Our Publishing Platform Makes It Easy to Manage Your Articles!

We understand you put a lot of time and effort into writing articles to demonstrate your expertise and increase your visibility within the ExpertHub Legal Network and search engines like Google. To help streamline the submission process we developed an easy way to upload and manage your articles from the “Publishing” tab of your online account, formerly called “Articles”.

When you log in to your account, you will see the “Publishing” tab clearly located on the green navigation bar that runs across the top of your screen.  Clicking this tab will take you to the new publishing central where you can view:  topic suggestions, article drafts, and published articles. Can’t figure out what to write about?  The “Publishing” tab also provides you a list of topic suggestions based on the practice areas you subscribe to.

Another great feature is the ability to track your article’s progress.  Once you submit your article, a member of our SEO editorial team will review it to make sure your content complies with our submission guidelines, as well as optimize it for better search results online.  Don’t worry about formatting the article, we will handle that on our end. 

To track the progress of your article, you will click on Drafts (as pictured below) and will be able to see the title of the article you saved or submitted, the date submitted and where the article is in the approval process.  For example, an articles not yet published will have a status of “Waiting for Approval”.

Getting started is easy:

1. If you have content ready to upload or want to write a new article, log in to your account and click on the “Publishing” tab.
2. Click the Contribute New Content link highlighted in blue and located on the right side of the page.
3. You will then land on a page to insert the required information (see image below). You can type directly in the fields provided, giving your article a title and the body content.  If you prefer to copy and paste the information from a Word Document, that is fine also. 
4. Once you are ready to submit your article for approval, click the Submit Content For Approval button located at the bottom of the screen.  If you would like more time crafting your content, you can chose to click the Save Draft button and return to continue at a later date.

Locating topic suggestions and managing your articles in one spot is now more convenient than ever.  Check out our helpful tips for user friendly articles and submission guidelines to guide your writing. For more information or if you have any questions, please contact us today.

Grab Attention with a Powerful Profile Teaser!

Adding a profile teaser to your LawFirms.com profile page provides your potential clients with a short message that highlights important details about your firm. Conveniently positioned at the top, the teaser is often the first bit of information visitors read when landing on your profile. This element is key and motivates potential clients to read the rest of the information about your firm.

Below is a sample profile page from Pennsylvania Personal Injury Attorneys Lowenthal and Abrams, P.C. You will notice the profile teaser positioned at the top and highlighted in blue.

Here are a few examples of current ExpertHub subscribers who have completed their profiles. You will notice that each profile teaser varies in focus and includes statements about firm experience, areas of practice and even attorney fees.  The sky’s the limit!

• Indiana Disability Attorney Steven R. Jacobs : “Contact the experienced attorneys at the Law Office of Steven R. Jacobs to have your case evaluated. No fee unless we get you benefits.”

• Florida Bankruptcy Attorneys Hagen & Hagen, P.A.: “Fighting for your rights.”

• The Alia Law Center, P.C. located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: “Practice Areas: Bankruptcy, Foreclosure, Real Estate, Debt Settlement And IP Law, Including Patent, Trademarks, Copyrights.”

• California Bankruptcy Law Offices of Eric Johnson: “Discounted Attorney Fees for Overlapping Cases: Bankruptcy, Workers Compensation, and/or Social Security Law.”

A great feature about your LawFirms.com profile is that you control the content you want potential clients to see about your firm.  Be creative in how you differentiate your firm against the competition. For more tips and ideas about creating a powerful profile teaser, please contact us today.

Why Was My Article Denied?

One of the least costly and most effective ways our clients can gain additional exposure is by submitting articles to our network of legal sites. Not only does this drive additional traffic to your profile page, but utilizing the link back can also drive traffic to your own site, as well as that all-elusive SEO value.

While many attorneys use this feature on a regular basis, newer subscribers will often submit articles that they have posted elsewhere. Unfortunately, we don't publish content that's already been posted online. As a rule, content that is not unique will not be published on our network. Every time a new contribution comes through the system, one of our SEO team members will do a quick Google search to ensure the content is unique. If it's found that the article has already been posted and indexed by Google, it will be sent back for a rewrite.

This rule may sound a bit harsh, but it's put in place for the benefit of our clients. Almost 100% of the traffic coming into our network is through organic search. Content that has already been published will not be indexed by search engines a second time on another site. If it does get indexed, it almost always gets dumped into a secondary index, and will only be displayed when a searcher specifically asks to "view omitted results". This means if we "re-publish" content from another site, it just won't get any traffic. Additionally, if any site is found to simply be regurgitating existing content, it can potentially be flagged as search spam and penalized with lower rankings and little traffic.

Now, I have had attorneys tell me, "I don't care if it doesn't get traffic from Google, people will read it when they land on your site from another page and browse around". Not really. If you look at some of the statistics, and these are true for any "informational" type site, visitors tend to view just under 2 pages on average. What this tells you is that they come in and land on an article about something they were searching for, read it, and either 1) decide to contact a lawyer, or 2) move on. If they don't land directly on your page, they are not going to read it.

Another question I get is, "What if I post it to your network, then to my own blog?" Well, there's not a lot we can do about that. Once we deem an article unique and publish it, it stays there. After that, it can be posted in any number of places. Our sites are so well indexed, our version will be displayed in search results in a matter of hours, something that takes most smaller sites weeks to achieve. As a result, our sites "version" of the article will almost always be the one displayed in search results. In this case, it really doesn't matter where else it's published. As a matter of fact, many aggregation sites syndicate our content which really has no impact on our traffic, other than to drive even more links back to us.

This may all seem like a hassle, but the fact is, publishing content to the ExpertHub Network is far more effective than posting it anywhere else online. Having 60+ SEO-optimized sites targeting specific areas of law allows our clients the most effective means of distributing their content and getting more eyeballs at very little or no cost. Having our guidelines in place helps to maintain a level of quality and authority that benefits both our visitors and clients.

Please contact us with any questions you may have or for more information about contributing content to our network.

Uploading Videos is Quick and Easy

Many of our subscribers have asked how to upload a video to their LawFirms.com profile page. To make things easy, we have create a 4-step process that can be accessed right from your profile page.  If you already have videos on your firm’s website or videos hosted on a service like YouTube, Yahoo! Video, DailyMotion or Vimeo, you can easily upload those or other videos to your profile page at any time.

When you log in to your profile page, on the right hand side you will see how complete your profile is.  Just below that you will see two options to start the process of uploading your video.  You can click on the “Adding Videos” button from the list of remaining items to upload or you can click on “Add Video” from the videos section.

When you click on either button to add your video, a box will pop up (make sure your pop up blocker is turned off) with step-by-step instructions on how to link your video to your profile page successfully.  If you are wondering how to locate the “embed” box or need examples of what the code looks like, you can click on the examples we have provided.  You will see these in Step 2 and Step 3 as displayed in the sample below.

Videos are an entertaining way to target potential clients with important legal information.  If you would like further assistance with your videos, please contact us today.

July’s Honorable Mentions

1. Auto Accident Attorney, Anthony D. Castelli, completed his LawFirms.com profile page to 100% and continues to contribute quality article content to our network.  His most recent article, 7 Steps to Finding a Great Car Accident Attorney, provides his potential client with tips on choosing an attorney to handle their auto accident claim. 

2. The Utah-based Personal Injury Law Firm, Gregory & Swapp, PLLC, uploaded five great examples to the Case History section of their profile page.  In addition to having a completed profile, these details on case history provide potential clients with a more rounded picture of the success the firm has had with past clients. This helps demonstrate the ability of your firm to handle their case.

3. Uploading a photo or firm logo to your profile page is important, as it allows potential clients to connect with the firm they will be contacting.  Gallagher & Associates Law Firm, P.A. provided several photos of the attorneys representing this firm.  In addition to photos, the firm uploaded several helpful videos on “Foreclosure Defense” and “Foreclosure Relief”. 

4. The Oklahoma Family Law Firm of Lily Debrah Cruickshank & Associates, PLLC completed the Overview section of their profile page, providing an in-depth explanation about the firm. By completing each section of her profile page, Attorney Cruickshank has increased her chances of generating free leads through her profile page.

For more helpful tips on optimizing your profile page, please contact us today.

Boost Your Monthly Leads

Many ExpertHub subscribers have asked how they can generate more leads each month. In prior posts, we explored the importance of having a completed profile page and submitting articles to the ExpertHub network.  Whether you are on a flat rate or pay per lead payment option, completing these two things will help boost your dashboard numbers.

Profile Page: Having a completed profile is a surefire way to motivate consumers to contact you directly through your profile page. Through the “Contact Us” box, potential clients will select the appropriate practice area and enter their zip code.  After clicking the “Next” button, they will be taken to a form to provide detailed  information on their case. Your firm will be the only one to receive their information if that consumer is requesting an attorney in your subscribed location. 

The best part, you are not charged for any lead that comes in through your profile page.

Contributed Articles: In addition to branding yourself as a content expert and providing great SEO value, articles open an additional avenue for potential clients to contact you directly. In the body of each article you submit, is a micro profile that shows your photo or firm logo, your name and a button to contact you directly. 

The best part, you are not charged for leads that come in through the articles you submit.

 Please contact us for more information on connecting with potential clients.

How to Gain Additional Exposure: The New “Most Recent Article” Section

Use your contributed content to gain additional exposure, it’s easier than you think.

You may have noticed a new section on our redesigned homepage called “Most Recent Legal Articles”. This section shows up on the homepage of LawFirms.com and on the homepage of each relevant site in our network. This area also displays the 5 most recent published articles for that practice area. For example, your article on “Liablity for a Dog Bite Injury”would show up in the “Most Recent Legal Articles” section on LawFirms.com and PersonalInjuryLawyer.com.  In order to ensure consistent exposure in this section, you need to continually submit fresh content to our network.

So in essence, the more content you submit on a regular basis, the more exposure you will gain.

For topic suggestions to help guide your writing or tips to optimize your profile page, please contact us today