In short, SEO helps potential readers find your blog through Google and other search engines, and there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it -- you don't want to appeal to the machines at the expense of human readers. 

On Wednesday, December 14 at 12 p.m. EST (9 a.m. PST), LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe, along with LexBlog's Client Services and Editorial teams, will host "SEO for Law Blogs," a free, hourlong webinar on this subject.

"SEO for Law Blogs" will touch upon:

• The basics of SEO and what makes a high-ranking site.
• Elements of effective SEO: what to do.
• How overdoing SEO can be counterintuitive: what definitely not to do.

You can register for "SEO for Law Blogs" at LexBlog's Events Center. The password went out in an email to LexBlog clients earlier this week; email Helen Pitlick if you did not receive it. 

As always, we’ll be recording this webinar. So, if you can’t attend, feel free to visit the LexBlog Support Site or Real Lawyers Have Blogs and view at your convenience.

Thanks to all who attended last week's webinar on SEO for blogs, let by LexBlog CEO Kevin O'Keefe and Client Services Director Lyda Hawes.

Kevin and Lyda discussed the importance of clear titles, linking, and developing a strong social network; why the most important search result is your name; and how to grab the low-hanging fruit.

If you missed it, you can view the recording at LexBlog's events center or at LexBlog Support. You can also download a PDF of the mindmap Kevin worked from during the session by clicking the image above.

More resources:

• Search Engine Optimization
• Basic SEO - search engine optimization - for your law blog
• Law blogs may be single best way to get links for SEO
• 5 myths about SEO

Tools for finding keywords:

• Google Tool Bar
• Google Trends
• Google Adwords

• What is SEO and why does it matter?
• The elements of SEO: keywords, titles, tags and linking
• Mistakes to avoid
• What LexBlog does for you

You can register for "Search Engine Optimization for Blogs" at LexBlog's Events Center -- check your email for the invite containing the password or contact Client Services.

As always, we’ll be recording this webinar and posting it here and at the LexBlog Support Site. So, if you can’t attend, feel free to visit and view at your convenience.
 

We've been able to re-do the screencast and recording of this webinar for those who couldn't attend, or for those who wanted to revisit some of the topics discussed. Make sure you hit the little expand the screen button with the four arrows pointing out to get a full screen view.

Some of the points covered included:

• How the Search Engines "See" Your Posts
• Writing Effective Post Titles
• Writing Search-Friendly Articles
• Where to Get Article Ideas that Win
• 5 ways to Screw up your posts

This webinar will also be posted along with our other recorded webinars on the LexBlog support site.

If you had any additional questions about writing for search, feel free to contact our Helpdesk at support@lexblog.com or at 1-800-913-0988. And stay tuned for more information about our next client webinar next month.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to appear high in searches for your topic. But how do you do it without sacrificing quality content and productive engagement? Keyword stuffing or trying to outwit the search engines will backfire and cause more harm than benefit.

In our next webinar, exclusively for members of the LexBlog Network, I’ll have a dialogue with LexBlog's Jake Ludington about Effective Blog Writing for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 

In addition to being our Director of Product Development and Technology, Jake built a blogging business on Search. His articles on digital media solutions consistently rank in the top 3 posts on Google for the topic. Part of Jake's success in this area is his ability to write to effectively rank for key search terms.

This webinar will be held Thursday, February 18, at 9 a.m. PT/12 p.m. ET. We’ll cover:

• How the Search Engines "See" Your Posts
• Writing Effective Post Titles
• Writing Search-Friendly Articles
• Where to Get Article Ideas that Win
• 5 ways to Screw up your posts

Please visit our Event Center to register for this webinar. If you need the password, email our HelpDesk or contact a member of our Author Services team at 1-800-913-0988.

Additionally, if you have any specific questions you'd like us to address in the webinar, please post them in the comment section below or email them to our Editorial Manager, Lisa Kennelly. And if you'd like your blog to be one of the ones we use as an example during the webinar, feel free to volunteer as well.

Two reasons. One, you draw more traffic to your law blog through the effective use of social media than SEO. Two, traffic drawn to your blog through social media is more preferrable.

I've been blogging less than the mad 2 or 3 posts I've done in the past. However, traffic to my blog for this month is the highest ever.

Why? Because of social media. By social media I mean people passing on to others what I say via a blog post or something I say on Twitter. Plus I've been more active on Twitter.

When I tweet about a blog post of mine, I share word of the post on Twitter. People following me on Twitter, retweet word of my blog post. Through this network I wouldn't be surprised if within an hour of my tweeting about a blog post 25,000 or 30,000 people receive word of my post through Twitter. That's a powerful network.

Without even linking to a blog post of mine, my using Twitter in general draws traffic to my blog. I'm a notorious sharer of news via Twitter. I'll share links to news and blog posts offering my brief commentary. I'll retweet what someone I'm following may have tweeted - so long as it's of interest to my followers. I'll also offer brief commentary without a link or a retweet on various subjects of interest to my followers.

In each case, whether it be a follower of mine on Twitter or a follower of someone who has retweeted what I've said, people look at my Twitter profile. That profile includes a link to my blog. And a lot of people click on that link to find out more about me.

Traffic to a law blog drawn via social media brings higher quality traffic than SEO. Good lawyers get their best work via word of mouth and people doing research on the lawyer. Doesn't matter whether the word of mouth is generated or the research is done offline or online.

Social media traffic drawn to your blog comes because someone else, more likely than not a thought leader in your field, blogged about what you've blogged about or retweeted about something you said or shared on Twitter.

Someone else sharing what you've said is a tacit endorsement of you as an authority. Why else would someone share what you've said with their friends and followers unless they thought enough about you or what you said? People are drawn to look up more about you when you have received a tacit endorsement. Those people end up at your blog.

Take it a step further and realize that these people who see your content via social media and then look you up are more apt to have a keen interest in what you're saying, what you do or about you personally. They're also a tad more advanced than someone, who previously went to the yellow pages, who goes to the Internet and keys in New York City bankruptcy lawyer. You want that kind of traffic to your blog.

Speaking in Toronto yesterday to law firm management professionals with medium and large law firms, I felt very comfortable telling them that social media through blogging was more important than any sort of search engine optimization of their law firms' websites or blogs.

Sure, you want your blog and website optimized by having the right title tags. You also want to have incoming links to your blog and website from other relevant sites. Social media and blogging will get you all the links you need.

But at the end of the day, I just wonder if social media, which includes effective blogging, is not a more powerful way to draw traffic to your blog than search engine optimization?

Lawyers addicted to SEO are like crack cocaine addicts who need to get their fix. Don't care how, from whom, or at what price. Just give my fix. As a result they get hooked up with crack cocaine dealers dressed up as SEO consultants - not a good crowd.

Effective blogging on a legal niche propels a lawyer to the top of the Google search results. And not just on what they do and their location, ie, Palm Springs Estate Planning Lawyer, but also for terms on which thousands of people search, ie, living will, estate tax etc. No question, effective blogging gets you found on Google.

But at the end of the day, the search engines are one big yellow pages directory. If you advertised heavily in the yellow pages and your good clients came primarily from the yellow pages, by all means, pour all your marketing and business development time and money into search results. Getting to the top of Google results is like having the first 2 full page spread in the yellow pages.

But if your best clients came by word of mouth, as opposed to the yellow pages, Google is not the be all and end all. You need an effective online presence so that your prospective clients and those who influence them see you as a reliable and trusted authority in your niche. A link from the top of the search results to a web page proclaiming your accolades is not going to do it.

I'm speaking from experience. I was a plaintiff's trial lawyer for 17 years. We spent heavily on advertising. TV, radio, yellow pages. You name it, we did it. But at the end of the year, the largest fees were generated on cases we received by word of mouth.

When I started answering injury law related questions on AOL's message boards in 1996, there were no search engines. But injury victims and their family members saw what I was doing and spread the word across the Internet. Thousands of people, including many from my state of Wisconsin, came to my website where I archived the questions and answers. Work and notoriety as a trusted authority followed - in spades.

Don't get me wrong. Google matters. And good blogging gets you to the top. But Google results is not the leading way the best lawyers get their best clients.

• The best lawyers get their best work by word of mouth. Period.
• Word of mouth is generated by being recognized as a reliable and trusted authority in one's practice area. Offline that takes a decade or more for a good lawyer. With effective blogging, a good lawyer can do it in a year or two.
• Forgo this and you're acknowledging that you'll be on the never ending rat race chasing the top results on search engines, which is like chasing the largest ad in the yellow pages.
• Better clients come from being an authority and by word of mouth, not from search engines. Good clients are evaluating a lawyers skill, acumen, and passion as well as who is citing that lawyer on line (other bloggers & reporters).
• An effective Internet presence through effective blogging and the innovative use of social media is achieved by very few lawyers. 99% of lawyers don't know how to do it or are too lazy to learn how. That's far less competition for you. Chasing SEO is something everyone of your competitors is doing.

Better clients. Less competition. Less Cost. Long lasting. What's not to like?

Back to weaning lawyers off their fix. ;)

Well the mud just got a little deeper for FindLaw today. Dow Jones' Nat Worden reported this afternoon that FindLaw has been slapped by Google for shady SEO tactics and that lawyers are now questioning the SEO marketing product FindLaw sold them.

Worden explained that FindLaw came up with a 'SEM Advantage' product which cost some lawyers $2,000 per month.

Billed as a "high-octane" way to double or even triple traffic on his site, Newell [FindLaw lawyer customer] and others like him understood FindLaw's SEM Advantage product to be a package of well-placed links designed to lift a Web site's standing in a Google search. But now they're wondering if they're still getting their money's worth.

Worden reports FindLaw may have pulled the wool out from under these lawyers.

Late last month, FindLaw quietly made changes to a link on one of its Web sites leading to Newell's site, which he had received as part of SEM Advantage. It also changed at least 99 other links to the Web sites of law-firm clients after it ran afoul of Google Inc. (GOOG) in the search giant's ongoing efforts to crack down on a practice known as selling "link juice," or Web links designed to boost a Web site's page rankings in a search engine. With the link juice trade springing up as a cottage industry across the entire spectrum of online marketing, Google views it as threatening the quality of its search engine, an asset that has made Google a dominant force in media.

Read on in Worden's article and you'll see that FindLaw made the changes adversely effecting lawyers like Newell because FindLaw had been caught by Google for selling links in violation of Google's guidelines. Something in my opinion, FindLaw knew or should have known it was going to get caught doing.

Worden concludes with what is most alarming, and perhaps why FindLaw is not owning up to its misconduct.

The controversy comes at a difficult time for FindLaw's parent company, Thomson-Reuters, which publishes a news service that competes directly with Dow Jones Newswires and is delivered on the same terminals. Its stock price is down about 20% over the last year amid concerns that the U.S. financial crisis will quash growth in its financial markets division. Investors are counting on its professional division to pick up the slack, and its legal services business, for which Findlaw is a small but important growth engine, made up 66% of that division's revenue in the first half.

Imagine if FindLaw confessed to duping lawyers for millions of dollars (not saying they did, just looks to me like they did). Imagine having to refund millions of dollars. Imagine having to refund these monies after paying millions of dollars in sales commissions on the sale of this 'high-octane SEM Advantage Product.' Imagine how investors would view Thomson Reuter's stock then.

Scary stuff for FindLaw and their parent Thomson Reuters. Scary stuff for lawyers relying on FindLaw going forward.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

Not only may FindLaw be liable to law firms for the millions of dollars paid by law firms to FindLaw for these spam links, but FindLaw and its parent company, Thomson Reuters, has damaged its reputation and brand in the eyes of lawyers and the search community, including Google, for years to come.

Dad always said there's a right way and a wrong way to handle everything. FindLaw needs to do the right thing and to do it now.

Here's the right thing to do:

1. Acknowledge immediately to your lawyer customers who bought the spam links and the legal community as a whole that 'FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business,' acted wrongly and in violation of Google's webmaster rules.
2. Apologize immediately to the law firms and the legal community for FindLaw's course of conduct.
3. Announce immediately that FindLaw will refund within 30 days all the money paid by the law firms for these links.
4. Perform an immediate accounting of all monies paid for the links by the respective law firms. (Appears to be in the hundreds, possibly thousands of law firms and for all I know could be $3 to $5 million).
5. Report the results of the accounting publicly.
6. Hold the FindLaw people who authorized the sale of links, who had to know it was improper, personally responsible. That includes senior management who very likely knew.
7. Establish an in-house ethics review committee and ethical standards protocol to prevent future improper conduct.

Tuesday will be the 7th day since the news of FindLaw's selling links was reported on the net as well as 7 days from when Google's Matt Cutts became aware of the violation. And at least the 4th day since FindLaw was penalized by having its website PageRank dropped from a 7 to a 5.

FindLaw has chosen not to respond - to the public, to its customers, or to bloggers. This is rather surprising in these days of corporate damage control and where word spreads like wildfire on the net.

I worked as a VP of Business Development for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell - lawyers.com, FindLaw's largest competitor, following the acquisition of my prior company. I may never have agreed with everything Martindale did, and God knows I am a vocal critic of Martindale here, but Martindale always looked at itself as having a reputation to uphold because of its history and its role in the legal community as a whole.

I can't believe Martindale senior management would have ever allowed this sort of thing, no matter the pressure for incremental revenue. But if Martindale did get itself in trouble, I have to believe it would have held itself accountable to its lawyer customers and the legal profession.

FindLaw needs to act accordingly if it wants to seriously compete with Martindale and lawyers.com, reduce the damage to the Thomson Reuters FindLaw name, and to attempt to reestablish itself as a respected member of our legal community.

The legal community looks forward to FindLaw's response in the next day or two.

Update: Based on an inquiry from a sales rep I want to make myself clear. In no way did I mean to imply that Martindale ever sold spam links - Martindale, to my knowledge, has not ever sold links like FindLaw did. My point was that the Martindale senior management I knew while serving as a VP of Martindale would never have even thought of doing something like FindLaw did.

Related posts:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?
• Traits you look for in a legal marketing strategic partner
• FindLaw selling links story is spreading like wildfire
• FindLaw selling links update : Dow Jones reporting FindLaw misconduct and lawyers questioning what FindLaw sold them
• FindLaw Linkgate : Former FindLaw sales rep blows whistle

Per Google, here's how it works.

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you've entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms......On the results page, you'll also see a list of the top searches, top rising searches, and a world heat map graphically displaying the search volume index with regions, subregions, and cities.

Google goes on to explain how Insights will be helpful.

Whether you're an advertising agency, a small business owner, a multinational corporation, or an academic researcher, Insights for Search can help you gauge interest in pertinent search terms......Insights can help you determine which messages resonate best. For example, an automobile manufacturer may be unsure of whether it should highlight fuel efficiency, safety, or engine performance to market a new car model.

I ran a search on blogs to measure the increased interest over the last 4 years and here's what I got.

as well as search terms and rising searches related to 'law blogs.'

It's not going to work for every keyword or phrase term as some search terms may not receive enough traffic for Insights to generate a report. But on my first look, and based on the comments from bloggers at Google Blog Search, Insights looks to be pretty cool.

In fact some lawyers would rather see their name at the top of search results or on the back of a phone book than have a reputation as a trusted and reliable authority in a niche area of the law. Wonderful that these cads are in the same profession as you and I who went to law school to right a few wrongs and to take pride in what we do.

The latest comes from lawyers throwing money down a rat hole by paying unscrupulous SEO-Search Engine Optimization clowns to get spam links via comments on good law blogs.

Scott Greenfield explains how the spam comments on law blogs scheme works.

One of the latest [trends] that has hit Simple Justice fairly hard is the latest effort in advertising by desperate lawyers, who apparently pay someone else to post comments to a blawg (such as this) with a link to their website.

The name of the commenter is listed as 'Miami Lawyer' and the link is to some Miami lawyer's website.  One might think that the concept would be followed through with some further degree of thought, such as searching for posts that relate in some way to stories about Miami, so that people who read the comments to the story might have a better chance of being interested in Miami lawyers.  Not so.

In the course of a day, I get one individual posting a dozen comments to miscellaneous old posts without any apparent nexus to each other or the geographical or subject matter area of the lawyer.  Each will link back to this 'Miami Lawyer's' website.  But here's the rub:  The comment is written in broken English and fails to demonstrate any knowledge of the content of the post.

Example: Greet to the webmaster for this wonderful site.Keep up good work.

This is the actual comment left yesterday.  To the Miami Lawyer who paid someone to leave this comment and link to his website, this word of advice.  It makes you look like a blithering idiot.  Is that what you are trying to accomplish?

As Scott explains the comments usually say 'nice job on the blog' or something else complimentary. So lawyers new to blogging are apt to keep the comments up. Don't. You'll just be supporting the sleaze and lazy of our legal profession.

And for lawyers buying SEO from guys that sound and behave like crack cocaine dealers, follow Scott's advise.

...[A]s a public service to anyone foolish enough to pay good money to some advertising 'solutions' company that outsources its work to people who will make you look far more pathetic than you are, let me say this.  Don't do it.

You are wasting your money.  You are not going to get any cases from comments that make you look stupid.  You are going to have your comments deleted, and then I'm going to ban you from here.

If you're really trying to market yourself by establishing yourself as an authority in the legal blogsophere, do it the old fashioned way. By working at it.

Subscribe to blogs in your niche as well as keywords and key phrases via Google Blog Search and Google News. Comment on other blogs - both on your own blog and in the comment field on other law blogs.

And at all times, add value to the discussion. You went to law school. You have 7 years of college and graduate education. It is actually possible to offer insight and commentary, as opposed to looking for the next get rich/cut corners advertising scheme.

Working at blogging the old fashioned way will get you plenty of links - and others citing you and your content throughout the net. I know you may not care, but it will save you money and get you more legal work.

That's nuts. I'm not sure Ben honestly believes that.

If there's lawyers and legal marketing professionals who honestly believe blogs are only for search engine rankings, I expect they're the ones who previously believed the only way a lawyer could get new clients was through large yellow page ads and other advertising. You know, the biggest and gaudiest ad with call the 1 800 lawyer thing.

They believe Google is replacing the yellow pages for people selecting a lawyer. God forbid you're not at the top of search engine results page of Google when someone searches your town and the type of lawyer you are. 'If I'm not at the top of Google, I'll never get any work. I'll go broke.'

The same thing that has allowed good lawyers, no matter their area of practice, to get good work over the years is why law blogs work so well. The ability to network with thought leaders in your field, influencers within your community, and prospective clients.

When I practiced in a small rural town in the Midwest a leading law firm ran only a very small in column ad in the yellow pages listing their 12 lawyers by name. That's it. Only advertising they did. And they got as much work as anyone in the area in everything - personal injury, divorce, real estate, corporate, estate planning, bankruptcy, probate and what have you.

How they'd do it?

• By striving to be good lawyers - staying up to speed on legal developments and news that effected their practice.
• By writing articles for legal publications and regional newspapers.
• By presenting at seminars and conferences for lawyers and relevant industries.
• By being well known by the press and being available when reporters need resources or a quote.
• By becoming leaders regionally and state-wide in bar and legal associations.
• By networking with good lawyers around the state.
• By networking with community leaders and influencers in various civic organizations.
• By being social and cordial with people who influence others in their selection of a lawyer - bailiffs, court clerks, judges, bankers, doctors, insurance agents, realtors, title company personnel, court reporters etc.

They further enhanced their reputation as good lawyers you could trust by networking. Word of mouth spread.

Blogging is a new way of networking with thought leaders, community leaders, the media, current clients, and prospective clients. It's how you further enhance your reputation as a lawyer who can do a heck of a job for people and companies needing legal services in your niche. It's how you generate a word of mouth reputation that's far wider reaching than offline.

Ask any lawyer who knows how to blog effectively. They'll tell you their blog is much more than search engine rankings. Don't get me wrong. Search engine rankings are important, but they'll come anyway through effective blogging.

Let's act like lawyers folks. We didn't go to law school so we could run the largest yellow page ad, billboard, or to rank at the top of something called Google - which in our wildest dreams we could not have dreamed of in law school 30 years ago. What's after Google? You'll be chasing that too with the latest gimmicks.

Rise above the pack. Be the lawyer you want to be in the area of law for which you have a passion. Become a lawyer's lawyer. Establish a reputation that's not fleeting. It can be done via online networking through effective blogging - not by just being at the top of Google.

Julie Batten at The ClickZ Network sheds some light on why blogs achieve higher rankings.

• A high number of inbound links (with keyword-rich anchor text).
• A lot of keyword-rich textual content, with typically a distinct lack of Flash and other non-textual content.
• An inherent structure that enables the spider to both find and understand site content (e.g., posts are descriptively titled, organized by topical areas, and linked to in a logical manner).
• A high propensity for being found through popular blog directories or search engines, such as Technorati.

Of course, as Batten notes, Internet users will still need to determine the credibility of websites or blogs at the top of Google's search results. But as a lawyer blogging on a niche topic for which you have first hand expertise, you're a pretty credible source. For Google looking to get get credible informative sites to the top of its search results, mission accomplished.

Though law blogs often rank higher on Google than websites, law blogs don't exist for SEO shenanigans. Law firm website developers and law firm 'SEO experts' who don't have a clue about blogs don't understand this.

Unfortnately, I'm seeing the same disturbing trend as Edelman Senior Vice President Steve Rubel.

Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

This represents a clear and present danger to the fabric of the community. If you care about the social web, then you should be alarmed.

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more.

Steve goes on to explain that if you're using blogs appropriately, high rankings will follow anyway.

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. SEO, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective. Any brand that plays in this space should be aiming to create value. Do that and the other stuff will follow.

The vast majority of LexBlog's 300 plus blogs rank near the top of Google for their area of law. That's happening as a result of good blogging and proper blog site architecture, not because of SEO shenanigans.

Lawyers are repeatedly seduced and marketers are constantly aggravated to take space in law firm directories.' Which one to choose? How much to pay? Should you pay?' I can make the decision easy for you. There is only one directory you need to worry about: Google......Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online.

I have heard Larry speak and he's speaking of the importance of Google for all sized law firms, from solos to the very largest.

Other search engines aren't all that important for lawyers either. New research from Compete.com, indicates Google's share of Web searches in September 2007 was 67%, up from 54% in 2006. Yahoo is at 19%, down from 29% in 2006, with MSN at 9%.

I agree with Larry. Though it may still be worth my while, I never look at Yahoo or MSN when examining the search engine performance of my sites or LexBlog client blog sites.

As for directories such as FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, Avvo, and the like, the most important function they can play is getting the biographical information of your firm and its lawyers indexed at Google. The days of a lawyer directory portal site where Internet users go to look up lawyers are coming to an end.

'From a copywriting standpoint,' Brian says 'it's a no brainer—it's been proven time and time again that if you want someone to do something, you'll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do.'

But because of people like me advising people to use a link such as 'law firm SEO tips,' as opposed to 'click here' for law firm SEO tips, Brian thought sharing the results of a Marketing Sherpa experiment would be helpful.

The study found the right two or three link words can improve click-through rates by more than 8%.

• 'Click to continue': 8.53%
• 'Continue to article': 3.3%
• 'Read more': (-)1.8%

Per Brian, click here to read the original Marketing Sherpa article in its entirety.

If you want to expose your firm's content, it is not enough to simply build webpages and hope for the best. You must employ a strategy to get your chosen content in front of its target audience. In-house newsletters, email marketing, content syndication, etc. are all wonderful pieces to your marketing puzzle, but are more effective at marketing to existing clients......If firms wish to stretch out their online branding efforts - for whatever reasoning they choose - they must expose their content to new audiences. And to that end, the search engines continue to be a the number one tool available to drive new readership.

Steve had 7 quick reasons why a law firm would employ an SEO strategy.

• The firm is looking to increase exposure for a new office in a regional market.
• Lawyer profile pages aren't ranking for their areas of practice expertise.
• The firm is a market leader and sees a top search ranking as a 'must have.'
• The firm wishes to increase market share for lucrative or high-margin area of practice.
• A competitive regional practice, where service pages are buried beyond the second page of search results.
• The firm has a new or innovative service offering, and seeks the first strike advantage.
• The firm is a boutique practice without geographic boundaries, and simply needs a top-10 listing to turn volume.

The impact of good law firm SEO, per Steve:

Reports have shown the top search position to receive as many as 42% of the available clicks. On the bottom side of that comparison, rankings between position #11 and #100 will share as few as 11% of the clicks available.

I talk to 3 to 5 lawyers/law firms a day. 95% of their websites and blogs are not optimized to be found on Google and the other search engines. More than anything else in marketing, those firms should focus on SEO.

• Attribution is important. Linking to popular bloggers and other sources is a way of getting their attention. Its like saying hey I just talked about you, come see what I said. Many will ignore you, but it only takes a couple good ones liking you for your blog to spread like a weed.
• Make sure your content is formatted such that it is easy to read. Use headings and sub-headers, bulleted lists, spread things out, etc. Ultimately you need people to read and trust your work for search engines to want to trust it. Search engines follow what people do.
• Make sure your page titles are unique on a per post level with the unique part of the title element at the far left of the page title. This helps improve rankings and makes people more likely to click on your listing when you do rank. Descriptive enticing headlines will pull more clicks than boring and bland ones.
• Don't ignore internal navigation. Where possible, allow some of your categories to drive your keyword strategy. Some of your categories should be well aligned with some of your keywords. Create a top hits or featured posts section that makes it easy to find your best content. Also link back to your older posts in some of your newer posts to alert new readers to the best related posts in your archives and help search engines understand which pages are most important.
• If many people are writing about the same thing you are, try to write about something else or try to write about it from a different perspective such that people want to keep paying attention to you. Don't be afraid of being yourself. Often times our flaws are more interesting than what we are allegedly good at.

With all the bum SEO advive given to law firms, I like Aaron's sound and straight forward advice. For those of you looking to learn more about SEO, Aaron's SEO book looks like a good one. Testimonials from a prod at Wharton and Seth Godin don't come liightly.

...[T]his question is a real core issue for any business in the 21st century. In a nutshell, more and more people are moving online to find just about every product and service imaginable. They do that primarily through search engines like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Yahoo (Nasdaq: YHOO) and Microsoft Live (Nasdaq: MSFT).

What these three search engines have in common is that they analyze every page they find on the Web to automatically figure out both what the page is talking about and what some people call a 'quality score', a quantitative measure of whether the content is unique, where the inbound links are coming from (a link from the NY Times is far more valuable than a link from some spam site, for example), the ratio of content to advertising, and so on.

If you have a site online and you aren't clear about how those sites work and what they're looking for, you are doubtless finding that you can't be found when people are searching for your own product or service. And if they can't find you, they can't hire you or buy your products.

Until now, law firms have looked at websites has a necessity, akin to a listing in Martindale-Hubbell. The focus was design and little attention was paid to making sure the website could be found when people were looking for a lawyer on the net. The result - law firm websites that couldn't be found on the net anywhere near the first page or two of the search engine results pages, the only place net users look.

This is why firms are looking at other alternatives, one of which is blogs. More than one of LexBlog's large law firm clients has turned to a practice area blog to make certain that the firm's content and lawyers could be found by an exec, in-house counsel, or reporter doing an Internet search on the relevant topic.

Google antitrust law firm and you'll find Sheppard Mullin's Antitrust Law Blog in the number one position. Try telecom lawyer at Google. You'll find Davis Wright Tremaine's Telecom Law Blog in the number two position following the Wall Street Journal.

Small firms with one prominent practice area have turned to well designed blogs alone, without a website, to make sure they can be found.

Google Austin criminal defense lawyer. You'll find Jamie Spencer who, without a website is number one at Google. When prospective clients find Jamie on the net, they are more impressed with Jamie's informative criminal defense blog than a law firm web site going on ad finitum about how wonderful the lawyer is.

Google where your law firm is located and what you do. If you can't be found, your law firm is in serious trouble.

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