I have been testing an interesting service designed to increase my exposure to the media. The service is called ProfNet and it offers an interesting twist on the traditional method of seeking publicity through press releases. Journalists and free lance writers use Profnet to find experts to use for quotes and background in news stories and features. I am one of those experts. The journalists log in to Profnet and posts inquiries (and example post might read – "I am looking for an expert to discuss company policy on employees who cash out 401(k) plans early"). For a monthly membership, I receive three or four of these leads by email four times a day. If one of these leads relates to something I can speak to, I respond directly to the journalist by email to set up an interview. At sign up, I was able to choose several areas that relate to my areas of knowledge, so I do not get leads about subjects where I have no understanding. So far, I have been interviewed by PayPal radio and I have an interview with a free lancer who writes a bi-monthly column for the New York Times. I have only been testing this service for a little over a month, but so far, so good. [tags] Profnet, PR Leads, Dan Janal, public relations, publicity, Paypal Radio [/tags]
Filed under Public Relations by 
I have been publishing a lot of posts on my law blogs – Social Security Disability blog and Georgia Bankruptcy blog and I have been encouraging my lawyer colleagues to get on the blog bandwagon.
First, I can say with some certainty that I have become more knowledgeble about these two areas of law because of the time I spend posting to my blogs. I have subscribed via my Google home page to a number of blogs in these subject areas and I am constantly exposed to new developments, and more particularly practical ideas.
Interestingly, when I discuss blogging with other lawyers, I generally get a blank stare. Right now there are probably less than 10 active lawyer bloggers who regularly post – and that is in the entire State of Georgia.
I have even offered several of my lawyer colleagues a log-in to one of my legal blogs so they can post without worrying about the administration – a few have shown mild interest but no one has actually done anything.
Anyway, I recently came across a very erudite blogger named Paul Stamatiou from Georgia Tech whose blog contains several insightful posts about blog usability and blog traffic – especially his comments about SEO for blogging. Its well worth a read and a subscription to Paul's blog.
[tags] Paul Stamatiou, blog SEO, blog usability, technorati, lawyers and blogging [/tags]
Filed under Blogging by
Most of the Internet marketing gurus correctly teach that the starting point for any on-line venture is something called keyword research. What exactly is keyword research and how do you do it?
"Keyword research" in its purest form means that you can discover the actual search terms used by paying customers who are in the market for goods and services similar to what you offer.
Your ability to obtain this information is quite amazing, if you think about it. Television and radio advertisers spend millions of dollars a year on "interruption" marketing, with trial and error as the only means to test the effectiveness of their message and copy.
On the Internet, by contrast, your customers announce their entry into the marketplace by typing in a search term and you can review the terms they are using.
When I was in law school and in subsequent continuing legal education courses, the science of jury selection and jury dynamics was considered a key component of success as a trial lawyer. In fact, most good trial lawyers take the time to interview jurors after the verdict to find out what they did right and what they did wrong. Often the points that the lawyer saw as being key were basically ignored by the jury, while a seemingly minor point led the jury to decide one way or the other.
Keyword research is like having the right to convene a daily meeting during the course of trial to interview the jurors so that trial tactics can be changed during the course of the trial. It is a huge advantage and its results can be applied to any form of advertising.
There are many tools that one can use to conduct keyword research and I would be interested to hear more about the tools that you use. Here is a non-exclusive list:
2. Wordtracker (paid)
3. Keyword Discovery (paid)
4. Shawn Pringle's tools (free)
5. Google Adwords keyword tool (free)
6. Good Keywords (free)
All of these tools are designed to help you discover the terms that your customers are using on a daily basis. For example, if you sell umbrellas online, Overture reports that there were over 55,000 searches for the term "umbrella" last month. By contrast, there were 6400 searches for "rain gear" and 3650 searches for "parasol." If I was building a web site to sell umbrellas, this data would be helpful in many ways – domain name selection, page optimization ,pay per click choices, etc.
Even more importantly, keyword research keeps you from interjecting your personal preferences into business decisions. You may have grown up in a household where the term "parasol" was used. Does it matter what term you would enter into the search engine? No. It matters what your customers would use.
I remember performing keyword research for a legal site I was building. At that time, the term "Atlanta bankruptcy attorney" had more traffic that did "Atlanta bankruptcy lawyer." Why? I don't know and I don't care. I built my site around the term "Atlanta Bankruptcy Attorney" and after optimizing the site and obtaining quality incoming links, within a few months it was the number one free result in Google.
What tools do you use for keyword research and how has it changed your business?
–Jonathan
Filed under Keyword research, Search engine optimization by
Robert Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice is an essential business resource. If you do not have a copy, I strongly recommend that you get one. I saw Dr. Cialdini speak at a conference a few years ago, and, unlike the presentations of most speakers, his message was so eye opening that I try to apply his teachings on a daily basis. Influence is one of those books that you will read and re-read on a regular basis.
Basically, the message of Influence is that human behavior (such as buying behavior) is subject to various triggers. Dr. Cialdini is a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona and a few years ago he set out to study the psychology of influence. As part of his research, Dr. Cialdini traveled around the country applying for and working at various sales jobs – everything from telemarketing, in-store sales, and door to door. His goal was to identify the reasons people comply with requests in business settings.
Dr. Cialdini describes how you can use (ethically) this applied psychology to frame your message to customers and potential customers.
I would strongly advise that you visit Dr. Cialdini's web site – Inside Influence and subscribe to his free email newsletter.
The current issue describes talks about one of the principles of influence called "social proof" – that is, people tend to follow what they perceive to be the most popular course of action. He describes an experiment conducted at a national park that was attempting to discourage visitors from taking pieces of petrified wood.
In one experiment, Dr. Cialdini and his associates posted signs at one exit signifying disapproval about visitors taking the petrified wood. In another exit location, they posted signs saying "Many past visitors have removed the petrified wood from the park, changing the natural state of the Petrified Forest."
Cialdini and his students discovered that theft of petrified wood actually increased in the area where the second sign was posted. Why? Because the second sign suggested that a large number of people were engaging in the behavior of stealing petrified wood thus giving "social proof" to that (undesirable behavior).
This is an interesting example of how the wrong approach to a business request can result in actions opposite from those desired. How many of your marketing messages fail this test.
Another quick example of how this principle of influence works. Earlier this week, my associate sat through a legal marketing tele-seminar for bankruptcy lawyers. One of the speaker's main points was to encourage bankruptcy lawyers to use terms like "taking the bankruptcy route" or "choosing bankruptcy protection" instead of "filing for bankruptcy." He also compared bankruptcy marketing to weight loss marketing, where the most effective marketing messages put the blame for obesity on restaurants (for serving large portions), for sodas (for putting too much sugar in the drinks), etc. In other words, never put the blame on the consumer.
The point here is that you need to know the psychological triggers that cause your customers to take actions and build those triggers into your web sites and all of your marketing messages. Robert Cialdini's book Influence: Science and Practice is a must read and an essential tool in your marketing arsenal.
Filed under Marketing resources by
I need to link my site with the appropriate companies in order to get traffic. How do I go about doing this?
Louise – Dating website for the disabled
Louise, thanks for your question. Here are my thoughts:
Firstly, I think you need to recognize that linking is only part of the traffic puzzle. In a very basic sense, linking works because most of the search engines consider a site's popularity as an indicia of its importance. This same theory works in the legal arena and in academia. If a particular law case or a particular scientific paper is recognized as a primary source for ideas, then lots of other documents will reference that case or paper.
For this reason, the term "news" is associated with CNN, "click here" with Adobe, etc.
In my experience, simply exchanging reciprocal links does not really do much. If you think about it, a web site with 500 reciprocal links is not inherently important or relevant – most likely the 500 links are the result of the efforts of a diligent link exchanger.
To put it another way, the search engines look for artificial reciprocal link exchange practices and filter out those links.
That being said, it has been my experience that reciprocal link exchange does have some value – it will get you indexed by the big 3 search engines and it appears that it will get you up to a PR 4 on Google.
So, I still engage in some reciprocal or three way link exchange for that purpose.
If you do engage in link exchange, make sure to select three or four phrases that will be used as your link text. For example, when I referenced your site above, I called it Dating Website for the Disabled as opposed to www.soulfulencounters.com. Why? Because you want to associate your site with a search term. No one types in "soulful encounters" in the Google search box. But hopefully there is traffic on terms related to the subject matter of your site. "Dating website for the disabled" is an example of link text. Ultimately your goal is to associate several search phrases with your web site. That will improve the chances that your site will appear when those search phrases are entered into the search engine.
Search phrase (also known as "key word") research is really the starting point of your Internet business. You may have the best product or service in the world, but if no one is looking for it, your business will not succeed. So, before you spend any more time and money on promoting your business, you need to discover whether there is a market for your service and, if so, what terms are potential customers using to search for your service. Those search phrases ought to be your "link text."
I personally use three or four different link text phrases for linking purposes. The goal is to make my linking campaign look natural. In the real world, it is unlikely that every searcher will use the same three or four word phrase. You need to vary it a bit.
Five years ago, a simple link exchange may have done more, but now, the search engine algorighms see them for what they are – an attempt by web site owners and SEO companies to artificially inflate web site positioning. So, what do you do?
What I like right now are article exchanges. For example, if you wrote an article about dating issues related to heart patients, I could post that article as a link on the page of my Social Security disability resource site addressing how to win a cardiac impairment Social Security disability case.
Even better, I might add a paragraph or two to your article focusing on the disability component and now each of us has relevant, unique content. More importantly, this content is natural and logical and it very well may respond specifically to a search engine query on the subject. And what do the search engines want more than anything – relevant search results, not ads and search engine spam.
So, the bottom line is that if you want to use linking to build page rank and to generate paying customers to your web site, you need to find article exchange partners who will work with you in posting content.
Jonathan
[tags] linking, page rank [/tags]
Filed under Content pages, Linking strategies, Search engine optimization by
