Law Firm Marketing - No room for 2nd best

If your SEO program is not successful in placing your law firm in the #1 position for Google natural search results, you lose. Statistics show that close to half the clickthroughs go to the top position. Go below the top 3 and your traffic becomes meaningless and your program is not worth the cost.

Even is an SEO firm can get you up there, can they keep you up there? Doing so takes time and resource investments. Ultimately, you will not be able to sustain over the long haul, when your competition is paying 1/3 to 1/2 the fees for comparable SEO efforts. Today I am pitching you on why you should trust LitigatorEdge with your business. In several years, law firms and legal marketers that treat SEO like a professional service will begin to understand why getting the greatest value for your dollar is what ultimately drives SEO impact.

Put all your doubts out of your mind for 5 minutes and call me, or e-mail me and I will call you and ask me to explain in detail why LitigatorEdge is a better value to your law firm than any other Internet marketing vendor in the vertical. You are a lawyer and I am sure you are very persuasive. If you disagree with anything I say, I welcome a debate as to why using another Internet marketing firm, or handling online marketing in-house makes more financial sense for your law firm's bottom line.

LitigatorEdge - Lawyer Internet Marketing

LitigatorEdge Achieves 1st Page Google Rankings For Plaintiff Lawyer Internet Marketing and Similar Key Word Phrases

I am a very happy camper today. LitigatorEdge is now on the 1st page of Google for the following keyword phrases: Plaintiff Lawyer Internet Marketing Plaintiff Law Firm Internet Marketing, Plaintiff Firm Online Marketing, Plaintiff Lawyer Web Marketing and many more similar keyword phrases.

I am not looking to pound my chest, rather to highlight just how plausible it is for your firm to achieve top rankings. This one was all me - no delivery team backup - they are busy servicing clients - just quality and relevant content (at least I think so) :-).

The amazing thing is that our offshore delivery staff can put me to shame. I have seen them deliver #1 Google rankings for keyword phrase after keyword phrase. What they can do is absolutely amazing and I have not seen this type of online marketing firepower within the legal niche - this is why I am so excited about introducing this type of talent to the legal community. If I can accomplish these types of rankings solo imagine what a team of trained experts with way more time and experience on their hands than I have can do with scores of keyword phrases that are relevant to your law firm practice niche. There are hundreds of thousands of consumers seeking out lawyers on the Internet, on a monthly basis.

The toughest part is getting law firms to understand the profound impact that being ranked #1 for dozens of keywords will have on annual client leads and dedicating a meaningful budget toward a form of marketing that is still novel for many practitioners.

Please visit our attorney Internet marketing informational page or contact us today.

Law Firm Internet Marketing: A How To

It is remarkable that there are still a large number of established plaintiff's law firms with no defined Internet marketing budgets. I'm not talking solo practitioners here, but firms with three, four or more lawyers. OK, so your firm dominates its market because you landed a local television legal expert gig, or you have thrived as a result of seven figure case referrals from your network.

5 years ago, a professional Web site was par for the course for any successful law firm. Today, a mature Internet marketing program is a "must-have" and no longer a "nice-to-have". For a list of reasons why lawyer Web marketing has become so critical, download the informational guide on the LitigatorEdge.com home page.

So, how do you start and what do you focus on? The answer to this depends on what you are trying to accomplish and the type of new business leads that you are looking to generate.

A well designed Web site is typically the first step for most firms. Design is much more than aesthetics. It is about how conducive your Web site is to capturing leads and how well your content reflects the type of search traffic you wish to generate.

The second step for most plaintiff's firms is search engine optimization. There are onsite elements (including tags, keyword phrases, specific landing pages) and offsite elements (including directory submissions, link building, article submission, press releases). Search engine optimization has become very sophisticated and it pays to do your homework and to speak with multiple vendors before making a decision.

Because of the growing role of content in search engine formulas, the next consideration for law firms is the degree of internal or external resources to dedicate to content creation for the firm. Of course, having SEO experts monitor and optimize all content produced by your firm greatly increases its value.

Some firms may decide that Pay Per Click is a viable alternative in particular situations. In certain toxic tort or product defect cases firms have to react quickly and SEO has too long of a ramp up time and is not sufficiently predictable. While SEO may work well for a search phrase such as "dog bite lawyer New York" it will not fly for "Hydroxycut lawsuit", where time is of the essence and firms are seeking to reach a specific claimant audience before the competition does.

The best advice I can give is to learn as much as possible about SEO and PPC. There are many free Internet resources including the LitigatorEdge Web site. If you have any questions please contact me and I will gladly discuss any specific areas of marketing interest.

Are You Paying to Market Your Law Firm or Their Marketing Firm?

I get it, there's comfort in face to face relationships. You just finished your educational session at a major legal conference and proceed to walk into the exhibit hall, where you greet an array of Lawyer Internet Marketing vendors pitching you on the latest and greatest products and services.

Most lawyers, who have been buying products and services in the same way for years, will select one of the 3-4 Internet marketing vendors within these halls to handle their online marketing. Why? For the same reason you are willing to pay double at the supermarket, for a product with the exact same ingredients, but different labels. It is the power of branding.

By experiencing their brand in person, you gain a sense of added comfort. If they are at this event, they must really be experts in their trade. They are tangible and real, there is comfort in the fact that you have shaken hands with them and thus they have created the perception of added trust, credibility and work product quality.

I believe in branding, but I also believe that brand power is dying. We see this today in supermarkets, through the increased dominance of store brand products and there is no reason to think that this trend away from big brands will diminish.

The reason for this is that the Internet is educating consumers at an extraordinary rate. People are sharing information like never before and there is an increased surge in demand for true value over hyperbole.

I always go back to referencing Honda. They do not have the best marketing in the industry, but they have the best product. They succeeded in communicating this value to their clients and the rest is history... that is until Hyundai came along and started giving them a real run for their money on value...

Back to the big attorney tradeshows. There is a price to pay for shaking hands with those marketers. That price is exhibit fees, travel costs, sales and marketing staff overhead, sponsorship fees and additional high operational expenses - all of which have to be passed on to YOU.

You will not get to shake my hand at conferences because the way law firms are buying is changing and we are on the cutting edge of this trend. All of our promotion today is done via the Internet and direct e-mail. We leverage a stellar offshore delivery team that is extremely talented and can deliver results that are equal to or better than anyone else you will find in the business today. Simply put, there is no more efficient model than ours available today.

You may not have the that same warm and cushy feeling until we handle an Internet marketing project for your firm. We fully expect to see a backlash from every marketing company out there that is comfortably used to charging you 2 to 3 times more than you should be paying and everyone else that is profiting from this.

Mom and Pop stores all over the country kicked and threw mud when Wal-Mart came in and changed the face of retail in America. You know who didn't hate it? The customer, who received superior value. Similarly, established online marketing companies ("the overchargers" and their supporters and partners will likely throw mud at us. Like Wal-Mart, our #1 focus is delivering maximum value to our clients and at the end of the day, results come down to basic finance that we can measure and no detractor can deny.

YOU SPEND LESS WITH US FOR MORE LEADS - PERIOD.

Our vision is to change the online legal marketing landscape in the same way that Wal-Mart changed retail. We promise that once you see how your fees compare to your results, you will never want to work with another Internet marketing vendor. Visit LitigatorEdge today.

If Search is King, then Content is its Queen

Any law firm that targets a consumer client base and wants to be a major online player over the next 10 years should read this post very carefully:

By now, you probably don't need anyone explaining the value of being at the top of search engine results pages for keywords relevant to your area of practice. If you're only focused on traditional media and rely on referrals, know that there are firms in your geographical area generating tens of millions of dollars in verdicts and settlements using the Internet and they are not spending millions to drive this business through their Web sites.

Now, unless you do something about it, these firms will likely continue to generate this traffic and the more they learn about Internet marketing and the more consumers use the Internet to find law firms, the larger the competitive gap will get between the top online marketers and everyone else and the harder it will be to catch up.

Why is the gap getting larger?

OK, here's the scoop. Google loves content and also loves links to your site from relevant Web sites with content. What is one of the best ways that is completely within your control, to generate quality links back to your site? Writing and submitting online articles that are relevant to your area of expertise and having them linking back to your Web site.

That's right... Quality Content -> Quality Back Links -> High Rankings

While Google can change the rules whenever it pleases, this is the general law of the land in SEO and while it may be tweaked here and there, no one expects it to deviate radically.

So, it will be very difficult to dislodge firms with significant content and links from their positions of search engine dominance. The good news is that the online content world for law firms is still in its relative infancy and only a few firms have really grasped its long term value.

If you want your firm to climb to the top for your favorite keywords and stay there, contact me today and I will explain how we can help. Just make sure that you don't come to see me after they have stopped publishing the Yellow Pages, OK?