The ways in which consumers use the Internet to find information, goods, and services vary significantly. In fact, it would be an effort in futility to try to describe all these different ways here. Even within the segment of online legal services consumers, there is great diversity in usage.

Understanding the differences between these different types of users is critical to marketing your law firm online. For example, let’s take a look at two of the most common types:

The Researcher

This online legal services consumer wants information. They will typically perform multiple searches and their searches will be topical in nature. In other words, they are more likely to search for the issues related to their need for legal services than to search for a more general “lawyer” or “law firm” term. For example, if The Researcher has been arrested or charged with a crime, they are likely to search for terms related to their crime.

With regard to website usage, The Researcher wants information. She wants to find specific detailed information about her legal situation. In order to “convert” her into a potential client, the law firm website needs to demonstrate their expertise in handling her type of legal issue.

One of the best strategies to appeal to this consumer is a law firm blog.  Your blog can be used to demonstrate what you know about your field of law.  It can share relevant firm news and other pieces of information that position you and your law firm as specialists in your practice area and geographic location.

Education-based marketing also strongly appeals to The Researcher.  Offering e-books, whitepapers, and other informational items for download, is an excellent way to engage this type of online legal consumer.

The Yellow Book’er

At the opposite end of the spectrum is the Yellow Book’er.  This online legal services consumer has had years of experience using the Yellow Book to find the goods and services she needs.  She will typically perform very few searches to find a law firm.  In fact, many Yellow Book’ers will perform only one search.

These consumers will search for much more broad terms.  They may search for a practice area / geographic / legal key phrase (like “chicago injury lawyer”).  They may even search for extremely broad terms like “lawyer” “attorney” or “law firm”.

When it comes to website usage, many of these consumers will never even get to your law firm’s website.  Many of them will call a number displayed right on the search results page!  The Yellow Book’er has a very short attention span and even shorter patience.

While some “law firm marketing gurus” might tell you that people don’t use the internet this way, it’s simply not true.

The truth is that in order to have success with your online marketing efforts, you need to appeal to both.  That means that your need to have high visibility in search engines AND you need to have strong education-based content on your law firm website.

Marketing a law firm online presents unique challenges from marketing other businesses on the web. What works in other industries, doesn’t necessarily work for law firm marketing. Also, there are many ethical considerations that are unique to law firm marketing the rules for which vary from state to state.

Due to the unique challenges of marketing a law firm online, it is that much more important to seek out professionals that specialize in internet marketing for law firms.

Like the practice of law, their can be no substitute for experience. SEO for law firms is part technical science and part technique. For most law firm seos, these skills are developed by working with clients and producing results. Again, experienced specialists in seo for law firms know how to navigate many of the obstacles, pitfalls, and challenges associated with web-based practice growth.

From keywords, to linkerati resources, to content production and publication, those that specialize in online law firm marketing have a competitive advantage over other internet marketing consultants that don’t have experience handling legal specific web campaigns.

One great way to distinguish specialists from more general search engine optimization consultants is through the use of targeted searches. For example, searches for “search engine optimization consultants” won’t produce as targeted results as searches for “law firm search engine optimization consultants”. Using legal modifiers like lawyer, attorney, and law firm in your searches for search engine optimization companies will help you find those that specialize in working with law firms.

Since a large part of law firm internet marketing is about “getting found” in various search engines, like Google, law firm SEO firms that rank-well in the organic listings for these types of terms provide good empirical evidence that they “know what they’re doing”. Keep in mind that this is more of a guideline than a rule.

Some law firm search engine optimization companies will push the envelope of acceptable practices. So, while these companies may enjoy short term success in the search engines, over time their rankings begin to diminish. Performing multiple searches for targeted relevant terms is a good way of weeding out some of these more short-minded firms.

If you’re in the market for a law firm seo company, be sure to check out our free guide on hiring the right consultant. We’ve identified some of what we believe are the most common law firm search engine marketing traps to avoid. Quite frankly, there are a lot more questionable firms than any of us in the industry would probably like to admit.

Even though a lot has changed since 2007, Matt Cutts’ overview of Google’s search engine results is still helpful for those trying to understand how and why Google displays its results.

Matt discusses the anatomy of a search result, and provides insight as to how you can improve how your site appears in Google. He covers all the basics including page title, page description, and sitelinks.

Understanding what is displaying in a search result is a great place to start if you’re considering marketing your law firm on the web.

The search engine optimization field has long stressed how secretive and specialized its field is. There is no shortage of SEO marketing claiming to hold the secrets to search engine success. This industry of darkness continues to baffle, perplex, and unfortunately, swindle many of those searching out these secrets.

Many lawyers fail to recognize that attorney internet marketing is a lot less about secret tactics and much more about prioritizing effective strategies and time expenditures in executing these strategies. Many law firms pay too much in search engine optimization consulting because of their lack of knowledge about what it is that their search firm is doing for them.

Truthfully, there are some aspects of SEO that can be easily handled by the lawyers themselves. On the other hand, there are many strategies that are just too time consuming to be effectively and efficiently performed by lawyers. Let’s face it, a lawyer’s professional time is worth a lot. Usually more than the time of a law firm seo consultant.

Deciding whether to outsource or not really comes down to a matter of time and money. Even if you know what to do, is it worth your time to execute these activities? Or, are these activities more economically completed by someone else? Many times, the hourly cost of hiring a law firm SEO is far-less than your own billable professional time.

In the end there are two questions that you must answer for yourself. First, are you capable of effectively running a lawyer search engine optimization campaign? Do you have the know-how? Second, if you know what needs to be done, can you do it for less than it would cost to have someone else do it? Make sure you take into account the dollar value of your professional time.

When you approach the art of writing copy for a legal website, it is important to keep a couple of things in mind.  You not only need to explain complex legal issues in a way that your average person can understand, you also need to make sure you keep the attention of your visitor.  This is difficult to do considering the fleeting attention span of web users these days.

Writing for the web is unique from other types of more traditional writing.

Effective advertising for lawyers requires that you improve your skills with regards to writing for the web.

I am going to discuss how to write better web copy.  Even though writing good web copy for search engine optimization purposes is important, I want to tackle this issue from the standpoint of usability and reader engagement.

Here are a few pointers to get you started off the right foot:

1. Bullet points – Web users are drawn to bullet points.  Default to creating lists and bullet points for your web copy when appropriate.

2. Write as if you were having a dialogue – The power of the internet is the high level of engagement it provides.  People frequent blogs and sites so that they can interact with the content.  The best way to achieve this engagement is to write like you are having a conversation.  Stay professional but write with your unique voice.

3. Don’t write with industry buzzwords – Stay away from legalese.  People need to be able to engage with and understand what you are writing.  If you don’t achieve this with your web copy, then users will quickly leave your site.  It is important to write in a way that conveys your points, but stays simple enough for others to understand.

4. Use pictures and videos in your writing – Pictures capture a users attention.  They can make the page interesting and complement your writing.

By implementing the suggestions in this article you will see an improvement with the usability and engagement of your web copy.

Talk to us about how we can help with content for your law firm website.