How lawyers can use law information to generate clients on the internet

By Olabode Oruku , 08033205456 olabode@oakcomputers.net

In the real world location is the determinant issue to the success of a business. Imagine running an eatery where there are crowd of people you will not lack customers. But on the internet it’s a different thing entirely, you need consistent traffic to generate clients. That is attracting visitors to your website or blog on a continuous basis.

Most of the people that visit the internet especially for the first time go in search of information to solve certain challenges. So the internet is more about providing information to people. As a lawyer your first priority is to offer valuable law information that will help your visitors on legal matters and make the search engine to rank you high in their results. It’s the primary source that most people use to find information. So finding your site through the search engines is vital to the success of your chamber. In this article I will be sharing with you some tips to get traffic from the search engines.

Provide quality law information on your website and blog: The search engines love quality contents because they are in business of satisfying people searching for information. Their spiders are constantly crawling sites for content to index and add to their database. So by providing quality law information on your site will make it to rank you well in their database. The more quality information on your site, the more it will be attracted to the search engines. Just loading your site filled keyword will not make an impact on the search engines or your visitors.

But by slowly and steadily adding pages of quality information will help your site attract the search engine spiders on a regular basis. This will create more interest and potential clients to your site. The visitors too will be happy with the information and they will visit your site regularly and refer others to it. The content will provide platform to build relationship with potential clients and market your expertise in the law industry.

Your law information must be optimized: That is, the law information must be keyword rich to suit the engines. This will boost the chances of your website to come up when people are searching for information that relate to your content. The optimization of your site will determine the numbers of traffic you will attract from it. Keywords can be regarded as the words that people type when they are searching for information on the search engines. The keyword density is how often the keywords appear within the information.

Use original information for your site: It has been noted that the search engines don’t like duplicate materials. So for your site to rank high in their results you must write your own content to write an original content for you. An original content will also help people that are visiting related sites and are looking for fresh information in the law industry. If you are using a template site you will need to change important amount of the information in order to create a site that the search engines will consider as distinctive.

Informative Law Content: As mentioned before, getting traffic is not valuable to you if people leave your site right away. Providing valuable information will be beneficial to your visitors and will help the Search Engines to rank you site higher. There are grammatical rules that some of them use as a basis for removing out falsely optimized sites from the truly informative. Apparently the search engines won’t really know if the content is of any value to your visitors, only you can know that. But if you want your visitors to trust, you have to take time to write good information that will be of value to them.

Relevant Law Information: By focusing your theme-based content site on law information will help your site both with the search engines and visitors. If you are posting information on different topics, you just will not have the opportunity to optimize your site to its greatest potential. The loopholes that optimizers have been trying to use for high ranking engines has created an embarrassment form of sites that boast high keyword ratios, but thousands of unrelated hyperlinks and sometimes even redirection. These redirected websites try to create an optimized web page that will rank high but actually redirect the viewer to a less friendly site.

The summary of the message is that information is everything on the internet. As a lawyer, by providing consistently quality law information to your visitors will improve your listing with the search engines. It will also persuade other website owners to link with you, providing your site with valuable hyperlinks. The word or phrase that people use when searching for content on the engines is known as keyword.

Blogging is a good public relation tool for lawyers

Blogging is the new trend on the internet today. It gives every business owners the opportunity to communicate with millions of targeted audience and boost their profit online. A blog gives all entrepreneurs a platform to express themselves on the net. It does not matter the kind of business you are doing. You may be a lawyer, caterer, journalist, business person, professional, student, etc.

It’s a form of site that does not necessitate you to understand technical skill like html to design a website. Its content is structured by the date and time it was posted. It gives readers the opportunity to leave comments in an interactive format. According to an article from Blog Herald, as of July 2005 there were an estimated 70 million blogs in the world. As at today it is estimated that at least 3 new blogs are created per day.

My intention with this article is to express my perception that Blogs are good public relation tool for lawyers. A recent Google search I did results in over 23 million law blogs and everyday more new law blogs are created. It is my belief that the 21st century Nigerian legal practitioner, like his/her counterpart in the developed world, should be able to use the internet as a tool in developing his/her practise.

The way the internet works conformed to the ethics by Nigerian Bar Association (NBA) that does not encourage lawyers to advertise their profession. For better understanding of this statement, let’s try and compares advertising and public relations since the internet is a powerful tool for public relations.

Globally, advertising is declining and the growing of public relations. Advertising is paying to get your product and service message to the target audience, while public relations is about telling your business tale in a roundabout way through third party, either the media or word of mouth by people that are contented with your service. The internet is the most important tool to build trust with millions of people because of the speed, efficiency and number of choice available. Here are some other facts for lawyers to consider the internet.

· According to e-marketer, online search marketing will continue to grow by 14.9% annually. People are starting to use the internet more than they watch TV or even read the newspapers.

· A recently Jupiter research report found that more than 25% of the people they studied have cut back on watching TV, so they can spend more time on the internet. On top of that 18% of people in the study said they were reading newspaper less and getting their information on the internet instead.

· According to Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.

· According to Forrester Research, “Despite the recession being felt in other areas of the economy, online sales will continue to grow by 11% in 2009.

There are lots of specific reasons why Blogs are good public relation tool for lawyers. Below are some factors to consider.

1. Blogging can be use by lawyers to give information to the public in a form they can utilize. That way they can build their reputation as a lawyer and place themselves as opinion shaper in the legal profession.
2. It’s a tool that will generate more business, and opportunity for lawyers to brand themselves on the internet as an expert in their industry.
3. It can improve law firm’s reputation and draw journalists looking for law information.
4. Lawyers can search other law blogs to find information. It also provides opportunities for them to connect with each others and share experiences.
5. Legal firms can use Blogging to promote an event or seminar.
6. It’s a good platform to attract new clients and earn from your services (consulting, legal advice, speaking, training, events etc), selling an e-book, tangible book. For example, a land and property lawyer can be writing about real estate to attract target clients.
7. A lawyer could use blog to create a private membership site to increase revenue.
8. A lawyer can focus on writing articles that gives counsel to the general public and in turn some of them will use his/her services. For instance, car accident lawyers writing to educate readers about accident claims from insurance companies will gain trusts from readers and draw more paying clients.
9. It will add to your market exposure, getting you and your law practise notice in your industry.