Search Engines come together - schema.org

By Tom Fitzgerald on June 5, 2011 8:47 PM | No Comments
google-webmaster-tools.pngGoogle, along with Yahoo & Bing have joined together to create a new standard for the web. Schema.org is a site that is helping to define how to provide microdata to search engines in an easy way. Google's blog post really explains a lot of this great information. For search engine optimization followers and web developers, this is pretty big news. 

They explain it very easily on why this is such a great thing. Your website has a ton of great data in it. Sometimes it can be hard for the search engines to understand this data. This schema design allows you to tell the search engines exactly what your data means and why they should care about.

Learn more:

Ask your clients to review you

By Tom Fitzgerald on January 18, 2011 11:54 PM | No Comments
Google Places has really taken over the web recently. One of the biggest questions we receive is how to optimize your site for Google Places. Google ranks your listing based on many different reasons, one of them being activity. 

For this reason we suggest business suggest their customers review them! Asking your customers to review your business can be a great way to gain activity. When Google sees this, they will increase your ranking. This can be a pretty easy thing to do, you can offer discounts for customers that participate. 

Linking your blog to Twitter

By Tom Fitzgerald on December 14, 2009 11:46 PM | No Comments
Hopefully everyone is in the habit of updating their blogs on a somewhat regular basis. I know right now I'm pretty far behind but with 5 blogs and a full time job - it's hard. I understand. There are some cool shortcuts available now thankful to Google. Now using Google's FeedBurner you can automate the posting of your blogs to Twitter. 

Why do this? Well really its more like why not do it. I talked about Twitter recently on my other blog so I won't go into that here. 

First things first lets create a FeedBurner account. 

Just go to FeedBurner.com sign in with your Google account. When you get to the next screen, it'll ask you for your feed address. All you really need to do is put in your blog address. For example 'http://www.lawfirmwebsiteoptimization.com/'

Setting up the Twitter link

Now just click on 'Publicize' then underneath click on 'Socialize', click on 'Add Twitter Account'. If you are already logged into Twitter you can just hit 'Allow' to hit everything happen. If you need to log in as a different user you will get that chance as well .

Make sure you hit 'Activate' at the bottom and you are ready to go. There are more options and settings you can play with but that'll get you up and running. If you haven't used FeedBurner much, I highly recommend it. It's also owned by Google if I didn't mention that already. 

Are you linked in?

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 18, 2009 2:47 PM | No Comments
The goal of this blog, and my company OptiLaw is to help you increase business for your law firm. With all this new technology it may be confusing, what is the best thing to do? Where is the most 'bang for your buck'? I'll be honest, I don't think anyone really knows. Even if there was a right answer it certainly wouldn't fit for everyone. 

My view is to be out there as much as possible. I previously talked about using Twitter as a way to be out there, today lets talk about Linked In.

What is linkedin.com? 

Basically its another social site just like Facebook. However LinkedIn has a twist - its for business professionals. You could argue that Facebook can be used for that, and it is and it works great. LinkedIn may be viewed as less popular but its still used frequently by many - Including myself!

Once you create an account it will ask to invite your business associates and friends. You may be shocked to find out how many people already have an account. After you get a group of people in your network you will begin to network with them. Its really no different than a real life meeting, except its easier here to show everyone what you do. 

Without going too much deeper, LinkedIn is a great tool, its free and easy. Give it a try. Soon we'll go over some other details on how you can use LinkedIn.

Featured Clients on Twitter

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 9, 2009 12:05 PM | No Comments
I wanted to take some time and show some appreciation for 2 clients of mine that have recently joined Twitter. What's the point you ask?  If you have a web site, you have a blog, the question is really - why NOT be on Twitter? Twitter right now is very young and I don't think anyone really knows the future of where it's ultimately going. 

What I do know is that it's going somewhere. Google & Microsoft recently announced that Tweets will be included in search results. So this means we have another way to be in front of potential clients. That reason should be enough to get on there and start posting. 
Continue reading Featured Clients on Twitter.

Be more efficient with Twitter

By Tom Fitzgerald on August 20, 2009 8:42 PM | No Comments
As I mentioned in my other blog (I'm sure you already read it) I'm currently on vacation. One thing thats hard about blogging and marketing altogether is that it can be time consuming. I wanted to share some tips on how you can be more efficient and get work done quickly. 

As we know its important to keep you site updated with relevant content. That doesn't mean it has to be a novel or extremely ground breaking. It also mean it doesn't need to take a lot of time. I want to shift gears away from law firms for a moment and show a site for a restaurant close to my home on Kent Island, Maryland. The web site is Jettydockbar.com they wanted a site to show off all the cool stuff that goes on at the restaurant / bar. One of the cool features is right on the main. You will see updates from the owner of the restaurant. It's short its simple and up to date. How do they do this? Twitter.

This is a great example of how using new technology can make things better. My point here is that the owner can quickly open a browser and in under 140 characters say what the current specials of the day are, or give a last minute plug to the evenings entertainment. I'll post in another blog on design tutorials how to implement this on your web site. 

So if you can't blog - tweet!

Building links

By Tom Fitzgerald on August 10, 2009 11:21 PM | No Comments
So you are working on your content, that's great. What else can you do? Well links are very important. Links help Google decide if your site is really important. After all a site that gets a lot of links must be great right? Not necessarily - actually due to spam link values have gone down in some areas in favor of good text. That doesn't mean links are not used - they are still very important. I wouldn't suggest just emailing everyone you know and say 'Can you link to me?'. 

A Few Tips

Unrelated sites don't help. If you are a law firm in Maryland, having a buddy in New York that runs a restaurant link to you isn't going to help much. In fact I would say it doesn't help at all. So what can you do? Will your competition link to you? Absolutely not! Or maybe they will. It's a common process for blogs to link together. Maybe you will not link to your competitor down the street but what about another law firm that handles a different area of practice? Or perhaps same area of practice in another area? 

We recommend blogs linking to each other. It helps strengthen both parties. Take a look at Ron Miller's blog - Maryland auto accident lawyer blog. You will see he links to his own blogs and some related blogs in the area. Take a page from him and spread the love. It'll come back.

Site reconsideration

By Tom Fitzgerald on August 5, 2009 12:34 AM | No Comments
Do you believe your site has been penalized by Google? Maybe at one point you had duplicate text? Once you correct your mistakes lets talk about how to ask Google to reconsider your site. 

  1. Go to Google's Webmaster Tools
  2. Click on Site Reconsideration
  3. Click Request Site Reconsideration
  4. You can then enter details on why you would another chance with Google.
Quick & easy! Next time we'll talk about some other good functions of Google's webmaster tools in our other blog - Website Design Tutorials.

Microsoft reaches deal with Yahoo

By Tom Fitzgerald on July 29, 2009 4:20 AM | No Comments
A few hours ago I read that Microsoft has reached a deal with Yahoo. For those of you that don't know the history - Microsoft has been trying to purchase Yahoo for a while now (early 2008). See way back in the day, Yahoo was everything. Not only did were they the first big search engine, they also owned the market share. Then came along  Google and we all know what happened after that. I remember reading a quote from a Yahoo employee admitting that even though they were first, Google had clearly won the search wars.
Continue reading Microsoft reaches deal with Yahoo.

First things, first - Are you updating?

By Tom Fitzgerald on July 27, 2009 7:23 AM | No Comments
One of the most frequent mistakes made by law firms (or just about any business) on the web today, is their lack of updates. Yes, you must update your site. Actually I should repeat that again and possibly bold it - you must update your site. Google watches over the web and will place sites that update more frequently higher than sites that are rarely updated. 

Don't worry - this isn't too hard. Much like exercise or eating right, once you get started it'll pay off, then get easier. I should also mention that while you are taking the time to update your site, please make sure you are adding text that someone will actually want to read. If you are simply repeating the news that has already been reported - you aren't really helping. 

For example, if you say 'There was an accident on 695 this morning, involving several cars and a tractor trailer. By the way I am a Maryland car accident lawyer.' That's not text anyone cares to read. Now if you repeat the news then offer your opinion and insight, that is something that is certainly more interesting. Why is this information interesting? Can you offer an opinion that wasn't included in the original report? Perhaps a different view? 

Whatever it is you are writing about in your blogs, please keep it interesting and try and get on a regular schedule. Each post doesn't have to be an amazing work of art but try to offer something interesting - your readers will thank you!
Archives