{"id":1621,"date":"2012-05-16T16:14:03","date_gmt":"2012-05-16T16:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/panda-penguin-california-lawyer-who-blogs-about-blogging\/"},"modified":"2020-10-30T20:48:59","modified_gmt":"2020-10-30T20:48:59","slug":"panda-penguin-california-lawyer-who-blogs-about-blogging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/panda-penguin-california-lawyer-who-blogs-about-blogging\/","title":{"rendered":"SEO for California lawyers – The Panda, The Penguin, and The California Lawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>SEO for California lawyers what an exciting topic. \u00a0 They taught us a lot of different subjects in law school, but SEO for California lawyers was definitely not one of them. \u00a0 And what the heck does SEO for California lawyers have to do with practicing law? \u00a0 As a California lawyer<\/a>, I spend most of my time driving around the greater Los Angeles freeway system going to California courts<\/a> and helping people solve problems with their traffic<\/a>, criminal<\/a>, and DUI<\/a> issues. \u00a0 \u00a0Over the last 12 years I have learned that one of my greatest skills is the ability to communicate with my clients in a language they can understand. \u00a0 My job as an attorney involves translating all the legal mumbo jumbo into English so that my clients understand their legal rights and options. \u00a0And then of course I have to translate my client’s goals back into legal mumbo jumbo so that the legal system will understand what my client actually wants.<\/p>\n

If you have ever been in a California courtroom for a criminal or traffic proceeding without a lawyer, you already know what I’m talking about. \u00a0 The system crawls along in slow motion until they call your case and then suddenly it moves at lightning speed. \u00a0The judge talks fast, and the bailiff has one hand on the handcuffs at all times. \u00a0 The District Attorney and Public Defender spend so much time in the courtroom, they are practically part of the furniture. \u00a0 Most of them look at the public like they are from another planet because they simply don’t speak the same language. \u00a0 The clerk in the cashier’s office can turn that $35 fine ordered by the judge into a $927 bill<\/a> due and payable immediately with the threat of a suspended license. \u00a0If you try to ask for an explanation, you are usually told you can pay in full now, pay more later, or get back in line for a few more hours to think about it some more. \u00a0 \u00a0And if you have ever tried reading a court docket or a printout from the California DMV<\/a>, you wonder if they accidentally gave you the document in html.<\/p>\n

So that brings me to the next important role as a translator. \u00a0 As a blogger and self admitted online marketing nerd, I am starting to pick up some useful skills in the arena of SEO for California lawyers. \u00a0 SEO for California lawyers includes link building, content generation, website design and development, social media marketing, analytics, keyword tracking, and all other sorts of fun stuff. \u00a0 \u00a0 I am well aware that while I have over 12 years of experience in the legal field, I’m a rookie in this game. \u00a0 The funny thing is that I once again find myself in the role of translator. \u00a0 By online marketing standards, I know nothing about SEO for California lawyers. \u00a0 But compared to many lawyers I know, I’m a miracle worker because I have unlocked the mystery of \u00a0how to make the phone ring. \u00a0 After years of falling for sales pitches from the snake oil salesmen who prey on lawyers looking to market online, I started kicking the tires and trying to do it myself. \u00a0So for all the other California lawyers<\/a> out there, here is my effort at translating the state of the online union about SEO for California lawyers.<\/p>\n

SEO for California lawyers and internet marketing in general comes down to one thing and that is getting on the first page of google<\/a>. \u00a0If you practice personal injury law in California, try doing a google search for “Los Angeles personal injury lawyer”. \u00a0 You will quickly notice there are 3,650,000 results for this search. \u00a0 If you have somehow managed to make it to the promised land of the first page, you are looking at a LOT of calls and clicks from potential clients. \u00a0So how do you get there? \u00a0 Well like most valuable properties, you can rent or you can own. \u00a0If you want instant action and you are willing to pay for it, you can purchase PPC or pay per click ads for your desired search terms and achieve first page ranking over night. \u00a0The only problem is that the rent is due every time someone clicks on your website. \u00a0Stop paying rent and your position disappears. \u00a0 The same holds true for the battle over local search and most other methods of achieving first page visibility, pay to play. \u00a0 The better option is long term ownership. \u00a0In the online world this is called “organic search”. \u00a0To achieve a top position in organic search you will need two things, a constant supply of fresh, relevant content, and incoming links.<\/p>\n

The online marketing people are reading this and saying “Duh, this isn’t a good article about SEO for California lawyers, this is basic information from SEO 101”, and the lawyers who are new to this arena are saying “what the heck did he just say?” \u00a0 So if you run a web design firm, go cold call some lawyers and quote crazy fees, but if you are a lawyer who is new to online marketing, read that last paragraph a few more times until it starts to sink in.<\/p>\n

So now you are ready to build a great presence online and you need to start cranking out some content relevant to your practice area. \u00a0You can do it any number of different ways such as a blog<\/a>, a website, a press release, an ezine, an email newsletter<\/a>, or a social media release<\/a>. \u00a0Choose the format that is most comfortable for you and start writing. \u00a0 Don’t hire a copywriter, don’t let an intern do it, don’t outsource it to some marketing firm, write it yourself. \u00a0 \u00a0 Just pick a topic that is relevant to your practice area and start writing about it in plain English. \u00a0 \u00a0Maybe talk about some recent case law that is changing the game in your practice area, or a recent victory for a client. \u00a0 Vent about the problems in the legal system in your practice area. \u00a0 Explain a new statute or some of the factual issues that you often confront in your cases.<\/p>\n

The key is to write it yourself. \u00a0 By doing this, you will be sharing your style and personality with your readers and potential clients. \u00a0 In the modern era, consumers are smart. \u00a0They recognize a sales pitch a mile away and ignore it. \u00a0 So paying someone to crank out advertisements for you is a waste of money. \u00a0 You need to provide useful information that people actually want to read. \u00a0 The crazy thing is that in 2012, google wants the same thing! \u00a0 To put you on the first page, google doesn’t want you to write like a computer, they want you to write like a person. \u00a0 Keyword stuffing and other blackhat SEO practices are out. \u00a0 SEO for California lawyers is no longer a mystery. \u00a0 SEO for California lawyers is now best performed by……..California lawyers.<\/p>\n

Back in the day when Al Gore invented the internet (sorry couldn’t help myself), SEO tricks worked great because they fooled the search algorithms into thinking your content was the best. \u00a0 So the SEO goons would compete to one up each other in a constant game of cat and mouse to get to the top of the listings. \u00a0 If you wanted good SEO for California lawyers, you needed to hire the right people to game the system. \u00a0 Thankfully that is now over. \u00a0 Google became the king of search over the last decade because they actually \u00a0incorporated the human element. \u00a0Google puts thousands of people on the payroll to watch for these things and to filter them out, moving the good content to the top, and pushing the automated crap to the bottom. \u00a0 Today, google is so good at this that the newest revisions to the algorithm (last year’s Panda<\/a> update and this year’s Penguin<\/a>) actually automate the process of filtering out automated content and rewarding content that is written by humans. \u00a0 So if you are looking for SEO for California lawyers, this is a golden opportunity. \u00a0You no longer need to pay someone an arm and a leg to create web content that gets attention. \u00a0Just write it yourself and let the Penguin and the Panda do their thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SEO for California lawyers what an exciting topic. \u00a0 They taught us a lot of different subjects in law school, but SEO for California lawyers was definitely not one of them. \u00a0 And what the heck does SEO for California lawyers have to do with practicing law? \u00a0 As a California lawyer, I spend most…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-web-design-and-seo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5583,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/5583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markagallagher.com\/socaldefenselawyers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}