Every time I hear someone in marketing or advertising talk about "best practices" for website design, I roll my eyes.

Now granted, many of the do's and don't's of web design have merit. They've been tried, tested and proven to work. And I believe that certain best practices such as ease of navigation, making good use of white space, ensuring that site text is easy to read and building for fast loading times are sarcosanct. But I also believe that best practices are helping to hold marketers back.

GUEST BLOGGER: Kimberly Alford Rice, President - KLA Marketing Associates

How wise would it be to leave on a road trip without programming your GPS first with the “end location” or without Google driving directions? Not very wise, but that is essentially what law firms do when they spend on marketing without a written plan and annual budget.

Would you build a white picket fence around your beautiful new home without knowing the dimensions? Let me answer the question for you –  “most likely, no”. You would never cut corners building a home. Having a sound structure that is functional and keeps your family safe is essential, right?

GUEST BLOGGER: Cheryl Bame, Principal - Bame Public Relations 

Many professionals want to see their names in print, either by being quoted in the press or by writing a bylined article. If you want to take the latter route, then there are some important questions you need to ask yourself before you set out to write your masterpiece. And these questions go beyond the traditional tasks of identifying your target publication and getting your topic approved by an editor.

I enjoy writing blogs like this, and sending out tweets when I run across a great article that I think will be of value to colleagues. However, I must admit that I have stopped tuning in on my TweetDeck on a daily basis. Why? Because I see more and more tweets that simply prattle on about subjects that I don’t have the time or interest in reading. Perhaps I need to go in and clean out my followers and create more robust lists. But this is not my point.

Accounting marketers have swarmed Washington, DC this week for the Association for Accounting Marketers (AAM) annual conference. Sessions have included performance reviews, how to add value to your firm and niche development to marketing audits and online marketing strategy.

We all want our websites to be found, positioned and ranked high by search engines. Are you checking to see that your site is attracting traffic? Or, are your professionals sending you emails asking you why your firm’s site doesn’t appear on the first or even the second page of search results? SEO is not optional; it is critical to the success when designing or redesigning websites. We all have websites; we all have to take SEO into consideration when building our sites!

As marketing professionals, we are continually searching for ways to extend our brand and touch our clients and prospects in a cost effective way, but how do you know your tactics are effective? Now more than ever, we should be building tools into our marketing strategy to track and analyze the results.

As law firms continue to struggle under the weight of the economic downturn, online positioning and advertising opportunities have emerged as an inexpensive way to elevate their brand and raise name awareness. Increasing your online visibility can draw more visitors to your website, position you as a thought leader and attract new customers.