There are a lot of different things you can do now with your law firms website. The first thing you should consider doing is upgrading your site and its content. Then creating a blog, facebook page, LinkedIn account and Twitter account are all solid new year ideas.

Below are some tips for your 2011 law firm marketing campaign.

Fine Tune & Upgrade Your Website: Most people will land on your site before they decide to communicate with your law firm. Your website could be what causes your phone to ring, so take the time this year to really clean it up if you haven’t already done so. Sometimes all you need is just a little bit of fine tuning which doesn’t have to break the bank.   I would suggest that you upgrade your existing site to a wordpress site so that its easier for you and anyone in your firm to make updates to your site and/or blog.

Law Firm Blogging: Its key to have a blog BUT you must keep it updated with fresh content. The way you approach your blog often times adds credibility to your law firm. Try blogging at least once per week and create links to the different pages within your site.

Create Facebook Fan Page: Creating a facebook business page for your law firm is a must these days. Facebook fan pages now have a vast variety of additional plugins a company can ad in order to increase the user experience. Facebook fan pages bring a variety of branding and credibility efforts to the table.

Start Tweeting: Twitter is no longer just a little fad.  It is a real business tool that can be used to increase awareness, business and overall website traffic. Are you still skeptical about using Twitter to help grow your business? There are a variety of case studies that show a staggering number of large and small businesses in the U.S that have been successful in significantly growing their businesses using this amazing communication tool.

Either  way, its a good idea to at least get a twitter name for you and your law firm. Its free and its pretty easy to setup and start tweeting, there a number of benefits including SEO benefits, so create your law firm twitter account today, or hire me!

Whether you choose to do-it-yourself or hire a pro, marketing your business with online video doesn’t end with the production. Remember, videos need to be seen. Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your video marketing:

1. Aim for Authentic, Actionable Content

Don’t worry about stock photography, templates, or videographers who will make you look like all their other clients. Be authentic. Be personal. After all, this is your big chance to highlight your strengths and show what really makes you different. Keep the video short and the less scripted, the better
— since customers are jaded by typical sales pitches and marketing
buzzwords. Creating authentic video that captures the human element
behind any business allows customers to connect on a personal level.

This is TRUE and creating a video that is personal and shows who you are and what you do can be a big factor when a new client chooses your law firm.  Also creating a video of client testimonials can be another powerful tool.

And don’t forget to incorporate a call to action.
While your authentic video builds trust and drives action, viewers must
be given a reason and a way to call you, visit your website, or stop by
your store. Be sure to include some action path — for example, a
trackable URL, a coupon, discount code, or unique phone number to call.
This not only encourages viewers to engage with you, but also provides
a tangible way to measure the results of your video.

2. Optimize Video for Google Search

The advent of blended or universal search has changed the search
game. Search engines now display more and more videos, images, blogs,
maps, and books in their results. These new search algorithms weigh
video heavily, giving you a great opportunity to increase your
relevance in search results (and even achieve that coveted first page
ranking on Google). In fact, Forrester Research ran an experiment on
the top-searched keywords and discovered that videos have an
11,000-to-1 chance of appearing on the first page of Google’s results,
while text has a 500,000-to-1 chance of making it on the first page —
in short, video has a 50 times better chance than plain text for getting to the top of search rankings.

Even with this incredible opportunity, many marketers don’t yet
think about making their video Google-friendly. There are several
simple steps you can take to optimize your online video content.

3. Add Video to Your Facebook Page

Most likely, your Facebook fans are already customers — the social
network gives you the chance to strengthen existing relationships,
build your brand, present special offers, as well as find some new
customers as you reach into the extended networks of your current fan
base. On Facebook, use video to show the human side of your company.
Think fun and creative. Show a ‘behind the scenes’ peak at your office
or shop. Use video to announce a new contest or special. Post video
highlights of past events, customer testimonials, etc.

4. Put Video on YouTube and Other Video Sites

YouTube has quickly grown from a network of user-generated content
to become an invaluable repository of content. Next to Google, YouTube is the second largest search engine, with more than 3.5 billion queries a month according to comScore. YouTube and other video sites are great vehicles to reach an audience who might not find you otherwise. Best of all, you can create a branded YouTube channel and host your videos without incurring any bandwidth costs.
And don’t worry — you don’t necessarily have to create the next viral
sensation to find success on YouTube. Small businesses can create
valuable new relationships and build sales without generating a million
views.

5. Add Video to Your Google Local Business Listing

By adding video to your business listing on Google Local,
you’ll be able to tell your story and connect with those people who are
looking for your products or services, at the very point in time when
they’re actively researching or ready to buy. This ultra-targeted form of marketing is highly effective
for driving clicks and calls. And amid a list of company names,
addresses, and phone numbers, an engaging video brings your listing to
life and sets you apart from the crowd.

Most Importantly – Get Started

There’s no time like the present to get started with video. While
spare time is always in short supply for the small business owner,
online video can be less time intensive and is relatively low cost
compared with other marketing initiatives. Most importantly, video will reap dividends in both the short and long term.

This is all great video advise.  Putting a video on your lawyer website is a great move for many reasons, just do it!

Read full post at Reel SEO

Every law firm should do some kind of keyword research to determine which keywords to focus on. Keyword research is vital to a succesful search engine optimization campaign, both for organic and pay per click search marketing. Below is some example data from Keyword Research.com for a law firm in Portland, Orgeon.

Query	Searches	Occurrences	KEI	Predicted Daily
oregon lawyer	578,155	1,010,000	5.11	13,200
oregon criminal law	383,994	1,010,000	4.70	8,767
real estate law	301,432	256,000,000	0.18	6,882
property law real estate law	19,211	77,900,000	0.04	439
real estate and portland oregon	16,012	10,400,000	0.30	366
oregon+lawyer	12,902	991,000	1.56	295
real estate portland oregon	10,399	17,100,000	0.12	237
portland attorney	4,863	581,000	1.26	111
portland law firm	3,897	440,000	1.32	89
oregon bankruptcy law	3,843	n/a	n/a	88

These are the top 10 results sorted by the # of searches. Below is an explanation of what each column means.

Predicted Searches

Figures in this column provide a rough estimate of the total number of daily searches on the internet as a whole, for each given search term.

Predicted Daily count is just that, "PREDICTED". The searches column contains the total number of ACTUAL searches in OUR DATABASE that is supplied by close to 200 search engines.

Occurences

This column contains an estimate of the number of pages in which each search term appears.

The more pages there are, the more competition there is for the top position in the search results. This means that if there are a lot of pages, it will be more difficult for you to achieve good rankings.

KEI

KEI stands for Keyword Effectiveness Indicator.

It is designed to measure the effectiveness, or the value of a given search term. This is done by correlating a number of factors such as the number times a keyword is searched for, with the number of pages on which it occurs, etc.

KEI is a log scale with values from 0 to 10.

The concept is very similar to the Richter Scale used to measure earthquakes and this is a good way to think about the numbers. Search terms with the largest values tend to be less competitive and thus have the most potential to "shake" things up.

Its probably the best program out there to discover what keywords users are typing in the search engines and it helps you to come up with many additional keywords including mis-spellings of words.  Keyword research should be part of every online law firm web site marketing campaign.