Do Your Clients Search Like That?

Lawyers have it in their heads (or were more likely told by their legal seo marketers) that they need to rank #1 for terms like, "chicago personal injury lawyer", "los angeles criminal defense attorney", "boston bankruptcy law firm", etc, etc.

And for high-volume consumer firms, these keywords might make sense. After all, at least one way that people use search engines are like traditional business directories. That's how we've been trained by yellow pages advertisers for years.

But people use the internet for a variety of different information consumption tasks.

And so, before you make considerable investments into ranking #1 for one of these competitive keywords, you really ought to ask yourself whether your clients, and potential clients, "search like that"?

If they do, great. Track your rankings, traffic, inquiries, and new clients from search.

But if they don't, and you're paying to rank for these types of terms, you probably need to re-think your strategy.

SEO for attorneys is quite different from SEO for other businesses. Even from other professional services businesses like doctors and accountants.

This is even more true for law firms that handle complex legal matters related to business.

How likely are your sophisticated business clients likely to type in "business lawyer" into Google and hire the first firm that appears?

The answer is not very.

But what they might do is research a legal issue that they might be facing. They might be looking for a specific industry site that has information or news about their business.

And the question becomes, "what can you do to get in front of them where they're looking online?"

But before you get to figuring out how to get in front of them, you obviously need to know where they're looking.

And how do you do that? Ask them.

Talk to your current clients about what they do and where they go online.

What searches do they perform? Who do they read online? What sites do they have bookmarked? What rss feeds are they subscribed to?

There's a lot to be learned about how your clients use search engines and the internet by listening to them.

It isn't until you get a pretty good idea about where they're going, that you can have any clue about how to get yourself there.

Trying Out Blogger iPhone App

I literally just downloaded the Blogger iPhone app and verified via 2 step verification.

The app runs fast and smoothly. No hanging.

The interface is simple and clean. Typing this post on iPhone's touch screen is actually working better than I had anticipated.

I haven't yet figured out how to quickly and efficiently add links. However, adding images, location, and tags is pretty straightforward.

As Google continues to integrate products ( i.e. search, google plus, blogger, etc) I foresee my use of the blogger platform, as well as its app, will likely increase.

Thoughts On Online Directories

Businesses have been using directories to advertise and market themselves since time out of mind. This is especially true in the legal profession (at least since Bates). Attorneys have been trained on legal directories, bar member directories, and yellow book advertising. And, at least in some instances, those efforts served their purpose.

However, that time has come to an end. Why? Because the way that people "look" for and "vet" businesses has changed.

Today, when people need something, at some point in their search, they are very likely to go online. Whether it be new shoes or legal services, people turn to the internet to get answers to their questions, and in some cases, actually make a purchase.

And while how people buy shoes and choose a lawyer are vastly different, in both situations, they are likely to spend part of their time turning to the internet.

And so, businesses began to recognize this which gave rise to online business directories. For lawyers, these might include FindLaw, Lawyers.com, Justia, or HG.org. In fact, AttorneySync has an HG directory listing.

And in many instances, simple web directory listings serve their purpose. However, the web provides a platform for much, much, more.

For example, a traditional online directory might just list your basic business/contact information. Today, online directories, like Avvo, allow professionals to demonstrate their knowledge, skill, and experience in a variety of ways. These include:

• Providing answers to consumer questions online.
• Displaying testimonials of other professionals in their community.
• Displaying testimonials from current and former clients.
• Displaying overall rating information based on a variety of other factors.

And having the ability to demonstrate this information provides professionals a new way of communicating with prospective clients that might be searching and researching information about the professional.

Online Legal Marketing: If You Do Only One Thing

As a lawyer, it's likely you barely have time to have lunch, let alone, build a comprehensive online presence for your practice. From keyword research, to web design, to advertising, to search engine optimization, there are a variety of techniques, tools, and skills that take a lot of time to develop.

However, if you had to choose one thing to do online, I would recommend that you write. Ultimately, the content that you publish online is the most critical piece of developing your professional reputation.

After all, this is what your prospective clients will see and what will eventually motivate them to contact you, or move on to your competitor.

Your writing can take a variety of forms. It can come in blog posts, tweets, answering questions, status updates, guides, newsletters, and a variety of other web-based publishing media.

My advice is to set aside as much time as you can to writing. Even if you are only able to dedicate an hour or two per week, my bet is that over time you will start to see some results from your efforts. These may include increased traffic to your website, other people sharing what you've written online, and eventually, people reaching out to you regarding your practice.

While there's a lot more to internet marketing than simply writing, publish content is the foundation for everything else.

Link Building vs Link Attracting

As Google states in their webmaster guidelines:

Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. 

Which has in turn created an entire industry built around building new links to websites. Unfortunately, this is an upside down approach to SEO.

Instead of focusing on building links, you should be focusing on ways to attract more links. In order to do that, you need to understand how links are naturally created online.

Needless to say, one can imagine literally thousands of examples of why something is linked to online. Perhaps it gets linked to because it's useful. Perhaps it gets linked to because it makes someone laugh. Perhaps it gets linked to as an example of what not to do. When you really boil it down, attracting links is about finding ways to motivate people to link to your content.

Custom Content Management, More Trouble Than Value

A long time ago, on the internet, most web pages were hard-coded by developers. Over time, webmasters and developers began to recognize that there must be a better way to create, organize, update, and remove web pages without having to edit HTML files. Along came the concept of the content management system.

At first, these content management systems were very basic and not more more user-friendly than editing the hard-coded pages. Some developers began creating proprietary CMS solutions. Users would basically rent (license) the software for use on their sites.

Today, there are a variety of CMS solutions from which to choose. Even better, many are released under open-source and general use licenses. Not only are these CMS platforms free, they're constantly updated by a large community of very talented developers.

Unfortunately, some CMS platforms don't follow best search engine optimization practices out of the box. However, most mainstream open-source general use platforms are moving in the direction of 100% search engine-friendliness. And some that don't have easy fixes through the use of various plugins.

Nonetheless, there are still many custom content management systems out there on the world wide web. While some of these provide additional value over the ready-to-use general use platforms, in my experience, most aren't worth the problems they create in terms of search engine optimization.

I've worked with a handful of clients who have custom content management systems that create big search problems. Two of the most common are the lack of semantic information in URL and page/post titles.

This is a huge problem as these are two key signals to search as to what a web is about.

If you're using a custom CMS and you're not sure whether or not it's search engine-friendly, you should check for some of these basic issues:

• URLs - Do you URLs contain keywords related to the content on your pages or do they look bizarre containing strange special characters?
• Page Titles - When you create new page or post on your site does it create an HTML title tag that reflects the page title?
• Headings - When you create a new page does your CMS create an H1 tag that reflects your page/post title?

If your URLs, page titles, and headers don't accurately describe what your pages are about, it's likely that you are creating some serious problems for your site's visibility within search engines.

Vetting Your Internet Marketing Agency

Trying to figure out who is who and what is what when it comes to internet marketing agencies can be really tough. However, there are some things you can do to separate the good, from the bad, from the ugly.

 Learn

 The first thing you can need to do is to spend some time learning at least the basics. You can't even begin to effectively vet an internet marketer without having some common ground in terms of definitions, concepts, etc. Make sure you understand the differences between organic and paid search marketing. I recommend you check out SEOmoz.org and search Google.com (site:google.com seo). These are really phenomenal references for getting getting down some basics. I also recommend GetListed.org for learning about local search which is especially important if you're a local business.

 Ask

 Once you've got the basics down, you should start compiling a list of questions. Ask your prospective internet marketer for examples of clients. Ask them very specific questions about what they plan to do on your behalf. Ask them how they will measure the effectiveness of what you're paying them to do. Ask them how long you will have to commit to them. Ask them is they have specific experience working with businesses like yours. Ask them if they're working with your competitors.

 Expectations

 One of the best ways to avoid problems with an internet marketing agency any vendor is to identify specific expectations from the start. Identify expectations in terms of performance metrics. Identify expectations in terms of results. Identify expectations in terms of what will specifically be accomplished and when. The less surprises that you face, the more likely that you will have a positive experience with an agency.

 Run, Don't Walk

 If your prospective internet marketer is talking in terms of "magic," "special relationships," or "secret sauce," my advice is that you politely say no thank you. If you're dealing with someone that is selling secrets, it's likely that the secret is that you're being taken for sucker.