Legal Marketing & SEO Blog

Hi Friends,

We have released the first beta version of BlawgSearch.com for searching legal blogs... and our first alpha version of Blawgs.fm for searching legal podcasts and blog posts with audio or video media files attached.

BlawgSearch.com

Blawg Search. BlawgSearch.com allows legal researchers to search over a 1,000 editorially selected legal blogs. The database is updated throughout the day with new posts. BlawgSearch.com allows you to sort your search results by relevance or posting date, and you can subscribe to RSS feeds of your searches, to continuously track newly updated posts that match your search terms.

On the search front, we will be adding some advanced search functionality, as well as some other core functionality and features... but more on those when they are ready.

Blawg Directory. We also provide a directory of blawgs by subject category and locality (state and country) focus, as well links to other Blawg directories like Blawg.com's Blawg directory. This may be helpful in finding other legal blogs on a topic you are interested in. We are still fixing up the categories somewhat (Antitrust will be its own category soon :), but it is a pretty good start.

Blawg Rankings. Everyone loves rankings (except Michigan Football). We rank the blogs on a variety of factors, including how often a blog is clicked on in a search result or directory listing and the last post date (blogs with more recent posts are valued higher). Clicks from different parts of the site (eg top ranked blawgs on the home page, search results, blawg directory pages) are attributed different values. And there are some click spam protections built in. The overall system algorithm is still being fine tuned somewhat, but it seems to be working pretty well.

We still have 1000s of more legal blogs to check out in the weeks ahead. If you have or know of a legal subject matter blog you think should be included, please click here and fill out a form to suggest the blog. We are very focused of adding more blogs into the directory.

Blawgs.fm

While working on BlawgSearch.com, we noticed that we could tell from the RSS feeds when there were audio or video files. So we added some small icons to indicate there was a multimedia file, and then added a flash player so people could quickly listen to audio of a particular post right there in the search results. But on BlawgSearch.com, the audio or video files would only show up once in awhile in the search results*.

So we made Blawgs.fm, a new search interface for searching blawg posts with multimedia files. Blawgs.fm searches all of the posts that are included in BlawgSearch.com, but just returns those posts that have multimedia files attached to them.

In addition we have started a legal podcast/vidcast directory categorized by subject and locality, and a ranking of the podcasts (like BlawgSearch.com). The podcast directory only includes blogs that are either focused on providing multimedia content (like Coast to Coast) or primarily text based but have a substantial number of multimedia posts (like Evan Schaeffer's Legal Underground). If we were able to find a special podcast feed (like the Stark & Stark's New Jersey Law Blog's Podcast feed) we included that podcast feed in addition to the general blog feed.

But again, not all of the search results will be from blogs that are in this podcast directory. The search will have results from blogs that might not be podcast blogs, but have a multimedia post or two.

You can listen to audio files for a particular post using the flash player if you wish. What is nice about this, is that you can do a search and see what individual podcast posts have matching descriptions. Then you could either visit the original podcast page or do a quick listen using the flash player before deciding to subscribe to the full podcast. I have found it useful in finding new podcasts, and I will bet others will too.

And like the BlawgSearch.com, we are also looking for more legal Podcasts to add into the directory. So if you have a legal Podcast you like us to add please click here on the Podcast and fill out the Podcast suggestion form.

Ok... that is it for now. We will announce some more features in the near future...

Peace - Tim

* We will include the media search only functionality into the advanced search options of BlawgSearch.com as well, but we thought it would be nice if there was site that just searched multimedia files from the get-go, and thus Blawgs.FM is being launched as a separate site.

:: These Are Days, Our Time in Eden by the 10,000 Maniacs

Bob, the short-lived Microsoft assistant, has met his match. Windows Live, Microsoft's search engine, now sports an edition anchored by Ms. Dewey. Bob, meet Ms. Dewey.

Before you start optimizing your websites for Ms. Dewey, know that the Ms. Dewey search engine is better suited for entertainment purposes rather than every day use. Like all other search engines, Ms. Dewey has a search field for you to enter your search terms. Click on the search button and Ms. Dewey retrieves the top three results along with a healthy dose of commentary.

For example, a search for "george bush" prompts Ms. Dewey to shout: "Solidfy the base. Stay the course. Leaders lead. There, now can I be president?" Since she rotates her comments, your mileage may vary during your search session. I'll leave it up to you to track down the other search terms that trigger relevant comments.

The most difficult part of starting a blog is the writing process. Sure, you may be drafting contracts, client letters, research memos and court briefs all the time, but is that writing style suitable for a blog? Probably not. And, it's not just lawyers that have difficulty blogging. Even newspaper journalists, who should be familiar with writing articles on a daily basis targeted to a general audience, can stumble when trying to transition from a print columnist to an online blogger. Take the case of Mike Cassidy's Loose Ends. Mike Cassidy is a journalist at the San Jose Mercury News. Recently, he appealed to tech blogger Robert Scoble for help. Scoble obliges with 13 tips to Help A San Jose Mercury News Columnist Blog. Very good advice, and useful for lawyer bloggers as well.

Photos can make your website or blog stand out. You may wish to display photos of the attorneys in your firm, photos to simplify legal concepts, or photos to highlight certain points. However, you should be mindful of legal, aesthetic and technical issues before spicing up your website or blog.

Legal. While Google Images is a great tool to see what images other people have used to illustrate certain concepts, you cannot reuse those images on your website or blog. In all likelihood, someone, such as the photographer, holds the copyright to that image. For low cost stock photos, you may consider using iStockphoto, which only costs $1 for a web-ready image.

Aesthetic. Digital cameras have vastly simplified the task of taking photos and placing them online. But, there's no guarantee that those photos will be any good. So, if you're thinking of taking snapshots around the office instead of hiring a professional photographer to take portraits of all the attorneys, keep the following in mind:

• Focus. Make sure that the attorney is in focus. For whatever reason, sometimes a camera will lock in on the wrong object and take an off-focus image. Sure, programs such as Photoshop can sharpen an image, but if the focus is too off, nothing can save it.
• Lighting. Professional photographers have all sorts of lights to illuminate the foreground and background of a scene. They also have ways to direct or soften the light so that there's no red eye or hot spot. Make sure you have sufficient lighting, so that your photos are not underdeveloped. Also, be conscious if your camera's built-in flash bounces off someone's face, glasses, or a window, and leaves a white spot.
• Background. When you visit a professional photographer, you usually can pick from a selection of backgrounds for your photo. If you're going to take the photo yourself in your office, be conscious of what is displayed in the background. Especially within an office environment, you might find a stack of case files or other books on a desk or credenza. Other times, a bookshelf or other object in the background might create distracting background lines, such as when a vertical line rises out of someone's head.

Technical. While a photo may enhance a web site or blog, too many photos can distract the viewer or lengthen web page loading times. When possible, resize and crop your photos to tighten the shot and reduce file sizes.

When discussing successful case outcomes on a blawg, lawyers may have some difficulty striking the proper balance. If you get overly detailed and technical, you'll weigh down your blog post. You also don't want to disclose client confidences or breach a confidentiality clause to a settlement agreement.

However, details matter for the simple reason that when people encounter problems and are searching for an attorney, they want someone with experience. In particular, clients want attorneys with experience handling similar problems and the more similar the better. If you are a personal injury lawyer, here are a few ways to communicate the breadth of your legal experience:

• Defendants. When discussing a case, mention the defendant, if permissible. If a client has experienced a serious problem with a particular business, hospital or organization, chances are that another person will too. Let potential clients know you have experience handling cases against such defendants.
• Injury. Mention the specific injury sustained by your clients, as well as the circumstances surrounding their injury. Before the Internet arrived, patients had a pretty difficult time researching a diagnosis given by a doctor. Now, if you hear shoulder dystocia, you head straight to Google to see what are the symptoms, how it is caused, and how it can be treated.
• Location. Mention the location where an accident occurred. Your client is not the first person (and certainly won't be the last one either) to be injured on the Marsh Road offramp to Highway 101.

By providing enough detail, you can help future clients find you.

Amazon recently named Chris Anderson's The Long Tail as the best business book of 2006. Perhaps, there's no easier way to illustrate the long tail than to prepare a long tail graph yourself. And, it isn't that difficult either!

First, sign in to your Google Analytics account. Google Analytics is a great (and free!) program for analyzing visitor traffic to your law firm's website or blawg. Google Analytics can tell you which pages your visitors are viewing the most, which websites referred them, as well as what search terms they used to reach your website.

After you have signed in, click on the View Report link for the website you are interested in. This should bring up a hierarchical menu similar to the one you see on the right. At first, some of the menu items will be hidden. Only after you have selected certain options will the collapsed sub-menus be expanded. Click on Content Optimization under All Reports. Then, click on the Content Performance, followed by the Top Content link. This will take you to a table that displays the most viewed pages during the past seven days.

However, to discern trends, you may want to work with a larger data set. So, if you click on a month within the Date Range, all the days of the month will be selected. Likewise, if you click on 2006, then the entire year will be selected. Within the Top Content table, Google Analytics displays the top 10 pages by default. There's a drop-down menu where you can ask it to display the top 10, 25, 50, 100 and 500 pages.

If you select 500, Google Analytics will retrieve the top 500 most viewed pages from your website. You can also export the data into a CSV format that Microsoft Excel can then open. To do this, click on the Excel icon by Export.

When you open the CSV spreadsheet, the columns are Content, Uniq. Views, Pageviews, Avg Time, % Exit and $ Index. Just make a graph of the second column (Uniq. Views) and you will should see something similar to the graph below.

So, this graph shows that a few pages receive a lot of page views. It also shows the long tail, which are those numerous pages that only receive a few page views each. Now, that you understand the long tail, let's focus on the premise of the book. Basically, The Long Tail posits that for online businesses that can stock unlimited books (Amazon) or rent unlimited movies (Netflix), the sum of all sales from those numerous products with low turnover can exceed the sum of all sales from those few products with high turnover. Google Analytics also illustrates this in their Top Content pie chart. The one below shows that the top 10 pages for a website added up to 27% of all page views, but the remaining pages added up to 73% of all page views.

So, what does the long tail have to do with law firm blawgs? Well, law firm blawgs are similar to Amazon and Netflix in the sense that they can carry a seemingly infinite amount of inventory. In the case of blawgs, that would be an inventory of legal information. Better yet, blogging software is uniquely designed to allow authors to post little bites of information easily and take advantage of the long tail. For example, you might write a few paragraphs covering your insight on a particular recent event, law, case or court opinion. By blogging a few times a week, you will soon amass a compendium of information that spans across hundreds of web pages. Also, don't be reticient about blogging on some esoteric legal topic. Some posts might receive a lot of page views, and some only a few. But, with enough breadth, you will be able to hit both ends of the curve.

And, if you do have a blawg, be sure to submit it to the Justia Blawg Search for inclusion. It's a great way to get discovered.