You finally got your law firm Web site online and waited for the new clients to come rolling in. But for some reason it just didn’t happen that way. Well, all of our marketing efforts are long term projects, with the possible exception of TV, radio and newspaper ads. Your marketing efforts will hopefully still pay off for years in the future. But the Internet is all about immediate gratification, right? So this week, I’ll have a bit of an online symposium on getting noticed by the search engines.

The first article is The ABCs of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) by two of my favorite people Sharon D. Nelson and John Simek of Sensei Enterprises, Inc. SEO is one of those terms that intimidates a lot of people. Sharon and John do a great job of explaining the basics in understandable language. Everyone should read this article even if you don’t have time to start your SEO project this week. And, remember that you don’t have to try all of these techniques. Trying just a few simple ones will no doubt boast your search engine ranking. You may want to print or save this article for later reference as it is hosted at the Canadian Bar’s PracticeLink and may slip into the "password required" area soon.

The Technology eReport from the American Bar Association General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division this month featured two articles on online marketing.

Internet Marketing 101 for Attorneys: How to Reach Prospective Clients Through Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing by lawyer-turned-Internet-entrepreneur Jeff Lantz covers many topics such a PPC (pay per click), the importance of anchor text and questions to ask a SEO company before agreeing to pay for their services. Since Jeff heads a company that does SEO, among other Internet marketing services, I appreciate his sharing of knowledge. This is a quite good in-depth piece. I know how anchor text works to optimize your site’s ranking by search engines. People link to my blog by its name. Do a Google search for "law practice tips" with or without the quotes and see the results.

Marketing Your General Practice Firm Online is an article by Jennifer Black. "Although legal–related businesses are one of the top five topics consumers search for on the Internet every single day, the trick to connecting with these potential customers, involves a successful online marketing strategy that helps improve the ways these local firms can be found online," she states in this feature. I found this interesting. In the early days of law firm websites, the lawyers noticed that they initially got a lot of out-of-state clients who used the Internet because they didn’t have access to local resources like phone directories. But now people use Web searches for local resources because they find the results more easily and quickly than with a phone directory. Want to start the betting pool on the eventual death of the Yellow Pages in print?

These three articles can expand your understanding of how the Internet can bring your clients–if you have a Website. But let’s not forget the basics either. Have a unique and understandable domain name for your law firm website. Then make sure it is included on your stationery, firm brochures and the e-mail signature blocks of everyone in the firm. You might even have a sign in your waiting area "Visit us on the Web at xxx." Update your content regularly and if the domain name is short enough, include it in your Yellow Pages ad, as long as you still have one.

Courtney Kennaday and I have just published "See You Later, at the Aggregators!" for our column Sites for Sore Eyes that appears regularly in the ABA GP Solo Division Technology eReport.

Despite the huge initial embrace of RSS newsfeeds and newsreaders from the technology early adopters, many lawyers and other Net users have shied away from fully embracing the RSS concept, at least intentionally. So this month Courtney and I decided to outline all the different forms of news aggregators, from those that will download all of the feeds you want into a inbox and save them until you have time to review them to the simple idea of customizing a personal news page so that you can visit it when you have the time.

So if you really don’t understand RSS feeds or news aggregators, this article is for you. But even those who use an aggregator now may want to read this to learn of the newest options that are now available. Hopefully more court opinions will be available via RSS feeds, like the Oklahoma appellate court opinions (and other states we mention in the article.) As I have noted before the effect of court RSS feeds is just like free electronic advance sheets.

There are literally tons of books published on increasing your productivity and improving your time management skills. There are numerous classes, blogs, (I noted 100 of them not long ago.) websites, coaches and other resources to give advice in this area. 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily is a quick treatment of much of the advice you would learn from these other resources. You can’t try all of these at once or you’d overdose on productivity. But you can pick three or four that you willing to try and save the link for future reference.

I think all-on-a-page news aggregators are pretty slick and I’ve featured several of them already this year. Law.alltop.com is a really nice example of combining many newsfeeds from blogs and law-related news sources. The great thing here is you can hover over any headline and see all or a large part of the linked item. This preview lets you decide whether you want to click for the entire item or not. This is very cool and law firm web designers should take note. Law was not the first subject of an Alltop treatment. The Alltop site shows you the varied collections that have already been created.

We’re still getting quite a few visits to our Oklahoma Bar Law Practice aggregator, with tips from the practice management advisors, and its three companion aggregators. There are more advanced methods with more customization and features. But, for now, it seems like many lawyers like the idea of a simple "click, click" for their news and information break as noted in this article.

Here’s an idea our family is trying this summer. Hopefully it will help us with scheduling and hopefully we will continue after the summer. We are setting up Google Calendars and sharing them so that you view all in one combined view. There are many other options for online calendars, like CalendarHub or 30 Boxes. But we all have GMail accounts, so the choice was easy. It’s not like this is a new idea. But we think the time has come to have one place we can check online for the family plans, trips, sports camps, times Dad will be staying out of town for work and Norman, OK events we want to attend.

The setup was simple (as are most things Google) so we will see how it goes. I also think it gives my 6th grade son a little training in a life skill. No matter what career he has, I can’t imagine that it won’t involve keeping a calendar on a computer, a hand device or perhaps a holographic display. And, of course, it is my favorite price – free.

The ironic thing is that earlier this week I was promoting Erik Mazzone’s Law Practice Matters blog and when I visited his blog I noticed that his latest post was this one saying that you must only have one calendar. Well, I’m not saying he is wrong. Maybe this is just the exception to the rule. There will certainly be some duplicate entry required with a few family matters that have to go on the office calendar because they impact it. But I like the idea of keeping business things on the "work" calendar and when I get contacted with some personal invitation I can have the family calendar available in seconds. It beats the present system, which is bothering my spouse with an inquiry.

60 Sites in 60 Minutes was the closing highlight of ABA TECHSHOW. As always, the presenters were entertaining, the sites were informative and there were some minor technical problems. J Tom Mighell, Reid Trautz and Craig Ball did the honors this year. I did a mini-review earlier on my blog. But now the complete list of 60 Sites from ABA TECHSHOW 2008 has been posted online. Check it out.

And, as a bonus, let me note something I meant to discuss here earlier, but didn’t — The 101 Most Useful Websites as determined by the Telegraph in Great Britain. I didn’t cross check for overlap, but that should at least be 150 sites or so to keep you busy for a while.

UPDATE: While this program has already taken place, you can still enjoy the entire program online through the OBA-CLE’s online offerings. Just click this link to see about purchasing the online program. We enjoyed doing the program and have gotten some very good feedback on it.

Tom Mighell, chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2008, will join me for a two hour webinar on Advanced Internet Research on May 13, 2008 at 10:00 a.m. CST. Tom and I have done several versions of this program over the years. We will explain different types of search tools available and we will also discuss search strategies. Of course, we will have some relatively new cutting edge material. Here’s a good way to become a power Internet researcher quickly. Anyone can enroll in this online CLE program,  not just Oklahoma lawyers. To enroll or to get more specific information, click here.

Erik Mazzone was recently hired by the North Carolina Bar Association as the Director of their newly-established Center for Practice Management. Now he has started the blog, Law Practice Matters. I got to meet Erik at ABA TECHSHOW. He wanted to compile a few weeks worth of blog posts before announcing his blog to the world, but time’s up now, Erik. He is no stranger to law office technology and I think you will find his posts insightful and interesting. So visit his blog and check out his first month’s worth of posting and then subscribe to his feed or add it to your Favorites as you choose.

Just as there are many self-help books on the shelves of book stores, there are a growing number of blogs dedicated to doing things better. I think you will enjoy looking through this list of 100 Productivity and Lifehack Blogs compiled by a website promoting online college degrees. I can’t really completely agree with their rankings as they omitted Lifehacker from the most popular and stuck it at the end of the list. It is typically ranked in the top (or second) spot in this category and as one of the five most popular blogs on the entire Internet. (It’s also my personal favorite.) But one can find some really great productivity resources here like 43 Folders, Dumb Little Man and Zen Habits.

People often encourage audience participation by saying "Ask any question. There is no such thing as a dumb question!" Experience, of course, sometimes tells us otherwise. J

But it is true that if one asks the question, they do need an answer. We all have questions that we need answered. We can search for answers or ask friends or trusted colleagues. In the Internet age, there are now online communities of interest where people share information and answer each other’s questions. Some of these online groups are huge, like slashdot.org. Others are smaller. A group may consist of an electronic mailing list rather than an Internet site. It may even as informal as saving the last e-mail to "the group" and using Reply All when you want to ask a question or convery information to "the group."

These online communities face challenges. Internet trolls try to disrupt the group. New users pay no attention to the exisiting culture and quickly break either written or unwritten rules. In larger groups, long-term users become frustrated by newbies asking the same questions over and over again. People argue or do veer way off-topic.

My particular frustration is people who ask a question of the group in a detailed e-mail when they could easily find the answer themselves in less time than it takes to type the e-mail. Why not get the answer now? And what if the person who first answers your question is wrong? We don’t want just any answer. We want the right answer. I have concluded that the explanation must be that many people don’t know how to find the answer online. Well, I can help with that! And so, submitted for your approval, is this tutorial, "I Just Need an Answer to a Simple Question."