The Truth About Lawyer Internet Marketing

I gave a Certified Legal Education SEM webinar last week to over 200 attorneys for LexisNexis. I am going to answer a few of the questions I received but could not get through my blog today and over the next few days. I will also post answers to question I did have time to answer.

As for upcoming SEM (search engine marketing) seminars:

June 2nd El Paso County Bar Internet Marketing Seminar (contact the bar for location) http://www.epcounty.com/

June 12th Multnomah Bar Assoc. Sanctioned SEM Seminar (contact the bar for location) http://www.mbabar.org/

More to come throughout the west and specifically in the Bay area over the next few months.

Here are the first few Q & As from the Webinar:

Q: How do you qualify lawyers.com/findlaw.com - as local searches?
A:For many industries there are vertical search engines. For a few industries there are highly used vertical search engines. The legal industry is one of them. Searchers get to vertical search engines usually when they appear at the top of a search engine results page. In the case of Lawyers.com, I have seen in some regions where up to 40% of the traffic is from people going directly to the site by typing in www.lawyers.com. They can also find Lawyers.com on search engines.

Technically it is a vertical search directory, but this report does not have a category for vertical search directories, so depending on the industry different vertical directories would be part of “other” and some percentage of the “local search directory” market. I suppose it is possible that they might also take away some market share from the search engines.

Question: would like key word search information dcampanelli@day-ketterer.com

Answer: Links to Free tools for researching keywords below:
SEO Book (free version of Wordtracker results and links to many others)

http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/

Google Adwords:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Tools worth paying for:
Paid Version: www.wordtracker.com

More answers to come next week

Call me if you have any questions you need answered now: 720-985-7945

Common Internet Marketing Mistakes Attorneys Make When Building a Website
 
As I have stated many times before in this blog, in my conversations and in my seminars; there are more bad Internet marketing programs available for attorneys than there are good ones.

One of the most common mistakes I see them make is in the website building process.

MOST attorneys believe they need to have a website. So the first thing they do is build a website or hire someone to build it for them.

Example One: The attorney or law firm may decide to choose to “save money” by building a site themselves or having it done the “cheapest” way possible.

Example Two: The attorney may decide that they are willing to spend whatever it takes to have a beautiful site designed by a competent and creative web designer.

Which one of these attorneys is making the biggest mistake?

Answer: With this limited information we cannot really know which attorney or law firm is making the biggest mistake, but it seems they are both making the same mistake:

They may have both made the mistake of building a website as their first step to improving their web presence, when there are many other things they should have considered first.

Before building a website you need to ask yourself some key questions:

What do you expect from your website presence?

If you want to get new customers from your website, then you need to consider search engine marketing as an option. More people use a search engine like Google, Yahoo! or MSN to find an attorney than the yellow pages. (according to TMP Marketing). You may also want to consider local directories like yellowpages.com, dexknows.com, or vertical directories like lawyers.com, martindale.com and others.

If you simply want someone to find your site when they have been referred to you then you do not need to spend a lot of money on marketing your website.

However, in both cases you need to invest wisely in a website that will meet the following minimum criteria.

A: Represent your firm well online. More people will see your site than see your office. If you have a clean, professional office that puts a good foot forward for your firm, then you should also have a website that is clean, professional and content rich (like you!).

If you skimp on a website with an ugly template or fail to put good content on your site you may hurt your firm’s reputation rather than help it, and you may even lose a referral that checked out one of your competitor’s websites. When you are being compared online your referrals may feel your competition is better qualified to handle their legal needs.

I met one firm who apologized for their site when they got a referral call from someone who began the conversation; “I was looking at your website…”

As you can tell by my blog I am not a website designer; I am a search engine marketing expert. If you came here for some honest information about Internet marketing you have come to the right place, but if you want a website designed for your firm I would have to recommend an expert that works for me to do it for you.

Conversely; most web designers are not up to speed on the latest search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

B: Your site needs to be search engine friendly.

You may not need an extensive SEO program to meet your needs, but if your website is not search engine friendly then your prospects or referrals may not even be able to find your site when they look you up by name in your city. Furthermore, if your site is built correctly from the start, then driving your site to the top of search engines like Google is going to be a lot easier, and you might even get up there for specific searches with very little additional effort.

I think it is worth repeating: most website designers are not up to speed on the latest search engine optimization (SEO) best practices. If it was my firm, and I was looking to build a website I would first begin looking for an SEO specialist. They can help you find a web designer that will build a site with search engines in mind, or they can manage the process for you so that your web designer builds your site correctly from the start.

Come back soon to learn how to find the answers to the questions below-and do not hesitate to call me at 720-985-7945 for a free consultation.

For what types of searches do you want your site to appear on Google and other search engines?

How competitive is your market?

Who are your competitors and what do their websites look like?

What is your budget for your website?

What should your budget for your website be?

How do you select a website designer?

How will you track the success of your web presence?

How much should you invest in an Internet marketing program?

Should you build your site yourself?

Most Common Internet Marketing Mistakes:
Letting your yellow pages salesperson talk you out of a good plan and into a bad one.

Both of these cases studies are based on true stories I have heard from attorneys. Names and possibly genders are changed to protect their anonymity.

Case study one:
Tom is waiting for his yellow pages rep to meet with him to go over his yellow pages plan. He is prepared to cancel his whole plan because he remembers; “The calls are not coming in like they used to, and I am tired of paying $5,000 a month for a yellow pages ad because I am afraid that I will miss out on that one I case I would have received had I been in there. I am going to put this money towards something that will bring me more and better business or buy a Porsche and give up on this advertising thing.”

The yellow pages rep, Joe, arrives with Judy; his “Internet Specialist”.

They explain the “power of the Internet”. They say “Online yellow pages yada-yada, Google yada-yada this, Yahoo! yada-yada that, and yada-yada websites.”

Then they say:
“If you take advantage of our Internet marketing/SEM/SEO/PPC/online yellow pages program for $3,000 a month, we will lower the price of your print yellow pages to $3,000 a month.”

Tom thinks: “Wow, I only have to pay 20% more than I paid last year, and I will now have a website and an Internet marketing program from my trustworthy yellow pages salesperson and their brilliant Internet Marketing Guru! This is going to be my year!”

Stories like this have been going on for years nationwide, and they still happen every day across the country; especially to attorneys.

The next day, week or month Tom realizes he has just signed a 12 month contract he cannot possibly get out of, and he is worse off than he was the year before. He does not have a $3,000 Internet marketing program. He has a sub-par website, a sub-par Internet marketing program that is at best over priced, at worst completely useless and he still has a yellow pages ad that is generating fewer calls than ever.

He has invested more money, he is getting fewer clients and now there is less of a chance Tom is going to get a Porsche, a boat, or buy a house for a homeless family anytime soon. (You were thinking of doing the last one, right?)

Ouch!

Case study two, part 1:

Eva cancelled her “double-truck” (2 page) yellow pages ad last year when the yellow pages rep visited. The rep, Justin, called shortly before the close of the book and said; “Eva, we would like to invite you to get back in the book for half price. Would you be interested in that?”

Eva said “Certainly-come on out and let’s talk about it.”

Justin came out with his “Internet Guru” Judy. They offered the Yellow Pages ad at $7,500 (half the “rack rate”) and an online program for $2,500 a month.

Eva was mad. She said; “I only paid $10,000 for my double truck last year. You have two choices:
1-Leave now.
2-Give me my ad this year for $5,000 like you ‘implied’ (promised?) over the phone, and then leave.”

She got her ad for half price.

Case study 2, part 2:
Mike and Dan from the company that built her custom website the year before came in to visit with her a few days later and began to talk to her about the advantages of SEO.

They had a sound strategy that made sense:

1. They could show her examples of other law firm websites they had optimized in other competitive markets.
2. They offered conversion tracking-not just clicks and impression tracking.
3. They offered transparent reporting of the work being done on her website and monthly ranking reports.
4. They offered limited exclusivity, so she knew they would not be providing this service to all of her competitors.

She asked for references and she got them. Mike and Dan came back a week later and she signed up for the program.

Case Study 2, part 3:
8 months later the yellow pages came back with the tactic attempted in case study one. Eva said: “My SEO is working. I dominate Google and other search engines for my search terms and I am getting clients from the program every month. There is no way I am going to mess with that. Either renew my yellow pages at the same rate I had last year or take me out of the book.”

And so it goes…

Yellow page has become a very tricky business. In this post I will attempt to give you some insight from my experience with the yellow pages, what I am hearing from other attorneys and even some reliable statistics on yellow pages vs. Internet usage.

(For a comprehensive analysis for your firm please feel free to call me anytime at 720-985-7945)

Don’t get me wrong-the yellow pages is  a viable way to market a local service business, but in the current world it is often over priced and over rated by the people selling it. Of course, that can be said about many people selling advertising and marketing programs.

10 or 15+ years ago, businesses used to line up at the local yellow pages office (the “real yellow” pages-always associated with the phone company) to buy ads so they could grow their business. It was like trying to get Jonas Brother tickets. You had to get in line early, make the big decision on whether or not your were willing to spend a few hundred dollars a month on the biggest ad in your heading-which at one point was a “half page ad”.

Year after year the yellow pages grew the size of the ads, and admittedly accomplished some very high quality full color ads on paper that was maybe slightly thicker than the paper in a compact bible.

This program often worked very well for attorneys until recently.

Then came cover ads, spine, inside covers, tabs, magnets and even brochures and magazines delivered with the books. Not to mention all of the smaller community books. For example, I believe Dex Media (the YP for Qwest) has as many as 20+ books being delivered in the Denver metro area alone. The Yellow Pages for a long time has been a cash cow with huge profits-up to 60% on each book.

Then competitors like Yellowbook came into many towns and in some cases offered an excellent return on investment for the attorneys and other businesses in their markets. I will not try to explain in any detail how this affected the legal industry, because I know that many of the attorneys could tell that story better than I could.

Then came the search engines, and the shift from using the yellow pages to find local information to Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others-but mostly Google.

I worked for Dex Media for a while at their headquarters working with product development and sales. From 2004 to 2005 we more than doubled the revenue Dex generated from Internet marketing, however, that did not make a dent in the lack of growth in the print side of the business-which at the time was a $1.6 billion source of revenue, vs. under $70k in Internet advertising revenue.

Let’s get some facts:

This report came out in October 2008 from TMP Directional Marketing; a reputable company that sells Pay Per Click marketing, Online Yellow Pages and Yellow Pages. They act as representatives for all of the major yellow pages across the country for businesses that need to advertise in multiple states but want one point of contact. They have credibility with me because they have to approach direct advertising from a consultative approach for national and international businesses like Pizza Hut and Porsche, and they have to deliver results to stay in business.

Here is the report they put out from their research last fall:

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire - October 9, 2008) –
TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM)-the largest local search marketing agency…
…announced today the findings of its second annual Local Search Usage Study conducted by comScore, which confirms shoppers still use a variety of online and offline directional media resources to find local business information.
First sources used are Search Engines (31%)
Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%)
Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)
Local Search Sites (11%)
(61% of Searches are online searches-more than twice the usage of the books)
This represents a change from last year’s study, which ranked:
Print Yellow Pages first (33%)
Followed by Search Engines (30%).This affirms what most attorneys I talk to are experiencing, and as a result I am seeing many attorneys this year do one of two things:1-Pull their ads from the book

2-Negotiate some pretty amazing deals

3-Get talked into a very bad Internet marketing strategy managed by their yellow pages provider

NEW YORK, NY–(Marketwire - October 9, 2008) - TMP Directional Marketing (TMPDM), the largest local search marketing agency, announced today the findings of its second annual Local Search Usage Study conducted by comScore, which confirms shoppers still use a variety of online and offline directional media resources to find local business information.

First sources used are Search Engines (31%)

Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%)

Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%)

Local Search Sites (11%)

61% of Searches are online searches

This represents a change from last year’s study, which ranked:

Print Yellow Pages first (33%)

Followed by Search Engines (30%).

Bottom Line: It is now very apparent that local search is being dominated by the Internet.

Come back soon for the best ways to capitalize on these drastic market changes-and how to win the negotiation battle with your yellow pages representative.

Wow.

I still cannot believe how much bad Internet marketing I see out there all over the West. You would think by 2009 the legal industry would have figured out how to market their firms on the Internet.  Make no mistake-I do not blame the attorneys. They have been sold and promised a bill of goods for years now-often from people they thought they could and should trust.

What is a lawyer to do?

The yellow pages are tanking. RH Donnelly/Dex was de-listed after their stock dropped below 25 cents.

I see anger, frustration and fear on the faces of some of the attorneys at my seminars-not because of me, but because they have been burned so many times in the past. Most of them are relieved to attend a seminar like mine where they are not given a sales pitch, but truly educated on the nuances and truths of attorney Internet marketing.

The good news is that the attorneys and the local bars are realizing they need to educate themselves so they can make educated decisions on how to market their firms online. Our seminars are a great place to start.

Meeting with a good sized firm today that has been trying to find someone to help them successfully market their firm online for a few nears now. I am excited that I have the opportunity to help them out.

Remember, I work with attorneys exclusively. If you have another kind of business I recommend you contact the Denver based, Peter Kent endorsed firm Integrity Internet Consulting. They are the SEO Denver based experts you can trust to steer you in the right direction and give you an honest assessment of your Internet marketing potential. They have clients in Denver and all around the world-but they refer all of their law firm prospects to me, because the legal industry is so competitive you really need a firm that focuses on that industry only.

Good luck-and feel free to comment with any questions you may have. One of my resolutions this year is to try to add content and answer questions every day.

Happy 2009!

I have been traveling around the western United States since November giving 60-90 minute seminars on “SEM for Attorneys”. So far we have been in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Pasadena, San Diego, Spokane, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Denver. Many of these are CLE certified. I have a few more I am doing this month-and more in the months to come. Next Tuesday I will be in Salt Lake City, and on the 26th I will be in Long Beach California. I have more scheduled in February and March.

The feedback from law firms has been very positive:

“Very informative.”

“I appreciated the fact that it was not a sales pitch, but truly a learning experience.”

“Finally! I have needed to learn about this for a long time time!”

If you are interested in attending one of these coming up, or if you would like me to come to your area, please comment on this blog and I will respond.

Here is an outline of what we cover:

• What is Search Engine Marketing (“SEM”)?
• Key SEM Definitions
• Keyword Research
• PPC Best Practices (Pay-Per-Click)
• SEO Best Practices (Search Engine Optimization)
  • Site Development and Updating
  • Link Building Opportunities
  • Social Networking
• Best Practices in Measurement
• SEM-Do it Yourself or Outsource?
• How do you find someone to implement and manage a successful SEM program?
• Free Tools
• Q&A

I can doing over a lunch, or even in the evening.

It’s a great way to start off 2009!

By the time you read this you may have read the books, blogs, or listened to someone you trust explain how to get your site content “optimized”. You researched your search terms (“long tail”, “short tail”, “no tail”)You update your site more than your competition (you hope). You know about all of the acronyms; “URL”, “SEO”, “SEM”, “PPC”, “SERP”, “CPC”, “CTR”, “ROI”, “CPA”, etc.

 

Now what?

 

Just wait?

 

No.

 

If you haven’t done so already, you need to get the highest quantity and quality of links to your site. How many? How high of quality?

 

How long is a string?(It’s all relative)

 

If you have a better website than your competitors, and better and/or higher quality links to a website that is more consistently updated than your competitors, you may beat them to the top of Google.

 

Could I BE more ambiguous? Short of stealing the “secret sauce” from Google, this is about as specific as it gets.

 

Back to links:

 

How do you get links?

 

1. Internal links
   • Link content within your site to other pages within your site-in ways that make sense.
   • Example: Link the words “divorce lawyer” to the page on your site that is about “divorce lawyer”, link the word “links” too your page about links.
   • Level of difficulty-low
   • Time consuming? Yes, but still easy
   • Beneficial? Yes
2. Link your site to other sites. This is very easy-and easy usually means you will not get much SEO value from it. However, more Internet users may appreciate useful and relevant links and come back to your site after realizing you give them valuable information.
   • Level of difficulty-very easy.
   • Beneficial-possibly a little.
3. Reciprocal links:
   Linking to someone else’s site in exchange for their site linking to yours.
   • For a while this was the “game” everyone played.
   • This is still a good way to get links to and from relevant sites.
   • Get links from the highest ranked most relevant sites you can:
   • The bar, other attorneys you would like to recommend, and who would like to recommend you.
   • Level of difficulty-medium to hard
   • Beneficial? A little bit.
   • Biggest problem with this type of linking-lots of time to get lots of them with minimal value.
4. “Narcissistic” links, or one-way links: links that are all to, for and “about” you.
   • Links from legal sites-but you don’t link to them
   • Links from blogs
   • May be easy to get from your own blogs or friends
   • Very time consuming
   • High time to link ratio
   • Can be a very high quality link.
5. Links from press releases about you or your area of law
   • Not too hard to get
   • Take time
   • Take money
   • Need to be done right to achieve value
   • If they are not done right they could be a waste of time and/or money
6. Links from non-news articles about you and/or your area of law
7. Links from forums
   Examples: Lawyers.com blogs and forums
8. Links from directories
9. Social Networking
   Setting up profiles about you and/or your firm can be a great way to improve your web presence and get links.
   • Linked In
   • Facebook
   • MySpace

 

Links can be a lot of work. Finding someone who has successfully optimized other law firm websites could save you a lot of time, but make sure they have a track record of SEO work they can show you.

 Think about Search Engine Optimization this way: no matter how good you are, if you are not getting yourself out on the Internet letting everyone know what you are doing, what your expertise is, how experienced you are and what makes you the right choice for your prospects-and on a regular basis, no one searching online for a lawyer will be able to find you.

 Many attorneys want to get to the point where they can just practice law. They want the phone to ring with the best cases calling from referrals, or at least have the choice of operating this way once they have grown to the level they are comfortable with. Your referrals “Google” you by name, and as long as your site represents you well and is decently designed you should come up at the top of Google by name. Even the referral based firms need to remember that more people will see their website than see their offices, so they need to try to keep their website up to date and at a level that does not increase the risk of you losing referrals.

 I was at a firm a few months ago that said every time the phone rang from a referral that said “I was looking at your website…” the attorneys cringed because as good as they were, their website looked very “last century”. They did not want to invest in optimization for advertising purposes, but they needed to be represented online at least as well as they were at their office location and through the words of others who were referring them business. A firm like this can get a fully customized website with RSS feeds, and add flash and video for a total cost of between $5K and $15K-with no need for significant time or money spent on Search Engine Optimization.

 If you aren’t already famous, but think that you have something to offer, and you need more quality clients, then you need to treat the Internet like another community that you are reaching out to and getting to know. You need to “take Google out to lunch” and discover what they want from you for you to be considered an authority in your field and recommend you to the people who come to their site looking for an attorney like you.

 You need to get up to date information about you and your firm online regularly. Taking a doctor out to lunch once every two years is not going to work as well as taking them out once a month or once a week.

 How do you do that? The short answer is through blogs, press releases, forum postings, videos, emails and of course your website or websites.

 If networking is not your strong suit, you might consider developing that skill or hiring a PR or sales/marketing specialist to do it for you. If you are not capable of implementing the strategies required to earn Google’s respect and have them begin to refer you business, and you do not want to spend your time learning how to be a website developer and optimization specialist, then you need to hire someone you can trust to do it for you.

 How do you find someone to do it for you?

Check out my previous post on search engine optimization.

 Of course, if you really wanted to be thorough, you could take the time to put together a comprehensive RFP (request for proposal) and ask 2-3 reputable SEO service providers to look at it, put together a proposal and present it to you.

The problem is that you are not likely to be an Internet marketing expert (if you are, that’s still only half the battle). Every SEO service provider has a story as to why you should hire them and not the other guy. Call me at 720-985-7945 and I will help you put an RFP together for free, as long as you let LexisNexis be one of the respondants to your RFP.

 Meanwhile here is a link to an RFP outline you might consider using- rfp-outline.doc

The Wild Wild West.

I used to love that show (the original one-as much as I enjoy Will Smith, the movie version was not the same). I never dreamed that I would be living the life Mr. West in my 40s. Actually, I was hoping to be more like Superman.

Anyway…

How about SEO in the Wild Wild West.

In my job with LexisNexis I am the SEO/SEM/Internet marketing consultant for all of the states West of Kansas except for New Mexico and Arizona, but including Hawaii (is Hawaii West of Denver or East of Denver-trick question). As I have been making my rounds this month I have met with attorneys from Los Angeles and Seattle, to Hillsboro, OR, Salty Lake City and Honolulu. In every city and town attorneys are trying to figure out the most cost effective way to market their firms online. In Hillsboro I met an attorney that is doing his own optimization-and doing it pretty darn well. Conversely, in Seattle I meet attorneys that are STILL trying to figure out how the heck to get SEO done properly and who the heck to trust-and they are in the same town as Amazon, Microsoft and Google!

Below is my basic criteria for choosing an SEO service provider. These are the questions I would ask if I was looking for someone to optimize a website for my firm:

1-Can you show me multiple examples of your customers who are getting high rankings on Google for terms that are at least as competitive as mine?
Not from my direct competitors, but if I am going to have confidence that you are going to be able to optimize my site for “personal injury lawyer seattle” or “intellectual property lawyer seattle”, then you better be able to show me that you have success optimizing a site for “Medical Malpractice New York City” or “dui lawyer las vegas”. If you show me that you have optimized a site for keywords like “landscaping contractors Denver”, then I cannot be confident you can the same thing for “personal injury lawyer seattle”. The landscaping market is just not that competitive on the Internet.

2-Will you take the time to develop an SEO strategy based on the needs of my firm and the competitiveness of my particular geographic market and area of practice?

If your SEO consultant is saying “We CAN do this, or we could TRY this.” Then you should be leery.

After I tore my 1st ACL on my left knee after my brief professional soccer “career” came to an end, I met with the first Dr. I could for a consultation. I will never forget when he looked at me and said “Dan, I am not sure what we should do here. We could this, or that, or maybe this-what do you think?” At the time I was 25, it was my first knee injury, and I had not even completed my undergraduate degree. How the heck could I make a decision on what to do with my knee? I still didn’t even know what an ACL was. (After 4 ACL reconstructions I feel like I could “virtually” perform the surgery if I had to-”virtually” meaning in a video game or something like that).

Lucky for me, I was coaching the sons of Jim Bartimus, a top medical malpractice attorney in the Midwest. He was able to get me to the top of the list to meet with Dr. Yost, one of the KC Royals orthopedic surgeons, and one of the top Orthos in the KC area. Dr. Yost took the bull by the horns. He looked me in the eye, and while his assistant took notes he told me what he wanted to do, he scheduled my surgery, and sometime later I was back on the field playing better than I had played before.

As an attorney, you realize that ultimately your clients make the decision on what they want you to do for them, but if you do not give them competent and confident recommendations you are probably not providing them with a good service. (hopefully, as an attorney you can back up your recommendations with a track record)

3-Will you report to me on a regular basis the work you are doing on my website, the progress you are making, and your plans for the future of my website?

Not just Webtrends, impressions and clicks, but ranking reports, backlink reports,  and call reports, along with a summary analysis at least monthly of what the heck all of these reports mean.

Some SEO specialists act like they have the secret to SEO success, therefore you should just give them some money and trust them. They cannot tell you what they are doing, because it is a secret.

It’s not a secret. YOU could learn how to do SEO yourself. YOU could hire an SEO consultant for a few hundred dollars an hour to teach you how to do everything yourself, just like I could try my PI own case if I wanted to do so. The reason you want to hire someone to optimize your site is because they can do it more effectively than you, they can do it better than you because it is what they do every day and they can and will do it well for YOU. Not because they have the secret. If they claim to have the secret, I would eliminate them immediately as an option.

4-Do you offer any kind of exclusivity?

There are only 10 spots on the first page of Google organic results for a particular search. Few of the companies who do SEO offer exclusivity. They will sell the “first page of Google” to as many PI firms in Denver that will pay them for it. In the hopes that the lack of their reporting combined with the fact that their attorneys will not have the time to babysit their programs.

5-Have you been in business for a while, and how do I know you will be in business next week, next month, and next year?

I have heard more than once from attorneys and other business owners where someone has given thousands of dollars to an “SEO specialist”, with no results, no recourse, and no more “SEO specialist”.

6-Last, beware of:

A. Non descriptive SEO agreements combined with Pay-Per-Click programs. Pay-Per-Click can be profitable, but often it is hidden in a $1,000-8,000 a month program that has very little SEO and a lot of PPC.

B. Guarantees of placement.

Doood! Come on! You are an attorney! How could you fall for this trick? The only guarantee you will get from an SEO placement guarantee is that it will be written in such a way as to guarantee that the “SEO specialist” will set the standards so low that they cannot fail to meet the guarantee. Read my post where I expose the fine print of Network Solution’s SEO guarantee. It’s bogus.
If and when one of your peers says they guarantee they will win a tough case-what do you think? Of course the come back I hear from attorneys is “well, we work on contingency-why can’t you?”
I will. The first personal injury firm that offers me 30% of the revenue they generate from my search engine optimization efforts will be able to obtain my SEO services for free. I would expect to earn about $300K + my first year with this type of arrangement.

C. They tell you SEO is the only way to go, and to avoid PPC marketing. The truth is that both can be done well, and both can be done poorly-it is usually the latter. They both have their place when implemented strategically and with the proper expectations.

Of course that’s just my opinion. I might be wrong.

On two occasions in the last two weeks someone has told me that one of my SEO competitors is “guaranteeing” 1st page placement or they will give them their SEO investment money back.

I have dismissed it, poo-poo’d it or avoided it, because it is such a ridiculous idea-NOT because I think it has any legitimacy. It is a tool used by companies who have inexperienced “Internet Marketing Consultants” who have to have a gimmick to entice businesses to spend money with them. I have heard of other companies providing ”bogus” clicks that they were driving to their customer’s website as part of a “guarantee.” Since then, any time I hear the word “guarantee” and search engine marketing in the same breath I assume 2 things:

1-The guarantee is only that the guarantors will not fail to meet the terms and conditions of their guarantee.

2-It could be interpreted as “bogus” by an educated observer.

What is bogus?

bo·gus
–adjective 1. not genuine; counterfeit; spurious; sham.

 Here are the details of Network Solutions guarantee, taken from their website:

 It is boldly titled:

“Top 10 Search Results Guarantee”

 Part one is reasonable:

“Any Web site that is all Flash, contains frames/layers or adult content is not eligible for the guarantee. Guarantees may be voided for, among other reasons, Web sites that have downtime for one day or more, Web sites that have been altered after they have been optimized by Network Solutions, Web sites that are cloned, or that do not use 301 for redirects.”

This might be considered Reasonable:

“If customers do not respond to communications from Network Solutions for more than 60 days, the optimization project may be considered “abandoned” and payment will be surrendered in full.”

This is where it gets fishy:

“For optimization packages (”Top 10 Search Results service”), Network Solutions guarantees a minimum number of top ten listings in one or more of 12 search engines within 10 months from completion date. Most engines will index your site in about three (3) months, but it takes time to gain the popularity and ranking needed to compete using competitive phrases. Network Solutions will only submit keywords to search engines in the United States. The search engines included are: AOL®, AlltheWeb®, AltaVista™, Ask.com ® (formerly known as AskJeeves.com®), Google®, Hotbot®, Looksmart®, Lycos®, MSN®, Netscape®, and Yahoo!®. The minimum number of top ten listings guaranteed is 5 for the 20 keyword phrase package, 10 for the 30 keyword phrase package and 20 for the 50 keyword phrase package. There is no guarantee for the 10 keyword package. The guarantee is a full money back guarantee, subject to these and the other terms and conditions of our Services Agreement, provided at the 10 month mark from date of completion if results are not obtained.”

Why is this fishy?

In the best case scenario you will get 20 keywords out of 50 in the top 10 search results. That sounds reasonable, right? 40% of YOUR keywords in the top 10 of the search engines?

Not so fast-it is 20 placements out of 12 search engines. Not so fast-it is 20 placements out of 12 search engines. This means only 20 keywords out of 6oo opportunities have to be on the first page of a search engine. That is only 3.3% of your keywords. It could be your lowest 2 (least competitive) out your 50 keywords on the first page of each search engine to meet their guarantee-and they have 10 months to do it!

Like many performance statistics in the business world, you are likely to get 80% of your performance  results from the top 20% of your performers, and 90% from your top 10%. Target keywords are no exception.

You would likely get 90% of the traffic to your site from your top 10% most searched keywords if you were ranked number one for each of your keywords.

The point is that you have NO guarantee of an even moderately successful campaign from this example of a “guarantee”.

(back to the guarantee)

This is Reasonable:

 ”In no event will Network Solutions be liable to you for any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising from the optimizations services provided.

This service(s) does not guarantee any sales or traffic to your Web site. Traffic and sales depend upon the demand for your particular product or service, the design and layout of your Web site, and many other factors that are beyond the control of Network Solutions.

This is Reasonable, but a cost that a good SEO specialist could include as part of your investment…

“Network Solutions services do not include the paid submission fees that some engines charge for inclusion. Network Solutions is not affiliated with these submission services in any way. You may opt to pay these fees directly to the search engine for inclusion. Additional fees may apply for changes, modifications, updates, and optimization alterations that exceed the scope of these optimization services.”

So is this a “bogus” guarantee? Based on my analysis and these dictionary.com definitions, well, I will leave that up to you to decide…

bo·gus
–adjective 1. not genuine; counterfeit; spurious; sham.

coun·ter·feit
–adjective 1. made in imitation so as to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; not genuine; forged: counterfeit dollar bills. 

spu·ri·ous
–adjective 1. not genuine, authentic, or true; not from the claimed, pretended,or proper source; counterfeit

sham
–noun 1. something that is not what it purports to be; a spurious imitation; fraud or hoax.

coun·ter·feit
–adjective 1. made in imitation so as to be passed off fraudulently or deceptively as genuine; not genuine; forged: counterfeit dollar bills. 
 
Here is the guarantee without my interjections…

“Top 10 Search Results Guarantee
Any Web site that is all Flash, contains frames/layers or adult content is not eligible for the guarantee. Guarantees may be voided for, among other reasons, Web sites that have downtime for one day or more, Web sites that have been altered after they have been optimized by Network Solutions, Web sites that are cloned, or that do not use 301 for redirects.

If customers do not respond to communications from Network Solutions for more than 60 days, the optimization project may be considered “abandoned” and payment will be surrendered in full.

For optimization packages (”Top 10 Search Results service”), Network Solutions guarantees a minimum number of top ten listings in one or more of 12 search engines within 10 months from completion date. Most engines will index your site in about three (3) months, but it takes time to gain the popularity and ranking needed to compete using competitive phrases. Network Solutions will only submit keywords to search engines in the United States. The search engines included are: AOL®, AlltheWeb®, AltaVista™, Ask.com ® (formerly known as AskJeeves.com®), Google®, Hotbot®, Looksmart®, Lycos®, MSN®, Netscape®, and Yahoo!®. The minimum number of top ten listings guaranteed is 5 for the 20 keyword phrase package, 10 for the 30 keyword phrase package and 20 for the 50 keyword phrase package. There is no guarantee for the 10 keyword package. The guarantee is a full money back guarantee, subject to these and the other terms and conditions of our Services Agreement, provided at the 10 month mark from date of completion if results are not obtained. In no event will Network Solutions be liable to you for any lost profits, lost savings, or other incidental or consequential damages arising from the optimizations services provided.

This service(s) does not guarantee any sales or traffic to your Web site. Traffic and sales depend upon the demand for your particular product or service, the design and layout of your Web site, and many other factors that are beyond the control of Network Solutions.

Network Solutions services do not include the paid submission fees that some engines charge for inclusion. Network Solutions is not affiliated with these submission services in any way. You may opt to pay these fees directly to the search engine for inclusion. Additional fees may apply for changes, modifications, updates, and optimization alterations that exceed the scope of these optimization services.”