SEO Improvement Tips for Attorneys: Legal Content Writer Explains

Posted on May 15, 2013 by nbattaglia

Once your law firm or attorney webpage and legal blog is launched, there are certain legal marketing tweaks you can make to improve your website’s position. As a legal content writer, I have seen many legal websites that were on the right track but lacking simple fixes that will yield big results.

Three Tips from a Legal Content Writer

While these tips cannot replace a legal content writer who specializes in drafting content for legal websites, here are three tips to improve your website SEO that can be implemented even if you have the most basic understanding of online marketing:

1) Focus on your General Locality and Drill it

Logically, this makes absolutely sense. So much sense, that one would ask why this is the first SEO tip; it is stating the obvious. However, the truth of the matter is most attorney websites or legal blogs fail to hone in on the locality they hope to tap into. Others attempt to conquer too large of a locality that they cannot responsibly donate the time and effort into cultivating. As a legal content writer, this can be one of the easiest fixes to remedy.

For instance, a law firm seeking to obtain clients in the northern region of the state should focus on cities, towns, and counties in that area within their website content. Prospective clients will search locally first to save themselves the trip of having to travel far distances to a lawyer if they do not have it. Competition for these local places is likely to be significantly less than for larger geographic areas–such as entire states or regions–which require constant attention and more resources. Thus, if the attention required is not provided, all attempts will essentially be wasted because they will be spread too thin to be effective.

2) Use Titles that Interest Laypersons, Not You (the Attorney)

Again, this appears to go without saying. Yet, as a legal content writer, too often do I see attorneys posting titles such as “Premises Liability and You: Proving Constructive Notice.” Most people have no idea what premises liability cases actually are in the first place, let alone do they know what constructive notice is or why it is important.

However, morphing this title into “Slip and Fall Accidents: What You Need to Do to Win” would generate significantly more interest for someone who has just fallen and sustained an injury. Moreover, that is what they will be searching online; a slip and fall and how to win their case. Then within the post, you can tactfully convert a slip and fall case into a premises liability issue. Add the location you are hoping to focus on in the title, and you will have a solid title for your blog post.

Moreover, titles should be attention-grabbing or enticing. You want prospective clients coming across your blog posts to be compelled to click on the link and see what you have on your webpage. The best example of this is on news articles or tabloids. We hate them and don’t intend to ever click on them, however, sometimes the titles are just to irresistible to not uncover.

3) Provide Helpful Links, not Wasteful Ones

Google is smart and ever-evolving. In the past, heavy linking was the way to easily build your website’s online presence. In fact, webpage owners would just provide hundreds of random links within their articles to increase their ranking.

But Google culled these behavior and looked for relevant links that have content and buzzwords similar to the content and buzzwords in your blog posts. Thus, providing irrelevant links would actually harm your website’s potential. This can disarm your legal content writer and render your online legal marketing useless.

But in the gamesmanship of “beating Google,” people have forgotten the reason for writing the blogs and providing links in the first place: Help the readers! Regardless if you can make your website appear at the top of all relevant searches, if visitors to your website find, click on, and attempt to use your website–but it does not help them–you will generate no business. The visitor will simply hit the “back” button and go to the next website down the line.

Employing these three simple SEO tips can improve your website’s visibility and utility greatly. Remember, being at the top of the search engine is excellent, but it will still require solid and helpful content to impress your visitors to patronize your services.

While these are only a few tips, ask your legal content writer for more information on other ways to improve your website. Other methods are not as easy, but certainly effective.

If you have more questions or would like an SEO review of your website, please contact NAB Legal Marketing, LLC today. We are legal content writers who understand how to use SEO effectively to improve your law firm’s web presence. Contact us today at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com

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One Year Anniversary!

Posted on March 29, 2013 by nbattaglia

One year ago today, NAB Legal Marketing, LLC filed with the New York Secretary of State and converted an idea into a business. With the increasing amount of law firms using the internet to market themselves by using legal content writers, the future is optimistic as solicitations are becoming a weekly event and I look forward to continue growing this business.

I sincerely thank all those who have offered advice, support, and their time into improving my ideas, this business, and most importantly, helping my clients. Furthermore, I truly thank all of my clients who have trusted us for services and relied on our skill and knowledge to grow their law firm online–it has been a pleasure to work with all of you and I look forward to many years of a business relationship.

On behalf of NAB Legal Marketing, LLC, thank you for a great inaugural year!

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Firms With Legal Blogs Rose In Rankings, According to ABA Journal Article

Posted on January 12, 2013 by nbattaglia

The American Bar Association (“ABA”) published an article reporting the findings of a LexBlog 2012 end-of-the-year survey regarding U.S. law firms and legal blogs. The study itself focused particularly on large law firms and reported some very interesting findings.

Of the top Am Law 200 law firms, 77-percent of those firms had legal blogs which constituted a 26-percent increase over the last report. These firms were responsible for 633 blogs, which correlates with a 63-percent increase over the last report as well.

But what does this all mean? The report found that, on average, firms with blogs rose in the rankings while firms without blogs slipped. While all of the Am Law 200 increased their revenue last year, the study found that the 155 Am Law 200 firms with blogs increased their revenue by over a million dollars compared to the Am Law 200 firms without blogs.

The study admits that there could be some contributing factors, but still acknowledges that the results are important: Firms with legal content on their blogs will perform better than firms without.

Even though the study is for large law firms, the effect may be more pronounced for small to mid-size firms, particularly those in less-saturated markets. That is because most, if not, all of the Am Law 200 firms are in large, saturated markets. Firms in regions outside of the large markets would have a stronger affect with any advertising that they make.

Here are NAB Legal Marketing, LLC, we are legal content writers and focus our legal content drafting business on small to mid-size firms in any market, particularly smaller or mid-size markets. We stride to improve the marketing of these firms through legal blogs by writing engaging and informative content for a law firm’s blog. If you have any questions or would like to learn more, contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

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Legal Blog Start-up Kits; One Client’s Request Becomes A New Service

Posted on January 6, 2013 by nbattaglia

As legal content writers, we are always willing to take request from clients regarding services we may provide. Back in August, we had received a request seeking a legal blog start-up kit which comprised of a group of blog posts to help populate a legal blog before launching it publicly. We gladly obliged and provided the content as requested.

A few weeks later, another client asked us to advise them regarding a blog start-up kit; this time significantly more detailed and with more content. It became apparent this was going to be a common and important service we can provide to our clients.

Internally, we devised a marketing strategy for new legal blogs regarding what content should be included and what purposes the posts should have. We wanted to make sure there was sufficient search engine optimization (“SEO”) on the main practice areas to attract prospective clients, but we also wanted to ensure the more narrow issues were accounted for–even to those just generally visiting the blog. In addition, we wanted to make sure the law firm’s largest practice area was more specifically highlighted. Finally, we wanted some more recent posts to be included to show timeliness and relevance. All in all, the content would have a mix of heavy legalese for referrals from other practitioners, while still providing easily digestible posts for prospective clients.

Therefore, we suggest a combination of fifteen (15) legal blog posts. One or two of the larger posts that include a general overview of your practice areas, with subheadings of specific issues within that area of law. Next, we recommend about five posts of smaller posts discussing specific issues within your main area of law. This is so that a visitor to your website will see a diverse listing of titles listed under your blog, and hopefully the more specific one they are looking for. With that said, we also suggest five more posts of these topics that are longer and more detailed to help educate prospective clients and to showcase your law firm’s competence. Finally, we suggest two posts of current events to show relevance and timeliness to visitors coming to your website at launch.

Of course, depending on your current website and blog, these recommendations may change. Another variable is your practice areas and how large your firm is, while also considering what the purpose of the law firm blog is. For instance, if your law firm’s legal blog is for just personal injury, the content will be focused just that area of law. However, if your legal blog is for general litigation practices, you will want some posts on personal injury, medical malpractice, employment law, products litigation, court concepts, and will contests.

If you are interested in learning more about our blog start-up kits, please visit our Primary Services or contact us with any questions you may have.

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Want Us to Pay You? Learn How Our Finder’s Fee Program Works

Posted on August 10, 2012 by nbattaglia

Do you work at a law firm or know someone who does?

Do they have a legal blog on their website?

If so, let them know about our business! We could pay you up to $500 through our Finder’s Fee program!

For each law firm that you promote our business to, we will pay you either $50 if they use monthly billing or 6.94% of the contract if they sign one when they retain us. You will get paid at the end of the first month if the firm is using monthly billing, or you will get paid once the contract is either completed or near completion (final month).

There are no limits either! You can refer as many firms as you know and we will continue to pay you. That means, you could refer us to multiple law firms whether or not you are associated with them. If they all use monthly billing, you will get $50 each which will really add up quickly.

At the time the law firm retains us, make sure that they mention you referred us so we can contact you to arrange the Finder’s Fee contract with you as required by New York General Obligations Law Sec. 5-701(a)(10).

If you have more questions about our finders fee program, please visit our FAQ for more information or contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

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What is PageRank and Why It Matters for Legal Content

Posted on August 9, 2012 by nbattaglia

Too many legal content writers go off the “content is king” approach. That is not entirely true though. Legal content is much more complex than just drafting blog posts and articles. But as you’ll read in this post, content is less than one-fourth of a webpage’s overall ranking. Each post or article must consider Search Engine Optimization (“SEO”) and how it will help increase a legal website’s PageRank.

PageRank is Google’s way of ranking webpages and is named after co-founder Larry Page who devised the algorithm to link websites. This system ranks a webpage on a scale of one to ten, with ten being perfect; very few webpages have a ten! What is important to note is that PageRank measures individual pages and not entire websites. This means that internal links between pages in a website are permissible.

Initially, PageRank looked purely at the number of links to and from a website equating them to “votes” for the page’s popularity. And this makes sense, because the more substantial and relevant the content, the more people will link to that website.

However, people learned how to abuse this and began spamming links on their webpages or having surrogate websites to feed to their main page; this became known as “Google Bombs.” Google countered by upgrading their algorithm to prevent his behavior–or attempted to. While there is still the possibility of websites abusing this to a decree, if Google identifies such behavior, there are major demerits given to a website’s PageRank. Google does not directly provide their own PageRank check unless you use their Toolbar, but other websites such as this link do have online checks for free.

In addition, Google added “Google Panda” in 2011 to look for higher-quality and more relevant website. This algorithm is significantly more sophisticated and was added to this year by “Google Penguin” which is an even more sophisticated algorithm program which takes into consideration a myriad of other factors. Most notably, Penguin looks for duplication content, manipulation, and violations of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Previously, we have posted this updated “Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors” which Google uses to add or subtract from a webpage’s rank.

So why is this important?

Well, if you go to the Periodic Table linked above, you’ll see that content encompasses five factors of the eleven “on the page ranking factors” that Google now uses to rank your webpage; about one-half. But that completely ignores the eleven “off the page ranking factors” and eight harmful factors you want to avoid. Content itself can certainly help your legal website’s ranking because it constitutes one-fourth of the positive ranking factors, but it cannot alone boost your rank to superior levels.

With so many other legal websites and competitor-attorneys, a lawyer or law firm’s legal content needs to distinguish themselves from their competitors both on and off the webpage ranking. Here at NAB Legal Marketing,we understand SEO and PageRank factors, while also having the ability to draft substantial legal content for your website.

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquires@nablegalmarketing.com.

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Why to Hire a Legal Content Writer for your Law Firm Website

Posted on August 6, 2012 by nbattaglia

Many people ask why hire a legal content writer to draft blog posts or articles for your firm’s website. Many firms typically assign this task to their support staff, associates, or even have partners/members and of counsel on a rotating schedule. This is a flawed approach for many reasons.

First, support staff may not have the knowledge of or ability to present the law effectively in a short blog post. Second, all of this positions have many other tasks to complete in a busy law firm and drafting substantial, accurate, and useful blog posts are the least important task in the day; this is particularly true for partners/members and of counsel.

Third and final, all of these positions are being paid more per hour than most legal content writers. More importantly, each of these positions are billing more per hour than it would cost to hire a legal content writer. For example, if you are billing an associate’s time at $200 per hour and it takes the associate an hour to draft a blog post that day, you just lost $200! Moreover, if that associate’s salary equate to about $50 an hour, you had to pay out that $50 to the associate while losing $200 for billing a client making your net loss $250! Here at NAB Legal Marketing, it costs between $15 to $40 per post which is significantly less money than you will pay if you use your own staff!

In addition, hiring a legal content writer goes further than just knowledge, time, and cost. Other issues take into account the complexity of attorney websites and search engines while staying abreast to market changes. Here are five other reasons why to hire a legal content writer:

1 – Search Engine Optimization

Legal content writers such as NAB Legal Marketing understand how to effectively use keywords in such a way that search engines will pick up the content in posts and your website to increase your overall page ranking. This is done when search engines send out “spiders” which search websites for content.

2 – Attention-getting

Generally, most people do not think of legal content has particularly interesting to read in their spare time. But that should not be the case! While the post of legal blogs and articles is to help prospective clients get answers and to entice them to retain you as their lawyer, these posts should also interest other individuals who are searching the web and come across your website. At the very least, your legal content should have catchy titles or blurbs which entice readers to click on the link. Legal content writers have more experience drafting articles in this manner because of the shear volume of law firms and posts they are servicing.

3 – Writing for the layperson as opposed to the Judge or Opposing Counsel

Sometimes lawyers and law firms forget that the vast majority of individuals seeking information on the web are, well, not lawyers! Sure, some attorneys will be viewing your legal website for information to possibly refer clients to you, but that is certainly the minority of cases. Legal content writers are able to separate themselves from drafting legal documents or arguments in their writing, and truly break down articles in ways that laypersons are able to comprehend. Moreover, legal content writers such as NAB Legal Marketing understand how to break down legally complicated issues, cases, laws, or terms in ways that not on a layperson can understand, but also search engines.

4 – Understanding Newsworthiness vs. Over-reported stories

Nothing can hurt your website ranking more than the same stories, information, and posts as other websites. With the thousands of legal websites on the internet, if all of them are posting about a certain event that is happening and you join them, you will never be able to differentiate yourself. For example, the oral arguments for the affordable care act were certainly newsworthy, however, because nearly every legal website has reported on the events that day, it became impossible for any one source to separate themselves from others. In fact, some search engines like Google may issue a demerit to your webpage because of repetitive and unoriginal material. Here at NAB Legal Marketing, we understand these differences and know when to effectively tap into these sources to stay ahead of the curve before the story shifts from newsworthy to over-reported.

5 – Multiple Layers of Review with Editing Experience

When legal content is generated in house through support staff, associates, partners/members, or of counsel, generally no one will second guess and may not even read the blog post before publishing it. This is a major mistake, particularly if the lawyer’s name is attached to it. Legal blog posts are meant to impress clients. Hastily-put or error-ridden articles will not help your cause. And while it really does not always matter that a practitioner does not have Law Review or similar journal experience, the level of editing is significantly more advanced if that experience is present. Here at NAB Legal Marketing, articles go through multiple levels of editing and review before being sent to your firm or posted to your firm’s website. Further, the final reviewer of NAB has experience as an executive editor on a flagship Law Review in addition to multiple publications in state bar journals and other law reviews. It is this experience that separate NAB Legal Marketing from other legal content writers.

All of these reasons should show you the importance of hiring a legal content writer and how NAB Legal Marketing is different than other legal content writers. But if you have any questions or would like to receive a FREE sample post, please do not hesitate to contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com!

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Unveiling New Logo

Posted on August 5, 2012 by nbattaglia

We are pleased to release our new logo to be used on our website and social media accounts!

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10 Reasons Why Lawyers Should Market Their Services Online

Posted on August 4, 2012 by nbattaglia

Recent studies show that search engine queries have surpassed Yellow Page and directories for local business searches. In addition, less and less people cite paper advertising as their primary source of information; upwards of seventy-five percent refer to search engines seeking local services as their first resource. Moreover, your best clients and your strongest competitors are all online which makes it imperative for you to also be.

If these are not good enough reasons, here are ten more reasons to market online:

1 – Costs

Per customer, your costs are rather low with online marketing as compared to other forms of advertising such as paper, TV, newsletters/mailings, or radio. Whether you use a website provider to organize your attorney or law firm webpage/blog, or post online ads on websites or on the side of search engine results, you will undoubtedly save money while experiencing a greater return using this medium.

2 – Speed and Efficiency

It goes without saying that internet marketing is instant and fast. The fact that you can reach a multitude of prospective clients in such a short period of time is incredibly efficient for a busy lawyer or law firm.

3 – Larger Geographical Reach

Particularly with TV and radio advertising, your outreach is quite restricted. By using the internet to market your services, your outreach is really limitless. For example, here at NAB Legal Marketing we have visitors from Australia and multiple countries in Africa (Zimbabwe, Chad), Europe (Sweden, UK, Germany), and South America (Belize, Brazil). While it is true that search engines will generally seek local webpages first, very close keyword searches will still bring up your website in regional, national, and even international searches… if your webpage is properly optimized–see this past week’s posts!

4 – Making a Sale

While using the internet to make sales for legal services is certainly different then purchasing items online through sites such as Amazon, you can gather prospective client information online and use that to assess the strength of the case before taking it by merely reading the information. This is efficient because it allows you to avoid an initial client meeting on weak or no claims and thus saving time for you and the client. Moreover, your website/blog allows the client to try YOU on and see if your services are a good fit for them.

5 – Advertising Design and Effect

Using the internet to help market your legal services allows you to use an excellent and advanced medium to make impress customers. You can only so much using paper, TV, and radio advertising; all of them lack an interactive element. With the internet, you can incorporate videos, soundbytes, and of course text or pictures in your webpage or blog while also having the ability to include interactive elements to engage prospective clients.

6 – You’re Always Open; No Hours of Operation

Even though your law firm office closes–hopefully–your website almost never will. This allows you to continue to advertise your services, answer questions about your services through you FAQ or blog, and to gather prospective client information at all hours of the day.

7 – Ease of Adjustments/Corrections

Once your advertisement goes out, if there are errors it is likely too late to correct them. However, with internet marketing, you can go back and edit your webpage, advertisement, or blog if there are any mistakes.

8 – Limited Advertising Life Span in Paper, TV, or Radio Mediums

An obvious advantage of online marketing is that it will continue as long as you pay the bills! Whereas with other sources, generally your advertisements will only run for a limited time span and then cease to be used. Thus, it really does pay to put more effort into your online advertising because of the potentially limitless life of the material.

9 – Flexibility and Responsiveness to Market Demands

Marketing your services online as opposed to print sources allow you to be flexible and responsive to trends in the law and market demands. For example, when there are certain product recalls that have caused personal injuries to many people, you are able to immediately create online advertising campaigns to seek out those clients. Moreover, if an ethical opinion prohibits a certain kind of marketing or advertising, you are immediately able to make changes using the internet as opposed to dealing with the hassle of withdrawing other mediums. Furthermore, you are able to provide as much information or as little information about your services and practice as you want without having to abridge or expand your advertisement to fit into a thirty-second time slot or a narrow column in the newspaper.

10 – Better Customer Service

Particularly with legal services, attorneys seek to empower the client with their representation. Ethically, lawyersmust allow many major decisions–such as settlement decisions–to be made by the client. By utilizing a website and blog, you are empowering the client to make smart decisions as to retaining you and providing them with general information about the law with your blog. As noted in yesterday’s blog post, if you also use the “Live Chat” features many website providers offer, you will be giving a prospective client more personalized service which they will truly appreciate.

If there reasons were not enough, please feel free to contact us for more information why marketing online is important for your law practice. Without a doubt, the stronger your website is and the better information that you provide to visitors will impress them and make them more likely to retain your services.

We offer a legal content writing service which is personalized to your firm. If you are interested in learning more about our services, please contact us at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

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Five Common Mistakes of Attorney Websites

Posted on August 3, 2012 by nbattaglia

The single most important tool in law firm marketing is having a webpage. But it goes without saying that there are a lot of attorney and law firm websites that your page will be competing with. Therefore, it is imperative to differentiate yourself from the competition through your website.

To help you do this, there are five common mistakes that the majority of lawyer and law firm websites make. Below is the list of mistakes you can avoid to help distinguish your website from the many others on the internet.

1 – Wasting the top one-third to one-half of your firm on “useless” information.

The hardest part about online marketing is getting prospective clients to your website. Once they are there, you should always be able to convince them you are the right person for the job. However, so many attorney and law firm websites have “useless” information at the top of their page. This is horrible considering that visitors immediately entering your website will see this first! If this is cluttered, does not look professional, or is not immediately helpful, the visitor is likely to click away to one of the other thousands of legal websites. Useless information includes over-sized logos, pictures of the attorneys or city where the firm is located, and “boasting” information about the firm’s successes. These all sound like great ideas, and they should be somewhere on your website or even later on the first page, but not the first thing that a visitor will see. A prospective client who clicks on your website should immediately see that you can help them and where they should look next for the answer.

2 – Using your main “landing” page of your website to talk about the attorneys.

People outside of the legal world have no idea what Law Review, moot court, or even how the different law schools outside of the obvious top four or five rank. Thus, these should not be taking up space on your main page of your website. Period! So many legal websites waste valuable space on their landing page explaining the history of their founding partner or their major litigators. There is much more important information that needs to be on this page to help answer the visitor’s questions or aim them in the direction to another page for the answer. Notwithstanding, this information should still be on your webpage somewhere to help you increase your referrals from other attorneys or for a particular savvy (or litigious) client who might find this information valuable still.

3 – Not having an easily accessible bar of buttons or links to your other internal pages.

Have you ever been to a website that was impossible to navigate? The information was there, but it was either burdensome or downright impossible to go from page to page searching for or reading the information you sought. Now image you are deciding whether or not to pay the owner of that website money–a lot of money–for other services that should also be well-organized. See my point? Disorganized attorney or law firm websites can absolutely pacify the most aggressive of clients. So many legal websites are either so congested or poorly linked to other internal pages that it is downright frustrating to browse through. So what do the client do? He or she will just go to one of the other thousands of legal websites! In addition, when a visitor comes to your website, they should immediately know where they need to next go for an answer; do not hide the information the client is seeking! If you put out free information, make sure to advertise it every spot searchers could find it.

4 – Failing to have either “chat boxes” or contact information and firm location immediately visible on the homepage.

Way too many legal websites make you have to hunt or search this information down. A visitor should immediately know where you are located and how to contact you when they enter your page. Nowadays many website service providers have an open for a “live chat”–USE IT. Many legal websites now have them and they are great sources of business because it adds a personal touch to get clients immediately engaged with what they think is another person. In realty, it is a program with a set of responses for certain information typed into the chat window by the client. The computer will have a full conversation with the client getting the basic facts, client contact information, and telling the client that an attorney will contact them back soon. It will then store this information and e-mail you a daily report of all the business generated and e-mail it to you directly.

5 – Optimize for search engines!

Yesterday’s post should really stressed this. To recap, make sure to use strong title tags, descriptions, and appropriate labels for lay persons to find you. Even if you have the world’s best website, if your search engine ranking is really low you’ll never get to show your website off to clients. So many lawyer or law firm websites have horrible title tags and descriptions which will never yield results unless individuals were specifically searching for their firm!

If you can avoid these five common and fatal mistakes many attorney and law firm websites make, you will help to distinguish your page from the others. But note, this is not the be-all cure for increasing your business–these will only help. Moreover, this is not an overnight or “light-switch” fix to start getting new clients. There are many other techniques you can use to help grow your business such as creating substantial legal content for your blog or website pages. Continue to follow this blog for more tips and tricks to grow you practice, or contact us to learn how we can help you at inquiries@NABLegalMarketing.com.

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