Google Trends Offers Traffic Charts for Legal Keywords
Today, at its second annual Press Day, Google unveiled Google Trends, the latest project to percolate from Google Labs. While I am always interested in the new products coming out of Google, this latest one has me really excited. And, once I show you how Google Trends can impact your law practice, I hope you will share my excitement as well.
First, let's take a look at the Google Trends home page. Right below the Google logo is the familiar search box. To view the charts for different search terms, enter each of the terms separated by a comma in the search box and click on the Search Trends button.
First, let's say you are a personal injury lawyer who handles asbestos cases. Two keywords that you would probably be interested in is asbestosis and mesothelioma. So, you type these two terms into Google Trends and retrieve the Asbestosis versus Mesothelioma traffic chart.
The legend indicates that the blue line maps the asbestosis traffic and the red line maps the mesothelioma traffic. The top graph charts search volume, while the bottom graph charts news volume. In addition, Google has plotted how news stories have impacted the search volume.
Google Trends also identifies the location where most of the searches for these two terms are originating—Charleston. If you want to refine your search (instead of all years and all regions), you can limit the results to come from a specific month or year and a specific country.
Let's run a different search. Here's the Vioxx, Celebrex and Bextra traffic chart. As you can see, the search volume for the three NSAIDs look approximately the same. However, each of the NSAIDs have an event-driven pop in traffic, with the one for Vioxx being the largest. This occurred when Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market.
To get a more detailed view, I limited the trend history to 2006. In this graph, you can see that there were more searches for Celebrex (red), than Vioxx (blue) or Bextra (Orange), even though the news volume for Vioxx was the greatest.
Let's look at one more graph. For those that practice family law, how should you describe your practice on your web site? Are you a divorce lawyer? A divorce attorney? A family law attorney? A family law lawyer?
The trend history shows that divorce attorney (red) edges divorce lawyer (blue) by a slight margin. And both of them are searched more frequently than either family law attorney (orange) and family law lawyer (green).
If we look at the statistics on a regional basis, we can variances in search volume by location. So, the chart first shows us that there are a lot of people in Minneapolis looking for a divorce, and these Minnesotans are searching for a divorce attorney more frequently than a divorce lawyer. However, if you look at New Yorkers, they are searching for a divorce lawyer more frequently than a divorce attorney. So, depending on the location of your family law practice, you may want to optimize your web site for divorce lawyer instead of divorce attorney.
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Top Ten Ways to Improve Your Law Firm Web Site
- Skip the skip button. When confronted with a "skip this page" button, your visitors have to quickly decide whether to click on the "skip" button to avoid the annoying web page or the "back" button to avoid the annoying web site. The "skip" button or link is usually found on the home page of a web site with some sort of flash animation, like where the law firm logo zooms by or spins in and out. Sometimes, there may even be some sound effects. By placing a "skip" button on the home page, the web site is already tacitly admitting that a fair number of people will find the flash animation annoying. So, why put it online at all?
- Discover your visitors deepest desires. How can you tell what visitors to your web site are looking for? As it turns out, this is a pretty easy question to answer. By using a web traffic analysis program, such as Google Analytics, you can look up the search terms a visitor had entered into a search engine to arrive at your site. See if potential clients are looking for certain information that is not currently available on your web site.
- Avoid an online Yellow Pages ad. A television ad should never look like a Yellow Pages ad. Neither should your web site. Since you are not bounded by the dimensions of a quarter or half page ad format, take advantage of this freedom by offering a robust web site with articles, information about your firm, and attorney biographies. Don't put up a one-page web site and then complain that the Internet doesn't work.
- Ban the scan. As you build your law firm web site, you may consider uploading some existing print content (such as articles from a quarterly client newsletter) onto your web site. In general, that is a good idea if you can post the articles in a text format. Don't pass the newsletter through a scanner and post it as an image file though. If you want potential clients to find your articles, make sure that these are first readable by Google.
- Link properly to other web pages. Print publications and web publications have different conventions. An example of this is how these two mediums handle web links. In a print publication, the author citing a web page will list the URL (e.g., http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=108_cong_documents&docid=f:td016.108). That's because a reader will have to type in the URL to reach the web page. However, for an online publication, the author should encode the URL in the anchor tag and provide a short title of the web page (e.g., U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime). If the URL does not have to be retyped, why clutter up the page with an undecipherable string of characters?
- No one likes to view television ads. With the exception of humorous and expensive Superbowl ads, most people don't like viewing television ads. That's what the remote is for. So think twice before placing your television ad on your web site.
- Don't be too unconventional. Have you ever seen a web site that includes a user manual? The one with such a complicated interface that it has to explicitly tell the users where or what to click on? If you find your web site heading in this direction, stop right away. The conventional web site contains a navigation bar, text with identifiable links and maybe even a search box. As you step away from this paradigm, you risk frustrating your visitors when your web site operates differently than their settled expectations.
- Avoid new windows. The pop-up is probably the most hated ad format. So, don't be a pop-up site. Even if you open all outside links on your web site in a new window, your visitors will still leave your web site when it no longer serves their purposes. Avoid the temptation. Instead of keeping potential clients on your site, you'll probably end up driving them away even faster.
- Turn your visitors into clients. Why does your firm want a web site? To attract new clients. If your web site is attracting decent traffic but no clients, you should analyze why potential clients are slipping through your grasp. How easy do you make it for a potential client to contact you?
- Read Other Blogs. To be a better blogger, spend some time reading other blogs. Note the writing style of different bloggers. Some bloggers author short and simple posts. Others create long and detailed articles. See which techniques best suit your own style and interests. Also, study the headlines of their blog posts. Are they sufficiently catchy that a visitor browsing the headlines will be enticed to read the full article?
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