Optimizing Your Web Site: The ABC’s of SEO

Law Practice Magazine :: Optimizing Your Web Site: The ABC’s of SEO
By Sharon Nelson and John Simek of Sensei Enterprises

Lawyers are constantly asking what single investment they can make to help grow their practices. Well, a not-to-be forgotten principle is that monies sensibly invested in Web sites will always return the investment. The bedrock element of “sensibly” involves optimization to attract visitors.

Recently we taught a seminar on legal Web sites and part of it, of course, was about search engine optimization (SEO)—which, essentially, is the art of properly constructing your site to get the highest possible rankings from search engines. Rather to our surprise, we learned from participants’ comments that many lawyers now understand how important search engine optimization is—but they also remain fairly clueless about how to achieve it.
To help rectify the situation, let’s address the fundamental questions about SEO to greatly up the odds that you invest in a first-class, creative Web site and that you know what to watch from there. Please bear with us—if you can absorb the material that follows, you will be well on your way to developing a site that really helps your bottom line.
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Read entire article with helpful list of “do’s and don’ts” to optimize your web site.
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Hat tip to LegalEase blog.

Google Earth 4.3 released

 

The newest version of Google Earth enables you to see 41 new cities in
3D, including Boston, Tampa, Zurich, Hamburg and Tokyo, along with
much faster 3D building rendering, new navigation control down to
street level, the ability to view the sun at any time of the day, and
more. They’ve also brought Street View from Maps to Earth and added 12
new languages.

http://earth.google.com

“And the Winner is…” Jurist!!

From JURIST:

In case you haven’t heard, JURIST has been nominated in New York for a prestigious Webby Award as best Law website of 2008!

 

We’re actually up for two prizes, one awarded by the Webby judges, and another, called the People’s Voice, awarded by popular online vote. Some of you may remember that JURIST actually won the Webby People’s Voice Award in 2006, beating Court TV and FindLaw in a close race.

 

This year JURIST and our dedicated band of law student staffers are up against some more heavyweight competition, including the website of the American Bar Association (ABA) Journal (the world’s largest circulation law magazine!) and the recruiting website for New York-based Shearman and Sterling, the world’s 17th largest law firm by revenue.

 

To win, we need your help. Here’s what you can do:

 

1. Go to http://pv.webbyawards.com/account/signup   and register to vote;

 

2. Once you register, an activation code will be sent to your email (check to make sure it’s not misdirected to your “junk” folder);

 

3. Log on to http://pv.webbyawards.com/ and click on “Website: Vote now”;

 

4. Scroll down to “Society” and click on the “Law” category;

 

5. Vote for JURIST!

 

The process just takes a couple of minutes.

 

Once you’ve voted yourself, *please* spread the word to your colleagues, friends, students and family - anyone you think should know about JURIST and the public service we perform every day by bringing you comprehensive, serious legal news and commentary with a global perspective.

 

Voting ends this Thursday, May 1; Webby winners will be announced in New York May 6.

 

Thanks for your support!

 

Best wishes,

 

Bernard

 

Professor Bernard Hibbitts

Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, JURIST

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu

 

Webby Awards Official Nominee/Law 2008

Webby Awards Official Honoree/Students 2008

University of Pittsburgh School of Law

Hibbitts@pitt.edu

NYTIMES: Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource

Lawyers Open Their File Cabinets for a Web Resource - New York Times

JDSupra.com, a new site, is stocking a free, virtual law library by persuading lawyers to do something highly unusual: to post examples of their legal work online for use by one and all, no strings attached. Many of the documents are articles and newsletters that can be understood by ordinary mortals who want more background on a legal issue, or who would like to find lawyers with expertise in a particular area.

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OTHER innovations in virtual law libraries are concerned with new search technology for legal information on the Web. Thomas Smith, a law professor at the University of San Diego, is the co-creator of a search engine called PreCYdent, now in the beta, or testing, stage, that uses legal citations to find related information (www.precydent.com).

Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus

Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus
Avira AntiVir Personal - FREE Antivirus is a free antivirus solution, that scans your computer for malicious programs (such as viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, worms, dialers etc.), monitoring every action executed by the user or by the operating system and being able to react promptly when a malicious program is detected.

This version is compatible with computers running Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

PDF Online

Convert to PDF for Free

PDF Online claims it converts more than 20,000 documents to PDF per day.

It converts these formats into PDF:

-MS Word (DOC | RTF) 
-MS PowerPoint (PPT)
-MS Publisher (PUB)
-MS Excel (XLS) 
-HTML (MHT)
-Text (TXT)

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I can never figure out what to do when I receive a MicroSoft Publisher document. Publisher has no Mac or Linux equivalent and, unlike most other programs, there is no conversion available. The best solution one can come up with is to find a way to convert the Publisher file to pdf. A little searching came up with PDF Online. The site is covered with ads; but it does what it says it will; i.e., convert the Publisher file I uploaded and email it back to me as a pdf attachment. There was no charge. You can’t ask for more than that.

PLoL Offers Free Case Law Online

The March 18 New York Law Journal carried a short piece on a new website, the Public Library of Law (PLoL for short), which purports to be the largest collection of free case law anywhere. Here’s a rip from their main page:

Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That’s why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law — to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites — all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web.What is available on PLoL?Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals

Cases from all 50 states back to 1997

Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states

Regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more!

PLoL also includes free links to paid content on Fastcase. PLoL is already the Web’s largest free law library, but with additional links from Fastcase, it is one of the most comprehensive law libraries in the world.Check out the site at www.plol.org.

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The above post is courtesy of our fellow section blogger, Paul Gillan, whoseSupraspinatus (health law) blog is worth a place on your favorites, bookmarks, andfeeds.

NY Supreme Court Criminal Term Library

New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library - Powered By Bloglines

A blog-based outreach initiative providing news and an informaton gateway to web based services offered by the New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library.

Rocketmatter

Here’s a Case Management System, which is entirely web-based.

With Rocket Matter, your calendar, contact, and billing information is:

secured on routinely updated enterprise level servers

stored in a highly secured facility where several municipalities maintain mission critical systems

placed on a network monitored by security experts 24 hours a day

available to you anytime, anyplace via encrypted connections

backed-up daily to comply with malpractice standards

Early adopters will receive a signing bonus; i.e., a discounted rate of $50.00 per month per lawyer and $15.00 per month per staff person.

Check out their blog for more info.

 

Searchme

Its hard to imagine anything new in searching; but these folks have come up with visual previews of pages, which can be used with the traditional line search. Searchme is now in private beta. Watch the videos and sign up if you are interested.