The first step to improving your legal marketing is to create an online presence through a website. This website will describe exactly what your law firm does and how it can help people who need specific legal counsel. But while many legal marketing efforts stop here, this is only the beginning. The real work now begins. You must drive traffic to your website and convert visitors into clients.

There is no shortage of ways to drive traffic to your website. And that is actually the problem, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. The result is that you end up postponing the task. When you do this nothing gets accomplished and your efforts at pursuing law firm internet marketing grinds to a stop.

You can drive traffic to your website using proven methods like:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)

• Video Marketing

• Web 2.0

Once you’ve got traffic, you can convert visitors into clients by using:

• Blogging

• Social Media

Part One: Traffic Generation

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization, usually referred to by its initials SEO, is all about getting a high ranking for a popular keyword in the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The higher your website ranks in a search engine index, the more people it will attract. Ultimate success is being the first listing on page one out of thousands or millions of websites indexed for your chosen keyword.

If 1000 people a day search for that keyword, your site will see more than 400 of them if you’re number one, and only about 100 if you’re number two. If you’re ranked number 10, only 30 people out of every 1000 people searching for that keyword will visit your legal website. So the aim of the game is to be ranked number one on page one.

Although this may seem like a monumental, if not impossible task, there are only two things you have to do to achieve top ranking. The first is to improve "on-page" SEO. The second is to improve "off-page" SEO. 10 percent of your success will come from "on-page" factors on your website. 90 percent of it will come from "off-page" factors. The way to win this 90 percent is to get a lot of links from high ranking pages. Essentially, links are like votes, or endorsements, from other websites. This practice is called "link-building."

Video Marketing

The next most important thing you can do to improve your marketing strategy is to learn and use video marketing. This is because videos online offer two huge benefits: traffic and conversion.

Since Google loves videos, as do all the other major search engines, your video will get indexed quickly for the keyword and it will also rank highly. Someone doing a search in a browser using your keyword is much more likely to find you if you post a video rather than write an article. Moreover, placing your video on a highly trafficked website like YouTube, which, incidentally, is owned by Google, will also drive traffic from that website.

Another benefit videos offer is that people would rather watch and listen than read. Consequently, they are more likely to comprehend the message and follow the suggestions. People are much more responsive to your marketing message if it is delivered by video rather than by text and they are much more likely to act on a video message.

Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is about placing relevant content and links on places like MySpace and Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, and Hubpages and Squidoo. Combine Web 2.0 with video marketing, social bookmarking, and RSS feeds, and you will optimize the quantity of your site. While traditional SEO delivers high page ranking in months, Web 2.0 marketing delivers it in weeks, sometimes days.

Part Two: Conversion

Once you’ve got traffic coming to your website, your next step in legal marketing is to convert visitors into clients. You can do this through blogging and email marketing.

Blogging

Blogging is about sharing your opinion and giving people an opportunity to know, like, and trust you. When you are perceived as knowledgeable and approachable, visitors become clients. You’ll be perceived as real, human, and trustworthy. Blog about what you know. For instance, a bankruptcy attorney can talk about unemployment, a tax attorney can talk about money management, and an injury attorney can write about accidents.