Have you experienced running out of great ideas of what to feature next on your law blog? Are you looking for fresh ideas and new ways to keep your readers from boredom and redundancy? Here are some blog ideas that can help you in making your blog more readable and entertaining.

Link Round Up

Create a blog post that features a list or group of links that might interest your readers. Depending on your topic, you can introduce them to new credible sources of information related to your field of practice. For example, you can do a link round up listing the blog posts of your fellow law bloggers featuring relevant topics that are helpful and informative to your target audience.

Interviews

Featuring an interview about a prominent person in your practice or a celebrity whom your readers can directly relate to is a great blogging idea that’s not utilized by most bloggers. Skype and Google Hangout are great online tools that will enable you to conduct interviews through the internet.

Polls

Creating a poll is a good way to know more what your visitors want or need. For example, if you want to determine how many of them prefer to look for lawyers online, you just have to conduct a poll asking them their preference. Depending on your goal, creating polls every now and then is beneficial both for you and your audience.

Videos

Sometimes watching videos is more comforting than reading a very long article. Once in a while, try to look for informative video in YouTube and embed it in your blog post. Your readers will definitely appreciate it.

Guest Post

Accepting guest posts from your fellow law bloggers is a great way of introducing fresh contents to your readers. Also, you can make use of these guest posts especially in times when you are too busy to write new ones.

Answer Reader Questions or Comments

Give importance to what your readers want by featuring their questions as topics on your blog posts. Create a topic out of their comments and write an informative article about them. This will increase their loyalty towards your blog and will encourage them to share it to their networks and circles.

Creating lists, reviews, podcasts, and how-to posts are also great ways to build enticing blog contents that won’t bore your readers. Being creative in presenting your contents is one of the effective ways to make your visitors come back and become loyal followers.

Bookmark this blog to learn more.

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Why SEO Has Garnered So Much Importance in Business?

Search engine optimization garnered respect and importance in the online industry due to the fact that most internet users prefer to use search engines in looking for information on the web.  Most recent research reveals that 93% of online experiences begin with search engine.  This data is backed up by another study which shows that 82.6% of internet users are using search engines to look for products and services on the web.   Search also drove 25% of all online U.S. device purchases in 2010.  Also, the number of global searches conducted every month goes up to over 100 billion.

The statistics above are some of the proofs why it is essential for companies to optimize their websites for search engines.  As a multi-billion dollar industry, search will always be one of the web’s major players when it comes to technology and innovation.

SEO and Effective Website Development

An effective website is a well-optimized website.  Its appearance, content, functionality, and usability are greatly influenced by SEO.  A website developed with SEO in mind has higher probability of getting favorable results not only from search engines, but most especially from people whom it is primarily created for.

Search engine optimization, unlike social media, PPC, SEM, and other types of online marketing, can only be fully executed in two clusters of strategy, the onsite optimization and the off-site optimization.  Also, SEO promotes permission marketing, the process of advertising products and services without the shameless act of getting a target audience’s attention.

A well-implemented SEO is the backbone of most successful online businesses.  SEO’s vital role in giving startups the opportunity to compete against more established and bigger establishments is another major factor that separates it from other types of marketing and online promotion strategies.

If you find this article helpful and informative, you may subscribe to our Dallas Internet Marketing Blog eNews & Update.  Look for the subscription box at the bottom right corner of our homepage, enter your email, and hit subscribe.

Photo by SEOPlanter and used under Creative Common License.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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To give you a more detailed description of a great blog design, the following are its top 16 characteristics.

1. Simple yet attractive theme.  Simple designs exude elegance and attract more visitors than extravagant ones.  Just take for example Google’s blog.  Very simple yet it’s one of the most visited blogs on the web.

2.  Easy to use navigation menus.  Give your readers the convenience of using navigational menus that are easy to use.  Avoid complicated menus that repel visitors away as they have no time to decipher them.

3.  Texts and contents are easy to read and use.  Readability is the most important characteristic of a great blog design.  Be sure your background color is well-matched with your text color.  Make use of bold and large fonts to facilitate easy reading.

4.  Search engine friendly.  An optimized blog that can easily be found by search engines is another important characteristic of a great blog design.  An attractive blog that cannot be found by its target audiences is a total waste of time.

5.  Allows users to search for past articles.  Always put a search box on your blog to allow your visitors to search past articles and other contents that they cannot see on your homepage.

6.  Long posts are paginated.  The use of pagination to engage readers to read a long blog post is another characteristic of a great blog design.

7.  Faster page speed.  No one wants to wait a page that loads very slowly.  A great blog design always showcases a faster blog interface.

8.  Has alternative options for disabled users.  Have you considered the disabled people when you designed your blog?  A great blog design puts into consideration all types of readers.  For the blind, you can have an audio option for your blog posts.  For those who have eyesight problems, an option to enlarge texts should be available.

9.  Ads are less intrusive and minimal in numbers.  Minimal and well integrated advertisements that don’t intrude with what your visitors are doing.  Avoid pop-ups and video ads as they often repel visitors away.

10.  Readers are allowed to comment on blog posts.  Your comment section is the most convenient way your visitors and readers can voice out their feedback and opinions.  Just be sure to moderate them to avoid spams.

11.  Relevant photos are used on important blog posts.  Photos can make a boring blog post attractive and more appealing.  Always make sure that they are properly resized.

12.  Better social media integration.  Get more visibility from famous social media websites by integrating them on your blog. Install social buttons that give your readers the ability to easily share your contents on famous social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter.

13.  Allows readers to subscribe to blog posts.  Displaying a subscription box allows readers to read new blog posts in the convenience of their email inbox.  This is a good strategy in reaching readers who have no time to visit your blog.

14.  High quality content.  This is of course one of the major characteristics of a great blog design.  High quality content that is of relevance to your target audiences is an essential element of a successful blog.

15.  Has a useful footer design.  A blog’s footer is an extension of its sidebar.  A useful footer design wisely maximizes the use of the total space of the blog as it features other resources that are not featured on the top menu and the sidebar.

16.  Well written semantic HTML structure.  This is another important factor that determines a great blog design.  A well written semantic HTML structure makes blog maintenance easier and more convenient.  It also allows search engines to easily crawl your blog site.

Do you think all these 16 characteristics have covered all the details of a well-designed blog?  If you still have some more ideas, feel free to contact us.

 Photo by Mike Licht and used under the Creative Common License.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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Social media now plays a vital role in website optimization and though there are still some people who hesitate and have some doubts, there’s no denying how search engines nowadays put more value on how contents are rated and being shared on social media sites.  If you are still one of those who have hesitations and doubts, here are the 5 foolproof reasons why it is highly recommended to use social media to improve your website’s SEO performance.

1.  Social signals are now given more importance in ranking contents in search engine results pages (SERPs).  The +1s, likes, retweets, reshares, and favorites are just some of the social signals used by search engines nowadays to determine content’s quality and relevance.  These signals affect your site’s search rankings and search engine visibility.

2.  Social media profiles are regularly spidered by search engines.  Sharing your contents on famous social media sites is now becoming more important as it increases the probability that they will appear on the SERPs.

3.  Your social media presence can affect your website’s rankings.  How people rate and share your contents on various social media sites can surely affect your website rankings.  Thus, it is important to build a social media strategy that encourages your social media followers or fans to be more engaging.

4.  Author rank, the new way to rank contents according to their author’s credibility is closely associated with Google+ profiles and circles.  Author rank which is powered by the Authorship mark-up seems to be the next big thing in SEO.  Contents that appear on top of the SERPs are mostly those ones which are written by credible writers (with verified Google+ profiles).  Author rank as an important factor that affects search rankings is powered by Google’s social media network, Google+.

5.  It is now easier to track social data and characteristics through the use of Google Analytics.  The newest version of Google Analytics now features Social Media reporting tools that give SEOs and webmasters social media monitoring and measurement capabilities.  Tracking the outcomes of any of your social media marketing campaigns is now closely integrated in the overall metrics system that determines the success of your online marketing efforts.

Another important factor that makes social media more preferable (to be used alongside SEO) than any other inbound marketing strategies is that, it is free.  You need no huge investment or marketing budget to start your own social media marketing campaign.   It is greatly beneficial for small online businesses that are still starting up.

Photo Credit: Photo by Webtreats and used under the Creative Common License.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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Google+ is Google’s social networking website reportedly launched to compete with Facebook.  But, it is not just a mere Facebook competitor.  It is Google’s ultimate social media weapon that integrates all its powerful web services – Search, Youtube, Business, and a lot more.  For search professionals and website owners, Google+ is no ordinary social media tool.

If you are a business owner who is looking for a better social media platform to market your products and services, then you should start moving in to Google+ now.  Here are some reasons why you should.

1.  It is created with business in mind.  Business and networking always go hand in hand.  Google+ is mainly created for business, thus it sure has all the features that are more beneficial for business owners.  The Google+ Local page, the search integration, and every business feature that they will be adding in the future are all for business purposes.

2.  It has better user interface compared to other social networking sites.  This is the obvious reason why more and more people are shifting to Google+.  Its user interface is simply great.  Its circles are awesome as you don’t need to add or accept friends anymore.  It also has better photo tagging feature, better game implementation, non-intrusive notifications, and instant profile set up especially if you already have your own Gmail account.

3.  Its page speed is pretty fast.  Webmasters and business people have no time to wait for a very slow page to finish loading.  Google+ is so far the fastest social networking site in terms of speed.  Photo and video browsing are more enjoyable as pages load instantly.

4.  It is well integrated with Google Search.  This is the very reason why some webmasters and business owners need no convincing to shift to Google+.  For business websites that greatly rely on Google’s Search traffic, Google+ plays an important role in improving search engine optimization performance.

5.  Better audience targeting options.  Unlike other social media websites, Google+ offers better content exposure through the use of Circles.  You have the option to which group of audiences can see or access your content.

Other great features in Google+ that can’t be found in other social networking websites include hot topics tracker with cool adjustment options, better privacy options,  faster and more dynamic mobile application, and better photo gallery set up.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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Extensions are applications or plugins developed by web programmers to run in browser platforms.   For search engine optimization, there are specific extensions made solely to SEOs and webmasters to help them in analyzing and optimizing webpages.  As there are lots of extensions featured in the Chrome directory, we selected our top 5 extensions that are very useful (based from our experience) in analyzing a webpage’s popularity, links, status, and on page characteristics (which would take time to detect if done manually).

SEOquake (from seoquake.com)

This SEO extension is a toolbar that instantly displays the Google page rank, Alexa rank, total number of indexed pages, domain age, and the like of the webpage you visit.  This tool is very useful when it comes to conducting competitors’ research, and regular website authority and link.  You can download this extension here.

Mozbar (from seomoz.org)

Mozbar is by far one of the most favorite browser extensions of SEOs and webmasters alike.  Aside from providing users with a detailed on-page analysis, it also gives important information about a website’s page and root domain authority which are essential in looking for prospects during link-building campaigns.  You can download the extension here.

SEO for Chrome (from marketing abuse.com)

This is an all-in-one SEO extension provides detailed preview of a website’s back-links, traffic, and number of pages indexed in major search engines.  It also features important SEO capabilities like NoFollow/DoFollow link detection, Keyword analysis, page rank check, social media stats, and a lot more.  Download this plugin here.

SEO Site Tools (from cartercole.com)

This extension provides users more detailed preview of a webpage’s external data, page elements, basic social media statistics, server and domain info, and basic on-page optimization suggestions.  It also provides access to important SEO tools like browser size checker, page load speed tester, plagiarism checker, and keyword research analysis application.  You can download this extension here.

WebRank SEO (from webrankstats.com)

WebRank SEO is a useful browser extension that instantly provides basic and helpful information about a webpage’s rank status across multiple metrics, total number of pages indexed in major search engines, total number of back-links, socio-meter, and traffic graphs.  This tool is ideal for webmasters and SEO who conduct regular website evaluation both for their web properties and for their competitors’.  You can download this extension here.

If you are not using a Google Chrome browser, some or most of the extensions featured above can also be found in the Firefox add-ons library.  Extensions or add-ons listed in that directory are made specifically for the Mozilla/Firefox browser.

If you find this article helpful and informative, you may subscribe to our Dallas Internet Marketing Blog eNews & Update.  Visit our blog’s homepage and look for the subscription box located at the bottom right area, enter your email and hit subscribe.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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What is Web Semantics?

Web Semantics is simply the process of making HTML markups more meaningful and understandable in the eyes of the search engines as well as in the eyes of people (more specifically webmasters, SEOs, and website owners).  Google has recently published an article regarding its importance and encouraging authors to familiarize certain HTML elements that have great impact in a website’s overall structure.  See excerpt below.

Up until today authors were not always certain about what HTML element to use for what functional unit in their HTML page, though, and “living” specs like HTML 5 require authors to keep an eye on what elements will be there going forward to mark up what otherwise calls for “meaningless” fallback elements like div or span.

In this case, Google clearly emphasized the importance of semantic markup to make HTML elements more understandable and gave a warning to avoid using those ones that don’t provide better meanings.  See basic example of web semantics below.

• Title elements (t)
• Heading elements (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6)
• Paragraph elements (p) with an optional attribute of align (left, right, center, justify)
• Body elements (body)
• Etc…

Impact of Web Semantics to SEO

One of the basic factors that affect onsite SEO has to do with the overall structure of a website, more specifically, with its raw components (the coding).  A website’s proper structuring of codes through the use of web semantics determines how it will be spidered by search engines and also predicts its overall performance once accessed by users or visitors.

The use of proper web semantics on a webpage guides search engine crawlers which content to prioritize and which ones are the least important.  It also provide more understandable meaning to various HTML elements that enables webmasters and SEOs to easily understand how search engines index and spider web data.

If you find this article helpful and informative, you may subscribe to our Dallas Internet Marketing Blog eNews and Updates.  Look for the subscription box on the bottom right corner of our homepage, enter your email, and hit subscribe.

Photo Credit: Photo by Sebastian Kippe.  Published under the Creative Common License.  .

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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The following are the 8 most common website design mistakes usually done by small businesses.

1.  Unwise usage of white space.  The white spaces on a webpage should be used to segregate contents and website parts with readability and pleasing design in mind.  White spaces should be used to put emphasis and focus on the rest of the colors of your webpage.

2.  Misspellings and grammatical errors.  These mistakes often affect your website’s credibility as well as the capability of your business to deliver satisfying results.  Wrong grammars and incorrect spellings give bad impressions about your website and can lessen the interest of readers and potential customers.

3.  Poor arrangement of navigational buttons and menus.  How could you deliver a satisfying message to your visitors if your website is in clutter and readers are confused how to navigate from one content to another?  Lousy navigational arrangement often irritates readers.  This usually prods them to leave and look for another webpage that offers easier ways of browsing contents.

4.  Too much graphical contents that slow down the page speed.  A webpage jam-packed with many useful contents and files are great but you should know how to compress them so that they won’t slow down the speed of your website.  Most readers have no patience in waiting for a page that loads slowly.

5.  Not optimized for the search engines.  A dynamic website design should be created with the readers and of course, with search engines in mind.  You may have a well-thought and compelling web design but if it is not optimized for search engines, there’s a higher possibility that most of your target audiences won’t even have the chance of knowing that it exists.

6.  Poor content presentation.  A very long blog post that is not paginated, un-resized photos on the homepage, and auto-played videos are just few of the examples of poor content presentation.  These mistakes often repel website visitors from staying on your website.

7.  No color harmony.  An effective web design always considers content readability which can greatly be affected by color and contrast.   The text of your content should have high level of contrast to its background color to lessen reading difficulty, especially for readers with poor eye-sight.  Using black as your background color and making use of green as your text color is an example of poor color harmony.

8.  Missing or vague calls to action.  If your web design has no proper or correct call to action button, box, form, or widget, then it would be difficult for you to track results, conversions, or goals.  This is the most common mistake often seen in small business websites especially those ones with no clear sets of objectives and goals.

Keep all these web design mistakes in mind and avoid doing any of them.  Also, don’t forget to share this blog post to your networks or friends who may find this article helpful and informative.

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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The following are the top 5 most popular SEO Myths that have been circulating in the industry through the years.

1.  SEO is a one-time strategy – Whoever started the spread of the this myth must be someone who had a one-shot luck in doing website optimization and hastily concluded that SEO is a strategy that once implemented will work on its own.  In reality, search engine optimization is a continuous process that needs regular maintenance to make it work and gain positive results.

2.  Positive Results are always guaranteed in SEO – This myth is actually used by those SEO practitioners who wanted to lure more clients, thus giving them false hopes and beliefs that are not anchored in reality.  There’s no such thing as guaranteed positive results when it comes to optimizing websites for search engines.  This is because each website is unique and strategies and tactics should be customized to fit its SEO requirements and needs.  If you are a business owner looking for SEOs to optimize your website, be very careful not to fall for this myth.

3.  SEO is easy – Getting your website indexed in Google can really be so easy, but ranking on top of the search engine result pages (SERPs) is always difficult, especially if you are competing against hundreds or thousands of websites all aiming to land on the top spot.  Those people who say that SEO is a piece of cake are mostly the inexperienced ones.

4.  Google hates SEO – This is actually a rumor spread around the net by those people who hate Google.  Google’s regular search algorithm updates to combat malpractices in SEO (i.e. paid link schemes, black hat, automated link-building) are used by haters to turn the table against the search engine giant.  In reality, Google supports ethical SEO practices and even encourage website owners to adopt them.

5.  SEO is dead – This is another rumor that came out after the series of search algorithm updates were launched by Google to combat against web spam and other SEO malpractices.  SEO is a multi-billion dollar industry and proclaiming that it is dead shows lack of knowledge about the search industry.  As long as there are search engines, the SEO industry will continue to strive to give startups and small businesses an opportunity to compete with big brands and larger establishments.

Do you know of other SEO myths that are currently circulating on the web? Share them to us and we’ll publish them here.

 Photo Credit: Question mark sign by Colin_K is used under the Creative Common License.  

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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If you will take a closer look on how link building is implemented in most SEO campaigns, it is not uncommon that you will find search professionals practicing all sorts of unethical ways to game the system.  This is because ethical link building is hard to come by, especially if competition is very stiff and all your competitors are doing all the dirty tricks to improve their websites’ search rankings.

What is Ethical Link Building?

Ethical link building is simply the ways of building back-links which are in line with the rules set by web search engines.  One of the most common rules is to build links naturally.  Links accumulated naturally are viewed by search engines as more valuable and have higher relevance compared to automated links and other links accumulated through unnatural means.  Also, natural back-links will never be labeled as spam by search engines.  This means that your website will be safe from any future algorithm changes and updates designed to counter unnatural link-building and web spams.

Implications of Ethical Link Building to SEO

Building back links through ethical means is the only way to maintain long-lasting SEO results without the fear of being penalized by search engines or being labeled as spam.  Though ethical link building takes time and requires more efforts, website owners should realize that it’s the only way to safeguard their reputation as a business while maintaining a good back-link profile in the eyes of the search engines.

Ethical link building brings more lasting benefits not only in improving search rankings but also in maintaining consistency and in upholding the credibility of your business, the exact opposite of building unnatural back-links.  Unnatural link building usually happens when a certain link building strategy is abused and used in ways that broke the rules on how links are built naturally.

In building back links, always keep in mind that quality is more important than quantity.  And using dirty tricks to game the system is already a thing in the past as search algorithms are constantly rehauled to get rid of practitioners engaging in dirty trades and tactics to spam the web.

If you find this article informative and helpful, you may subscribe to our Dallas Internet Marketing Blog eNews & Updates.  Just look for the subscription box on the bottom right corner of this blog’s homepage, enter your email, and hit subscribe.

Photo Credit: Chain Link by Gordon Griffiths.  Licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence

This blog post is brought to you by www.oneseocompany.com, a Dallas SEO & Internet Marketing Company.

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