, conveniently and whilst still holding a cup of coffee.

If you're interested in keeping up to date on internet marketing for law firms, continue to follow our blog, copy our SEO list on twitter (see also this SEO/E-Commerce List), or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.

2. Be Like An Octopus!

By this we don't mean live underwater! Think of your website as the head and your additional online marketing activities as the tentacles - do not see them as being separate from another. All online activity should be driving traffic back to your website where you control the messages driving positive, measurable action.

This tip may seem a bit strange, but we are hoping to go into this in more detail in our first VIDEO. See next tip!

3. Use Video

Video is ubiquitous and presented in the right way it can really help promote you brand, widen your reputation and drive engagement. It is cheap to produce, free to host and easy to embed in many of the online channels you may be using already.

Hope for viral (in a good way).

As search engines and search engine marketing continue to evolve, Google has announced in a blog post that it is making one of its most radical transformations ever. Following on from their introduction to Social Search, they are continuing their transformation with the rollout of their “Search Plus Your World” format, comprising three main features:- personal results, profiles in search and people & pages.

They note that Search plus Your World will become available over the next few days to people who are signed in and searching on https://www.google.com in English.

Google concludes their blog post: “We named our company after the mathematical number googol as an aspiration toward indexing the countless answers on webpages, but that’s only part of the picture. The other part is people, and that’s what Search plus Your World is all about.”

Comment

Essentially what this means is that material from Google’s fast growing social network Google+ will become integrated into Google’s search engine results much more.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the Web, has already criticised Facebook for creating a walled garden. Yesterday, Twitter criticised the move along similar lines:-

“For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results anytime they wanted to find something on the Internet. Often, they want to know more about world events and breaking news. Twitter has emerged as a vital source of this real-time information, with more than 100 million users sending 250 million Tweets every day on virtually every topic. As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter; as a result, Twitter accounts and Tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

As noted on the New York Times’ Bits Blog James Grimmelmann, an associate professor at New York Law School who specializes in Internet law, also criticised the move on Twitter, James stated “Today is a good day to turn off Google+ and delete your Google Profile. I just did. He continues in a telephone interview with the Times: “I don’t like it. I don’t like it for its effect on competition, and I don’t like it for what it does to people’s privacy. It breaks down a very clear conceptual divide between things that are private and things that are public online.”

Nevertheless search marketers must keep up with the latest trends. Law firm marketers should be keeping a very close eye on the changes and should at the least be experimenting with the functionality of Google+ for their firms. We have already written about our initial thoughts on Google Plus for law firms and lawyers and indeed already have a business page for Moore Legal Technology on Google Plus. I continue to develop my network on the platform and my Google Plus updates can be viewed here.

For further information on these new changes, Search Engine Land has produced a very comprehensive report on the Google changes. We would recommend anyone wanting to find out more about how the changes are going to affect their search experiences reads that.

To discuss any aspect of search marketing for law firms and other professional services firms in more detail please do contact us on 0845 620 5664.

We are pleased to announce that our clients, LawCloud, for which we provide social media consultancy services, have had their LawCloudComputing blog listed by Computer Weekly as one of the top 10 best new blogs of 2011.

As Computer Weekly notes, “Blogging has become part of the everyday consumption of information, this category looks at those blogs created in the past two years that have delivered something new and fresh to what is now a crowded and highly competitive space.”

This follows on from LawCloud's success earlier in 2011, when they were named in a list of the top 100 bloggers on cloud computing.

At Moore Legal Technology, we believe that blogging is an essential element of a professional services firm's Internet marketing strategy. To speak to us about law firm blog design, legal blogging or how to expand your social media efforts to the point where they are considered to be award winning, please telephone 0845 620 5664 or complete our online enquiry form today.

Our clients, LawCloud, for which we provide social media consultancy services have recently blogged about setting SMART objectives for law firms in 2012. We thought it would be good to supplement this by explaining how lawyers, law firms and other professional services firms can set SMART objectives for their SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) strategies for 2012.

What are SMART objectives?

You may be familiar with the SMART acronym. At the law firm where I used to work, setting SMART objectives was a regular activity for all lawyers in the firm. SMART objectives are those which are “Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound”.

Why set SMART objectives?

SMART objectives can be particularly useful for businesses planning to achieve desired results. And, given that at Moore Legal Technology we focus on achieving the best results for our clients, we hope our insights into this subject will provide you with some useful inspiration when considering your New Year’s Resolutions and business plans for 2012.

Specific SEO Objectives

Making your SEO objectives specific, not vague, is important. Doing so will increase your chance of following through. For newer websites or for firms only just getting to grips with SEO a good specific objective might be ranking on the first page of Google for targeted keywords in targeted geographic locations e.g. ‘family lawyer edinburgh’ or ‘compromise agreements solicitors liverpool’. For firms with more advanced investment in SEO, a better specific objective may be ranking number 1 in Google or in the top 3 for targeted keywords.

Specific does not, however, mean you have to create a narrow objective only focusing on keywords; it could be broader, for instance:-

• you’d like to generate over a certain number of phone calls through your website per month; or
• you’d like to get over a certain number of monthly views on your website; or
• you’d like to increase your relevant Twitter followers or LinkedIn group connections to a certain number (social media is becoming more relevant to SEO than ever before); or
• you’d like to achieve over a certain percentage of business coming through online means in 2012.

Measurable SEO Objectives

Making your SEO objectives measurable is also important. You won’t be able to track SEO performance if you can’t measure it. SEO experts are able to report on more than you might think. Your SEO expert should, for instance, be able to provide monthly or weekly tailored Google Analytics reports, keyword analysis, keyword rankings not only for your homepage, but also for specific landing pages, over a certain period of time. And they should help you understand what the data means so that you can determine progress made.

"A shrinking legal market and fierce price competition has placed law firms under immense pressure to be as productive as possible. For their IT departments, this means a focus on freeing up fee earners so they can spend as much time as possible doing what they are best at – making money."

We are pleased to welcome guest author Rob Greenslade, Sales & Marketing Director of Centralis, as he looks at the competitive pressures driving law firms towards virtualisation and the technology options available:-

It’s no great secret that the legal sector has been cautious when adopting new technology. Historically 2-3 years behind more commercially-aggressive organisations, pressures from the economic downturn, increased competition and client sophistication are forcing law firms to operate within tighter spending and management controls in order to maintain profits as fee revenue has dropped.

There is no question that the high availability of information systems, applications and data are critical to a law firm’s ability to generate fees. When lawyers can’t access their applications or get to their case data, valuable time and resources are wasted. It also leads to frustrated staff, clients and partners. As a result firms of all sizes are looking more seriously at embracing the latest technologies to drive efficiency and increase profits.

One technology in particular is now attracting a lot of attention from the legal sector.  Known as ‘virtual desktop infrastructure’ (VDI), VDI allows businesses to host desktops from a centralised server room,  data centre, or indeed from the cloud. It separates the individual user’s settings from their device and operating system to enable significant benefits including enhanced performance and reduced cost and complexity of managing the desktop application environment. It also improves the end-user experience – especially when users are accessing corporate applications in a number of ways, such as by laptop, desktop or other end-device running a thin client.

Time is money

One major benefit of VDI is rapid deployment. A growing problem, particularly for firms using outdated technology, is the time that fee earners can waste logging-on to corporate systems and applications. It is not unusual for users to take up to five minutes accessing the corporate network with their user profile and this can easily take double when logging-on remotely. Indeed, at one law firm, it took users 40 minutes to log-on to the network remotely. Although 5-10 minutes out of someone’s day might not sound like much, when you multiply this across 500 fee earners, 100 of whom might be working remotely, over the course of one month this soon adds up to an alarming amount.

A new version of Twitter is being rolled out in the next couple of weeks. Explained in more detail through the subdomain Fly.Twitter.com the new version of Twitter has been released already for Android, iPhone and Tweetdeck users, with the full version to appear in the next few weeks.

Writing on the official Twitter blog, Twitter noted that:-

"Today we introduce a new version of Twitter. We’ve simplified the design to make it easier than ever to follow what you care about, connect with others and discover something new. You’ll see this new design both on Twitter.com and mobile phones, so that you’ll have a familiar experience any time, anywhere. We’ve also updated TweetDeck to be consistent with this new version."

"We’ll be rolling out the redesigned Twitter over the next few weeks. You can see it immediately on the just-updated versions of mobile.twitter.com, Twitter for iPhone, and Twitter for Android. You can get early access on your computer by downloading and logging into Twitter for iPhone or Twitter for Android. We’re working on updates for other apps, such as Twitter for iPad, and will share news as they become available."

Comment

It wasn't long ago that Twitter launched a new design and experienced a mixed bag of opinions from the tweeting community, with many users prefering to use "Old Twitter" for as long as possible or choosing to use 'old style RTs'. It is hoped that these new changes will be more welcome than previous changes to allow the Twitter experience to be better for everyone to share information more easily and to connect with others with better user experience. Follow hashtags #letsfly, #newtwitter and #newlook for the latest reactions.

Last week I spoke at the 2011 LawWare User Conference on the subject of the "High Street Law Firm in a Digital Age".

Looking at search engine results for keywords such as 'solicitors east kilbride' (for which our client Austin Lafferty ranks first) and examining some our others clients' successes with some firms generating over 100 enquiries per month through their websites, I explained that the web is the new high street for law firms.

Further examples of sites we have designed and optimised were given, such as Employment Law Edinburgh which ranks at the top of Google for relevant employment law terms in the Edinburgh area and which has a strong social media presence, e.g. via Twitter, generates many relevant enquiries each month. The traffic to the site and indeed the enquiries generated are targetted because of the way the site is optimised for search engines.

In conclusion, I noted that law firms without a solid Internet marketing strategy are missing out on the chance to build their online presence and generate valuable business. On the other hand, if they get it right, they could find themselves in the most prominent location (or indeed locations) on the new high street.

Further, Moore Legal Technology's social media manager, Gavin Ward, was tweeting live from the event via the LawCloud Twitter account. The updates from the event can be viewed under the hashtag #LawWareUGM and other updates from the event can be read on LawCloud's blog post.

In a departure from our typical workload of legal website design, optimisation and marketing we've branched out into tyres!

With offices throughout central Scotland in Coatbridge, Johnstone, Kilmarnock and Leven, Strathclyde Tyres are one of Scotland's leading independent tyre retailers with a reputation for outstanding service, innovative tyres programmes and, most importantly, value for money.

The Project

We were commissioned by the Strathclyde Tyres team to design, develop, optimise and implement a search engine friendly and highly scalable web presence with social media integration. We were also asked to manage their website and social media activities on an ongoing basis. To date the site has been implemented, partially optimised and the Strathclyde Tyres’ blog  is up and running attracting increasing numbers of visits every day through organic search and nascent social media campaigns.

Additionally, new prominence is being given to Strathclyde Tyres’ innovative Tracey’s Tyres concept which is a service specifically aimed at women.

Timescales

If you are trying to drive more traffic to your website, it is a good idea to share links to articles or other pages on your website through social media channels. And when you do so, you will want to increase your click-through rate ("CTR"), i.e. the rate at which others click-through your links to arrive at your website. You may think that sharing a link with hundreds or thousands of followers, on Twitter for instance, will naturally result in many clicks through to your website. It is, however, not quite as easy as that and there are some additional tips to consider when sharing links.

Social Media Scientist at HubSpot, Dan Zarella recently blogged about 10 words that can increase or decrease your CTR. They are as follows:-

These can increase your CTR

1. #

2. "daily is out"

3. via

Further to our recent post about our thoughts on the relatively new social network Google+, Google+ has now activated business pages.

These Google+ pages will give businesses a chance to expand their online presence even more. Google Senior Vice President (Engineering) Vic Gundotra, wrote in a blog post, "So far Google Plus has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about--from local businesses to global brands -- So today we' re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide."

Please do visit and circle us at Moore Legal Technology's Google+ page to keep up to date with relevant web design, SEO and social media tips and news.

Google announced yesterday that it has updated its search algorithm, with the results impacting around 35% of Google searches. This news comes only months after their Panda update which had a major impact on search results, particularly in respect of duplicated content. This time, it's about making their search results as up-to-date as possible for news-worthy stories, while preserving the prominence of older posts where these are still relevant.

Following on from Google's completion of their Caffeine web indexing system last year, which allows them to "crawl and index the web for fresh content quickly on an enormous scale", Google notes that, as of yesterday, they are "making a significant improvement to our ranking algorithm that impacts roughly 35 percent of searches and better determines when to give you more up-to-date relevant results for these varying degrees of freshness."

As explained by TechCrunch, "Now, it’s clear that Google understands that the most relevant search result is more often the one that’s relevant now – the one that’s bringing you new information."

TechCrunch also makes pertinent points regarding the correlation between this recent update and the abandonment of their RealTime search facility. They note "Google used to have a search vertical specifically for the most recent updates at www.google.com/realtime, where it was indexing Twitter updates. However, when the contract with Twitter expired, Google shuttered the site (it now redirects to the Google homepage). Google said at the time that it planned to re-open the site with Google+ search results alongside other realtime sources of information. But with the new Google search update, a specific vertical for realtime information feels less necessary."

As this news illustrates, the way search engine rankings work is constantly changing. Moore Legal Technology are experts in website design and optimisation to help your firm rank higher in Google and other search engines in order for you to generate more, relevant business online. Call us today on 0845 620 5664 for a no-obligation discussion about how your website or online marketing strategy can be improved.

Looking to drive more traffic to your website using social media? StumbleUpon is your answer. Over the past year in the US, for instance, StumbleUpon sent more traffic to websites than any other social media network including Facebook or Twitter.

And, having been a user of StumbleUpon for over a year, I would certainly recommend investing some time with this social network - or at least ensuring that your digital marketing team is doing so. An example from personal experience of how effective StumbleUpon can be, especially for sharing blog posts, can be found with my Top 10 LinkedIn Tips for Young Lawyers blog post from earlier this year, which has been "Stumbled" over 2,000 times. With almost 100 followers on StumbleUpon, my StumbleUpon profile can be viewed here.

In their recent blog post, StumbleUpon sets out some useful statistics about their network with the following infographic entitled "The Life Cycle of a Web Page":-

Image source: StumbleUpon blog

Guest post by Peter Collins, managing director, Retain International

For legal firms, especially smaller and mid-tier firms outside of the ‘magic circle’, the importance of improving margins and making the most of existing resources has been brought into sharp focus given the reduced pool of commercial work following the financial crisis. The situation isn’t getting any better as legal process outsourcing (LPO) firms start to look increasingly attractive to businesses looking to cut costs.

In order for UK-based legal firms to compete with LPOs, they need to ensure they are running as cost-effectively as possible so they can offer an attractive value proposition. For these firms, resource management is vital for creating client value, enhancing profitability and maintaining a competitive edge. Work must be planned, resourced and executed in a way that allows a firm to maximise billable hours at the lowest possible cost and achieve the best possible margin. Firms also need to know that they have the headroom to take on new cases and clients, which is particularly challenging in the current economic climate, where headcounts have been reduced and recruitment programmes frozen.

Without the means to report on and analyse internal resources, senior management has no way to identify where resources are being under-utilised or where spare capacity may exist. Trying to offer services at competitive rates is therefore very difficult, making it a challenge to go up against cheaper outsourcing providers.  It can also leave the business vulnerable to spikes in demand if more cases or clients are taken on, or existing cases run over. Furthermore, without visibility across the business, a firm is unable to identify and analyse trends that would otherwise help to improve the business and plan for future work.

Simply using a basic spreadsheet package to track who is doing what will never provide the level of foresight and analysis firms need to effectively manage resources. Although many firms continue to use conventional spreadsheets to plan projects and allocate resources, they are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain visibility across their organisation and manage resources effectively.

We have a position available for a website developer to work with our growing legal technology practice in the UK.

The successful candidate should have experience in and be able to demonstrate expertise in designing and developing Joomla! based websites. Passion is critical, as are strong communication & organisational skills.

The position is temporary, with potential to become permanent.

If you are interested in applying for this position, please send your CV to Gavin Ward at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it no later than Friday 11th November 2011.

Head of Google’s Web spam team, Matt Cutts has recently clarified that Google does not consider SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to be spam.

As ZDNet reports, "Of course, those of us in the industry have known this for as long as we’ve been interested in SEO, but the overwhelming perception of SEO by the everyman is that it is directly proportional to spam."

Matt Cutts answers the question: "Does Google consider SEO to be spam? in this video below:-

This is a welcome clarification from Google. Matt acknowledges that there are some "black hat SEOs" who use inappropriate tricks to try to con Google, such as hacking sites or employing "sneaky redirects". But, for the most part, SEO is to be welcomed. In that respect, the Google Webmaster help team also makes available a beginner's guide to SEO and also provides a guide to choosing an SEO team.

For law firms and other businesses in the UK and around the world, search engine rankings are becoming more competitive. Some areas of practice are more competitive than others, but even in the most competitive areas, it is still possible to get to the highest places on Google or other search engines for targeted keywords in targeted geographical locations. Considering the more competitive areas of online search such as car hire can provide some welcome examples for law firms and other professional service firms considering enhancing their online strategies to convert relevant enquiries.

Car hire search engine rankings

One of the more competitive areas of online search, car hire is well-suited to optimised Internet marketing. Many customers seeking car hire companies will usually look to the web in the form of a search on Google or other search engines first in considering the best provider. Not only will such prospective customers search for “car hire”, they may also search for other terms such as “car rental” or expand further with geographical locations, such as “car hire Glasgow”. For those customers coming from abroad looking for car hire at major airports, search becomes even more important for them. Companies trying to attract such customers to their website must have not only prominent Google rankings for relevant search terms, but also relevant landing pages to which searches can be directed.

Converting relevant car hire enquiries

A good example of a company using Internet marketing well, Arnold Clark Car & Van Rental uses separate landing pages for various locations to attract car hire enquiries. It can be useful for law firms and other professional services businesses to take note of their approach.

Strong landing pages are used for the main areas of airport car hire, such as their Glasgow Airport  car hire, Edinburgh Airport car hire, Aberdeen Airport car hire and Manchester Airport car hire services. When a potential customer lands on these pages through Google, they are immediately greeted with calls-to-action such as a phone number to call or an email address to which they can send a message. Further, bespoke descriptions of their service on each page are provided with instructions specific to each airport in addition to details of types of car available. By presenting the landing pages in this way, customers can find what they are looking for, not just through their initial Google search, but once they land on the relevant pages as well. Such an approach sets them up well to convert relevant online enquiries.

What can law firms and other professional services firms learn?

In many ways, law firms and other professional services firms are no different. They have services for varying areas of law or other professional service. They will usually operate in more than one area, e.g. in different towns or cities. They will, therefore, want potential clients to land on pages of their website relevant to that service or the location in which they practice. An essential feature of optimising those landing pages includes having prominent calls-to-action, whether in the main body of text or in the widgets on the page. The main types of calls-to-action such firms should rely on consist either of phone numbers, email addresses or online enquiry forms and should be used in a similar way, for instance, to the leading car hire companies.

Hubspot has published an article recently about the "9 must-haves for the Perfect Landing Page".

One of the most important elements for generating business on a website, landing pages are the pages on your website that customers view initially when they visit your website, whether they were led there through a search on Google or through a social media link or an emailed link etc. And indeed these are the pages to which you want to direct potential clients.

Generating Business through Landing Pages

As the post at Hubspot notes, "The job of a landing page is to tell your visitors exactly what you want them to do and why they should do it. Homepages, while still an important element of a website, are typically less focused on a particular task because they are serving the masses. Homepages are great for direct traffic, but when you can control how visitors arrive on your site, a landing page is the best place to send them. When done right, landing pages can have a very positive impact on your lead generation."

The nine must-haves are as follows and are elaborated in the Hubspot article:-

1. Never use your homepage as a landing page

Google Analytics is the most prolific search analytics tool for many search engine marketing professionals. Yesterday, it became even more valuable, with Google’s major announcement that it is to introduce Google Analytics Real-Time.

Previously, Google Analytics measured past data, meaning that webmasters had to wait until the end of any given day before viewing stats from that day on Google Analytics. With Google Analytics Real-Time, a set of new reports can be created that show what’s happening on your site as it happens. This screenshot shows what Real-Time looks like:-

Measuring social media impact

One of the key differences this will make for Google Analytics users will be the ability to track traffic as and when it is directed to websites through social media. Although there are other analytics tools available on the market already for this, Google's announcement is still very significant.

Other benefits

In addition to being able to measure social media impact more accurately, Real-Time will also give users the benefit of being able to track an ad campaign, e.g. a TV or email marketing campaign, as it happens.

While Google still holds the largest share of the global search engine market (with 64.8% according to comScore), Microsoft’s Bing is still trying to catch up. With a current 14.7% share of global searches being made through Bing each day, law firms and professional services firms looking to be found on search engines for targeted keywords should not rely solely on Google. And, indeed, we’re always pleased to tell a client we’ve helped get their website to the number one spot in Google AND Bing and other search engines for targeted keywords.

Getting to the number one spot on Bing

What helps a site rank well on Bing? As with Google, Bing’s search algorithm is constantly changing. Recently Bing published a post on their webmaster blog detailing different SEO factors which affect Bing search engine rankings. We’ve summarised these as follows:-

Crawlability

Can a crawler access your content? If not it won’t be indexed by search engines. This can be improved by using XML sitemaps and enhancing navigation on your website. The URL structure should also be keyword rich and not convoluted.

Site Structure

Does your website structure have strong functionality, encouraging link building? Linking both to external trusted sources and to other internal content helps provide a good user experience and, as a result, helps with search rankings.

Content Hierarchy

Is your site’s content hierarchy structured in a way that allows searchers to find what they’re looking for?  If it isn’t, keyword research performed either by your firm or by keyword research experts followed by implementation can greatly enhance content hierarchy.

When working with clients we appreciate that there is strong competition in the Internet search market, with the value of search continuing to increase. Given that much legal business can be won through having optimised online presence, this inevitably means that law firms are finding it more challenging to rank well for the most profitable keywords.

Therefore, unless law firms continue to have a strong online marketing partner or, indeed, marketing partners, they could be losing out on valuable legal business. A recent McKinsey study, The impact of Internet technologies: Search explains and examines the phenomenon of Internet search and its rising value. Some of the key findings include:

• Using country-level analysis as a base, it is estimated that the total gross value of Internet search across the global economy was $780 billion (£494 billion) in 2009. By this estimate, each search is worth about $0.50 (£0.32). Among retailers, the value of search in 2009 equalled 2 percent of total annual revenues in developed nations and 1 percent in developing ones. That value stemmed directly from online shopping, as well as from online research that led to an in-store sale. US retailers saw as much as $67 billion (£42.4 billion) in search-related revenues.

• In the five countries studied, knowledge workers experienced search-related productivity gains of up to $117 billion (£74 billion), flowing from faster and more accurate access to information.

• There are new emerging sources of search-related value. These include the rise of use of “long tail” keywords as a search technique to help consumers access ever-narrower product or service segments. Another is new business models, such as those keyed to the needs of consumers who search via mobile devices.