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April 2007, Issue #11

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In this issue:

Lawyer Marketing Online – To Blog or Not to Blog?

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I was doing a website consultation this week with a client and his coach talking about lawyer marketing online. I was asked if this client should have a blog. This particular coach’s client is a solo with a PI practice and has several websites with one of them having 160 pages. Unfortunately he is not even in the first 3 pages of results on Google with this large site or even his firm site. If you are not in the first three pages of search engine results you will not get much, if any traffic. Clearly he is doing a lot right, however, he is missing some extremely key factors that make all the difference in the world in getting ranked high on search engines so he is not a champ with lawyer marketing online as yet. Thus my quick and dirty answer to “should I have a blog” was “not until you have it right with your website” and that goes for almost all solo and small firms is my take. There are exceptions of course. There is an exception here:

http://kansasfamilylawblog.lexblog.com/

Read his “About” page and see how he is different from most attorneys. His blog has a Google PageRank of 5, with 0 being bad and 10 being the best although a rank of 5 is very good, not just average. His blog is on the first page of Google results in the third position with an Alexa Rank of 118,027 (this is a great rank with Alexa). All of which means he is getting a ton of traffic since his site is in the top 2% of all websites on the Internet given this Alexa ranking and he is a champ of lawyer marketing online. So clearly he is doing most things very right although I would have liked him to have built this blog on a domain name that he owned instead of a blog service. Well, enough of a preamble here. Let me quickly give you my advice on blogs:

1. Ask yourself if you really love writing and that you are a good writer with a style that would hold the interest of the general public (also do you have an understanding of “on page” search engine optimization) if your blog were designed for the general public. If not you probably don’t want to take on a blog. Why? Because most Internet marketing experts who understand lawyer marketing online and blogging will tell you that you will need to post two to four times per week and that will take you from two to four hours per week on average to do it well. Also, I assert that spending two to four hours per week on building your referral source network will yield more results and faster than building a blog will. If your blog is designed for other lawyers then you need to be able to write well enough to impress and hold the interest of other lawyers.

2. If you are not dissuaded yet then be clear on who your target will be with your lawyer marketing online and what practice area the blog will cover. By targets I mean current clients, prospective clients, or other lawyers.

3. Be sure you get a designer to make your blog look pleasing since “template” style blogs are generally not pleasing visually. That said do know that even great design is not a senior factor in success in lawyer marketing online – keywords and content written to the keywords are senior issues.

4. Read a whole lot of other blogs by lawyers to get an idea of what you need to do to be successful. Look at what their Google PageRank and Alexa ranks are and see if they are working from a traffic perspective. You can find some here:

www.blawg.com/
www.blawgrepublic.com/dir/
www.theblogsoflaw.com/cat/Blogs_About_Blogging.html

5. I would NOT integrate your blog into your website. Keep them separate. I won’t go into all the reasons for this recommendation in lawyer marketing online. Suffice to say at the least the preponderance of the evidence says keep them separate. You can put links to them on each of the sites if you do have both.

6. When you name your blog be sure you include keywords in the name. It is best if you have completed keyword research using www.wordtracker.com as well prior to making this decision. Keywords are the ball game in lawyer marketing online.

The bottom line is don’t rush out to do a blog and for sure do own your own domain name with keyword research if you do get a blog. If things like Google Page Rank, Alexa, and keyword research are of interest to you read my back issues from September of 2006 through December of 2006 for all the details on lawyer marketing online. So you want to get a website consultation from me and become a champ in lawyer marketing online? No problem. Just call 888-434-3006 or email me and I will spend up to twenty minutes reviewing your website with you. I promise you will be better at lawyer marketing online.

Comments, ideas, questions or topics you would like to see addressed in future newsletters? I would love to hear from you. Just reply to this newsletter and tell me what you think.

To your success,

Henry Harlow
Founder, www.Law-Firm-Marketing-Coach.com

PS: You can find all our website resources with the two complimentary seven part e-courses at www.Law-Firm-Marketing-Coach.com/resources.html.