2. Technorati. Sign up for it, learn how to use it, add the widgets. It’s a great tool. See who quotes you and reciprocate.

3. Sitemeter. Know your audience.

4. Ping-o-Matic. Let’s the search world know you exist.

5. Link to other sources. Just like you would cite a source in a brief link other websites in your posts. That way, you can make a quick point and provide your basis through a link. I find it gives my posts substance and it seems to help in the search rankings.

6. Tell everyone about your blog. Tell your colleagues, friends, neighbors, put in on your attorney website, business cards. Your blog is the easiest way for clients to get to know you. It can really set your firm apart.

7. Register with texasbar/blogs

8. Read Grits For Breakfast, find a way to get quoted by GFB.

9. Read TDCAA user forums. Be marveled at the complete lack of prosecutorial blogs. Posting in forums- how 90’s. Defense lawyers are creative people and blogging is creative work.

10. I find practical blawging hard. Like writing a CLE seminar or law review. I keep those short and aim for my audience- defendants. If you can do it well, go for it. I can’t force it, so I don’t.

Here are my two blogposts beneficial to all new bloggers and new webmasters, not just lawyers:

http://tinyurl.com/2l5ryu

http://tinyurl.com/2ko7kd

I tend to use Technorati, our trackback software and our site statistics software to know which blogs and other websites are linking to our website. I found your blog entry through Technorati.

Our Underdog blog name results in many unrelated results in google unless I use such restrictive phrases as blog and criminal law, which still returns many unrelated links and several blogs of the same title. However, that’s a price for my favorite title for our blog.

I suggest having one’s blogname in the URL, although justiceblog is in our URL, because I originally thought of using that blog title. It will be hard to turn back now, unless I use a mirrored URL with underdog in it.

When deciding which blogs to link to, I tend to consider such aspects as quality of content and context, frequency of posting relevant topics, overall content, subject matter, and my gut reaction. My blog entries and links are done both for the benefit of me and my readers.

I tend to link to all frequently-posted prosecutors’ blogs no matter what their content, to know the opposition.

If I link to a blog that offends me tremendously, but still think it should be linked to (e.g., prosecutors‚Äô blogs) I might make note of it in some way in my blogroll. For instance, I have called “Seeking Justice” “Seeking [In]Justice”. A newer prosecutor who subsequently password-protected his blog was making me ill unnecessarily bashing criminal defendants and focusing on winning his cases no matter the damage to justice, so I entitled his blog “Gloating Prosecutor.”

One widely-linked-to and long-existing law blog that I find frequently beneficial is too frequently and unnecessarily mean-spirited and character-assassinating (even about other criminal defense lawyers). I do not wish to dignify nor encourage its mean spiritedness by linking to it.

I believe in erring on the side of not listing a blog than listing it to my blogroll, when I am on the fence about it. Your blogroll’s length is spare and relevant like a Count Basie solo.

Have a great week. Jon

I don’t know that I’ve gotten any clients because of my blog. I know that several people have read my blog, then hired me, but I can’t say that they wouldn’t have hired me otherwise.