Lawyer’s Websites that are More Productive

By Bob Schwartz, CRS, GRI ©2007 Promotions Unlimited all rights reserved.

This material is subject to copyright and any unauthorized use, copying or mirroring is prohibited

For the majority of legal firms the most cost effective way to attain new clients is through the Internet. Naturally you must have your own website. Your site should be displayed on all your printed material from business cards, to letterhead, and all advertising.

The true key to success is to go beyond the basics. To actually have an effective legal website you must have your site’s keyword phrases appear on the first three pages of the major search engine search results.

In most cases, a prospective legal client will go to their preferred search engine and type in a very broad legal search term like “lawyer” or “Social security lawyer.” Such general terms will return lawyers from Hawaii to Nebraska. The searcher will realize that they must be more specific or qualify their search phrase in order to find the legal advice they seek. So, the natural next action is usually adding their city or state name to the broad legal phrase. The revised legal keyword phrases will now be close to: San Diego lawyers, San Diego social security lawyers or San Diego attorneys.

Naturally, the competition for these city specific legal search phrases is very steep. Your law firm’s options for getting your site to rank high for these phrases is to purchase sponsored listings on an auction type, pay-per-click basis, employ a search engine optimization firm to work on your site, or purchase a listing on a legal site that already has a high placement for these legal phrases.

Of the above three options, the most cost efficient is to be listed on a site ALREADY ranking high for your city/area’s legal keyword phrases. However, don’t just select a site to advertise on based on their ranking for one or two specific legal phrases. You should look for a site that has multiple city/area legal keyword phrases appearing on page one of several major search engines.

As an example, let's take our Houston Texas legal directory. Keep in mind, keyword standings change a lot and the rankings noted here were effective as of the writing of this article. The Houston lawyers directory site’s URL is: www.houston-texas-lawyers-attorneys-directory.com.

For the legal search phrase, Houston Texas lawyers, this site is on page one of the organic search results of Google, AOL, and MSN! Just looking further on MSN, this site also holds page one standings for the terms: Houston lawyers, Houston attorneys, Houston TX lawyers, Houston TX attorneys, Houston bankruptcy attorneys, Houston defense lawyers, Houston criminal lawyers, Houston divorce lawyers, Houston DUI, Houston accident lawyers, Houston wrongful death lawyers, Houston social security lawyers, Houston labor attorneys, Houston labor lawyers and Houston employment attorneys. Such multiple city specific page one standings should be your primary selection criteria.

So many city specific legal phrases generate a large amount of laser-like focused legal traffic. In May, the Houston Texas lawyers site above produced 3,348 unique visitors!

Promotions Unlimited started out as a general search engine optimization firm but has grown into a specialized search engine optimization service. Our attorney client’s have achieved results from our directories that have proven to be far more cost effective compared to Yellow Pages advertising. What is surprising to us is the amount of skepticism still prevalent among legal practitioners about the effectiveness of the Internet to generate new business. Some times old habits die hard!

Copyright 2007 Promotions Unlimited. All rights reserved.

ABOUT THE AUTHORBob Schwartz runs 15 legal directory sites, a few of which are: Houston lawyers, Dallas lawyers, Los Angeles DUI lawyers, San Jose DUI lawyers, San Francisco DUI lawyers In May 2006 Bob's legal websites generated over 40,164 unique visitors.