Lawyer Internet Marketing Checklist for a new Web Site or Blog Launch.
By Peter Boyd on May 6, 2009 in Web Design
Just launched your new legal web site?” Make sure that your law firm site is setup for long-term success with these easy steps. This article details some beginner steps for SEO, Content, and Social Media (mostly SEO tips though). 🙂
Tags – For SEO purposes, make sure that you included appropriate tags on each page.
Make sure your web designer did their job and setup your site for long term success. SEO may not come instantly, but if everything is tagged correctly it has a better chance of achieving your goals (of course you need to work on content and links to get high rankings).
- Title Tag – Don’t just say your firm name. Say “Miami Criminal Defense Lawyer – Firm Name – Miami, Florida Criminal Attorney” or something like that. Make sure it’s different on each page and matches to your content.
- Headline – Don’t just say Welcome, say “New York Injury Lawyer”. State a good headline that matches to the content on the page.
- Meta Description – Make sure each page has a unique description of the page.
- Alt Tags – Make sure all images have ALT tags or CSS image replacement techniques. Not only does it help screen readers process images, but it helps with SEO.
- Footer Tags (Sitemap) – Some pages need help. Create a well-designed footer that includes a few extra keyword phrases integrated into a well designed sitemap of your most important content. DON’T go overboard with keyword stuffing or it will be considered spam.
- Font Tags – Make sure you have H1 tags for headlines with keyword phrases in them, H2 tags for sub-sections, bold for important keyword phrases and internally link to important documents in the text. Font tags help search engines interpret what is important on your page, which should be your keyword phrases.
Links – Again for SEO (and for traffic purposes), Get people to link to your site after launch.
Begin building links to your web site from other sites. Every link you receive will increase your overall score with Google. The more links you have, the more from trusted sites, the higher you will rank.Get linked up over time and see the benefits from a top ranked site.
- Directory Links – Yahoo Directory, Business.com, DMOZ
- Press Releases – PRWeb.com” (Paid) and other free PR sites.
- Blog Directory – Get linked up with bloggers about your site launch.
- Design Directories – If your site is innovative, get listed.
- Trade Links – Keep this to a minimum, but a few links from solid sites will help. Blogging helps in that bloggers trade links on their blog rolls pretty regularly. Most law firms have a resources directory too that you might be able to get a listing with.
Text Content – Make sure you wrote something interesting for either your blog or web site.
Of course, content is always important. Make sure you have relevant content on your site that talks about your company, services and includes keyword phrases. The more content, the better, and in most areas you need a significant web presence (i.e. more than 20 pages) to achieve results. ” Make sure your content is easy to read, easy to scan, and not just long paragraphs.
- Make sure that important keyword phrases are placed within the actual body copy of your text.
- Provide links to appropriate areas from your home page and internally that highlight important topics.
- Make sure your page names have keyword phrases inside.
- Bullet points, lists, subheads, headlines, callouts are important.
Domain Name -Buy Long
Make sure your domain is bought for as many years as possible.
- Buy your domain name for as long as possible.
- Search engines reward multi-year registrations.
Blog – Create a blog.
Make sure that you are able to post relevant new content on your web site, quickly and easily. If your content system can do this, great. If not, install a blog. As you post content, your site will grow in terms of overall size and most likely overall traffic too.
- Post at least one interesting article a week on your practice areas.
- Get your content picked up in various RSS feeds.
Get Social – Start to Online Network
If you can’t network in-person, network online.
- Use a service like Twitter to blast out your ideas to over 14 million unique visitors (as of March 2009). Mass market your new web site, blog and ideas on Twitter. Post relevant ideas and start a following to lead people back to your web site and business.
- Use LinkedIN to make connections in your industry and with other clients.
- Tryout other social services like StumbleUpon, Facebook and Squidoo to start a following.
