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How Vulnerable Are Your Online Legal Marketing Efforts?

August 12, 2010 By

vulnerable online legal marketingEven if you’re at the top of the search engines, you’re vulnerable to new competition.  Go to sleep at #1, wake up at #4.  Is this a risk you’re willing to take when marketing your law firm online?

A few days ago, I was semi–involved in a debate that was raging on an e-mail discussion list in which I am a member. One person asked a question about marketing your law firm online with a blog, and a lawyer started touting the fact that his website ranked at the top of the organic search engine results for his chosen search term. The lawyer in question does no blogging whatsoever, and essentially stated that blogging was worthless to his efforts at marketing his law firm online.

Of course, this being a marketing discussion group, chaos ensued fairly rapidly. The resident legal marketing professionals jumped all over this poor guy, and basically proclaimed him to be full of shit.

But here’s where it gets interesting. Not only does the lawyer in question do no blogging, he produces no content on any of its websites. They’re all extremely thin, and none of them stand out whatsoever. They’re all filled with the same trite, empty language that is so pervasive on law firm websites.  To him, marketing his law firm online didn’t require any content production strategy.  And his results were, to his mind, proof that his theories worked.

If I were to hazard a guess I would say that the attorney has ensured his high rankings based on off–page search engine optimization. By that I’m talking about massive numbers of back links to his site from other sites, with appropriate anchor text tied to his chosen search term.

Assuming this to be the case, and further assuming that there is no funny business or “black hat” tactics being employed, then I applaud this attorney for his efforts. Undoubtedly, he gets a tremendous amount of traffic and, I would assume, quite a bit of business as a result of his efforts to market his law firm online.

So, you see, this stands as proof of the fact that you need not blog in order to attain a high search engine ranking for a single term. I would go so far as to say that you don’t need to blog in order to do well for any term whatsoever.

The fact, however, doesn’t mean a thing. We all know that Google and the other search engines reward websites with more content over those that are thin. We also know that people who visit your website are more inclined to hire you after seeing the depth of your expertise reflected in your blog posts.

So even if this attorney ranks very well for a narrowly-defined search term (which may or may not get enough traffic to sustain him), it’s unlikely that he’s able to capture a tremendous percentage of those site visitors and convert them into paying clients. People are searching for information, and won’t stop looking for answers until they find them. If they happen to find them on the top–ranked site that matches their query, then they will go no further. However, if their first click does not result in an informative answer to their question then they are likely to move to the next site presented by the search engines.

I’m sure that my colleague does very well now, but his attitude with respect to his efforts to market his law firm online makes him an easy target. If one of his local competitors establishes a new website and continually adds content that is relevant, in formative, and optimize for the search engines as well as for human visitors then the likelihood is that this new site will quickly rise to the top of search engine rankings with very little effort.

How about you?  Are you willing to take on this sort of risk when marketing your law firm online?

Image credit: mlhradio (Flickr)

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing Tip – Check Your Site For Broken Links

May 26, 2010 By

W3C Link CheckerYour website or blog is critical to your online legal marketing efforts.  It’s got to be clean, well-organized and accessible.  Take the time to do some housekeeping to maximize your search engine results.

In order to engage in online legal marketing you need to understand search engine optimization, that nebulous field that deals with maximizing your search engine placement and visibility.  Without at least a minimal grasp of search engine optimization, your online legal marketing will never be as effective as it can be.  Period.  After all, how can you do something really well unless you know how to do it?

Remember that online legal marketing means attracting people to your content, keeping them involved, and educating them about how you can help.  As a result, you become a trusted resource and more likely to get a particular client as opposed to another lawyer.

One of the important search engine optimization factors you need to know about is the use of links on your website.  Links between pages on your site as well as links that go to other sites are useful not only to the search engines, but to your readers as well.

When someone visits your law firm website or blog and sees a link, they’re going to click it.  If that link takes them somewhere else on your site, you’ve kept them interested and engaged.  More interest and engagement leads to a greater likelihood that your online legal marketing efforts will lead to a paying client.  Paydirt, baby!

That greater level of engagement also serves to reduce your site’s bounce rate, one of the visitor engagement metrics that’s so important to search engines when determining how and where to rank you.  I’ve already talked about how to lower your bounce rate, and why doing so is an important facet of your online legal marketing strategy.  Lower bounce rate means better rankings in the long-term.

Though external links don’t do much for your rankings, broken ones tend to annoy visitors.  Ever go to a website, click a link and find out that it’s busted?  That sucks, and you’re less likely to visit that website again.  As the owner of the site, your online legal marketing efforts have been wasted if you lose a visitor because of something as simple as that.

On the pure search engine optimization front, you need to realize that the spiders are constantly looking at your site and making sure all those links work.  If they do, everyone’s happy.  But if they don’t, the spiders are decidedly unhappy.  It looks like you’re falling down on the job, delivering a less-than-optimal user experience to visitors.

And if the search engines think you’re doing a bad job then your rankings are going to suffer.  Bad rankings mean bad rate of online legal marketing return.

These are the reasons why you need to check your site for broken links, and do so often.  The tool I use is a free web-based on called the W3C Link Checker.  The tool will go through your entire website or blog and report back on any broken links.  If there’s a problem, you know where to look for it – and fix it immediately.

So check those links with this free tool.  Your wallet will thank you.

Filed Under: Blogging For Lawyers, Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing – 11 Reasons Why Content Is King

April 16, 2010 By

Online Legal Marketing - 11 Reasons Why Content Is King

Online legal marketing efforts typically consist of a thin website or a blog that collects dust.  You’re all fired up about “getting online,” that you forget one critical point – if you’re using your website as a brochure filled with platitudes and hollow verbiage then why would someone ever consider hiring you?

Answer – they wouldn’t.

Consider the text of this website, created by an excellent law firm with high hopes for a killer online legal marketing effort:

<name of firm> is a full-service <location> bankruptcy law firm providing legal assistance to individuals and families in <area of practice>. As a <location> Board Certified Bankruptcy Attorney, <name of lawyer> has the legal knowledge, experience and resources to help you, just as he and his legal team have helped thousands of clients.

Your may now proceed to enter your name and location in that paragraph.  Once you’ve done that, substitute the name of your closest competitor.

Can you tell the difference?  I didn’t think so.

It’s boring and doesn’t provide any useful information.  Online legal marketing at the lowest possible level, indeed.

The rest of this lawyer’s site is filled with similarly empty-sounding paragraphs, providing zero substance and consisting of the online legal marketing equivalent of a brochure.

There’s no meat on those bones.  Nothing’s there but something for the dog to gnaw on.

Online legal marketing, if it’s going to be effective, must be formed around a content-based strategy.  That’s anathema to most lawyers because there’s still that annoying voice in their head that says:

If you give prospective clients a ton of information for free, why would they pay you for it?

It’s a point I used to brush off, dismissing the concerns as those of dinosaurs who refused to embrace the “new rules”of online legal marketing as it progressed from a one-dimensional brochureware approach to an interactive and content-based strategy.  But as with the stock market and the world of business, the old rules are exactly the same as the new ones.  The only difference is that the new rules wear more stylish clothing.

My law practice has engaged in online legal marketing  using a content strategy for 5 years, and it’s paid off in myriad ways: people come to me with more information under their belt, a sense of confidence in my abilities and, to a large extent, a level of preparation I’d never seen before I started marketing my law firm with content.

More to the point, they’re pre-sold on my services – I don’t need to quibble over legal fees or convince them that I’m the right choice.  They’ve already gotten to the point where they have made the decision on their own, which is far more effective than trying to sell them.

This isn’t a “new rule” of marketing your law firm.  None of this stuff is particularly new, in fact.  It’s easier to get a client when you’ve had the opportunity to educate and convince that person about the need for, and value of, your services.

Online legal marketing strategies consist of nothing more than a using a new platform.  The Internet enables you to get it done more effectively and on a larger scale than pressing the flesh or direct mail. All we’re doing here is using a new delivery mechanism for reaching out and educating people.

Here are my top 11 reasons why online legal marketing efforts must be centered around the creation of real content instead of marketing fluff:

  1. Content informs people about the basics before they pick up the phone to call you for an initial meeting;
  2. Your online legal marketing efforts need to be designed to prove that your law firm is well-educated in solving client needs, and can communicate those solutions effectively;
  3. When you show how much you know, you don’t need to tell your prospective clients about your competence – the proof is in the pudding;
  4. Informative content gets passed along from one person to the next, providing exposure to more people than would otherwise be possible using other marketing techniques;
  5. When your law firm creates useful content – not fluff – it helps you learn more about it even if you’ve been practicing law for years;
  6. Valuable content allows your online legal marketing efforts to weed out those people who do not need your help – someone reads your stuff, they realize the solution you offer isn’t for them, and they move on without wasting your time or theirs;
  7. Providing information as the basis of your marketing efforts gives people the ability to do some of the “grunt work” that you’d like them to do before meeting with you.  Stuff like writing a letter to a debt collector to stop contacting them, initiating an effective credit reporting reinvestigation request, or putting together all of the documents they’ll need to start a bankruptcy case.  Why would you not want them to do this legwork before coming to you in the first place?
  8. While you’re marketing your law firm by providing valuable information, others are marketing with the bland and forgettable 30 second TV spot (and people are skipping it to hit the bathroom or grab a snack);
  9. Creating a blog post, article or other form of content takes time but no money;
  10. You can re-purpose your content by taking blog posts and turning them into an ebook or informational package to provide to clients, so you can create it once and spin it out to use over and over again;
  11. More content marketing = more search engine saturation = higher placement on the search engines = more traffic to your website or blog = more clients = more money.

So here’s my question for you: if you’re not using a content market strategy, why not?  What’s getting in your way?  And how can we break down those roadblocks to make you more successful?

Photo courtesy of badgerxx.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Are You A Grain Of Sand?

April 15, 2010 By

online legal marketing grain of sand

Marketing your law firm online means one thing to every attorney I know – get to the top of the search engines, ideally in the organic (unpaid) part of the index.  Being in first place means getting the lion’s share of search traffic for your keywords of choice, guaranteeing you dominance in your online legal marketing efforts.

But the reality is that there are tens of millions of web pages that are competing for that top position.  Other lawyers, self-help guides, legal directories and the like are all clamoring for that same brass ring.

That’s where the big-money companies come in to help you in the onerous and arcane task of marketing your law firm.  Large and small firms that promise to get you on page one of the Google search engine results page for any term you choose.  I’m pretty sure we’ll see a bunch of them at the NACBA convention in San Francisco at the end of April, and every other legal conference will find the same story played out over and over again.

Promises with money, that’s what they are.  Give us a lot of money and we’ll get you where you want to be.  We’ll do everything when it comes to marketing your law firm online.  Link-building, on-site optimization, pay-per-click, pay-per-lead – it’s all a variation on a theme.

Don’t worry about actually (gasp) putting relevant and useful information on your site.  All we need you to do is write us a fat check and we’ll do all the marketing your law firm needs.

They play on your fears, and on your lack of information.  You’re sucked in by the promises that “all it takes is a single new client to pay for this.”

Sounds like the old Yellow Pages sales script, doesn’t it?

But the reality is this – you’re a grain of sand in the Sahara.  Someone finds you more by luck than anything else.

And even worse, there is more sand coming into the desert every minute.  More websites pop up, more blogs, more directories.  Content is everywhere, and it continues to pile up on top of your site.

You can paint yourself a different color, make a prettier website, and pay all the money you want.  Sorry to bear the bad news, but it isn’t going to save you.

Don’t have time to add content to your blog?

Don’t know what to write about?

Think it’s a waste of time?

Consider this:

  • if you blog, you’re going to get 67% more leads from your online legal marketing efforts;
  • having more pages of your website indexed leads to more traffic and, ultimately, more leads from your site to your firm;
  • more leads means more clients;
  • more clients means more revenue;
  • more revenue means … well, a more rewarding life overall.

Most of the bankruptcy lawyers I know have flimsy websites with fewer than 20-30 pages of content.  Most of that content is stale, outdated and, quite frankly, not incredibly interesting.  Routine discussions of Chapter 7, Chapter 13, and the like – none of them saying anything in a way that particularly engages their prospective clients.

Just look at the search result at the top of this post – 2,880,000 results returned for a search of “bankruptcy lawyers.” That’s a lot of sand.

So I urge you to consider this – what steps will you take to formulate a content marketing strategy that multiplies those grains of sand and helps you get noticed?

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing – Fish Where The Fish Are

February 17, 2010 By

Online Legal Marketing Is Like Fishing

When you’re marketing your law firm online it’s easy to get caught up in the blogging whirlwind.  After all, that stuff takes nothing more than time – and it’s entirely within your control.  There are technical issues to contend with, but they’re easily tackled.

Most people will tell you to work on excellent content and optimize it for the search engines.  Once that’s done, optimize for actual readers to decrease bounce rate, increase time on site, and overall create an environment that makes it easier for potential clients to interact with and, ultimately, hire, you.

But what’s missing for this equation is that by providing excellent content and optimizing it, you’re taking too passive of a position.

That’s right, I called you passive.  Your online legal marketing efforts are reliant upon someone stumbling on your site.  It’s like opening up a store on a dead-end street and hoping that someone will magically find it.

Not gonna happen.  At least, not quickly.

The toughest part of your online legal marketing efforts are to get as many qualified prospective clients to your websites, blogs and social media circles as possible.

Your need to promote your content overtly by using Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites, and indirectly by establishing yourself as a trustworthy professional who knows a thing or two about your field of practice.

How?  You need to fish where the fish are.  In the world of online marketing, you still need to (and I dread this statement) get yourself out there.

I’m talking about consumer finance listservs, debt and credit forum sites, and blogs that discuss personal finance issues.  You can hang out on the lawyer listservs too, but that’s for you – not your online marketing.  Use the lawyer sites for education and camaraderie, but don’t expect to get much business there.

You’ve got to fish where the fish are.  And those fish are on the consumer finance sites.  You need to take the time to get to know these online communities and start answering questions.  Give from your base of knowledge – without promoting yourself or your sites.  In time, people will come to realize that you’re a smart lawyer and will begin to rely upon you as a referral source.

Yes, it takes time.  But so does any relationship.  You didn’t marry your spouse on the first date.  You didn’t wake up one morning with a new best friend or business partner.  It took time.  So does this.  But it will also give you the reputation that’s earned only when people know and trust you.  People who are your potential clients and referral sources.

People who may need help someday – help you can give.  And isn’t that the goal?

Photo courtesy of bogdog Dan.

Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

10 Legal Marketing Tips For Slow Times

November 26, 2009 By

Market Your Law Firm Or Take A Nap?

Thanksgiving begins the strange time of year when most lawyers don’t have much new business to handle. People are more concerned with their holiday shopping than with their legal issues, so the pipeline dries up a bit. You can rattle around in your office surfing the Internet all day or you can take some action to make sure your legal marketing efforts continue to roll on once people come back to reality when the ball drops on January 1.

Here are 10 of my legal marketing tips for slow times:

  1. Review your business card: Your business card is for many people the first impression they have of you. When you hand it out, the recipient often puts it into a pocket or wallet and forgets about it until later. Does your card show your field of practice? Your direct dial phone number? Your website address and email account? If not, get cracking on an update.
  2. Update your website: When you’re busy, your home on the web goes stale. Check the bio section to make sure everything is fresh and up-to-date. If you’ve spoken at an event, had a decision published, or done something interesting then you need to make sure it’s online. One more thing – if your picture wasn’t taken in this decade then it’s probably a good idea to replace it with something more current.
  3. Look at title and description tags: The title and description tags for your web pages are critical to your search engine optimization success. Take a look at them and make sure they’re optimized with your keywords and other critical information to create not only better placement in the search engines, but also to spur searchers to click on your listing rather than someone else’s.
  4. Install Analytics: Google Analytics is simply the best way to track your website or blog traffic. It provides a mess of tools and data to help you keep your site on top of the search engines.
  5. Prepare Client Satisfaction Surveys: Whether you survey your clients online or by snail mail, getting feedback is critical to improving your processes. You’ll never know how to do a better job for your clients than asking them. Caution: send them out after Christmas or they’ll get lost in the shuffle of holiday cards.
  6. Brainstorm blog post topics: One of the reasons you don’t blog is because you don’t have time to think of stuff to write. Well, now you’ve got time. No excuses!
  7. Call a colleague for coffee: Making a human connection is the cornerstone of getting referrals. Go out and meet a colleague for an hour – not to talk shop, but just to talk. It’s the original social networking platform!
  8. Hop onto Twitter and start playing around: 140 characters never seemed so intimidating. But the good news is that you can’t break the Internet. Sign up, log on and poke around a bit. Listen and learn, then dip a toe in the water.
  9. Clean your office: That mess in your office isn’t going to get any prettier when the new clients come flooding back in January. Clean up – it makes a better impression on people who are deciding whether you’re organized enough to be trusted with their legal issues.
  10. Relax: This lull in business isn’t going to last for long.  You’ll need all your energy if you’re going to do good work for people when they show up asking for your help.
Photo courtesy of sfllaw.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Online Legal Marketing – 6 Ways To Reduce Your Bounce Rate

October 21, 2009 By

Legal Marketing And Website Bounce Rate

You’ve committed to marketing your law firm online. Your bankruptcy website is getting 10, 20, 50, 100 or more unique visitors each day, which is pretty good.  After all, the site hasn’t been touched in months (if not years) and it doesn’t cost much to keep it online.  Even if you’re a regular legal blogger, it still doesn’t take anything but elbow grease and some time to maintain your site.

Any clients who come to you from your online legal marketing efforts are freebies, so you’re not paying much attention to the disparity between visitors and clients.

Let’s step back for a moment and say you’re getting 25 unique visitors per day.  Not a ton, but still 750 people each month.

Out of those visitors, you’re getting 20 new clients from your online marketing efforts.  If you’re charging $1,000 for an average case, that’s $20,000 a month.  Cool, right?

Not so much.  How about all those people to surf to your website and leave, vanishing into the ether?

They’re gone, off to another lawyer.  Worse yet, they’re off to no other lawyer.

Maybe people are getting to your website and realizing that there’s no compelling reason to stick around.  Maybe they read a bunch of pages and then go elsewhere.  How do you know?

The key is to studying your website’s bounce rate.  To my mind, it’s a critical aspect of the data you should be looking at closely.

What Is The Bounce Rate?

Avinash Kaushik, the Google employee who lives website analytics, defines bounce rate as, “I came, I puked, I left.”  More technically, he defines bounce rate as, “single page view visits divided by entry pages.”  Avinash goes into a bit more detail on the Official Google Blog.

In other words, the percent of people who land on your site, do absolutely nothing whatsoever, and then close the window and head for somewhere else.

I call it the failure rate.  Someone came to my website, took one look at what I was talking about, and decided that is had absolutely ZERO value.

Bounce Rate For Law Firm Websites

The Intersection Of Bounce Rate And Online Legal Marketing

When you’re marketing your law practice online, you are looking to create a connection with your audience.  Whether it’s a blog or a static website, you understand (at some level) that it’s tough to make any lasting positive impression on someone if they stick around for only a few seconds.  therefore, one of your goals is to give people a reason to stick around as long as possible.

What’s A Good Bounce Rate?

The short answer is, “I have no clue.”  Do you want people to come to your site and surf for a bunch of information?  Do you want them to land on the site, get your phone number and call you?  Do you want them to get lost in your site, delving deeper and deeper?  Or do you want them to log on, find your Facebook page, and then go there to become a fan?

Your ideal bounce rate will depend based on your motives.  But suffice to say, if you’ve got a 60% bounce rate then you’re definitely not engaging your visitors.  It probably explains why you’re getting 20 visits per day and only 1 phone call from a new client.

6 Ways To Improve The Bounce Rate On Your Law Firm Website

  1. Know What You’re Dealing With.  Figure out the bounce rate per referring site and keyword search term.  You will find that some sites give you good traffic (i.e., traffic with a low bounce rate) and others not so much.  In addition, you’ll find that some search terms result in a high bounce rate.  This means that your content may be optimized for the search engines (i.e., people see your site when they search for a specific term) but not for visitors (i.e., once they get to your site they realize they’ve been short-changed).
  2. Next, concentrate on getting more referrals from the good sources.  Maybe people who come to your site from Facebook stick around whereas people who visit from Twitter bounce out a lot.  Send more of your links to Facebook and take the time to test what other types of tweets might encourage more people to visit and stick around happily.
  3. Spruce Up Your Site’s Navigation.  If people can’t figure out how to navigate around your site, they’re going to leave fast.
  4. Update Your Website Content.  If I come to your site today and see the same stuff I saw yesterday, I’m not going to have a reason to stick around.
  5. Create More Internal Links.  Internal links are hotlinks on a page that go to other pages on your site.  When you create internal links it encourages visitors to move from one page to another more easily.  A good thing to do is create a link from legal terms to pages with definitions (in other words, link the word “discharge” to another page that has a definition for that term).  It’s good for users to get clarification when they don’t understand something.
  6. Use Visual Cues To Draw In Visitors.  Eye-catching pictures and video content encourages people to stick around for awhile longer.

Your law firm website’s bounce rate is important, and tells a lot about what appeals to your website visitors.  Work on reducing your bounce rate and you’ll find that your site’s effectiveness rises exponentially.

Photos courtesy of Kevin Steele and p@r@noid.
Filed Under: Legal Marketing, Online Marketing For Lawyers Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

What is an Opt-In… And Why Should You Care?

May 15, 2009 By

So you’re blogging to get your name out there as a bankruptcy lawyer, and building a following of readers who care about what you’re saying. That’s great – it feels good to read a heartfelt comment from a reader, thanking you for being a beacon of light in the muddled mess of cyber-info. And you can hope that some of your readers will keep coming back – and maybe even eventually become your client.

If you’re not getting visitors to opt-in, though, you’re missing out on a boatload of opportunities to connect with them.

I’m sure that you’ve seen that little box on a blog or website where you can fill in your name and email address (hint: look to the right of this page and you’ll see what I’m talking about). That’s called an opt-in form. Most of the time, the webmaster or blog owner will offer you some kind of bonus – a report or “how-to” guide, for example – to get your contact information. You get valuable information, and they get your email address, so it’s a winning proposition for everybody.

By voluntarily submitting your contact info, you become an “opt-in”. That means that the owner of the site can send you email without fear of being accused of spam (the email equivalent of telemarketing calls), as long as you’re told how you can opt out.

As a lawyer, why would you want to get your readers’ contact info?

Think about it from a reader’s standpoint for a minute. Let’s say you stumble onto this great blog, and it’s filled with useful, relevant advice that you can actually use. Maybe there are even a few products on the blog that you wouldn’t mind buying at some point.

You’re reading along, and mid-sentence, the phone rings. A potential client is on the other end, so you can’t really let it go to voicemail. So you take the call, meaning to get back to your reading in just a bit. The second you hang up, though, another call comes in… and then it’s time for a consultation… and then you have to be in court an hour later…

You can easily see where this is going. As useful and downright important as that blog was, you were pulled away from it by other obligations. By the time you’ve dealt with all of the phone calls and meetings, you’ve forgotten all about the blog. Maybe you remember a few days later, but then you can’t find it again.

Do you want your prospective clients to forget about you?

I certainly don’t.

This is where the opt-in form becomes such a powerful marketing tool. Offer your readers something of value – for example, a guide to handling credit card debt, or a report showing how to avoid mortgage scams – in exchange for their contact info. People will gladly share their email addresses if they know they’re going to get something useful out of it.

Once a reader has opted in… you don’t have to worry about wandering off and forgetting how to find you again. You can send them newsletters, announcements, email courses, free information …. anything that will benefit your subscriber. You’ll not only keep yourself (and your practice) in front of your readers, but you’ll also become the “go to” attorney because of the wealth of knowledge you share with your opt-in list.

Photo by Donna Grayson.

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Filed Under: Legal Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,