Arizona Insurance Subrogation Lawyers - Belknap & Sittu PC

Subrogation Lawyers Website

Congrats to Belknap & Sittu PC on the release of their new website: www.azsubrogationlawyers.com

The firm focuses on insurance subrogation. Released just a few weeks ago, the site is already a fixture on the Google search engine results page (SERP) for Arizona Subrogation searches.

Did You Know??? Partner Doug Belknap is a diehard fan of his alma mater: The University of Tennessee Volunteers.

Phoenix Legal Networking Event

Phoenix Legal Networking Event

I attended the Phoenix Legal Networking Event this past Thursday. The 50 attorneys that attended were treated to a fantastic presentation by Stephen Fairley of the Rainmaker Institute. The presentation centered on a proven way to increase the number of referrals for your practice. Besides the fantastic presentation, I was able to connect with a number of my clients who attended: including Dick Bredemann, Geoffery Fish, Howard Snader, Michael Zdancewicz, and John Gilbert.

Get Paul Deloughery Out of Jail

Help Paul Deloughery Give to the MDA

Scottsdale Estate Planning Lawyer, Paul Deloughery needs your help getting out of jail. Paul is participating in the Get out of Jail annual fundraiser for the MDA. You can contribute directly by clicking here.

Bill Bishop Featured in Attorney at Law Magazine

Bill Bishop -Lawyer Featured on Cover
Congrats to Bill Bishop on having his firm featured in the September Issue of Attorney at Law Magazine. Bill Bishop is a successful Arizona family lawyer and is truly the star of the issue. Bill Bishop is on the cover, his firm is featured in an article, and I also featured his family law website and testimonial on my back cover advertisement.

As always, I wrote an article on online marketing for the magazine. This month I tackled the importance of inbound linking. You can read my article below or you can read the online version of the magazine by clicking here. The website from another family law client, Davis Limited was also featured having won design of the Month in July.


Inbound Links: Driving Traffic — and Clients — to Your Website

You have a website — or I certainly hope you do. It has a great, eye-catching design. The copy is right on, telling potential clients about what your law firm does and, most important, what you can do for the potential client. Carefully researched keywords, selected by a search engine marketing professional, are woven into every page..

All of these factors help people find your website. Now you can sit back while the phone calls and e-mails pour in, right?

Well, not yet. There is one more thing to do, and it’s the single most important factor in getting your website noticed by search engines.

Inbound links make a critical difference. An inbound link is a link from another website to yours. While all inbound links have value, some have more value than others. Before I get into that, though, look at what Google’s Webmaster Central has to say about inbound links:
In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

That means the time you spend by requesting a link from other sites — especially sites from sources you and others trust — is time well spent. A link from a bar association, a community organization or a local business group are like votes of confidence in the value of your website.

What are the best links? The best links to your website are the ones your competitor can’t get, according to Joe Leyba, a search optimization consultant at FindLaw. Examples are links from your alumni associations, a non-profit where you did pro bono work or the Little League team you sponsored.

Those links give your website exclusivity and set it apart from other websites from similar law firms.

How is link value ranked? Google has a complex algorithm called PageRank that ranks individual pages within a website. The numbers are similar to those on the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes. In other words, a 6 rank is twice as good as a 5. Each of a website’s pages is ranked separately and may be different.

What does this mean? The link to your site carries the PageRank value of the page it came from. (PageRank is not to be confused with where your site is on a Search Engine Results Page — SERP.)

Is the link relevant? As a general rule, you will want links from websites from highly reliable, trustworthy websites. You also want those sites to be relevant to your law firm. A link from a furniture store in North Carolina is not as valuable to your Scottsdale law firm as a link from the Arizona bar association.

Search engines are looking for answers. The search engines gain their credibility and popularity from guiding web users to the answers they are looking for. If your website has the information they are looking for PLUS the vote of confidence from relevant outside websites, they will suggest your site to the user.

Beware people selling links. Of course, because links are so important to search results, there are people ready and willing to sell links. Those links are almost always of little value — if they have any value at all. These link-selling operations are often called “link farms,” and like other farms, they tend to produce a lot of, well, “manure.” They certainly don’t have exclusivity, often do not have relevance and rarely have the page value that you want in a link. Trading links is also of little help and, indeed, can hurt your website.

If you have questions about inbound links or any topic about search engine marketing, you are always welcome to call me. I represent FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business. We develop websites for lawyers and for no one else.

Mind Reading: Brought to you by Google

Today, Google began rolling out its new instant search function. What may be a welcome change for many, may also have unintended implications for others. Will it change the way consumers find businesses online, or will Google Instant make them find you more efficiently? Let’s examine what Google Instant really means for online searching.

Google Instant is the latest in a long line of googley products that is intent on increasing productivity and creating more efficient search results. So how is it different than before you ask? Well, Google instant search will show your search results live…right as you type. Think of it like a giant status update as you type, showing the latest and greatest stream of search results for every extra letter you type. No need to scroll. No need to hit enter. As one google executive put it “It’s search before you type”. By amalgamating your behavior and pulling information from other search queries, Google Instant can offer results that it believes to be the most relevant to your search right on the go. No wading through pages of useless information. Just the results that are relevant.

So this sounds great, but many will ask what the downside could be? For most searchs it will show the most relevant results for finding what you want. However, many factors could influence consumer behavior in choosing what Google presents is actually “relevant”. For instance, most of the top 3-5 organic search results, along with the placement of Ads on Google Adwords, will fill your screen. Some have already noted, however, that it seems the new Google Instant favors those Pay Per Click (PPC) Ads, rather than organic searches. This largely depends upon the search query as tangible products may have more competition via Ebay, Amazon, and other retailers. There is also a debate amongst the internet gurus as to the effect on long tail keywords. Some say that long tail keywords will now be even MORE important, as Google will begin to show suggested long tail keywords as you type. Others argue that long tail keyword relevancy may go the way of the dinosaur, as consumers may invariably choose the first search result that vaguely resembles what they are looking for.

So who is the real winner? You and I. The overall search experience just evolved into something that was unfathomable just a few years ago. Results will change based on consumer behavior, giving you personalized search results every time you search. No two searches will be the same. Yet, not everyone will be happy with the change.

From an internet lawyer standpoint, some may use Google Instant as fodder in their challenge of Google’s monopoly on paid search results. Between the lawsuits involving Google Buzz, as well as concerns with Google’s lack of candor in respecting its users privacy, many may switch back to Yahoo or Bing. Others may choose to switch Instant search “off”, while some many continue to use Google Instant as their default option as it provides them with optimized, real time, and relevant search results. Time will tell how this changes things, but in the meantime searching on the internet just got a lot more interesting.

Is the I-Pad Good For Lawyers??

I-Pad for Lawyers

..After reading a recent BLOG post by Arizona Business attorney Aaron Kelly, it certainly seems like a great idea. The article is a must read for any lawyer thinking about adding an Apple i-Pad to their practice. You can find the article on Aaron's fantastic BLOG: http://www.kellylawblog.com/ and can be read here. I-Pad For Lawyers Article by Aaron Kelly

Getting Started with BLOGGER - Google's Free BLOG Product

How to Setup a Google BLOG for your Law Firm

Blogging is definitely catching on in the AZ legal community. Earlier this year I wrote an article for Attorney at Law Magazine titled "Should an Attorney or Law Firm BLOG" in which I laid out a rationale for Blogging and recommended that you may want to start with the free and easy to use BLOGGER BLOG platform. BLOGGER is a Google product and is stupidly easy to use even for the techno neophyte. In fact you can be Blogging in less than 10 minutes. Here is how to do it.

1. Go to any Google BLOG like this one http://www.azlawyermarketing.com/ and click on the 'Create BLOG' button on the upper right of the page.

2. This will take you to a screen that asks you to either sign into your Google/gmail account or create one. Signing up is a simple process - but make sure you save your password.

3. Once your done with that it will ask for a BLOG title. This is important because this will be the first thing people see when they get to your BLOG. Mine is Alex Morris: Arizona Attorney Marketing Consultant in Scottsdale and Phoenix. Make sure that you utilize practice and geographic keywords in your title as it will also serve as the Title Tag of your BLOG. - an important consideration for search engine optimization.

4. Pick a URL. For this you may want to reference my article on choosing a domain name. The difference here is that I recommend that you use the word "BLOG' in your title. *Its important to note that when you first sign up the URL will have .blogspot.com on the end. For $10 dollars a year you can and should change this to a custom URL of your choosing. Therefore, since you will be changing the URL anyways - don't spend much time here, racking your brain for the perfect URL address.

5. Pick a Template. One drawback to Google BLOG is the paucity of template design options. At first there is like 6 to choose from. Choose one and move on - The templates are like dresses, you can change them at any time. In addition, Google just added an easy to use design editor which will allow you to change colors and layouts.

6. Now you are ready to post! However, I recommend that you knock out some administrative issues first.

- Comments: Turn on Comment Moderation or Disallow Comments completely. As an attorney, you don't want to run the risk of a spammer or irate former client to post bad comments on your BLOG! So go to the 'Settings' Tab, click on Comments and click the box that says enable comment moderation. This will prompt you to enter an email address where all comments will first go for your approval.

- BLOG Description: This appears underneath the BLOG title and should be used to describe the purpose of the BLOG in greater detail. This is important since it will always be on the first page of your BLOG and visible to every reader. (Posts are sequential and will move down the page as you post more). It is also important to include keywords as the content of the description is also important in terms of search engine optimization. *To add a BLOG description go to the settings tab, click on 'basic' and fill out the 'Description' Box.

- Publish to a Custom Domain: At this point you have an active BLOG. The only problem is that the URL contains that bulky .blogpost.com nomenclature. Ugh!! So for $10 a year I recommend that we change that to a custom domain of your choosing. To do this - go to the 'Settings' tab, then the 'Publishing' tab. Here you will see "Switch to a Custom Domain" option. Follow that link. Here you will be asked to enter in a custom URL. (*Dont add the www) Once finished, Google will check to see if its available. If so you can have it and you will proceed to check out and enter your credit card info. If the URL is not available try another one. After you check out you have a new domain, but it wont show up right away. In my experience it usually takes 10 minutes for the new domain to work. In the meantime, use the Blogspot address to get there.

-Adding Labels and Changing your Layout: This refers to the layout of your BLOG- and the page elements that are to the right or left of your content. Google calls them 'Gadgets' but are also commonly referred to as Widgets. When your BLOG is released there are three Gadgets listed: Followers, Post Archive and, About Me. You can remove a Gadget, add a Gadget or change the order of the Gadgets. This is pure personal preference but I usually recommend adding at least one Gadget called- 'labels'. This is important in that the Labels Page Element allows you to organize your posts. To add the 'labels' Gadget or any Gadget go to the 'design' tab and click on 'Add a Gadget'. Here you will see a number of cool gadgets that can spruce up your BLOG. Besides 'labels' I also recommend adding a 'link list' - as you will be able to prominently link to your main site from here. I normally recommend moving down the 'Followers' label in the beginning since you will have very few followers when you start. You also should edit the "About Me " Widget - adding a picture and a description of the firm.

BLOG Posting
Once the above is done, you won't need to mess with it again. The priority now is for you to crank out BLOG posts. This is very easy with BLOGGER. To get back to your BLOG and post, simply enter the URL of your BLOG and sign in with your new Google Password you got in step one. From the dashboard, you can edit an old post or add a new one. Similar to Microsoft Word, the BLOG posting tool is very easy to use and intuitive. The only item you should be aware of is how to link from your BLOG post.


Adding a Link From Your BLOG Post:
One advantage of Blogging is that it can create some great linking opportunities to your website(s), particularly if it helps improve the reader's experience. For example if you are doing a post on pressure ulcers - it may be useful to link to the page on your website that has even more information on decubitis ulcers. To do this, have your website URL open in another window. Click on the specific page you want to link to and copy the URL of the internal page. Within your BLOG post, highlight the phrase you want to link, in my example Pressure Ulcers, and click on the link button above the posting window. Paste the URL and press submit link. You have now just built a link! But dont get carried away with linking. Too many links and you risk diluting the link value of the page and/or it make look spammy to the search engines. One per post is a good rule of thumb.


There is more to cover but these are the basics. Good Luck and happy Blogging!

You Write a Legal Blog, but Are You a Reader?

The last thing any of us need is more complication. What I’m going to explain now is something that makes your life better. It sounds complicated, but it’s not.

If you write a blog, I wonder if you read blogs? That’s what you are asking your readers to do – why not do it yourself?

You’ve heard that you can “subscribe to” or “follow” a blog. Let’s discuss.

Remember that blogs are updated frequently and contain current, breaking news, often from a personal POV. That’s why Google loves them. Let’s say you find a blog like Arizona Bankruptcy Blog. You think “I’d like to stay abreast of what he publishes.”

Your options are:

• Set a to-do list reminder to periodically go to http://www.arizonabankruptcyblog.info/ (face it: you won’t do it).
• Subscribe, and use an RSS Feed Reader. I will explain how.

Following and subscribing are the same thing. I want the news I want, and I want it brought to me. Don’t ask me go find it. That’s what your Reader does – working silently and in the background, it checks your subscriptions and brings you the news you have subscribed to. It’s that simple.

Two Reader alternatives (among many):

1. Use Google Reader. Sign in. Click on “add a subscription” and paste in the URL of a blog. Reader will automatically pull in any new posts, using the magic of RSS. Then check Google Reader every 3 days or so. The news will always be there, waiting for you.
2. Use Outlook. In your mailbox you should see a folder entitled “RSS Feeds.” Right-click on it and select “Add Feed” and paste in the blog URL. Note: Outlook is great for this, but can be a little more picky to deal with. You need to use the URL of the blog's RSS feed.

Pick an option, above, and subscribe to this blog, or any blog. Findlaw has several fine legal blogs. The Arizona legal community has many fine blogs. Your Reader will do the heavy lifting for you. So dive in!

How to Make a Link Open in a New Window

Making a Link Open in a New Window in Blogger

This is an advanced Nugget from Craig Brooksby. When you build a link, you may want to have the link open in a new window, versus leaving your site entirely. Here is how you do that.


If you want to make a link open in a new browser, click on the "Edit Html" tab above the posting window. Then add Target="_blank" exactly after the url . Here is what the code would look like:

In the new Blogger, when you create a hyperlink, there is a field for target. Just type _blank into that field. On the old BLOGGER platform you have to add the code manually as I have done above.

All browsers, nowadays, are tabbed. If you are browsing, and want to open a page in a new tab, Ctrl+click does it.