The Truth About Lawyer Internet Marketing

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!

In the last post on search engine optimization and pay per click marketing, I discussed how these two strategies could be used to help you get your web site to the top of Google.

In this post we will be talking about another way to get your site to the top of Google: Google Local (or Google Maps) and listing your site on directories. Next week I will discuss the 4th way, and as a bonus, a 5th way we do not normally discuss.

 1. Google Local

Often, when a person goes to Google and does a search that includes local search terms like “Denver”, “Denver,CO ”Las Vegas”, or “Las Vegas,NV”, Google brings their “Local” or “Maps” results towards the top of the page. They used to bring back 2-4 results, but as of this writing they are bringing back around 10 results-and sometimes their are organic results above the Local results.

 For example, if you type in:

 lawyer las vegas,nv

You will see this screenshot: Google Search Results-’lawyer las vegas,nv’ 

You will see these firms at the top as part of the Google Local results, next to a map:

	Lionel Sawyer & Collins: Goldstein Mark H  - www.lionelsawyer.com - (702) 383-8888 - more
	Jones Vargas: Cohen Douglas M  - www.jonesvargas.com - (702) 862-3300 - more
	Kummer Kaempfer Bonner: Gronauer Robert J  - www.kkbrf.com - (702) 792-7000 - more
	Santor Driggs Walch  - www.santorodriggs.com - (702) 791-0308 - more
	Greenberg Traurig  - www.gtlaw.com - (702) 792-3773 - more
	Albright, Stoddard, Warnick & Albright  - albrightstoddard.com - (702) 384-7111 - more
	Lewis & Roca  - www.lrlaw.com - (702) 949-8200 - more
	Thorndal Armstrong Delk  - www.thorndal.com - (702) 366-0622 - more
	Mc Donald Carano Wilson  - www.mcdonaldcarano.com - (702) 873-4100 - more
	Dempsey Roberts & Smith Ltd  - vegaslawyer.net - (702) 388-1229 - more

Above this you may see sponsored results, and below you will see the “optimized”, “natural” or “organic” results. If you click on:

More results near Las Vegas, NV »

You will see a longer list, and you can browse the results.

As an attorney, how do you get your site listed in Google local?

Google populates their Local listings one of 2 ways:

1. Businesses submit their information for FREE-do a Google search for google local business center to find out how.
2. Google gets data from other directories that they trust.

For attorneys, Google only trusts one Legal Directory; Lawyers.com. As part of listing on Lawyers.com (the most used online lawyer directory according to ComScore, Hitwise and Nielson Ratings), you are automatically listed on Martindale.com, CitySearch, Superpages, Google Local and a bunch of others, with a link to your Lawyers.com listing. LexisNexis has made it easy for you to make sure you are listed on all of these online directories.

Attorneys and other businesses I have seen try to do it themselves have mixed results. Google is so busy that only about 50% of the time does self-submission work. Which means you may have to do it 2 or 3 times before it works.

How does Google determine who they show on the first page?

This is the million dollar question for which I have yet to get the answer.

I can tell you this: 

It is not ONLY geography based. While it looks like they may be bringing back the results closest to the center of the city that was specified in the search, this is only one of the factors, and cannot be depended upon. If you are in Henderson, NV, or on the outskirts of Las Vegas, you probably won’t be able to move up to the top of Google Local for Las Vegas searches.  However, if you are in very center of the city you are not guaranteed to appear at the top either.

The businesses that have optimized web sites seem to have the advantage in Google Local placement. Firms my company (LexisNexis) has optimized web sites for are consistently at the top of Google Local in addition to being at the top of the organic results for their search terms.

This leads me to believe that Google Local looks for some of the same things they look for in the organic results:

Quantity and quality of content.

Updated content.

Number of links to your web site.

How do you optimize your site to get to the top of Google?

See last weeks post on search engine optimization.

I think it is appropriate to begin this blog dedicated to the Truth About Lawyer Internet Marketing discussing the effectiveness of blogs.

I am obviously a believer of blogs and the value of blogs to the readers and writers of them, but they are not THE answer for attorneys.

Hold on a minute:

Blog writing tip #1:

DON’T write your blog online. Write it in another program like Word or a text document. When you are done, login to your blog and then copy and paste it as a new post. If you have ever gone through writing a lot of content in a blog, email or website only to lose your connection AND your content you will know why I am suggesting this.

In fact, I switched to a Word document after I wrote the second sentence in this post, after remembering the potential pain of not doing so.

Back to this post:

While a blog can be a good way to generate traffic to your website, it is better utilized as a means for you to engage with your potential prospects and current customers with current advice on topics they may be interested in like new tax laws, new medical malpractice issues and other current events.

In fact, one of the great things about blogs is that the search engines love them, and you can easily update them to reflect news events like the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada Hepatitis and HIV scare that is going on right now.

Of course, this blog is competing against a host of other blogs and press release organizations, and I would be surprised if just by posting to this blog I could appear at the top of Google for the search: Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada.

Some of you may have heard that blogging will bring your website to the top of Google or Yahoo!, and that you just need to “blog, blog and blog more”-link to your site and watch it rise to the top.

This may work in less competitive markets for less competitive keywords (like “rodent racing”, as Peter Kent always says), but it is not sufficient for a competitive market like Real Estate, Insurance, and of course; the highly competitive attorney market.

The fact is that you must generate tens, hundreds or even thousands of links to your site if you are going to win the battle to get to the top of Yahoo! or Google for search terms like ‘injury lawyer las vegas’.

One quality link from your blog will not do the trick.

The moral of the story is; keep on blogging if you want to, but don’t expect miracle placement for your website as a result.

There are other things you can do that will generate higher rankings on Google and Yahoo! that are much more efficient.

What can you do to get your site to the top of Google?

THAT is the question.

Getting an honest answer to it can be very tricky.

Until now.

You can ask me through the form on this blog, wait until my next post, or call me at 702-996-9414 to schedule a free Internet marketing consultation for your firm.

Have fun blogging!