Philadelphia businesses know there are endless amounts of e-commerce websites available, to the point where customers find it challenging to choose where they’d like to shop.  With the following e-commerce web design strategies, you’ll be able to get a leg up on the competition and understand which e-commerce strategies should be emulated.  The following are successful web design trends and web development strategies.

Useful (and Basic) e-Commerce Web Design Tips:  Philadelphia Web Development

1. Categorize your products and items properly, so customers can easily find what they’re looking for.  You’ll have to designate which categories and sub categories are appropriate so viewers are exposed to all site essentials and can efficiently navigate around.
2. Product descriptions are also necessary.  You’ll need to write clear and informative product descriptions, using SEO keywords when necessary for every product on your site.  Viewers like to know what it is they’re buying.
3. Keep it simple, keep it clear. Very clearly display all price related information next to products to maintain a level of trust with customers.  This means in addition to prices, you’ll need to prominently display discounts, special offers, shipping charges, or any other costs if they exist.
4. Make it easy for customers to pay. Your e-commerce website shopping cart should support as many payment options as are available, from PayPal, Credit Card, Google Checkout, etc so customers are provided with a variety of payment methods to accommodate the means of checkout they feel most secure with.
5. Security, assurance, confirmation. Keep in mind to only require the information necessary from customers so potential clients aren’t overwhelmed and lose focus.  Also, your customers will need a payment receipt or confirmation receipt after they’ve gone ahead and made a purchase, so remember to provide one.

Specific e-Commerce Web Design Tips:

Amazon.com’s success has come from much testing, retesting, and optimization, and remains the envy of many e-commerce marketers.  We can learn a thing or two from them and apply it to our own website in the process of web design and web development.  Several of these e-commerce web design trends don’t only look great, but they obviously work.

1. Offer your customers more then one picture to look at, preferably several that can be blown up, zoomed in, and viewed at many different angles.
2. Set up your ecommerce platform to offer comparison shopping.  This includes recommended products based upon consumer’s previous purchases, related items, or items “frequently bought together”.
3. Don’t underestimate the power of “big”.  Big is a popular web design trend, especially for e-commerce websites.  Modern, clear, and prominent designs are in—big logos, openly displayed coupons, and large images make large impressions.  This strategy also serves as a “call-to-action”.
4. Open source e-commerce platforms are easy to customize, convey professionalism, make navigation easy, and are easy to implement.  One e-commerce feature is “content sliders”, a very popular web design feature that displays a slideshow result of products/items for easy browsing and customer interaction.  Not only that, they serve as an easy way to manage and display content.  There are many customizable options available—choose one that best suits your product choices and page content.  Walmart, Borders, and Nordstrom make use of these.

Philadelphia businesses, explore your web design and web development options.  Incorporating the aforementioned e-commerce web designs is a sure way to improve user experience and gain a competitive advantage.  Learn more—discuss e-commerce options with a company that specializes in Philadelphia web design and Philadelphia web development.

• If possible, make sure to do a 301 redirect from the “www” version of your website to non “www” version or vise-versa.
• Use a tool like Google analytics to track visitors to your Corporate Blog.
• It is very important that the posts you write target industry related news with industry keywords. Also every post must have unique and quality content. Search engine bots are very sensitive to duplicate content and if you copy something, you will face difficulty in indexing.
• It is important to do as many posts as you can. Please make at least 4 posts each month.
• Please use keywords in the title of each Blog post.
• Please try to make keyword-rich posts on your Blog. Ideal keyword density is 2-7%.
• Ensure that each post has industry related tags.
• Please categorize your post according to service or product category name. It will be great if you can use keywords in Category name.
• Please add “industry news” & “industry trends” and regularly post unique industry news.
• Add “recent posts” and “top posts” on your Blog Navigation. It will help your visitors to find other post on your Blog and increase index rate of search engines.
• Arrange the older entries into monthly archives for easy access.
• Please add a “Tag cloud” on the blog navigation.
• Provide RSS feed subscription option for visitors.
• Allow visitors to subscribe to your blog through eMail.
• Comments are a good option to interaction with Blog visitors with your company. It’s also help to build relationship with other Blogger and proposed clients.
• Write a press release announcing corporate blog and post over free press release directories.
• Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
• Add the main website service page link on your Blog. This way your blog visitors can get to your main website and learn about your services.
• Please add Social Bookmarking links on the bottom of each Post, so that visitors can bookmark your post on there personal profiles.
• Please add a link to each post on your social media profile including FaceBook, Twitter & LinkedIn.
• Highlight your Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn profile with an image on the Blog so that visitors can follow you on these social profiles.
• Make sure there is an HTML sitemap on your Blog.
• Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
• Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your corporate blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.

We think any ecommerce store can track Google Product Search Traffic using two different methods. The first method is URL tagging. Google also recommends URL tagging for tracking Google Product Search Traffic. Erica Ronchetti explains about UTM URL tagging in details on another post in our Blog. The second option is using Google Analytics Filters to segment the Product search traffic.

UTM Tagging:

Google provides a URL Builder for tagging UTM tags. However, if you have a huge list of products and you already provide a feed to Google Base, you can ask your developer to add the following code on the ends of your URLs:

“?utm_source=google&utm_medium=Product_Search&utm_campaign=google_base” at the end of the URL if you already did not use “?”
For example:

http://www.boomtownig.com/sample-products.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=Product_Search&utm_campaign=google_base

If you already use a “?” in your URLs, please do not use “?” again just add the tags with “&“. For example, if you have URL like:

http://www.boomtownig.com/product.html?q=sample-product

Then Use the code like this:

http://www.boomtownig.com/product.html?q=sample-product&utm_source=google&utm_medium=Product_Search&utm_campaign=google_base

After the tagging is complete, please wait for one day, Google Analytics will begin showing the traffic from Google Product Search under Traffic Source> All Traffic Source as Google / Product_Search.

If you want to add the tags on a short list of URL’s and you upload a feed to Google Base Using MS-Excel, you can do UTM tagging by following these steps:

Download your Products feed and open it with MS- Excel.
Next insert one column next to your Product URL on the worksheet.
Write the following tracking code on the top cell of on the newly inserted cell:
“?utm_source=google&utm_medium=Product_Search&utm_campaign=google_base”. Please note there should not be any space in the start or end of the cell.

• Drag the cell up-to the last row of the product URL.
• Insert another column next to the URL tag column.
• Now use CONCATENATE (i.e. CONCATENATE(E2,F2)) formula of the MS-Excel to merge your URL with the URM tag.
• Copy the result of Merge cell into Notepad.
• Delete both the newly inserted columns.
• Again copy the data from notepad to the URL column.
• Save the file and upload again on Google Base.

Wow! You did add UTM tags on your entire URL and now you must a allow minimum of two days for Google analytics to begin tracking the data.  It will show the traffic from Google Product Search under Traffic Source> All Traffic Source as Google / Product_Search.

Google Analytic Filters:

A Google Analytic filter is a useful tool to track traffic from a particular directory on your website or traffic from a particular source. Because of this, Google Analytic Filter are also another good option that can be used to track traffic form Google Product search. Before starting to use this filter, you need to understand “what you are going to track” first.

If you search on Google with “Ceramic Orange Travel Coffee Mug”, the resulting Google Search will show the following URL:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1B3GGLL_enIN368IN368&q=Ceramic+Orange+Travel+Coffee+Mug

However, if you search specifically on Google Product search (Google Shopping) with “Ceramic Orange Travel Coffee Mug”, you will see the search result URL is:

http://www.google.com/products?q=Ceramic+Orange+Travel+Coffee+Mug&aq=f

Therefore, if you want to use Google Analytic Filters to track all organic traffic which comes from http://www.google.com/products? You can follow these steps: (Please note you are going to track only organic traffic and not the sponsored links on Google Product Search.)

• Login to Google analytic.
• Click on the Account Name on which you would like to track the traffic.
• Click on “Filter Manager” then “Add Filter”
• Name the filter on the given text box.
• Choose Custom filter > Advance Filter.
• Now select & add the following values:
• Field A -> Extract A Referral  google\.com/products
• Filed B – > Extract B Campaign Medium organic
• Campaign Source Product_Search

Filed A Required: choose yes
Filed B Required: choose yes
Override Output Field: Choose Yes
Case Sensitive: Choose No or yes as per server support.

• Now select and add the profile on which you would like to add the Filter and save the filter.

You have setup the filter. Now let try to understand why we choose above value so you can do use them as per your requirement.

• Field A will look for a referrer URL as google.com/products.
• Field B will limit the data from organic search. Remember Google Also show Adwords ads on product search result. This field is only mean to limit your traffic from organic result of Google Product Search.
• The Output to Constructor will help you show the data as “Google Product Search” on your Analytics referral results.

Again allow Google analytic two days to track your traffic. It will be shown the traffic from Google Product Search under Traffic Source> All Traffic Source as Product_Search / organic.

Do you know the current position of your company in the SERPS?  Do you know the position of your competitors?  How can you determine whether or not your competitors are using SEO or implementing SEO strategies on their website?  To find out if your competitor is doing SEO for their website, you can check the following:

• Current Ranking: Use Spy Foo, to find out if your competitor is ranked well on search engines with industry leading keywords in organic or paid advertisements.  If they are ranked with industry related keywords, they might be using SEO.
• Web Traffic Tracking System: If your competitors employ SEO, they will definitely use some measures to track web traffic. Try to view their HTML source code and identify if the website uses any effective web traffic tracking systems. Most reliable tracking systems add a tracking code just before the </body> tags. For example, your will find Google Analytics tracking code on the bottom of that page, just before the </body> tag.
• Page Title: Have a look on the HTML title of your competitor’s website. Try to determine whether or not they composed this text using industry related keywords. Are all the HTML titles unique throughout their website? If the answer is yes, then they might be doing SEO for their business.
• Meta Description & keywords: Most SEO practice includes effective Meta Description & keywords tag optimization. Are the Meta descriptions & keywords tags properly composed using industry related keywords?  Are the Meta descriptions & keywords tags unique through over the website?
• Robots Information: Try to find the robots.txt file on the root of the server. The ideal location of this file is www.example.com/robots.txt. The Meta tag syntax for the same is:
  <meta name=”robots” content=”robots-terms”>
  robots.txt.  “Robots” Meta tags are used to inform search engines which pages they should access and which should not. Good SEO practice includes effective robots optimization.
• 404 Error Page: Write “/qwerasdf.html” after the domain name in your browser address box and hit enter. If you see any Error pages then they might use a SEO service. Most SEO services include “404 error page” optimization.
• Internal Linking: Try to find out if the website has maximized internal linking using keywords. Do they use keywords for linked internal page? If so, then your competitor might use SEO.
• Back-Links: Looking at back-links will not help you to identify whether or not your competitor is doing SEO directly, but it’ll provide an idea as to how many back-links your competitors have. More links are better for SEO. To get an idea of numbers of Back-links, you might want to use Yahoo! Site Explorer.

As I mention above, SEO is complicated and includes more than 100 techniques, but these are some of the techniques used to identify whether or not a competitor is doing SEO for their website. To learn more, contact Boomtown Internet Group for a detailed competitor analysis.  For further details, you may contact Sue McCrossin at 888.454.3330 or by email at Sue.McCrossin@boomtownig.com.

This is was an important announcement because mobile devices are fast becoming a common thing in our life, and mobile handsets and smart phones are being used as shopping devices. Using a mobile store, customers can conveniently purchase whenever and wherever they want via a streamlined payment process.  In fact mobile commerce has been identified as a new retail channel called m-commerce, and Philadelphia Website Design firms will soon be asked to begin building compatible applications.

Magento’s website boasts the following: Welcome to the world’s first mobile commerce platform. With Magento mobile, you can easily create branded, native storefront applications that are deeply integrated with Magento’s market-leading eCommerce platform.

So why the excitement about mobile commerce apps?

Many industry experts predict that mobile is the next “frontier” for commerce. There are two ways that users interact with ecommerce sites on mobile devices:  mobile web (browser) apps and native mobile apps.  Mobile web apps involve using themes to optimize the store website so that it renders well on phones and mobile devices.  Native mobile apps allow users to engage more deeply with ecommerce sites on their mobile devices.   Some native mobile applications even allow a user to begin making a purchase, add things into their shopping basket, and finish the purchase from a mobile device. This is becoming an important trend in mobile applications especially since eBay announced that they project $1.5 billion in mobile sales this year.

However the current m-commerce technology is inadequate to meet retailer’s demands, and there is a lack of universal standards. Magento Mobile is one of the first attempts to meet retailer’s needs with native commerce apps for mobile devices, and the meet up with Philadelphia Website Design representatives helped to convey the features of the platform to developers.

Philadelphia website design representatives were quick to point out that native mobile applications are complicated to manage and expensive to build.  Magento’s new mobile native application works only for the iPhone now, but it features commerce, customizable themes that include background images and button colors, and integration with your existing ecommerce and merchandizing tools, at affordable prices.   And the Magento representative on hand indicated that an Android compatible version of Magento Mobile will soon be released.

What is Google Caffeine?
Google caffeine is Google’s new web indexing system, providing 50% fresher web results then the previous index, as well as the largest amount of web content ever offered to searchers.  You’ll now be able to find news stories, blogs, forums, tweets, videos, and relevant content with recent results given greater prominence.  You may find that web pages and other web media will appear much sooner after published.

Why Did Google Develop Caffeine?
Web content is no longer limited to web page form, it’s evolved to include videos, images, news, real-time updates, and other forms of media that all need to be taken into account, especially as web pages are displaying these features as well.  As web content blossoms both in diversity and volume, searchers expectations have changed.  They want fresh, relevant results and they want their recently published content to be found instantly.

How Does Caffeine Work?
Google’s old index was made up of several layers, some refreshed more frequently and quickly then others.  The main layer of index was updated every few weeks or so—creating a delay of when content was published and when it’d become available for searchers.  Caffeine updates Google’s search index globally and continually so information is fresher.  Caffeine tackles the growth of online information and presents it to searchers with greater comprehensive abilities, speed, and relevance.

What Does This Mean For Your Website?
Caffeine won’t have a direct impact on your rankings but you’ll certainly see changes.  To keep up with the ever evolving and growing web, your content and web pages will be searchable moments after being crawled.  This doesn’t necessarily mean that pages will get crawled on a more frequent schedule, it means that they’ll be displayed in search results more quickly.  Yes, competition for web rankings is going to get tough.  Why?  Because there’s a lot more content that’s going to be competing for top rankings, specifically older content facing fresh and recent content given priority by Caffeine.  Content is also going to be more frequently added to the index.

Philadelphia SEO Strategies:  Success With Google Caffeine.  Is Google Caffeine an opportunity or a possible threat for your web visibility?  While you’ll be facing more competition, Philadelphia Internet Marketing companies provide you with the opportunity to compete with websites that you were once unable to.

Philadelphia SEO  Strategies for Ranking Well With Google Caffeine:

• Philadelphia SEO expands and continually updates site content for better keyword targeting and relevance.
• Consult with a Philadelphia Internet Marketing specialist to effectively use Social Media to your advantage, as you’ll find these results integrated with Google’s regular display.
• It’s crucial that your Philadelphia SEO company monitor your competitors more closely, as their efforts will be taken into account by Google too.
• Long tail keywords are of greater importance.  Philadelphia SEO can re-evaluate current keywords and capture new keyword phrases for you.
• Of course, your web site should have a clean layout, structure, and optimized code.

If you’re worried about your Google rank, Philadelphia SEO companies and Philadelphia SEO specialists deliver value to online customers, and caffeine will do a better job of measuring and delivering that value.

Philadelphia SEO and Philadelphia Internet Marketing makes it possible for you to rank well with Google Caffeine, with strategies that produce content frequently and make good use of Social Media. While Caffeine won’t destroy your current rankings, you’ll find that everything will become a lot more competitive because of the greater amount of information fed into the index.  Philadelphia SEO and Philadelphia Internet Marketing know that while you face more competition, so do your competitors.  Targeted content and good use of social media outlets are more important then ever.  SEO requires regular site maintenance, fresh content, and link building strategies that are ongoing.  Find out more about what an Internet Marketing company in Philadelphia can do for your website rankings.  Contact a SEO expert for further details on Google Caffeine and what it means for your site.

Erica Ronchetti works for Boomtown Internet Group, a Philadelphia SEO company. Boomtown Internet Group is a Philadelphia Internet Marketing company whose services include Web Development & Internet Marketing.

Google today announced the completion of its new index algorithm called Caffeine. According to Google “Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it’s the largest collection of web content we’ve offered. Whether it’s a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.”  Read more about this here: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html

Many speculate that Google created this new algorithm to compete with Twitter’s growing search share. Twitter delivers real time results for very current news, raising searcher’s expectations about the timeliness of results. Google also said they created the new algorithm in response to the growth of Internet content and different media like video, images, news and real-time updates. With this new media, the average webpage is much more complex. One Google blogger said, “Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.”

Prior to Caffeine, Google indexed web pages every couple of weeks, analyzing the entire web before refreshing the index. The new Caffeine will analyze continuously update the index in small portions globally. As pages are found they will be immediately added to the index, no matter where it was published.

What this means to your website is that there may be a period of change in your rankings as Google results adjust to the new algorithm and also that the results you see when you search may not be the same as the results another person searching the same phrase will see at any given time. In addition, fresher content will probably be indexed above legacy pages in some cases, like when news is searched. Continue to make updates in blogs and social media, continue to add video and podcasts to your pages and video repositories on the web. You will be rewarded with better search rankings for your fresh content.

The following three easy steps will take an hour or two to complete, but will bring significant return on investment by raising your Google Map listing ranking.

Step 1 – Claim Your Listing: The first step in optimization is to claim your local business listing by going to https://www.google.com/local/add, and claiming or adding your listing. Next you’ll need to verify the listing either by having Google automatically call you at the phone number on the listing, or send you a postcard in the mail, so that you can enter the PIN code they provide for you either way. This is how Google verifies your location. When customizing your listing, try to provide as much information as possible, including pictures (perhaps of your location so customers can easily find you), videos, and coupons. It’s a good idea to add any appropriate certifications next to your name as well. Make sure you put your listing in five related categories, then click on the “add a category link” and add up to five more categories for your listing. If possible, you can also add your main product or service listing in the title and description fields of your map listing.

Step 2 – Sign Up for a Virtual Office in the Closest Major City: It is much easier to get listed for the city where your actual company has a mailing address, so if you want to be listed on the map listing for a big city closest to your actual company location, you may consider setting up a virtual office and phone number within the heart of that city to boost your relevance in the local map listings for that city. Make sure to add this city’s address (as well as all your other addresses) to the other search directories on this list:
• Yahoo Local, http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
• Bing Local, https://ssl.bing.com/listings/ListingCenter.aspx
• Superpages.com, http://www.superpages.com/about/new_chg_listing.html
• Yellowpages.com, http://listings.yellowpages.com/
• Best of the Web Local, http://local.botw.org/helpcenter/jumpstartproduct.aspx
• DexKnows, http://www.dexknows.com/info/faqSiteUser.asp (instructions are on this page)
• GetFave.com, http://www.markosweb.com/www/getfave.com/
• Citysquares, https://my.citysquares.com/search
• GenieKnows.com, http://www.genieknows.com/business/promote
• YellowBot, https://www.yellowbot.com/signin?yp_r=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yellowbot.com%2Fsubmit%2Fnewbusiness
• Kudzu, http://bizsuccess.kudzu.com/?p=384 (instructions are on this page),
Praized, http://praized.com/sessions/new
• InfoUSA, http://leads.infousa.com/Landing/UpdateListing.aspx?bas_session=S55920174527381&bas_vendor=83552
• Localeze, http://webapp.localeze.com/extranet/login.aspx
• UniversalBusinessListing.org, https://www.ubl.org/Signup.aspx
Wcities.com, http://corporate.wcities.com/contactus.html

Step 3 – Ask your Clients to Post a Review: Allowing customers to post a review is beneficial in that the number of reviews on Google maps is becoming more important to local rankings. In addition, people finding you on map listings are more likely to read your reviews before deciding to call you, so having a lot of positive reviews can help with your conversion of visitors to clients too. Ask all your clients to write you a review. You may even consider sending an email to past clients asking for the review. They will most likely be happy to do this for you.
Following these three relatively easy steps will result in greater visibility on Google Maps. It’s worth the time to get listed—Google will immediately provide your site with authority because you’ve established yourself as a real business, and appropriately rank you higher. Potential customers will find you—and you’ll benefit from the ROI because it’s absolutely free.

A: A fantastic customized search experience for searchers, and more web traffic and visibility for you, if you web design with Web 3.0 in mind.

Web 3.0, according to some Internet experts will allow you to do less and your browser to do more.  You’ll be able to search more specifically—your browser will then gather, analyze, and then present the data to you based on the detailed or narrow parameters of your search.  Web 3.0 has a greater understanding of all information present on the web, and can efficiently and more effectively deliver it.

When using search engines today, you still have to work with them or “guide” them to display the best search results—they still don’t fully “comprehend” what you are seeking.  Search engines scour the net for web pages that contain the keywords or phrases you’ve searched for.  Web 2.0 browsers can’t confirm to you that the page displayed is relevant to your query, it can only confirm a keyword match.  (For instance, if you’re searching for pictures of a jaguar, Google will display an almost even mix of cars and cats).  Web 3.0 will be able to understand context and deliver a more appropriate search results, along with a match for the keywords you’ve entered.

Let’s say for instance you want to go on a vacation, perhaps a cruise around the Mediterranean.  With Web 3.0, you’ll be able to type “Mediterranean cruise under $4,000” and receive a variety of results related to your query, beyond typical cruise results including restaurants, activities, ticket prices, and other suggestions.  Web 3.0 puts the entire Internet—and all contextually related information—at your searching fingertips.

Web 3.0:  What to Expect

Most Internet experts agree that Web 3.0 will possess the following general traits.

• An overall “rich” and “relevant” browsing experience.
• The possibility of a unique browsing experience, based on what you’ve previously browsed for—you could be entering the same keywords as someone else, but will receive different results based on previous queries and profiles.  (Think of Pandora, the music genome project.  Pandora relies on trial and error to provide individualized content and music selections based on previous likes and dislikes.  Web 3.0 may be similar to this, but perhaps more efficient.
• A tailored web experience based on browsing habits and individual tastes.
• The overall transformation of the web into a database of information, with content made available by non-browsing applications as well.
• Overall focus on usability:  search engines returning fewer and better results, with less spam and online scams.

What Will This Entail for Web Design?

We’re already communicating, publishing, shopping, and sharing more quickly and easily, as data, content, and people are far more accessible then ever before.  Web 3.0 will take that to the next level—it’ll match information exactly to where it’s needed.  Web designers will have to design with that new experience in mind.

Web Design With Web 3.0 in Mind:  The Future of Web Design

Test the source of all web pages for semantic richness—content should be readable by both humans and web applications.  The clearer your content, the easier time search engines and other applications will have indexing and then displaying those results to users.

Web design 3.0 means web design for mobile devices, such as iPhones, Blackberry, iPads, and other computing devices.  Test existing web pages for compliance with all computing devices to ensure all users to have accessibility to your content.  Web design should always take mobile devices into consideration for Web 3.0.

Have your web designer verify that all HTML web pages do not use outdated or ineffectual table tags and coding. In addition, verify that all content as free of errors for optimal search engine indexing and search.  This will ensure you are Web 3.0 ready.

By now, most web designers know that Flash and Search Engines aren’t compatible. Web design with web 3.0 in mind will avoid using flash for content-related purposes.  If you must use flash, do so only for accent purposes, if at all.  The future of flash-compatibility with Web 3.0, iPads, and other devices are unknown.

Web design for Web 3.0 should involve the customization of website templates. Creating the optimal look and feel for users and search engine entails optimizing a template that complies with the W3C, search engines, and provides a superior user experience.

Web design with SEO in mind. Your web designer should work hand-in-hand with a SEO specialist to ensure that your website will rank highly in the Search Engine Results Pages, providing you the visibility that you want.  Effective web design will achieve heavy traffic to your website, and web design combined with smart SEO will deliver the bottom-line results you want, even as the internet continues to change.

Google’s “Universal Search” doesn’t just display text and webpage content anymore, but now includes all relevant results for images, video, news, local results, and audio content as well.  Take advantage of this by creating and then optimizing these mediums—a high ranking video on YouTube will show up in results and drive traffic to your site.

If you do decide to explore Youtube, creating personable and informative videos is a great way to get in touch with clients, demonstrate your knowledge, and “connect” with your viewer.  It’s a fantastic way to guide viewers to your website and encourage them to pick up the phone and give you a call.

YouTube is a very effective promotional system and can build trust and connection between clientele and lawyers.  In 2008, approximately 770 million YouTube users searched for lawyer related queries. YouTube viewers and internet users prefer watching concise video clips as opposed to reading technical articles.  Creating simple and clear videos are a very useful marketing tool for lawyers and create a “bond” between individuals and clientele.  When creating online videos, be both professional in demeanor and warm.  A well crafted video can increase the conversion rate for your website and allow clients to make a positive final decision regarding the services you offer.  Your YouTube video can be placed both on your website and on YouTube, Google Video, and other free video host websites.

Creating packages, books, CD’s, multimedia (such as an eBook) for your clients. Writing, promoting, and providing free E-books, reports, consumer guides, and other useful information for your potential clients is a terrific promotion technique.  It may be time consuming, but an informative and personable monthly e-newsletter is generally highly appreciated by clients.  You can take the opportunity to provide industry updates, your reaction to current events, new services you offer, tips, and anything else you imagine would be beneficial.  Your customers and prospects will trust you and your law firm.

Create information packages you can physically send to your clients. Whether this includes free books, reports, consumer guides, CDs, DVDs, and so on, giving your potential clients this free information lets your content do your marketing for you.  And the best part is it’ll save you valuable time if you mail information packages instead of conducting time-consuming consultations and phone calls.

Is your website SEO friendly?  Here’s our Checklist for Making Lawyer Websites Popular With Search Engines.
Read the next blog post on Lawyer SEO/Internet Marketing Strategies…