Legal Marketing Guru - Dan Hynes Blog

Changing SEO Strategies for Businesses

Since the Dotcom revolution and the worldwide prevalence of Internet marketing, SEO has become a much-used term amongst consumers. However, SEO strategies also cause marketers a great deal of grief. Because search engines are constantly adapting and changing the way algorithms measure a site's value, SEO strategies must adapt to conform to new standards.

What is Website SEO?

Website SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that businesses use to ensure that a website ranks highly on search engine results pages. For attorneys, ranking high can mean the difference between a constant flow of new customers and clients and an insufferable period of client drought. Consumers use the Internet when they need to find a good attorney. Unless your website ranks highly for search terms such as "attorney" or "legal advice," you may be missing out on a huge population of consumers.

Google Algorithm Updates and Their Effects

Google is the single most popular search engine in the world. Billions of searches are performed every day on this website. Google determines the value of all the websites online by using a complex algorithm. The recent Penguin update, however, changed the way many sites were evaluated. This caused a general uproar amongst marketers and SEO strategists.

Avoiding Substandard SEO Methods

The recent changes to major search engine algorithms are complicated and often difficult to understand. A business may not realize how these changes to the search engine algorithms will affect the rankings of a business's website until it is too late. When Google unveiled Penguin, many companies such as attorneys and legal firms saw their ranking statistics start falling because of substandard SEO methods that were no longer acceptable.

As a general rule of thumb, companies that want to rank well on search engine results pages should simply try to use the best SEO methods possible. Instead of wasting time and energy buying links, stuffing articles with keywords, and filling pages with complex meta data, all with the intention of capturing the attention of search engine algorithms and bots, try to simply create content that will appeal to consumers. Consumers can actually provide the most valuable and effective SEO results. When consumers are interested in and appreciative of the content posted to your firm's website, those consumers will unknowingly start to help your web pages rank well. Sharing content, commenting on content, and linking to your website will happen when consumers begin to trust your site as an authority and a resource for high quality information.

Trying to stay ahead of changing SEO strategies is exhausting work. Google, one of the biggest search engines in the world, is constantly creating algorithm changes that affect SEO strategies. Marketers who adapt their strategies based on algorithm updates will constantly be trying to stay ahead of the game. Instead, consider evaluating the purpose of SEO. Google's algorithm is designed to assess the value of a website for consumers. If you work at creating a valuable website, rather than implementing SEO strategies, you'll rank well without having to stress about changes to algorithms.

Black Hat vs. White Hat SEO for Attorneys

SEO strategies are complex and highly varied from one marketer to the next. Because search engine optimization is constantly changing and adapting, many marketers have to adjust their strategies to keep up. There is a general divide between SEO ideologies. Black Hat SEO is considered to be a cheap and substandard method, while White Hat SEO is the recommended way to optimize a website for search engine rankings.

The SEO Marketing World

Search engine optimization is the process of boosting a website's ranking on search engine results pages. Google and other large search engines have created algorithms that crawl over website content and evaluate the content contained therein. Writing great content and spending time to perfect a website's functionality is what Google hopes for. There are, however, backdoor ways to "fool" algorithms and make them evaluate your website as a great resource.

Why is Black Hat Dangerous?

These backdoor practices are referred to as Black Hat SEO. Examples of this strategy include buying links to your website, stuffing articles with relevant keywords, manipulating meta data to rank more highly, and posting keyword-rich anchor text throughout your site. This method may be effective, but it is exceptionally dangerous. The moment Google adapts its algorithm to recognize these Black Hat strategies your entire website can be considered irrelevant and low quality. A minor change in an algorithm can render months of Black Hat SEO efforts useless.

Choosing Your SEO Strategy for the Future

White Hat SEO will require more time, effort, and potentially even more money from your marketing budget. White Hat SEO is also more difficult to explain and understand. There is no checklist of processes that can be completed with this SEO strategy, and there are no "quick fixes" that can be employed to make a website start ranking more highly in an instant. Why, then, are businesses making the dramatic switch from Black Hat strategies to a purer White Hat SEO strategy?

Marketers who employ SEO strategies are choosing the White Hat road because it enables them to prepare long-term marketing strategies well into the future. When your entire SEO strategy is based on the elements of an algorithm that could be completely transformed and reworked tomorrow, it's impossible to plan far into the future. What is working today for a huge search engine algorithm like Google's may wind up being detrimental to your website a month from now. Only White Hat SEO offers the potential to create a long-term, detailed strategy for website optimization.

When your focus lies with producing high quality content, fulfilling the needs of consumers, and establishing your website as a reputable source of important information, you don't need to concern yourself any longer with algorithms and bots. Your website will continue to rank well because you are addressing the big picture instead of wasting time trying to find backdoors to search engine optimization. The process is more difficult and much more time-consuming, but the freedom to progress steadily without micromanaging an SEO strategy is priceless.

Attorney Marketing with Pinterest

When Pinterest first graced the social networking scene, it was perceived by many to be a fluffy and light-hearted social network with no real marketing potential. Many businesses avoided the network because they believed it was strictly being used to share recipes and craft ideas. However, this social network is being revealed as a unique and highly effective way to market services to an ever-growing population of users. Many consumers prefer to connect socially via Pinterest because of the quality of the content, the image-based posts, and the ability to customize the content you see when you visit the network home page. Even though attorneys offer serious and important services to clients, they may still be able to benefit from using Pinterest as a marketing strategy.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social media network like Facebook and Twitter. While Pinterest is not as popular or highly used as Facebook and Twitter, it's important to realize that this network is still relatively young. This social network uses images as a sharing method. Internet content is shared through Pinterest when users post pictures from web pages on specially made "pin boards." These boards can be labeled to correspond with different subjects or themes. All of the pinned images that are posted to Pinterest are organized into categories such as Entertainment, Food, Men, Women, Fitness, Cars, etc. These categories help consumers search through the millions of Pinterest images to find the content that interests them the most.

Can Attorneys Market with Pinterest?

Pinterest may seem like a place to share pictures of celebrities and fitness tips, but it can actually be quite more than that. Consumers respond in dramatic ways to images, and attorneys can capitalize on the image-based sharing potential of Pinterest by posting links to their service web pages that correspond to powerful images. Because Pinterest is gaining popularity so quickly throughout the nation, attorneys that are looking for a younger population of clients will find a wealth of potential consumers via Pinterest.

Information via Pictures

Another way to effectively market legal services via Pinterest is to create images that communicate information in a stylish and visually appealing way. Pictures that contain information are often referred to as "infographics." An infographic may be as simple as a bar graph that provides statistics about drunk driving accidents, or it can be as sophisticated as a pictorial representation of the legal process. By communicating valuable attorney information through pictures, a legal firm can ensure that important facts are absorbed more easily by interested consumers.

Create Boards that Interest Consumers

To market effectively via Pinterest, attorney firms must create boards that will appeal to and interest consumers. These boards can be divided into different categories such as Attorney News, Accident Statistics, and Legal Advice. It's true that customers don't usually turn to Pinterest for significant information, but attorneys can use Pinterest to show customers that the law doesn't have to be scary or intimidating. With powerful images and a consistent social network presence, Pinterest can be an effective marketing tool for any business.

A Quick Guide to Attorney Facebook Marketing

Facebook is a popular social networking platform where users can upload personal information, share articles, videos, photos, and comments with friends and family members, explore industry news and worldwide developments, and interact with their favorite brands and product manufacturers. Facebook marketing is continuing to develop, but many businesses are discovering that this social media network offers one of the richest Internet marketing populations on the web.

Facebook Fan Pages

Facebook fan pages are specific pages that businesses can create to advertise new products and services, post industry news and articles that will interest consumers, and connect with a virtually limitless audience. A Facebook fan page must be professional, yet interesting. Facebook users like to visit brand pages that look interesting and are filled with helpful, informative content. Attorneys who use Facebook to advertise services can connect with consumers who are interested in seeking the expertise of a professional legal advisor.

Connecting with Customers on a Personal Level

Facebook also offers businesses the opportunity to connect with consumers on a more personal level. Marketing is becoming more and more personal, and businesses that do not embrace this individualized approach to marketing may find their profit margins decreasing steadily over time. Mass-market advertising campaigns such as TV commercials and billboard are losing effectiveness because consumers want to know specifically how a product or service can benefit their lives. Facebook allows businesses to connect with consumers and share personal information. By evaluating the information contained in consumer profiles, businesses can create lists of potential customers that are organized by hobbies, location, gender, age, socioeconomic status, and any number of additional factors.

Offering Valuable Opportunities

Facebook is also a great marketing platform for offering valuable opportunities, deals, and coupons to consumers. Because of Facebook's sharing potential, brands can get the word out about special promotions with ease. If an offer is tantalizing to a Facebook user, he or she may choose to "share" that offer with his or her friend community. The more people who share content posted to a business's fan page, the larger the network of people that are exposed to the business, brand, and products or services being sold.

Gather Information About Spending Habits

Some of the most valuable information to a business involves the spending habits of the population of consumers in its targeted audience. When a business knows how, when, and on what a consumer is spending money, that business can tailor its approach to marketing by incorporating this information. For example, if a business is able to evaluate that consumers are willing to spend more money on high quality and experienced services, like those of an attorney, that business will know that keywords such as "cheap attorneys" may not be effective. This will help businesses and firms adjust their websites, fan pages, and marketing strategies. Facebook allows businesses to amass information about customer spending habits. By monitoring the posts and comments of consumers who are interested in the brand's products or services, marketing strategies can be adjusted and perfected.

Facebook remains the single most popular social media network on the Internet. With millions of Facebook users managing their accounts on a daily basis, this social network represents one of the biggest marketing potentials for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

A Professional Website Doesn't Have to be Boring

Professional websites are obvious to the average consumer. Customers can tell within an instant when they have navigated to a website that has been professional designed and maintained. Conversely, they can also tell when they've landed on a website that was created by someone with no industry experience. A bad website translates to bad performance. Sometimes, businesses try to avoid design errors by removing any and all superfluous design elements. Websites that consist of black text on a white background and nothing more may be suffering from the delusion that professionalism must be boring.

Why You Should Liven Up Your Site

Instead of stripping your website to the basics, however, feel free to include attractive design elements that will make your site interesting and livelier. Customers appreciate websites that engage their senses. Soothing colors, attractive lines, photos, videos, beautiful and interesting fonts, and even design elements can impact the way consumers feel about your brand.

Add Video Content

One great way to liven up the design of your website is to include video content on the landing page. When a consumer reaches the home page, he or she can be greeted by a personal and professional video that explains the site, the company, and the services to the consumer. This is beneficial because the customer doesn't have to spend a lot of time navigating throughout the site to learn about the content contained within the web pages. A simple video on the home page is a dramatic fix.

Change Photos Regularly

Another way to improve the boring factor on your website is to change photos on a regular basis. If consumers check your site regularly, they may become desensitized to the design elements that you have chosen. By changing photos according to the seasons, events occurring within your company, or just a yearly rotation of stock photos, you can keep your web pages looking fresh and interesting. Even repeat customers will see that your site is being updated regularly.

Use Unique Fonts and Design Elements

There is another simple way to change your site from boring to impressive without sacrificing professionalism and quality. Including design elements that are strictly aesthetic may help to impress consumers and keep them navigating around your website for more information. It's important, however, to let a professional designer assist you in adding aesthetic elements to your website. Many businesses include design elements such as shapes, art images, and accents that they believe are interesting and attractive. However, consumers may react quite differently to these elements. An experienced web designer will be able to advise you what design elements are appropriate for your business and your website.

Web design is the first exposure that a consumer has to your brand's image. A poorly designed website will drastically decrease the number of consumers that pursue your services. Bare bones websites that are filled with content only may be clear and easily understood, but they won't communicate any personality on behalf of your business. Good design doesn't have to be boring to be effective.

5 Tips for Finding the Right Web Designer

Designing a website is a complicated and involved process. There is so much coding and artistic knowledge required to create an effective website that it becomes almost impossible for an inexperienced person to effectively design a site. Your business's website is the face of your company. A consumer may make a split-second decision about your business, your employees, your services, and their relationship with your company based on the look of your website. This is why it is so important to find the right website designer. These tips will help you choose the perfect design professional.

Experience

Obviously, years of experience is one of the first things you should consider when hiring a web designer. Effective web design is not a skill that can be learned overnight. There are many facets to web design, and these skills can only be acquired over a long period of time.

Professional Training

While not a necessity, professional training may give a web designer an edge over other designers. Because professional training exposes a designer to certain design software, techniques, and methods, the design process is likely to be much smoother and simpler.

High Quality Portfolio

Always evaluate the portfolio of the designers you are considering. When you can see what type of work a designer has done in the past, you'll be able to determine if your website can be trusted to that individual.

Willingness to Listen and Communicate

A willingness to listen and communicate with clients is a necessity for a good web designer. Unless the designer can understand precisely what you want and need from your web design, he or she will be unable to execute your desires. You'll be left with a website that doesn't meet your needs.

Commitment to Satisfying Customers

The final thing that you should look for in a high quality web designer is a commitment to working on your web design project until you are perfectly satisfied. Unfortunately, there are many web designers who feel that their artistic expression is more important than your satisfaction. They may be unwilling to make simple changes to an overall web design because they feel that their choices were the right ones from an aesthetic perspective. It's important to choose a designer who understands that your needs and preferences are the only ones that really matter. Ask a web designer how he or she handles edits and revisions to a web design. When you find a designer that guarantees to keep editing until you are perfectly happy, you'll know that you are in good hands.

The design of your website is one of the most important elements of effective Internet marketing. Consumers will base their entire concept and evaluation of your brand on the way they feel about your website. Good design can only be accomplished by a good designer. Look for experience, education, examples of past work, good communication skills, and a willingness to do the job right. When you find these qualities in spades, you'll know you've found a graphic designer who can handle your project.

4 Common Web Design Mistakes

In today's modern world, if a business wants to succeed and grow its customer base, a high quality website is an absolute necessity. Ten years ago, small businesses could get by without a web presence. Today, however, that is simply not possible. A web presence doesn't have to be expensive and elaborate to be functional. Consumers simply want to see that a company has invested time and energy into creating a web presence. When a business has a website, a consumer assumes that the business is reputable and established. Consumers use company websites to gather information, evaluate services, find contact information, and even read customer reviews and experiences.

A high quality website can help to boost your business toward greater success. Web design, however, is a double-edged sword. If the site is designed poorly, it can be dangerously detrimental to your business's success potential. A consumer may be on the fence about services from two similar companies. Often, the decision comes down to which business's web presence the consumer feels better about. Avoiding these common web design mistakes will help you avoid the fallout caused by bad web design.

Conflicting Design Elements

The biggest mistake that first-time web designers make when creating a web page for their business is the inclusion of design elements that conflict with one another. For example, a website that features a professional color scheme and several high quality images can be derailed by a font that is comical or silly. Similarly, a business that offers legal services may confuse consumers if the images on the site are not appropriate to the services offered by the business. Be certain that the design elements on your website complement one another.

Using a Template

Another common mistake in web design is using a cheap design template to create your website. Design templates can be great ways for small businesses and freelancers to create an effective web presence that communicates basic information. If you want your website to do more, however, a template simply will not cover it. Templates are easily perceived by consumers. A customer who visits a website that was clearly created from a common template may assume that the business doesn't have a substantial marketing budget. This can affect the consumer's concept of the business as a whole.

Too Many Words

A design mistake that is easily remedied is the inclusion of too much written word content. The content on your site is important, but it should be balanced by images, videos, and other design elements. Consumers can get exhausted when they are greeted by a website that features pages and pages of text.

Illegally Acquired Images

The images on your site can derail your web design plan if they are not acquired legally. Most photos have copyrights and licenses attached to them. If you use these photos without permission, you can find yourself in serious legal trouble. Select photos that are public images or have a professional photographer create photos specifically for your business web page.

4 Ways to Update Your Brand Image with Design

The image that a brand has is the single most important factor in determining the relationship a company will have with consumers. Brand image is everything when marketing a business. If your brand, for example, has an image that is closely associated with social activism, consumers will flock to you because they trust you to care about their needs. If, on the other hand, your brand image is corporate and impersonal, it may be difficult to find new consumers. Brand images can be intimidating, personal, cheap, modern, professional, or comforting.

Many businesses feel that they are permanently stuck with the brand image that develops over time in the consumer's mind. This, however, is not true. Companies are constantly adapting and tweaking their brand image. There are many different actions that can be performed to change the image that consumers have in their minds regarding a specific brand. Walmart, for example, has adapted its brand from a careless mega store with cheap goods to a socially active and involved store with high quality products. This brand change didn't happen overnight, of course, but Walmart's marketing team strategically changed aspects of the image. A lot of the changes to a brand image start with adaptations in design.

Modernize Your Logo

One easy way to change your brand images is to modernize your logo. If your logo is boring or stuck in the past, you might be missing out on a younger and more vibrant customer population. Logos that are streamlined, colorful, image-based, or highly graphic and artistic are more likely to be noticed by consumers. A simple logo revamp can change your brand image and propel you into the future. You can then work on incorporating the brand concept throughout the rest of your marketing strategies.

Redesign Your Website

While not as simple as changing a logo, a redesign of your business website can be a very effective way to change your brand image. The concept and purpose of a website redesign are similar to those behind a logo update. If your website design is boring, stagnating, or just not unique enough, you can add new life into your brand image with a redesign. Do some market research and find companies with websites that are attracting attention. Show these sites to a designer and work with him or her to come up with a new imaging plan.

Use Photos to Emphasize Local Services

If you want to emphasize the local nature of your brand, you can accomplish this by using photos of places and people that will be easily recognized by customers in your area. You can post photos of local landmarks, buildings, and scenes to your website. This is especially helpful for law firms and attorney offices who want to build a more personal brand image.

Humanize Your Brand with Media

You can further humanize your brand image by adding additional media such as sound files, podcasts, or even video files to your website. When consumers see the business owner communicating face-to-face through web videos, they immediately feel a greater connection with the brand.

4 Tips to Design Great Websites

The design process for a website is one of the most complicated marketing processes that any business will undergo. Web design requires a great deal of knowledge and professionalism, and many businesses find success or failure depending solely on the quality of their website. Without a high quality website, consumers will not be able to find your business, explore its services, and turn into consistent and reliable customers. A low quality website can be more detrimental than no website at all. Low quality sites often communicate a lack of professionalism or trustworthiness to consumers. If your site is perceived to be poor in quality, your services won't be trusted and consumers will give their business to a competitor.

Good web design is difficult, which is why so many business owners hire professional web creators and graphic designers to handle the process. However, there are a few tips that can help marketers and business owners create effective and efficient websites that will drive traffic and increase lead generation.

Have a Plan in Mind

The first tip for great web design is to have a basic plan in mind before you begin the design process. Poor quality websites are easily identifiable by their haphazard layout and lack of logical organization. If you own a business that offers a myriad of services and professional areas of expertise to clients, it's important to ensure that this information is well-organized and the layout planned in advance. Decide what content you want to include on your website and on which pages that content will be displayed. The more detailed your plan is in advance, the less you'll have to worry about in the execution stages. However, it's important to leave room for adjustments and adaptations during the creation process.

Evaluate Aesthetics First

Before you start adding content to your website, you must evaluate the aesthetics of your site. This part of web design involves the colors, fonts, lines, and shapes that will be featured on your website. Generally, the style of your logo will dictate a great deal of this information. Customers pay a lot of attention to aesthetics, so give your website the visual attention it deserves.

Keep it Simple

It's crucial to keep your web design simple if you hope to create an effective website. Sites that feature scores of pages of content can be confusing for consumers. Break your website up into a handful of sections. Include subheadings beneath the main pages of your site. The more organized and simple your content is, the more likely consumers will be to find the information they need.

Keep it Short

Don't overwhelm your customers with verbose content that goes on and on. Keep the content on your site short and to the point. Break up long passages of content with images, infographics, or graphs that will communicate information in a different format besides the written word. Consumers have very little patience when they are browsing the Internet. If you can communicate quickly and efficiently, your site will be more effective.

4 Signs Your Website Isn't Working

A business's website is like a road map for consumers. With more and more consumers gathering the bulk of their information from the Internet, a business must have a high quality web presence with which to inform and attract consumers. Whether you have a boutique business run from the comfort of your own home or a skyscraper business in the midst of a bustling metropolis, your website needs to be a functional and effective marketing strategy.

Many businesses spend years developing a website that works for their target audience. Design elements like colors and fonts may need to be adjusted in order to appeal to consumers and communicate the right ideas about the brand and services offered. The content on a website may need to be tweaked to attract attention and keep a consumer's focus riveted on the business. Social media marketing may need to be coordinated with the website. This will help to engage consumers on many different levels and improve the channels by which consumers find your website.

Web design is largely a process of trial and error. It depends greatly on the psychology and emotions of consumers. This is hard to predict and even harder to assess. The only way to know if your site is designed well is to determine whether your website is or isn't working as a marketing strategy. Here are some signs that your website may not be working effectively.

Consumers Aren't Spending Enough Time on Your Site

If you use analytic tools to determine how long a specific IP address is interacting with the pages on your website, you can determine how long consumers are staying on your site. The longer a consumer navigates from page to page within your site, the more information that consumer is gathering. Think of website navigation as a face-to-face conversation with consumers. If you are able to talk to a consumer over lunch, you're more likely to make a conversion that if you talked to a customer during an elevator ride. The more information that you can convey the greater effect you have on the customer. If customers are leaving your website after a few minutes, there may be a problem.

Consumers Aren't Finding the Conversion Pages

Your website should be dispersed with conversion pages that call the customer to action and enable your company to make a sale and secure a customer. If, however, customers aren't finding their way to these pages, your site won't be effective at turning leads into customers. There may be a navigation problem in your web design.

Consumers Aren't Landing on Your Home Page

The home page of your site should be the most meticulously designed and updated because that is the first page consumers see. If consumers aren't landing on your home page, however, all that design effort is wasted.

Consumers Aren't Contacting You Through Website Channels

If you aren't getting any contact through your website, your calls to action may not be strong enough. Consider adding a web form that will make it easy for consumers to request more information. If consumers still aren't filling out the forms and contacting you, your content or design may not be powerful enough.

Matching Your Site Design to Your Firm's Image

For a law firm or any individual attorney, Internet marketing has to be tailored to fit the desired image for the law firm. Aside from the many strategies that'll be employed to promote your website, law firm marketing is very much dependent upon the design of the site itself. A good designer will be able to take the image you want to convey to your visitors and translate that into an appropriate website. As you are getting started, here are some of the things that you'll want to consider about site design an image.

Classiness

If your law firm marketing mainly reaches out to very affluent individuals and families – such as a website for a law firm that specializes in handling estates and so forth – you want to convey an image of class. Your design, in this case, might employ some of the same techniques that bankers use to convey that same image. Blues, browns and other colors that are muted and associated with seriousness and trust are good choices in these cases.

One of the popular design trends for websites that are trying to convey a classy image is minimalism. Minimalism in the case of website design, to a great extent, has to do with the use of negative space on the page. Minimalistic sites will typically have very small amounts of targeted text, perhaps one or two images and navigation and little more. This creates a very clean, practical looking site that can be very conducive to conveying an image of elegance and classiness, which may appeal to some client bases.

Dynamic, Energetic Sites

Some law firms aren't so worried about conveying an image of reserved classiness but are more concerned about conveying and image of a law firm that is energetic and that doesn't mind a tough legal battle. Many personal injury attorneys go with this type of image. It makes sense, since most personal injury attorney clients are looking for someone to take up a tough fight for them. In these cases, law firm website creation might involve choosing from the color palette that is more dynamic. Think of oranges, reds and other powerful colors.

The images on such sites tend to convey a sense of energy and usefulness. As examples of this, many personal injury attorneys feature an image of themselves standing in a rather aggressive posture, as if they're almost ready to jump out of the picture and start talking to the client right there. If your clients are looking for someone who is a fighter in the courtroom, this isn't a bad image to convey at all and a good website designer can help you to do so.

Get creative with your site design and talk to your site designer about how you might best convey the image that your law firm desires. Provided you choose the right type of design, the right colors and the right images, you should be able to give potential clients exactly the impression you want about your law firm.

Making Lawyer Website Design Attractive

Lawyer website design can be quite effective, provided it's done right. An attorney's website is going to have to serve a need that is a bit different from the needs that many other websites serve. For instance, an attorney's website is going to be looked at as an authoritative place to find information about legal matters. This means that the design has to not only make the website attractive, it also has to make it navigable and easy to understand.

Navigation

Using a personal injury attorney as an example, lawyer website design is not too difficult to understand. A personal injury attorney will generally handle many different types of cases. These cases will include slip and fall injuries, medical malpractice claims, vehicle crashes, dog bite cases and so forth. The people who come to an attorney's website seeking information about these topics are not likely to be interested in other topics that may be covered on the site. This is where good navigation comes in.

Lawyer website design should include navigation menus that make it extremely easy to find the information you want while skipping the information that you do not want. For example, if somebody happens to come to an attorney's site because they slipped and fell in a store and want to know about suing over the damages that they suffered, they're not likely to care about vehicle accidents. There should be a link on the site that takes them directly to the section that covers slip and fall injuries. Good website designers will ensure that such navigation is provided.

Engage

Most of the time, lawyer website design is rather involved as far as the generating of content is concerned. This means professional writers are usually hired to fill the site. It's not a bad idea for an attorney to have something of a website presence of their own, however. For example, putting up blogs with insights into recent news items that only an attorney would be able to provide is a great way to make your website see more personable. During the process of law firm website creation, designers can generally include blogs or other features that you may want on your site so that everything is ready to go as soon as your site is opened.

Engaging also means participating in websites that are not your own. If you have access to a good forum where people discuss legal issues or some other venue where you can establish yourself as an expert, it's a good idea to participate a bit. If any of the people on that website happen to need an attorney, your name may very well be the first one in front of them, which goes a long way.

An attractive design for a law firm website doesn't just mean the visual elements. An attractive design, from the perspective of the person who owns the site, should include elements that they can use to offer a little bit of their personality to the site and to engage with their visitors a bit.

Making Law Firm Website Creation Go Smoothly

For a lawyer, website design needs to reflect the professionalism of their overall image. If you're having a website designed for your law firm, there are some issues that you need to keep in mind about the typical problems in communication between website designers and their clients. The overarching thing to keep in mind is that the more you communicate with your website designer the more smoothly the process of design will go. It may seem obvious but, when you make an effort to communicate what you like or don't like about a site design to your web designer right away, you'll be more likely to get exactly what you want in a timely fashion.

How to Communicate Issues

As an attorney, you should be familiar with the idea of clients coming into your office and not knowing exactly what their issue really is from a legal standpoint. There's a similar roadblock between knowing there's an issue and knowing what it is where web design is concerned. During the process of law firm website creation, you'll need to be able to communicate effectively what you like and what you don't like about a website. What follows should help you to communicate in language that you and your web designer will both understand and be able to work with.

Layout

Any issues you have about your lawyer website design that relate to the positioning of elements on the page are layout issues. For example, if you don't want your head shot up in the upper right-hand corner, you have a layout issue. It's important to know this distinction. If, for example, you were trying to say that you had a graphic design issue, that would technically be true but it would be more likely something that a designer would associate with the actual graphics on your site, not their placement.

Multimedia Issues

Any video or audio on your site can be referred to as multimedia. If you want more multimedia content on your site and you communicate as much to your web designer, your web designer is going to assume you're talking about maybe adding some videos to your site, adding some podcasts about legal issues and similar enhancements. You may want to have the company handling your law firm website creation add a specific multimedia section to your website. You could, for example, add a video section where your potential clients could go to watch videos of you giving them legal information.

Content

Even though any information on your site is technically content, the term content itself is usually used to refer to the written content. Content creation, in most cases, means writing articles and page content to fill up your site. If your web designer tells you that you need more content, the likely present you with some options, such as having articles professionally written for you. Content marketing, additionally, generally refers to marketing your website to search engines by creating articles and linking them to your site from other sites.

When you're communicating with a web designer, knowing the terminology goes a long way. The most important thing to keep in mind is that you should never be afraid to ask your web designer questions if you don't understand something they're trying to tell you.

Making a Lawyer Site Interesting

When you're talking to search engine optimization experts, the good ones will let you know from the start that what search engines are really looking for are websites that are useful to the people who visit them. They want websites that are written for people, not written for search engines. This means that successful law firm marketing on the Internet has to be founded on a website that actually offers something to the people who visit. Provided you have your head and your heart in the right place when you're having your site designed, this is actually fairly easy to accomplish.

Have a Good Design

Good lawyer website design is more than eye-catching. It should make it very easy for anybody who visits your home page to quickly make their way to another page that has extremely useful information on it. It's a given that your homepage is going to be largely about providing contact information, providing an overview of your areas of practice and giving other information that is basically just marketing. There's nothing wrong with that and, in fact, the search engines aren't even going to penalize you for that. You have to have a site that gives a bit more.

The process of law firm website creation has to assume that there's going to be a great deal of information on the site after it has been worked on for a while. A good website designer will make certain that all of this information is easily accessible to anybody. They will, for example, make sure that your areas of practice are described in a way that entices the reader to look at some of the other articles you have on the site about that area of practice.

A good design will also make it easy for search engines to go from one page on your site to the next. There are many different techniques to website design that can be used to facilitate this. For example, a site map provides a feature that makes it easy for the search engines to get to every page on your site. They are also useful for people but, in fact, they're mainly made for search engines. People tend to use the regular navigation menus. This type of site design is good because it takes into account both people and the search engine that need to index your site.

Fresh Content

The search engines do prefer sites that have fresh content added to them regularly. Part of law firm marketing will be adding new content to your site on a regular basis. The way good site design plays into this is by making sure that it's easy to add that new content. The pages, for example, will be based on templates that can easily allow for the creation of a new page that is consistent with the design of the rest of your site. This cuts down on time and money. Fresh content, good design and a commitment to providing a page that really offer something to people who visited will pay off in the short and long terms.

Making a Law Firm Website Interesting

For an attorney, Internet marketing presents opportunities to offer potential clients more than an incentive to get in touch. Because of that, it also gives an attorney much more power over their public image. If you use your webpage correctly and sensibly, you can expect to get much better results from it than you would if you just did the same thing that every other law firm website out there does. Here are some things to consider.

Lots of Information

You can assume a few things about the people who visit your website. One, they can figure out what type of law you practice from your banner and from the sections on your website; two, they're at the website because they believe they may need an attorney; three, they have questions that they want answered. Even though all of this seems obvious, some lawyer website design conventions really don't take advantage of the opportunity to address these needs.

You don't need to state repeatedly that you're an attorney who practices in a certain area. You don't need to make constant sales pitches to convince people whether or not they should call. What you can do, however, is increase the viability of your law firm marketing efforts by satisfying those needs.

1: Be Current

Internet marketing experts will tell you that people tend to gravitate towards websites that seem to be updated regularly. Static websites really don't leave a good impression. If you have at least one section on your website that is regularly updated with new content, use it properly. Among the information you put on it, include information that is current as of the time it is posted. For example, some of your blog entries should reference stories in the news that were occurring at the time you made the post. Choose new stories that are relevant to your area of practice. This reinforces your areas of practice in the visitor's mind and gives examples of cases that you might be interested in taking.

2: Explain the Need

In your content, make an effort to explain to the reader when they may need an attorney and when they may not. Not only does this encourage the right people to get in touch with you, it actually helps people who aren't sure whether or not they need an attorney by giving them examples of when they would and when they would not.

3: Be Informational

For law firm marketing, creating very large sites full of a lot of content is advantageous. The more information people visiting your website have access to, the more likely it is that you're going to be able to answer their questions. Sometimes, answering that question will result in them realizing that they do need to get in touch with you because they need an attorney. In other cases, they may realize that they actually don't need an attorney and you'll be spared a call from someone you cannot help.

Interesting law firm websites typically have great information on them that's good enough to keep people interested in the site long enough to be persuaded to make contact, if they need to.

Logo Design and Website Design

Logo design is a major part of website creation. If your law firm has been in business for some time, it's likely that you already have a logo. Even though that may be the case, your logo may need some reworking to be made suitable for use on the Internet. To clarify some of the things that need to be done to logos to make them more Internet friendly and some of the purposes that they serve on the Internet, read the information below.

Logo Design and Web-Friendly Designs

During the process of your law firm website creation, some of the materials that you've likely used for your print advertisements and television advertisements will probably be employed. They will also have to be retooled. For example, there are differences in how televisions and computer screens render color. If you have a logo that was designed to be used as a graphic in a television commercial, that will have to be retooled so that it displays properly on the Internet.

The same is of true print advertisements. Printed advertisements utilize color in different ways than do computer screens. To make certain that you get the exact same color rendition on your Internet logo as you do on your printed logo, your designer will likely have to do a bit of work.

What your designer will try to do is make your logo as consistent as possible with the way it appears on your print and television advertisements. There is a good reason for this.

Branding

Law firm marketing, particularly in large markets, has to be able to make your law firm stand out effectively from the other law firms that work in your same area of practice. To that end, it's constructive to make certain that your marketing materials are consistent from one medium to another.

A versatile logo allows a website designer to incorporate it in different sizes and in different ways on your website and on other advertisements. This helps to make your law firm marketing more effective by creating a consistent brand image that people instantly identify with your law firm. Good branding can be a powerful way to make certain that people remember your law firm more than they remember the others they run into. Remember, there are likely to be a lot of other law firms in your market competing for business; you have to make certain you take advantage of every opportunity to distinguish yourself from them.

If you have a good logo designed, it can be used on your website and in many other venues due to the way that graphic designers do their work. They will make certain that your logo can be resized without losing its look, they will make certain that the colors render correctly in whatever medium applies and it will make certain that your logo is clear and easily read in many different sizes. If you want your logo re-created completely, a good website design firm should be able to provide you with many great options that are modern and eye-catching.

Logo Design and Website Design

Logo design is a major part of website creation. If your law firm has been in business for some time, it's likely that you already have a logo. Even though that may be the case, your logo may need some reworking to be made suitable for use on the Internet. To clarify some of the things that need to be done to logos to make them more Internet friendly and some of the purposes that they serve on the Internet, read the information below.

Logo Design and Web-Friendly Designs

During the process of your law firm website creation, some of the materials that you've likely used for your print advertisements and television advertisements will probably be employed. They will also have to be retooled. For example, there are differences in how televisions and computer screens render color. If you have a logo that was designed to be used as a graphic in a television commercial, that will have to be retooled so that it displays properly on the Internet.

The same is of true print advertisements. Printed advertisements utilize color in different ways than do computer screens. To make certain that you get the exact same color rendition on your Internet logo as you do on your printed logo, your designer will likely have to do a bit of work.

What your designer will try to do is make your logo as consistent as possible with the way it appears on your print and television advertisements. There is a good reason for this.

Branding

Law firm marketing, particularly in large markets, has to be able to make your law firm stand out effectively from the other law firms that work in your same area of practice. To that end, it's constructive to make certain that your marketing materials are consistent from one medium to another.

A versatile logo allows a website designer to incorporate it in different sizes and in different ways on your website and on other advertisements. This helps to make your law firm marketing more effective by creating a consistent brand image that people instantly identify with your law firm. Good branding can be a powerful way to make certain that people remember your law firm more than they remember the others they run into. Remember, there are likely to be a lot of other law firms in your market competing for business; you have to make certain you take advantage of every opportunity to distinguish yourself from them.

If you have a good logo designed, it can be used on your website and in many other venues due to the way that graphic designers do their work. They will make certain that your logo can be resized without losing its look, they will make certain that the colors render correctly in whatever medium applies and it will make certain that your logo is clear and easily read in many different sizes. If you want your logo re-created completely, a good website design firm should be able to provide you with many great options that are modern and eye-catching.

Lawyer Websites and Marketing

An attorney engaged in Internet marketing has to make certain that their marketing adheres to certain professional standards. Aside from that, they also have to make certain that their attorney website is actually linked up with other advertising venues, whether that means an actual hyperlink or a link through simple association. Here are some ways that you can integrate your website into your other marketing efforts.

Print Media

Print media has some serious limitations compared to Internet marketing. The biggest limitation is that every single word you put on a print advertisement costs money. On an Internet page, you pay the same amount for web hosting, no matter how much text you put on a page. Sometimes, you can use print publications as teasers for your website.

Here's an example, you could put an article in a magazine or a newspaper as advertorial content. At the bottom of that advertisement, you could put a link to your website where people could go to get more information. If you wanted to be really slick about it, you could put a QR code that leads to your website at the bottom of the article, so people with smartphones could simply scan that QR code and go directly to your site.

Broadcast Media

One of the things that will really matter in terms of linking broadcast advertisements with your website is how easy it is for people to remember your domain name. Ideally, your domain name will match the name of your law firm exactly. Law firm marketing is much easier if things are consistent in this fashion. Make certain that your domain name is easy to read and make certain that it is easy for radio announcers to say. Sometimes, these goals can be at cross purposes. For example, if your law firm's name was Personal Litigation Co, Personallitigation.com would be the natural choice for a domain name, but it would also be very difficult to read because of the double L and the I that appear together in the middle of the domain name. Personal-litigation.com would be easier to read, but would require a radio announcer to actually say the word "hyphen" in the middle of the domain.

Choosing a domain name is a big deal, partially because of the intricacies of making it as easy as possible for people to remember and to read. Put some time into this effort. It may not seem like a part of your website design, but it most certainly is.

Sponsorships and Charity

If your law firm contributes to a charity organization, ask them if you can have your website address reproduced on any acknowledgments you receive in print or other media. This is a great way to associate your law firm with a good cause and to get your name out there in general.

Be picky about what sponsorships and charities you contribute to. Having your domain name associated with controversial charities or other organizations may be detrimental to business, so you want to make sensible choices in this regard.

Lawyer Website Design 101

It's important to understand the very basic elements of a website before you start trying to figure out what kind of website design you want to go with. The most basic elements of websites do not need to be described in technical terms. They can be described and understood by their functions. If you understand these basic elements, it's much easier to work with a company that designs websites for law firm marketing.

Page Structure

The page structure of a website, aside from aesthetic considerations, is designed around making it easy to find information. There are conventions that make this easier. For example, most websites have navigation along the left margin of the page and near the top of the page, in a position where it is visible on most people's screens when they first arrive at the site. This placement is practical and, because it's so universally employed by designers, sticking to this convention makes it very easy for people to navigate your site.

Website pages are generally formatted so that they have two or three columns. If there are three columns, the third column is usually smaller than the middle column and is typically used to provide additional navigation, various features and informational content.

There are website designs that use a header, footer and one column in the middle of the page. The header typically is where you will find a company logo and a phone number or other contact information and the footer is usually used to provide additional navigation and, occasionally, additional features. Regardless of whether a website has one, two or three columns, it usually will have a header and a footer section.

Navigation

The navigation on your site is simply the collection of links that people use to go from one page to another. What's important to navigation – or rather, one of the things that are important to navigation – is that menus are well organized. Law firm marketing usually involves creating websites that have quite a bit of information on them. For this reason, you need to consider your navigation structure carefully before you actually have it built for you.

One of the easiest ways to divide the navigation structure for a lawyer's website is to divide it up by practice area. Within these different practice areas, there will usually be subsections. For example, you might have a menu that goes from a main section named Personal Injury Law to a subsection named Slip and Fall Accidents to another subsection named Suing Retail Establishments. With good navigational structure, people can quickly and easily get to where they want to go on your site and, importantly, it makes a very good impression about your site.

Graphic design is an area where you can get very creative. Depending upon the page structure of your site and how you have the information organized, your website designer will be able to come up with clever looks that make your website visually appealing, in addition to being useful. If you have a good blend of form and function on your site, people usually appreciate it and get a very good first impression of your law firm.

Lawyer Site Design Mistakes You Can Avoid

A law firm website creation company will do their best to steer you in the right direction to get a great site. They cannot, however, stop you from making some bad mistakes if you're determined to do so. Here are some of the things you'll definitely want to avoid when you're having your site designed. They sometimes seem like good ideas, but they're usually not.

Too Much Flash

Flashy websites can be eye-catching, but they don’t always come off as serious. Site features such as slideshows and carousel images can be great ways to add visual appeal, but don’t overdo it. Not only do too many different page elements tend to be distracting, they also tend to make people's browsers slow down, particularly if they're on an older machine.

Check your logos and make sure that they look professional and not tacky. Some color choices end up being far too bright or frivolous seeming and you'll want to double check this with your graphic designer. Law firm marketing is about creating a serious, competent image and you don’t want to look like a discount lawyer to potential clients.

Overblown Text

Check your text content. Make sure it sounds serious and fits with your other marketing information. The wrong type of content can give you exactly the wrong image, so you'll want to be sure you have everything written in a professional manner that isn't screaming sales text. If you have bad content on an old site, have it rewritten by a professional so that they can retool it for SEO purposes, as well.

Too Busy

If you have a site with too much color, too many lines and that is just generally difficult to look at, you'll want to fix the problem right away. It's hard for people to pay attention to any one thing on a website when every other part of it is flashing at them and trying to get their attention. A good law firm website creation company will point out when there may be too many elements on your page and when you may want to drop them or move them to other sections of the site.

Bad Photography

If your headshot isn't up to date or particularly flattering, have it redone. Most law firm marketing contains an image of the attorney and you'll want to make sure that yours is as attractive as possible. It's not expensive to have a headshot taken and a good graphic designer can even customize the look if you want it altered a bit.

Be smart about your site. Don't go overboard with flashy elements, don't put content up until it's been reviewed for quality and errors. If you do, you can be sure that your site will project a very professional image and that your visitors will take you seriously as an attorney based on what they see at your site. If you're unsure about your site, have a designer take a look at it for common mistakes.