Just over a year ago, eighty-six percent of people said search engines were an intrinsic aspect of the buying process. From books and restaurants to private jets, consumers consistently begin their searches on Google.

And with the wealth of information available, it’s natural that most people will stop searching after the first page (four years ago, the percentage of searches that didn’t go past the first page was at 68%). This is why SEO is indispensable; the fight to be listed on the first page of search results is vital to a business’s survival. So vital in fact, that many are resorting to black hat tactics in an attempt to deceive Google’s SEO algorithms.

Google, for their part, knows that many businesses are trying to manipulate their system. And that’s why the latest update to their search algorithm on April 24^th is such a big deal. Known to the world as Google’s Penguin Update, its focus is to weed out sites that are over-optimized and replace them with high-quality sites. Websites stuffed to capacity with keywords, chock full of spun content and riddled with non-relevant links are those who will suffer the most from this update.

What This Means For You

Google has long said that it wants to promote high-quality sites. They want to nurture an environment that benefits and simplifies the search process for its users. Increasing the rate of updates from every couple of months to every few weeks with each update targeting about 5% of searches, Google strives to prevent the growth of an inorganic SPAM-based listing of results. While this may not sound like much, it quickly adds up to be affecting trillions of searches, literally.

Since its release a week and half ago, we’ve noticed a few things about the Penguin Update that you should be aware of. First, some sites that are being penalized are those that were piggybacking onto poor quality links. Second, the sites that will be affected are those with rankings built up by SPAM link building; these sites were showing a higher ranking due in part to questionable links that Google will no longer be considering valid. Third, as of yet there has been no indication that Penguin will have a rolling update; however, we believe there will be as evidenced through their call for wrongly affected sites.

How To Protect Your Site

Balancing the incorporation of SEO on your site while still making sure you won’t be penalized in the long run isn’t easy, but there are a few sure-fire methods to accomplish this feat.

1) Have a Well-Designed Site: While you may want as many pages on your site as possible to grow the size of your online footprint, it’s more important to have high-quality content on fewer pages. Hire a talented website design team and don’t outsource your blogging to Vietnam.

2) Before hiring an SEO firm, check their references: They should have detailed information about their clients and their work; pay attention. They should be incorporating white hat techniques and not engaging in black hat or gray hat tactics. If they aren’t willing to tell you what their methods are, it’s a good idea not to trust them. And if the price is too good to be true, it probably is.

3) Incorporate blogging and social media into your online marketing strategies: You can’t rely on SEO alone to drive clients to your business anymore. Everyday it is becoming increasingly crucial to not only have a social media presence, but also to be creating new, original content and sharing it. If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. But there are high-quality turnkey solutions available.

Having your business ranked on the first page of Google searches is no longer a luxury. In order for your business to continue to thrive in the online marketplace, it needs to have a sturdy and reputable SEO platform  built around a quality website. Even with Google bringing in about $3 billion dollars a month in pay-per-click advertising, the majority of consumers continue to value the organic listings over the paid search results.

If you have questions about implementing a sure-fire SEO strategy with a quality content-driven website, contact us today and we’ll provide you with a free consultation.

No matter the size of a law firm, a stellar reputation is the largest factor for generating and maintaining clients. Time and time again, word-of-mouth marketing has proven itself to be the most effective method for building that reputation. That’s why law firms generally avoid over-crowded, noisy and fast-paced environments like social media outlets. With so many voices being drowned out on time-consuming platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn – it’s easy to feel like there is little point to get involved.

But if there’s one thing the digital movement has proven it’s that the Internet is a doorway to new clients – and it’s never a good idea to close the door.

Building a Reputation Through Social Media

On its own, the creation and implementation of a social media strategy is not going to miraculously add to your client base. Alone, a social media strategy, a blog or a search engine optimization of your website can work towards growing your business but each demands a significant amount of time and effort in order to be successful. That is because each is a fundamental cog in an overall online marketing strategy that, when used in conjunction with one another, creates an emergent property.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a majority of law firms worldwide are finally starting to stick their toes into social media—recognizing the value in the two-way conversations that can be cultivated through the array of outlets. As social media and blogging are currently seen as vehicles for sharing thought leadership online, leveraging a legal blog and encouraging a consistent dialogue with potential clients through informative social posts forges an online reputation of equal importance and benefit to that within an offline community.

How to Get Involved

Social media’s niche is that it’s a great outlet to showcase not only your firm’s expertise but also your culture. Each social outlet has proven to be prime real estate simply due to their high levels of traffic, with the price only being time invested. But you don’t have to spend a lot of each day to see results; in fact, ten minutes or less a day over an extended period of time is sufficient.

Whether you manage your accounts yourself or outsource the work to a reputable business comprised of social media experts, like ourselves, getting involved is as simple as the click of a button.

What To Post About

Social media is about storytelling. Through these outlets, your goal is to create an engaging and interactive dialogue with your peers, clients, and prospective clients. Sharing pictures of your firm’s attorneys with clients after winning a case, links to interesting articles you were already reading, blog posts you’ve written, charitable causes you support and other similar options help build your firm’s narrative, show personality and tell a story. It’s a way to burnish your reputation.

Twenty years ago, professional reputations were built around networking and scholarly writing. The same is true today, only that there are new mediums of distribution.

If you want to learn more about how online marketing, and social media in particular, can help grow your firm, contact us today to schedule a free consultation.

Five tips to leave you with:

 1. Sharpen up your LinkedIn profile – The most professional of social networks, this should be the tip of your spear.
2. Become an authority and engage on Twitter – Think of Twitter as speed networking. You can learn more here.
3. Establish a Google+ presence – Not only is it the new frontier for social networking, but it also benefits your firm’s website ranking on Google.
4. Create a Facebook Fan Page – Just as you meet people on Twitter and LinkedIn, you stay in touch with them on Facebook.
5. Share your content on all Social Media platforms – Showcase your firm. Tell its story.

Description of AOIT:

With over 140 academies nationwide, the Academy of Information Technology (AOIT) was created in 2000 and provides a program of study that introduces students to the broad career opportunities in today’s digital workforce and equips them with the personal, analytical, technical and communication skills they need to thrive.

Learn more about AOIT here

When you visit a website, you see the dining room. But when you run a website, you see it from the kitchen sink. That said, it doesn’t have to be chaotic for quality to exist there.

Why We (Almost Exclusively) Use WordPress

Many of the CMS options out there are optimized for specific uses and not much else. Running with the same analogy, it would be like building a kitchen with eighteen stoves for a twenty table restaurant.

Some companies hire engineers to custom-build a CMS, but that process can easily run into the six-figure range. Instead of developing a fully-customized CMS, which is not incredibly “user-friendly,” we recommend starting with WordPress. Within the framework of WordPress, we are able to develop a multitude of customizeable options that perfectly synch with your online needs. We develop features for every type of site be it content-based, portfolio-centric, real estate, or another.

Why You Should (Almost Exclusively) Use WordPress

The primary benefit to running your site on a WordPress platform as opposed to HTML is that you can update, maintain and add to the site yourself. You no longer need to email your web guy for a three sentence change or to update a set of photos on your homepage. You can easily work your own blog, coordinate new HTML5 slide shows and add new pages at your whim.

WordPress is a breeze even for those who would qualify themselves as “tech-illiterate.” Its platform is so easy and clean that within a few minutes of playing around you can easily integrate social media widgets and Google Site-Map creation, add videos and connect your mailing list to your blog and email newsletters.

We could go on and on about why WordPress is a perfect fit your website and your business–but that could take up more than this blog space will allow.

Instead, go ahead and schedule a free consultation to learn more. We would be happy to show you how the back end of a website can change the entire online experience.

What does this mean for html5 developers?

This is a major road block for web apps that are converted into mobile apps, specifically apps that use Phonegap. Apple now deems this data as temporary, meaning that app data can be deleted at anytime. There are a large number of PhoneGap apps the use this localstorage method and will be affected by this change. Many users will now loose settings and data within existing apps when upgrading to the lastest iOS version.

Apple has to review every app that it allows in the app store. This change was, more than likely, due to Apple seeing a large number of apps storing databases of information within the app. This can cause an app to be large in size but there is a size limit to this localstorage space (5MB).

Bottom line: Apple doesn’t seem to be a big fan of web apps being ported by PhoneGap. Either that or they just didn’t care or notice this update would break the way localstorage was being utilized by web apps. Building in html5 makes it easier to create apps for both iOS and Android with the same codebase.  By making these changes, it is now necessary to build  apps that utilize local storage in objective c (native) which in turn hinders the cross platform approach of building in html5 thus making apps more expensive to create across multiple platforms. Hopefully Apple finds a way to address this issue.

Some references on the web about this topic:

• PhoneGap response
• Apple breaks web storage in iOS 5.1, does not care about web apps? via  itwriting.com

Do you have an IOS app affected by the this recent change? If so, sound off on our blog.

Successful lawyers get most of their clients through word-of-mouth marketing. It’s always been their most reliable and truest method for obtaining new business.

But in today’s online and digital marketplace, a lawyer’s reputation is forced to develop differently than it did before.

How Blogging Can Grow a Practice

Legal blogs are an effective method to showcase your expertise, authority, experience and leadership. Maintaining a regular blog expands your website’s breadth, allowing for it to be recognized more widely and ranked higher on search engines like Google.

A blog can amplify and extend your business’s network through attracting prospective leads simply by sharing engaging and informative content. As the value of content rises, a quality blog can amass a following of influencers including clients, referral sources and the media.

Unlike traditional journals and articles, blogs are published more quickly, they are more widely read and have a longer shelf-life thus promoting your firm to a better effect.

Beyond a Website

No matter how brilliant, interactive and aesthetically pleasing your legal website may be–a blog always adds a depth and vibrancy to it. Blogs are timely, personal and interactive. They create an engaging atmosphere where prospective clients are able to view you as a person, someone they can trust, question and interact with on a personal level.

What to Write About

An excellent place to start is to define black and white topics such as: who is responsible for the medical bills after an auto accident or how child support is determined. Successful legal blogs eventually branch away from the clear cut topics and studies of their particular area of expertise and begin to study the legal aspects of current events. Criminal defense lawyers might want to discuss Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. An intellectual property lawyer could write about the patent process in regards to the ongoing suits and countersuits in Silicon Valley.

In the end, the best blogs are personal. They are written as editorial pieces giving opinion-based perspectives that showcase one’s expertise. Results are guaranteed if you persist, demonstrate prowess, and maintain a regular posting schedule.

At TECKpert, we’re more than happy to discuss how legal blogging can benefit your firm in further depth. Contact us to schedule a free consultation on legal blogging today.

In fact, it’s a great strategic move for them. Instagram does photo-sharing so much better than Facebook does, and add the fact that it gives Facebook a beachhead in so many other social media competitors, it makes perfect sense that Instagram is an asset worth that much to them.

Nevertheless, we hear a lot of people griping about Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (Instagram’s co-founders) stumbling upon a winning lotto ticket and how preposterous it is that a company who employs thirteen people, and has never made a dime, can be valued so astronomically high. The answer is quite simple: ideas are an extremely valuable commodity.

Instagram is a great idea with solid engineering to back it up. Their goal is simple: to provide an easy way for people to share photos. Adding some cool filters and the ability to sync with multiple social media platforms is why Instagram is so sleek and popular.

Idea Incubator

In 2010, the market for photography apps was as cluttered as a hoarder’s house. There were clunky and slow apps like the camera function on Facebook’s app, Hipstamatic’s slew of filters that didn’t have an easy share option and dozens of others in between.

Systrom and Krieger saw a niche for a simple point-and-shoot application that made sharing photos easy. They experimented with a prototype, worked out the bugs in beta testing before releasing Instagram in iOS only. The app’s usability built up a large following, only jumping into the Android market last week. That jump, and the subsequent surge in downloads, assuredly played a factor in Facebook’s purchase on Monday.

Instagram is a fantastic example of what apps can become and both Systrom and Krieger are expected to be pocketing $400 million from the sale.

The Value of Web Experts

The problem is that the gripers think that what Systrom and Krieger did was that easy. The truth is that they are so good at what they do they make it look easy. The ability to take an idea, build an app prototype, vet it, launch it, market it and scale it to mass use is a process that few can undertake successfully. It takes a unique skill-set to execute as well as engineers that understand the idea and can make the form fit the function.

If you have an idea for an app, we highly recommend setting up meetings with different engineers and finding one (or a team) that you feel comfortable enough with to enter into a partnership. You might be a sharing a fortune with them.

When just starting out, or while still a small operation–turning to social media is a simple, cost-effective and efficient method to drive leads and score new clients.

So, what to do if you are ready and eager to expand your business but not quite toe-deep in the pool of social media? It’s really quite simple–jump in!

We’ve compiled a few easy steps on how to get involved in social media, how to drive more traffic to your site and, in the end, gain more customers.

1. Be Findable

First things first, being online is pointless if potential clients can’t find you. Not only should your site be complete with SEO keywords but your brand should be also be identifying where your customers are online. What markets does your target audience flock to? What sites and social outlets are they getting involved in? Is it Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest? When you are able to track what networks your clients are logged into when they are on your site, you can determine where you need to create an online presence and which sites you should have a promotion. In addition, you should be posting your business profile on various social media outlets and directories. Be sure to get listed on Foursquare, Yelp, and more.

2. Seek Reviews

Once you establish your brand’s online identity on multiple sources and mediums, it’s important to solicit online reviews. With platforms such as Yelp and Foursquare, you can promote your business effectively through reviews and word-of-mouth marketing. With consumers relying more and more heavily on social media channels for review information, every small business should actively encourage online reviews in order to generate more traction for your business and secure new leads through online searches.

3. Blog Regularly
With the majority of the world constantly online desperate for more information, it’s a wonder that the world keeps turning. The internet doesn’t turn off, and neither should your business. By allowing your business to showcase itself as a source of information–you are giving potential customers the chance to deem your company as helpful, insightful and a brand with which they would want to associate.

Generating more business can be tricky and difficult when it comes to small businesses. But the key will always remain in how wide you throw your net. Keep casting and you will be guaranteed to see results.

We want to help speed up the learning curve. If you already get Twitter, you probably already know how to best leverage its system–but like many networking tools, there’s always something more to learn.

The best way to explain Twitter to the uninitiated is to compare it to Facebook. Twitter is best for networking with people while Facebook is best for staying in contact with those already in your network. Keep this in mind; you’re always trying to make a good first impression on Twitter.

Tips To Make Twitter Work For You

Get your profile perfect. This is your elevator pitch. Introduce yourself and elude to what type of content you are going to tweet about. A lot of folk will decide whether to follow you or not based on what you put here. Take the time to get it right.

Instead of writing a Tweet, write a headline. Early on, it’s easy to stumble over the 140 character limit. That’s why it’s best to think of a Tweet as a short and sweet introduction to whatever you are linking to (this obviously doesn’t apply to quotes or deep thoughts; those stand for themselves).

Don’t try to sell. The only way to get sales through Twitter is to not actively sell. Show your expertise. If you are in real estate, share links to articles about the shifts in the market. If you’re a lawyer, tweet links to interesting cases.

Interact with your followers and the people you follow. While a decent percentage of your tweets should focus on the tips mentioned above, the rest should focus on other users. If they ask a question, answer it. If they tweet something that makes you laugh, tell them about it. And above all, retweet everything you find interesting. Upwards of half your tweets should be retweets of other people.

Create Lists. It’s impossible to keep a thousand different people that you follow straight. Create lists and treat them the same as verticals; it will save you time in the long run. Users that maintain good lists get added to other people’s lists and it becomes the most effective way to gain traction.

Keep track of what works and what doesn’t. Maintaining data is key for Twitter. Keep track of what times in the day you get the most traction and the voice in which you write your Tweets that is the most effective. Get a web app to manage your Twitter account (we like Buffer) and pay attention to your analytics and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Variety is the spice of life. Every once in a while, tweet about something off topic. It shows depth and reinforces that a person is tweeting, not a machine…which, by the way, is the worst thing you can do tweeting. Let your personality shine through or your voice will be washed out by the white noise that perpetually threatens to take Twitter over.

Tweet often. You don’t need to tweet every five minutes, but ten to twenty a day is good. And don’t be afraid to reshare links (as long as you rewrite the verbiage of the tweet). There is such a constant flow of information on Twitter that it won’t come across as spam.

Interested?

Then head on over to our career page and apply.