Why Lawyers Should Blog

One of the most effective ways to generate website traffic to your lawyer website is to develop a blog. A blog is a simple way to generate unique content and build great link exchange to those pages that you are trying to promote. In fact, over the past few years of working with attorneys, I have noticed that blogs can sometimes generate more traffic than a law firms website.

Whether you are using Wordpress, blogspot or another third party blogging service, a blog is a powerful search engine optimization tool that is easy to set-up and more importantly easy to manage. Attorneys that have blogs may talk about their latest wins, post testimonials, generate content about specific practice areas, post recent news articles and keep readers informed on changes in the law. A blog can also allow you to become an authority in the legal community.

The attorneys that are effectively blogging on the Internet are doing so for one may reason; to generate leads for their firm!

Another great aspect in building a blog is the ability to allow your readers and prospects the option of commenting on certain posts. Allowing your readers to comment will  help capture key search terms and in turn, help the site get to the top of the search engines for a variety of different legal related searches.

Submit RSS Feeds

When submitting your blog to the major search engines and directories, consider those sites that allow you to submit RSS Feeds. Your RSS Feed is typically your blog url/feed (www.targetlaw.com/feed). Submitting your RSS blog feed will give you a chance to pick up deep links into your site. Most sites will list your past five posts. This means every time you create new content, the site will pick up your last post. This will certainly help increase optimization to your site.

Submit RSS Feeds to TargetLaw

TargetLaw gives each attorney the ability to submit their website URL and their blog RSS feed. This means if you submit a profile and a blog to TargetLaw, you will receive 6 links to your site, 5 being deep links.

Deliver a Web Presence through TargetLaw

Free attorney profiles, free article submissions, integrated social networking and blog functionality are all reasons why you should apply with TargetLaw. TargetLaw is a free online marketing platform that gives attorneys the ability to get great inbound links to their website and blog, while gaining maximum exposure through online profiles and articles. The company is solely dedicated to providing maximum web presence for each attorney.

By signing up with TargetLaw we give you the ability to automatically link submitted articles, blog feeds, facebook and twitter feeds straight from your TargetLaw profile; which links directly back to your website. TargetLaw gives each attorney at no cost the ability to gain great inbound links to their websites and blogs ultimately increasing your search engine rankings in the major search engines.

The most important part of any website is the ability to get it found in the major search engines. If you have a good web presence you can significantly decrease your overall marketing budget while increasing the quality of your leads. Over the last several years more attorneys are turning to the web to generate quality leads to their firm. The leads that are generated from the web are typically more qualified and have more money to spend for legal services.

Recent studies show that consumers using the Internet to search for legal services are more educated and have the ability to pay more for legal services. A good web presence can result in an increased bottom line and a decrease in the overall marketing budgets for all sized firms.

Most attorneys believe that a pay per click campaign is the only way to get leads from the Internet. While pay per click can be an effective way to generate leads via the Internet a much more affordable way is through an organic web presence. This means the ability to show up on the first page of the major search engines without having to pay for the click campaign.

Perhaps the 2 most important factors in gaining good web presence are content and incoming links to your website. TargetLaw gives you the ability to gain a high quality of unlimited incoming links to your site at no cost to you. By adding a profile and submitting articles on a regular basis you will ultimately put yourself in a better position to boost the rankings of your website and have the opportunity to attract a consumer looking for a legal need.

If you are serious about gaining a good web presence for your law firm, begin by participating in TargetLaw.

Great Incoming Links For Lawyer Websites

If you are a lawyer and searching for good search engine optimization (SEO) consider incoming links as a way to increase traffic to your website. In the world of  SEO there are many experts that would argue that good incoming links is as important as good content on your website. Google and other major search engines will evaluate a site for both content and incoming links. So what exactly is an incoming link?

Incoming links are links from other websites that bring traffic to your site. These links are also extremely valuable because they can increase your search engine rankings (SERP). If you have very few incoming links to your website it is very hard for the search engines to justify a high placement in the SERP’s.

In order to effectively promote your website in the SERP’s it will be extremely important to build incoming links to your website. There are many different ways to build a good  SEO program through incoming links. Some of the various sites that should be considered are directories, article submission sites, social networking sites, Q&A sites, blogs and listserves. These can be a starting basis in a good way to build links into your website.

When developing a plan its also important that you submit your website to the appropriate sites. This means if you have a legal site you should look for those sites that promote legal information such as TargetLaw. There are sites that charge a monthly or yearly fee and there are free sites that allow you to link back to your website. The idea is to investigate which sites provide the best incoming links to your site and begin submitting.

The submission process:

The most valuable incoming link is that link that has a title. For instance when submitting your website to a third party site try to use an incoming link that defines your website. If you are a criminal lawyer in Maryland and want a good link consider using the phrase Maryland Criminal Lawyer in the link.

An example: We have included an example from TargetLaw. Follow this link: Maryland Criminal Law Firms

If you notice the title of the link “Maryland Criminal Law Firms” goes out to a page of content about Maryland criminal law firms. If you click on the link it will take you to the article. The attorney that submitted this content through our article submissions is able to link out to the website with the term Maryland Criminal Lawyers. This is a great example of an effective search engine optimization strategy and a great use of an incoming link to the website.

Based upon our website traffic this link has received over 100 clicks. While this attorney may have gained business from the article the most important aspect is the incoming link to his site; It will help generate traffic organically to the website. Furthermore, the link that is generated is a “follow link.” Because TargetLaw allows attorneys to generate organic links from our website to theirs, we are telling the search engines that the link is important and should be weighed.

If you are a lawyer and searching for great link exchange to your website begin by submitting articles with TargetLaw. Create a profile and start submitting! Now you can follow our incoming link for “Lawyer Article Submissions“!

Free Lawyer Directory

Are you searching for a free lawyer directory to help increase your website exposure? At TargetLaw, we provide just more than a free lawyer directory, we provide a marketing tool that can bring your firm business and enhance your current and future web presence for free. TargetLaw consists of over 50,000 URL’s in one of the largest lawyer search engines in the marketplace. In addition, lawyers can now submit their lawyer profiles for free and automatically generate location and practice area traffic through TargetLaw’s search engine optimized profiles.

TargetLaw has helped thousands of attorneys at no cost generate leads to their law firm. Because TargetLaw emphasis white hat search engine techniques you will have the ability to generate great incoming links to your website while having the ability of getting your profiles and legal articles found on the major search engines. If you are searching for a free lawyer directory that will help you enhance your firm through the Internet, begin by adding a profile and article today.

Some of the benefits:

• Targeted title tag links through article submissions
• Unlimited article submissions (Articles follow your profile)
• Link from your profile to your home page (Follow-Links)
• Ability to link your twitter account
• Ability to link your most recent blog posts
• TargetLaw is one of the best lawyer directories to help generate organic traffic to your website!

How to Leverage Targetlaw to Bring More Traffic to a Firm’s Website

We get asked all the time by attorneys, “I have this great website, but there are no visitors. What can I do?”

There are far too numerous answers to this question to be outlined in this post, but we will give some insight on how to leverage lawyer directories such as Targetlaw, to bring more traffic to your existing website and hopefully more qualified prospective clients.

To oversimplify, there are two important factors to search engine optimization (SEO). Content and incoming links. There is a billion dollar industry of SEO experts that will advise law firms to adopt some sort of strategy to create fresh content on a website and to build relevant incoming links to the firms website.

How does Targetlaw allow firms to take advantage of building content and create incoming links? There are few different Targetlaw features that aid with these strategies.

1. The Targetlaw attorney profile content. An attorney’s profile within Targetlaw does not have a limit on the amount of content a lawyer can type in relevant to their experience, location, practice areas, credentials, accolades etc. When creating a Targetlaw profile, we recommend that at least 250 words be typed. However, don’t use filler words and irrelevant content. Remember, a potential client may read what an attorney writes. So why 250 words or more? It is simple mathematics. The more relevant words describing a particular topic, the more likely a search engine like Google or Bing will reward that content and have it show up highly in search results.

2. Website listing. As simple as it may sound, attorneys should make sure they type in the firm website into the appropriate field when creating their Targetlaw profile. Targetlaw is a legal specific website, so an incoming link from Targetlaw is regarded highly by the search engines. In addition, unlike many other attorney directories, Targetlaw does not incorporate a “no follow” tag to the firm’s website listing. In layman’s terms, a “no follow” tag tells Google’s spiders not to leave the originating site and  index the web address listed. Targetlaw is highly optimized to drive traffic to firms’ websites.

3. Attorneys should take advantage of their existing Blog. Targetlaw can automatically feed an attorney’s five most recent blog posts to their Targetlaw profile. Simply type in the RSS feed address of the blog. Why is this important? First, visitors finding an attorney’s profile are not only able to read the descriptive content of the profile, but also see what the attorney has posted in their blog. Second, the blog feed also adds more and constantly refreshed content to the Targetlaw profile. Search engines look favorably on refreshed content.

4. Twitter. Similar to the Blog feed on the Targetlaw profile, a Twitter feed can also be added. Twitter posts are generally more frequent than Blog posts, so this adds additional and refreshed content to the Targetlaw profile. Visitors now can read the lastest tweets and blog snippets an attorney or firm writes.

5. Legal Articles. Targetlaw allows for legal articles to be submitted by attorneys in the directory. Legal articles build great content that is linked to the attorney’s Targetlaw profile and webpage. All articles submitted and published by Targetlaw will be listed and hyperlinked within the attorney’s profile listing.

6. Tags. Targetlaw allows for firms to “tag” or categorize their profile and articles. Tags give search engines a good one or two word summary of what the webpage is all about. For location type tags, we recommend using location tags of city(s), state(s), region(s), country(s), and county(s). For practice area tags, we recommend such terms in the stye of “personal injury attorney” and “Baltimore personal injury attorney”.

With these six features of the Targetlaw lawyer directory, firms can help drive web traffic to their websites and leverage their existing blog, Twitter, and legal article efforts.

Targetlaw Adds Attorney Blogs and RSS to Listings

Targetlaw, a leading online attorney directory, has recently enabled member lawyers to add their blog web address and RSS feed to their directory listings. Not  only will visitors to Targetlaw be able to see the attorney’s blog, but also to read the attorney’s most recent blog post titles and snippets.

Targetlaw has become is now an online law firm web directory, an attorney blog directory, and attorney Twitter directory. An individual attorney listing now includes the attorney’s recent Twitter Tweets, recent blog post titles, and links to articles submitted to Targetlaw.

Why would an attorney wish to submit their blog to Targetlaw:
1. Targetlaw will help drive web traffic to the attorney’s blog.
2. The recent blog posts and snippets will add and refresh relevant content on the attorney’s profile. The more content on a profile (or any web page), the higher the rankings in the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc).

If an attorney or law firm has gone through the effort of creating and updating a blog, then it makes sense to submit their blog and profile to Targetlaw. Targetlaw continues to be a free lawyer directory.

Targetlaw Adds Twitter Functionality to Attorney Profiles

Targetlaw, an innovative online lawyer directory, is pleased to announce that Twitter Username and Feeds are now available to be added to attorney profiles. Attorneys will be able to create or edit their attorney listing and not only add a Twitter Username, but also their law firm’s website, practice areas, address, phone number, state,  summary description, attorney overview, practice area tags, and location tags.

Attorneys will now be able to have visitors easily follow them on Twitter. In addition, the  latest 5 Tweets will listed on their attorney profile. These last 5 tweets will refresh the content on the lawyer’s profile, which is very search engine (Google, Yahoo!, Bing etc) friendly. The more the attorney profile appears highly in search engines, the more web traffic will be driven to the law firm’s website.

In addition to a law firm website directory, Targetlaw has become an attorney Twitter Directory. Visitors can seek out attorneys they wish to follow by reading the attorney’s complete profile and simply clicking on the Twitter username to start following.

Social media has become a huge part of everyone’s web experience. Targetlaw’s new Twitter functionality takes advantage of this trend.

Targetlaw Continues Steady Growth

Targetlaw, a free online lawyer directory, continues to grow in number of attorney and law firm listings. Targetlaw now has over 500 practice areas, 20 countries, and 1000 localities listed validating the website as a legal information resource and lawyer search engine.

Some of the top practice areas that attorneys have listed under their profiles include:
Personal Injury
Auto Accidents
Wills & Estates
Bankruptcy
Commercial Litgation
Intellectual Property
DWI
Drug Overdose
Criminal Defense
Drug Overdose
Medical Malpractice
Real Estate
Complex Litigation

Some recent location tags include:
Tulsa Criminal Attorney
Baltimore DWI Attorney
Elkton Criminal Attorney
West Tulsa
Cecil County Criminal Attorneys
Orlando Car Accident Attorney
Ybor City
Florida

By utilizing location and practice area tags, Targetlaw is uniquely search engine optimized. Targetlaw continues to be a free lawyer directory and welcomes all attorneys to sign up for a free listing.

Why is Targetlaw Different From other Attorney Directories?

One of the first things you will notice when signing up for a profile at Targetlaw, an online lawyer directory, is that it is unlike virtually all other legal directories. Targetlaw was created for search engine optimization in mind. What does this mean to the law firm or attorney that creates a profile? Great web exposure.

There are aspects of Targetlaw that, unlike most online attorney directories,  are designed to help capture searches and search terms from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. Targetlaw allows for an extensive attorney description. This description allows for a lawyer to add rich content relevant to their practice areas, locations, and experience.  The more content a website, the more likely search engines will rank that web set higher in search results.

Targetlaw also allows for a “hot link” back to the lawyer’s website. Most other attorney directories either charge  for this feature or do not allow the search engine spiders to follow that link back to the attorney website.  The more hot links back to a particular website, the more “votes” of validation are registered with the search engines. The result: a law firm’s website will benefit from a Targetlaw listing containing a hot link.

In addition to descriptive attorney descriptions, Targetlaw allows attorneys to submit legal related articles that link back to their attorney profile. Articles are a great way to create content that is relevant to a particular practice of law. Articles can be very broad in scope, or can more specific to state and local law.

The latest feature to Targetlaw is the individual practice area/landing page. Law firms can create pages to specify practice areas and locations (the same way as submitting a legal article). Targetlaw also provides this service apon request.

What you may not notice is the behind the scenes web optimization Targetlaw utilizes to bring maximum web exposure to the attorney profiles. Optimal link exchange, categories, and tags are just a few examples of how Targetlaw is unique in lawyer directories.

One last, but very important feature:  Targetlaw is free of charge. That’s right, there currently is no charge to create an attorney profile.

New features are coming soon to Targetlaw. Be on the lookout for integration with Twitter and Attorney Blog RSS feeds.

Lawyer Article Submissions

If you are a lawyer and searching for a great online marketing vehicle that is free, consider submitting articles to TargetLaw. When you create an attorney profile in TargetLaw you can take advantage of free article submissions within the TargetLaw directory. The articles will be listed under your profile so potential clients can read about your knowledge on specific practice areas.

TargetLaw gives each attorney the ability to write articles that can be found on the major search engines. We also allow you to deep link the article giving you an incoming link to any page on your website. Whether you are writing an article about your law firm or submitting information regarding a specific practice area, article submissions at TargetLaw can help produce leads to your law firm.

Some of the benefits of submitting articles to TargetLaw include:

• Articles will drive more traffic to your website.
• It’s a free and easy way to generate back-links to your site.
• It will improve your website google page rank and search engine rankings.
• It will drive more qualified individuals to your practice.

TargetLaw has a vast network of websites that generate RSS feeds directly from our website. This will almost immediately generate back links to your site, increasing page rank and search engine placement.

TargetLaw is an online search engine marketing company that offers its services for free. If you are currently searching for new ways of generating traffic to your website, begin by submitting articles to TargetLaw today. You do the submission and we’ll take care of the optimization.

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