When your law firm started thinking about a strong online marketing plan, you probably ran a few searches on local competing law firms. After getting a look at the top-ranking crowd, you may have then contacted a search engine marketing company and declared that you wanted them to do whatever your competitor was doing.

In fact, some companies offer that same tactic. They check a competitor's link portfolio and then try to get your firm linked with all of the same sites. While competitor research is very important and can lead your legal marketing company to some good opportunities, it should not be the only strategy for developing a link building and search marketing plan.

Perhaps the most valuable way to use competitor data is not to clone their strategy, but to look for their shortcomings. If the number one ranking firm for your keyword is not utilizing news releases to build links, using a marketing strategy that utilizes press releases could give you the upper hand.

If the number one ranking website has 30-40 pages of content, you could build 80-100 pages by focusing on every detail of every practice area, setting up FAQs and information resources, glossaries, and by establishing an active blog.

Looking to competitors is a great way to enter the online marketing scene, but to succeed, you need a custom marketing plan that finds ways to take advantage of what your competitors are not doing, not just copy what they are doing.

Bigger Law Firm: Bigger Law Firm

Celebrating our 12th issue! This month's Bigger Law Firm magazine talks about how Google Penguin is helping and harming lawyers and their SEO goals. Also, we talk to a lawyer that knows how to make Facebook work for his firm, explain how a press room can lead to new cases, talk about…