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January 9, 2007
Posted By Ken
Watch Your Words
Today, former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki posted an interview with Chip and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick. I enjoy reading Guy's blog because he writes in an engaging and easy-to-read style that most of us would love to emulate. Anyways, in the interview, the Heaths explain the Curse of Knowledge:
Think of a lawyer who can't give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can't follow. And we're all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.
To put it succinctly, "when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it."
This is particular true regarding the lexicon of legal professionals. Since our 1L days, law schools have drilled terms like torts, negligence and standard of care into our heads, such that when we want to describe a personal injury action, we often turn to these familiar terms and concepts—familiar to us, that is. After a while, it becomes difficult to determine whether lay persons also refer to drunk driving as DUI or an error made by a doctor as medical malpractice.
However, I do know that the Heaths' explanation does not apply to all lawyers. Many trial lawyers are able to breakdown complex legal concepts and explain them to a client or a juror without resorting to jargon. When writing for your law firm website or blog, strive for the same goal. Communicate to your readers by using their vocabulary so that when they search using their own words, it will be your words as well.
November 29, 2006
Posted By Ken
Being Bilingual
June 19, 2006
Posted By Ken
Love Means...
Where Do I Begin.... Sometimes, it's better to be wrong than to be right. Say you've just opened up a law firm that will focus on immigration law. Specifically, you want to be in the business of love. In preparation for your law firm web site, you do some basic research.
Should you target potential clients seeking a
- K-1 Visa
- K1 Visa
- Fiancé Visa
- Fiancée Visa
- Fiance Visa, or
- Fiancee Visa?
Let's take a peek inside Google Trends.
Even though the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services refers to the fiancé(e) visa as a K-1, most people search for k1 visa instead of k-1 visa. Well, how does k1 visa fare against the other permutations of fiancé(e) visa?
From the looks of it, people don't like entering search terms with accent marks — fiancé visa and fiancée visa didn't even make it on the graph. That's not surprising. However, what may be unexpected is that fiance visa is a more common search term than either k1 visa or fiancee visa. Let's run a test for Americans seeking Russians. From the looks of it, there are more men looking for Russian brides (i.e., fiancées) and than women seeking Russian grooms (i.e., fiancés). No contest here.
Of course, maybe Russian grooms aren't the right keywords, but I suspect that the ratio is about right. So, why are more people searching for a fiance visa then? Perhaps, it's because we're not French, we don't like accents, and we cannot differentiate between a fiance and a fiancee, which incidentally both share the same pronounciation. So, optimize for k-1 visa or fiancée visa, if you want to be right. But, if traffic (or love) is what is really important to you, then being wrong and targeting fiance visa may really turn out to be the right call. And, if someone asks why fiancée is missing an accent mark as well as an "e," there's no need to apologize or explain. After all, love means never having to say you're sorry.
:: Love Story by Andy Williams
June 12, 2006
Posted By Ken
Where is here?
What happens when billions of web pages link to click here? Google aggregates all the click here links so that if anyone actually searched for that term, we know that Adobe Acrobat Reader is the #1 click here search result. This isn't because Adobe is optimizing their web site for click here. Instead, a lot of web pages are telling people to click here to download Adobe Acrobat Reader.
We can also see the search results for
here.
As you can see, click here is different from click here.
| Top 5 Google Search Results for... |
| Click Here | Here |
| Adobe Acrobat Reader | Adobe Acrobat Reader |
| XE.com - Universal Currency Converter | MapQuest |
| Apple - QuickTime | Apple QuickTime |
| Netscape Browser | Rhapsody & RealPlayer |
| Microsoft Internet Explorer | Microsoft Internet Explorer |
Logically, no one searches for Adobe Acrobat Reader by entering here into Google. However, after reading this blog, they just might since it's a lot faster to type here than Adobe Acrobat Reader. :-) The lesson here is to label your links correctly. If your web site offers criminal lawyer resources, then label the link as such instead of telling people to click here for criminal lawyer resources. It'll take a lot of Google Juice to unseat Adobe Acrobat Reader for the #1 click here spot.
June 6, 2006
Posted By Ken
Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer of Anaheim
How do you market your law practice? For law firms based in a metropolis, focusing on your home base makes a lot of sense. After all, why head towards the suburbs looking for clients when you have plenty of low-hanging fruit in your own backyard.
However, if your office is located in the suburbs, what do you do? If you've hung your shingle down the street from Disneyland, do you optimize your web site for Anaheim personal injury lawyer? Or, maybe you borrow a page from the Angels and call yourself a Los Angeles Personal Injury Lawyer of Anaheim. The right answer may depend on the nature of your practice and how far potential clients are willing to travel to meet with you.
A different problem arises when an attorney seeks to convey a more regional reach. For example, let's consider a Santa Clara divorce attorney. San Francisco is too far away. She doesn't want to travel to San Francisco and potential clients in the City probably aren't willing to drive down to see her in Santa Clara, espcially when plenty of capable attorneys have set-up shop closer by. And, while San Jose is next door, the name doesn't carry the same big city cachet. So, what about South Bay divorce lawyer? If South Bay is good enough for craigslist, is it good enough for her?
Google Trends offers an easy answer. If we search for south bay, Google tells us that while people from Sunnyvale, Santa Clara and San Jose do search for south bay, the bulk of the searches for that term originate from the other south bay—Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes Peninsula and Torrance. Not such a good idea then, eh?
January 26, 2006
Posted By Ken
Do you see what I see?
Said the law firm to the Googlebot:
Do you see what I see?
Come and see my site, Googlebot,
Do you see what I see?
A flash, a flash
Dancing on the screen,
Scrolling text with voices to hear,
Scrolling text with voices to hear.
Said the Googlebot to the people everywhere:
Listen to what I say!
Don't click here, people everywhere,
Listen to what I say!
A blank, a blank
Nothing here to see,
This web site is plain as the snow,
This web site is plain as the snow.
Your home page may be the most valuable page on your web site. From there, you will dispatch visitors and search engine spiders to the far corners of your site. So, why would you want to tie up this valuable piece of space with only a graphic image or some gimmicky animation? Polling your users to see what they think of your home page is a hassle. So, in the alternative, why not just ask Google? It's easier than you think.
Using the cache: operator on Google is one way to view a web site from Google's point-of-view. And, to your surprise, you may discover that Google views your home page as one big blank page if you offer nothing more than a graphic image or an animated flash file. When the Googlebot pays a visit to your site, make sure it doesn't draw a blank.
December 19, 2005
Posted By Ken
Law Firm Marketing Lessons I Learned While on Jury Duty
Slow week at the courthouse. A lot of empty chairs in the jury assembly room. Thankfully, the court provided cubicles and free wireless internet access for people to do their work while waiting.
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.
April 5, 2005
Posted By Tim Stanley
Justia Law Firm Web Design - Search Engine Optimization for Atlanta, Chicago & San Francisco Law Firm Clients
Hi Friends,
I would like to show you a few more samples of Justia's search engine optimized Web sites, before I move on to my post about Google Map's new satellite pictures, and how they can be used with Amazon's A9 street level photos to track...
Below are two more personal injury law firm clients in large metros (Atlanta and San Francisco) and a new Chicago estate planning lawyer client, that are now all doing very well in Web search results for multiple key words and localities. They do especially well in Google, but are also showing high organic result placements in Yahoo! Search and MSN Search.
Ken Shigley is an Atlanta Georgia personal injury and business litigation attorney. He was one of the first lawyers to have a Web site (back in the mid 1990s), and was already doing well for the key words Atlanta Injury Lawyer (his domain name is http://www.atlantainjurylawyer.com :). But his firm was not doing as well for many other key words and phrases, such as Georgia Injury Lawyer, Atlanta Trucking Lawyer, Georgia Trucking Lawyer, Georgia Trucking Attorney or Atlanta Accident Attorney ... Now he is doing well, in fact at the time of this post he is number 1 on page 1 on Google for each of those search terms. He is also doing well on most of those terms on MSN and Yahoo! (#1 for a some of the terms).
Of course the work that Ken did getting links to his Web site over the course of many years has really helped. We made sure he could take advantage of all those links coming to his Web site, by optimizing its structure and page layout.
Bostwick and Associates is a San Francisco personal injury and medical malpractice law firm . Their Web site was not performing well in the Web search engines. We redid their Web site and now... San Francisco Injury Lawyer (#1 - Page 1 on Google), San Francisco Medical Malpractice Lawyer (#1 - Page 1), California Medical Malpractice Lawyer (#2 - Page 1), Kaiser Malpractice Lawyer (#2 - Page 1) and for their Hawaii office, Honolulu Injury Lawyer (#2 - Page 1) and for their Denver office, Denver Injury lawyer (#7 - Page 1). They do well for many other terms as well (eg Anesthesia Injury they are #1 - Page 1).
And of course Chicago personal injury law firm William G. Pintas and Associates is still doing well (in fact even better that they were before :). You can read about how well they are doing for Chicago Injury Lawyer, Chicago Injury Attorney and more in the previous blog post and how William G. Pintas and Associates moved from Google result page 13 with FindLaw to number 1 - page 1 with Justia.
Well those are the first three personal injury law firm Web sites we have released. Three firms, three large metros - Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco - and three Justia clients doing well in the search engines.
And to show it is not just personal injury firms we are helping, Joel A. Schoenmeyer is a Chicago estate planning lawyer. His site went live last week, and he is doing pretty well for Chicago Estate Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1), Chicago Estate Planning Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1), Chicago Trusts Attorney (Google #3 - page 1), Illinois Estate Lawyer (Google #5 - page 1), Oak Park Lawyer (Google #1 - page 1 - Joel's office is in Oak Park).
In general our client's Google and MSN search rankings have improved relatively quickly after their Web site goes live. Improvement in the Yahoo! results has taken a bit longer, normally a week or two. The primary reason that Yahoo! Search is slower to update is that Yahoo! has the Site Match feed product, where companies pay money to have their Web pages included in the Yahoo! Search Web index, and have them re-indexed on a daily basis. If Yahoo! were to index sites quickly, companies for free it would compete with this paid product. The other search engines, Google, MSN Search and even Ask Jeeves have moved away from paid inclusion (see our take on paid inclusion in the Justia SEO center). That said, the Yahoo! Search results rankings do improve once the Yahoo! index update takes place.
Feel free to visit the Justia SEO center for free information on optimizing your Web site. It is what we read, and we wrote it :) And while talking about free, Justia does offer free Justia template Web sites, although they are not customizable and have less search engine optimization features than our paid offerings (but they are free :)
Or you if you want Justia to build you a custom search engine optimized law firm Web site contact us online or call us at 888.587.8421. We will build and fully SEO your Web new site, at a reasonable price (Justia Web Solutions' Prices), just like the Justia clients mentioned above did a few weeks ago.
Okay enough product marketing... onto Google Maps new satellite pictures feature!
Peace - Tim
:: Comes A Time, Comes A Time by Neil Young
March 19, 2005
Posted By Tim Stanley
Hi Friends,
Today Justia formally released the search engine optimized Web site for Pintas.com for Chicago injury lawyer - William G. Pintas & Associates. They had bought a Justia Web Pro Solution.
Google Search Result page for Chicago Injury Attorney - Pintas.com - #1 out of 1,100,000.
Doing well in search engines is the key to have your Web site produce a high ROI on your marketing investment. For most law firms, a properly optimized Web site will lead to search engines accounting for 50-80% of your unique visitors.
The Pintas firm previously had a FindLaw West Firmsite. Justia did a complete overhaul to the Web site structure and page layout that resulted in greatly increased search engine optimization of the Pintas.com Web site.
As an example, for the search terms Chicago Injury Attorney and Chicago Injury Lawyer, the old FindLaw version of the Pintas.com Web site was showing up as the 126th (on page 13) and 133rd (on page 14) Google result respectively.
Within 24 hours of Justia releasing the new SEOed Pintas.com Web site, it was in the top 3 of the first page of Google results for both Chicago Injury Attorney and Chicago Injury Lawyer.
Pintas.com is not just doing much better on Google, it has also significantly improved its positions on Yahoo! Search and MSN Search. Pintas.com was many pages deep in the results on both of these search engines before Justia optimized their Web site. Now they are on the first result page at or near the top.
Yahoo! Search Result page for Chicago Injury Lawyer - Pintas.com - #2 out of 754,000.
MSN Search Result page for Chicago Injury Lawyer - Pintas.com - #1 out of 797,979.
But it is not just these two phrases, they are doing great for many other search terms as well....
Continue Reading
March 6, 2005
Posted By Tim Stanley
Free Web Directory Links to you Web site - Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu and the Open Directory Project - Free Online Marketing for Law Firms Tool #4
Hi Friends,
Doing well in the search engines, like Google, Yahoo! Search and MSN Search, involves three primary components - (1) Search Engine Optimized Web site structure and page layout (see the free Justia Web sites post), (2) links to your Web site from other related Web sites (this post :) and (3) strong legal content with related key words and phrases that Web users search on (to be covered in a later post).
Two (free) places your law firm should be listed in our the Open Directory (DMOZ.org) and Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu legal Web directory.
The Open Directory is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. The listings from the Open Directory are provided under a free license and are used by Google, for their Google Directory, and hundreds of other Web sites. Getting a link in the Open Directory thus essentially gets you 100s of links to your Web site.
To find the best place to get linked, look at both the practice area and locality of the directory page, the PageRank (download the Google ToolBar or a FireFox extension [ PageRank Status (Google PageRank) | SearchStatus (Google PageRank & Alexa) ]) of the page, and the number of links on that page. What you would ideally like is a Web page that matches your firm's primary practice area, matches your city, has a PageRank of 3+ and few links. To find where to ask for a link, you have two starting point choices, the Society: Law: Services: Lawyers and Law Firms section or through the Regional directory section.
Washburn Law School's WashLaw.edu is the best law school Web directory site for getting a link to your law firm. Washburn has long been at the forefront of online legal research, and their directory is well maintained and updated quickly.
Where else should you get your Web site linked? Well look for places that have legal or locality content that is related to your practice. Practice specific Web site directories and local directories. Sites with a lot of good content are also great for getting links from.
And a non-free note: How much should you pay for a link? Well that depends somewhat on the content of the Web page, the PageRank and number of links on the page, but I would place $100 per year at the upper end, with the exception of the Yahoo! directory, which is $299 per year.
And a Yahoo! directory note: I will have other posts on this blog on the Yahoo! directory and other Yahoo! marketing solutions (Yellow pages etc...) in the near future, but a quick note about Yahoo!'s Web directory placement. Choosing the correct page on Yahoo! to get linked up is non-trivial, and involves many of the same factors listed above in choosing a page to be linked in the Open Directory. But no matter what your practice is, do not submit to a Yahoo! directory listing page that is being split into multiple pages unless your Web site will show up on the first page of the split directory page. Being on page two or three of a split page is of minimal value, and probably not worth $299 per year, especially since there should be other places to purchase a Yahoo! directory link.
In summary... submit your law firm Web site to the Open Directory and Washburn Law School's Washlaw.edu. There is more information about link popularity in the Justia SEO Center.
Peace - Tim
:: Highway 61 Revisited, Highway 61 Revisited by Bob Dylan
February 3, 2005
Posted By Tim Stanley
Google Resources and Google Local Search on Google home page
Hi Friends,
I thought I would do a quick post on a few Google Resources. Not that there is really anything new here, just that Justia's blog is new, and we felt should have some posts of and links to the basics.
So here are some Google resources...
First is the Google Blog. It is used by Google to introduce new features of and changes to their site, such as today's post about Google adding the "Local" link to the Google home page for Google's Local Search.
The Google-Friends announcement list has (finally) moved to Google Groups from Yahoo! Groups*. In what can only be considered a blatant rip-off of the Google-friends list, Justia has also set up Justia-Friends at Google Groups as well. So please join the Justia list when you sign up for the Google list.
Google Guy - is an engineer at Google who posts on the various search engine discussion boards about Google's results and rankings among other things. Google Guy is really Matt Cutts [ pic ] a programmer at Google, but that may change, since he chose the moniker GoogleGuy rather than his own name so the person behind the name could be switched out with another programmer (maybe even a female programmer) at any time.
Read a summary of some of the things the Google Guy has stated on the discussion boards here.
Here are some non-Google Google resources, starting with two message boards worth checking out. The WebmasterWorld.com Google Forum and the SearchEngineWatch.com Google Forum
And here is Google Rankings, a tool to check your ranking in Google, which apparently has been okayed for doing such checks by Google's legal department. They have many other nice tools and scripts there that can be used in search engine optimizing your Web site (keyword density tools, Yahoo! Rankings... ). The site is certainly worth checking out.
And here is a paper on the Google prototype for historical purposes.
Well, the new news of this post is Google putting the Local search link on their home page. And since you read this far, then I will give you the key to doing well with Google's local search...have your full street address on all of your Web site pages.
Peace - Tim
And finally, visit Google Labs for the interesting public betas that have been released. The one I like is Google Site Flavored Search. Here is a law flavored search.
* Yahoo! Groups is the former eGroups (and OneList), which was originally Scott Hassan's FindMail before it was a commerical enterprise. Larry's brother Carl Page was one of the co-founders, along with multi-company co-founder (including FindLaw) Martin Roscheisen and, of course, the man with the original plan Scott.
January 26, 2005
Posted By Tim Stanley
Welcome to the Justia Legal Marketing Blog
Hi Friends,
Welcome to Justia's Legal SEO Blog. On this blog we will comment on the Internet and legal marketing industries, as well as introduce new Justia features and services.
We would like to thank Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog for helping us set up our own Marketing Blog.
Have a great day!
Peace,
Tim
I recently came across a web site where a law firm introduced itself as having bilingual speakers. The crucial piece of missing information? The other language spoken. What potential clients want to know is whether you speak their language, and not the number of languages which you can speak. Here are some different ways to think of this:
