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Part of our service to our clients is answering their questions. Some ask questions about a particular web marketing strategy. Some want specific tangible techniques to use in building their online reputations. Others want competitive research identifying what their competitors are doing. Some want to know which strategies, solutions, and companies "work".
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Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]
John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]
I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]
If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]
If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]
The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]
The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]
How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]
And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]
First, I am always impressed with what you publish -- and amazed at the quantity and quality of what you put out for free! Thank you. That said, here's what continues to prey on my marketing mind: As much as I understand the critical need for link-building by a small specialized law firm like mine, I don't have any understanding of how to actually go about it. We have a high-quality site and blog, as judged by content and frequency of publishing. OK, but this does not seem enough to cause "clean in-bound links." (?) Are there concrete things we can and should do? Somehow, I never can make the leap from the discussions of the need and value in doing it to the actual hands-on-the-keyboard activities that need doing and will reap results.
Thanks for your comments! I am glad you find our blog useful. Regarding:
This is becoming one of the most common problems facing legal professionals online.
The simple answer is that, for most of us, simply writing won't attract links. Luckily, there are many other techniques for acquiring new links than simply writing.
While most of these techniques are not that complicated (building link relationships with other lawyers you know, sponsoring local organizations, paying to be listed in a local business directory), it takes time and some skill to execute these strategies.
If "content is king", "publicizing is queen." That means getting your content in front of those who are ready, willing, and able to link to your content. This becomes a little more tricky. Typically, the most difficult part is identifying link targets that are likely to generate the best results.
One of the most effective ways to identify link targets is to perform a competitive back link analysis on your competitors who are ranking in the top spots for your target keywords.
Once you know where your competitors are getting links, you can see if you can obtain those links or similarly competitive links. When your site's back link profile contains the links of your high-ranking competitors, it stands to reason that your site will also perform better (assuming you are publishing frequent and relevant content.
I hope this helps.