AI Law Guy

Apple Ipad Apps for Lawyers

Apple, IPad for Lawyers /

I have been using my new Ipad 2.0 and its a really amazing device that EVERY lawyer should have.  There are so many things that can make your law firm more productive and I will be reviewing some of the top apps here over the next few weeks. One of the first Ipad APPS you should get is DROPBOX – www.dropbox.com You can sign up for a free Dropbox account and it puts a folder on your computer and the free app  on your iPad as well. Anything you throw in Dropbox at your computer shows up on your iPad and vice versa. Install Dropbox on all your computers and all your mobile devices to have a virtual filing cabinet everywhere you go. What’s better, the starter 2 GB of storage is free. If you have significant file needs, you can get more space for a fee (e.g., 50 GB for $100/yr, 100 GB for $200/yr). Dropbox has about 4 million users which means that app developers often include Dropbox compatibility as quickly as possible.

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Why Creating City Specific Sites is a Good Idea

City Sites, Legal Web Design /

Having more then one site for your law firm is becoming much more common these days.   Many times you will have a main site and then a blog using a different domain name. Creating mini sites or wordpress blogs around different practice areas or the different geographic locations the law firm practices in is a good idea for multiple reasons. #1-   You Can Focus on Specific Keywords – With one website, it can be harder to get ranked organically at the search engines for many different keyword combination’s.  Sure you can get top 10 rankings for your main city and state, but what about the other 10-15 areas that people might do searches in? So having a city specific site that has content focused on your legal practice area and that geographic location, can make it easier to get ranked on those keywords such as Edmonds Personal Injury, if you were focusing on that city for your personal injury practice. #2-   You Can Capture Clients better by showing them Your Near Them geographically – Creating a site site around your location means that your header logo will include your geographic location and your content will have your city name in it multiple times.  So this will instantly let a new visitor know that your highly focused on that location and that you can help  them. #3-   You Can Build Your own Legal Site Network – Getting links to your site is a valuable thing and if you have your own group of sites, you can interlink them strategically.  These sites can then assist your main site. The bottom line is that you only want to create sites that make sense and have some kind of unique content. You also want to do them right and have them look good, be functional and most importantly be listed high in the search engine rankings for the terms your focusing on.

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Getting Rid of Spam in Your Contact Forms

Contact Forms, Web Site Tips, Wordpress Plugins /

If you have a contact form on your lawyer web site or legal blog, then odds are you have gotten your share of spam contact form emails. If you dont have proper CAPTCHA Security, then you might get 1000’s of spammer contact form emails, which are really irritating. You can beat the spammers easily by making sure you have the latest wordpress contact form plugin with captcha security. WHAT IS CAPTCHA? A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t: The term CAPTCHA (for Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart) was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas Hopper and John Langford of Carnegie Mellon University. So the bottom line is that you want to have the Captcha security feature on your contact form. If you have a WordPress site, then it can be much easier to set this feature up.  Most of the contact form plugins today have some sort of Captcha security you can setup that forces the user who filles out the form, to have to put in the 4 digit code before hitting submit. CONTACT FORM 7 – Download it here Contact Form 7 can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on. This is a pretty simple form and one that Ive used in the past but sometimes I have found that if you dont update the plugin or the Captcha plugin, spam can sometimes still get through or an error message will come up on the captcha portion of the form. SO I would now recommend using the contact form plugin below, the Fast Secure Contact Form. FAST SECURE CONTACT FORM – Download it here This plugin allows a webmaster to easily create and add contact forms to WordPress. The contact form will let the user send emails to a site’s admin. An administration panel is present, where the webmaster can create and preview unlimited forms. Features a super easy admin panel, multi-form feature, autoresponder, no templates to mess with, and an option to redirect visitors to any URL after the message is sent. Includes CAPTCHA and Akismet support to block all common spammer tactics. Spam is no longer a problem. This is a VERY GOOD contact form solution.  You can create multiple forms, you can add them to pages and to your sidebar easily as a widget.   You can setup a confirmation page that the user is taken to after filling out the form, this is a good idea for multiple reasons. Once this is setup, you can then setup a Google performance goal in Google analytics or a conversion in Google adwords. If your site is not in WordPress, then there are other ways to add the Captcha security feature.  Don’t let the spammers win! Upgrade your site today, and as long as you have this form, you wont get many spams via the contact form, its a great solution. CAPTCHA: Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically A CAPTCHA is a program that protects websites against bots by generating and grading tests that humans can pass but current computer programs cannot. For example, humans can read distorted text as the one shown below, but current computer programs can’t:

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Latest Legal Web Site Creation

New Legal Web Design /

We have created a number of new web sites for lawyers in the last few months. More lawyers are seeing the value of creating city or practice area specific wordpress sites/blogs.   The key with these sites like all sites, is that you need to keep them updated and add fresh relevant content on an ongoing basis.  Then getting links from other sites is also important. If you do everything right, then your going to come up on the first page of the Google organic search listings. NEW SITE – Redmond Washington Personal Injury Lawyer – Already ranked in the top 3 at Google for most KW’s New Geographic specific website created in WordPress featuring pages of content focused on different areas of personal injury, with keyword focus on Redmond personal injury and accident terms. This site was created for a Washington personal injury lawyer who focuses on most areas within Washington.  The reason you would create a site for a specific area like this, is because you are trying to focus on specific sets of keywords. Its hard to get ranked for every possible keyword combination at Google and with only one site, you can only get ranked for so many different keywords. So if your main site is coming up in the top 5 for most Washington personal injury and Seattle personal injury terms, that is great and the main goal. Yet there are many other locations within Washington, so if your a person injured in REDMOND Washington, then you might type in “Redmond Personal Injury Lawyer”, or “Redmond accident attorney”, if you did that, you would fnd this site here at #1 or #2.  This is after only a month or two. This is typical of the sites we do, they get ranked very high in the search engines and its not by accident! We know what we are doing and we do it all! We create the sites, we do the SEO marketing, we do the pay per click adwords marketing, we create Twitter accounts and get you followers, we create Blogs and actually blog, we make sure your site is also in full mobile format for not only Iphones but Ipads, we are on the cutting edge and If you would like us to assist your law firm, contact us now.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-04-03

Twitter /

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-03-27: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-03-20: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2011-03… http://bit.ly/graqms # Busy Busy… So much going on right now. Helping an Indiana law firm create a network of city sites for their personal injury practice, fun! # Just finished creating a series of 15 sites for a Washington law firm, most of them are already coming up for highly competitive words, fun! # Legal SEO Tip of the day…. Get other sites to link to your site, its best if they are in your area of law and are older trusted sites. # Does your law firm have its site in a mobile version? So if someone on an Iphone visits the site, they can easily read it and navigate. NO? #

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Attorneys Reserve Your Domain Names Now

General Search Engine News /

Its a wise idea to make sure you have all possible combinations of your firms practice and location covered in your domain names.  Obviously you want to have your firm name as your domain name if possible, but you also want to make sure to cover other variations of your name (Smith Law/Smith Group/Chicago Smith Law Group), also might not be a bad idea to pick up the other domain name extensions such as .net, .org and even maybe .biz in some cases. Also its a good idea to cover your bases and get names that are related to your geographic location and practice area. So if your a Chicago Tax Lawyer, you would want to try and find any available combinations starting with Chicago Tax Lawyer.com, if thats taken, which it is, then try Tax Lawyers Chicago or Tax Law Illinois.com, get creative.   The reason you want to grab these types of domain names, is that you should think of creating a site or a blog around those names. Creating a narrow focus can be a benefit because the goal is to get organic SEO rankings for terms that you might not be achieveing on your main site, because your focus is to broad.   So if your a personal injury lawyer, creating a site specifically on just auto accidents can be a good idea, as long as you have unique content and evne better, create a blog around and create content just focused on the auto accidents part of your practice.   This then could result in you having multiple sites come up in the search engines or you can come up now for keywords you cant get ranked on with your main site. BUY NEW LEGAL DOMAIN NAMES It might be time to revisit your domain name stategy and bulk up your domain name arsenal.  If your a firm that has more then 5 practice areas and more then one location, you should have at least 20 domain names in your portfolio, if not more.   Get them now because they are only $10 per year, even less if you join the Godaddy Domain discount club (Then they are $7.49 each).

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Lawyers List Your Site in Legal Directories

Legal Directory, Legal Internet Marketing /

One of the many things you have to do in order to get your site well ranked at the search engines is to get links from other well established sites, especially legal sites that are focused on your legal practice area such as DUI, Personal Injury, Tax Law, etc. Links from other sites are one of the many things that make up how your site is indexed by Google and a pretty important one.  Google looks at links to your sites like Votes for your site, the more votes you get and more importantly the quality of those votes, can go a long way in determining where your site gets ranked in the search engines. Getting links from legal directories can be one way to obtain a quality backlink to your site, especially if the site your getting the link from is an older well established site and the real key is that the link is a FOLLOW link, versus a NO Follow link. A No Follow link will tell Google to basically not count the link. Another factor to consider when listing with a legal directory, is where your placed and how much traffic that directory gets per month.   Yet even if you just get 10 visitors a month from the directory, it can be worth it, especially combined with the fact you can also get a quality link to your site. There are many different legal directories out there. I use a variety of different legal directories for my clients. Some of the ones I use are: –   Law Firm Directory – List your legal site for as low as $20 per month or $250 for the year. Premium listings are $995 for the year. –  Personal Injury Directory – List your personal injury or accident lawyer site here. –  Washlaw Legal Directory – Free .EDU Link from lawyer directory. –  DUI Lawyer Directory – Get your DUI Attorney site listed. Contact us if you need assistance with your law firms Internet marketing or legal directory needs.

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