Lawyers: Six Ways to Improve your Firm's Website

By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited All rights reserved. This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying or mirroring is prohibited.

Internet marketing success depends on you ability to offer a legal service that has benefits for the potential client. However, simply having this may not be enough if you want to have that extra advantage over your competitors in internet marketing.

How successful your internet marketing business will be depends on people visiting your website and becoming a paying client. Therefore, you do not want to lose a potential client because they do not feel safe or comfortable enough to contact you from your website.

So what can you do to set your internet marketing business apart from competition? What can you do to make sure that a potential client who comes to your website will believe that what you say about your practice is actually true? What can you do to make sure that your prospects will feel comfortable enough to email or call your office?

The endurance of your internet marketing business depends on having many clients, and always attaining new prospective clients.

1. Have your name and contact specifics on your website. People want an easy and obvious way to get in touch with you.

2. Have well-placed and effective testimonials on your website. Clients always want to know that someone you represented was satisfied with your service and their outcome. Your testimonials must be genuine. They must be honest and unbiased, and they must point out the satisfaction which the client experienced after their case was closed.

3. Always keep in mind your reputation. For your internet marketing business to succeed, you must have a good reputation. There are some websites that have critiques and comments about other websites that offer services and products which do not provide what they promise. So, you do not want to risk creating a bad reputation for your website by offering sub-standard services. If you have high quality services, it is no problem to get good reviews from happy clients.

4. Have a third party approval. Because the internet is full of dishonest people, clients generally tend to be doubtful about online services. Get an approval from a third party certified customer-interests related or business-ethics related approver to add some confidence to your prospective clients. Get these approvals and show them on your website. If you have this approval, then you have an advantage against your competitors, which is very important for your internet marketing business. I’m talking about seals or logos from your local chamber of commerce, better business bureau, local city & state and national law organizations and bars.

5. Have a privacy policy on your website. Spamming is common online these days. People are doing all sorts of unethical things with other people's emails. Have a privacy policy statement on your website and keep that promise. Your prospective clients will want confidence that if they leave their email address on your website, you will not spam them.

6. Be available! Your internet marketing business' website is your shop that does business all year round, 24 hours per day. Your online business is a global business – meaning you can get customers from anywhere in the world. As a result, you must be available to answer any questions. Check your emails at least every 2 to 3 hours. Be prompt in answering questions.

In summary, just go that 'extra mile' for your potential Internet clients and make them feel safe on your site. All these factors are very important for your legal internet website.

Our specific city legal directory approach provides our clients with a highly optimized site whose standing can be checked prior to joining. With the guess work removed, keyword standings and traffic verified, this is a far more cost saving approach when compared to hiring a professional to do SEO on the firm's own site. Driving this point home is the fact that with multi-year algorithm changes by the search engines, and thousands of new sites fighting for top positions, SEO to be successful must be an on-going labor intensive process.

Copyright 2007 Promotions Unlimited SEO services All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bob Schwartz runs 15 legal directory sites, a few of which are: San Diego lawyers, Sacramento lawyers, San Jose lawyers, Riverside lawyers, Austin lawyers. Promotions Unlimited started out as a general search engine optimization firm but has morphed into a specialized search engine optimization service. Our attorney client’s results through our directories have proven to be far more cost effective compared to Yellow Pages advertising. What is surprising to us is the amount of skepticism still prevalent among legal practitioners about the effectiveness of the Internet to generate new business. Some times old habits die hard!

In November 2006 Bob's legal websites generated over 42,290 unique visitors.