Attorney John Fisher in Kingston, New York shares with Author and Educator Michael J. Swanson marketing tips that he uses to contribute to the growth of his law firm.

For a free copy of "The Power of a System," email Mr. Fisher at JFisher@fishermalpracticelaw.com.

By Adam Rowan, Content Specialist at Page 1 Solutions

For many years, Wikipedia was seen as a dubious source of information. Its open-source model initially gave the impression that pages on the platform were riddled with questionable quality and unreliable research, especially among academic and professional circles.

However, few websites have so rigorously enforced quality standards, and Wikipedia is now recognized not only as a prominent, trustworthy brand but a go-to source for information on people, places, companies, and other entities. When you do an online search, relevant Wikipedia pages consistently rank on the first page of results.

Not just anything or anybody can qualify for inclusion on Wikipedia, and law firms are no exception. But if your firm has the extensive history and quality backlinks that are the hallmarks of any good Wikipedia article, there are several benefits your firm's website can enjoy from being included among the nearly 5 million articles on The Free Encyclopedia.

Benefit #1: Search Authority

Wikipedia has a perfect 100 domain authority score, a metric developed by search engine optimization (SEO) company Moz to analyze and predict the performance of a given website in search results. This score means that pages from the domain are extremely likely to rank well in search.

If your firm is the subject of a Wikipedia article, make sure there is a link back to your website somewhere on the page. A backlink from such an authoritative domain like Wikipedia (even if marked “No Follow”) should enhance the authority of your own site, potentially increase your performance for target keyword terms against your competitors, and generate more website traffic.

Benefit #2: Consumer Legitimacy

As noted in a recent Inside Business article, only 10 percent of online consumers trust the advertising created by brands. More and more consumers are seeking out third-party sources, such as review sites, to arm themselves with what they perceive to be impartial information before choosing to engage with a brand.

Today, few websites enjoy greater objectivity in the eyes of consumers than Wikipedia. Though anyone can create an article, new articles are reviewed within days by moderators who can and will enforce Wikipedia's guidelines for acceptable content. One of those guidelines is eschewing content that reads like an advertisement.

If your law firm is deemed noteworthy and the Wikipedia page provides verifiable information that isn't written in a promotional fashion, the more likely it is that the article will stay online. The longer the article is online and the better written it is, the better your brand will look to clients seeking legal services.

Benefit #3: Potential Knowledge Graph Placement

Over the past few years, you've likely noticed that some of your searches on Google return not just the expected list of results but also informative, eye-catching graphic boxes displaying information and images relevant to your search. This is Google Knowledge Graph, a tool engineered by the search giant to deliver answers more immediately to users.

How is Google able to find and display this information in such a neat little package? The search engine crawls a number of reliable websites for digestible information, and one of the most reliable is Wikipedia.

A search for a big-name brand will likely return a Google Knowledge Graph result. But you don't need to be a Fortune 500 company to show up on the Knowledge Graph. Your firm can also appear in these results.

First, as discussed recently by Search Engine Land, your firm will need to have an article on Wikipedia and be entered as an entity in Wikidata, a data knowledge base Google crawls to provide Knowledge Graph results. Then, by using structured data markup tagging on your site (see the article to learn how to do this), you tell Google that your website is the same as the entities identified on Wikipedia and Wikidata, thus increasing the likelihood that your firm will show up prominently as part of Knowledge Graph.

The information that shows up in a Google Knowledge Graph result is difficult to predict, and like anything in SEO there is no guarantee that the above process will work. But the increased visibility of your firm above and beyond traditional search results is another way to set yourself apart in the eyes of users in need of an attorney.

Here are a few examples of law firms and lawyers with Wikipedia pages:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Wright
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colling_Gilbert_Wright_%26_Carter
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_R._Kline
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanin_Specter
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Hickey

At Page 1 Solutions, we regularly work with attorneys to identify the aspects that set their firm apart and use those strengths to build competitive Web marketing campaigns. If you're struggling to find traction in search results, Page 1 Solutions can help! Call (800) 368-9910 to speak with one of our team members.

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By Yvette Valencia

How often should I update a blog for my law firm's website?

Whether you've been practicing law for a few months or a few decades, most attorneys know that their busy schedules don't make it easy to constantly update a blog for their law firm. The good news: that's okay. There is no set standard for how often you should update a blog on your law firm’s website. But keeping a regular schedule can help you build your audience and drive traffic.

Sometimes Less Is More When It Comes to Blog Updates

How often you should blog depends mostly on two things: your time and your ideas.

Before you set yourself on a blogging schedule, take into consideration your own time constraints. If you know you can't dedicate at least an hour to write a post a few times a week, try once a week, or every other week, or even once a month. It's better to space out your posts rather than trying to meet a tight blogging deadline.

And if you don't have a good topic to blog about, you could be sabotaging your blog by putting out boring, bland, or useless information. If you’re struggling to regularly come up with topics, a looser schedule with more time between posts can give you adequate time to create a topic or monitor relevant news that you can comment on.

Further, set yourself up for success by gathering "evergreen" topics. An "evergreen" topic is one that's relevant no matter what time you write it. These are good topics when there's no hot news in your field, ensuring you'll always have something to write about when you need to blog.

If You Create a Blogging Schedule, Stick to It

One of the biggest advantages to blogging regularly is that Google and other search engines will take notice of your site's regular updates. Google loves fresh information, which may benefit you in the search results.

Also keep in mind that blogging on a schedule creates expectations as you build an audience. Think about your favorite TV show like Game of Thrones. Fans have come to expect a new episode every week, and if the show's creators couldn't get an episode out for the week, the fans would riot.

While your law firm's blog may not have the following of Game of Thrones, it can look just as bad if your readers expect a weekly blog and you fail to deliver.

Blogging Services Are Available for Those Who Don’t Have the Time

If you want to set up a regular posting schedule but know you don't have the time or topics to support it, don't fret. We Do Web Content can set up your law firm blog with a regular schedule that drives traffic to your website. To get started, reach out to us to speak with our sales manager about all of the content services we offer for law firms.

By Jenell Henning

The phrase 'inbound marketing' is becoming increasingly popular, and chances are that you have heard the term before especially when marketing professionals discuss it as a means to help supplement lead generation. However, why is inbound marketing so important, and how can it help your law firm generate real leads and cultivate real relationships?

What Is Inbound Marketing?

An inbound marketing strategy focuses on attracting prospects through a variety of marketing channels, like your website, SEO, blog articles, and email discussions, and then systematically provides relevant and helpful follow-up information to build credibility, rapport, and conversions.

With traditional marketing (outbound marketing), businesses focus on finding clients, often using unwelcome marketing techniques like cold calls and junk email/print mail. Instead of interrupting people with these invasive tactics, inbound marketing positions your law firm to be the solution to the answer that your ideal clients are seeking by speaking to their specific needs.

The heart of inbound marketing focuses on building awareness and creating valuable, educational content that pulls people toward your website where they can learn more about the solutions to their problem on their own time. Providing valuable content gives your prospective clients the guidance they need to develop trust and recognition in your firm, and ultimately helps convert them from a prospect to a paying client. Nowhere is trust more important than in the relationship that exists between an attorney and his/her client.

Why Your Firm Should Consider Inbound Marketing

If you are looking for an effective way to generate more clientele, then you should consider adopting inbound marketing techniques for the following reasons:

Inbound marketing increases lead generation:

Inbound marketing is a website-driven campaign that promotes strategic calls-to-action and useful consumer resources (e-books, checklists, “how-to” guides, etc.) that motivate visitors to provide their contact information. It gives visitors who are earlier in the buying cycle an opportunity to engage with your website and receive educational information through a series of highly targeted emails. Considering only about 5 percent of website visitors convert into a lead, this strategy targets the other 95 percent of visitors that your website doesn’t convert.

Inbound marketing has more robust data collection and segmenting:

Inbound marketing leverages automated data collection by programming every website contact form and download form to feed into your marketing database. It also segments your new leads and contacts into separate databases, including clients, service-specific leads, hot leads, low-commitment contacts, etc.

Inbound marketing utilizes marketing automation:

In addition to automated data collection, inbound marketing also sends automated yet highly-focused emails to segmented contacts. Prospective clients receive multiple follow-up resources to help move them through the buying cycle, rather than generic promotional materials. Some key statistics:

• Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months (Gartner Research).
• Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10% (Aberdeen Group).
• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads (The Annuitas Group).

In short, nothing will replace your need to continue to network and manage referral and client relationships, but inbound marketing can offer an easy, low-cost, high-ROI solution to generate more business for your law firm.

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Effective marketing is key to any business that wants to truly grow. Your practice is your business, and you handle a lot of the business side of it. You probably even do your own marketing. That isn’t a bad thing, but you’re busy being an attorney. Your time for marketing is more than likely limited, and creativity or marketing insight might be two things you do not possess. This is where advertising agencies can help.

While advertising agencies may seem pricey, they can often times be worth it. If they are based in your local area, their knowledge of which demographics to target and which marketing mediums to use for your firm can be invaluable. What does all this mean to you? Three things:

• Building your firm’s brand.
• Increasing your number of clients.
• Allowing you more time to focus on your cases.

Want to learn more about the advantages of advertising? Check out The Advantages of an Advertising Agency, an article by David Ingram on www.Chron.com.

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