SEO — search engine optimization – is to Google and lawyer websites, what Boolean searches are to Lexis-Nexis and Westlaw. Feeding specific search terms into the search engine quickly produces reliable results consistent with the search terms. SEO relies on keywords and key-phrases (e.g., search terms) that have been narrowed by feeding criteria specific to your practice into the latest web traffic reporting tools.

Lawyer Success, Inc. uses these results to decide to the best and most frequently used keywords and phrases and, more specifically, those likely to generate the highest volume of web traffic to your lawyer website. Google then uses algorithms that interpret the SEO to evaluate your lawyer website and determine your search rankings. When a prospective client uses search terms that contain your keywords and phrases, the SEO elevates your lawyer website search ranking producing consistent search results for both you and the prospective client.

These important tips can complement your SEO campaign:

Titles. Your page title is the most important tool you have to attract new clients from Google search listings. Productive titles incorporating SEO increases search engine visibility. SEO is how prospective clients find you on the Web, and factors into their navigation of your lawyer website by guiding them to the specific page that is useful to them.
Answers. Clients expect lawyers to answer their questions. Prospective clients searching your lawyer website expect your legal content to answer their questions. Our goal-driven nature sends us to the Web in search of a specific find or to accomplish a particular goal. The next website is just a click-of-the-mouse away, making efficient and relevant legal content interspersed with SEO critical to meeting the needs of prospective clients and keeping them on your lawyer website.
Design. Effective lawyer website design complements SEO and promotes the prospective client’s goal-driven search. Remember, you are branding your name and marketing your practice — not advertising. Animation, flashing text, pop-ups, and banners give the appearance of a gaming business, and not a lawyer website. Make your professionalism stand out through tasteful lawyer website design and legal content.
Color. Changing the color of visited links guarantees ease-of-navigation for prospective clients visiting your lawyer website. This allows them to exclude pages already visited, and to proceed to pages that spoke to a particular issue or otherwise piqued their interest. Links are generally tied to SEO. For example, links labeled “personal injury” and “product liability” are likely to contain cross-over information; yet, each topic has its own link allowing the prospective client to discern the difference. The changing color link also helps visitors easily identify and recall pages on your lawyer website that were helpful.
Format. Your legal content needs to be “scannable” meaning you are writing for an online audience, as opposed to a print media. Prospective clients are drawn to the use of short paragraphs, simple writing style, highlighted keywords, bulleted lists, and subheads. The idea is to draw the visitor’s eye to your page using understated, yet highly-effective formatting.

The SEO Experts – Free Advice Hotline – Call (769) 218-6099

At Best Attorney Websites, optimizing your lawyer website for great search engine rankings is our biggest goal. We provide that critical keyword research, and guarantee the results. Our consultants are happy to show you how to stay competitive and increase your client-base through no-obligation strategies. Our lawyer website design and 24/7 client-support saves you both time and money! Ask about our Free, No Risk lawyer website design when you call.

The Psychology of Attorney Website Design

The psychological connection a legal consumer finds with the best attorney website may be complex or simple, but it does take cues from the overall design. These factors play into the marketability of your Internet brand, and can convert legal consumers to prospective clients with proper execution.

Internet brand

Legal consumers identify with your Internet brand, as long as they find visual appeal and legal content that is useful and trustworthy on the best attorney website. The professional reputation of your Internet brand is lateral to the professional reputation of you’ve earned in your offline law practice, and you’ve worked hard for both. Maintaining your professional reputation is a matter of establishing authority among competitors. Legal consumers develop positive feelings for Internet brands that are credible and compete successfully.

These factors can lead legal consumers to positive identification of your Internet brand:

Pleasant color scheme
Clickable landing page
Complementary logo
Authoritative and trustworthy tone
Trustworthy legal content

Trustworthy

Not only should the best attorney webpage strive to maintain trustworthy-status with Google, it is equally important to build the trust of legal consumers drawn to your site. The quality of your legal content is just as important as the aesthetics. Credible legal ethics and a professional design can be equally appeasing from a psychological perspective.

The hallmarks of trustworthy legal content are:

Good grammar, correct punctuation, and precise spellings
Clear and concise writing style
Functional with working links
General demeanor that is appeasing to the eye, and rewarding to the brain

Design

Color has long been known to elicit specific moods. It’s important for color, graphics, layout and, yes, legal content to exist in a harmonious environment on the best attorney website. Creative webpages complete with complementary color-scheme can provoke an immediate response of either positive or negative emotions. Professional designers can tap the psychology, striking the right note with even the fussiest legal consumer.

Legal consumers are just like the rest of the population when it comes to the effects of color on their psyche:

Green – health, nature
Brown – natural, sensible
Red – assertive, passionate
Yellow – happy, cheerful
Purple – compassion, peace
Black – enigmatic, edgy
White – virtuous, pure
Gray – neutral, calm
Blue – serene, cool

Site usability from the perspective of legal consumers

The ease or difficulty of navigating a website can impact a legal consumer’s perception of your Internet brand. Emotions experienced can run the gamut from calm to frustrated – or anything in-between. The psychological impact of a bad experience can send your legal consumers clicking your competitors links.

Keep the good vibrations flowing through best attorney website by providing legal consumers with:

Clear and concise legal content
Scanability (bullet points, white space, brevity)
Easy click-through navigation
Clickable icons and highlighted text

A positive Internet brand by design

Lawyer Success, Inc. understands the important relationship between legal consumers and your Internet brand. We are the best attorney website design firm on the market, saving you valuable time and money, growing your client-base, and maintaining your competitive edge. Our consultants are happy to share no-obligation strategies, such as the best attorney website design – customized, Free, No Risk, and guaranteed results!

Free Advice Hotline – Call 1 (800) 877-2776 to Discuss Your Legal Website

Is Your Legal Website Easy on the Eyes?

Unfortunately, many legal websites tend to follow such a similar format that it can be hard to distinguish one from another. You want your site to accurately reflect your brand while being professional and, of course, achieving your goal of maximum conversion. The question many webmasters tend to overlook is whether the site is also easy on the eyes. In other words, does the person landing on the site want to stay and read or are they hitting the back button as fast as they can. Before you begin, consider once again the purpose of your legal website. What do you hope to accomplish and what sort of mood do you want to set for your visitors?

One of the most basic issues on your website is readability. Is it truly easy on the eyes? We have all attempted to read online articles in fancy fonts or on a colored background, or words which were crammed together with little to no whitespace. When a reader struggles to decipher your content not only will they not stay—they will not be back. Consider the fact that most all newspapers and magazines are printed in columns. The purpose is to shorten the lines so that after you’ve read one line it’s easy to find the start of the next. If you don’t want to use columns, center your text with no line of text exceeding 650 pixels in width. Almost all those who use computers have screens at least 1024 x 768 pixels, so keep this in mind when putting your pages together.

There is almost never a reason to place light text on a light background or the flip side: dark text on a dark background. Ensure your text and background are nicely contrasted and no matter how much you want to add color to your site, resist the urge to do so with your actual text. If you actually want visitors to read your website, make sure it is large enough that they actually can read it. 12px is the standard and anything smaller is…well, too small. Use white space intelligently. Make sure there is a bit of space after each line, and don’t crowd your graphics in too close to your content.

While capitalizing a word can draw the reader’s attention, use all caps sparingly. If you want to draw attention to something, make your title bold or in all caps, or even in a different or larger font, but the remainder of the text must be easy to read. The same goes for exclamation points. An article filled with exclamation points does not make it more important, only annoying to the reader. Now, this tip certainly seems like a no-brainer, but you might be surprised how many websites ignore it: Use a spell checker. While there are certainly people in the world who may not notice or care that there are misspelled words on your website, the majority of people do notice and they do care. Misspelled words on your site make you look amateurish and unprofessional or give the reader the idea that you don’t care enough to give your content a once-over prior to publishing.

Finally, make sure that you use graphics sparingly and that they do not detract from your message. For expert help in creating your legal website, you need a designer who is experienced in lawyer website design. We have the experience, the knowledge and a long history of creating stellar websites for legal professionals. For your free consultation, call (800) 877-2776 to speak with a design expert—never a sales representative.

Is Your Legal Website Credible?

Credibility, while somewhat subjective, can nonetheless make or break your legal website. Google took the issue of credibility very seriously with its Panda update which evaluated the quality and credibility for websites when deciding how to rank them. If you are concerned about the credibility of your website or you received a reprimand from Google over a perceived lapse in credibility consider the following ways to ensure your website remains high-quality and credible:

Minimize Ads

Although many attorney websites skip advertisements altogether, if you employ the use of ads on your website, keep them to a bare minimum. When you have tons of distracting ads on your site it can look as though you are desperate for clients or that you simply don’t care how annoying the ads are to your visitors. Even ads which point to your website can be overdone. While it’s okay to use banners which promote the services of your firm in moderation, keep them to a minimum.

Freshen Your Content on a Regular Basis

If you believe your job is done once your website is set up, content is in place and you’ve written a few blog postings, think again. When you allow your legal website to become stale, you are essentially saying that you really don’t care that much about your readers’ experience on your site, that their business is not all that important to you, or that you are simply too lazy to update your content. Things change quickly in our world and in the legal profession as well. Your website should always reflect the most up-to-date information on your firm. In fact, if you are truly interested in letting your visitors know you are an authority on your particular legal niche, start a legal blog and update it often. A legal blog can lend credibility to your firm as well as bring scores of traffic to your website via search engines and costs you nothing other than your time.

Ease of Navigation and Professional Design

You will always want the design of your legal website to appear professional and up-to-date with a pleasing appearance. You don’t want the first impression of your visitors to be that your firm is stuck back in the 90’s (based on your out-of-date web design) nor do you want them to be frustrated by the level of difficulty it entails to navigate your site. Simplicity in your layout is key to credibility. Keep your layout clean, concise and not overly trendy.

Put a Human Touch on Your Site

You never want your visitors to feel as though you are the Wizard of Oz, hiding behind the curtain. Your business location and other pertinent details need to be extremely easy to locate on your site. If you’ve ever visited a website and had to search long and hard to find the contact information, you know what I’m talking about. When I have difficulty locating contact information I immediately think “shady,” and many others have the same reaction. Visitors want to know they can trust your law firm and that there are real attorneys who can be held accountable for the end results.

In a nutshell, to increase credibility, have a great domain name, a reliable host, a website that is user-friendly, a simple, pleasing design which has a unique touch, compelling, informative and high-quality content and a unique brand. If this sounds fairly overwhelming, call (800) 877-2776 to speak with an expert in lawyer web development. We have highly experienced consultants who will discuss the best strategies for your particular law firm. Call today for your free consultation.

How Your Website Design Can Boost Conversions

In the world we inhabit design impacts behavior, and those who understand how to impact behavior adjust their designs accordingly. According to Dr. B.J. Fogg, three elements must come together at the same time in order for a desired behavior to occur. These three elements are motivation, ability and trigger. Should the desired behavior not occur, you can assume one of the three elements was not present.

How, you might ask, do these three elements of behavior relate to your legal website? Well, presumably the goal of your law firm’s website is to achieve maximum conversion. You want visitors to your website to receive something of value and, in turn, become a client. You want your visitors to be highly motivated to call your office and set up an appointment, you want that action to be easily accomplished and you want a trigger in place that prompts that behavior.

Motivation

Looking at the three elements separately, let’s consider motivation. In most cases you can presume that your visitor already has a certain amount of motivation to come to your website. After all, few people browse legal websites with no goal in mind. Most people who click on a legal website have a particular problem which they need an attorney’s help with; they are motivated to find the help they need. Your use of an effective design, layout and sales copy can certainly boost motivation, but it is nearly impossible to create motivation in this instance artificially.

Although there are many motivators, hope and fear are possibly the two most likely to bring visitors to your website. If the person has been arrested or a family member has been arrested, then they are fearful for the future. Hope is where your website comes in. You must offer both high-quality information as well as hope that you can use your legal skills to increase the odds of a positive future.

Ability

Next comes ability which is essentially whether the task at hand is easy for the person to accomplish. In other words, if you want your visitors to sign up for your weekly legal newsletter yet it takes filling out a long form to do so, you have made the task difficult—and in most cases any level of difficulty on the Internet causes visitors to hit the back button and seek out a more user-friendly website. Motivation is simply not enough when you are looking for conversions. It’s more effective to make the task easier to accomplish rather than artificially attempting to increase motivation. Simplicity is key for your legal website; it can be very professionally and well-designed while still being simple for the average user to navigate.

Trigger

Finally comes the trigger—if there is no appropriate trigger the desired behavior will simply not occur even if motivation and ability are firmly in place. The trigger is what causes human beings to take action, so your call to action on your website is a trigger. Watch the content of your trigger carefully and remember that the trigger must proceed in small, easy-to-accomplish steps rather that a blaring “hire me now” button. When the three elements come together beautifully you likely have a highly experienced website designer to thank!

Finding a Web Designer Who Understands Lawyer Websites

We are experts in lawyer website design and would appreciate the opportunity to discuss highly successful strategies for your legal website. When you call you will speak with a knowledgeable consultant rather than a sales rep. Call (800) 877-2776 today for your free consultation.

How the Right Domain Name Can Increase Your Direct Traffic

There are essentially only three ways we get to a site: we can be surfing one site and see a link which looks promising, we can type in a search query then click on the link in the search results, or we can enter the domain name directly into our computer’s Internet address bar. This method is generally known as direct navigation.

Direct navigation occurs when the person who is searching knows the precise website they are looking for and approximately one-sixth of all traffic have directly typed in the domain name. Those firms who are fortunate enough to have a domain name which brings in this highly targeted traffic are probably aware that not only does the right domain name bring traffic to their firm—it prevents the competition from obtaining those crucial leads.

The Benefits of Generic Domain Names

What many people are unaware of is that a relatively generic domain name can bring the kind of targeted traffic that most firms only dream of. Those firms who manage the highest number of direct-navigation domain names are much less reliant of the whims of the search engine algorithms. When all the generic domain names a firm owns are redirected to the primary domain, your firm has just upped your traffic considerably.

Consider that Barnes & Noble owns the domain name “books.com” which is then redirected to their primary website and you will understand the importance of generic domain names. In many instances obtaining these generic domain names can be considered “Internet real estate,” meaning you may even be able to write off the cost of such a business asset. Of course in the legal business, finding generic domain names which pertain to the industry may take a little more creativity, but could certainly be worth a brainstorming session or two.

The Importance of Choosing Your Domain Names

If you are new to the legal website world and have not yet chosen your primary domain name, be aware that this is truly one of the most important aspects of your overall online marketing strategy. A unique yet pertinent domain name will increase your profits for years to come by allowing your customers to find you easily. The best domain name will drive web traffic and sales to you and will, of course, reflect your legal services. When choosing a domain name think relevance and simplicity as well as ensuring the domain name is memorable and easy to spell. It is crucial that you include your firm’s primary keywords in your domain name whenever possible.

While there are other extensions such as .info and .biz, a .com address will be much more easily recognized by the public, and for those who are typing your domain address directly into the search bar, they will naturally add the .com. If you happen to live in an area where a domain name such as kansascitylawyer.com is available, grab it quickly! You can always redirect such a domain name to your primary domain should you choose to have your firm’s name in the primary domain.

Because domain names are relatively inexpensive, choose as many as are available from your short list. Should you not use the domain name in the next couple of years, you will likely have no trouble selling it and might even turn a profit. For expert and professional advice regarding domain names as well as any questions regarding legal web design or law firm website content, call (800) 877-2776 for your free consultation. You will receive valuable advice and strategies from highly experienced writers with a law degree – not sales representatives.

How Color Choices Can Make or Break Your Legal Website

When designing a new legal website it’s difficult to prevent your own feelings about color and design from creeping into the picture, however color is an extremely important element which should be carefully considered. As a matter of fact, color could very well be the most important element in your overall design. As you know, the Internet is very much a visual medium. In order to get your message across in the very best way possible, take a few moments to consider your color scheme.

We have all heard that the color red is an attention-getter, green reflects nature, blue is calming and reflects trustworthiness and yellow is a happy, fun color and on down the line of colors. Further, our society associates certain colors with specific genders such as pink for girls and blue for boys. While you don’t have to choose your color scheme based entirely on the psychological effect of colors on human responses and choices, you should at the very least determine your ultimate goals and use colors accordingly to achieve those goals.

Identifying Your Target Market

It’s extremely important that you be able to identify your target market when considering colors for your legal website. Different colors will appeal to different markets; men tend to prefer different colors than women, some colors are much more appropriate to a professional business than an ice cream shop and children will generally prefer the bright primary colors. Research indicates that well-educated people will usually prefer the blended colors such as blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, yellow-green, yellow-orange and red-orange (known as tertiary colors).

The less educated will often prefer simpler primary and secondary colors. In the same vein, wealthier people will often choose more complex and sophisticated colors while the working class or blue collar workers tend to prefer bright, warm primary colors and the secondary colors of the rainbow. Those in the 65 and over crowd generally identify yellow as their least favorite color and prefer clean, clear colors such as fresh blues, pinks and greens. This age group is more comfortable with calmer, muted colors. If you are going for a solid business/professional look, the more serious your business, the darker the colors such as dark blue, dark green, dark red, dark indigo, black and gray. Using these colors takes design know-how, however, to avoid having your website look excessively funereal.

The Many Ways Colors are Implemented

Not only will you have to choose an overall color scheme for your legal website, you will also need to choose the best colors for text, links, background and images. Using red in places you want action to be taken could be a good idea as well as in areas which are directing your visitors around your website. Links are generally blue which is smart, since the color suggests credibility. White is almost always the best choice for background text color as it provides the highest level of readability. Pastel colors could also work as a text background in some businesses, but possibly not for a law firm.

Whatever you do, don’t try to throw in a little of every color in hopes you will appeal to every demographic—all you will do is create a look of chaos. Keep your site simple and limit the number of colors you use to make it aesthetically pleasing to your visitors. For assistance determining the best colors for your website, call (800) 877-2776 for your free consultation from experts in lawyer website design. We have extensive experience specifically in lawyer website design. You will never speak with a sales representative but will always talk directly to a highly experienced consultant. Call today!

The Relationship Between Words and Design

Many companies can get so caught up with trendy web designs that the content can go by the wayside, and in the beginning, when websites are being designed, the content is a faraway concept, not a part of the design in any way. Experts now believe that the fastest way your website will fail as a sales tool is having the website design created without thinking about the copy or having the copy created without a thought to the website design. If you are just beginning to engage in talks about a website for your law firm, or if you are thinking about a major overhaul, having the design team and the content team communicate can be crucial to the site’s success. Think about a magazine you pick up from the rack at the supermarket. Sure you may first be attracted by the photographs on the glossy cover, but imagine you opened that magazine and there was nothing inside but blank pages? The message here is that while a magazine might captivate you with the design, it will keep your attention through the content. Content communicates a message, idea, story or solution, and websites are no exception.

Communication Between Design and Content

What seems to be causing uncertainty in the website development process is where content development fits into the overall picture. Unfortunately, in too many cases, content ends up as an afterthought. More and more web designers are pushing for content to be written during the design phase under the belief that without meaningful content it is impossible to deliver a meaningful design. Others still hold with the theory that placeholder text works just fine and that the real content is not required at this stage. While every project is unique and may have budget or time constraints which prevent content from being developed until the end, in a perfect world content should be developed from the beginning of a projects in order to understand how the content will relate to the overall message, story or solution you are attempting to communicate.

Creating a Content Matrix

A content matrix spreadsheet can make the process of developing content much more organized while holding the appropriate person accountable for the content which must be developed. Content matrixes can also facilitate communication between the website designer and the content writer ensuring content and design are working together for the greater good of the entire website. You will want to prioritize and build a hierarchy on the content matrix by listing live, pending and developing content. The content matrix will also include page titles and URLs, tags and keywords, status of images to be used, creator of the content, description of the content, links form the content, maintenance information for updating the content and anything else you think of which will help your content and design work together.

Without content even the most beautifully designed website is little more than decoration, yet the content can only be truly meaningful when it works together with the design. While the design of a website captures our attention and provides a visually stimulating experience, the content will keep us at the website, engaging our attention and leaving us wanting more.

The Dangers of a Large Redesign

Perhaps you feel your legal website is just kind of…sitting there. While it is not necessarily a failure, it simply appears to be languishing in cyberspace so you think a total redesign is in order. Before you jump in to tear apart a lackluster design, think about the fact that a major overhaul can be a dangerous—and less than productive—strategy. Generally speaking, people don’t like change and it takes a while for them to adapt to a new environment. The better strategy could be to make it a point to engage in continuous improvement of the tasks your customer’s engage in the most on your site. Many site owners seem to have an obsession with website redesign, and while some of them can result in a better site, many times the redesign is simply done for the wrong reasons.

Design Only When There is a Valid Reason

If there is a genuine reason for a major overhaul such as the fact that the old structure simply is not working, then go ahead and redesign—if not, think about it a bit longer and try to sit down and determine what part of the site is not working and why. Most organizations would rather spend $50,000 on a single overhaul project than to spend $5,000 per year to continuously improve their site. While this sounds counter-intuitive, remember that organizations—and the human beings who make up those organizations—love to measure and a single project is much more measurable than a series of improvements. A large redesign probably also comes with a large budget, has a beginning and an end, making it easy to measure results.

Redesign is More Fun!

In other instances, a redesign is chosen over improvements simply because it’s more fun. Let’s face it—constant updating and implementing improvements is pretty much sheer drudgery. All those changes can seem small and trivial and it can feel as though you are simply spinning your wheels. Nonetheless there are valid reasons to choose continuous improvement over total redesign. The world is a huge, complex place and it is virtually impossible to ensure that within one huge design, everything is absolutely perfect. It’s much better to change in small increments, then test the results. Test your headings, test your links, test your images at a larger size vs. a smaller one, test your navigation and test the strength of your content. Prior to the Web it was incredibly difficult to determine how people reacted to content. The Web allows us to observe how our content causes people to behave and to react.

Avoiding an SEO Crisis During a Redesign

Finally, it can be difficult to avoid an SEO disaster during a major website redesign, losing the rankings and organic search traffic you’ve worked so hard to obtain. When you redesign your website there’s a good chance the URL’s will change and if they change you have to let the search engines know where the older URL’s have moved to. If you don’t, your hard-won SEO is going to vanish into thin air, leading to a drop in your PageRank, drops in organic search traffic, drops in readers and a drop in conversions. If you can possibly keep the same URL structure that your original website had, by all means, do so as your life will be much, much easier. Should you decide that a total redesign is absolutely necessary, make sure to review your current optimization before the redesign, making sure the new pages contain the same optimization. Baby steps are almost always than a big leap into the unknown, so if possible get over your dislike of improvement and give it a whirl before you decide on a large redesign.

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