The keyword for today is balance. Search engine optimization (or SEO) refers to certain methods that one can adopt to make your law firm web site or blog appear well on the search engines. However, it is a grave mistake to treat the Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft search engines as your target audience. Certainly, showing up at the top of page one increases the chances that a potential client will visit your web site or blog. However, unless you are a legal publisher just interested in the size of your audience, you need to convert that audience into clients. And, that’s where writing for search engines instead of humans can hurt you. Ask whether the page titles and page text that you have written for the search engines are easily digestible by human readers. Because, if a potential client cannot figure out what you have said, how likely will that person contact you for legal advice or whatever product or service you are offering?
Tag: legal marketing
Kevin O’Keefe says that online advertising by law firms suck, if you extrapolate from a Nielsen Research study that compares the different advertising channels. To no surprise, word of mouth was the most effective form of advertising. I vet a lot of my purchasing decisions through Consumer Reports, as well as Amazon. As for newspaper, television, magazine or Internet ads, I don’t know that I trust one of them over the other. I really question the 63% of people that trust print newspaper ads since fewer than 63% even read a newspaper in an average week. How can you even trust something you don’t read? For newspaper ads, I doubt if reader trust flows uniformly to all advertisers with the Macy’s ad being not untrustworthy, the cell phone ad with an inch of disclaimers being possibly untrustworthy, and the classifieds offering work-at-home opportunities and real estate riches garnering the greatest skepticism. Television ads work the same way with Nike, Disney and Apple ads on the positive end of the spectrum and pharmaceutical, exercise equipment, and spray-on hair ads at the opposite end.
As I see it, one form of advertising isn’t necessarily better than another. Instead, the companies and brands that succeed are the ones that constantly build trust and customer loyalty, which in turn generates that valued word of mouth recommendation. How can law firms build trust? Law firms can build trust and their online reputations through a law firm blog. However, like advertising, which can be good or bad, blogs can swing both ways as well. Know that you are writing for a sophisticated audience that can rapidly differentiate between genuine insight and marketing copy. Also, understand that while some bloggers may praise your blog posts, others may target them for criticism, whether warranted or not, and how you react to praise as well as criticism can amplify or destroy your trustworthiness.
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Jack of All Trades
Seth Godin spotted this blog post on specialization. If you have a law firm web site or blog, you should take his advice to heart. While for a large law firm, the breadth of practice areas may demonstrate size and strength, for a solo or smaller practice, someone that visits your web site or blog may think you are spreading yourself too thin. Can anyone really be a specialist in 3 or 4 practice areas? You want to project to a potential client that you really are a master of divorces of he is seeking a divorce, or a master of copyright if he has a copyright issue.
Kevin O’Keefe points out that the Florida Bar took four years to propose a new rule regulating attorney web sites. Of course, we’re only hearing about this rule from a news article, so the actual text of the rule may differ. But, seriously, four years of brainstorming and the best they can come up with is 1-click?From the Orlando Business Journal:
Website Rule 4-7.6 would allow lawyers to advertise their past results and statement characteristics concerning the quality of legal services through testimonials on Web pages that are just one click past the homepage.
Now, lawyers being lawyers, we really need to see if the Florida Bar also defined “advertise their past results” and “homepage,” assuming this is how the proposed rule is worded.
- Advertise Their Past Results. If you’re thinking this rule only applies to personal injury lawyers that list the millions of dollars that they have recovered for their clients, think again. Take a look at White & Case, which incidentally has a Miami office. Their “homepage” includes a news column which currently includes the following bullet points: (1) Bridgepoint in £360 Million LBO of Fat Face and (2) First Ever Public RMBS Securitisation by Ukrainian Bank. Sure, this isn’t exactly “$10 Million for SUV Rollover,” but isn’t this an advertisement of their past results or are press releases different. Because, I’m sure the personal injury attorney could just as well add a new column that includes press releases of their verdicts and settlements. Not so clear cut now, eh?
- Homepage. I want to see how the Florida Bar defines a homepage. Is it the web page that is labeled “home”? Or, is it the first “web page” that you see when you type in a domain name? What if a law firm initially displays one of those Flash graphics with text zooming back and forth, which prompts you to click to enter? Is that the “homepage”? What if your website has one or more sub-domains? Is each sub-domain an individual website with their own “homepage”? Probably the most pointless part of the 1-click rule is that people “Google” now instead of “Yahoo.” Instead of a web directory taking you to the “homepage,” a search engine takes you to the most relevant page for your search query. So, even if your testimonials are “1-click” from the “homepage,” Google might take you directly to a testimonial page, completely bypassing the “homepage.” What’s the point of the rule then?
Ordinarily, I would classify legal research advertising under the “things that aren’t funny” category. But, the Westlaw marketing folks put together an entertaining video on stress toy abuse. My favorite line was when they criticize “the clumsiness of free legal research sites” with “primitive search tools.” I would love to hear a response from Scott Kinney, the Vice President and General Manager of FindLaw, which claims to be the highest-trafficked legal Web site. When your parent company comes out with an ad slamming your product, look out below.