Law Firm Web Marketing Newsletter

Web Press Releases Improve Search Engine Rankings
& Make You a Recognized Expert

by Suuzen Ty Anderson, Esq.

Online press releases offer a fast, low-cost shortcut to achieving higher website search engine rankings. Issuing them repeatedly can establish you with the press as a quotable legal expert. They work whether you're an experienced specialist or a brand-new graduate with no clients. Here's how to use them.

Step 1: Find a newly-reported event or trend you can use as an excuse
            to give legal advice to the ordinary consumer or business person.

First, watch print newspapers, Google News, and Yahoo News for a just-reported event or trend you can use as a springboard to offer general legal advice to the public. Reporters are paid to write stories that sell newspapers, which means your advice should appeal to the widest possible audience. If you are a specialist in an esoteric field, work from your knowledge in the broader legal discipline that includes your practice area. New attorneys: this is your chance to put your law-school training to practical use.

Step 2: Write a 1-2 page release giving your advice and tying it to the news.

A celebrity divorce can be used as a stepping stone to give divorce legal advice to ordinary couples. A fictional episode of a popular TV series can support legal advice on injury risks, fraud, or handling business disputes. A change of seasons can merit advice about tax strategies. Stock upticks and downticks can be fodder for advice on buying or selling a business, or protecting oneself from stock broker fraud. A story about the rising costs of car repairs could be an excuse to remind consumers about Lemon Law protections.

You simply restate the news briefly and say that it illustrates, demonstrates, serves as notice, should be a wake-up call, or other tie-in language "for [business owners] [employers] [landlords] [car-buyers] [families] [etc.]."
For example:

Title: Separated Spouses Should Avoid Copying Spoiled and Selfish

Los Angeles, Jan. 1, 2005 "The public break-up battle between Spoiled Moviestar and Selfish Teeveestar yesterday illustrates why separated spouses should interact through a neutral third person or their lawyers when dividing property," says California divorce lawyer Jacy B. Esquire.

The two celebrities, during a "friendly" meeting to discuss divvying up their automobile collection, began taking out their frustrations by raining blows on each other's favorite cars with a piece of garden statuary (her) and a golf club (him). By the time the police arrived, the estimated auto body damage was over $200,000.

Esquire says, "A good way to divide personal property in a divorce is for you and your spouse to each make two lists. One ranks your expensive possessions, and the other your sentimental possessions, from most favorite to least. Your lawyers then spend an hour or so alternating choices on the "expensive" lists and then on the "sentimental" lists until everything is divided. No hard feelings, no property damage, no arrests." [add two more paragraphs of advice; keep tying it back to the news]

A list of simple, no-fireworks ways to divide property is on Esquire's website at www.esquiredivorcelaw.com/divide-property.htm.

For more information, contact Jacy B. Esquire at (888) 555-1212 or email esquire@www.esquiredivorcelaw.com.

About Jacy B. Esquire
Jacy B. Esquire is a certified family law specialist practicing in Abagado, California. [two-line background, contact info block here]

(See PRWeb.com for a good press release template and tips for release-writing.)

Timeliness is crucial, so in this case, the enemy of "good" is "better." You have a greater chance of publication if you send a good release on the day the story first appears rather than send a better-written release on the day after.

Step 3: Pay $119 to PR Web/EMediaWire

After you write the release, go to http://www.prwebdirect.com/catalog.php and pay PR Web/EMediawire $119 to distribute and archive it that day.

PRWeb/EMediaWire will immediately distribute your release by automatic "RSS feed" to subscribing reporters at newspapers and magazines all over the United States. If any of them publish your release online, or quote you in an online story written from your release, there is a good chance they will also reprint the link to your website.

PRWeb/EMediaWire will also send your release to all major search engines, where it will show up in the searchable "news" sections in about three days. Google will move your release into its main "web" section in about thirty days.

PRWeb.com will then archive your release on its site, making it permanently available to search engines and the press.

Step 4: Enjoy search engine rankings improvement & reputation as expert

Your search engine rankings depend in substantial part on how many popular sites link to your website. Links from the media have the greatest ability of all "inbound " links to improve your search engine rankings; next in line are links from popular resources such as PRWeb.com.

So long as your site has "search engine friendly" programming, the link to your website from your release archived in the well-known PRWeb.com will help improve your search engine rankings across the board. However, if any online news media reprints your release or writes a story based on your release and includes a link to your website, your search engine rankings will improve even more. So long as the news story remains available to search engines (i.e., is not moved into a subscriber-only access area), your rankings will stay up. The more permanent links you can obtain from online newspapers and magazines, the higher your website rankings will be.

If you send out a release every month, and even a few of these are reprinted or rewritten as stories in online newspapers or magazines, you will begin to gain name recognition among reporters covering popular culture or business. With enough releases, multiple reporters will come to see you as a dependable commentator who can be called upon to "translate" events into legal advice for their readers. Being frequently quoted in the press will enhance your professional reputation and make it easier for you to obtain good clients.

That’s it for this issue of Law Firm Web Marketing Techniques. I'm Suuzen Anderson. Thank you for joining me.

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