The past few years have seen a dramatic increase in new web sites, directories, and social networks for attorneys. From LinkedIn to Avvo to Facebook to Twitter, it seems like there’s always a new opportunity to promote your business. Faced with finite budgets and resources, many wonder whether or not to implement these new tools at the expense of more time-tested tactics.

Happily it’s not an either/or situation – online marketing techniques can reinforce the effectiveness of relationship building, traditional networking, and lead generation. And as more consumers turn to the Internet, having a strong, complete online presence is more important than ever.

Consider these statistics:

•    Most people (97%) search online before making a purchase — anyone seeking an attorney will head to Google first (BIA/Kelsey).
•    66% of American use online local search, like Google local search, to locate local businesses (TMP/comScore/proprietary average).
•    54% of Americans prefer the Internet and local search to phone books (comScore networks).
•    When researching products or services in their local area, 90 percent of consumers use search engines, 48 percent use Internet Yellow Pages, and 42 percent use comparison shopping sites.
•    63% of social networkers are more likely to use a local business if the business has information available on a social networking site (Localeze/15miles).

Your Online Presence
But what exactly is an “online presence” and how can it help you grow your business? Your online presence is a combination of all of the ways you are represented on the Internet: your website, online profiles, videos, blog posts, podcasts, social media pages, directory listings, and more. Individually, each of these helps you be found by prospects and clients. Using them in combination, strategically, is even more powerful and will help you get as much visibility online as possible. For example, completing a profile on mainstream and legal social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Places, Avvo, and Justia and optimizing each properly you can dominate the search engine results pages and make it easier for potential clients to find you.

Most attorneys are fantastic natural networkers, connecting with current clients and prospects through colleagues, peers in other professions, trade and bar associations, and networking events. They know it’s a necessary part of generating leads and growing their practice. Only a few attorneys have chosen to use this ability to attract and retain clients via the Internet. And they are reaping the benefits. Building a strong online presence can help build your professional network, gain a competitive advantage, get the most out of your digital assets, retain loyal customers, and generate leads efficiently and cost-effectively.

Here are the essential elements of a credible, interesting, successful online presence.

WEBSITE ENHANCEMENT
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO means using techniques to bring your website into the top positions of search engines like Google for specific relevant keywords. Higher rankings can boost your visibility and a drop in rankings can mean a loss of potential consumers.

Blogging
Blogs can improve search rankings and increase website traffic. Having your own blog will help potential clients get to know you and your expertise, build trust and rapport, and offer a cost-effective way to build a brand.

Ratings and Reviews
Ratings and reviews are the digital equivalent of “word of mouth” referrals. Encourage your clients to write short reviews and post links to the sources on your website.

GENERAL BUSINESS LISTINGS
Google Places [www.google.com/places]
Google Places is a free online business listing service. Being listed in Google Places will help you be found online and differentiate yourself from the competition. Claim your listing and verify that the basic information is accurate. Then add links to your other online assets like a blog, reviews, videos, photos, or LinkedIn profile.

LinkedIn [www.linkedin.com]
LinkedIn is a general online business directory. With more than 135 million users, LinkedIn is used primarily for professional networking and is an easy, low maintenance way to connect with clients, prospects. You can also join relevant groups and answer questions.

LEGAL DIRECTORIES
Avvo [www.avvo.com] and Justia [www.justia.com]
Avvo and Justia are popular online directories that specialize in attorney profiles. Completing your listing, answering questions, and posting speaking engagements, case examples or articles allows you to have a complete online profile and engage with clients.

JD Supra [www.jdsupra.com]
JD Supra is an online repository of legal documents, filings, and pleadings. Publishing your filings, decisions, briefs, and newsletters allows them to be found on the search engines as well as by the media and opposing counsel.

SOCIAL MEDIA
Facebook [www.facebook.com]
The behemoth online social network now has over 800 million users and is an essential way to build and maintain professional and personal networks. Company pages allow you to maintain a specialized presence and share insights, expertise and links to relevant articles.

Twitter [www.twitter.com]
This microblogging site allows you to post or share short messages of 140 characters each. It’s a fun, fast way to connect with clients and prospects and one more tool to get your practice noticed.

Beyond the Website
The best online marketing goes beyond launching a website to creating a strategic online presence. The Internet is quickly replacing yellow pages, television, and radio as the preferred source for people in need of a lawyer. Taking the time to represent your expertise online, consistently and credibly, will help you stay current and build your business. To find out more about Internet marketing for attorneys contact Ian Bardorf at www.bardorfmarketing.com.

Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus, sometimes abbreviated as G+) is one of the newest social networking sites. Launched as a test in June 2011, the site became available to all in September. The New York Times declared it Google’s attempt to rival Facebook, which has over 800 million users.

In January 2012, Google+ had surpassed 90 million users. However, these users are reportedly only spending 3.3 minutes a month on Google+ compared to Facebook users who spend 7.5 hours a month using Facebook.

Google+ integrates previous social services such as Google Profiles and Google Buzz and introduces new services such as the Stream, Circles, Hangouts and Games. Circles enable users to organize people into groups (Friends, Family, Acquaintances, Following) for sharing across various Google products like Gmail. Hangouts are used for group video chat. In the Stream, users see updates from those in their Circles.

I have trialed Google+ on a few attorney websites with mixed results. Although it offers more flexibility in terms of grouping contacts, both the attorney and his or her contacts need to be Google users to engage with the service. It’s a cool feature, but the verdict is still out whether it will have practical use for business development.

By Ian Bardorf

What do prospects find when they look for you online? They may find your firm’s website, your LinkedIn and Avvo profiles, blog posts or videos, your Facebook business page, and glowing reviews of your services. But what if your website is listed last or, even worse, not listed at all on the first page of results? Instead the top links lead to a client’s bad review, a disgruntled employee’s comments, or a competitor’s website.

This situation is becoming all too common on the results pages of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. Attorneys who have spent years growing their businesses can find their work tarnished by lackluster search results or bad reviews. Many are turning to online reputation management to protect, strengthen and occasionally repair their standing on the Internet. Online reputation management can fortify and preserve an attorney’s reputation in the search results and repair any damage that may have been caused by negative results.

For many attorneys, it’s the nature of their business to be caught in the crossfire between clients and the opposing party. You are there to represent your client, not to make both sides happy. This means attorneys have a greater risk of receiving unfavorable reviews online, possibly from an unhappy client, but more likely from the other side’s client. Unfortunately, these negative reviews may appear first when someone searches for an attorney with your area of expertise.

Having a presence online is one of the most important ways to grow your business and it is vital to make sure that presence is accurate and positive. Online reputation management uses the tools and techniques of search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure that your firm is getting good rankings and that favorable results outrank any unfavorable ones. Here are three steps you can take to maintain a good reputation online.

1. Ask for client reviews.
Reviews are paramount for any local business to gain visibility on search engines and social directories like Yelp. 70 percent of consumers say reviews and ratings are important to them. Positive reviews have many benefits: verifying your authenticity, confirming your expertise and credibility, differentiating your firm from the competition, and improving your rankings on the search engine results pages.

Reviews are especially important for attorneys, who depend on referrals from other attorneys and from clients to generate new business. Someone who got your name from a friend will most likely conduct due diligence on Google before contacting you. A negative review, especially if it’s the only review of your services, will decrease the likelihood that they’ll trust you with their issue.

Tip: Encourage your current clients to write about your firm as soon as possible. Once reviews have been submitted, you may post them on your website with a link back to the original source – Google Review, LinkedIn, Avvo, etc.

2. Respond to legitimate reviews, remove bogus ones.
There are two types of reviews — legitimate and bogus – and there is something you can do about each. A client who is unhappy with your services and writes an unfavorable review is an opportunity for you to respond and to try to resolve the situation. It’s important that this review not be the first or only one that comes up in a search. Try to have four or five positive reviews to balance a bad one.

There is another type of review that is not a legitimate complaint. Considered a “bogus” review, this is one that is written by a competitor to undermine your business or one that uses unnecessarily harsh or offensive language. You can submit a request to Yahoo, Google or Yelp to have this type of review removed. Unfortunately, the review has to have certain characteristics and it can take months to have it taken down.

Tip: Because the nature of your business is that, in the end, someone’s not going to be happy, be proactive now and make sure you’re not hurt by negative reviews.

3. Monitor your site’s visibility.
Online reputation management can also protect against the misuse of your site or your name. Recently I was reviewing the analytics for a client’s website when I realized that someone had copied the entire site and posted it under their firm’s domain. Everything was exactly the same except for the logo and the name. The imposter site was being used to solicit personal injury inquiries to sell to attorneys. After being notified, Google blacklisted the false site and domain name within 48 hours.

Tip: Regularly search for your name and firm name to see how they appear, or set up Google and/or Yahoo alerts to get email updates any time one of these terms is mentioned online.

Online reputation management is an essential part of business today for attorneys in all areas. With a dedicated strategy and consistent effort, it is an invaluable investment that will protect your firm’s most important asset: its good name. To find out more about online reputation management, contact Ian Bardorf at www.BardorfMarketing.com.

Ian M. Bardorf is an Internet marketing and social media advisor to attorneys and law firms seeking to grow and advance their business via the web. This article is copyrighted as original content by Ian M. Bardorf and Bardorf Legal Marketing. This article may be reproduced or republished with appropriate attribution and credit.

Congrats on setting up a Twitter account – you’ve taken the first step. Social media like Facebook and Twitter let you stay connected with clients, share information, gather feedback, and obtain more visibility in the search rankings.

Imagine your Twitter account as a friendly information booth or place for people to ask questions and share information. You can also share links to interesting articles; post updates on the law, announce upcoming seminars or events; ask questions; solicit feedback; and ask followers what they think. Experts recommend that business tweets are two-thirds conversational and one-third promotional. Research has shown that conversational tweets produce 8 to 12 times the response of company-oriented ones. An example of a conversational tweet is, “Are Massachusetts family courts over-worked and understaffed?” A promotional tweet is, “We’ll be hosting a seminar tomorrow on Estate Planning strategies. Contact us to reserve your spot.”

Once you set up your firm’s account, commit to engaging and replying quickly. Twitter and Facebook users expect you to respond to questions and complaints quickly. To connect with followers, be real. Use an authentic, personal voice. Post your photo and business phone number. More than any other format, tweets can be casual, friendly, and transparent.

Clients come from all walks of life, they go online at all hours of the day, they point, they click, they research and buy online. In fact, 97% of consumers research online before they make a purchase. This means prospects may be looking for your particular area of expertise right now. Yet you could be one of many attorneys who lose revenue each year by neglecting to maximize your firm’s online visibility in your area.

Internet searches are becoming increasingly more localized and specific to geographic locations. Local search is on the rise as people become more sophisticated search engine users. Because most people seeking legal assistance start their search on Google by entering their location and the specialty they need, local search should be considered part of a firm’s online marketing strategy.

Consider these statistics regarding local search:

• 82% of local searchers follow up offline via an in-store visit, phone call or purchase (comScore)
• 73% of online activity is related to local content (Google)
• 66% of American use online local search, like Google local search, to locate local businesses (TMP/comScore/proprietary average)
• 54% of Americans prefer the Internet and local search over phone books (comScore networks)

Clearly, having a well-defined local Internet marketing strategy can be crucial to certain businesses, particularly attorneys whose main source of business is their communities.

Here are the six elements of well-constructed local marketing campaign:

1. Correct and consistent business listings.

Ensuring that your NAP (name, address, and phone number) is listed correctly and consistently across multiple platforms like Google Places, Yahoo! Local and Bing Local Listing Center is the key element that enables a successful local search campaign. Be sure to claim and check your listings.

2. Place Page optimization.

Last year Google changed its layout to feature local business listings and Place Pages more prominently. A well-executed local optimization plan is now even more vital to leverage leads generated by online listings. Make sure you optimize your Place Page on the three major platforms: Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

3. Ratings and reviews.

Ratings and reviews are the digital equivalent of “word of mouth” referrals and are probably one of the most important local search elements. The quality and quantity of ratings and review contribute to how often the search engines display your listing or your location. They are to local search what “backlinks” are to SEO, creating credibility and authority for your business online. Encourage your clients to write short reviews.

4. Local directory advertising.

While the search engines have done a terrific job of increasing the effectiveness of their local search platforms, Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), city guides, and special interest directories can provide high-value leads at cost-effective levels. Include these ads for a well-rounded campaign.

5. Social networking.

Facebook and LinkedIn are now critical elements of an attorney’s presence online.  For firms whose prospects and customers are increasingly using social media, as we all are, devoting some time and resources to this effort can pay off at the local level, both for marketing promotions and for client service. Keep these accounts active and up-to-date.

6. Local online display advertising.

Online display advertising can be beneficial for generating leads by increasing the awareness of your services. While business listing management and local paid search often deliver clients based on how closely your firm is located, display can help make the case for why they should do business with your firm. Display can also help support other marketing efforts with a consistent, targeted message. Consider adding local display to your campaign.

Local search delivers highly relevant results to the consumer, helping them find the products and services they seek in a specific location and helping attorneys gain clients who are in need of assistance. And for firms with limited marketing dollars, local search offers a more cost-effective alternative, with targeted advertising dollars delivering a higher ROI. To find out more about local Internet marketing for attorneys contact Ian Bardorf at www.bardorfmarketing.com.

Ian M. Bardorf is an Internet marketing and social media advisor to attorneys and law firms seeking to grow and advance their business via the web. This article is copyrighted as original content by Ian M. Bardorf and Bardorf Legal Marketing. This article may be reproduced or republished with appropriate attribution and credit.

You’re right! On November 2, Google announced a major change to how sponsored listings would appear on their results pages. In some cases — but not all – ads no longer appear on the top and side rail, but only on the top and bottom of the page. There has never been a layout change as significant as this one and the shift poses many new challenges for advertisers.

Before 11/2/11, results pages included three listings at the top of the page and up to ten listings on the right rail. Advertisers are now competing for fewer spots in the new layout. Based on examples provided by Google, the ad placement shift to the bottom decreases the number of positions to three at the top and two to four at the bottom, a potential fifty percent reduction in listings on the first page of results. Google reports that this change is designed to improve the search experience for users and that it is based on data that ties navigation and click rates to search term and indicates where users are more likely to click based on what they’re looking for. We’ll have to wait and see what the long-term impact is.

Read Google’s official announcement

By Ian M. Bardorf

If you’re like many busy attorneys, you don’t have the time to stay up-to-date on the latest advances in Internet marketing. Your expertise is in helping your clients and providing high-quality legal services. You need a savvy partner that will design and implement a results-driven, cost-effective online marketing strategy.

Most attorneys sign up with a company they believe will take care of their Internet marketing needs and help them stay current. Some of the biggest providers include FindLaw (a part of Westlaw) and Martindale Hubble. These are established companies that were founded to produce legal research in the form of print directories and have since moved into the world of online publications and marketing. Many of you have paid to appear in their listings, both in print and online, and have hired these venerable firms to create and host your websites, and market your practice.

But Internet marketing is more than just a listing and a website, and over time, many clients of these big companies become dissatisfied by not only the level of service but more importantly, the results they get for what they pay. If you’re a FindLaw or Martindale Hubble client, you may be spending more than you need to for inferior results and missing out on other opportunities to help your business succeed. Read on to find out how FindLaw and Martindale Hubble miss the mark.

Local Always Beats National.

Did you know that 97 percent of people conduct research online before buying locally? Or that 64 percent of consumers expect the business within their search results to be within 15 miles of their location? Clearly it’s important to appear in the search results for clients looking for an attorney close by and to work with a marketing partner that understands your area.

Attorneys who have claimed their Google Places listing know how important “localization” is. Google developed this feature in response to the growing demands for local results. Google knows that when people search for a particular service – they’ve been in a car accident or slipped and fallen — they want local results so they can actually find a solution.

But while Google is striving for localization in their search results, FindLaw and Martindale Hubble serve a national clientele and produce products for the masses that are not tailored by geography. For example, the dynamic content FindLaw offers their clients at a premium price is written to accommodate thousands of clients in every state across America. These articles are syndicated content, so not only are they vague and general, but they are not targeted or customized to a particular local market. Their clients are missing a huge opportunity to connect with local prospects on issues relevant in their communities, such as the recent Massachusetts Alimony Reform Act.

More Isn’t Better.

The true value of a FindLaw or Martindale Hubble account is actually a simple listing in their legal directory, but not for the reason you may think. The pitch from the sales team is that their directory attracts millions of visitors every month and is a viable source of qualified traffic. While millions of visitors sounds impressive, you’re really only concerned with attracting prospects that are quite literally within a 25 mile radius of your office. Those are your clients.

The real benefit of being listed in their directory is actually the backlinks from their directory to your website. Backlinks are a critical component of SEO (search engine optimization) and help your website obtain more authority with the search engines and higher rankings. You want to get your website higher organic rankings and backlinks are key.

Typically FindLaw and Martindale Hubble’s directories appear high in the search engine results while individual attorney profiles within do not. The reality is that if a prospect searches for a term like “Metrowest divorce attorneys” and both the FindLaw directory and a local law firm’s website appear in Google’s results, more people will choose to visit the law firm’s actual website than get trapped in a massive legal directory. If they do choose to click on the directory they may have to drill down three or four pages to find the listings they’re looking for, wade through multiple other results from sponsored listings, and they may never see your profile.

Dollars Don’t Equal Results.

The bottom line is that these services are expensive. Many FindLaw and Martindale Hubble clients spend between $1,000 to $2,000 per month. If you don’t like the results you may have to pay more to upgrade your site. What most don’t realize is that you can easily get locked in to depending on their services for years to come, which of course is exactly what they want. If you spend $15K a year to get your Internet marketing underway, the question is how long do you plan to spend that each year? Is it 10 years, 20 years, until you retire? That expense quickly adds up. You could spend a quarter of a million dollars with one company and on just their products and services.

You need to consider the return on your investment over time. With the bigger firms there is definitely a case of diminishing returns. While it may be worth $15K the first year to get your website going, it’s definitely not worth this much in the third year, never mind year four, five, six, and beyond. Thinking about ROI long-term will save you from making an unworthy investment.

Service or Sales.

When’s the last time you heard from your account rep at FindLaw or Martindale Hubble? Were they calling with a great new idea for improving your site or reaching new clients? Most likely it was because they had something new to sell you or they were trying to collect their most recent invoice. Although these large firms are staffed with dozens of sales reps in Massachusetts, chances are when you need something done it may not happen as quickly as you’d like. The Internet is a dynamic marketplace. In order to harness its power and obtain the results you desire you need the flexibility and the nimbleness to make changes quickly.

We all know how great it feels when the barista at the local coffee shop remembers our order from week to week. Think how much more important it is for your agency to understand your clients. A good agency will take the time to learn your market and design a specific campaign to reach and engage them, and not fit your business model into a “one-size-fits-all” approach that may simply be, “how we do it”.

Who Owns Your Site?

Once you’ve decided that you’re not happy with the results, expense, or service you’re getting from one of the big firms it’s time to consider your options. Making a change may not be easy. Findlaw for example, hosts your site, often manages your domain, and controls your content. If you decide to terminate with them, the company will give you your site and most of it’s design elements on a CD. What they don’t tell you is that in doing so they strip out all of the SEO (search engine optimization) of your site, which quite frankly is its true value. You would never notice this from the appearance of the website, but all of its SEO mechanics have been removed. It’s like taking a formula engine out of your fancy sports car and replacing it with a tiny 2 cylinder engine made for a lawn mower.

At the same time, once your FindLaw site is shuttered there is often at least a two-week time lag before you receive your site on CD, which sends up a red flag to Google since you site has been down for that long. Once your site loses its authority, it essentially becomes a new site in Google’s eyes and you have to begin the slow process of optimizing your site and regaining its rankings from square one. Some sites never have the good rankings they had before canceling with FindLaw and they’ve essentially lost their investment. To avoid this, you need to figure out the logistics of transitioning your site to an equally effective and much more affordable solution.

One Channel or Many.

To make the most of Internet marketing, a savvy attorney will take advantage of all the opportunities online, creating a “’digital arsenal” that they can use to attract prospects and engage clients. This can include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Places, Google AdWords,  monthly videos, and listings in local directories and other effective and affordable legal directories like Justia and Avvo. Findlaw and Martindale Hubble do not offer these services and having just a website and a directory listing with just one company won’t cut in in the competitive world of Internet marketing. Unfortunately, even after spending $15K or more a year with FindLaw for just one channel, many attorneys find they don’t have the online presence they need to build their businesses. Ironically, being in more places will help attorneys save money, spend more wisely, and get obtain better results.

Now it’s up to you.

You want to outsource Internet marketing to a trusted provider to save time and get the best results. A good agency will help you help yourself by educating you on the pros and cons of various approaches. Choose a service-oriented agency that will become a true business partner. In this economy, that will make all the difference. To find out more about local Internet marketing for attorneys contact Ian Bardorf at www.bardorfmarketing.com.

Ian M. Bardorf is an Internet marketing and social media advisor to attorneys and law firms seeking to grow and advance their business via the web. This article is copyrighted as original content by Ian M. Bardorf and Bardorf Legal Marketing. This article may be reproduced or republished with appropriate attribution and credit.

If you don’t have a website or your website is simply a business card online without video, testimonials, articles, or Q&As, you may benefit from investing in these services for a year or two to jump start your marketing efforts.

Then you should harvest your investment by transitioning your site to a more affordable option and invest the money you saved in even more marketing opportunities.

The point is that you don’t have to pay just one company a premium rate year over year. Once you decide to take your Internet marketing to the next level, it’s time to move on to an agency that knows your local market and that’s dedicated to your success.

By Ian M. Bardorf

Search Engine Marketing is one of the most effective tactics to generate leads, help you promote your expertise, reach prospects and stay connected with clients. A good ranking on Google’s results pages is a measurable gateway for new business. Enhancing your website so that it’s listed at or near the top of Google, Yahoo or any other search engine is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

But along with the growing focus on search marketing has come a proliferation of agencies that claim they provide Search Engine Optimization. Many of these are website design firms or ad agencies that have simply added “search engine optimization” to their websites and have no in-depth experience. They often over-promise and under-deliver. Even worse, some of them can hurt your business in the long run.

Search engine optimization, if done well, is not a product or a commodity, but a sophisticated process that requires well trained and experienced individuals with up-to-date insight on the business.

In a tight economy, you simply can’t afford to spend valuable resources on an effort that may or may not deliver the results you need. Here are six tactics to avoid when considering SEO.

Tactic 1: Promising a guaranteed #1 ranking.

Evaluating a firm to conduct your site’s SEO is time consuming but worthwhile. You’re spending valuable marketing dollars and need to show the return on that investment. It’s easy to be tempted by firms that guarantee top rankings.

But beware of vendors that make this promise. Search rankings are notoriously unstable, and subject to a variety of factors such as the location of the person searching and whether they’ve logged in to Google and are using personalized results. Reputable SEO firms don’t offer guaranteed #1 rankings, fast results, or any other promises that sound too good to be true. Google itself warns, “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.”

Tactic #2: Claiming rapid results.

Claims about rapid improvements in search engine rankings should be viewed skeptically. SEO is not a quick-fix marketing tactic that can deliver results in a matter of hours or days. Instead, it typically takes a diligent, ongoing process that gradually improves your site’s rankings.

A good SEO project can take three to four months to begin showing a real impact, depending on a number of factors such as the age of your site, the number of quality inbound links you already have, and the competitiveness of keywords. Anyone promising you an upward bump in your results in 30 days is overpromising. Worse, they could be using shady SEO tactics that might deliver a quick change at the expense of long-term search engine visibility.

Tactic #3: Using “black hat” techniques.

SEO providers have variety of ways to achieve higher rankings for a site, but not all techniques are considered above board. Bending the generally accepted rules established by search engines is called “black hat” SEO. And while black hat SEO is not technically illegal, it is discouraged by search engines and can hurt your business in the long run.

Major retailer J.C. Penney was caught in a black hat SEO nightmare after the 2010 holiday shopping season, when Google found that the company’s SEO firm had used a link-buying scheme (paying to place links on hundreds of websites unrelated to J.C Penney) to help the retailer achieve top rankings for broad product terms such as “area rugs,” “furniture,” “home décor” and “skinny jeans.” Google responded by lowering J.C. Penney’s rankings. In just over one week, the average position for a J.C. Penney webpage dropped from #1.3 to #52, according to a New York Times report.

Tactic #4: Buying inbound links.

Attracting lots of high-quality inbound links to your website is essential for improving your website’s authority and search engine rankings, so it’s no surprise that link-building is one of the services that most SEO firms promise their clients.

The problem is, not all inbound links are valuable — and some may even harm you. Offering payment for inbound links, creating new sites solely to link back to a main site, or placing hundreds of inbound links on unrelated pages just to boost a specific page’s rank are a few of many black hat link-building techniques to avoid.

Tactic #5: Focusing on clicks, not conversions.

Rankings or website traffic alone are weak metrics for overall performance. It’s more important that the search results drive relevant visitors that take a desired action – such as signing up for an email newsletter or viewing a video – once they land on your page. Avoid vendors that spend too much time talking about number of website visitors and not enough about how to measure what they’re doing once they get there.

Tactic #6: Offering a One-Time Fix

SEO isn’t a one-time project — it’s an on-going process. Your site’s content has to be constantly refreshed, inbound links added regularly, and your keyword strategy tweaked according to performance metrics. And that doesn’t even take into account ongoing changes to search engine algorithms that make any page’s ranking susceptible to fluctuation over time.

The bottom line is that SEO should be a constant focus for your marketing team – and your agency partner. It’s more than just a few structural fixes, a burst of link building, and a one-time content generation push.

Search Marketing is a service, not a product.

Rather than a one-time, single approach that can be used by companies across any industry, search marketing is a service that improves over time and with experience. An experienced agency will provide better, quicker assessments of your client profile and site objectives; implement more effective optimizations; manage paid search more efficiently; produce better results; and avoid mistakes and pitfalls that cost you time and money.

Now it’s up to you. You want to outsource search marketing to a trusted provider to save precious time and get the best results. A good agency will help you help yourself by educating you on the pros and cons of various approaches. Choose a service-oriented agency that will become a true business partner. In this economy, that will make all the difference. To find out more about Search Engine Optimization, contact Ian Bardorf at www.BardorfMarketing.com.

Ian M. Bardorf is an Internet marketing and social media advisor to attorneys and law firms seeking to grow and advance their business via the web. This article is copyrighted as original content by Ian M. Bardorf and Bardorf Legal Marketing. This article may be reproduced or republished with appropriate attribution and credit.

Since most people (97%) search online before making a purchase, it’s logical that anyone seeking an attorney will head to Google first.

The most important thing you can do to be found in a “local search” is to claim your Google Places page and verify that the basic information is accurate. I wrote an article about Google Places that explains how in more detail.

The second most important thing to attract local searchers is to gather testimonials and ratings for your business. Client reviews are critical for local attorneys to gain visibility on search engines and social directories like Yelp that people turn to for referrals. Reviews and ratings offer two benefits: differentiating your firm from the competition and improving your rankings on the search engine results pages.

Encourage your current clients to write testimonials. Once you have obtained their reviews, submit them to relevant websites and feature them in an easy-to-use and easy-to-find section on your site and LinkedIn profile.