SEO for Lawyers, Attorneys and Law Firms

Google is in the news again today as its share price falls following some negative commentary by analysts and a report that PPC revenue was flat in January. See this NY Times article for the full story:

Highflier loses Altitude as Google’s Clicks Go Flat

This story focuses mainly on the impact on Google of the slowdown in the US economy and upon various changes that Google has made in its PPC program which may (or may not) provide long term benefit to the company.

However, in the legal space, there may be a longer term problem with Google’s business model for PPC. As you know, Google’s model is basically an auction under which advertisers compete for prime advertising space by bidding higher and higher on keywords that might generate a chargeable click. This model works great for Google but in the long term it can hardly be seen as beneficial for the advertisers who simply ratchet up the costs for everybody by competing against each other. Every new entrant to the space has to compete with the existing advertisers which pushes the costs up ever higher. There is no moderating effect on price other than by advertisers simply folding their cards and either leaving the game or downgrading their campaign.

As a result, and in theory, the price per click should get pushed up to the maximum cost that will still produce some minimal ROI. When Google started AdWords, pretty much all the available spaces were bargains and clicks were available for mere cents. However, now that the market has matured, clicks have become expensive. In some areas, for example for personal injury lawyers, clicks have become really expensive and it is easy to spend thousands of dollars a month on a campaign. At the moment, those campaigns are still producing some decent returns but if costs keep going up, it may reach a point where the value is marginal and Google’s attractiveness as a medium starts to erode.

Imagine if the Yellow Pages did the same thing. They have an auction for the “lawyers” section of the YP and everybody bids for the space with the highest bid getting the first double-spread ad in the section. Next year they do the same but the bidding for that first ad starts at last year’s highest price. And then again the next year. It is easy to see that prices would quickly get too high and advertisers would start abandoning the top end of the auction and/or downscaling their ads.

Technically, the problem with auctions is that they assume that everyone is always acting rationally when they make a bid and that they have carefully considered the costs and returns. In fact, if you have been to a live auction, you will know that people frequently do not act rationally and often overbid for items. The problem with Google’s model is that once the bid gets too high, it is difficult for it to come back down.

I am just speculating here but maybe this will start to cause some problems for Google as the prices spiral ever higher and higher. Theoretically, there could be price adjustments if all advertisers in the space act collectively … but that type of conspiratorial action is unlikely. It seems more likely that the bid price will reach a level where advertisers will not want to bid for top spot … they will then satisfy themselves with lesser spots which may produce unsatisfactory results. Maybe Google’s fabulous business model will price itself out of certain markets? Just some thoughts …

Google Local has been updated in the last few weeks. The “new” Google Local shows more results, usually about 10, and the algorithms appear to have improved. On the good side, the local results now appear to be closer to the organic results. On the down side, the results are still displayed above the organic results (which created Google’s success). However, because of this, the Local listings pose an SEO opportunity for law firms. If you have decent but not stellar organic results, you may be able to leap into the top 10 Local results (and thus display at the top of the first page) above your competitors who may have better organic results but not a Local account. So the moral of the story is make sure that your law firm has an accurate Local listing account as well as good organic SEO. Obviously, appearing in both places will accentuate your SEM on the first page results.

Aaron at SEOBook made the following posting on the changes: http://www.seobook.com/google-local-becomes-more-important

Check out this latest post from SEO guru, Aaron Wall on why Google loves “old” web sites:

http://www.seobook.com/why-google-trusts-old-websites-so-much

As I have said to clients many times, this poses tremendous opportunities for law firms that posted a “brochure” type web site a few years ago and have not done much with it since then. Whether you know it or not, your “old” web site has likely attracted some trust and value in the eyes of Google. However, you are likely not taking full or even much advantage of that trust and value if your site has stayed static for any considerable period of time. A relaunch of such a site can bring tremendous SEO gains if the site is redesigned with proper SEO concepts in mind. You can get an even bigger boost if you redesign your site using a content management system and then actually use the CMS to update your site regularly. This is an easy and relatively inexpensive way to get much better internet visibility for your firm.

There has been a considerable amount of commentary recently on Google’s purported penalizing of sites that sell paid links. See for example these comments:

• Aaron Wall: http://www.seobook.com/google-pants-on-fire
• WebProNews: http://www.webpronews.com/insiderreports/2007/10/29/yes-google-admits-torching-your-pagerank
• Danny Sullivan: http://searchengineland.com/071007-173841.php

Has this controversy carried over into the legal web space? I haven’t seen much evidence that it has. Generally, for any particular search on lawyers, the top ranked sites remain directory or portal services, most of which have some form of paid link inclusion. As a result, inclusion in these types of sites is still a valuable strategy for a law firm to improve its search results and visibility. Of course, there are other equally valuable tools such as the use of blogs. As I have written previously, the legal space does pose unique problems for ranking related to the difficulty of ranking lawyers and professionals generally. Personally, I think that directories and portal sites still provide a valuable service in that they provide an easy way for lay people to find a lawyer: I don’t think that it is in anyone’s interest to penalize such sites if they are well run. Full disclosure: I have an ownership interest in LawOne, a BC lawyers network. While not a directory service, LawOne does provide a “portal type” site for BC and Vancouver lawyers which is well ranked by Google.

Most large law firms are now using content management systems to maintain their web sites. The advantages are numerous:

• Ease of administration - liberation from web designers/developers
• No reliance on external parties - site can be maintained by internal marketing staff or by office admin staff
• Site will be more up to date if it is easier to add new content
• Most systems will permit automated display of most recent news items, events etc …
• The use of a CMS will also usually provide an SEO boost both due to increased frequency of changes in content and from the use of the system itself

The implementation of content management systems has sometimes proved to be daunting historically as the cost of the systems can be very high and implementation costs can incrementally increase these costs even further. However, there are now excellent open-source content management systems which can provide almost exactly the same benefits at a fraction of the cost. At my legal marketing agency, Skunkworks Creative Group, we commonly use a system based on the open-source CMS, Joomla, which provides the general CMS benefits as well as excellent ease of use. The implementation of such a system is economical even for small and medium sized law firms and provides a long term solution to web marketing which will provide impressive return on investment.

We have customized Joomla for law firm use and are in the process of adding increased functionality which has been specifically designed for lawyers and law firms. Shoot me an email if you would like more information.

Historically (and of course I am talking about very recent history here since the internet is so young), large law firms have not paid much attention to SEO in relation to their web sites. However, the times are changing and some large firms are now engaging in SEO to improve their web visibility.

However, acceptance of SEO is far from universal. While larger firms that are engaging in web site redesign are often incorporating SEO as part of the process (see the new Davis & Co. web site in Vancouver, for example), I think most big firms are still behind the times, so to speak. Of course, this raises the larger and all too common question, particular where partners are concerned: why should we be concerned about SEO at all?

Often this question is framed in relation to other comments such as: “we don’t get clients from the internet - we’re a big corporate firm” or “we are an established big firm, we don’t need to do internet marketing”. In some sense, these concerns are correct. If you are a big firm servicing an established corporate client base, you are unlikely to get a new big corporate client off the internet. However, there are other reasons why you may want to have decent internet visibility. I have listed some of them below.

1. Confirmation Searching.

A lot of potential clients, and even existing clients, will have decided that they are likely to hire your firm or a particular lawyer at your firm due to your existing reputation. However, clients will often google you anyway to do a “confirmation” check. They think they are going to hire you but they just want to check your credentials and experience to confirm the choice by looking at your web site. It’s sort of like someone deciding that they want to buy a new BMW but want to check out how great it looks and all the great features on the BMW web site. They are basically already sold on the purchase but if they can’t find the BMW web site when they google it or if the site looks lousy when they get there, they might start to have doubts. It’s no different for law firm web sites. You want your web presence to reflect the quality of your legal “brand”. You want your clients to be able to find you easily and to remain impressed once they get to your web site.

2. Google Instead of URLs.

I have noticed that a lot of people (a lot more than you think) use Google to find everything that they are looking for on the web. They have Google set as their home page. Then if they are looking for the BMW web site, they don’t type “www.bmw.com” into the address bar on their browser, they just type “BMW” into Google and hit search. Same for your law firm. They won’t type “www.mcmillanbinch.com” into the browser, they will just type “mcmillan binch” into Google to find you. Most times Google will find you and put you on the front page (see search for mcmillan binch). But what if they don’t spell your firm name properly (see search for macmillan binch) or what if your firm name, or the lawyer’s name, is a common name like “john smith”. Then they may not find you unless you have good search engine presence which means good SEO. Incidentally, I used to work with a John Smith at Lawson Lundell in Vancouver. Lawson Lundell has good SEO so even if you search “john smith lawyer“, you will still find him despite his common name.

3. Phone Book or Google
A lot of people now use Google instead of the phone book if they want to find your phone number or address. It’s often more accurate, frequently more informative, and usually faster (particularly if you are already sitting in front of your computer). Your firm would probably never dream of canceling its phone book listing. Well, today, having no Google presence (especially if somebody searches your name and you still don’t turn up) is like having no phone book listing. It’s important not to be invisible … unless, of course, maybe you are too busy and want to get rid of some clients.

4. Branding

A good web presence reinforces your firm brand which you have probably spent a great deal of time, money and expertise developing. Since you have built up a great brand, it’s important that people should be able to find it and recognize it. Not showing up on Google means that people won’t see your brand, won’t recognize it, and won’t call your firm.

5. Reputation

Have you ever googled yourself to see where you turn up? Well, even if you are part of the dozen or so people that haven’t, most of the lawyers that work in your firm will have done so. If they are not showing up on the search engines, that may hurt their feelings … especially in regards to reputation. Everyone wants to be perceived as being important. And successful lawyers usually want to be perceived as being very important. To be important on the internet is to rank highly on Google. If your top entertainment lawyer or your top class action litigator is not showing up for appropriate searches, maybe something needs to be done. And that something is SEO.

To summarize, SEO can be wildly successful if it is done to attract clients. But even if you are not looking for clients, it is still important for general business purposes, particularly for branding and reputation, to be visible. The invisible law firm is not a good long term strategic goal.

Maybe it is bad luck to post on Friday the 13th. But here goes anyway on my thought of the day: the decline and fall of the Yellow Pages. Most law firms, particularly ones in consumer oriented practice areas such as personal injury and family, spend an inordinate amount of their marketing dollars on the Yellow Pages. Historically, this has been a smart move. The Yellow Pages has proven to be a vital part of the marketing budget for law firms trying to reach these types of markets. However, it is my firm belief that the times are changing. In my experience, hardly any one under the age of 30 uses the Yellow Pages. Pretty much the only use for that big fat yellow book in this demographic is as a stand for their computer monitor. This age group has grown up online. They live to be connected and they get nearly all their information online. As a result, they use search engines almost exclusively when they are looking for something including a lawyer. As a result, law firms should carefully gauge the demographics of their clients. If your firm does a lot of work for young people … start thinking about increasing your SEO budget. You will reach more clients (and at a lower cost) than you will through the Yellow Pages. Even with older clients, you should start to think seriously about your search budget. The usage of the Yellow Pages has been consistently falling over the past few years while the use of search is incrementally increasing. In addition, the cost of Yellow Pages advertising is exorbitantly expensive given its falling market share. In addition, and in some markets including British Columbia, there are competing versions of the “yellow pages” so you have to spend even more to get full coverage. These trends will continue. Eventually, as the “wired population” gets older and bigger, the demographics of the market place are going to kill off the Yellow Pages. An eventual victory for trees if not for the phone companies.

One caveat on all of this: if you are a criminal lawyer, the Yellow Pages still has some important value … as far as I am aware, the authorities will still let an arrested person make one phone call … I don’t think they permit a Google search … yet.

For some reason, whenever I talk to law firms about SEO, they generally want to do either organic optimization or pay-per-click. My impression and anecdotal evidence suggests that the reason for the single pronged approach is that generally law firms are somewhat sceptical about the value of internet marketing generally. Often, I get comments along the lines of “do we really want to get clients off the internet” or “I don’t think I have ever got a client from the internet” (as an aside, the latter comment is almost always the result of poor referral tracking).

As a result, there seems to be a reluctance to spend money on internet marketing. Of course, these same firms are often spending plenty of money on marketing … usually through yellow pages ads or maybe tv ads on the cable listings channel. They can usually be persuaded to try SEO but only with a limited budget and only on one aspect of SEO. If you tried that approach with the yellow pages or with tv, that would be like saying “I only want a really small yellow pages ad at the back of the section” or “I only want my tv ad to run late at night when it’s not as expensive”.

The point of my comments is that in order to get real success on any marketing campaign, you have to allocate sufficient resources to the campaign and you have to do it properly. A well executed campaign, whether it is in the yellow pages, on tv, or on google, can produce stunning results but a half-baked campaign will only produce half-baked results.

If you want to be the “Go-To Guy” (in other words, THE lawyer to call in your practice area) on Google, then you need to do a multi-faceted campaign such that your name pops up wherever the searcher looks. You want the searcher to think that you are THE guy … you appear everywhere they look … that means credibility in the eyes of a searcher and it means lots of people calling you. How do you do it? You get your SEO consultant to run an effective PPC campaign so that you are at or near the top of the PPC results. You also want to be high in the organic listings so that when the searcher sees your name in both places, you are THE guy to call. And you want to appear in all of the lawyer directory services as well: if they look in any of those, your name comes again. Once again you are the one to call.

In short, do it all. Do it right. Be the Go-To Guy in your practice area. Believe me, it works.

There was an interesting article in the NY Times this past Sunday (article here, June 24^th) which discussed the rise of “human powered” search results. The article discusses Mahalo, a new search engine which aims to provide search results edited by humans (http://www.mahalo.com/), as well as Google’s efforts to supplement its search results with human reviewed content (http://www.google.com/).

The problem with automated results is certainly demonstrated well with any search for a professional advisor such as a lawyer. When someone searches for a lawyer on Google, their perception of Google’s results will usually be that the top-ranked lawyers in a Google search are, in fact, good lawyers: i.e. Google users tend to “trust” Google and to give the results credibility. However, this is a demonstration of what I like to refer to as the “Google Gap” on professionals. Generally, Google’s results for professional searches are unrelated to any assessment of the professionals who are listed: they may or may not be lawyers at the top of the field. In fact, the results simply reflect SEO prowess or, more likely, willingness to spend money on SEO.

However, most searchers will not think about this: they will simply call one of the lawyers who appear at or near the top of Google’s results, be they organic or PPC. Of course, this poses good opportunities for lawyers who are willing to engage in SEO.

Eventually, services such as Mahalo may be able to capitalize on the gap and build better search results for professionals. Of course, this alternative strategy presents its own problems: how do you rank the results if you are doing an objective assessment. At the moment, Mahalo doesn’t seem to have any search results pages written for professional searches. For an idea about how you might do this, see the upstart search site AVVO: www.avvo.com . However, AVVO has already been sued by a number of lawyers despite having only launched a couple of weeks ago: no doubt it is a dangerous enterprise listing and ranking professionals … doing so for lawyers invites litigation, particularly in the U.S. market. 

I have just posted my new white paper “Search Engines for Lawyers” which is available for free download immediately. The paper is intended as a general introduction to search engine marketing and optimization for lawyers and attorneys. It reviews the differences between organic SEO and PPC and highlights the major issues that you should consider with each. The current version is in Adobe PDF format. I consider this to be the “beta” version of the paper and I would appreciate any and all comments which I will use for the next revision. Download Search Engines for Lawyers (1 MB PDF File).