AttorneySync Blog

There is a good book I read a little while back called Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive. One section in the book dealt with fear and it’s effects with marketing. I thought it was applicable to law firm marketing, especially in some consumer segments such as personal injury, criminal, bankruptcy, etc., so I wanted to share.

The book describes the effects of fear based communication as such:

For the most part, research has demonstrated that fear-arousing communications usually stimulate the audience to take action to reduce the threat. However there is one important exception: When the fear producing message describes danger but the audience is not told of clear, specific, effective means of reducing the danger, they may deal with the fear by “blocking out” the message or denying that it applies to them. As a consequence, they may indeed be paralyzed into taking no action at all.

Advertising campaigns that inform potential customers of the real-world threats that a company’s goods or services can alleviate should always be accompanied by clear, specific, effective steps they can take to reduce the danger.

Simply scaring customers into believing that a product or service can help with a potential problem might have the opposite effect, potentially cementing them into inaction.

I believe this has an impact on a lot of law firm marketing efforts out there. I have seen quite a few that utilize fear as a strong emotion to get a potential client to take action. However, this may be back-firing if not done properly.

A Law Firm Marketing Example

Perhaps you are marketing your criminal law practice. You have a page on your site discussing the ramifications of what can happen after an individual is arrested for a DWI offense. You lay out the consequences and punishments of a DWI for the reader, with the intent of informing them about consequences and the need to hire a DWI attorney to help them. After arousing a bit of fear in them, uou tell them they should contact an attorney. However, you do not clearly articulate what the process is from that point forward or what hiring an attorney can do to help “reduce the danger or fear”. The end result can be one you didn’t intend, a potential client that is frozen into inaction.

Photo by Jimee, Jackie, Tom & Asha

Free Guide: Writing Content For Your Law Firm’s Website Want to learn how writing content for your firm’s site can help bring in business? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Writing Web Content For Lawyers.

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What does Google return to consumers searching for lawyers in your practice areas and geographic location? Your website? Your profile on Nolo, Avvo, Expert Hub, or Justia? Perhaps it’s your law firm blog. Maybe it’s your paid search advertisement. Or maybe you’re not appearing at all.

Marketing your law firm through search engines will increase the number of people that “see” your law firm.  The more people that use the web for locating local professional services, the more lawyer internet marketing campaigns just makes sense. For the consumer, finding a lawyer online can be more effective than using traditional methods (like yellow book, or directory listings).

Even initial legal consultations can be performed almost completely online. More information is available about a lawyer or law firm than ever before. Once you build and maintain a strong online presence, you will begin to access the overwhelming number of people in need of legal services on the web.

There is vast variation in the efficiency and effectiveness of law firm web strategies. However, each strategy plays some role in your law firm’s search engine profile. Some of the more important components are a comprehensive keyword strategy, your website’s architecture, and the content found on your website.

Mixing all these components together, will produce a certain outcome for your law firm’s ability to attract new clients from the internet.  If any of these components are out of balance, it will significantly decrease your chances of leveraging the internet successfully.

Lawyer internet marketing can be one of the most effective ways to generate new clients.  However, partnering with the right SEO firm will increase your likelihood of success. They can advise you on keyword discovery and link building. If you’re interested in learning some basics on building links, check out our free guide.

Free Guide: How To Build Links For Your Law Firm Website Want to learn how to get your law firm website more trusted, authoritative, and in front of more potential clients? Download AttorneySync's Free Guide On Building Links For Your Law Firm Website.

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Google Local Business Center Listing

Getting your law firm found in Google is all about local search results.  One of the free tools that Google provides for local businesses is their Google Local Business Center listing.

Optimizing Your Listing

David Mihm has put together a fantastic report to help you better understand the local search ranking factors for your LBC listing. In his own words:

Participants were asked to rate the importance of 49 criteria with respect to their influence on rankings in the Google and Yahoo Local “Universal” search algorithms (those that drive the 10-pack, 3-pack, and authoritative onebox search results; NOT the standard organic algorithms)

This is the second annual report and you can read it here.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

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As followers of our blog probably notice, when it comes to getting found in Google, we often cite what Google has to say. It’s sort of a “know your enemy” philosophy (obviously, we don’t consider Google an enemy, for now). One of our favorite resources that we put to work for our law firm seo clients is The Webmaster Central Blog.

This past Tuesday (March 2, 2010), Google released its SEO Report Card. It was reported as an effort by Google to “improve their products’ pages using simple and accepted optimizations”.

Whoa. Google is intentionally optimizing pages to influence their rankings? Then again, maybe not:

“These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users’ experience when visiting our sites”.

Ah, it’s just to help the users. I see. As they put it, the optimizations listed are definitely the most “simple and accepted”. Nonetheless, these on-page optimizations serve their purpose and are an important foundation upon which to build your law firm search optimization strategy.

If you’re looking to get started with on-page optimization, check out the Webmaster Central Help Forum and Google’s SEO Beginner’s Guide.

On the other hand, it’s important to keep perspective that doing these simple on-page optimizations alone will not allow you to compete in the highly competitive online legal marketing industry.

I for one, just appreciate the fact that Google not only uses search engine optimization in its vernacular, its also purposefully implementing seo strategies on its own pages. I just can’t wait for Google’s guide to link building… For now, we’ll just have to rely on our own.

Free Guide: How To Build Links For Your Law Firm Website Want to learn how to get your law firm website more trusted, authoritative, and in front of more potential clients? Download AttorneySync's Free Guide On Building Links For Your Law Firm Website.

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We’ve heard about how Google is making changes to make search more personal. But what effect does personalized search really have when it comes to your law firm internet marketing results? Virginia Nussey shares how search queries are frequently imprecise and how personalization can help fill in the gaps.

So what does this mean for your law firm? Actually, a lot of the same principles hold true. Having success isn’t about ranking well generally. The key is to rank well for the legal service consumers who are likely to hire you. The practical effect of personalized search is that your firm will be less likely to compete with the whole search universe. However, you will be more likely to compete with your local search universe.

For example, searches for “lawyer”, “attorney”, and “law firm” are more likely to return law firms in the geographic area from which the search is performed. One of the advantages is that if you’re local, you’ll be less likely to generate visitors from search that aren’t looking for lawyers in your geographic area.

For the most part, the traditional rules apply, write good content for users and not search engines. It is also worth noting that you can control personalization for your searches. Here’s a browser search plugin that does just that.

It will be interesting to see the impact of personalization on link profiles. For example, we know that getting links from geographically relevant domains is advantageous. Will personalized search increase the importance of geography in your link profile? My guess is yes.

Free Guide: How To Build Links For Your Law Firm Website Want to learn how to get your law firm website more trusted, authoritative, and in front of more potential clients? Download AttorneySync's Free Guide On Building Links For Your Law Firm Website.

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AttorneySync’s newest free guide, How To Build Links For Your Law Firm Website, is available for download.

In the world of search engines, links TO a web page equal votes for that page. But not all link-votes are created equal. A link from CNN.com is much stronger than a link from a site that you just set up today. In this sense, links are the “currency” of the web. Any successful search marketing campaign involves link building.

This Guide Will Give You A Proper Introduction To Building Links To Your Law Firm’s Website Including:

• Common Strategies For Building Links
• Why Having A Content Creation Strategy Is Important
• How NOT To Ask For Links
• Types Of Websites You Want Links From
• The Importance Of Having A Diverse Link Profile

Download your free guide: How To Get Get Links For Your Law Firm’s Website today!

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There is an interesting post at the Predictably Irrational blog that discusses the author’s troubles he had recently while playing squash. He tells us that he enjoys playing squash as it not only provides exercise, but is also a game of strategy. The strategy comes in as each player tries to build an advantage over the other by positioning the next shot just so. He goes on to tell us:

Anyway, I have not played for a while so yesterday when I played I was out of shape. But what was interesting was that I realized that my thinking ability was also diminished. Usually I try to plan my moves in advance, and think about where my opponent will move, what I will do next etc – but being out of shape made me think very myopically, and focus just on making the next shot. This of course was a very bad strategy and to my delight of my opponent I lost badly.

Perhaps the larger point is that being exhausted (and maybe also being under stress, physical exhaustion, sleep deprived, etc) makes people focus on the short-term and ignore the long-term – and this way become more susceptible to making mistakes….

How This Applies To Lawyer Internet Marketing

Marketing your law firm properly is a time intensive and strategic task. Just as in the squash example given above, there is the execution of your marketing strategy (actually hitting the shot and placing it where you wanted) and strategic planning (thinking about where the next shot should go). One of the problems that I see as an SEO consultant is that firms become so entrenched in their current marketing and getting short-term results, they forget to explore new ways of marketing. They lose focus of the long-term marketing strategy for the firm. Their strategy is focused on just connecting with the next shot, instead of thinking strategically where the next shot should be going.

A good example would be a firm where the entire marketing plan consists of spending money on advertising. The appeal is that by investing money into advertising, you get immediate results. The problem is that advertising costs will rise and if you want more leads, you have to pay more money. I’m not insisting that advertising is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t provide a sound, long-term strategy. You are simply “hitting the next shot”. You are not building equity in something you own that will continue to produce for you even if you stop paying money tomorrow. This is why it’s important to complement your advertising campaigns with other types of marketing avenues that position you for the future such as SEO, name recognition, social media strategy, networking, referrals, etc.

Make sure you are focusing on both your short-term and long-term goals with your marketing plan. Think about where you want your next shot to go in addition to how you’re going to actually hit the shot.

Photo by flydime

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

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WP Greetbox is a plugin for Wordpress blogs that can help build readership to your law firm’s Wordpress blog. The creators of the plugin describe it as such:

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it. Another example, when a visitor clicks through from Twitter, they will see a message suggesting them to twit the post and follow you on Twitter.

The photo above is a snapshot of what WP Greetbox does when a visitor arrives on our blog from a Google search. A dropdown box appears below the title of the article inviting the user to take an action such as subscribing to your blog, retweeting the post, etc. It’s a great way to automate a call to action that appeals to the visitor. Since the call to action is customized based on how they arrived, it comes across as more personal than just a simple “subscribe to my blog” you place on the sidebar.

We have seen our subscriptions and readership increase since using this plugin. I highly recommend it.

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Ever wonder what effect ordering of key phrases has in Google? Pick any “geo-practice-legal” key phrase combination and search the various permutations. For example, let’s look at “boston bankruptcy lawyer”. It is very likely that each search will produce a different result. As you can see in this example:

boston bankruptcy lawyer

bankruptcy lawyer boston

boston lawyer bankruptcy

Should you target these various key phrase permutations on the same page? Isn’t that keyword spamming? Take a look at what Google’s Matt Cutts has to say on the matter.

The question really becomes one of balance. Obviously, you want to take advantage of as many different relevant key phrases as you can, without spamming Google and your visitors. As always, Mr. Cutts’ response is rather vague. “Just use them naturally”. Often easier said than done.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync's Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

Really the best advice is to try different key phrase variations. Just remember to think like a visitor and not like a search engine. Even if Google doesn’t penalize you for keyword stuffing, your visitors might (by bouncing off your page).

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On Page Optimization In 52 Seconds

There are many factors that go into a successful search engine optimization campaign. As a start, it’s important that you include properly researched keywords into certain areas of your site. This video will show you several key areas or your site where you should include keyword phrases. You can learn more about implementing law firm SEO strategy by downloading our Short Guide To Getting Your Law Firm Found In Google below.

Free Guide: Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google Do You Want To Know How To Get Potential Clients To Find Your Law Firm On Google? Download AttorneySync’s Free Guide On Getting Your Law Firm Found On Google.

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