Bigger Lawfirms Don't Do SEO

Legal SEO Marketing /

Most lawyers that contact me for doing organic search engine optimization or pay per click marketing are smaller law firms and solo attorneys. CAN YOUR FIRMS ATTORNEYS BE FOUND WHEN THEY ARE GOOGLED? I usually notice that bigger law firms websites aren’t optimized and sometimes you can’t even find key partners when "googling" them, let alone finding the firms site for keywords related to their practice areas. I would think that bigger law firms with big marketing budgets would do more with search engine optimization and pay per click marketing.  This is good news though for the smaller firms of the world, they can compete and beat the bigger guys in online advertising. MOST LAWFIRM MARKETING DIRECTORS DONT GET SEO I do have a number of bigger law firms that do recognize the value of search engine optimization and thats usually because of a sharp law marketing director.  Yet I find most law firm marketing directors don’t seem to understand how important it is to have some optimization done on the firms site, at the very least make sure your firm and its partners can be found at Google. I do see more and more lawyers recognizing that online marketing is the wave of the future and replacing the yellow pages and traditional ways to advertise. The latest large law firm client that we are working for is a Canadian law firm with multiple locations including Toronto, New York & London. If you law firm needs assistance with search engine optimization or pay per click marketing, contact us today.

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Google Adwords Can be Very Expensive

Google AdWords /

Google adwords is by far the best place to bid on keywords for your legal practice BUT you have to be very careful that you don’t overbid.  I have had more then one lawyer who has paid 10 times the amount per click then they had to. Some people are under the impression that the more you bid, the better your results but thats not true.  You might be guaranteed of a higher placement but in the long run you will waste a lot of money. Sometimes you have no choice but to bid a high amount if you have a lot of competition and you want to be in the top 3. Yet usually you can get in the top 3 and not pay a premium price. An example is the term Boston DUI lawyer, if you bid a max CPC of $60, you would probably pay around $20 per click. Now if that same person had lowered the max CPC to $10, then they would only pay around $3-4 per click and still be in the top 3 positions at adwords.  The savings over time can be $1000’s of per month and more. With a savings like that, you could then hire an organic SEO specialist like myself and save even more money in the long run!!

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Good Organic Search Rankings= More Visitors = More Clients

Legal Internet Marketing /

"ORGANIC" SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION VS. PAY PER CLICKIts important to know the difference between organic SEO and Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. Organic SEO is the process of getting your site listed in Google’s and other search engine’s main search index and coming up in the free or organic Search Engine results, located on the left side of the screen. Pay Per Click is basically buying the rankings for keywords and bidding to rank higher then other sites, these PPC results come up usually on the right side of the screen under "sponsored listings". Anyone can get their site listed in the PPC’s by simply paying for it, but getting organic listings takes time and effort. Most studies show that people prefer to click organic listings because they are more trustworthy, plus the nice thing about them is that you don’t have to pay a per click fee, which can sometimes be over $10 per click. BENEFITS OF ORGANIC SEOSEO can help place your web site among the top search engine results for a particular search, which will lead users looking for your firm’s practice area to your web site. This is a good way to establish your web presence and gain a solid flow of traffic to your site,  which can lead to new clients. Each search engine has a different set of rules as to how they rank web sites. Among other things, SEO involves Keyword Research to find all the possible key phrases people might use to locate your legal web site. Then its a matter of creating the optimized code for each page within the site and optimizing other key elements of the web site to make the site search engine friendly and ready. Once the site is optimized, then its a matter of submitting the site to the top search engines and directories.  Obtaining links from other quality web sites is the key to building your site’s Link Popularity score, which is a VERY important factor when search engines such as Google rank your web site. A combination of all these things will get your site listed at the search engines and get people visiting your site. See some of the results we have had in the organic search engine listings for some of our legal clients.

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Why Organic Search Rankings Are MUCH more valuable then Pay Per Click

Organic Search Engine Optimization /

Many law firms pay in order to have top rankings at the search engines via pay per click programs like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.  Each time someone clicks on the ad for a certain keyword, they pay a certain price to Google or Yahoo.  This can get very expensive if your bidding on highly competitive keywords, many times costing more then $10 per click. Organic search engine positions on the other hand are free!  They are the gift that keep on giving and if you have one of the top 10 or 20 positons, you will get a nice flow of traffic from people that are interested in your legal services.    The organic results are the ones on the left side of the page and people tend to trust organic results more then paid results, because anyone can buy their way to the top but with organic results, you have to earn your way to the top! EXAMPLE OF ORGANIC SEARCH ENGINE SUCCESS I have a legal client that does both organic optimization and pay per click marketing. Here is an example of how valuable organic results are for a law firm versus pay per click results.  This firm was doing a lot of PPC marketing for bankruptcy related keywords but stopped doing it because of how high the cost was.   The cost for the term chicago bankruptcy lawyer at Google adwords is an average of $12.62 per click for a top 3 position.  Same thing for most chicago bankruptcy terms, in the $10-15 per click range. Luckily for this client, we have been developing thier organic presense for the past few years and we not only optimized the firms main site, but we created a legal mini site for the chicago bankruptcy law practice.  So the firm has a very strong organic presence at Google and other search engines. At Google for the term chicago bankruptcy law the mini site is ranked #1 and the main site is ranked #6. So TWO top 10 listings for a competitive and very expensive keyword.  If they were paying per click and got just 20 clicks per site, it would cost more then $400 just for 40 total clicks on one keyword. The firm gets much more then 20 clicks and are top 10 for many other keywords in the organic listings at Google.  The senior partner told me the other day that they are getting about 2-3 referrals a week for bankruptcy work and its all coming from the organic listings because they stopped the pay per click campaigns for those keywords.  So they are saving huge money on the clicks and the traffic from the organic results are resulting in new business. Pay per click marketing is a great idea but in the long run, you must have good organic listings or your going to pay much more overall for your online advertising. We can assist your law firm with building its organic search engine presense, contact us today.

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Rapper 50 Cent Sues in New York over Internet ad

Uncategorized /

Rapper 50 cent on Friday sued Internet advertising company Traffix Inc. for using his image without permission in the graphic "Shoot the Rapper" ad, which he says promotes violence and threatens his safety. The lawsuit, filed in New York State Court seeks a minimum of $1 million in damages. The "vile, tasteless and despicable" use of 50 Cent’s image was "completely unauthorized" and "quite literally calls for violence against" him, the lawsuit says.

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Getting The Right Kind of Links to your Site

Legal Internet Marketing /

Its important that you have other websites that links to your legal site. Yet it’s not the number of links you get but the quality of the links.  Getting one link from a high ranking well ranked site is much better then getting a 100 links from link farms, sites that have nothing to do with your site or sites that have no existing search engine rankings. Getting links from established directories can be very valuable and are considered high quality valuablelinks. Links from the Yahoo directory, the Open Directory, .EDU sites and other business and legal directories can be very valuable in your overall search engine marketing plan.  Contact us today for more information.

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Upgrading Your Lawfirms Web Site

New Legal Web Design /

Updating your law firms website can be a good idea, especially if you have an older design with outdated content.  Clients expect to see a professional looking website that is easy to navigate and easy to find via the search engines.  If you have an older looking website that is not easy on the eyes or is not easy to navigate, you might lose some potential clients. We have helped a number of lawyers upgrade their sites from basic one page sites to larger sites with loads of content, upgraded images, firm logos and flash animation. The lastest law firm we have helped upgrade its site is The Law Offices of Robert Aronov, a New York Real Estate Lawyer.  We have expanded the site and included practice area pages for each of the firms practice areas, real estate headlines, legal resources and more. Each page is also optimized for the search engines and the site was built from the ground up with search engines in mind.

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SEO Doesn’t Guarantee Blog Visitor Loyalty

Legal SEO Marketing, Organic Search Engine Optimization /

Good post from Andy Beal about how most traffic to your blog will come from the search engines, BUT that its not enough, you must provide quality content relevant to what people are seeking for your blog to really flourish. ***  Mixed blessings for SEM come from a Boston University study entitled Traffic Characteristics and Communication Patterns in the Blogosphere. First, the good news: the majority of blog traffic comes from search engines. Search engines accounted for 43% of referral traffic in the blogosphere. Hurray for search engine marketers! Their diagram of referral traffic (below) does not include the 28% of blogosphere traffic without any referral data (probably bookmark or type-in traffic). Now for the bad news: “Despite the intimacy between traffic and search, however, optimizing a blog for search engine algorithms does not win the blogs retention or popularity,” as MarketingVOX put it. Yep, all the rankings in the world don’t make your blog well read, popular or sticky. You have to do that. SOURCE:  Marketing Pilgrim

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Google Still The Search Leader

Google Search Engine /

Hitwise’s latest numbers indicate that Google, already the clear leader among search engines in the US, is still growing at a pretty healthy rate. All the other major search engines have declined in the last year. Google, on the other hand, now drives 64% of US searches—10% growth over last year.   Google is obviously the most important search engine to have your law firms website listed at. SOURCE : Marketing Pilgrim

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Can Your Law Firm Live Without Microsoft Vista?

General Legal News /

Good article on the new Windows vista system from law.com. Vista is the successor to Windows XP, the PC operating system currently used by over 400 million people. After more than five years of intensive efforts, Windows Vista is finally complete. This new operating system is a major Windows update with lots of new functionality and features. The words Microsoft uses to present its new operating system are "Confident, Clear, Connected." It is a complex product and a big product, 50 million lines of code. It’s the first Windows version to provide developers with a major new programming model in ten years. This article looks at what is new about Vista, pros and cons of upgrading, hardware requirements and how this new operating system will impact the technology path of your office.

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