Yvette Valencia is an expert at writing search engine optimized Web content humans love to read and share. She specializes in helping law firms identify the information their prospective clients are searching for online and developing content strategies that drive the right kind of traffic to their sites.

Through her company, We Do Web Content, Yvette upholds the standard for quality inbound marketing. Her mission is to help lawyers understand this standard by identifying what's important to their potential clients, providing these prospects with information they'll find helpful and trustworthy, and then, seamlessly merging the two with the law firms' business goals. Most recently, Yvette authored a second book called 10 Reasons Your Website Doesn't Generate Leads, which offers law firms advice on developing an effective content marketing strategy.

Prior to co-founding We Do Web Content, Inc., Yvette honed her skills as a presenter and writer when she served as the lead corporate trainer for two major international banks: ABN AMRO Bank (4 years); and Deutsche Bank (2 years).

In addition to managing the day-to-day operations for We Do Web Content, Yvette is passionate about music, fashion, and being a loving wife and mother to two amazing little boys.

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Yvette Valencia is an expert at writing search engine optimized Web content humans love to read and share. She specializes in helping law firms identify the information their prospective clients are searching for online and developing content strategies that drive the right kind of traffic to their sites.

Through her company, We Do Web Content, Yvette upholds the standard for quality inbound marketing. Her mission is to help lawyers understand this standard by identifying what’s important to their potential clients, providing these prospects with information they’ll find helpful and trustworthy, and then, seamlessly merging the two with the law firms’ business goals. Most recently, Yvette authored a second book called 10 Reasons Your Website Doesn’t Generate Leads, which offers law firms advice on developing an effective content marketing strategy.

Prior to co-founding We Do Web Content, Inc., Yvette honed her skills as a presenter and writer when she served as the lead corporate trainer for two major international banks: ABN AMRO Bank (4 years); and Deutsche Bank (2 years).

In addition to managing the day-to-day operations for We Do Web Content, Yvette is passionate about music, fashion, and being a loving wife and mother to two amazing little boys.

By Yvette Valencia

Who says lawyers can't be social? A healthy social marketing plan is a key component of successful law firms across the country, but it takes more than just a Facebook profile and a Twitter handle to conquer the social media marketing world.

Before you put your law firm out on the social channels, read our list of dos and don’ts of social media for lawyers.

The Dos of Social Media for Lawyers

Do brag about your achievements. Potential clients want to see that you’re an attorney who gets results. Pictures of yourself along with satisfied clients and a brief note about their successful case can help instill confidence in your legal skills and puts a human face on your legal services.

Do engage in discussions with your followers. When someone comments on a social post from your firm, make sure you respond appropriately. Even if it’s just a compliment, thank the commenter for taking the time to write on your page. You also should look at engagement as an opportunity to ask satisfied clients for testimonials on AVVO, Yelp, Google+ and other rating/review sites.

Do post entertaining and informative content. The most shared content on social media is content that entertains and content that informs. It might include videos, photos, infographics or just helpful content. If you want your social networks to be heavily trafficked and really give you the full benefit of social marketing, you need to share content that your followers will find useful and/or amusing.

The Don’ts of Social Media for Lawyers

Don’t be arrogant. While you should share your successful cases, you also need to be tactful about doing so. Avoid gloating, demeaning or deceptive language in posts about recently resolved cases. Your goal in posting case successes is to show humbly how honored you are that your clients chose your firm for their case and how happy you are to be able to help them achieve justice for their cases.

Don’t ignore comments. The point of social media is to be social, and ignoring comments -- even negative ones -- defeats the purpose of having a social channel. You should respond to all interaction with your social profiles in a professional and prompt manner. If a discussion gets too heated, you may wish to ask politely that it ends or move the discussion to private communication.

Don’t post confidential content or content that could violate your local bar rules. Details of your recent case victories should be kept as general as possible to avoid breaching the attorney-client privilege. You also need to keep in mind that your state bar may have restrictions about social media conduct for attorneys, and you may not be allowed to post case results or may have to include a disclaimer on your profiles.

Don’t Make a Social Blunder – We Do Web Content Handles Social Marketing for Lawyers

We Do Web Content, Inc. handles social media for lawyers. We help attorneys and law firms across the nation keep their social presence up and lively. To get started, give us a call or fill out our contact form to speak with our sales manager about all of the services we offer to help grow your law firm through Internet and SEO marketing. 888-521-3880.

How to Use Your Legal Blog Content to Convert Readers into Clients

By Yvette Valencia

Convert readers into new clients for your law firm by understanding what topics will draw their interest. Whether you’re a lawyer flying solo with your own single-employee law firm or a partner of a multi-attorney firm with several staff members, getting to know your customers is key to content conversion.

The first step is to pay attention to interactions between your business and your existing clients. It’s here where you can do a little investigative reporting to uncover the hot topics that really grab clients’ attention.

Ask Your Employees about Their Day-to-Day Customer Interactions

When you run a medium to large law firm, you may not find yourself meeting directly with clients as often as your legal assistants, paralegals and case representatives. However, that doesn’t mean that you should be in the dark about what’s on your clients' minds.

Make it a part of your weekly or monthly routine to meet with the staff members who have the most direct interaction with your clients and pick their brains for the latest hot topics. For example, family law attorneys in a state where the ban on gay marriage was overturned recently may see a surge in same-sex couples seeking help in preparing prenuptial agreements. Personal injury law firms in states with harsh winters may notice more slip and fall cases at shopping malls during the winter shopping months.

Your employees can keep you abreast of what kind of cases or situations are most commonly brought to your office so you can tailor your legal blog content to really get in-depth about those topics. Ask your employees to keep track of the most commonly asked questions they hear on a regular basis – these questions are excellent for bulking up your FAQ section.

Solo Attorneys: Analyze Your Customer Interactions for Content Opportunities

Attorneys with solo practices can use the same techniques to develop ideas for new blog posts. Because you are working directly with your clients, the rapport you build with them can be used to test different blog ideas. For example, if you have a good working relationship with a car accident client, see if he or she would be willing to do a short interview with you to get some information from the client’s perspective on the injury claims process.

Your client’s answers to the following questions can help you generate blogs explaining the kind of information they learned or wish they had known prior to their accident.

• How much did you know about the injury claims process before your accident?
• What was the most shocking thing you learned about the injury claims process?
• What did you wish you had known about injury claims before your accident?
• What advice would you give to someone who has just been in an accident?
• What do you think is the biggest myth about the injury claims process?

These article ideas will fulfill a necessary role of your legal blog: It will help you write entries that answer common client questions and alleviate fears and misconceptions about their legal rights and their case. During your questioning, keep your ears open for repeated terms – these can become your keywords for your blogs.

We Do Web Content Writes the Legal Content Your Potential Clients Want

The writing team at We Do Web Content knows how to think like a potential client and write to their needs and interests to help transform readers into customers. To get started, give us a call or fill out our contact form to speak with our sales manager about all of the services we offer to help grow your business through Internet and SEO marketing: 888-521-3880.

New Google Ranking Factors: 10 of the Latest Quality Guidelines You Must Heed

By Yvette Valencia

Google’s recently leaked Quality Rating Guidelines Version 5.0 may be one of the most important 160-page documents you'll ever read. Of course, not every website manager has the time to digest all of the rating parameters that have come and gone, so we've broken it down into this                                                                                              handy list of the latest Google ranking factors.

E-A-T: Expertise-Authority-Trust - Google wants your content to establish that your website is an experienced source of information on your topic; your writers are an authority on the subject they write about; and your website can be trusted to provide the information or service that it advertises or supports.
Establish authority early - You don't need a Ph.D. to be an expert on something. Google takes people with firsthand knowledge of something like living with Crohn's disease as a type of expertise. Just make sure you have a clear "about the author" section to explain why the writer is an expert on the topic.
Watch your use of on-page ads - Google gives lower-quality ratings to pages that have too many ads, place ads in the middle of the main content, or use ad services with malware or deceptive banners.
Use a clean design - Don't design your site to maximize ad space; design your site with user enjoyment and convenience in mind.
Be transparent - Google wants to know who's running the site and how users can contact you if they have any questions or concerns. Make sure that you have a clear way for customers to contact you for support or concerns.
Don't associate with sites that have a bad reputation - Google looks at the company you keep, and if you have outbound links that go to dead sites, known dangerous sites, or any form of malware or spam, your site's quality rating will suffer.
Add supplementary content when appropriate - Including high-quality supplementary content to support your text, such as instructional videos and pictures is another factor that Google uses to determine your authority and trust.
Fraudulent behavior and bad reputation are automatic poor ratings - Google's rating team has been instructed to give an automatic poor quality rating to any sites that engage in fraudulent behavior or have a bad reputation among users.
Do not auto-generate pages - There are programs out there that can auto-generate blog posts based on search trends and other data. These posts are almost always gibberish, and Google's rating team has been instructed to rate these pages with the lowest rating.
Include an "About Us" and "Contact Info" page - Older versions of the quality guidelines have only required these pages for sites dedicated to health, finance, or well-being, but now they are a requirement for all pages to obtain a favorable quality rating.

Google's Quality Rating Guidelines are a Lot to Digest – We Can Help

Those are a lot of guidelines and factors to take into consideration, and if you're feeling overwhelmed, don't worry. We Do Web Content, Inc. is here to help your business impress Google's quality rating team with total compliance with their guidelines.

Give us a call or fill out our contact form to speak with our content team and learn how our company can help yours exceed expectations when it comes to website quality. Call us at 888-521-3880.

References:

http://www.thesempost.com/google-rewrites-quality-rating-guide-seos-need-know/

http://www.mboresourcecenter.com/googles-new-quality-rating-guide-revealed/

By Yvette Valencia

If you’re hoping to increase website traffic and generate more leads, don’t hire a wizard.

What does that mean? Anyone who tells you that you can dramatically increase your web leads and boost your site traffic in less than three to six months has to either be a wizard or involved in black hat SEO.

The truth is, content success takes time and continuous effort. Great websites with thousands of hits per day didn’t get that way overnight. They gained their popularity through years of publishing great content.

The Secret to Increase Traffic to a Website

The secret is: there is no secret. There’s no magic formula, no tricks, and no amount of money you can pay to get solid leads and genuine increases in web traffic. There are still black hat SEO marketers who use unscrupulous techniques like link schemes and shady link networks to generate quick web traffic.

While it’s a quick trick to temporarily boost your traffic, what you’re paying for ultimately is a short-lived reign at the top followed by the risk of de-ranking by Google and a low chance of generating good leads.

The plain and simple truth is that truly successful websites and blogs generate leads and increase web traffic through quality content. Just like any publication, gaining traction on the Internet takes time. You have to find your niche and build a fan base, milestones that take time to reach. Spend that time crafting and curating a library of quality content designed to attract and capture potential leads.

Now, how do you set up your content marketing strategy for success?

The Content Saturation Index

Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion hit the nail on the head when he coined the term “Content Saturation Index” or CSI. The estimated time it takes a website to gain traffic and leads through a content marketing strategy depends on the content market you are entering.

In the legal content industry, you can break down the types of content into three levels.

• Broad content that talks about the fundamentals of the industry (what a personal injury attorney does, the benefits of hiring a lawyer).

• Narrow content that deals with the specifics of a type of law (how injury attorneys get paid, the differences between drug trafficking charges and drug possession charges).

• Niche content that talks about information specific to your practice and geographic area (DUI laws in Pennsylvania, Texas divorce laws).

The speed of the success of your content marketing depends on the type of content you’re writing.

Content in the broad category is everywhere; it’s the most highly saturated category of content on the Internet. If you’re writing only at the broad level, increasing your traffic and generating more leads may be almost impossible without paying for clicks and leads.

Writing more in the narrow and niche levels gives your website a better chance to stand out from the crowd and rank faster for the key terms most closely associated with your practice. When you focus on saturating these less competitive levels with your quality content, you’re setting yourself up for a faster – but not overnight – track to content success.

Saturate Your Content

At We Do Web Content, our experienced team of writers, content managers, and editors know how to craft a content plan to safely and honestly improve your Internet presence. To get started, give us a call or fill out our contact form to speak with our sales manager about all of the services we offer to help grow your business through Internet and SEO marketing. Call 888-521-3880.

By Yvette Valencia

Comments on your web content are a sign you're doing something right! Whether they're good or bad, receiving comments on your blog is an indicator that people are finding, reading and being influenced by your posts. Because your readers are taking the time to comment on your content, you should return the favor by responding to their web comments.

Responding to Positive Comments Increases Client Dialogue

Everyone loves to get a personal thank you note after giving a gift. Consider comments gifts from your readers and your response a thank you note.

Even if somebody writes something short like, “Great info!” take the time to acknowledge the comment, especially if you don’t get a lot of comments. A simple, “Thank you!” could suffice for these short comments. If you get hundreds of comments, you might choose to write a single note to all the readers who commented thanking them for their kind words if you don’t have time to respond to each one.

When you get longer comments that go in depth about your content, take a bit more time to respond. If you get dozens of these longer comments, you might have to pick and choose which you respond to. But showing commenters that you read and respond to their thoughts will help promote a dialogue between the readers and your site. This, in turn, may foster a stronger relationship with your potential clients.

Responding to Negative Web Comments

While words will never hurt you, you should discourage outright harassment on your site, especially if it attacks your law firm or the clients your law firm serves. Sometimes negative comments come from clients using your blog as a public sounding board for issues with their cases. In these situations, it's best to add a public follow-up comment briefly addressing their concerns while mentioning that you will be contacting them privately to discuss their issue further.

In other cases, you'll get general harassment from non-clients just out to bother you. Always remember to keep calm and civil when responding to these negative comments. You don't want to create the impression that a few negative comments from strangers can ruffle your feathers. Address their comment with respect. If the commenter took issue with something you wrote, calmly explain your reasoning.

The last thing you want to do when responding to negative web comments is encourage hecklers. Responding with animosity will only make the matter worse.

Never Turn Your Back on a Comment

Even spam comments deserve your attention. If your site is receiving too many spam comments (nonsensical words or ads for unrelated sites), talk to your webmaster about anti-spam measures. Fixing spam can be as easy as adding the Akismet plugin for WordPress-based sites or adding a Captcha or other human vs. robot check mechanism. Letting spam get out of control will hide relevant comments and can hinder discussion or engagement with your readers.

Remember that you can't get quality comments unless you have quality content. Let We Do Web Content fill your blog and website with quality, engaging content that will inspire your readers to talk about and share your posts. Just fill out our contact form or call us at 888-521-3880 to inquire about all the services we offer to help grow your web traffic and boost your Internet presence.

By Yvette Valencia

There's more to "seasonal web content" than just following the calendar patterns of spring, summer, fall, and winter. There are many more seasons that matter to different businesses. CPAs, for example, perk up around tax season, while roofers and disaster repair specialists might see a pickup in web searches for their services around hurricane season.

Attorneys: Take a Look at Your Own Seasonal Observations

Seasons exist for attorneys as well. If you've been practicing for a while you should have started to notice trends in your caseload and the types of cases you get during certain times of the year. Understanding this information will help you craft the most relevant content for the season. For example, many family law attorneys find that January is a major month for divorce cases.

Personal Injury: Consider the Recreational Seasons

For personal injury attorneys, there's never an "off season" where people don't get injured in accidents. However, depending on where you practice, there are several "seasons" that can influence the types of accidents you see.

Injury attorneys in warm coastal areas like Florida and California may see patterns of decreases and increases relative to weather and tourist season in water-related accidents.

• Boat crashes
• Parasailing injuries
• Defective water products like jet skis

Personal injury lawyers in rural areas may see an increase in hunting accidents during the various game seasons. Lawyers in or near large cities with high tourism may anticipate more accidents with lost or distracted drivers from out of town during certain seasons.

Keep in mind the major holidays to tailor content to those celebrations, like pedestrian safety for Halloween and decorating safety during the winter holidays. Another type of content to keep in mind during holidays is driving safety.

Every year AAA publishes heavy traffic warnings during major holiday weekends like Memorial Day Weekend, Labor Day Weekend, and 4th of July Weekend. These are all times when more people take road trips or drive while intoxicated from holiday parties.

Seasonal Calendars Can Help You Plan for Maximum Content Success

If you're going to take advantage of content seasons to increase web traffic and lead gathering, do some pre-planning. At the start of every year make up a content calendar and highlight all of the different seasons that matter to your law practice. They don't all have to be legal-related, either. If you have a charitable cause that's near and dear to your heart like breast cancer awareness, highlight that in October during National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Planning seasonal content in advance allows you to ensure your content is written, proofread, and ready to post when the appropriate season comes up. Not only does this help you keep your content timely and current, it also ensures you'll have something ready to post when you don't have a regular article or blog to go up.

If you're hitting a wall trying to come up with seasonal content, don't fret! We Do Web Content has your back! Just fill out our contact form and we'll be in touch to discuss your practice and what kind of content we can provide year-round to take advantage of the seasons and other hot topics in your area. Call us at 888-521-3880.

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 Yvette Valencia

Obtaining website comments about content on your site is a sign that you're writing blogs and articles that make people take notice of what you have to say.

There are many types of web comments that could be submitted to your web content and each type should be handled differently. The one similarity is that comments should never be ignored; even writing a simple "thanks" can let readers know you're paying attention to what they have to say.

Responding to Positive Comments

Positive comments, even brief ones that just state how much a reader liked your article, should be acknowledged and responded to in a timely manner. The purpose of web comments is to engage your readers in dialogue to show that you're not an automated content farm. You're a business that truly cares about what its customers or clients have to say.

In most cases, a simple "thanks for the comment!" will do as a response. But try to respond with something relevant and insightful once in a while, especially if a commenter took the time to leave a long and insightful comment. You can also use positive comments as an opportunity to find out what you're doing right.

In your response try asking questions like these.

• What part of the blog/article did you like the best or was most helpful?
• Was there anything I didn't talk about or explain that you'd like to see covered in a future blog post?
• Is there anything I can do to help you with (topic of article)?
• What other similar topics would you like to read about?

Your positive commenters can be a great source of inspiration for future article and blog topics if you take the time to respond and track their comments.

Responding to Negative Comments

The first thing worth mentioning about negative comments is that you should almost never delete them to hide them from your page. The only time you should do this is if they are full of inappropriate language or content. Otherwise, they should be handled just like positive comments by issuing a full and engaging response.

If the comment brings up a specific issue with your web content or company, address that issue as fully as appropriate in a public forum. If the comment is sensitive or personal in nature, ask the commenter to send you a private email or call your office to discuss his or her grievances.

Above all, be civil. Getting angry at rude or childish commenters will do nothing but harm your reputation. Responding with dignity and patience and asking what the problem is rather than yelling, is a much better response in the eyes of other readers.

Responding to Spam Comments

Believe it or not, you should respond to spam comments, just not on your actual site. If you're using a platform such as WordPress to post your web content, you should install an anti-spam measure such as Akismet. If you do not manage your site, talk to your webmaster about automated spam controls.

If you manage spam manually, keep your comment queue clear by deleting spam comments every few days. If you receive a high volume of spam comments, you may want to implement a comment approval system where you must approve the comments before they appear on the site.

Comments on your web content are a great sign for site owners. It means that human readers are coming by and engaging with the content they're offering. Google picks this up by tracking the time spent on pages and uses that as a ranking factor in the search results. If you have quality, relevant content that's easy to read and gives readers something to talk about, you should be getting comments worth replying to!

At We Do Web Content, Inc. our goal is to provide our clients with the kind of quality content that inspires readers to share and comment. Just give us a call or fill out our contact form to learn about our content marketing services and ghostwriting options. Your comment sections will thank you! Call 888-521-3880.

By Yvette Valencia

“How do I attract clients to my law firm?” Attorneys ask themselves – and others – that question all the time. The answer can be pretty lengthy. Here, we’ll discuss how to get clients as an attorney by using the content of your blog. The following three steps can help you establish authority to reach out to potential clients and then influence them to take action.

Achieve a Position of Authority

Blogs that develop a following do so because the author has established a position of authority or celebrity status. As an attorney, “celebrity” is probably not the niche you want. Acting as an authoritative source will serve you better.

Establishing authority begins with dispensing information. Spread your knowledge and expertise freely; don't make people hunt or pay for content. One way to establish yourself as an authority is to write an eBook about your legal area of expertise and offer it as a free download.

If you're not the book-writing type, develop a robust FAQ section on your website to answer the most common (and not so common) questions potential clients might have. If you have an AVVO profile (and you should) spread your knowledge by contributing to its Q&A section or posting articles to its legal library.

Learn What Your Clients Want and Deliver On It

The first steps of successful content conversion are to learn what your clients want and then give it to them. Sometimes a client will walk into your office knowing she is going to hire you to represent her. Others might know they have a legal issue but might not know if they should hire a lawyer.

It’s the same with your blog or article library. Some readers will be looking for general information about a legal topic. After reading your content, they may realize they should contact you for legal consultation. Others will come right to your website looking to set up a consultation with you.

Address both readers. Write general content about legal topics for readers not yet looking to hire you. And write content geared towards\ readers who know they need to hire a lawyer. But how do you know which topics to address?

Your own experience addressing clients’ concerns could help. Brainstorm some topics and questions you address a lot. Keyword research can also be valuable for learning what potential clients are searching for on the Internet. Tools like SEMRush can tell you how popular certain keywords are or tell you what keywords are associated with your site and competitor sites.

Make sure you have Google Analytics activated on your site as well; the queries tool can give you a lot of insight on what search queries bring the most users to your website.

Once you have some topic ideas generated, build up your blog with quality posts on those topics. Make sure you're using blogging best practices.

• Keep entries between 400 and 600 words
• Use diverse keywords and synonyms
• End with a strong call to action

Influence Readers to Take Action

A strong call to action is a statement near the end of a blog post that tells your reader exactly the action step needed to solve his or her problem. Your call to action might encourage the reader to contact your law firm. A less direct approach is to invite the reader to learn more by reading other posts on your blog or downloading your eBook.

If coming up with all this content seems daunting, don't fret! We Do Web Content specializes in online marketing for lawyers and other professionals. We produce top quality, unique legal content for law firms across the nation. Just fill out our contact form and we'll reach out to you to discuss a custom content plan to draw readers to your website and convert them into clients. You can also call us at 888-521-3880.

We are always on the lookout for valuable content to share on our blog; adding worth beyond case expense financing for our readers.  Today we welcome guest blogger Yvette Valencia.  She is the co-founder and COO of WeDoWebContent.  I hope this is useful to you!

By Yvette Valencia

If you’re reading this post, you likely found it in one of two ways: you’re either a subscriber to our blog or you used a search engine, like Google, to find information on “capturing new clients.” If the latter is true, my keyword (or “on-page search engine optimization”) strategy worked. You see, I wrote this article for two reasons: 1) to educate and help you succeed on the Web; and 2) to attract potential clients to my company’s website where they could learn more about our services and eventually hire us to design their law firm’s search marketing strategy.

Today I am here to tell you that you can do the same for your law firm. When you research and use the terms your ideal clients are using to find information on the Web within your Web content, you increase your chances of being found. And, when you write truly informative pages, ones that give your readers valuable takeaways, you will earn your stripes with Google and be rewarded with top spots on their search results pages (referred to as “ranking”).

During my presentation at the Broward County Hispanic Bar Association’s monthly luncheon, I revealed the biggest mistake most lawyers make with their legal marketing strategy and offered tips on creating a loyal fan base for the purpose of expanding their firms’ reach and increasing referrals. Now I’m ready to discuss one of the most powerful components of search marketing: keywords.

If you took the time to identify and develop a niche for your business and are taking the necessary steps to grow your practice, you will have a good idea of how your ideal clients search for information on the Internet. So if you want to continue building your list with similar clients, you should start by looking to your current clients for keyword inspiration.

Get Into Your Clients’ Heads

Conducting interviews with past clients can help you better understand how they search for legal resources on the Internet. Some questions you could ask are:

• When you were searching for a personal injury attorney, what was more important: 1) their office location; or 2) their specialty or exclusivity in handling cases similar to yours?
• How did you initiate your search? Did you believe you had a viable legal issue and knew you needed an attorney and therefore started your search there, or did you set out to learn whether or not you had a legal issue?
• If you received a referral from a friend or family member, did you first research the attorney or firm online or did you contact the attorney without researching?
• Did you search for lawyers that handled the type of accident in which you were injured or the specific injury you suffered?

Conduct Research & Analyze the Data

More and more people are using search engines like Google and Bing to find products and services on the Web. By analyzing what your prospective clients are looking for and how they are searching for it online, you will increase the chances of your website appearing on the first page of their search results.

You’ll want to start by gathering data from your website’s analytics service, as well as using a couple of independent keyword tools available on the Web. When you work with data that is accurate, you move away from assumptions and the dreaded possibility of wasting a lot of time and money.

Keyword tools allow you to evaluate the performance of millions of search terms – an essential step for creating the best keyword list for your business.

Google AdWords is a free and pretty robust keyword tool that provides the popularity and competition level of a specific keyword, as well as related keywords. You should be expanding your focus beyond the original keywords you research and open yourself to similar search topics – synonyms are great!

When coded properly into your website’s off-page code, Google’s Webmaster Tools and Analytics will track your domain’s performance and offer a treasure trove of information. In other words, from these tools you can gather up-to-date data about your audience, traffic sources, content, and conversions. In some instances you will be able to see the keywords that were responsible for drawing in new and repeat visitors, and which of them also led someone to buy your products or enlist your services. You’ll want to continue to promote these keywords within your Web content so as to not compromise your rankings and the ability to generate leads.

SEMRush is a paid keyword tool that’s definitely worth the price. You can track the performance of your chosen keywords over time. And, the reports you can generate will take the guesswork out of determining whether a keyword will be beneficial to your content as far as attracting potential clients.

You can generate lists with hundreds of keywords using these tools, but the real trick is knowing how to choose and target the right ones.

Evaluate Your Keywords

The keyword lists you generate during the research phase of your Web content strategy are only suggestions of what MAY work. To truly unearth the money-making keywords, you have to evaluate these keywords based on the following three points:

#1: Relevancy to your website. Ranking for a keyword that is completely unrelated to your company, your products, or service is completely futile. For example, a personal injury law firm has no business ranking for the keyword “teen pop star” unless it only represents celebrities like Justin Bieber. This will only lead to meaningless website traffic and do nothing for your firm’s bottom line. Instead, focus on the keywords that are closest to the end of your sales cycle so you can increase your chances of generating leads and gaining new clients.

Quality over quantity is the name of the game.

#2. Popularity in terms of web traffic and conversion potential. While keywords with high search volume can drive traffic to your website, they may not do much in the way of converting visitors to clients. This is why keyword research is critical to the success of any online marketing campaign.

A visitor to your website is just another notch on your Web traffic belt. You’re better off paying attention to the keywords that have the best conversion potential. Before you put all of your eggs in the expensive, high-competition-keyword basket, test the effectiveness of your business’s most important phrases with some pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns.

If your chosen keywords are generating Web traffic and new leads, you know you’re on the right track.

#3: Competition to rank for the keyword. While it’s great to want the #1 spot on page one of Google for “personal injury lawyer,” it’s highly unlikely that your law firm will gain this position using only organic marketing methods.

Your organic marketing efforts will consist mainly of a Web content strategy that ethically infuses both the keywords and synonyms your target audience is using to find the topics that interest them. Unlike paid advertisements, which I will go into shortly, the Web pages you create are indexed by the search engines, which means they will exist on the Web forever and will be served to the searcher every time your page meets their search criteria at no additional cost.

Knowing the competition level of a specific keyword will allow you to determine what it will take to rank for it and whether or not you are willing and have the budget to jump through those perpetual hoops.

Be Open to Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Most times, acquiring and/or maintaining a top position for a highly-competitive term means you will have to engage in a lengthy and expensive pay-per-click campaign.

The Beatles said it best in their 1964 chart topper “Money Can’t Buy Me Love,” but it can buy you a spot on Google’s search results pages. Through the search engine’s AdWords program, Google allows businesses to buy ad space on page one for the keywords they want to target, but this is a costly option, especially for attorneys whose top search terms typically range from $50 to $80 per click.

In highly-competitive geographic areas, like South Florida, Denver, Colorado, and Los Angeles, California, for example, engaging in pay-per-click advertising is necessary for the long-term health of your online presence. However, in other, not-so-competitive areas, you can get away with engaging in a modest and temporary pay-per-click campaign meant to accelerate your website’s exposure and ranking, as well as complement your organic (non-paid advertisements such as landing pages, informative articles, and blog posts) efforts.

The one advantage to pay-per-click advertising is that you will find out very quickly whether or not a highly-coveted term is actually a money-making term. If it’s not, you can drop it from your campaign and invest your money in another term that will actually generate qualified leads for your firm.

Get Organized!

A smart and savvy businessperson is always organized. Microsoft Excel can be your best friend when it comes to organizing and tracking your keyword placement once the research and evaluation phases are complete.

You’ll want to develop a keyword matrix that has separate worksheets to group related keywords. For each keyword, keep notes on their popularity and competition, as well as when, where, and how you used them within your pages.

Discover How We Do Web Content Can Boost Your Online Presence

There’s no doubt that developing a keyword strategy for your website is a daunting task, especially when you have a successful law firm to run! Don’t take up your valuable time researching keywords when We Do Web Content can do the work for you!

Get started on one of our SEO plans today. Call 888-594-5442 or complete our online contact form to speak with our sales director about all of the services we offer to grow your practice.