South Florida Web Marketing Blog

Guidelines for Florida Lawyer and Law Firm Websites

Approved by The Standing Committee on Advertising
(January 1, 2010)

Effective July 1, 2010, lawyer and law firm websites must comply with the general lawyer advertising requirements set forth in Rule 4-7.2, Rules Regulating The Florida Bar. Although websites must comply with these requirements, they are not required to be filed with The Florida Bar for review. Rule 4-7.8(f), Rules Regulating The Florida Bar. The Florida Bar Board of Governors has adopted a policy that The Florida Bar will not accept voluntary filings of the entire contents of a lawyer or law firm website, although staff of the Ethics and Advertising Department will respond to specific questions involving a specific phrase or image to be included on a website. To make such an inquiry, please call the Ethics and Advertising Department at (800) 235-8619.

Click here for the Guidelines for Lawyer and Law Firm Websites

Additional information:

Lawyer Regulations

Lawyer advertising and business solicitation are strictly regulated by The Florida Bar. Lawyer advertising can provide crucial information about legal rights and increases access to lawyers for the public. Visit this link for more information:  Advertising Regulation

Guidelines for social networking sites

Guidelines for video sharing sites

Examples of complying and noncomplying ads

Quick Reference Checklist – Websites

Quick Reference Checklist – Direct E-mail Ads

Quick Reference Checklist – Other Internet Ads

The Handbook on Lawyer Advertising and SolicitationThe handbook has been updated to include the most recent amendments to the lawyer advertising rules, including changes to Rule 4-7.6 on computer accessed communications (effective January 1, 2010) and changes to other lawyer advertising rules from the 2008 Master Rules filing (effective February 1, 2010). The quick reference checklists have been updated to include these amendments as well. To obtain the full handbook, please download both the handbook
and the examples of complying and noncomplying ads.

The Florida Bar
651 E. Jefferson Street
Tallahassee, FL 32399-2300
(850) 561-5600

I received this e-mail notice about the upcoming changes concerning Yahoo and Microsoft Search Alliance.

=================

Dear Advertiser,

Yahoo! and Microsoft have now received regulatory clearance to form a search alliance. This is a significant milestone and an exciting first step in our combined effort to help you reach even more customers with greater ease and efficiency.

What’s Ahead
There will be no immediate changes to your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. Both companies are committed to making this transition as seamless and beneficial to you as possible. Our aim is a high quality transition of advertisers and partners in at least the U.S. prior to the 2010 holiday season. However, we may wait until 2011 if we determine this will be more effective. Approximately three months in advance, we’ll begin providing you with detailed information about what to expect and how we will assist you.

How the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance Will Benefit You
Once implemented, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance will enable you to:

Reach more customers.

Save valuable time and effort.

Benefit from rapid innovation.

We appreciate your business and look forward to bringing the benefits of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance to you. In the meantime, please refer to the resources below:

» Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance website |    » Yahoo! Transition Center

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

1. comScore custom data, December 2009
2. comScore qSearch December, 2009

Link building is a process that never ends. You may want to spend as much time as you can looking for opportunities to place a link on other websites to yours.

There are many ways to conduct link building, But be warned – there are the right ways and wrongs ways to build incoming links.

1. The best way to build links is to hand submit to the main search engines,  directories and other websites willing to exchange links. This is the easiest way and it can take time, but the links can be well worth it.
2. Create an XML files for the major Search Engines to get all your web pages submitted at one time – this works very well. The XML file is a common formatted file that can be submitted via a ping or you can set up an account for each Search Engine to submit to.
3. Start your own Blog and supply your own content – if your blog is configured correctly it will drive more traffic to your website.  Search Engines do enjoy fresh content and other websites may  link to your articles – creating the type of links you want.
4. Commenting on Blogs and Forums with a link in your signature file is another nice way to garner incoming links – if the blog or forum  does not block with a rel=”no follow” for their links
5. Writing articles and posting on many of the free article distribution websites is an excellent way to build incoming links, be sure you include your website link in the article.
6. Of course th Social Networks are very good to use, but caution needs to be made not posting a lot of spammy posts, twitter, Facebook and Myspace are the larger audience sites
7. Press Releases are very effective. The major issue is being careful on how it is written and which service you use to post it. I would look at other press releases for similar subjects to get an idea of the layout before writing one.
8. I guess the latest in incoming link marketing is Video. YouTube is the big video content provider, but there are many new ones popping up. Create your video and be sure to ad a link back to your website when posting.

Places to avoid:

1. Avoid Link farms – they seem easy to use and post, but this has a double edge cut, first the search engines dislike link farms – so it could just lower your ranking being on those sites. The other cut – is that you just signed yourself up to a ton of spam. Your e-mail address will be on every marketing list from here to China.
2. Guest books use to be a big attraction – like 10 years ago, but became a bullseye for every automated bot to post drugs to porn. Avoid them – they will not do much for you.
3. Google does not like paid listings with other websites – although I find that quite hypocritical, because Google offers Adwords which is a paid listing on theirs. Although some paid listings work fine on other sites – so just use caution and good judgment.
4. If you have a Social Network Account – avoid spamming you friends and people that are following you – your followers will leave – no one likes getting spammed.
5. Avoid automated linking building software that will post your site everywhere.  It will hurt your rankings. Search engines like seeing a slow progressive building approach, not suddenly having 2000 incoming links – big red flag.

Check each site before posting or consider before placing your good name on a website. This part of web marketing is getting abit more complicated each month with the changes to the Main Search Engines.

Market Your Web Site Wisely…

Other websites for more information:

131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies – http://searchenginewatch.com/2160301

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity – http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml

Are you the type of business person that likes getting phone calls from your website?

Do you get worried when the calls stop? You should.

I have clients call me all the time when their business slows down.  I normally check the Web Analytics to see if the traffic decreased and if there were any economic changes that could affect their visitor traffic. I talk with my clients to see when this started then try to piece together a picture of what is going on and create a plan to get that traffic back.

I notice that several things need to be in place:

1. Have your phone number visible on the website – normally in the header.
2. Be sure to have a contact form on your website to send e-mailed requests.
3. Do not place your e-mail address on the web apge unless you want to have your e-mail address harvested by the giant spam machines out there.
4. Are you adding new content on a regular basis? – You need to keep your website up to date.
5. Is your web hosting working properly? Does your website ever go down and how often? Did you have web site monitoring in place?
6. Do you have call to actions in place? Like asking people to call or contact you for that special you posted?

These are but a few ideas – but you need to look  over your website on a regular basis and keep checking your web analytics.

A message from Yahoo

Dear Advertiser,

On February 16, 2010, our advertiser Master Terms and Conditions and Program Terms will be modified to reflect recent changes to our products and services. We encourage you to review the new version at http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/advertising/mtcprogramterms/, as your continued use of Yahoo! advertising products on and after February 16, 2010 constitutes acceptance of the modified Master Terms and Conditions and Program Terms.

You may review the current Master Terms and Conditions and Program Terms, which will continue to be in effect through February 15, at http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/advertising/masterterms/masterterms-322.html. On February 16, 2010, the modified Master Terms and Conditions and Program Terms will be located at that URL.

The changes to the Master Terms and Conditions and Program Terms include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Please note that certain Program Terms within the new Master Terms and Conditions will not apply to you if you have not enrolled in those Programs.

If you have any questions about this notice, please use the Support Request Form, which may be found at the upper-right corner of each page once you are logged in to your account at https://login12.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/adui/signin/loadSignin.do.

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

Why do people do it?

Why do people who want more links, use systems that post nonsense comments to Wordpress Blogs?  I get them every day and all I do is delete them.

What gets me is the people that sell these programs – tell everyone this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Get Real -  It’s not. All it is – is comment spam.

If there are new Wordpress Blog owners out there, be sure to setup your blog requiring authorization for each comment.

It’s getting so bad – I think it is probably better to just turn off comments.

Just to experiment.  I am just leaving this post with the comments left on.

I’ll post what I get (without the back links) just to see what “people” or their systems post.

Take tools and time to turn a Web site into a search powerhouse
South Florida Business Journal – by Jeff Zbar
Friday, January 8, 2010

Small business owners who neglect their Web sites can’t expect much return on them. Many launch them, post little new content – and then wonder why no one visits or shops.

“Lackluster Web site search and traffic can stem from numerous issues – from poor search engine optimization (SEO) to a soft market, said Lee Smith, principal with Smitty’s Holdings, a Davie-based search and Web design firm. Smith helped a tuxedo rental company rise to the top of the rankings – only to see sales remain soft. The reason: People weren’t renting tuxedos, he said.”

Read more…

Jeff Zbar quoted me in the article – Cool…

I received this E-mail from Google:

Coming Soon:
Click-to-Call in Ads on Mobile Devices with Google AdWords  January 4, 2010

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We’re pleased to announce that beginning in January, your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.

How will phone numbers appear in my ads?

Based on the customer’s geographic location, the phone number and closest business address will appear as a fifth line of ad text when the ad appears on mobile devices with full HTML browsers (e.g. iPhone, Android, Palm WebOS).

Where will I be able to see the results?

At launch, you’ll be able to view calls from your ads on your Campaign Summary page within AdWords from the “click type” segment option under the “Filter and Views” drop down.

How will I be charged for phone calls I get from my ad?

The cost of a click to call your business will be the same as the cost of a click to visit your website.

What actions should I take?

If you’d like your ads to show location-specific phone numbers when displayed on mobile devices, make sure that your campaign is targeting iPhones and other mobile devices with full HTML browsers, and that you have included phone numbers with your business addresses in the locations under your Campaign settings.

If you would prefer your ads not show phone numbers, simply remove the phone number from the business listings included in your campaigns targeting mobile devices.

We hope this new feature enables you to connect more easily with your potential customers. If you have any questions or feedback, please email us at ctc-feedback@google.com.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

From all of us to you – May this new year be a happy and prosperous one.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION
16 CFR Part 255
Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising

The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC” or “Commission”) is adopting revised Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (“the Guides”). The revised Guides include additional changes not incorporated in the proposed revisions published for public comment in November 2008. See 73 FR 72374 (Nov. 28, 2008).

http://www.ftc.gov/os/2009/10/091005endorsementguidesfnnotice.pdf

This has good and bad issues associated with it. So read carefully and examine their examples at the end of the document.