First of all:
Why get your website to the top of Google?
- Local Searches on major search engines has been growing by 40% a year.
- There were over 100,000 Nevada attorney or lawyer related searches last month.
- Bottom Line: people are looking for attorneys online every day-if you are not there, your competition is.
- Because of the habits of searchers-a recent study of online searchers showed:
- 23% only looked at the first few results
- 39% said they only look at the first page of results
- 19% looked through the first 2 pages
- 9% only went up to the first 3 pages
- 10% went more than 3 pages deep
There are 4 ways to get your sit to the top of Google:
1-Pay-Per-Click marketing.
2-Search Engine Optimization
3-Google Local
4-Having your site listed on a site that is already there.
First of all; if anyone tells you that one of the above is the best, one of the worst, or the only way to get to the top of Google, then they are probably trying to sell you on their solution, rather than providing you with objective advice on what will work best to meet the needs of your firm.
The benefits and challenges of each:
1-Pay-Per-Click marketing.
The biggest benefit to Pay-Per-Click marketing is that you generate revenue for Google and potentially help drive up their stock price. So the strategy here is to buy their stock, and invest the rest of your money into thousands and thousands of dollars of Google Adwords advertising.
OK-that was a joke. I was just pandering to all of the sceptics out there.
The truth is that I have seen very poorly run Google Adwords campaigns, and I have seen very well run Google Adwords campaigns. I hate to say it, and I might lose my Google certification for stating this; but some of the worst Google Adwords campaigns I have seen have been the ones that people have had Google setup for them. I had a client who was spending about $800 a month on Google Adwords, but $200+ of that was for clicks that were not relevant to his business. He had relied on Google to set it up for him and they had not set it up in his best interest.
After my consultation we created a win-win-win situation: He spent more money on Google Adwords for more targeted and more profitable keyword terms, therefore Google increased their revenue, searchers found what they were looking for and the business increased profits.
The bottom line is that you have to know the ins and outs or pay someone who knows the ins and outs of Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search marketing or you will most likely waste much of your budget on paying for clicks that are not generating the most profit for your firm.
If you are going to learn the ins and outs you are going to have to be fairly technologically savvy, and spend 5-20 hours going through Google tutorials, and then learn from mistakes you will make in the first few months even after going through the tutorials. Of course you will have to do the same thing for other Pay-Per-Click programs as well. You will not have to re-learn everything for each Pay-Per-Click program, because they have their similarities. However, if you miss the differences it can cost you. What works on Google does not necessarily work the same way on Yahoo!.
When deciding on whether or not to become an expert on Pay-Per-Click yourself you have to ask yourself two questions:
1-How much is your time worth? You probably bill out at $300-$500+ and hour, and if you have a family or enjoy other activities like golfing or biking, then spending 5-20 hours learning about and 2-5 hours a month managing your Pay-Per-Click programs might be very costly.
That’s at the very least $8,700 a year in billable hours you spend on yourself managing your Pay-Per-Click program-and probably a lot more.
2-Who can you trust to manage your Pay-Per-Click program?
That’s another challenge to Pay-Per-Click marketing. While I do not believe having Google or Yahoo! setup your campaign is your best options, finding “some guy” to do it is probably not any better. LexisNexis/Martindale Hubbell offers this service to attorneys, Findlaw/Westlaw does not. There are a bunch of start ups and boutique firms that might also do a good job for you, but it is hard to find one that is dependable.
Make certain whoever you choose meets the following criteria:
a-They will let you have final word on the keyword phrases they use.
b-They tell you what search engines you will be on.
c-They allow you the choice of geo-targeting (IP targeted) and content targeting, but they do not force this on you (they better know what geo-targeted and content targeted means)
d-They give you monthly reports.
e-They are a legitimate company.
f-They have other customers (hopefully attorneys) they are providing this service for.
g-They limit the number of campaigns they will run in a certain area of practice in a certain geographic area.
2-Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization is a service or a skill requiring a lot of expertise and a lot of time-not a product you can pay for.
Search Engine Optimization can raise the ranking of your site so that you appear higher in the “organic”, “natural” or “optimized” side of the search result on Google, Yahoo! and others.
These are the advantages to having a well optimized site:
- Being viewed as an ‘industry leader’ in the eyes of potential clients. A recent online study found that 76% of all on line searchers believe that sites with the highest search listings are the top companies in their field.
- Increased brand awareness and visibility. SEO can single-handedly make your law firm a Top brand name in your target markets
- 24/7 advertising. Web site is constantly advertising your brand 24/7, 365 days a year. Potential clients can find you anytime, anywhere
- Traffic Ceiling: unlike a PPC campaign that has a set amount to work with, traffic from an organic search ranking just keeps on a coming. There is no running out of cash to keep them flowing into the site. In the world of Pay-Per-Click Advertising you are only going to get as many eyes on the prize as you can afford to bring – organic search traffic has it’s doors open 24/7 and you will never hit the ‘ceiling’.
- More qualified traffic to your site-60-80% of the clicks on the first page are in the organic section of the page. If you are not there you are missing out on 60-80% of your potential prospects,
What are the challenges of optimizing your site?
The number one challenge is figuring out who you can trust to optimize your web site.
Option 1: Learn how to do it yourself.
NOT RECOMMENDED for attorneys. The attorney market is so competitive for Search Engine Optimization that you would have to spend hundreds of hours learning how to optimize your site and implementing the optimization-every year.
You would need to learn HTML, learn how to code the HTML on each page of your site differently, write gobs of content, change and add to the content everyday, make sure the content was properly linked-and these are just some of the things you would have to do to your website-not to mention building the site in the first place.
Then you would have to figure out how to build hundreds of links to your site from others.
You could learn how to do all of this, but it could be the equivalent of at least 1 full time semester in college.
Option 2: Hire someone to do it for you.
The biggest challenge in having someone do it for you is finding an SEO service provider you can trust.
An SEO service company pitch usually goes like this:
“Pay us X thousands of dollars and see what happens.”or
“Sign a long term contract with us for x thousands of dollars and see what happens.”
Neither of these approaches are advantageous for most attorneys-and few of them actually deliver the results you want.
The problem is that it is hard to hold an SEO firm accountable, because they cannot guarantee results. Most of them will not tell you what they are doing to your site every month. It would be nice if more of them were “transparent”.
In addition, there is not room for everyone on the first page of Google.
There is only one company I know of that are breaking the mold when it comes to “transparency and SEO“:
LexisNexis/Martindale Hubbell is actually offering an SEO service for attorneys that is as transparent as it can be. They provide the attorney with an estimate of the hours it will take to provide a successful SEO campaign based on the competitive landscape of the keywords. The attorney receives reports every month with reports services provided so that the attorney can hold them accountable. They also help you track leads so you can see how well your program is working for you by determining your return on investment and/or cost per customer acquisition.
No one else that I know of is providing that transparent of a service for attorneys.
In addition, after successful beta tests where they provided this service to just a few dozen firms across the country, they are now only offerring it to a few attorneys in each market, because there truly is limited space at the top of the search engines. If SEO is one of your marketing goals you better call one of your local LexisNexis/Martindale reps ASAP to to see if you qualify for this service.
Come back next week or call me to discuss other ways to move your firm to the top of Google: Dan Stratford at 702-966-9414.
