Dan Shure is right, “People like to link to people.”

And this is true for lawyers. Don’t believe me? Look around. Go to almost any law firm website and you’re likely to find links to other lawyers. Why? There are several reasons.

In some cases, it’s because the SEO agency that they’re working with simply links all of their client sites together.

In other cases, it’s because someone told the lawyer that it’s a good idea to go out and solicit links from people you know. And lawyers tend to know other lawyers.

Whether it’s through resource pages (yuck), blog rolls (less yuck), guest posts (meh) or natural editorial links (yay), lawyers prefer to link with lawyers.

But not always.

Some lawyers prefer not to link to other lawyers at all. Their primary concern is that someone that visits their site might click through to a competitor’s site and hire them instead. Is this a valid concern? Maybe. Is there some chance that a visitor to lawyer A’s site clicks on a link to lawyer B’s site and decides to contact & hire lawyer B? Yes.

However, weighing the costs and benefits, there’s a lot more to be gained by participating, linking with, sharing, etc, with other lawyers than there is from taking an internet isolationist strategy.

If you’re unwilling to link to other lawyers, or for that matter, other sites in general, you’re severely handicapping your ability to attract new visitors.

No please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not advocating willy-nilly linking for the sake of linking. But if you read something that another lawyer writes and you have something to add to the discussion, you should link to the source. That’s just good internet citizenry. And for the selfish among you, it’s going to pay dividends.

When you link to someone, there’s a decent chance that the author is going to find out about it. If they follow your link, and they find something worthwhile, they might comment. They might add you to their feed reader. They might share what you’ve written in their online social networks. And that’s good for you.

What lawyers specifically, and people more generally, are less likely to link to are nameless, faceless blogs, posts, sites, etc.

In other words, if the author of your post is “admin” or “insert law firm name,” it’s much less likely that someone is going to take your post seriously. And it’s extremely unlikely that they’re going to link to you. Unless of course you’re participating in some sort of artificial link scheme.

Have you ever wondered how getting +1′s for your web pages influence click-through rates? Well, Google Webmaster Tools provides might provide you with some answers.

Hopefully, by now you’ve already set up and verified your webmaster tools account. If not, I encourage you to do so. There’s a lot of good information to be gained by regularly checking your webmaster tools account. In fact, recently Google has been using the webmaster tools messaging system more and more to communicate with webmasters about potential problems their sites may have.

Once you’ve properly verified webmaster tools, to review the search impact of +1′s you’ll need to navigate to +1 Metrics -> Search Impact:

This will produce a nice graph and charts relating to the impact that +1′s of your pages have on various search metrics. Some of the metrics include:

• +1 annotated impressions
• +1 annotated clicks
• Search impact – CTR Change with +1

Here is an example from AttorneySync.com:

Hmmm… That’s interesting.

If you’re still on the fence about the whole Google Plus thing, respectfully, you’re missing the boat here.

Is Google Plus a Facebook killer? I doubt it. But it does add an entirely new dimension to search. A social layer that will have a strong impact on what results get clicked, which in turn, will impact which results are served up in the first place.

One of the most common questions we get is about how much a law firm should pay for SEO. And this isn’t the first time that I’ve written about this subject either. The problem, of course, is that it really depends. But the ultimate answer is, over time, less than it generates in new business. Which, depending on your sophistication, can be a difficult thing to measure.

Instead of focusing on the cost of SEO for your law firm, I humbly suggest that you focus on defining goals for your SEO, or really, any marketing or advertising that you’re doing.

For instance, if your SEO goal is merely to have some information for search users that look for you, then, unless you have a very common name or popular name, your SEO shouldn’t cost you very much at all. In fact, by simply registering a domain, installing wordpress, and optimizing the home page of your site for your name, you will likely be able to very quickly, easily and inexpensively appear prominently in organic search results for searches for your name.

On the other hand, if you’re intent on “ranking #1″ for very competitive and highly searched for queries, then it’s like you will have to make much more significant investments of time and money into your search engine optimization marketing initiatives.

It’s a fact that, with a little bit of learning, you can do a lot of search engine optimization on your own. And so, much of the cost of do-it-yourself SEO is merely a matter of a time investment. Investing in learning, strategy, and execution. But of course, the question becomes how much time do you have to invest? Do you have some of the necessary skills? How competitive is the sand box within which you are operating?

If you decide that your online business development goals require some professional attention, make sure you thoroughly vet your prospective SEO professional. Ask a lot of questions. Especially questions about their experience working with law firms, examples of their work and what specific strategies they intend to execute on your behalf.

Before we address whether or not SEO actually works for attorneys, we need to make sure we’re on the same page about what kind of SEO we’re talking about.

If we’re talking about site architecture, organizing information on websites, developing quality legal web content, and getting in front of the right audiences, SEO can work exceptionally well for attorneys.

On the other hand, if we’re talking about link schemes, comment spam, article spinning, and fake client testimonials, then SEO, not only doesn’t really work, it actually can be quite harmful to an attorney’s professional reputation and even license to practice.

But even assuming we’re working from the former definition, and doing things “right” in terms of complying with search engine quality guidelines, SEO may still not be “working” in the way that you might expect it to.

While there are a lot of SEO strategies that work exceptionally well for attorneys, if we really distill things down to a couple key concepts, we can identify some of the most effective.

First, you have to pay attention to the technical components of SEO. This means making sure that your site is getting properly crawled and indexed. While it’s pretty easy to set up a site that is easily crawled by search spiders, if it can’t be crawled and indexed, search engines simply can’t serve up site in their results.

Second, once you’re sure your site is getting crawled and indexed, the next step is making sure you’re using meta tags to communicate to search engines what your site is about. These include title tags, headers, bold text, etc.

Third, and the most important thing you can do, is focus on developing content that serves a demand. Whether it’s a demand for answers to legal questions, a demand for interesting information related to your practice, or even entertaining information, your success in search will ultimately depend upon your ability to “listen” to what there is a demand for in search and supplying online content that satisfies that demand.

And satisfaction of that demand is about more than just consumption. Sure, we want search users to read our site content, but perhaps more importantly, we want people to engage it. And engagement can come in many forms. It may mean subscribing to future updates. It may mean sharing it with other people with whom your readers are connected online. It may linking to your content from other site upon which your visitors publish. All of these types of engagement serve a purpose in acquiring new business from the web.

Is this the year that you take your law firm online? If so, one of the decisions you will face is whether to perform your law firm’s search engine optimization in-house, or hire someone to assist you.

Unfortunately, as anyone who has started to look for search consultants online, it’s an ugly world out there. Here are some quick tips that can help you understand whether your prospective SEO is worth her salt, and whether you need outside help at all.

Should I Hire an SEO for My Law Firm?

Frankly, there are a lot of pieces of search engine optimization that you might be able to sufficiently handle yourself. If you know a little bit about html, how search engines work, and you’re committed to developing content and sharing it, you may have some success in generating new qualified search traffic to your site. Some of this traffic may even turn into potential client inquiries.

On the other hand, if you don’t know a paragraph tag from a title tag, you’re probably going to make some pretty big mistakes that may prevent search engines from crawling and indexing your site altogether. If you think you might want to learn some things about search engine optimization before you decide whether to keep it in-house or outsource it, check our our SEO resources. We have hand-selected these trusted sources.

Here is a quick list of some of the skills you will likely need to launch a successful SEO campaign:

• Technical Knowledge – While you don’t need to be a code warrior to have success in search engines, some basic fundamental knowledge of HTML and probably javascript is pretty critical. Consequences from code mistakes can range from sub-optimal web pages all the way to getting penalized and even completely blocked from search engines. If you’re going to handle the heavy-lifting on your own, learn some code first.
• Creativity – Creative skills are probably the most important attribute of a good SEO. If you’re creating content that looks like everybody else’s people probably aren’t going to link to it and share with other people they know. In order to separate yourself from the pack, you will need to develop web content that makes people really say wow and further link to and share it.
• Patience – SEO is not advertising. This is a common misconception that many lawyers have. They are accustomed to paying for a yellow book, television, or radio advertisement. SEO is not advertising. If you’re launching a brand new site, it’s going to take time to get your site indexed in search engines, and an even longer time to get it to generate significant search traffic and rank for high volume competitive keywords.
• Writing – While web content can take a variety of forms, the overwhelming majority of web content is still the written word. And let’s face it, writing is a skill that many people simply don’t have. If you’re going to handle your own search strategy, you will need to be able to write frequently and effectively. Emphasis on the effectively. And by effectively, I don’t me regurgitating the latest local news stories. Again, you will need to consistently publish quality content that makes your readers want to come back, link to, and share your content with other people that they know.
• Design – Having solid design skills is also very helpful to a good SEO. The use of images, videos, infographics, and a variety of other types of content will help distinguish your site’s content from that of others. And as effective as good design can be in attracting visitors and links, sloppy or otherwise poor quality design work can have a negative impact on your visitors and your ability to attract strong search signals.
• Time – Finally, running an effective search engine optimization takes time. Time which most lawyers simply don’t have. Sure, you can dabble in SEO. Depending on your skills, you may even have some limited success. But if you’re not committed to the day-in-day-out work of building authority to your website, you’re not going to be able to compete with those firms that have hired full-time search consultants to help them.

You are likely to read things about how “content is king” and all you have to do is “write” to have success in search engines. And in some cases, for some very talented and committed writers with a little technical know-how, this may be true. But for the overwhelming majority of lawyers out there, adopting the “if you write it, they will come” mantra simply won’t pay off. Which is why many legal bloggers resort to the advice that if you write for any other reason than a love for blogging, you’re wasting your time.

There’s no doubt that being passionate about writing is helpful in content development. However, writing passion alone will not get you qualified search traffic for highly-competitive search phrases. Ultimately, you will have to decide whether you have the skills and time to execute your own search strategy or whether to get the assistance of someone with experience to guide you.

You might also want to download our free guide and sign-up for our law firm SEO tips. Whether you’re doing SEO yourself, have some in-house help, or are using an agency, we try to provide the tips that we have found successful in executing a law firm SEO campaign.

Who Should I Hire to Do SEO for My Law Firm?

Once you’ve conceded that you need some help, the next step is trying to figure out who you should hire. This is a very important decision that you shouldn’t try to decide in a half-hour. It’s not like buying a cell phone of running shoes. It’s likely that you’ll need to develop a working professional relationship with this person. So, you better be able to effectively communication with them. You should also consider whether or not they possess the skills that I have described above. And you had better check references.

You also should find a consultant that’s willing to work with you. Quality search engine optimization isn’t one-size-fits-all. For example, perhaps you understand the basics but just want someone watching over your shoulder to make sure you’re not making some the most significant and common mistakes. On the other hand, you might be looking for something more turn-key. Meaning that your search agency will be handling all aspects of your search campaign. If this is the case, you better focus on hiring someone that your trust with your professional reputation and perhaps even your license to practice. You don’t want to get into ethics hot water because you turned your search marketing over to someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Here are some tips you should consider when choosing a law firm SEO consultant:

• Do they have experience marketing a law firm?
• Are they familiar with the professionals rules related to marketing and advertising a law firm?
• Do they have examples of work they have done?
• Do they have references?
• What will the communication process look like?
• How will you measure the effectiveness of their services?
• How long before you can start to expect some results?
• Are they working with your competitors?
• What specifically will they be doing on your behalf?
• How will they communicate work being done?
• Will you pay them on an hourly, project, or retainer basis?
• What are the terms of the agreement?
• Will you be providing login and password information to your website?
• Will they be making changes to your web pages?
• Will there be any participation on your end?
• Who will be developing content for the website?
• From where will they be building links?
• Is there a social media component to the strategy? How will that be executed?
• Will there be a local strategy? What will that look like?

These are just a few questions that you should ask when interviewing any prospective law firm SEO agency. If you start to get answers like “that’s difficult to explain”, “I’ve never been asked that before”, or “it’s a secret” politely move along to the next agency.

The truth is, there’s no magic to SEO. Like most other things, it’s a combination of experience, leg-work, and skill.

Edgy SEO has provided a nice round-up of 18 SEO Experts On How To Do SEO In 2012.

The list contains some of the best minds in search. While there are a variety of ideas, one theme rings true throughout:

Search has changed, and it’s more important than ever to focus on quality content development.

In 2012, your law firm should dedicate even more resources to content development. While frequency of publishing has value, frequency should never be done at the expense of quality.

If you had difficulty meeting your publishing deadlines in 2011, you should probably consider scaling back your frequency and focus more time on quality.

Start by thinking about your audience’s demand for online information. What type of stuff do your prospective clients look for online? What topics are being discussed that are relevant to your practice? Who is writing on this subject matter and where? What are your social networks buzzing about?

Once you’ve listened to what’s being discussed, set down to develop something that contributes to the discussion. Don’t write in marketing isolation. Link to other sites that are developing the conversation. Share your contributions with those authors.

In 2012, your law firm’s SEO mantra should be, “Make the web better.”

Here are just a couple ideas:

• Checklists.
• Analysis of new laws and how they might impact your clients.
• Resource lists. Where are some places that your clients can go for reliable information on your subject matter?
• Webinars. Host a webinar either for other lawyers or prospective clients. Give information away for free.
• Create a video. Well-executed informational videos add your personalized voice and messaging.

These are just a few content ideas that you should consider in 2012. The great news is that for those lawyers that adopt a quality content approach to SEO, the world is their oyster.

Most law firms are stuck on more traditional strategies of link building and content spamming. I suggest that these methods will continue to become less and less effective this year. Plus, the harm that they can do to your professional reputation is likely to increase.

So how do you know whether your content “is working”? It’s actually quite simple. Is it attracting readers, links, and shares? In other words, are people discussing your content online? Are they sharing it with people they know? Are they quoting you or otherwise citing and linking to your content? If not, then it’s likely that it’s not working. At least with regard to gaining visibility and authority within search engines.

Finally, in 2012 you should spend more time thinking about the additional ways that people use the internet in addition to search. How do your audiences access information online? Do they regularly visit particular sites? If so, get your message out on those sites. Engage in discussions via commenting. Don’t become overly reliant on search as your soul source of visitor traffic.

Build more relationships offline and take those relationships online by growing your networks on platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.

Stop thinking of your law firm’s SEO campaign like an advertising or marketing campaign. Think about it in terms of more traditional professional networking.

Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away at costs.

-Henry Ford

One of the things that attracts me most to web marketing is the competitive aspect. Unlike many traditional marketing media, the internet is completely transparent. You just need to know what to look for and how to find it. Here are some tips for performing competitive recon:

1. Identify the Competition – The first step is to identify your web competitors. To do this, select a handful of keywords that you think your prospective clients might use to find you in search engines. Go to Google and and search on these keywords. Make a note of which websites appear in the top positions for those results.
2. Analyze Competitor Websites – Once you have a list of 10 or so competitors, head to their websites. Make note of their domains, URL structure, title tages, and other html components of their site. This will tell you what keywords they are targeting. You should also click around their site. What types of things are they doing? Are they writing blog posts? Do they have resources pages linked with other websites? What are they doing to get visitors to interact? Do they have contact forms, free downloads, phone numbers and email addresses?
3. Backlink Analysis – Next, head back to Google and search: link:yourcompetitorsdomain.com -site:youreompetitorsdomain.com. This will show you some of the external sites that are linking to your competitors. You may also want to head over to opensiteexplorer.org and majesticseo.com. These sites will provide more detailed back link reports.
4. Execute – Take advantage of quality link opportunities that your competitors are pursuing. Determining quality opportunities is part art and part science. Focus on link targets that are relevant to your practice, are authoritative on your subject matter, and have reasonable page rank.

It stands to reason that, if you are able to take advantage of the techniques that your high ranking competitors are doing, you will likely increase your own visibility.

It’s important to recognize that blindly copying everything that your competition is doing online is inadvisable. On the other hand, selective competitive analysis and link building can have a very positive impact on your site. Further, it will help you understand, more holistically, what your competitors are doing online and where they are investing time and money.

Like other areas of search engine optimization (or really any other industry for that matter), the law firm SEO services landscape is made up of consultants and companies at both ends of the spectrum. I think Google puts it rather well:

While SEOs can provide clients with valuable services, some unethical SEOs have given the industry a black eye through their overly aggressive marketing efforts and their attempts to manipulate search engine results in unfair ways. Practices that violate our guidelines may result in a negative adjustment of your site’s presence in Google, or even the removal of your site from our index.

I try to stay out of the moralistic debate about SEO. In my view, clients should be informed about the various benefits and risks associated with any search engine optimization campaign, technique, or strategy. These include both the risks to their visibility within search engines, as well as, to their professional reputation, in the case of lawyers, their professional license. Once informed, they should makes an assessment of these various risks and proceed on a course of action with which they are comfortable.

For my part, I recommend complying with search engine webmaster guidelines. In my experience, the risks associated with penalties and being removed from search indexes far outweigh any short term benefit. This is even more true when it comes to damage to one’s professional reputation and certainly when it comes to risks associated with one’s license to practice.

Of course, the problem is that most attorneys have neither the time nor interest (with a few exceptions of course) to understand how search engines, and more generally, the internet, really “work” as part of a more comprehensive law practice marketing plan. Which in turn leads many lawyers to fall victim to inexperienced, unscrupulous, or irresponsible search engine optimization service providers.

So, what’s the solution? As with most issues that arise from a vast knowledge gap, the answer is education. When it comes to protecting oneself from getting tangled up with a “bad” SEO, there’s simply no substitute for learning some basics about search engines, how they work, and some basic concepts and principles about what lawyers can do to increase their visibility within them.

That’s why we offer out free information like Organic Web Strategy for Lawyers.

I would also suggest that lawyers don’t need to understand all the technical intricacies of SEO in order to make informed hiring decisions. In fact, Google also provides some great tips for folks considering retaining the services of an SEO professional:

• Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that send you email out of the blue.Amazingly, we get these spam emails too:
  

  “Dear google.com,
  I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines and directories…”

  Reserve the same skepticism for unsolicited email about search engines as you do for “burn fat at night” diet pills or requests to help transfer funds from deposed dictators.

• No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.
• Be careful if a company is secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.Ask for explanations if something is unclear. If an SEO creates deceptive or misleading content on your behalf, such as doorway pages or “throwaway” domains, your site could be removed entirely from Google’s index. Ultimately, you are responsible for the actions of any companies you hire, so it’s best to be sure you know exactly how they intend to “help” you. If an SEO has FTP access to your server, they should be willing to explain all the changes they are making to your site.
• You should never have to link to an SEO.Avoid SEOs that talk about the power of “free-for-all” links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines. These are typically useless exercises that don’t affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines — at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive.
• Choose wisely.While you consider whether to go with an SEO, you may want to do some research on the industry. Google is one way to do that, of course. You might also seek out a few of the cautionary tales that have appeared in the press, including this article on one particularly aggressive SEO: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com. While Google doesn’t comment on specific companies, we’ve encountered firms calling themselves SEOs who follow practices that are clearly beyond the pale of accepted business behavior. Be careful.
• Be sure to understand where the money goes.While Google never sells better ranking in our search results, several other search engines combine pay-per-click or pay-for-inclusion results with their regular web search results. Some SEOs will promise to rank you highly in search engines, but place you in the advertising section rather than in the search results. A few SEOs will even change their bid prices in real time to create the illusion that they “control” other search engines and can place themselves in the slot of their choice. This scam doesn’t work with Google because our advertising is clearly labeled and separated from our search results, but be sure to ask any SEO you’re considering which fees go toward permanent inclusion and which apply toward temporary advertising.
• What are the most common abuses a website owner is likely to encounter?

One common scam is the creation of “shadow” domains that funnel users to a site by using deceptive redirects. These shadow domains often will be owned by the SEO who claims to be working on a client’s behalf. However, if the relationship sours, the SEO may point the domain to a different site, or even to a competitor’s domain. If that happens, the client has paid to develop a competing site owned entirely by the SEO.

Another illicit practice is to place “doorway” pages loaded with keywords on the client’s site somewhere. The SEO promises this will make the page more relevant for more queries. This is inherently false since individual pages are rarely relevant for a wide range of keywords. More insidious, however, is that these doorway pages often contain hidden links to the SEO’s other clients as well. Such doorway pages drain away the link popularity of a site and route it to the SEO and its other clients, which may include sites with unsavory or illegal content.

• What are some other things to look out for?

There are a few warning signs that you may be dealing with a rogue SEO. It’s far from a comprehensive list, so if you have any doubts, you should trust your instincts. By all means, feel free to walk away if the SEO:

• owns shadow domains
• puts links to their other clients on doorway pages
• offers to sell keywords in the address bar
• doesn’t distinguish between actual search results and ads that appear on search results pages
• guarantees ranking, but only on obscure, long keyword phrases you would get anyway
• operates with multiple aliases or falsified WHOIS info
• gets traffic from “fake” search engines, spyware, or scumware
• has had domains removed from Google’s index or is not itself listed in Google

Here are some of my own questions that I often suggest that lawyers ask their SEO services consultant:

1. What are you planning on doing on my behalf specifically, and what is the purpose and benefit to my firm?
2. Are you working with any of my competitors?
3. Do you have experience working with law firms like mine?
4. Can you provide specific examples and results you have achieved for other clients?
5. How will I measure the effectiveness of what you are doing on my behalf?
6. Are you familiar with the rules of professional responsibility that govern my practice?
7. How long before I can expect results, what will those results be, and what happens if you don’t deliver?
8. If I hire you, will I be locked into a long-term contract?
9. If I hire you to help design and develop my website(s) will I own the site? Will I own the content? Will I own the domain?
10. How will you build links?
11. How will you build citations?
12. How will you generate local search signals?
13. How will you help generate social search signals?
14. Will you be helping with content develop? If so, do you have examples of content that you have developed for other law firms?
15. Will you be doing on-page optimization? What is your plan in this area?
16. If you claim a profile on my behalf, will you provide me the login information?
17. Do you offer hourly fee, monthly fee, or project fee arrangements? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each?
18. If I stop paying you, will you remove links the links that you have created to my website?
19. What metrics will you report on? How will you provide these reports?
20. What access will I have to an actual person to discuss my campaign?

Outsourcing your law firm’s SEO efforts is not right for all firms. There are a variety of factors that you need to consider before deciding whether to retain a professional SEO consultant or do-it-yourself. It’s also not a clear cut in-house vs. outsource decision. You might decide that there are some aspects to search engine optimization that you are capable of doing on your own, and others that just make more sense to outsource in terms of time, cost, and effectiveness.

Selecting a search engine optimization (SEO) professional has a lot of considerations and risks associated with it. While an experienced SEO consultant can improve your site and you a lot of save time, an unskilled or irresponsible SEO can damage your site and professional reputation. Nonetheless, there are several reasons to consider partnering with a professional. Here are just a few:

• Time – You’re a busy lawyer. You don’t have time to learn, understand, execute, and maintain a law firm search engine optimization campaign. In many instances, your time is more efficiently spent serving clients than it is trying to learn and execute SEO.
• Experience – It stands to reason that a first year lawyer is going to make many more mistakes than a thirty year veteran. The same is true in SEO. If you don’t have experience, you’re going to make a lot of common mistakes that a veteran would be able to avoid. This is why even if you choose to execute some of the strategies on your own, consulting with an experienced SEO can help you avoid some of the most basic errors.
• Skill – Let’s face it, experience alone isn’t always enough. There are SEOs out there who have been in the business for a long time that simply aren’t that skilled. Further, the internet and search engines are constantly evolving. There are SEOs who may have been very effective in 1999 but haven’t kept pace with the rapidly evolving SEO world. Outsourcing to a skilled SEO professional who stays up-to-date with these changes will ensure that you’re on the cutting edge.

If you do choose to outsource, you should look for folks that have specific experience working with law firms like yours. Also, you should be sure to structure your relationship with them that is both transparent, as well as, holds your SEO professional accountable for generating results.

In the end, the choice of whether or not to outsource is unique to each firm. You should consider your knowledge, time, budget, and goals in making the decision of whether or not to hire some help.

Developing a presence for you legal practice online can seem overwhelming. There is no shortage of websites, experts, blogs, and ads about how to go about building your professional presence on the web. Frankly, a lot of what’s out there simply isn’t very good. Part of the lack of quality comes from a fundamental misunderstanding about what metrics are most likely to lead to success.

At one point or another, someone might have told you (or you may have reasoned this on your own) that you need to rank high in search engines to have success in growing your online visibility. And while it’s true that search engine rankings are a piece of the formula, far too much emphasis is placed solely on rankings.

If you take a step back from the noise of the SEO and internet marketing world, you’ll realized that keywords, rankings, optimization, link building, content development, and various other components to internet marketing really come down to two essential things:

1. Getting eyeballs on “you” on online.
2. Turning more eyeballs into actions.

By getting more eyeballs on “you” I mean getting your persona, message, offering, content, point of view, expertise, knowledge, etc, in front of the right internet users. Notice I said internet users and not search engine users.

People use the internet in a vast variety of ways. And the ways that they use it can depend on a wide variety of factors. Some of these have to do with who they are as people. Others have to do with what they look for online. And of course, many of these factors depend upon their experience with using the internet.

In order to get more eyeballs on yourself, you need to understand some of the characteristics of your audiences. Who are these people? How do they use the internet? Once you’ve done that, you need to get yourself visible in the places that these people look. While this probably means search engines, it also means a variety of other online places online. These place may be social networking sites, or industry journals, or news websites.

But eyeballs alone aren’t enough. You need actions. You need internet users to call you. You need them to email you. You need them to quote you, cite you, interview you, link to you, share your writing, talk about you, say positive things about you, etc.

And so, all of your online efforts should really be tied back to attracting more eyeballs and motivating more actions.