Law Firm Web Design, SEO & Social Media Blog

Hello, g’day, nín hǎo. It’s been an exciting week for the team at Moore Legal Technology, one which sees us reach another milestone in our growth as we pick up our first international accounts with a project in Australia and one in Hong Kong.

CaseCheck, the online resource of case law, summaries, articles and expert opinions, has released the first in a series of downloadable ebooks. Available, for free, as part of CaseCheck subscription (only £5 per month) the first digest contains over 700 summaries from 2012.

Dave Kerr will be running the Paris Marathon this Sunday for the Mo Farah Foundation.

Guest post regarding the future of website marketing and some of the key considerations for your law firm.

Guest post regarding recognition and trust in professional services firms, including law firms.

Earlier this week I presented to the Glasgow Sole Practitioners’ Group at The Royal Faculty of Procurators on the subject of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for Sole Practitioners: Getting You Found Online.

If you’re a regular visitor to our blog, you’ll know how often we extol the importance of well designed websites for law firms. In most cases, this includes ‘responsive design’, which is to say websites which are set up with tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices in mind. However, no matter how well-designed a site is, or how tailored for portable platforms it is, it will never offer a complete experience. Responsive design does the job of presenting your site and its contents in a user-friendly way on small-screen and touch-screen devices. The user still needs to use web browsing software to access the site, meaning your site is constrained by the confines of the browser itself.

Some of our new contacts have recently noted that they thought some of our team members only existed on the Internet. When we're helping our clients generate more business online, that can sometimes be the way we see it too (at least during working hours).

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is most often associated solely with Google, Bing and Yahoo. But it must not be forgotten that search engines also exist with the dominant social media platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ etc) and, with the growing significance of social media, these are becoming more important (indeed, there is a growing specialism in ‘social media optimisation’ (‘SMO’). Twitter search, in particular, just received a massive boost.

Web marketing can produce powerful results for your law firm or other business, but there are some essential elements which must be done correctly if you are to achieve your online goals. If not, you may be not only wasting your time and investment, but you may also be risking damage to your reputation. The following are ten of the most common online marketing mistakes made by law firms and businesses and some tips on how you can avoid these:-

The world's largest professional social media network, LinkedIn announced yesterday (9 January) that it has surpassed a new milestone: it now boasts more than 200 million members.

At the start of 2012 we blogged our top 7 online marketing tips for professional services companies for the year. Looking ahead to 2013, here are our top digital marketing tips for law firms, lawyers and other businesses to get the most from their online marketing efforts and investment.

Personal injury practice has always been difficult. A competitive market place, irregular revenue streams and a generally negative public perception (until they need one!) have made the personal injury lawyer's lot a difficult one. As if this wasn't bad enough, the changes in the legal landscape over the last decade, as well as those still to come, have had most impact on personal injury firms. The referral fee ban and changes to the way in which whiplash claims are to be administered may well, as Neil Rose of Legal Futures puts it "decimate the workload of many law firms".

A recent study from BIA/Kelsey forecasts that social media advertisement revenues will reach over $9.2 billion (over £5 billion) by 2016 in the US alone, as reported in Marketing Pilgrim.

Most lawyers have managed to harness the power of the written word for their practices. But not many have been able to use their writing mastery to its fullest for web marketing purposes. With the Internet continuing to evolve, the good news is that proficient content marketing has never been more powerful than it is today. We thought it would be useful to explain in basic terms what content marketing is and why it is an essential aspect of a law firm’s online marketing strategy.

Further to our recent publications in Legal Futures (“Twitter and Facebook are the new golf course – law firms urged to take online marketing initiative”)  and The Law Society Gazette (“Competing with new entrants”), we are pleased to announce that our White Paper "Generating Business Online" regarding online business generation for law firms in the age of ABS is now available to download.

In a guest blog in the Law Society Gazette, Stephen Moore discusses contemporary issues in marketing for law firms, changes in the way potential clients are searching for legal services and how law firms can capitalise on the changes taking place in the legal sector.

Within the past month there have been three significant updates to Google's algorithm. These are summarised as follows:-

To win legal business against ABS competitors who are already skilled retailers, lawyers will have become expert in such things as “networking, selling, social media, internet marketing, branding”. We explain why lawyers are being urged to take online marketing initiative in a recent article in Legal Futures. Our 'online business generation' report referred to in the article will be available soon and we'll notify you here on our blog.