Many of our lawyer marketing clients have asked us over the years whether they should invest more of their law firm marketing budget on buying media or in the production of TV spots.

While the rule of thumb may say that 85% of an advertising budget should be spent on media and the rest on strategy and production, the percentage is really contingent on how large the budget is. Every law firm and broadcast market is unique and both the budget and how it's allocated will depend on those two factors along with the goals of the marketing plan. That will also determine how many TV ads need to be produced for the campaign. The fact is that it doesn't matter what the percentage is, if the result is that the law firm does not grow their business.

Many law firm marketers seem to believe that it would be better to air several mediocre TV ad campaigns for a single year rather than running one stellar campaign for multiple years. In fact the reverse is true. If the bottom line for TV advertising for lawyers is to generate new business, then saturating the market with average ads will probably do the opposite. Ads are like magnets; they attract some consumers and repel others. Mediocre ads stand a greater chance to repel more.

The smaller your advertising budget, the smarter your law firm must be in spending it. That means really getting down to the nitty gritty on how your firm must position its brand in your market and how you can spend your media money more intelligently so that your firm can compete with firms that have far greater budgets.

The bottom line is that advertising is a marathon, not a sprint, so making your investment work smarter and harder will help your law firm generate more new prospects in the future. And in a need driven business like personal injury law, your ads must be visible when that need arises. Having a solid media mix along with great TV creative will also help significantly. Top-of-mind awareness is fleeting and relying on your firm's name being the first to come to mind will only work if your planning and budgeting is designed for that long haul.

To learn more about TV advertising for lawyers or attorney media buying, contact Rene Perras or visit cepac.com.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Over the last few years many of my clients and other attorneys have asked me about the value of legal blogs for their practice. I know of several lawyers that get the bulk of their new client acquisitions through their blogs and their practices are still growing. They have eliminated their reliance on the Yellow Pages and do their entire lawyer marketing through their blogs and associated websites.

Their new clients are coming from consumers who need a lawyer with expertise specific to their needs and they find that the information that they get from the blogs is more up-to-date and shows a greater sense of the style, personality and level of compassion than a plain website.

One of the great things about a blog for lawyers is that they can perform as well, or better in Google rankings than the typical legal website which in many cases has content that remains unchanged for long periods of time. Fresh new relevant content keeps the blog fresh and helps create inbound links that are both highly favored by Google. If you can attract followers because of the content that you publish, when their need arises, you will be the first attorney that will come to mind.

Another great aspect of legal blogging is that it gives your law firm marketing a boost in building your brand online. Your brand is not your logo, a picture of your office or a mere tag line. Your brand is your unique skill set that helps create an emotional connection that implies a certain set of specific promises of value and communicates the distinct advantage of your firm.

When you blog you build trust and credibility, your personality and some sense of your style. Talking about how you helped clients in your various practice areas demonstrates your knowledge in areas of law that prospects may need help in. Opinions on legal news, current events, and changes in the law also show your proficiency and expertise. Let's face it, everyone wants to hire an expert and this is a best practices legal marketing opportunity to show your insight into the law and begin to build online relationships with readers. Be consistent in how you write your posts and how often you post. Like minds are attracted and it doesn't hurt to attract the type of clients that will respond well to your style and personality.

Cepac specializes in lawyer web marketing including development of private label newsrooms that act like legal blogs on steroids, transmitting your news and press releases across a vast and growing network of news partners. These newsrooms also have the added benefit of creating new web pages with each posting and enticing the blogosphere to link back to your stories, further enhancing your position in Google search results.

For more information on blogs for lawyers, legal websites or other questions about lawyer marketing contact Rene Perras.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

In years past top lawyers marketed their firms and increased their clientele largely through referrals from satisfied clients and other attorneys. In today's marketplace that can still be true. What has changed is the venue for that conversation. Word-of-mouth, perhaps the greatest form of advertising for lawyers and other marketers is no longer conducted only around the water cooler. It takes place on the web on a variety of social media sites like legal blogs, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Word-of-mouth, or relationship marketing for attorneys, has made social media an incredibly powerful tool because consumers trust their family and friends, even those that they only know online. Both the place where the dialogue takes place and who takes part has impact on how the recommendation may be viewed by a consumer. Naturally, information from friends and family has been shown to be the most highly trusted, but research conducted by Invoke Solutions and reported by eMarketer also found that blog and Facebook posts by companies were also trusted. When rating what made social sites more trustworthy, consumers mentioned, among other reasons, quality of the content and the willingness of the company to be involved in a real conversation with visitors. In addition, the greater the number of participants and the continuing commitment to the dialogue were also considered important factors.

In addition to the research showing the impact of social media on consumers' choices, the American Bar Association conducted a poll that showed that more than 50% of attorneys and law firms have a page on one of the social media sites and 10% of respondents indicated that they had acquired a client because of that presence. Since the practice of law is a need-driven business it is absolutely essential to maintain a presence so that your law firm will be front and center when that need arises.

If your law firm would like to include the new social media platforms for lawyers in your arsenal to either enhance your traditional marketing efforts or to begin to market your law firm, now is the time to jump in with both feet. By creating a legal blog or creating a Facebook page and beginning discussions about topics that are relevant to potential clients your law firm can help develop your professional network by becoming a source for news and legal updates that make you the expert in your geographic area of influence. By balancing your content so that it shows both your legal proficiency and a bit of your personality, your law firm will have the greatest chance for referrals from consumers and other attorneys.

If you would like more information on legal blogs, social media for lawyers or marketing for law firms, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Many law firm marketers are bombarded by sales calls and emails from potential vendors that offer services ranging from pay-per-click advertising (PPC) to search engine optimization (SEO), to helping create links back to their websites.  With all of the promises made by all of these “consultants” it can be confusing and difficult to decide which tools to include in your legal marketing plan and how to find the appropriate lawyer marketing partner.  Even if your law firm gives little or no consideration to these pitches from India, Eastern Europe and around the US, all of the promises made by each venue for marketing your firm online certainly provide food for thought.

Which leads to the question should my law firm marketing plan focus on PPC or SEO?

The short answer may be both.

Many legal marketers believe that PPC and natural search (SEO) are distinctly different strategies and focus their efforts on one or the other. The truth is that there is a synergistic element to including both in your marketing toolbox.  PPC is a valuable tool for both the testing of key words for a natural search campaign, and also for eliciting a more immediate response that can be a useful stopgap measure until the natural search efforts gain traction and mature.  It is also a useful tool for appealing to prospects driven by a very time sensitive occurrence such as a major product recall or disaster. 

Natural search is probably the most valuable tool for online marketing, as it is more cost effective than PPC due to its fixed cost in highly competitive categories.  High page one ranking in natural search results gives your law firm’s website more credibility, broader reach and appeals to those searchers that shy away from paid advertising.  A greater percentage of searchers click on natural search results, but some experts believe that the conversion rate for PPC may be higher.

When it comes to making decisions about which strategy your law firm should employ for your Internet marketing program, the key part of the equation will probably be your budget.  For the long haul SEO can be more cost effective and PPC may elicit more immediate results, but together as part of your media mix they give great support to each other and can offer a greater chance to reach more prospects and enhance your lead acquisition efforts.

At Cepac, we'll find the most effective strategy and campaign to reach a firm's desired goal. Whether it is pay-per-click (PPC) advertising or natural search (SEO) or a combination of both, Cepac is a full-service agency that has the experience and resources to execute a marketing campaign in multiple media with a distinctive voice and good ROI.

For more information on search engine optimization for lawyers or legal focused pay-per-click campaigns, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Nearly two years ago, I posted an article stressing how important high quality content is whether you are creating a new website for lawyers, redesigning an existing site or just adding new content to your law firm's current website. As important as high quality content was at that time, it is even more important now, as there seems to be a greater focus on content by the new indexing system of Google's Caffeine and Bing.

As in the past, the legal content should be written to keep visitors to your website interested and to impress the search engine spiders. The first goal is important for two reasons, one is that consumers have a very short attention span, especially when browsing the web and secondly part of the search engine algorithms is focused on creating a great user experience. Boring, repetitive or uninformative content will cause prospects for your law firm to exit the site quickly causing a high "bounce rate."

As important as it is to create a great first impression and clearly outline the strengths and characteristics that separate your law firm from the competitors in your geographic sphere of influence, it is also key to talk about the areas of the law your law firm marketing program wants to focus on to attract new clients.

Practice area focused content and information that anticipates the type of questions your potential clients might ask will help keep visitors to your website for lawyers engaged and also influences the search engine spiders, especially when the content is keyword rich.

Google's new indexing process makes new content available to searchers much faster and will give Google the ability to evolve even further as the web evolves, so they can deliver even more web content to searchers. It also has enhanced the amount and types of data that can be associated with pages crawled by the spiders and the speed pages can be delivered to a searcher. Information about external page links and the text associated with those links is stored in Google's database. Although Caffeine may not be a change in the search algorithm, the ability to associate more detailed information about each page will probably impact search engine ranking down the road.

Essentially, when you do a Google search, you're not really searching the live web, you're searching Google's index of the web. Caffeine analyzes the web in smaller bites, rather than the entire web, and adds them to the index continuously. What that means is that new content, including images and video, can be found faster than ever before as Google processes hundreds of thousands of pages in just seconds.

By crafting fresh content and adding it to your website via your law blog, lawyer newsroom or by adding pages you can potentially improve your search engine results even faster. Searchers want to find the newest and most relevant content and that means updating your law firm website regularly is even more important.

Cepac has created a lawyer marketing tool called smart news technology. This powerful link building tool syndicates your automatically optimized articles across a wide array of newswire partners, including Google News, providing valuable links and creating a fresh page of website content with each release.

Better web content will help achieve better search engine rankings for your site, which leads to more unique visitors, which leads to more visitors filling out a contact form and potentially becoming new clients.

For more information on website content for lawyers, smart news technology or website design for law firms, contact Kevin Quinlan

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Many law firm marketers wonder how they can contend with the major legal advertisers that they compete with for clients in their geographic area of influence. While their smaller advertising budgets may never be large enough to compete for dominance on the radio, in outdoor advertising or TV, social media can really level the playing field.

Law firms with smaller budgets are finding that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter can give them a leg-up in marketing their firms. In addition to the fact that setting up a page is free, every Facebook or Twitter page is more or less identical, regardless of how substantial the law firm launching the page. Pages can be customized, but having a great Facebook page for your law firm does not require the same level of skill as would be required for development of high production value TV spots.

According to the New York Times, "Facebook, the largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members, or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25 billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog posts and photos)." What greater way to reach so many potential clients in your geographic area. Many of the users mentioned above are businesses that rely on Facebook to update their fans to changes within their companies. Using Facebook to market your firm is like having free PR with the added value of word-of-mouth. Have there been changes in the law, new attorneys added to the firm or have you had a recent success? All of these updates can be transmitted quickly and interactively with Facebook. And it's a dialogue not a monologue.

Many law firms have found that they have been generating new clients because prospects have contacted individual attorneys through their personal pages, prompting them to create a page for their firm. Social media has expanded beyond a point where it can be considered a flash-in-the-pan or fad.

When combined with a blog or lawyer newsroom that transmits all of your current articles firm announcements and press releases to the Internet and automatically posts the articles to your Facebook and headlines to your Twitter page, you will have created a marketing machine for your law firm.

Cepac lawyer marketing has developed an online lawyer newsroom that does exactly that. Smart News Technology offers a direct connection to the World Wide Web without the need for a press release distribution service and provides the ability for law firms to have their news carried on a large, continuously growing array of newswire partners, including Google news and other major Internet wire services. This powerful tool creates high visibility for your law firm and helps improve site rankings. Posts can be automatically added to your customized Facebook page, giving your firm an extra boost and an easy way to create more content in addition to your normal Facebook posts.

For more information on Smart News Technology, customized Facebook pages for law firms or other lawyer marketing strategies contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Just as the practice of law is in a constant state of change with new laws being enacted and updated trial presentation technology evolving, lawyer marketing is equally fluid.  Failure to adapt and adopt these new marketing strategies and advances can result in the same degree of consequences as failing to keep abreast of the law.

The evolution of new types of media from Yellow Pages to radio to TV and now the Internet have shaken up marketing for law firms and inspired legal marketers to respond with new marketing strategies and tools to address the appropriate media mix for each law firm's budget and category.

Here are three weapons that law firm marketers should adopt in their marketing arsenal:

Search engine optimization for lawyers (SEO)

SEO for attorneys is one of the most valuable and cost-effective tools a law firm can use for lead generation and acquisition of new clients. Search behavior studies have shown that most consumers rarely look beyond the top ten results in a search and nearly never get past the third page, even in the least competitive categories where results are harder to come by. It is absolutely critical that your law firm website appears on page one of the search results for your geographic area of influence for the benefit of your law firm and to make the search simpler for your potential clients.

Social Media

Over the years, attorneys have placed a heavy reliance on referrals to grow their business. These referrals often came from other attorneys that focus on different areas of practice or needed a trial attorney to take a case to court. In addition, prior clients that have had successful outcomes have also been a valuable source of new business. These referrals were the ‘old' word-of-mouth and were difficult to quantify and keep track of. Social media like Facebook and Twitter have become the word-of-mouth for a new generation of potential clients. The communication between legal marketers and those in need has become a dialogue rather than a monologue. Research shows that although consumers do trust advertising, they trust the recommendation that much more.

Web Videos

Web videos for lawyers are not meant to be competition for the vast influx of video on network TV sites, YouTube or Hulu, but really take web marketing to the next level by giving your law firm an edge that can help prevent "lawyer shopping". With the personalization of the lawyers that make up your firm and the ability to preemptively answer the questions your potential clients might need answered prior to contacting a firm, you warm up their cold call to your firm.

If your firm is considering an attorney web marketing program that includes the three tools listed above, working with a lawyer marketing shop that specializes in SEO for attorneys, social media and high value video productions can ensure that your firm has the best chance to achieve high page one rankings and grow your practice.

For more information on SEO for attorneys, or law firm social media, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

In order to keep pace with the ever more competitive legal category, many law firm websites are redesigned to make them more "sticky" and to make their architecture more search engine friendly, all with the ultimate goal of improving their natural search engine rankings. After all, what good is an aesthetically pleasing, informative website if no one can find it. Increasing the number of unique visitors and getting them to spend more time on your law firm website is the way to increase lead generation.

Because the content on existing attorney websites has already been indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo and the other search engines, it often makes sense to migrate the content from the existing site to similar pages on the new website. Even in cases where the content on the original website is sparse, certain pages such as the home page, attorney bios, and case studies are often reproduced verbatim on the newly designed site. There are SEO techniques that allow the search engines to be redirected to the corresponding new page when a search is performed that would have pointed to a page that has already been indexed.

In many cases, your old website design firm may have provided custom URL's with associated landing pages. Once you redesign your website and move on, they may not renew those URL's or may just cancel any redirects that you have put in place, negatively affecting your natural search engine results. Even worse, they may leave those pages live so that Google and the other search engines view the content on your new site as duplicate and penalize you. That can even be true for interior pages with URL's that no one would think to type into their browser address bar.

Often, you will not be aware that pages from your old site are still live until your search engine page ranks decline enough for you to notice. You may not be aware that the landing page URL's that have been redirected to your new site are no longer functional, unless you receive notification by your prior web design firm that they will not be renewing them and they have already turned off the functionality.

The redesign and launch of a law firm website requires care and attention to detail that can only occur when the SEO engineer either works closely with your firm and redesign team, or all of the tasks are  handled under one roof.

At Cepac, all of our websites are designed with an eye towards SEO for lawyers and redesigns are handled with care, so that your data migration and reengineering can reap the maximum results. Our team works with you to ensure the smoothest transition possible by focusing on both design and search engine optimization.

For more information on website design for lawyers or SEO for law firms contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, president of Cepac lawyer marketing, goes back to basics on search engine marketing for law firms, and discusses how the inclusion of a newsroom can support SEO efforts and improve search engine results for personal injury and other law firms.

Remember the days when all a personal injury or family law practice needed to generate new business was the big yellow book? Law firms dominated the pages and spent huge sums of money to promote their business, but lately the best reason most attorneys can come up with to be in the yellow book is that they are afraid not to be.

Consumers are moving away from the traditional yellow pages and other print media at an astounding rate. Research clearly shows that more and more consumers are looking to the Internet for goods and services. Even more specifically they are using Google, Bing and Yahoo to research the law and lawyers in their geographic area.

Your law firm website can give you the edge in your geographic sphere of influence by showing prospects what differentiates you from other attorneys that you compete with. Your law firm's website can contain an unlimited number of pages that position you and your firm as experts in the field, plus by including a newsroom, social media and web videos you can make their experience on your site more personal and engaging. A great law firm website will also support any other advertising your firm may do: TV, referral marketing, radio and event sponsorships.

But what good is a great website if no one can find you?

Organic search engine marketing (SEO) is the most cost effective way to move your law firm to the top of the page in search engine results. SEO incorporates on-page and off-page techniques which include re-engineering of an existing website to make it more "spider friendly" so that the search engines can crawl your site and index those pages that you want to be prominent in the search results. It also involves making the site as user friendly as possible by adding the most relevant key word rich content for those consumers you are targeting and making it compliant with W3C guidelines. It is not an overnight magic bullet and requires a consistent effort.

The off-page aspects of SEO include link building and link-baiting strategies to acquire as many high quality inbound links from sites that are considered an authority in your category and have longevity on the Internet. Google and the other search engines view each link as a vote of confidence in your attorney website which increases its popularity. One highly effective method of acquiring links is to use a lawyer news room to craft articles, opinions and commentary on current events, updates to your law firm, changes in the law and information that potential clients might find useful in their search for help.

Cepac developed the Smart News Technology product specifically to provide law firms with the ability to directly transmit articles, firm news and press releases to the Internet via their own private label newsrooms. Virtually no other product provides lawyers this unique ability to create high visibility and improve site rankings through this powerful link building news software platform. Each syndicated article or release is transmitted across Cepac's vast network of newswire partners including Google news.

For more information on website design for attorneys, SEO for law firms or Smart News Technology, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, lawyer marketing dude, reports on the delay in implementing the new advertising rules for Florida attorney websites until the Supreme Court can review the proposed amendments and the potential impact on SEO for lawyers and lawyer websites.

Law firms across the state of Florida that have nervously waited for the new Florida Bar rules for attorney websites and other web based communications to take effect on July 1, 2010, can now take a sigh of relief. On Thursday, June 10 the Supreme Court of Florida granted the Florida Bar's emergency motion to stay the effective date that the new advertising rules for websites for lawyers in Florida will become applicable.

Prior to the adoption of the new rules, it was generally assumed that since a consumer had to deliberately access an attorney's website, there was a distinction made between active forms of advertising and consumer based research by the public to find the appropriate law firm for their needs.

The new rules treat web based communications identically to all other forms of advertising, which means that the advertising rules (Rule 4-7.2) established by the Bar also apply to lawyer websites, except for the filing requirement. As with all other forms of advertising, websites must not contain any misrepresentations of fact or law, characterize the quality of the firm's services, promise results or claim specialization in any area of law unless an attorney is board certified in that practice area.

At the final Bar meeting of the year, held in Key West on May 28, the practicality of implementation was discussed in addition to the approval of proposed amendments to the new rules, as required by the Florida Supreme Court. These amendments propose that visitors to Florida law firm websites must take an affirmative action prior to viewing web pages that include testimonials, verdicts and settlements or discuss the relative qualifications of the lawyers in the firm. This affirmative action could be in the form of clicking an additional link, or by checking a box on a disclaimer landing page that indicates the visitor understands the nature of the web content they will be accessing and accepts responsibility.

The stay will remain in effect for 90-days from the date of the Court's ruling on the amendments approved and submitted by the Bar. It would be prudent for lawyers to review their web content and put in place contingency plans so that they are prepared to address the changes when they become effective. Much of the web content addressed by the advertising rules is deemed critical by law firms to try to differentiate themselves from their peers in an advertising environment that is designed to inhibit that goal. The choice is simple; either remove any content that characterizes the quality and successes of your work, including testimonials, or be prepared to add the appropriate mechanisms for consumers to take that affirmative action.

Aside from the loss of differentiation, there is also potential impact on SEO for lawyers. As is often discussed, "content is king" and the removal of web pages or large quantities of content can impact how a law firm website is indexed with the search engines. It will be important not only to plan for how to deal with the Bar rules, but also to maintain the search engine rankings you have already achieved. Additionally, pages that may not be accessed directly through a search engine bypassing the disclaimer pages may not be crawled by the search engines' spiders.

The best way to make sense of the new advertising rules and to be certain that your law firm's website complies is to partner with an attorney web design firm that has an extensive history of working with the Florida Bar on a broad array of advertising media and a successful track record of designing compelling web sites for law firms and providing SEO for attorneys..

For more information on law firm website design or SEO for attorneys or an evaluation of your current website, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, law firm marketing maven provides tips on cost effective marketing opportunities for personal injury law firms and corporate law firms that can improve their search engine rankings in Google and should be part of any set of marketing tools for attorneys.

The recession has hit every business category particularly hard, and although corporate law firms may have been trounced more than personal injury firms and others that work on contingency, it is not necessary to take out a second mortgage to market your law practice.

There is no time like the present to market your law firm. There are many law firm web-marketing opportunities for small and large firms alike that you can take advantage of. Here are a few tips:

• Update the verdicts and settlements and case study pages on your website with links to any news coverage for cases that you have been successful prosecuting on behalf of your clients. Maintaining the freshness of your results not only provides credibility for potential clients researching your firm, it provides fresh content for the search engines which could result in better search engine rankings.

• Ad videos to your website. Since the advent of Google Universal videos can be optimized and contribute to increasing your law firm's ranking in search results. Videos add a personal touch, provide a greater sense of knowledge and enable potential clients to glimpse individual attorney's and the firm's personality, minimizing lawyer shopping.

• Create and use an online newsroom. A newsroom covering breaking news in your areas of practice, commentary on changes in the law or local politics and any announcements that keep your prospects up to date and in the know about your law firm will be useful for prospect generation.

• Take advantage of social media. From LinkedIn to Facebook and Twitter, there are numerous opportunities for self-promotion and the creation of your own media coverage. Utilizing opt in e-newsletter marketing tools can be another method to stay engaged with the public. It is called social media for a reason.

• Create a blog and use it. Blogs add more fresh content to your website and can showcase the intellect and personality of individual attorneys within the firm. Not only does the law firm have a brand, each member of the team also has their own individual brand. Create it and use it, but only if you are willing to do so regularly. Nothing is worse that a three year old blog posting sitting alone.

At Cepac, our 25 years of experience has given us an expertise in creating marketing techniques that help you reach your desired audience with a distinctive message unique to your law firm.

Cepac now offers an exclusive online PR product called Smart News Technology that allows law firms to transmit their news across a vast array of newswire partners, create high visibility and improve website rankings through this powerful news software platform.

Cepac's services for law firms include:

 Internet Advertising / Marketing including SEO, Social Media, PPC
 Web Design for Law Firms With Private Label Newsrooms
 Web 2.0 Social Media Using Google guidelines
 TV & Web Video Production
 Media Planning and Buying

For more information on social media for law firms, attorney private label newsrooms or any other of our Internet marketing programs for lawyers contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

As detail oriented as most personal injury attorneys can be, and as focused on the big picture and the end game, as they have to be, it seems out of character that some of the smaller, but crucial details go unnoticed when it comes to marketing their law firms on the web.

One of the more important examples of this paradox is the selection of a domain name (URL) for their law firms.  While it makes great sense to build and market the reputation and name of your firm in your community as a general business practice, it may not be the best alternative for selecting a URL for web marketing.  We recommend registering and using a more practice and location focused URL for the web, and if necessary, a second URL that includes your firm name for your business cards and collateral.

Selecting a URL requires an understanding of the way in which potential clients search the Internet for attorneys and other services.  First of all, most searchers do not perform a global search for a service that they need locally.  What that means to your firm, is that a potential client living within a reasonable radius of your city or town will not just type in attorney when they search.  Many individuals searching for a lawyer will type in the city or town where they live followed by the word lawyer.  Many are unaware that a personal injury attorney may actually come to them, but all want the personal service and local familiarity provided by someone located reasonably close by.

In addition, as prospects become more and more savvy, they search for more specific types of attorneys, such as car accident attorney or personal injury attorney.  The more you can make your website search engine friendly, the better the chances are that new prospects will find you.  By including a key word that represents a practice area you want to market specifically in your URL selection, you can help the search engines help you.

In summary, by choosing a URL that includes a practice area of focus and your physical locale, you can improve your chances of being found on the web dramatically.  For example, YourCityCarAccidentAttorneys.com will provide greater opportunities than YourNameandPartner.com.

For more information contact Law Firm Marketing Company Cepac.com - Legal Website Design Specialist. 

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, legal marketing guru offers tips on why ongoing search engine optimization should be part of any marketing program for legal websites and how improved page rank in Google are at stake

In the beginning when law firm marketers first started making inroads into the Internet, there was a belief that legal websites were essentially an online brochure for potential clients to glean info about the law firm and its members in a non-threatening atmosphere. In a perfect world the next step would be to start search engine optimization (SEO) by adding targeted keywords to the content and attract inbound links, which would magically appear, and the page ranking for those targeted terms would rise and stay high on page one of Google.

But this is not a perfect world and just adding keyword rich content and creating links is not enough for your firm to improve or retain your page ranking or to prevent other law firms from climbing their way to the top of page one. Search engine optimization must be an ongoing long-term effort, a marathon, not a sprint. Expert legal SEO shops can increase conversions, save money over a pay-per-click campaign and help your firm branch out into the social aspects of Internet marketing, which are now an important part of the equation.

There are significant advantages to partnering with and retaining an attorney SEO firm to provide ongoing technical and creative input for your firm's Internet marketing program.

Here are three reasons why:

1)  Attorneys tend to practice law, not SEO
Even though a content management system and blog may be included as part of a website design, members of the law firm often don't find the time to create regular postings and generate fresh content, and tend to underutilize the tools that they have paid for. Additionally, even when the time is allocated, many attorneys who write exceptionally well, tend to write their articles as they would briefs and also neglect to include key words and phrases. Having a law firm SEO team means that keyword research is always current and their writers are crafting articles that make a difference.

2)  Search engine algorithms are always in flux
As evidenced by the release of Bing, the implementation of Google Universal and now the impending launch of Google Caffeine, the search engines are constantly changing and updating their algorithms. Legal SEO experts stay on top of the ever-changing search environment and can ensure that your efforts remain on track.

3)  Attorneys are not experts in the use of Google analytics
How can a law firm expect to get the maximum bang for their buck in their web-marketing efforts when they lack the knowledge necessary to analyze where their leads are coming from, what key words are the most effective and whether or not their website is providing the best return on their investment.

Law firms that partner with legal SEO experts and invest in their efforts over the long haul will maintain or improve their current rankings and stay ahead of their competition in lead generation, branding and maintaining their top-of-mind awareness on the web.

For more information on search engine optimization programs for law firms or attorney website design, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan President of Cepac lawyer marketing offers insight on how law firms can increase their website conversion rate and maximize lead generation by including web videos in their lawyer marketing and search engine optimization programs.

The online marketing environment has evolved at a remarkable pace over the last few years, yet many attorneys who have made the commitment to market their law firms on the Internet are still unaware of the power of online videos to promote their firms. According to research by a leading lawyer marketing company, consumers visit nearly 5 websites prior to deciding to select a law firm. When video is added to the mix the average number of sites visited drops to just under two.

Now that Google and the other search engines include video in their search results, it's even more important than ever to utilize this tool as part of your search engine optimization arsenal. Because the various state Bar associations often restrict marketing messages and the fact that many attorneys credentials "sound alike" to the average consumer, web video can be the way to clearly differentiate you and your law firm from your competitors. Web video empowers attorneys to convey their marketing message and establish a connection with visitors to their website or YouTube, wherever the video is posted. That connection can make the difference between a visitor and a prospect, as viewers develop a comfort level with the confidence, intellect and personality of the featured attorney.

The key to success in developing an online video marketing program is to align your law firm with legal marketing experts who can both produce high production value web videos that portray your firm it its best light and can also optimize the videos so that they have the best chance for high ranking on Google and the other search engines. When your law firm preemptively answers that potential clients might pose and creates a bond through video communication, your conversion rate and lead generation increase exponentially.

For more information on web videos for law firms, search engine optimization or attorney website design, contact Kevin Quinlan

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, President of Cepac lawyer marketing reports on the addition of court opinions and case law to the Google Scholar search engine and the impact on lexis nexis, westlaw and law firms across the country.

On November 16th in what was a somewhat shocking revelation, Google announced that their Google Scholar search engine would now provide free access to legal case law online. Google Scholar is a simple, easy to use, multi-disciplinary search engine that finds articles, theses, books abstracts and now court opinions across the Internet. It allows scholarly research in a diverse array of fields and locates the complete documents from libraries, publishers, universities and other websites.

There is a great buzz on legal blogs and across the Internet as prior to this development proprietary companies that have counted on case law as a revenue stream for many years have held these legal abstracts and opinions closely. The work product of judges and attorneys operating in our court system is a matter of public record, but until now was only available online from companies such as Lexis Nexis and Thompson Reuters (Westlaw) for a fee.

While many law firms around the US will likely maintain their subscriptions to these services, Google has stated in their blog "this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all". The service provides links to cases that have been influenced by the different decisions so that the historical context of important cases can be studied. The search results pages have "Cited by and Related articles" links under each search result to help facilitate further study.

Both Lexis and Westlaw offer products that are specially designed for attorneys and law firms. and although expensive. will not become obsolete by this new offering. Both are putting a positive spin on the development indicating that they have no problem with government created content being available for free, but that their clients require much more than the raw content that will be found on Google Scholar searches. While it may not be a replacement now, it certainly might be a good starting point for research and who knows what additional functionality that Google may offer down the road to potentially make it more of a head-to-head competitor. For now it may just offer a cost effective way to keep the expense of prelininary research done for potential clients to a minimum in this challenging economy.

For  information on law firm marketing, legal web design and SEO for attorneys, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, president of legal marketing firm Cepac, reports why legal marketers should know about new Nielsen research that shows why a consistent message using a diverse media mix is still important for law firm marketing.

Many legal marketers are familiar with the concept of media mix for attorney advertising, yet some don't grasp the impact that an integrated marketing campaign can have on their potential clients. Prospects are highly mobile, whether they require legal services now or in the future, and are exposed to innumerable marketing messages throughout their day.

To illustrate the point, here is a hypothetical day-in-the-life of a consumer. After getting up in the morning, your potential client either watches the early news on TV or reads a newspaper, while having his first cup of coffee of the day, and is exposed to a variety of ads right away. As he drives to work, perhaps listening to the radio, passing billboards on the highway and shelter advertising on the local streets, many more marketing messages are front and center. While in the office, browsing the web and checking emails, he sees pay-per-click and banner ads for a variety of products and services. At home again in the evening, watching TV, and perhaps browsing the web looking to purchase or research an item of interest the cycle is completed.

Obviously this over dramatized consumer media experience may be a marketer's fantasy, but it shows the reality that consumers may be exposed to many diverse messages throughout their day. The goal of skilled legal marketers is to select the media most appropriate for their potential clients and create a compelling and consistent message that breaks through the clutter of all of the advertising they are bombarded by every day. This approach creates a synergistic top-of-mind awareness so that when their need for an attorney arises, your name comes to mind or seems very familiar when they next see your firm's name.

Although this practice is one of the tried and true mainstays of any good law firm marketing program, new research from Nielsen's Three Screen Report now shows that  it may be even more important now. Their report provides single source electronic measurement of TV and Internet usage in the same homes. As of June, the research indicates, "57% of consumers with Internet access at home watch TV and go online simultaneously at least once a month. On average these consumers spend 2 hours, 39 minutes each month simultaneously using the Internet while also watching TV. Their online experience at home is in front of the television almost a third of the time."

What that means to law firm marketing is that consumers in need of legal assistance look to more than one single source to assist in making the decision to contact and hire a law firm. By integrating a firm's marketing strategy and including TV, search engine optimization (SEO), optimized web videos, and social media in the marketing mix it creates a greater chance for success for each individual medium.  Consumers have not abandoned traditional media for new media. The research shows that they consume both, sometimes simultaneously.

For more information on law firm marketing planning, SEO for attorneys or TV advertising, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, lawyer-marketing guru elaborates on why skilled lawyers have a greater chance of success at generating new business with their TV campaign and in Google searches when they don't delay launching their marketing program and are the first to be seen. 

Many law firm marketers spend enormous amounts of time and money trying to convey the message that their law firm, its services and everything about the way they practice law is better than their competitors. Although the various state bar associations make that a challenging task, the fact is many equally skilled lawyers make that claim on their law firm websites. That said, when it comes to generating new business, it may not be as important to be the best law firm advertising as it is to be the first.

Whether your firm is planning to take the plunge into TV advertising or considering a web-marketing program to promote your practice in your geographic area of influence, being first out of the box has significant advantages over actually being the best. When you evaluate the category leaders for almost every product or service, the company with the greatest awareness always wins. That awareness quite often comes from being the first in the mind of consumers. First in the mind of consumers often subliminally equates to being the best.

While marketing the practice of law may not be the same as marketing consumer products, the way consumers' minds work is consistent. When your TV spot is the first one they see, or they visit your website because it came up in position one of a Google search, most often they compare what they see afterwards to your firm's message. The first one out of the box is the one that is remembered and has the best opportunity to create the greatest awareness. By way of example, other companies may offer similar services, but no one ever says anything other than "Fedex this to our client."

That said, utilizing the highest production values when producing your firm's TV spots is still a rule to live by. According to Business Week, "Advertising is meant to attract customers, yet so much of it does the opposite. One reason: Too much time and money goes into running advertising, not enough into developing it." Creating a high quality TV campaign indirectly says a lot about the quality your firm.

The same can be said for website development and web marketing. Creating an informative, easily navigated website that anticipates and answers many of the preliminary questions a potential client might have serves the same role. An effective SEO plan that consistently results in high page one ranking in Google for your key search terms gives your law firm that leadership edge.

For more information about law firm TV production, website design for attorneys or legal SEO contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Kevin Quinlan, law firm TV advertising specialist advises about new web based research that clearly shows that TV is still a key tool for law firms and legal marketers across all demographic groups.

Much has been said over the last year or so about how the growth of web video and the web's increasing influence on marketing choices is indicative of the loss of the power of TV advertising for attorneys and other advertisers.

Many legal marketers look not just to trends in the adult population, but to trends in what teenagers are doing as a bellwether for things to come. The common belief is that teens are too involved in texting and social media to spend much time watching TV. Add to that the belief that teens are the biggest users of the Internet and it would seem to be a good reason to scale back on TV advertising for lawyers now, and even more so in the future. The bubble surrounding that myth has been recently been burst.

In a recent Nielsen report called How Teens Use Media, TV viewing by teens and other assumptions have been clarified and the data bodes well for TV media. The truth is that TV viewing by teens has risen by more than 6% over the past five years, exceeding the time spent browsing the Internet! Additionally, although teen web video consumption has grown both in number of teen viewers and time spent, it still lags behind the number of adults aged 18 to 44 that view online video.

While teens may be more web savvy than the average adult, and nearly 90% have access to the Internet at home, teens spent less time on the web than most other demographic groups. More adults typically spend their day with hi speed access at their places of work while students are in class, after school activities and other social outings.

Even though US TV ad spending as a whole dropped by more than 15% in the first half of 2009 compared to the same time frame in 2008, the legal services category was among the top 10 growth categories and increased 32.1%. It would seem that law firms around the country are raising the ante on TV advertising and feel that it is still a great bet. Even with the increase in web-based research and the power of web videos, TV can still be an effective medium on its own and a powerful tool when included in the mix with an aggressive search engine optimization (SEO) program. The top-of-mind awareness created by a solid and consistent TV campaign can help boost website conversions to an even higher level.

For more information on TV production for law firms, SEO, and legal media strategies, contact Kevin Quinlan.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Rene Perras law firm Internet marketing maven discusses the impact on search engine optimization for law firms because of the deal between  Yahoo and Microsoft which will have an affect on the algorithms and the focus on inbound links versus keywords.

The playing field for search engine optimization (SEO) is in the process of change thanks in part to the Microsoft/Yahoo deal and also to the new iteration of Google, currently referred to as Caffeine.  The integration of Bing as Yahoo's exclusive algorithm for search and paid search for Yahoo sites means that the new combined effort may garner 28% or more of search use, according to comScore.  That is based on total of their current share of search individually.  It will remain to be seen whether Bing can change the brand preference of Google searchers and acquire a larger share.  That said past SEO efforts for law firms  focused predominantly on Google, so if you were well optimized for Google your l;aw firm would be well optimized for all of the others. With a nearly 30% share of the search market that may no longer be enough.

While it could take a year or longer for the full implementation of the deal to take place, being prepared early and adjusting SEO efforts is probably a prudent plan. Although both Google and Bing react favorably to traditional strategic SEO efforts such as fresh keyword rich content, keywords in the title tag and domain, and the appropriate website architecture, there appear to be differences in the way they value the different criteria. Bing seems to place more weight on keywords whereas Google seems to place more weight on inbound links. Ensuring that you have both strategies covered can only help increase your law firm's website rankings now and in the future.

Microsoft is still in the process of tweaking its algorithm for Bing, so what seems to be true now, may be different as the evolution progresses.  Additionally, it is said that Google Caffeine has a greater focus on key words as well.  The best approach is to ensure a strong focus on the fundamentals of traditional, ethical, tactical SEO and keep abreast of the changes as they occur.  For now, it may require additional efforts to maintain a Google local listing and a Bing local listing but currently it does not seem necessary to have separate pages geared towards Bing or Google search engines.  Bing and Google currently deal with videos and images placement differently in the search results. Bing provides different placement for videos and images which may offer marketing opportunities for marketers that create both.

If your law firm has a relationship with an expert attorney web design firm/SEO professional for law firms that adheres to Google's design standards your firm should be on the right track now and in the future to make the necessary adjustments to your web marketing efforts.

For more information about law firm SEO, legal web site design for attorneys or other legal marketing strategies, contact Rene Perras.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126

Rene Perras law firm marketing expert talks about the effect of the reduction in pay per click fraud on law firm marketing programs that utilize pay per click advertising as part of an overall marketing strategy that includes search engine optimization along with traditional advertising campaigns.

As reported by ClickForensics, the industry wide pay-per-click (PPC) fraud rate for the second quarter of 2009 dropped from 16.2% to 12.7% compared to the same quarter in 2008.  They have been reporting PPC fraud statistics for nearly four years and collect their data from online ad campaigns for all size advertisers utilizing all of the major search engines and numerous ad networks.

Apparently, efforts by online ad networks to identify and curb activity from questionable sources has been effective in reducing the rate for this quarter, but highly sophisticated programs used by online publishers are still of great concern now and in the future. These publishers' goal is to generate higher revenue by increasing the number of clicks on their own sites, therefore boosting their commissions.

This downturn in click fraud is a benefit to online law firm marketers looking for quick visibility for areas of practice that evolve too quickly for an organic campaign to reach peak effectiveness or for search engine optimization (SEO) key word testing.  

Although our experience has been that SEO delivers better and more cost effective results over the long haul, a pay per click advertising campaign may be a useful tool for your law firm if you just launched your website or as a short term solution while your SEO efforts are ramping up.  

For more information about law firm SEO, pay-per-click advertising for attorneys or other legal marketing strategies, contact Rene Perras.

Kevin Quinlan
Lawyer Marketing 101
208 East 51st Street
Suite 309
New York NY 10022
212-759-1126