Friday, November 13, 2009

Calliope Media - Full Service Attorney Marketing

As a search engine optimization specialist who has a number of clients in the legal industry, I generally do not recommend other direct or indirect competitors, but I have been working recently with Calliope Media, a full service Attorney marketing firm and I have seen very impressive results from their all around work. If you are an attorney, law firm, or legal related company and are in need of anything from web design, to lead generation to pay per click management, I could not recommend a company more strongly.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Public Invitation to become a part of Legaldocs.com Free Legal Directory

Hi, I would like to invite you to add your website/clients websites to the legaldocs.com free attorney directory: Legaldocs.com, one of the most popular legal forms websites on the web, now has a free legal directory which offers a complete listing with links for attorneys and law firms.

The Legaldocs.com Legal Directory is currently in beta development and as a result has few listings. The site however is a very popular site (#1 in Google for Legal Documents among many other top listings) and we expect the directory to be beneficial both in terms of link popularity and eventually direct traffic.

We request that you provide a return link to legaldocs.com, but it is not a requirement.

The main directory page is here:
http://www.legaldocs.com/legaldir/listingIndex.aspx

You can sign up to add your listing here:
http://www.legaldocs.com/login.aspx?ReturnUrl=%2flegaldir%2fAddListing.aspx

Sincerely,
Chris Powell
Legaldocs.com
cpowell@legaldocs.com

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Search Engine OptimizationTargeting Country Specific Results

Chris Powell Discusses Search Engine Optimization for International Markets Targeting Country Specific Results

Country Specific Results: Part One


Country Specific Results: Part Two

Optimizing for Competitive Localized Markets

The following video discusses search engine optimization for competitive localized markets like real estate seo, lawyer seo and mortgage seo.

Part 1


Part 2

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Blog Catalog Verification

I recently submitted this blog to Blogcatalog.com and one of the requirements for submission is verifying your blog by providing a link back to Blogcatalog.com. The link I was asked to add to this blog is the following:

http://www.blogcatalog.com/directory/internet/seo

To the reviewer, thanks for stopping by. I am hopeful you will add my blog to the catalog.

Thanks
Chris

How to Show up in search engines for multiple country specific results

In my work with international clients, particularly in Europe, I am often asked what is the best strategy to ensure that a client shows up in country specific results in search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN for multiple countries. For example, a client based in Germany with a .de domain may also consider Austria or Switzerland attractive markets, and they may wish to show up in the country specific results under google.de, google.at, and google.ch. Most people would tell you that you have to choose just one. However, there are a number of strategies that one might employ to break into the results for more than one of these.

For those of you that are not familiar with how country specific results work, the general rule is that to show up let's say in Google.de for Germany results only, your site either needs to be physically hosted on a German server or have a .de extension. This only allows for the site to be listed in results for one country however.

One solution to the dilemma above would be to use a country specific domain from one country but host the site on a server physically located in another. In the example above we may choose to use a .de domain while hosting the site physically on a server based in Austria. This would cover two markets, but we would still be without results for Switzerland. To solve this, one solution, although not perfect, would be to set of a sub domain and host the sub domain on a server in Switzerland. This will allow pages of the site to be listed in the country specific results for all three target countries.

You may be dealing with some additional problem here however. First, you are complicating your hosting situation. This is just a matter of management. If set up correctly this can be avoided, but it would take a competent IT team. Another potential issue would be duplicate content. You would want to have unique content at the sub domain as opposed to a duplicate of the main folder. If done correctly, in this instance, you would have all three target countries covered and your business could essentially target all three through country specific searches.

Monday, December 3, 2007

Finding a Good SEO Consultant

Finding effective SEO consulting is not an easy task. There are thousands of companies that claim to provide quality SEO services, but most do little more than make some minor on-site changes to your title tags and meta code which ultimately will have little impact on your ranking in a competitive search environment.

When looking for an Internet marketing consultant it is important to research the company that you are going to hire. When hiring an SEO consultant, take the following into consideration:

1. Be sure that your potential SEO consultant is very straight forward about what they are going to do for you, how they are going to do it, and how much it will cost. SEO is not rocket science, and if an SEO company is acting like their strategies are top secret they probably have something to hide.

2. Be sure your potential SEO consultant has a history of success with other projects including their own? If you request such, they should be able to provide you with contacts from other successful projects. If they cannot you are likely wasting your money.

3. It is helpful if your SEO consultant has experience in your industry? This is not essential as SEO is fairly broad across the all industries. However, someone that has had success in a non competitive local market may not find that same success in a competitive general market. You may also find it advantageous in terms of keyword analysis to work with someone that speaks your language in terms of business.

4. Be aware of companies that offer black hat tactics such as IP cloaking, tricky redirects, etc. I have found that most companies that use such tactics have very little idea of what they are doing and are just as likely to get your site banned by search engines as they are to get you to the top.

5. Web designers are not SEO consultants. Many web design companies try to moonlight in SEO. I have found that in almost all cases where I have seen this, they do a very poor job. When it comes to something as important as the ranking of yoru website, stick with a professional.

This post is sponsored by DiscountClick