Manual Link Penalties are not Forever

openIf you received a manual action or unnatural links penalty on your website, it is not forever. The penalties, which may range from months to years, do have an intrinsic end date and are related, according to Distinguished Google Engineer Matt Cutts, to the “severity of the problem that Google sees.” There are no notifications sent when a penalty expires and if one has expired, the manual spam actions viewer...

Read More

Associating your law firms name with a good crowd

into_the_futureThe July issue of Bigger Law Firm magazine features a column by Ryan Conley, Into The Future of SEO.

In it, Conley made a case for citations becoming as important as inbound links. Your law firm should embrace this concept with open arms.

Here is how it works:

1) Smith & Smith, LLP setup their Google+ Local page, connecting the profile to their website, lawexample.com.

2) In their profile,...

Read More

Your law firm’s outbound links still play an important role

resourcelinksThere is a lot of discussion within the search engine marketing community surrounding the Google Penguin 2.0 updates and how they affect inbound links to your firm's website. In last month's issue of the Bigger Law Firm magazine, the author created a framework for how to think about search engine marketing moving forward. It's about connections, not just links to your website.

Connections involve social connections, citations, websites which mention...

Read More

Design Terms Part Two: Fixed vs. Liquid Layouts

fluidSince nascent HTML began supporting images, colors and backgrounds, people have been experimenting with ways to dress up their pages. Website design has since flourished, with developments in code and technology giving designers the freedom to create layouts they could not have dreamed of ten years ago. But even with modern development capabilities, challenges still exist. Browser and operating statistics, coupled with on-site analytics, can help you predict what technology...

Read More

New and Revolutionary! Fifteen of the Most Overused Words of 2012

bad wordsEvery year, some words are more popular than others. As fashionable words get bandied about with abandon, you will find some of them begin to grate on you. The more they are seen and heard, the less meaning they retain. You can only read that something is “cutting-edge” so often before nothing will ever seem cutting-edge again. And how many times can you hear the phrase “best practices” before...

Read More

Eight ways to come up with new ideas for your lawyer blog

blog ideasIf you blog or write articles on a regular basis, you will inevitably face times during which you believe there is simply no way you can come up with another interesting topic. The blank page stares at you, taunting and mocking. Everything that can be written about has already been done.

Generating a regular flow of informative posts is difficult, but it is a necessity for...

Read More

Mobile devices and responsive design are trends with staying power

tabletInternet connected devices such as phones, tablets and e-readers now outnumber people in the United States, according to data released by The NPD Group. Americans have 425 million web-enabled gadgets in homes across the country, while the latest Census report puts the human population at only 311.5 million.

Laptop and desktop machines are still the primary method people use when accessing the Internet from their homes, but the rapid...

Read More

The Law Firm Website Disconnect

gavel freeAttorney websites have come a long way in the past few years. Lawyers are catching on to false marketing prophets and looking beyond cheesy and ineffective SEO tricks. Websites are becoming more helpful, more well-designed and more relevant to people seeking legal help. This is a good thing.

However, it is a big Internet, and there are still too many firms that fall victim to the lawyer website disconnect. To demonstrate this problem, Tech4Law created a law firm...

Read More

Pinterest Makes Sharing Easier with New Business Accounts

business dayBusinesses have been setting up presences on Pinterest and integrating the network into their marketing for some time, but until now the site's terms have explicitly limited activity on their boards to “personal, non-commercial use.” Because the network was created for individuals, developing a consistent professional presence was not entirely easy. You can, of course, pin your own content and prompt others to pin it as well. While this...

Read More

Prevent SEO mishaps during website design projects

twoplustwoSome website design projects offer a chance to create a new site entirely from scratch. Perhaps a firm is just starting out with a new url, or maybe it has a relatively young or neglected website that is nowhere to be seen in search engine results. This gives designers and developers the chance to flesh out an information architecture, design and SEO strategy with what is basically a...

Read More