Legal Marketing & SEO Blog

Google recently published the inaugural issue of Google's Newsletter for Librarians. While the newsletter was conceived at the 2005 ALA (American Library Association) conference and is targeted at librarians, the information contained within the newsletter is equally applicable to lawyers or law firms with web sites.

In the newsletter, Google engineer Matt Cutts offers a primer on how Google crawls and indexes the web and then ranks the search results.

Google's Newsletter for Librarians	Action Items
The [Googlebot] doesn't really roam the web; it instead asks a web server to return a specified web page, then scans that web page for hyperlinks, which provide new documents that are fetched the same way.	Because unlinked files are invisible to Google, make sure all the pages on your web site that you want to be visible on the Google search engine results pages are linked. A site map is one way to help the Googlebot discover all the pages on your web site.
[T]o build an index ... we "invert" the crawl data; instead of having to scan for each word in every document, we juggle our data in order to list every document that contains a certain word.	Keywords matter. If you want Google to index your web page for a particular word, then that word better appear on your web page.
How do we find pages that contain the user's query?	Remember, Google returns results based on the user's query. So, focus on the user. Ask your friends and family members who are not lawyers to tell you what search terms they would use to locate a lawyer in your practice area.
PageRank evaluates two things: how many links there are to a web page from other pages, and the quality of the linking sites.	Why would someone link to your site? Do you offer some form of unique and interesting content that readers would like to share with others? If no, consider a lawyer blog. Blogs are great way to share your insights, demonstrate your expertise and develop links from other sites.
[I]f a document contains the words "civil" and "war" right next to each other, it might be more relevant than a document discussing the Revolutionary War that happens to use the word "civil" somewhere else on the page.	This example was discussed within the context of a search for civil war. The lesson here is that the proximity between keywords matter. So, if someone searches for an estate planning lawyer, you would be better off having estate planning lawyer appear on your web site instead of a lawyer who prepares wills and engages in the planning of estates even though both phrases contains estate, planning and lawyer within them.
Also, if a page includes the words "civil war" in its title, that's a hint that it might be more relevant than a document with the title "19th Century American Clothing."	Title tags matter. Review the title tags for all the pages on your web site to see if they contain the keywords that a potential client will use to locate your web site. See below if you don't know what a title tag is or where to find it on a web page.
As a rule, Google tries to find pages that are both reputable and relevant. If two pages appear to have roughly the same amount of information matching a given query, we'll usually try to pick the page that more trusted websites have chosen to link to. Still, we'll often elevate a page with fewer links or lower PageRank if other signals suggest that the page is more relevant. For example, a web page dedicated entirely to the civil war is often more useful than an article that mentions the civil war in passing, even if the article is part of a reputable site such as Time.com.	How does Google know whether "civil war" is discussed in depth or just mentioned in passing without having to actually understand the content of the page? Proxies for determining this include title tags (again), keyword frequency and keyword density. Review your web site to see whether the keywords on your web pages are diluted or concentrated.

The title tag appears at the top of your browser window and should be a keyword-rich description of the contents of that web page. You can also find additional SEO (search engine optimization) tips and resources at Justia's SEO Center.

A few weeks ago, I received a juror summons from the Santa Clara County Superior Court. Now, not too many people welcome the opportunity to serve on a jury because jury duty may conflict with family obligations or disrupt your work schedule. In addition, jury duty compensation, if any, is usually minimal. For example, California generally pays jurors $15 per day starting on the second day of service.

Anyways, today was my big day. As I was walking to the courthouse, I noticed several people distributing handouts, including one person who was offering an informational pamphlet entitled What You Need to Know About Talking to the Police. Although this isn't a high tech approach to legal marketing, it does offer a lesson for the online world.

Finding Your Target Audience. Why would a lawyer hire someone to distribute a pamphlet in front of a courthouse? Because the lawyer who authored the pamphlet realized that just writing an informational pamphlet alone is not enough. Only by distributing his pamphlet in a location flush with potential clients can the attorney use the pamphlet to convert a targeted audience of people with court business into paying clients.

Likewise, in the online world, just having a web site is not enough. You need your web site to be visible to your potential clients. What's the online equivalent of the front of the courthouse? Google. That's where potential clients start their searches and that's where law firms need to be. So, like the lawyer who hands out informational pamphlets outside the courthouse, law firms need to make sure that they are "handing out" copies of their web site on Google. If a potential client searches for san jose bankruptcy lawyer, then law firms with bankruptcy practices in that location must have their law firm web site listing appear at the top of the search engine results page for those keywords. Otherwise, that's like leaving your well-written informational pamphlet on your credenza at work. You can take a certain pride that you've assembled a fantastic pamphlet which is loaded with smart advice, but it certainly won't help you develop any clients if no one is reading it.

So, think of your law firm web site as your informational pamphlet and search engine optimization as the guy handing out your brochure. You need to both working together hand-in-hand to make your law firm web site a successful client development tool.

Here's a photo of the courthouse as I was leaving. (The jury panel on which I was sitting was excused.) As you can see, the line wasn't that long at that time. However, earlier in the morning, there was quite a wait. It wasn't until I reached the front of the line that I saw a sign indicating that attorneys, as officers of the court, may proceed to the front of the line upon presenting their bar membership card. I'll keep that in mind the next time.

Back in July, I compared Google Maps v. MSN Virtual Earth. Since then, Microsoft has refreshed their product and rebranded it as Microsoft Local Live. I guess Microsoft Local would sound too much like Yahoo! Local or Google Local. No better way to innovate and lead the industry than to add a "Live" tag to your logo. That really supercharges your brand and differentiates it from the competition! :-) Of course, the other popular tag is 360° (See Yahoo! 360° and Xbox 360). I'll be holding out and waiting for the Live 360° version for all these applications.

Anyways, Microsoft was previously displaying the Bellagio as a black & white photo of a construction site. In five quick months, Microsoft replaced it with a gleaming color photo of the hotel. Talk about an Extreme Makeover.

And, as if to prove that there are still cool engineers up in Redmond, Microsoft added a nifty bird's eye view.

Unfortunately, you have to use their bird's eye navigation box to move around -- i.e., no smooth scrolling around the map via arrow keys. Got spoiled by Google!

In bird's eye view, the three controls are point of view (i.e., face north, south, east or west), magnification, and movement (i.e., move up, down, left, right, etc.) I found the following flaws with the bird's eye view:

1. the map loses the ability to display an overlay of street or location names; and
2. the magnification interface doesn't let the user "pull-back" enough so it's easy to get lost.

Accordingly, I found it difficult to navigate around. Frequently, I had to go back to aerial view to locate myself before returning to bird's eye view to absorb all the eye candy.

Microsoft hasn't unveiled Bird's Eye imagery for all locations yet. For now, it's limited to New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, Seattle, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Lexington (KY).

In reality, their coverage may include some surrounding communities. As you can see above, Microsoft even provided a bird's eye view of Angel Stadium where the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim play. Even Microsoft believes that the Angels are from Los Angeles.