Much has been written about the best blogging/content management systems for search engine optimization (SEO). For over a year I have been using WordPress and the Thesis theme for various websites, and I’ve found it to be very easy to use for SEO. And you don’t have to sacrifice in terms of style. The Wall Street Journal Law Blog and WSJ Magazine, plus a lot of other top-flight sites, use WordPress. The fact that my sites aren’t any prettier is a reflection of my desire to control my own work, and my lack of skill as a designer. But even for a design-challenged lawyer, I can publish a decent-looking website in a matter of hours. And the Thesis theme is designed from the start for SEO. [click to continue…]
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I’ve written before that attorneys who market over the Internet can gain a huge advantage from the use of well-optimized video. As I mentioned in a post on the “Easiest way to a First Page Rank on Google“, Forrester Research has performed tests that show a video is 50 times more likely to be found on the first page of Google than a text page.
This has been consistently borne out in my own use of video in online legal marketing. I’m involved in a project with other lawyers to represent victims of Yamaha Rhino rollovers. We’ve posted two videos in connection with the project. According to recent Wordtracker reports, the search term “Yamaha Rhino recall” is by far the most frequently searched term associated with Yamaha Rhinos. I ran a Google search for “Yamaha Rhino recall” on October 7, 2009, and our two videos appeared in the top five results on Google’s first page.
Here’s a screenshot:
First page of a 10-7-09 Google search for "Yamaha Rhino recall"
[click to continue…]
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Years ago when pay-per-click ads were new, the first tests showed that searchers preferred to click on the links that appeared on the search page (“organic results”) rather clicking on than the pay-per-click ads. I saw a recent comparison yesterday, when Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro published an article saying results have remained remarkably steady over the past six years: for commercial searches, about 70% of searchers click on organic results, while only 30% click on the pay-per-click ads.
This is important information for firms trying to decide how to allocate resources between pay-per-click campaigns and search engine optimization.
We have been experimenting with online video since last year in our Yamaha Rhino project, with very good results. So I was not surprised to see a Forrester Research blog post saying that an online video is 50 times more likely than a text page to appear on Google’s first page. A big part of that is simply the huge disparity in the number of text pages and the number of videos. Now that Google is including videos in its “blended search results,” a well-optimized video has a much better shot at a first-page ranking than a text page. Forrester’s research meshes with our own experience. Although we have many more text pages dealing with the Yamaha Rhino recall, a Google search for “Yamaha Rhino recall” on July 2, 2009, placed our two Rhino videos in the top 4 search results. Message to consumer lawyers, include online video in your marketing plan.
Yamaha Rhino recall Google search results 7-2-09
I just saw an interesting article at Law.com asking whether pay-per-click advertising is worth it for small law firms. The article interviewed Miles Cooper, Managing Attorney of the Veen Firm in San Francisco. He said their firm had always relied on a steady diet of attorney referrals and what Cooper refers to as “cold calls.” I suppose Cooper was referring to potential clients calling the firm, even though I always thought of (and Wikipedia defines) cold calling as the process of approaching prospective customers or clients. Anyway, about a year ago the firm noticed a drop-off in “cold calls,” leading the firm to begin a pay-per-click ad campaign this January. “It was a philosophical jump for us,” Cooper said. “We thought of ourselves as one of the more prominent firms in the city, not a 1-800 ambulance firm. … But we need to make sure that our names are out there.” [click to continue…]
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According to a February 16, 2009 LawyersUSAonline.com article, almost two-thirds of potential clients begin their search for a lawyer online. The article doesn’t cite the source for that statistic, but even without a source, I’m convinced that many (if not most) clients begin their search for a lawyer online. One subscription service that provides keyword information (and which shall remain nameless here) says that the top 300 searches for the terms “lawyer” or “attorney” generate over 46,000 searches per day. I’m convinced the number would be even higher if you could capture all attorney/lawyer searches (the subscription service I used stopped at 300 searches for “lawyer” and 300 searches for “attorney”). The point of all this is that lawyers, even sole practitioners, need websites. [click to continue…]
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What can we do together? Since 1999 I've been using the Internet, websites, blogs, online video, Twitter and other social media to help thousands of injured people find great lawyers. We've organized national networks of lawyers in over forty states to take on Pfizer, Bayer, Yamaha and other multinational corporations. We've put consumers on a level playing field, and had fun doing it. If you're a great lawyer looking for more clients, contact me and let's see what we can do together.
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