LMA Northwest Holiday Social
The LMA Northwest Holiday Social has been rescheduled due to snow. The new date is Thursday, January 15. I hope to see you there!
Come mix and mingle with your LMA Northwest colleagues at the chapter's annual holiday social!
Please join us for some cocktails and hors d’oeuvres as we say goodbye to our outgoing board members and welcome in the 2009 board. Take a break and treat yourself to some holiday festivity and enjoy the beautiful views at the Columbia Tower Club.
When: Thursday, January 15, 2009 5:30 PM - 9:00 PM
Where: Columbia Tower Club
Simpson Library Room, 75th Floor
701 5th Ave
Seattle, WA 98104
Cost: $35/members, $50/non-members
RSVP: To register for this event, visit the LMA Northwest web site
SEO Tip #6: Get a Blog
This tip is important enough to warrant its own posting, and I’m not just saying that to suck up to my friends at LexBlog. There are many reasons that a blog is a good idea including:
- Search engines love blogs and therefore rank them higher because the content is timely, relevant and updated often.
- Anyone (with a username/pw) can update the blog any time from any computer with Internet access making it easy for attorneys to post entries themselves whenever news breaks in their practice area.
- Blogs are informal and conversational in tone taking some of the pressure off of creating a literary masterpiece. If you see a typo after it’s been posted, no biggie, go back and fix it.
- People can sign up to receive updates either via an RSS feed or by email.
- Blogs are cost-effective.
- Blogs target-driven.
- Blogs establish your attorneys as experts in their field. Once your blog gets rolling, you can expect to hear from reporters asking for quotes.
SEO Tip #5: See yourself through search engine glasses
If you’re thinking about getting serious about SEO you’ll want to start off by analyzing your existing traffic to see your strengths and weakness. Most likely your goal will be to increase traffic to your site but that alone is not going to determine the success of your campaign. You’ll need to look at the big picture.
For example, what search terms are people using to get to your site? If the first 20+ search terms used to find your site are all variations of your firm name, that will show that people who find your site are trying to find you. It’s nice your clients, family, friends and high school crushes were successful in finding you but new clients will not be searching for your firm name or your name. You need to attract your potential clients by optimizing for your keywords and having enticing descriptions.
Continue Reading...Christmas Gift Idea: A Photo DVD
Okay, so I know photo DVD’s aren’t exactly breaking news but I wanted to share a software program that I think is pretty cool (all you Mac users can just ignore this posting because I’m sure you have even cooler programs at your fingertips. This posts’s for PC users).
I have always loved making slide shows out of photos. I’m a sentimental fool who loves technology so it’s a natural fit and somehow I became the go-to slide show queen for my friends and family. I made slide shows for weddings, funerals, retirement parties, birthday parties, vacations, you name it and I always used to use PowerPoint. PowerPoint worked fine for what I was doing but it’s more of a presentation tool so I had to get a little creative at times. Plus adding music was a bit touchy because only certain formats worked. Plus the timing was inconsistent and I never was able to successfully burn the show onto a DVD.
Continue Reading...SEO Tip #4:Invite people to your site
The best way to get people to your site is to invite them there. There are many ways to do that online but if your audience isn't active in social media but addicted to email, you can invite them to your site via an e-Newsletter. E-Newsletters are incredibly effective if done well. And by that, I mean that the content needs to be timely and relevant to the audience. Don’t just tell your clients about an issue that will affect them, tell them specifically how it will affect them and what they need to do about it. A good practice is to create a generic “newsletter” and then have your attorneys forward it on to their clients with a quick note saying how it affects them and what they should do. Your clients will be flattered that you thought of them and will take notice of your advice.
Continue Reading...Email Signatures: Logo or No Logo?
Many firms are moving towards a standardized email signature, complete with a logo. While they do look nice when everything works as it should, there are a few things you should consider before making the plunge.
First of all, if you want to have your logo appear on your email signature, you will need to post your logo online somewhere and then link to it (as opposed to inserting it directly into your email). But even if you do it correctly, you run the risk of it appearing as a placeholder to the recipient. That’s because it’s up to the recipient as to whether they want to see images or placeholders. If they want placeholders, there’s not much you can do about it.
Continue Reading...Obama - McCain - or Starbucks?!
It's Election Day and I'm sitting here working on my blog and wondering who is going to win the election. Well, I have a pretty good idea but still wondering how things are going at the polls. Anyway, I started wondering what people were tweeting about on twitter. It turns out, it's not "Obama" or "McCain" but "Starbucks" that is causing a raucus. Becauase of the free coffee Starbucks is offering to (presumably) voters today, "Starbucks" is the third most tweeted word behind behind only #votereport and "Election Day".
That just made me smile. It's a proud day for us Starbucks fans. And to top it all off, the red cups came out today. I might just have to go celebrate at my local Starbucks.
Now if only their stocks would go up!
SEO Tip #3: Page titles
The Title Tag displays at the top of your browser window (blue bar) and it is also the linked text that appears on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Additionally, the content of the Title Tag is indexed by all search engines, especially Yahoo and MSN. It is very important that your Title Tag be descriptive and compelling in order to get people to click on it. Your title should be 5 - 7 words and/or less than 64 characters.
The tendency is to put the firm name up there and keep it the same for all pages but, let's face it, that's really not very compelling and you're also missing out on a chance to improve your SEO rankings.
Continue Reading...SEO Tip #2: Alt tags
Search engines also look at the behind-the-scenes content called meta data. This comes in several forms. For example, every graphic on the page should have a short description known as an “alt tag” assigned to it. The original purpose of alt tags is for ADA compliance. Site-impaired visitors can have their computers read them the alt tags. The SEO advantage to alt tags is the provide an opportunity to repeat key phrases. If you’re using a graphic for an article, use the alt tag to duplicate the article’s title, giving search engines two opportunities to find your phrase.
SEO Tip #1: Content is King
It might sound simple but it's true. The best way to get people to your web site is to make your web site relevant to them. You know your clients and the issues that are most important to them, so write about those topics and update your web site often. Or, better yet, get a blog so attorneys can update it themselves anytime, anywhere. Make sure to include terms people may use when using a search engine and try to get those search terms in the title, hyperlinks and first paragraph. Repeat the terms as often as you can without it becoming distracting to the message or just plain annoying. The goal with content is to make it engaging, relevant and timely. Having someone sign up for your RSS feed or bookmark your site is the ultimate victory.
