I have to admit I absolutely love this Mint program, especially considering the price is only a one time fee of $30.00. No, I am not being paid or receiving any other incentives to write this endorsement. I was literally sitting here trying to decide what I should blog about and I got sidetracked thinking about my web traffic…which got me thinking about my analytics program…which got me thinking about how impressed I was with it…which got me thinking I should hand out a real tip tonight.

Here is the tip, if you would like to get some REALLY good insight into how many unique visitors you are getting each day, which sites are referring the uniques, which keywords are pulling traffic, which pages they are entering and leaving from, which pages are most popular, which words your most recent visitors came in through, etc. etc. spend $30.00 dollars on  some killer web analytics and experience absolutely no buyers remorse.

Have a good Friday.

1. We just completed a big move into a new house.

2. My Dell laptop crashed on me, which has severely limited my flexibilityin terms of when and where I can write these posts.

3. Business has been extremely busy, which is of course completely welcome.

With that said, let me complete a post that I started weeks ago - 50% Content +50 % Trust = 100% SEO Results

Trust - This can be a frustrating topic to try and research.  Basically no SEO is going to give away his or her “secret sauce.”  Some may say they will, but when it comes down to it that would be like the Bush Beans Bros. really giving away their secret recipe. Just not going to happen. 

I am constantly amazed at how tight-lipped top notch SEOs are to others in the industry. In fact, it literally took years for two of my best friends (both top notch SEOs) to treat me like they knew me when I would try and talk SEO with them. 

So… what I am saying here is that in my opinion it takes two things to get top rankings: 1 part Content + 1 part Trust.  The good news for all you lawyers is that you are already content specialists.  Creating a website with lots of unique, valuable, and relevant content will be a very completable task. 

The other news (good or bad depending on how you look at it) is that to achieve Trust you will have to do one of two things: 1) really dig into SEO by researching, reading, ane EXPERIMENTING, or 2) hire a proven legal SEO expert. 

Is there a “search result hungry” law firm out there that is not just a little bit excited about this formula?

Let’s analyze that formula a little bit.

50% Content Explained

The “content” being referred to is the content of your website and the content you submit in the form of press, i.e. pages, articles, blog posts, etc. The good news here is that as a rule, lawyers are content machines. All of you have suffered through legal writing classes, law review journals, not to mention a countless number of briefs, motions, and pleadings. Therefore you should have A LOT of good information at your disposal. Further, there are law interns working in your office that could be asked to provide articles on certain legal topics relative to your practice.

Every lawyer and every law firm should feel 100% confident in being able to product the quantity and quality of content needed to rank well on the search engines.

The key becomes to write on topics related to your site which by nature should be related to your areas of practice.

Tips on writing:

1. Write for your reader. The content should be informative, entertaining, and impressive.

2. Utilize keywords and phrases that you would like to get traffic for within the content.

Monday I will post on TRUST.

A good friend of mine, Mat Siltala, has a great viral mind. Ok, that sounds dirty… he has a knack for all things viral… that still sounds wrong… the guy has had a lot of success with viral marketing! Because of that success, I have done my best to pay attention to his general strategies and two techniques really stand out:

1. Super headlines
2. Memorable visuals

With that in mind here are a few sample headlines with the accompanying visual stimuli for a few rather “fun” advertising campaigns - or at least a nice blog post!

Read how a few UK teenagers re-defined the legal term “assumption of the risk”

Workmen’s Compensation Lawyers would like to thank “Terry Tate Office Linebacker” for helping to keep us in practice

Go to Google and do a search for “how to write for search engines” and you will read a lot of conflicting advice. Many articles will tell you to focus on things like keyword phrase repetition, keyword density, and the like. A few of the articles will inform you this strategy works ok with MSN and to some degree on Yahoo, but that it is almost a worthless strategy for Google.

Then again, many of the successful bloggers will advise you not to even think about search engines. They feel the key to a successful website is found in writing content interesting enough to get others to link to it in the first place. In other words, if you please the end user the search engines won’t be able to ignore you.

Search Engine Optimization For Lawyers Advice

My opinion is take a little bit of all of the advice. For instance, one of the problems with law firms focusing too heavily on keyword phrase density is the result of sounding like a lousy writer. As a lawyer, you want people to be impressed with your writing. So what is the use of a number one ranking on MSN if your website text turns off the potential client?

Here are a few middle of the road SEO Tips that might prove useful:

Pay some attention to the page title:

You cannot ignore your page title. However, I would not start the title with a keyword. My advice, is to use a filler word prior to the keyword. For example instead of titling this article search engine friendly writing I have titled this article writing for result the search engine friendly way.

Mix up your keyword usage in terms of proximity and stemming:

It helps to use different suffixes on your keyword phrase like er, ing, etc. It is also useful to change the order of your keyword phrase. However, never use a keyword phrase in a location or in a way that sounds unnatural.

Write naturally. Develop on-target content. Utilize relevant blog posts.

What does your client want to read? What information can you provide that will be actually be helpful for a reader? Many of these answers depend on your firm’s area of practice. If you specialize in intellectual property a blog discussing IP issues may be extremely helpful in generating qualified traffic to your site. Consider drafting articles that address common questions one may have who is considering registering a copyright or filing for a trademark. If your articles are very informative others will link to them and eventually your site will both rank well and convert well!

Survey says - Majority of 18 to 30 year olds feel top natural ranking sites have more credibility than their lower ranked competitors -

The survey had only one question:

When using the Internet for business information research purposes do you feel a website’s natural search rank is a significant measure of the company’s overall credibility?

a. Strongly disagree
b. Somewhat disagree
c. Somewhat agree
d. Strongly agree

The answers:

Response “a.” received 3 votes
Response “b” received 11 votes
Response “c” received 16 votes
Response “d” received received 20 votes

Please save your objections… I know that many of you, with even a limited statistics background, are going to find a dozen things wrong with this survey. I understand the surveys weaknesses (i.e. too few participants, too short of a survey, not a random sample of the population, the list goes on…) Notwithstanding the objections, I think the results are somewhat indicative of a larger phenomenon - the generation of search savvy Internet users expect that strong companies will have strong search engine results. In other words, there is an expectation that as of 2008 good companies and law firms should have figured out ways to rank near the top of search engines.

-Cost saving tips for keyword phrase marketing-

1. Do not spend money on overly-general keyword phrase like “mattress“. The word lawyer may get a bazillion searches, but chances are not many of those searches will lead to a paying client in your jurisdiction.

2 . Every keyword phrase you spend money on should be geo-targeted like “Phoenix mattress store“. Of course, this advice might be different if your practice is heavy on co-counsel referrals.

3. Do not spend money on keywords that are not found on your website. i.e. If you don’t sell a latex mattress why advertise for one? Similarly, if you do not practice employment law, it makes no sense to spend time, money, and energy trying to generate that type of traffic.

4. Go after long-tail keyword phrases like “mesothelioma attorney in arizona”. Targeting more specific keyword phrases makes it easier to attain natural rankings, will generally bring a more qualified searcher (in other words they know exactly what it is they want = paying customers), and give you an opportunity to cater to that searcher as an expert. For example, if someone knows they are looking for a “mesothelioma attorney in Arizona” chances are good, if you have a specific website page which discusses your practice’s role in assisting clients in need of a mesothelioma attorney in Arizona, you will get a phone call!

5. Arrange for some kind of tracking tool. All of the major PPC networks have built in conversion tracking tools, however this does not help attorneys as you are not selling a product which can be purchased on your site.

-My “best practices” recommendation-

I would advise having your webmaster set up several different entry pages all with different 1-800 numbers and email addresses that correspond to set keyword phrases. This allows you to track the number of calls and emails generated by each keyword phrase. Thus, ensuring you can track each keywords success rate.

1. 75% of American households use the Internet.*
2. In August of 2007, 61 billion “searches” were conducted worldwide.**
3. In first place among the engines was Google accounting for 37.1 billion of the 61 billion searches. Second place went to Yahoo with 8.5 billion. 3rd went to Baidu, which clocked up 3.25 billion. And in fourth, was Microsoft’s Live Search at 2.1 billion.**
4. In August of 2007, 206.3 million Americans “searched” the Internet an average of of 77.4 searches each!**

There are literally millions of searches by people looking for legal assistance each month in this country!

What “search terms” are they using? How can you find out? And, how do you avoid spending time and money on keywords that will not lead to paying customers? (For the answer to this last question you have to read my next blog post on mattress liquidators!)

-Discovering your target market’s keyword usage behavior-

There are many excellent tools on the Internet for researching keywords. My top free recommendation is the SEO Book keyword suggestion tool. Most importantly, this tool will allow you to discover rough estimates for the total search volume of specified keywords for Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

The tool’s ability to link to price estimates (for PPC) of the specified keyword for Google Adwords is also quite helpful.

*According to information found on LexisNexis

**According to a study by Comscore

This post is designed to give some practical advice to lawyers and law firms who are contemplating joining the Internet marketing world, as well as those of you who have a website which simply is not producing.

Mistake 1 - Firms do not spend enough money to effectively market online -

Consider this, the average cost of a half-page, Yellow Pages display ad, for one full year is over $15,000. I have nothing against Yellow Page ads, other than most people agree the Yellow Pages is on its way out, I am simply reminding you that it takes a budget to advertise. Internet advertising costs money. What did your firm spend on Internet advertising in 2007 ? Far too many of your answers will involve goose eggs.

“Field of Dreams”, was only a movie, and unfortunately just building it (your website) is not enough to make them (clients) come.

Mistake 2 - Law firms that do spend money on Internet advertising rely far too heavily on pay per click advertising -

In the grand scheme of marketing paid search ads are great, because you only pay when someone searches and actually clicks on your ad. Paid search is targeted, easily tracked, and fairly easy to set up.

However, of the millions of people searching for legal services online, only some of them click the paid ads. Far more are clicking on the natural listings or free listings. If your law firm’s site can rank highly in the natural results this will result in free traffic converting to a paying client, versus paid traffic converting to a paying client. If you would like a quote on a natural search campaign please click here.

Mistake 3 - The average law firm website is boring and so are the marketing campaigns -

I know, historically lawyers were not allowed to advertise in any way, Advertising was considered beneath their professional dignity. After all, the legal profession was based solely on reputation and connections.

Today, many good lawyers still adhere to that train of thought. However, the Model Rules do allow for advertising and nothing in the rules states that the ads have to be boring.

Viral marketing is an internet marketing strategy that very few law firms are using. Viral marketing involves using marketing techniques like blogging, writing for social news sites, posting YouTube videos, and creating profiles at other social bookmarking sites.

Here are a few suggestions on how your firm can begin taking advantage of viral marketing: