Deciding on the Most Effective SEO Outsourcing Firm

Locating the best SEO Company which can help your website attain top rankings in search engines is mostly a hard job. You must know a number of details of the SEO firm, several basic facts as well as statistics, and the dedication of the effort before deciding on the firm.

An excellent SEO Company would be able to reveal results decisively. As an example, you’re able to see whether the SEO company was able to build traffic, turn many of the browsers to clients, build sufficient link popularity, supercharge sales, leads, and also figure out the tricks and tips to make a website stick on top rankings for months together.

But, how could you come across this astonishingly productive SEO Firm? Listed here are a few aspects to evaluate before you can discover a reliable SEO team.

Successes of the SEO Company
The outcomes would demonstrate how effective an SEO Company has been for the customers. Recommendations from the clients, portfolio examinations, as well as evaluations of the SEO Organization within social media websites are useful approaches to discover the best Seo Agency for your webpage.

You can even examine the seo’ed pages and determine if the answers are real or not. Be sure and note the wide range of web pages tweaked by the Seo Agency. Just how the customer webpages rated within search engines? Exactly what do the testimonails from others say? Is it possible to choose the most significant, positive elements of the Seo Agency? — Or, those sites don’t really possess something extraordinary about them. Answering these questions would help you find out the correct Seo Company for your business.

Own Ranking Formulae
A Seo company must have a great crew to work on the clients sites. Even so, the easiest way it can show off its marketing skills is to make its own site SEO-savvy. If the website is top rated and has its own reputation, brand identity, and group, you can be sure that the Seo Company is capable of doing exactly the same for your website.

Old is Gold
Seo isn’t a new notion. It only takes a long time to show the results. Discover an seo Company which has stayed in business for an extended time and also has valued leads to exhibit. The key idea is always to stay away from fly-by-the-night organizations which are there only to get money from you.

An SEO organization that has stayed running a business may explicitly point out the work it can easily do, results it can achieve, and the remuneration it needs for those jobs.

The period meant for a wholesome SEO marketing
SEO involves time and energy. Moreover it needs a large amount of keeping track, deeper tweaking, reporting, examines, and also web 2. 0 to have success. The truth is, SEO is really an on-going effort and constant.

As a result, most SEO companies offer a long-time optimization plan. The remuneration can either be project-based, result-based, or even task-based. Generally, a great Seo company would be able to specify the exact tasks it would offer for the corresponding fees.

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A Good SEO Course Will Help You to Optimize Your Website on the Web

Do you have a website of your own? Are you upset with the fact that the website does not show up in the first or second page of Google search? You need not worry more. You can improve the visibility of your web page by SEO. SEO is nothing but search engine optimization in which the ranking of your website can be improved and can feature in the top rankings of search results. SEO is an integral part of web marketing and can really give your website a boost. You can also pursue a SEO course from a reputed institute or university to enhance your SEO skills and to know more about Internet marketing.

A SEO course will help you to know the intricate skills of search engine optimization. SEO can be done online as well as offline and both these techniques help in attracting traffic to your website. There are some common topics that will be covered by majority of the universities and institutes that offer courses in SEO. Along with basic introduction to SEO, these courses will also provide knowledge on keyword research, on-site optimization, off-site optimization, getting listed, Google analytics, social media and SEO, viral marketing, pay per click ideas, dos and don’ts in SEO and many more.

Completing a SEO course will enable you track your website better. These courses are also taught online now so that people can study these courses in their convenient time. Various types of training materials are available in the form of CDs, DVDs as well as simple PDFs. For most of these online courses, you have to register to the website of the institute or the university that offers the SEO course. You can gain knowledge regarding SEO and its various techniques from these courses. Various types of SEO tools are being invented and implemented each day to enhance visibility of a website on search engines.

The best option is to opt for a regular SEO course. This gives opportunities of direct interaction with people in this field. Not only that these courses also offer first hand real experience with SEO tools and techniques. Many institutes and universities provide video demonstrations to their students for better understanding of SEO. You might ask questions about SEO and other internet marketing techniques from the experts teaching these courses. You will also be asked to do assignments as a test of your skill and understanding of the subject. These assignments are graded and you are also informed of your mistakes, if any.

After the completion of your SEO course, you will have to appear for an examination that will test your SEO skills and expertise. On clearing the examination successfully, you will be awarded a certificate. There are various levels in these courses. While the basic level deals with some very basic concepts of SEO, the advanced and professional SEO courses help in understanding SEO much better to depth. Most of these courses are hourly based and come at varied rate packages. The professional courses charge more than basic courses.

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6 Basic Steps to Start Your Own Business Online

Do you know, besides being an information powerhouse, the Internet is a source of living for millions the world over? YES, that’s a fact! Internet is revolutionizing the lives and livings of millions of people cutting across the international boundaries.

Online business is one such trend that’s catching up fast and fascinating the people from every strata of the society. But as with every other business, you need to get your basics right and acquire the requisite tools to succeed in online business.

There are some basic steps that you have to follow to start your own profitable business online.

1. Build a business plan: It is a packaged plan that covers everything for running a business where advertising, promoting, selling, innovating, researching, building relationships, and investing money, are involved. And it is designed to produce specific results.

Before you start running your business, you need to set up your business plan and it has to demonstrate that your business is profitable.

2. Find a hungry market: If you want to built a profitable business, then you need to know what people want, what problems they have and how much they can pay for a solution.

Think about how you can solve these peoples’ problems and how they want the solution packaged.

Research and investigate until you identify a hungry and passionate market that you can feed with your expertise and products.

3. Create a product/service: To make money, you need to sell a product and no matter if it is physical or digital. The point is that you have to provide your market with a good product/service. Create something different and unique, something that people love. They don’t want another product/service that is available everywhere.

4. Get your tools: Working online? You need some tools. There are many free tools out there, but remember you have to look professional. If people find attached advertisement not related with your product/service or unprofessional things on your product/service, they are not going to buy from you.

You need:

 - Domain name

- Web hosting

- Website

- Autoresponder (to keep in touch with your prospects or customers)

- Payment processor

 5. Sales letter: It is crucial to your success. It is designed to generate sales, therefore it must motivate the reader to take an action. For this reason, it must reach your target market.

Before you start writing your sales letter, put yourself in the shoes of your readers and answer every question that could be in a prospect’s mind. You need to communicate the benefits of your product/service to your readers in a clear and concise way. Show them why they must buy from you and not from your competitors.

Your sales letter can generate handsome revenues if you know how to use it.

6. Traffic: You can have the greatest product in the world, but if nobody knows about it, then you have nothing.

People need to know that you have a great product, therefore you have to divert traffic to your site. There are many ways to generate traffic, some of them are free while for others you have to pay.

You can use:

- Writing and submitting articles

- Writing and submitting press releases

- Participate in forums and place your link using your signature

- Create a blog

- Use web 2.0

- Joint Ventures

- Pay Per Click (PPC)

- Search Engine Optimization

Starting your own business online is not difficult. The hardest part is to build a successful business. For this reason, you need to prepare each step carefully.

Remember that your success depends on your effort and dedication.

If you understand this, then you can start to build your own business online right now.

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Why a Name is Important When Opening a Small Business Online

When opening a small business offering services or products online the domain name you choose is important. At first glance it may appear that a name is not important when opening a small business online. You may point to such name as Yahoo, Google and YouTube which appear to have no relation with what they do but dominate their niche. This article gives some reasons why you should consider your domain name carefully when opening a small business online.

You can make money online without a website. However, a website offers flexibility and a presence on the internet that is difficult to attain without a website. Depending on the purpose, opening a small business online will require you to register a domain name for your website. Usually the business name for your website will also be your domain name.

While trademark law protects product names, trade names, logos, even slogans, copyright law protects works of art, fiction, sculpture and other creative works. However, business law does not guarantee the exclusive use of a domain name. If you decide to use the name StartASmallBusiness.com as your domain name when open opening a small business online, you cannot prevent someone else using the same domain name but ending with .net, .biz or .info.

You should choose a domain name that reflects the activity or service offered by your business. Since an online store is different from a shop on a high street that can be seen by passersby, choose a name that people can easily remember. Usually people will come to your online store by typing your domain name into the web browser. For this reason a memorable name is important when opening a small online business.

Another reason for a good domain name is the Search Engine factor. You will notice that many domain names online are descriptive. They describe the service that a website offers. Search engines are slaves to key words. When opening a small business online, do some research using Google’s Keyword Tool, to find out the words people type into the search engines to find what they want. Create a domain name based on a key word that enjoys decent number of searches per day but is not so competitive.

A domain name based on a key word will help you to rank higher in search engines when the particular key word is typed into search engines, which result in free traffic to your website. A domain name is therefore important when opening a small business online. If the name you want is already taken just insert a dash between the words and see if the domain name is available. Opening a small business online starts with choosing a name. Make sure that you get the right end of the stick.

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This Is What Your SEO Should Be Doing

Do you know what your SEO company should be doing to help your website’s search result performance?

Unless you’re living search engine optimisation night and day, you probably can’t answer that question in any depth.

The worrying thing is that a lot of “SEO experts” don’t seem to want (or be able to) answer it either.

That makes it a tad difficult for you to sift out the good from the bad. Of course, one tip there would be to never respond to the small avalanche of SEO spam emails you get every day.

So, what should your SEO be doing for you?

Well, their job is to get your website visible, appearing in relevant search results. Note I used the word “relevant” – there’s no point in having top rankings for keywords that won’t bring in the customers.

The things you’re looking for, from the top down, are:

Improving your URL structure

Your URL is the web address of your web page.

For example, it could be:

www.thedesignerdogcollarhouse.co.UK/leather_collars

Which makes a whole lot more sense than something like:

www.thedesignerdogcollarhouse.co.UK/prd-34H87

Although the readability of your URL doesn’t have a massive impact on your rankings, it could have a detrimental effect on your click through rate.

Title tag optimisation

Your title tag has a huge influence on your rankings. When you look at search results, it’s the bit at the top in bold.

It mustn’t be keyword stuffed but should include your main keyword. It should flow/read naturally and include your company name. Plus, every page of your website must have a unique title tag, but one that is consistent in style, such as:

Leather Dog Collars | The Designer Dog Collar House

Headings

Another major ranking factor is the heading tags, which show the main topic of each page. A bit like the title tags, every page needs a unique H1 tag and only one of them. They should also be specific, such as:

Leather Dog Collars

Rather than:

Collars

META descriptions

Although these won’t affect your rankings directly, it is an element that, when done well, can attract click throughs.

The META description is the short paragraph that appears in the search results under the URL. It’s an opportunity to show the searcher how you can help them. It should contain your keywords, but again it must read naturally and make sense.

Fantastic content

Another part of the SEO role is the generation of great content. Fresh, original and informative content is what will get you noticed. That doesn’t mean it should be stuffed with keywords. They should be present but in a gentle sprinkling. Above all your content must be well written, original and authoritative.

Inside links

The last piece of the puzzle refers to links. In this case, we’re talking about internal links that will help your user navigate through your website and also allow Google to crawl your site.

Make sure the links go deep inside your site and don’t just deal with the top layer of pages. The anchor text you use must also be natural.

You’ve probably noticed that a big part of the SEO’s role is keyword research. Without it, none of the above would work. That’s not to say, however, that keywords are the be all and end all.

When people do take that attitude, you’re left with incomprehensible sites that are stuffed to the rafters with keywords. Firstly, Google will frown on you and, sooner or later, slap you with a penalty. Secondly, you’ll turn people above in their droves because it will be obvious to them you care more about your rankings than you do about your customers.

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Social Bookmarking Tools – Why You Need Them

Lately, I’ve been messing around with a lot of social bookmarking tools. My team and I have hit niche markets hard, both as affiliates and as product creators and it’s absolutely necessary to rank for key terms quickly. We’ve built probably 60 sites or so, each in different markets with different monetization methods…

You and I know that in order to succeed in Internet marketing, you’ve got to have traffic. Without traffic, any startup or project is a catastrophic fail.

So what I thought I’d do is talk a bit about why the idea of bookmarking is awesome and then leave you with some bookmarking tools you can test out.

Social Bookmarking Tools – Why They’re Important

As you probably know by now, bookmarking is a very quick way to get tons and tons of backlinks to your site. High quality backlinks at that. Gone are the days that you need to send ‘reciprocal link requests’ to potential linking partners.

With social bookmarking, all you have to do is create an account on a bookmarking site, enter in your URL, add some keywords and hit enter… 1 linkback.

The idea behind web 2.0 bookmarking services was to make it easy for people to share their favorite stuff with their friends and to keep track of lots of bookmarks easily.  And that’s a very noble cause.

What marketers quickly figured out was that those links, most of the time, got spidered by Google and a fair share of them are ‘dofollow’ so they give you some ‘linkjuice’ in the process. Meaning, Google awards you when it finds the link going to your site.

With the proper bookmarking tools, you can automate the process of linkbuilding on these social sites, saving you both time and money!

The Problem With Manual Social Bookmarks

As with anything, there are drawbacks to bookmarking. Especially when you’re doing it manually.

First of all, social bookmarking takes a ton of time. You have to create 50 or 100 social bookmarking accounts, then you have to verify all those emails, keep all those passwords straight and so on.

To submit a bookmark (aka. get a linkback) you’ve got to log in, fill in the form and hit submit..

Do that 100 times and you’ve shot the better part of a workday. Not cool.

The Darkside Of Social Bookmarking Tools

So great, social bookmarking tools is the way to go, right?  Well, there are a couple things to consider first.

One darkside of social bookmarking tools is that you may think that it’s too spammy – creating hundreds of links to your site for the benefit of Google. And I’ll give you that. But we’re not really creating these bookmarks for anyone. Very few people, if anyone will ever see them… But they will see your ‘money site’ in the search engines BECAUSE of all the social bookmarks!

One other negative side to social bookmarking tools is that fact that my two favorites charge monthly for access.. They do that to keep the software updated… The social, web 2.0 scene is growing so fast and has so many updates to their sites that in order for the social bookmarking tools to consistently work – they have to be updated… In fact, the one piece of software that doesn’t have a monthly fee has terrible success rates.

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How To Use Social Bookmarking as a Business Tool – Can You Digg It?

Before discussing the use of social bookmarking as a business tool, we should first have a quick look at the phenomenon and discuss why it has become so popular. By understanding that, then it will become easier to understand potential business uses. The uses outlined here are just that: outlines, since the particular applications to which these sites can be put will be specific to your type of online business.

The original intention of social bookmarking is to enable you to store websites and pages that you have found and want to refer to later, and also to refer them to others that you think might benefit from them or just enjoy visiting them. You can bookmark any type of web content from articles to blogs to videos, and to start doing so you have first to register with one or more social bookmarking sites.

Among the more popular of such services are Digg, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Blink, Furl and StumbleUpon. They are easy to join, and having done so all you have to do to make a bookmark is simply to add a button or chicklet linking to the specific social bookmarking site, and click on it. The URL of the page you are viewing will be added to your bookmarks and you can categorize it by means of tags. Tags are no more than the keywords that you feel best describe the page you are viewing. You can use just the one tag or a number of them.

All of your bookmarks within each site are accessible by clicking on one of the tags in your ‘tag cloud’, which is basically a list of tags, although it is possible to categorize them in order to make it easier to find bookmarks on specific topics.

So how can you use social bookmarking as a business tool? For a start it is a way to increase the visibility of your blogs, websites and even your affiliate programs, and increased visibility leads to more visitors. Social bookmarking sites can provide you with back-links that will improve your Google PageRank: this in turn can improve your search engine results position. Because they are free you have nothing to lose by using these sites in this way, unless you overdo it and are regarded as a spammer.

Here are the steps needed to use bookmarking sites effectively for your business while avoiding the spamming trap.

Let’s assume that you have registered with a social bookmarking site such as del.icio.us, and are ready to go. The same steps here will apply to the others, and like most other aspects of an online business, best results will be obtained by using as many social bookmarking sites as you can find. Repetition brings best results.

1. Check out the site. Not all social bookmarking sites have the same type of users, and it is essential that there are other users on the site that are liable to be interested in your website content and products. Check out the blogs and websites that get the highest number of bookmarks – that is often a good guide as to the type of user, and if you can produce content similar to the more popular stuff on the bookmarking site in question, then you should be able to use that site in your business.

2. Produce content close to that which gets most bookmarks on each specific site, and twist it towards your business. It is possible to use practically any social bookmarking site this way if you are clever enough. The bookmarks that you make of your own web pages or blogs should contain good content that is interesting, entertaining or educational, and not outright sales material. Leave the conversion of traffic to sales until you actually have them on your website, and then provide links to your sales pages. People are more liable to purchase from you if you have shown expertise in the subject in hand by solving a problem or presenting a new angle on a specific topic.

3. Avoid the advice given in some quarters to open several accounts with the same social bookmarking site. That is liable to damage your reputation, and at worst can result in the site banning you and canceling all of your registrations. Even if under different names and email addresses, they can identify you through your IP address.

These are the general ways in which you can begin using social bookmarking as a business tool in order to generate new business. However, there is more to these sites than just getting business, and they are useful as administrative tools in their own right. Here are some ways in which they can help make your business easier to run:

1. Use social bookmarking as a cataloging system for the knowledge base of your business. Any employees that come across sites that deal with specific aspects of your business can bookmark them under specific tags predefined by you to be used for certain types of information. Good restaurants and excellent hotels for business clients, inexpensive sources of office equipment and reference materials relating to your business are all categories that you can predefine, and that you and your employees can build up on approved social bookmarking sites.

2. Use them when seeking new suppliers or customers. Staff can make a bookmark when they come across websites or blog postings of potential clients or suppliers for specific services you are seeking. Let’s say you are seeking a new limo company to transport important clients to and from airports. After a while you can access the social bookmarking site to find out what your staff has bookmarked, and so make your choice much easier.

3. If you are able to establish if your clients, customers or vendors have a registration with a social bookmarking site, you can register with the same site yourself and bookmark your own blog postings and web content. If you get advance notice that a particular potential client is seeking a new service or supplier, then you can get ahead of the field by making a bookmark on the site that they use.

One of the advantages of such sites is that the keywords, or tags, are user defined rather than search engine defined. They should therefore define the content in a more human way that the machines would. If you are looking for specific information you should be able to find it easier by using the language that others would also use. There is a disadvantage to this in that misspellings are common, so make sure that your spelling is correct because the social bookmarking site will not ask you if you are sure, as a search engine such as Google does.

There are many ways in which to use social bookmarking as a business tool, both as an administration and a traffic and sales tool. Once you understand how such sites work, then you will doubtless find many more uses in addition to those outlined above.

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Niche Awareness – 5 Things You Need to Know

When you are first starting out in internet marketing one of the hardest things to do can be deciding which niche market you are going to target.

I know when I was first starting out I went from having no idea what area I would be targeting to being bombarded by so many different niche markets my head was spinning at the prospect of picking just one or two.

With that in mind I am going to look at some of the various kinds of niche markets available to you as well as a few other things you will need to consider, with the intention of casting a little light on the subject and hopefully as a result make the whole process of choosing a niche market that bit easier for you.

1. Try traditional niche markets

The traditional niche markets break down into three main categories

• Health and Fitness

• Wealth Creation

• Lifestyle

Each of these markets has existed for far longer than the internet has and will always be in demand. In fact, these markets have existed since before the beginning of marketing itself.

For example, people are always looking to improve their health, this could be health in general or dealing with a health condition that they have to live with such as diabetes, high blood pressure, back pain, asthma or IBS to name but a few.

Maybe you are more interested in the fitness side of things, again the scope for this market is huge and very much in demand. People are always looking for ways to work out at home or shorten their time at the gym with different ways to get the maximum results in the shortest amount of time. A lot of these gym goers are looking at ways to put on weight or build muscle.

Which brings me nicely onto what is probably the biggest area under the health and fitness banner, this is weight loss. The global weight loss market is estimated to be worth £220 million with an estimated 29 million Brits attempting to lose weight last year alone and with obesity on the rise this market is only going to get bigger. With that in mind there’s always a marketplace out there that will be hungry for information in this area.

In the same way, people are always looking to make more money, maybe they have retired and want something to fill their time and top up their pension, or they could be looking for something to do as a hobby that can generate a little extra cash to supplement their wages. It could be, they have dreams of quitting the drudgery of the 9 to 5 and starting out on their own. As with health and fitness, wealth creation is a huge marketplace with numerous possibilities.

Similarly, lifestyle is an area that people want to improve constantly, this again covers a wide range of subjects, quitting smoking or drinking could also be covered by the health and fitness banner but tends to come under lifestyle as does improving sleep and stress management. You could also look at relaxation techniques and meditation as well as the very popular relationship niche. So as you can see a vast number of people will always be looking for solutions within this market.

In conclusion, the markets I’ve mentioned are a fantastic place to start if you’re thinking of going into internet marketing, or even if you’re already up and running and you want to explore a new niche then these are huge markets for you to tap into.

2. Solve peoples problems

Every single person who is in internet marketing brings a wealth of knowledge with them, and if you think that this is not true for you, then you are wrong. We all have things that we are passionate about, or are knowledgeable in, it could be a hobby that you have been doing for years or maybe you do a job in which you have gained knowledge that could be passed on to the less initiated – insider information, tricks of the trade etc. You can use what you know or love to help solve other peoples problems. Even if you don’t have all the answers, with access to the internet you have all the experts in your chosen topic at your finger tips – just Google it! And if you’re solving a problem, you’re helping someone. If you’re helping someone, then you can get paid for your time and effort.

Every single day people all over the world are looking for answers to problems they may have, in every single subject under the sun. Don’t believe me? try googling ‘how to get my bread to rise’ and you get over 5.6 million results, or try ‘How to improve my golf swing’ and over 1.25 million results are returned, or try something more obscure like ‘How to stop my dog barking’ and you get over 770,000 results. What I’m trying to say here is that regardless of what you are knowledgeable about there is someone out there looking for answers to problems in that particular area.

If you can provide a solution to the people who are looking for answers, in a way that they can easily access, then you can get paid for doing it.

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Monograms – Trendy Way of Getting Personal

A monogram is a design made by combining two or more letters or even numbers. These designs can be made using all kinds of colors, fonts, styles and sizes. The numbers or letters are mixed in a way that together they make an appealing logo or symbol while still being identifiable.

A monogram lets you take personalization to the next level. It allows you to put your stamp on all various items so whether it is a bag that you take with you while travelling or the cushions that you keep in your living room, you can make a bold impression. This signature trend is hot nowadays. Using a monogram is a great way of expressing and displaying your personality and taste. Most people who use letters in monograms usually use their initials.

Marketing your company is quite a strenuous task that usually takes a lot of time. Monogramming is one way of ensuring quick results. Customized monogramming allows you to design a logo that is eye-catching and displays the company’s name. Monogramming can be done on almost all kinds of materials including glass, fiberglass, wood, plastic, metal, and fabric. So no matter what your company manufactures, you can design a monogram for it. However, you don’t necessarily have to own a business to get a monogram.

In fact, you can use monograms for one-time events to make them special and memorable. If you have a special occasion coming up and you cannot find a way to make it great, you should consider going for a monogram. You can create a monogram and use it on various things, such as the invitations, gift boxes, and banners. This would help you make a great impression.

However, designing the best monogram is not an easy job. Furthermore, printing it on various materials requires special machines and equipment. If you are looking for someone to get the monogramming job done for you, make sure you take your time to select the right company. There are many companies that offer this service but not all monogram companies provide the same level of quality and service. The two main things you should look for are experience and customization. If the company is experienced with a positive reputation and provides monograms on a variety of items, you are good to do.

However, regardless, you should not keep price as the main consideration. Because there are many companies offering monogram services, you can afford to be picky. With the right amount of research, you will be able to find a company that offers monograms at a price that suits your budget. Monograms are a trendy way of getting personal to help promote your brand. Set your brand apart from your competitors and find a reputable monogram company today.

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Internet Marketing for Lawyers – Advice That Counts

Lawyers face the same challenges any business does. In order to get new business they must market their services, i.e., advertise. And lawyers deal with the same marketing and advertising challenge every business does – how to beat the competition. Plus lawyers have to assume that any Internet or non-Internet marketing or advertising they do may well produce little or no results for the amount of time and money they spend — regardless of what an outside marketing or advertising advisor may say to the contrary.

Prior to the Internet the main non-Internet marketing option or advertising choice for any lawyer was to advertise in the yellow pages. To this day the print yellow pages contain plenty of colorful, one page display ads that feature lawyers offering their services, and lawyers pay a lot for these ads. How effective these ads are is anyone’s guess — it’s hard for your colored, one page display ad to stand out when you have 20 other lawyers doing the exact same thing! The yellow pages companies, however, continue to promote their marketing and advertising philosophy that “bigger is always better” and “everything we sell is an opportunity,” so they often present a lawyer with a non-Internet marketing and advertising solution that costs plenty but often produces little.

This line of thinking, along with the use of print yellow pages in general, has gone the way of the dinosaur at a very accelerated pace. The yellow pages in print form had their heyday for many decades, but the population now goes to the Internet for the information they seek, so most print directories are collecting dust. A lawyer who advertises in the print yellow pages may well get calls, but they’ll most likely be from vendors using the yellow pages as a cheap source of leads.

The major paid search providers (pay per click search engines) tend to offer lawyers Internet marketing and advertising solutions in a manner similar to the way the yellow pages do with their print directories. “Bigger is always better,” so rather than realistically discuss with a lawyer a pay per click Internet marketing and advertising campaign that makes financial sense and produces a decent ROI, the pay per click providers will tell the lawyer to go for as many top listing keywords (the most expensive) as their budget will permit and bid as high as they can. The lawyer may go broke in the process, but at least they’ll get exposure! Many lawyers get into pay per click as a quick way to get leads but quickly exit a month later after spending lots of money for Internet marketing and advertising results that produce nothing but expense.

While pay per click Internet marketing and advertising is the running favorite of Internet marketing advertisers worldwide, pay per click advertising for a lawyer is usually an extremely expensive proposition for what they get. How much a lawyer is willing to “pay for a lead” takes on a whole new meaning with pay per click. The cost per click for many lawyer related keywords, e.g., “personal injury lawyer,” “criminal defense lawyer,” can range from $5.00 to $70.00 per click depending on the market, and when the typical lawyer’s conversion rate (the number of clicks it takes to generate a lead) of one to two percent is factored in, the lawyer can find themselves paying upwards of $500.00 to $7,000.00 per lead, and a lead is not a client.

Part of the problem lawyers face when they work with pay per click (and this translates directly into poor conversion rates) is that (1) they spend little time creating their pay per click ads and (2) the ads direct traffic to the lawyer’s website. Any Internet marketing professional who knows something about pay per click knows you never send pay per click traffic to a website. Instead you create special pages, i.e., “landing pages” for pay per click traffic to be directed to. The landing pages perform the job of convincing traffic to do what the lawyer requires, which is normally to contact the lawyer via e-mail or by phone.

Legal Internet directories and portals offer the lawyer a potential Internet marketing and advertising option because of their popularity and enhanced Internet visibility. How effective a listing in a legal Internet directory or portal can be for a lawyer in terms of marketing, advertising and Internet exposure will depend upon the particular attributes of the legal Internet directory or portal in question. All things being equal, legal Internet directories or portals that charge a fee to be listed in them make more sense as an Internet marketing and advertising choice than similar sites that offer listings for free. The lawyer has to be particularly careful, however, when they consider advertising in legal Internet directories and portals that “look” like they offer a lot — and a price to go with it — but for whatever reasons simply do not produce enough leads for the amount of Internet marketing and advertising money the lawyer must spend.

Many legal Internet directories and portals exist that have a very strong Internet presence, and they are excellent resource centers for lawyers, but this does not automatically make them good places to advertise. With Internet legal portals especially it’s not how many lawyers the portal attracts but how many people the Internet legal portal attracts who are searching for legal services. People have paid thousands of dollars for advertising in Internet legal portals that have produced nothing in the way of Internet marketing and advertising results. A very wise idea for any lawyer who considers advertising in an Internet legal portal is to get some very accurate user demographics on what kind of specific traffic the Internet legal portal is actually attracting.

What is a lawyer supposed to do? Everywhere the lawyer looks, whether the marketing and advertising media is Internet or non-Internet, considerable financial risk is involved, and a guarantee that the lawyer will get good, solid results for the amount of money they spend is often hard to achieve.

Ultimately the best way for a lawyer to go with Internet marketing and advertising – the way that will ultimately get them the best long term results for the money they spend — is to focus on getting their website to rank high in organic search results. When all things are considered, people on the Internet who search for goods and services mainly search for websites to find their answers. They may look to legal Internet directories and portals, and if they don’t find what they want they may turn to pay per click listings as a last resort (only about 30% to 40% of users bother with pay per click) but ultimately people who search the Internet are looking for websites that provide them with the answers they seek.

If a lawyer is looking for an Internet marketing and advertising solution that doesn’t require being part of the pay per click crowd, the lawyer may want to look into pay per phone call programs. Pay per phone call is like pay per click, but the lawyer does not pay for a call unless they receive one. And the costs for pay per phone call are normally substantially less that what the lawyer will pay for a click in many cases. A smart lawyer may even want to consider getting involved with several pay per phone call providers with the idea that between the providers the lawyer will receive enough leads in the aggregate to make involvement with these programs worth it.

Many of the Internet marketing and advertising solutions that a lawyer chooses to look into must be tried on a case by case basis. Absolutely nothing can be assumed. A pay per click advertising campaign that works extremely well for the lawyer with one search provider might fail miserably with another.

One last thing that a lawyer should be aware of when it comes to the Internet and a website presence is that appearances really do count. Many people have been on the Internet for 10 years and have correspondingly seen websites of all types and styles. People are used to seeing professionally designed websites. The lawyer’s website should be too.

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