Three Steps to Online Success for Your Firm

What’s your firm’s online marketing plan?  You have a website, you say?  Having a site is a reasonable start, but if that’s all you’re doing, you are missing the opportunity to reach out to new clients.  Lets talk a little more about your website.  When did you last update it?  Is all your contact information still correct?  What about the content on your site?  Do you have more than just a few lines about each of your partners and some quick notes on your practice area?  How are people finding your site?  What are you doing to have a serious conversation with your site visitors and clients?

There are three basic steps to create an online presence.  First, update your website.  Simple enough.  While you’re updating the site make sure you create new targeted content.  If content’s step two, then it follows that the third step is to utilize this new content to drive traffic to your site.  After you have a new site, new content, and new traffic, you should start thinking about how to reach new clients and interact with your current clients.

Update Your Site:

This should be a no-brainer.  If the last time you updated your website was just before the dot-com bubble, chances are you need an update.  As the story goes, people make a decision about your site within 1/100th of a second of arriving.  In other words, if you site looks dated or uses antiquated technology, people are going to make a snap judgment about the quality and respectability of your firm.

Here’s the good news.  As technology has advanced, the technical expertise required to use it has decreased.  Using CMS software such as WordPress, Drupal, or Joomla you can create a brand new site with a limited time and money investment.

Content, Content, Content

While website design will get people to stop at your site for a few seconds, but content will keep them on your site.  I bet your current site has a bit of information about you, your partners, maybe a few short sentences about your practice areas and your contact information.  Firms with a serious online presence have much more.  Most successful firms have well-written, professional legal content.  Successful firms spend a great deal of time creating content that details their practice area, emerging trends in that area, and developing news and current opinions.

Here’s the good news:  you’re a subject matter expert.  You don’t need articles that trace two hundred years of jurisprudence, but take your time creating the content.  Make it approachable for non-lawyers.  More than anything, your content needs to be informative.  Site visitors should leave your site with a fuller understanding of your practice and why you are the best choice to represent them.

Finding New Visitors

Why am I so concerned with content quality?  In addition to helping visitors understand your practice, there’s a secondary benefit of quality, original content.  Original, high-quality content will get the attention of search engines.  There is an entire industry, called Search Engine Optimization or SEO, that claims to help your site place better in search engine results.  In many cases, SEO experts can help your results, but be careful.  Almost anyone can call themselves a SEO expert and promise you the world.  The first thing a true SEO consultant will tell you is to make sure your site is packed with original content.  There’s a lot more to successful SEO, but content is the largest piece of the puzzle.

Having serious and original content will attract search engines and increase your ranking on Google, Yahoo, and MSN.  Additionally, if you have high quality content on your site people will consider your site an authority.  In many cases, other firms, lawyers, and clients will link to your site and comment on your advice.

So you now have a new site, some great new content, and, hopefully, more traffic to your site.  Now, start thinking about how you will interact with your current clients, new clients, and others who might find your site interesting.  This could take the form of writing a blog with related content, creating a profile on Facebook and updating it regularly, creating a Twitter account and microblogging on legal topics.  Don’t worry about staring this too quickly, but keep in mind that this should be the next step in creating your online presence.

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