Do you monitor the web analytics for your law firm? What dashboards have you created? Here are some thoughts on creating actionable SEO dashboards in Google Analytics that will better help you understand the meaningful traffic to your site(s) and blog(s).

If you want to simply skip to setting up SEO dashboards, I recommend you check out Taylor Pratt’s post at SEO Book. If you’re familiar with GA and creating dashboards, you may find this post a bit remedial. However, if your head is spinning with analytics data, hopefully we can make some sense out of it for you.

For this post, I’m going to focus on creating a Google Analytics dashboard widget for Total Organic Keyword Conversions/Transactions (that’s the widget in the image above). I’m also going to assume that you already have goal tracking set-up for your site (i.e. you’re tracking phone calls, form fill, other goals on your site that have meaning to your firm). If you haven’t configured goal tracking, this isn’t going to work. Head over to Google Analytics help to learn how to Set up and edit Goals.

First, from within Google Analytics, you’ll need to click on the dashboards tab and then + New Dashboard:

You will be prompted to create a new dashboard either using a Blank Canvas or a Starter Dashboard. It doesn’t really matter which you choose. However, if you want to keep things clean and simple to get started, just choose Blank Canvas.

Next, you’ll be prompted to add a widget. To create the organic keyword conversions/transactions widget (the one from above), you’ll want to select table with columns for keyword, goal completion and goal conversion rate. You’ll also want to create a couple of filters. The first filter is to only show organic traffic. The second filter is to remove “branded” search traffic. This might include your name, the names of other attorneys at your firm and the name of your law firm.

Assuming you’ve properly implemented goal tracking, you should now see the widget from the image above displayed on your dashboard.

What’s This Widget Telling Me?

This widget is displaying your top converting unbranded keywords. In other words, it’s showing which keywords visitors used who completed goals on your site, excluding those who came in from searches for attorney and firm names.

If your goals are phone calls and form fill, this can be pretty powerful in terms of understanding which keywords are likely to convert into potential client inquiries. You can use this information for more efficient keyword-targeting and content creation. It’s also helpful in terms of measuring the effectiveness of your, or your marketing consultant’s, SEO activities.

Apparently, there’s a bit of deception taking place on the part of law firm SEO vendors (shocking, I know) with regard to analytics reporting.

Arm yourself with some web analytics knowledge so that you can sniff out these common scams. If you’re paying someone to generate more potential client inquiries from organic search traffic, make sure that’s what they’re reporting on. Don’t accept top-level traffic reports that lack transparency.

If you suspect that you’re getting bamboozled, sign-up for our free website audit service. We’ll be happy to take a look at your web analytics and give you our opinion.

Are you already using SEO dashboards and widgets in Google Analytics at your firm? Which implementations have you found useful? How are you putting web analytics to work for your practice?

Stop pretending you’re a web designer.

Do you have a background in design? Do you have years of experience designing and developing websites for lawyers? For business? For anyone? Stop pretending you do. Stop telling yourself that your sites are “good enough.” Stop using crappy stock legal imagery. Stop blending in with all of the other do-it-yourself legal websites. Stop telling us about how hard you’ll fight and how passionate you are. Stop trying to turn your website into another law firm television ad.

Stop pretending you’re a blogger.

Do you have something to write that’s actually worth writing about? Do people actually subscribe to your blog? Do you even know? Would even know how to figure that out? Do people talk about your blog? Do they share what you’ve written with others? Has anyone ever emailed one of your posts to somebody else? Stop churning out regurgitated news stories. Stop creating posts for every iteration of “your city” + “your practice area(s)” + ‘lawyer or attorney or law firm.”

Stop pretending you’re an SEO.

Do you know the fundamentals of user experience, information architecture and conversion optimization? Do you know the best practices to help search engines find, crawl and index your web pages? Are you familiar with the webmaster guidelines of major search engines? Is your best SEO strategy figuring out the right keyword density of your pages? Are you familiar with the most recent major Google algorithm updates? Do you know who this is:

Stop pretending you’re an SEO. Stop wasting time and money on article and directory submission software. Stop buying hundreds of legal domains and linking them altogether. Stop being surprised when your sites get a major penalty from search engines. Stop using content scraped from other sites. Stop creating pages for the purpose of ranking for a particular keyword. In fact, stop focusing on your rankings altogether.

Stop blaming Adwords.

Are you Adwords Certified? If I said “enhanced campaigns” to you, would you stare back blankly? Stop blaming Adwords. It’s not Google’s fault that you’re broad matching every legal term you can think of. It’s not their fault that your ad copy is weak. It’s not their fault that your landing pages suck, are slow to load and don’t respond well to mobile devices. It’s also not their fault that you’re not tracking, measuring and optimizing your campaigns to increase conversion and lower your average CPA (that’s cost-per-action to you).

Stop blaming your marketing consultant.

You’re a grown-a** lawyer. Stop blaming your marketing consultant for your crappy web marketing. Stop blaming them for hurting your reputation and causing ethics violations. Start taking ownership of your decisions to hire web marketing consultants. Spend some time vetting the people you work with. Understand what they’re planning to do on your behalf. Hold them accountable for acting without your permission.

Stop pretending you’re listening.

Stop pretending you’re listening. Stop commenting, sharing, liking and re-tweeting these posts and then going out and leaving blog comment spam, publishing spun and scraped content and sending unsolicited emails for links.

Stop incessantly nodding like some creepy bobble-head, only to go out and create another crappy website and pouring time and money into “tricking Google.”

Stop doing the same thing and expecting a different result.

Stop it!

Let’s say you’re researching something related to a legal matter. As a lawyer, you probably do this all the time. You research case law and statutes. Depending on the task, you might turn to another lawyer you hold in high-esteem. You might refer to a treatise on the subject. You might hire a subject-matter expert to provide an opinion.

And in performing this research, you’ll make judgments about their relevance to your investigation, as well as, how much weight, authority or credibility should be afforded to each of them.

You might even sort these sources of information based upon how you perceive their relevance and authority.

Now let’s say you are trying to build a machine that does this.

The very purpose of this machine would be to sort the relevant and reliable, from the irrelevant and unreliable. And in order to accomplish this task, the machine would need to know who the reliable authorities are on a particular subject and what they’ve said and written on the subject.

And so, you’d need ways to connect information with its author. And you might give preference to information that comes from a verified source. You might say something like this:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

- Eric Schmidt

And you might ask questions like these:

What makes someone authoritative versus popular? Is there a difference? If so, how would you go about separating the two?

How do you map the decline of authority? Of someone who is no longer really an expert and just mailing it in? Can you identify this even if they remain popular? How can you tell if someone is endorsing content based on merit or friendship? Is it what you know or who you know?

Furthermore, you could find that one was popular for the wrong reasons. Would you want to rank someone highly who simply fanned the flames of dissent and created controversy? The tone and type of interaction will be important so sentiment analysis and other processes will need to determine how to use social interaction as a reliable signal.

***

And how does influence fit into this equation? One can be influential without being popular, but clearly being popular gives you a better chance of being influential just by sheer reach. Can you be influential without being an authority? I think so. Just look at Jenny McCarthy and her influence within the anti-vaccine movement.

Becoming an Authority

Now let’s flip things around. Instead of being the builder of the machine, let’s say that meeting your business goals depends, in some part, upon how authoritative you appear to people who use the machine.

In other words, you’re the expert and whether or not you get hired depends upon whether users of the machine are able to find you, as well as, whether the machine recognizes you as an expert.

What types of things might you do?

Might you brainstorm ways that you could feed your knowledge, skill and experience into the authority machine?

Might you communicate what you know on a subject via the written word?

Might you speak publicly at relevant seminars and meetings of other experts on the subject?

Might you engage in discussions and debates with other subject-matter experts?

Might you want to be sure that what you’re writing and saying is being properly attributed to you?

And by doing these things, wouldn’t others begin to suggest that you are knowledgeable on the subject?

Might they begin to source and cite what you have written?

Might they begin to tell others about your knowledge you posses?

Might they also to begin to feed information about your knowledge into the machine?

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.

Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.

- Google Webmaster Tools help on Search Engine Optimization

I don’t know how long we’re going to have to talk about this. Probably forever. At least as long as you keep buying it…

Let’s make this simple: If an SEO is selling rankings, they don’t get it.

That’s at best, they don’t get. At worst, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re making a guarantee they can’t keep.

And even if they tie their compensation to a guaranteed ranking, you still shouldn’t pay for rankings.

Rankings ≠ Clients

At the risk of stating the obvious, rankings in search engines does not equal getting new clients. I know some of you think it does, but it doesn’t.

For example, if your law firm SEO service guarantees that they can get you to rank for obscure search queries that no one uses, you’re not going to get any search traffic, let alone, traffic that is likely to convert into a paying client.

But what if they guarantee that I can rank for an extremely popular term? Something like: “chicago personal injury lawyer”.

First, they can’t. Second, even if they can, chances are that they’re doing something that won’t last (search for google penguin update, panda update, link schemes, web spam, google penalty, etc). And for whatever amount of time that it does last, it’s likely to harm your reputation and get you in trouble with your state bar.

But here’s the part you might not have considered:

Those highly competitive head terms that everyone is optimizing for make up only a very small percentage of the search traffic that’s relevant to actually attracting new clients.

What? How can this be? Surely everyone that is looking for a lawyer online performs some variation of:

City Practice Area Lawyer/Attorney/Law Firm

Nope.

As it pertains to your practice, most people are using the internet to research something. They’re searching for information about their problems and answers to their questions.

After research, and depending upon your reputation in-real-life, people are using the internet to look you up. So they’re searching on variations of your name or maybe firm’s name.

Then there are all the people who aren’t currently in need of your services, but that make up your professional network. So that when they do need a lawyer, they think of you.

None of these people fit the City Practice Area Lawyer/Attorney/Law Firm search pattern.

So even if your law firm SEO service successfully delivers on their guarantee to get you to rank for the keywords you want, they’re missing the bigger picture.

What Should Law Firm SEO Services Sell?

SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer.” Deciding to hire an SEO is a big decision that can potentially improve your site and save time, but you can also risk damage to your site and reputation. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an irresponsible SEO can do to your site. Many SEOs and other agencies and consultants provide useful services for website owners, including:

Review of your site content or structure

Technical advice on website development: for example, hosting, redirects, error pages, use of JavaScript

Content development

Management of online business development campaigns

Keyword research

SEO training

Expertise in specific markets and geographies.

- Google Webmaster Tools help on Search Engine Optimization

Perhaps this list oversimplifies and understates some of the things that an SEO can do for you. And undoubtedly, some of you who read this will chuckle to yourselves that none of this applies to you because, “you have Google beat.” Good luck to you.

But for those of you who don’t want to throw time and money down the SEO rabbit hole, ask these questions:

Law Firm SEO Questions from Gyi Tsakalakis from Gyi Tsakalakis

I recently came across this tweet in my feed:

Webinars, checklists, alerts: your one-stop shop for everything you need to know about the #HIPAA #Omnibus Rule: bit.ly/XiRgUT

— Nixon Peabody LLP (@NixonPeabodyLLP) February 19, 2013

I don’t typically follow many of the BigLaw twitter handles. However, I’ve been impressed with Nixon Peabody’s (and more specifically, Lauren Iacono’s) twitter usage in the past.

And clicking-through to the page we find:

The page contains a brief explanation of the HIPAAA Omnibus Rule:

On January 17, 2013, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced significant modifications to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which greatly expands the types of entities responsible for protecting patient privacy—as well as the penalties for noncompliance.

What it might mean to their audience:

The new Privacy, Security, and Enforcement regulations, known as the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, dramatically impact the compliance obligations of health care providers and their business associates, companies with self-insured health plans, broker-dealers, and any other organization with access to individuals’ protected health information (PHI). It makes compliance a new challenge for a broad spectrum of previously non-affected companies, including business associates of covered entities and their subcontractors, patient-safety organizations, health information exchange organizations, entities offering a personal health record, and e-prescribing gateways.

While the patient now benefits from enhanced privacy rights, the companies responsible for protecting that privacy must bear additional responsibilities for compliance. In addition to increased enforcement measures, there are also new breach notification standards and larger monetary penalties for HIPAA violations.

And how Nixon Peabody might be able to assist:

Nixon Peabody’s HIPAA Compliance team can provide individual counsel on the tremendous impact of the HIPAA Omnibus Rule and will continue to offer additional resources, seminars, and alerts to help navigate these new compliance requirements.

This is really quite well-done. And while many people might look at this and say “duh, that’s obvious”, many lawyers and law firms get this wrong. From solos, all the way up to The AM Law 100.

But Nixon Peabody doesn’t stop there. They also provide a variety of content assets for readers, including:

A downloadable Compliance Checklist:

Thought Leadership/Alerts including a webinar recording and relevant alerts:

Finally, the firm provides a list of relevant events including webinars and a roundtable discussion where they answer questions about the rule.

This is what developing content assets is all about. No matter the size of your firm or the type of practice you want to have, you would be well-served to take some notes on what Nixon Peabody is doing online. This is the kind of law firm internet marketing strategy that attracts new visitors, positions the firm and its lawyers as experts and will drive new business.

A few critiques

While I strongly recommend this an example of what to do, I’d like to offer a few constructive critiques that you should think about if you intend to implement a similar content strategy.

Search Engine Optimization

While this Nixon Peabody page has the basics down, there are a few technical SEO modifications they might consider. First, let’s take a look at what they’ve done right. An un-personalized Google search for: “hipaa omnibus rule” delivers the Nixon Peabody listing:

Both the title and meta description appear properly optimized. However, they might consider including some Nixon Peabody branding in the title (I would add it to the end of the title tag). The also might consider modifying both the title and meta descriptions to “speak” to their intended audience. While “HIPAA Omnibus Rule” is certainly descriptive of the content on the page, they might consider adjusting it to speak to the people who are dealing with compliance at covered entities. And if not on this page, then somewhere else with a link back to this page.

The page also lacks rel=”publisher” and rel=”author” mark-up. Perhaps they concluded that authorship mark-up was inappropriate for this static content page, however the page really ought to have publisher mark-up.

Unfortunately, at least on my search, it appeared fourth from the bottom of the first page of results. The page could certainly benefit from some off-page PR and marketing from a search engine perspective.

I would also suggest that the page allow for more visitor interactivity. While the page contains key contact information, it might be beneficial to users to be able to participate in a discussion of these issues right on this page. Whether it be threaded comments or a moderated question & answer forum, providing visitors a way to engage with the page would be beneficial to both users, as well as, the firm.

Further, I would recommend the addition of properly optimized video content. This would enhance the page with a video snippet in search results.

For the most part, this is an excellent example of how law firms should build online assets. I encourage you to explore additional areas of Nixon Peabody’s site for inspiration in marketing your own firm online.

If attracting visitors from local search results is part of your legal marketing strategy, you probably know the importance of acquiring positive reviews on your Google+ Local Pages.

Which may lead you to conclude that you should solicit Google+ endorsements from clients and colleagues. Of course, most lawyers are limited as to how they can permissibly obtain reviews by their state’s rules of professional responsibility.

One way that business owners have tried to increase the number of reviews they receive from customers is by holding a contest to provide incentive for folks to leave reviews. Which probably violates your state’s ethics rules. But if violating your state’s ethics rules doesn’t dissuade you from holding a contest for reviews, here’s another reason: these contests violate Google’s guidelines.

As reported by Mike Blumenthal:

There had long been some ambiguity & contradictions around whether the Google Review guidelines prevented a business from having a contest or raffle to encourage customers to leave reviews. No more. Google has finally stated that drawings that involve incentives are not allowed.

In response to a report in the forums of a contest that had a drawing for the chance of a refund for the value of work done in return for a review (either positive or negative), Googler Jade said: Just clarifying that it is against our reviews guidelines to trade money for reviews, so, yes, this sort of solicitation would be against the reviews guidelines. You can see the rules for the contest in question here & here.

Wondering about what other ways encouraging reviews might be in violation? Here’s Google’s current review content policy (emphasis added):

Review content policy

You can use the Flag as inappropriate link next to a review to report it as inappropriate. We will then check if the review violates these guidelines.

Note, however, that Google Places reviews are a forum for users to share both positive and negative opinions. We do not arbitrate disputes and more often than not, we leave the review up.

Policy criteria for removing reviews

We want people to get ratings, reviews, and recommendations that are relevant, helpful, and trustworthy. To protect both business owners and customers, we have systems in place that may remove individual reviews that include any of the following:

Inappropriate content: Don’t post reviews that contain or link to unlawful content, or content that violates our Google+ content policy. We may also remove reviews that include plagiarism or are copied from other sites.

Advertising and spam: Don’t use reviews for advertising or post the same or similar reviews across multiple places, don’t post fake reviews intended to boost or lower ratings, and don’t include links to other websites. For certain types of businesses that are prone to spam, we also reserve the right to prevent reviews from publicly appearing across Google.

Off-topic reviews: Reviews should describe your personal, first-hand experience with a specific place. Don’t post reviews based on someone else’s experience, or that are not about the specific place you are reviewing. Reviews are not a forum for personal rants or crusades. Don’t use reviews to report incorrect information about a place–use the Report a problem link for that place instead.

Conflict of interest: Reviews are only valuable when they are honest and unbiased. For instance, as a business owner or employee you should not review your own business or current place of work. Don’t offer money or product to others to write reviews for your business or write negative reviews about a competitor. We also discourage specialized review stations or kiosks set up at your place of business for the sole purpose of soliciting reviews. As a reviewer, you should not accept money or product from a business to write a review about them. Additionally, don’t feel compelled to review a certain way just because an employee of that business asked you to do so. Finally, don’t post reviews on behalf of others or misrepresent your identity or affiliation with the place you are reviewing.

Sometimes our algorithms may flag and remove legitimate reviews in our effort to combat abuse. We know this is frustrating when it happens but believe that overall, these measures are helping everyone by ensuring that the reviews appearing on Google Places are authentic, relevant, and useful.

So what are the key takeaways?

• Don’t syndicate reviews from other places.
• Make sure your marketing company isn’t leaving fake reviews (get this in writing).
• Don’t review your own law firm and don’t encourage employees to leave reviews.
• Don’t pay people or provide other artificial incentive for people to leave reviews.

Do let happy clients know how and where they can permissibly review your services.

There’s little question that getting a number of positive reviews will become increasingly important to your visibility within local search results. Plus, research shows that, for better or worse, people rely upon and expect businesses to be reviewed. Law firms that have happy clients evangelizing the quality of the firm’s services are more likely to earn new business.

I read this terrific article yesterday on How To (and not to) Work With A Designer.  The article is chock-full of good advice that really hit home for me based on my experience working on web design projects. 

I would like to share a few of the suggestions that should be top of mind for lawyers.

Getting The Most Effective Design Results

As Will points out in his article,

The way to inspire a designer is to give them the message and feeling you want to convey, and the freedom to convey it in a fresh, new way.

In other words, being a “good client” in the design process is about communicating the marketing message and feeling you want the design to communicate, not telling the designer the specific layout and design to create.  Remember, you are hiring a designer because you are not one yourself.  It’s important you put trust in their ability to come up with a creative approach that communicates your message and appeals to your audience.  You aren’t hiring them so that you can tell your designer how to do design. 

Leave Preconcieved Notions At The Door

Don’t ask for a site like someone else’s but in a different color. Be open to new, unexpected ideas. Don’t be afraid of something different. Let new ideas sink in.

This one is especially relevant in the legal arena.  In my experience, lawyers tend to want to “follow the marketing” pack.  Many tend to choose one or two of their competitor sites they like and ask for the same site in green.  A better approach is to communicate the emotional components of the site, the feelings you want the site to evoke for your audience, to the designer so that they have the freedom to take you in a direction you may not have considered.  Often times you can wind up with a better, unexpected result.

Tell Your Designer What You Want To Say

…rather than how you want it to look. Don’t ask for a color, shape, or style–ask for meaning or emotion.

Design makes you feel, so tell your designer how it makes you feel. Instead of saying, “I like yellow,” get to the root of it and say “I want a site that feels warm,” or “I want something upbeat and friendly.” 

I touched on this point already, but it’s worth mentioning again.  It’s much more effective to tell a designer the message or feeling you are trying to communicate rather than telling them to change the border to brown and move the photo 15 pixels to the left.  This comes up often in my experience.  An attorney client takes over the design process and starts dictating design changes rather than deferring to the professional they hired.  It’s vital you have trust in the expertise of the design professional.

Design For Your Customer

…not yourself, your friends or your colleagues. Be specific so your designer knows who your customers are and what they want. It’s more important that they like your site than that you like it. Always remember, “What’s in it for them.”

This is a critical point that I would argue is one of the most important to keep in mind.  As I discussed in a recent post I wrote, Quit Marketing To Yourself (Unless You Are Your Audience), each decision you make regarding your marketing should be assessed from the viewpoint of how it will resonate with the audience your service is for. Unless you are a representative sample of your typical client, stop trying to create a website design around what appeals to you. 

Don’t Design By Committee

No good design was ever created by a consensus. The more people who have a voice in the process, the more watered down the results will be. Your friends and coworkers will often give you conflicting advice and people often have ulterior motives when they give you comments (they may be jealous or threatened if you get something that’s too good, or they may just be ignorant). You can show it to a few trusted people and get their comments, but there can only be one person making decisions. 

I’ve seen many law firm web design projects go down the tubes for this very reason.  Someone needs to be the quarterback of the team.  Here is a good article to read further expanding on this point, Design By Committee Will Ruin Your Website.

Give Specific FeedBack When Looking At Design Concepts

Don’t just say, “I don’t like brown.” That says nothing of real value. If you say “I’m concerned that the color looks sickly and we need something that conveys growth,” then you are giving the designer useful information, because you’re talking about content rather than telling them how to design.

Communication is key so that your design concepts can be improved upon and get closer to the messaging and website you are striving for.  Simply saying something “sucks” or you “don’t like it” doesn’t help a designer better understand the question of “Why?”.  Communicate what about you don’t like.  What feelings or impressions is the current iteration making on you that you want to change?

Keeping these points in mind during the design process can help produce a much more effective end result.

1. Read - Before we get to the active publishing verbs, we need to spend time with the passive verbs. In order to be most effective online, you should spend a lot of time reading. Find sites and blogs that interest you. Organize them into a fee reader. Consume information on the subjects that both interest you and are relevant to your business.
2. Listen - You should also find people online that are writing about the things that interest you. Where are these people publishing and discussing? Go to those platforms and follow those discussions.
3. Write - Writing is probably the single most important internet marketing verb. If you can’t write, there’s not much you can do in terms of contributing online.
4. Comment - Commenting on the articles/posts of others is a great way to get involved online. Commenting tends to be less time consuming than publishing your own posts. Providing thoughtful comments is one of the best way to begin to build internet recognition.
5. Update - This means both staying-up-to-date and keeping your online profiles updated. Being an absentee blogger is a surefire way to destroy your readership.
6. Review - Providing reviews of people, presentations, books, products, software, services, etc can be very valuable content.
7. Claim - There are many sites where you can claim profiles online. Some of these profiles may conatin incorrect information about you. Making sure that you claim, update and optimize these profiles allows you to monitor and manage your presence and also plays a role in your visibility in search results.
8. Share - Share your experiences and give your audiences a behind-the-scenes look at your practice. People that find you online will want to see you for who you really are. Sharing pieces of your knowledge, skill and experience is a very powerful way to demonstrate your expertise.
9. Discuss - The internet is an interactive medium, not just a broadcast medium. Its real power comes from its ability to facilitate dialogue. Engage in disucssions, not just broadcast.
10. Create - Ultimately, any potential effectiveness that the internet might have in terms of business development depends upon your ability to create “stuff” of value online. Whether it be blog posts, articles, infographics, presentations or something else, you will be judged by the content that you create.
11. Demonstrate - Using the internet to demonstrate your knowledge, in my opinion, is the key to unlocking the power of the web. People use the internet for research. By demonstrating your knowledge of a particular subject, you can position yourself as the expert. The next time your audience members need an expert of your skill set, they’ll come looking for you.
12. Answer - One way to demonstrate your knowledge is by answering questions. You can answer questions through a blog post, in a comment thread, or on a Q & A site.
13. Educate - As a lawyer, you have education and training that non-lawyers don’t. Teaching through the web is another great way to show your mastery of your subject matter.
14. Entertain - It might be difficult to embrace at first, but providing online entertainment can actually play a significant role in developing business for your law firm. People on the internet have short attention spans. If you’re constantly publishing boring legal content, it will be difficult for you to maintain an audience. Mix in some personality and entertaining content to keep your visitors engaged.
15. Deliver - There is a demand for information on the internet. Those that are successful using the intenret to develop business know that they must deliver information that supplies that demand. If you’re able to publish in way that demonstrates your expertise and delivers on the demand for information, you will be astonished as to just how effective the internet can be for law practice business development.

Obviously, these are just some basic internet marketing concepts. Where the rubber meets the road is in the excecution.

And as I wrote in Solely Social or Used to Promote?, they demonstrate a fundamental lack of understanding about how we communicate.

You see, the Florida Bar would prefer to look at communications by lawyers on social networking sites as fitting into neat little boxes.

In one box, they would put communications by lawyer “solely for social purposes, to maintain social contact with family and close friends.” These they suggest are not subject to the lawyer advertising rules.

In a second box, they would put “pages appearing on networking sites that are used to promote the lawyer or law firm’s practice.” These they suggest are subject to the lawyer advertising rules.

And while some communications by lawyers may fit neatly into one of the two boxes, of course we know that the overwhelming majority of communications will include social purposes, as well as, promotional purposes.

But even if we recognize that communications are intended to convey a variety of meanings, there’s really another question here. Should the intent of the communication be the distinguishing factor?

In Legal Blogging vs Advertising & Marketing we examined the Horace Hunter blog debacle. In that example the Virgninia Bar took issue with Mr. Hunter’s omission of disclaimer on his “blog”. They claimed that at least one purpose of his website to market the firm and attract business.

Which raised the question of whether there true distinctions between blogs, other forms of electronic communications, marketing materials, and advertisements.

As I’ve written before, at least with regard to lawyer ethics rules, the issue shouldn’t be whether the intent of the communication was editorial, solely social, or used to promote.

As Professor Goldman puts it:

“The law doesn’t handle editorial-content-as-marketing overlaps very well, unfortunately.”

In my humble opinion, even The U.S. Supreme Court has trouble making the distinction between “pure speech” and “commercial speech” (much this trouble created by the Court).

And so, in the end, lawyers, at least those in Florida, in order to comply with the silly and child-like rules of their State Bar, must regulate their communications to fit neatly into one of two boxes. Those that are solely for social purposes and those that are used to promote.

I challenge you to answer the hypothetical examples listed here.

Gorillas are the largest extant species of primates. Adult males, also called silverbacks, range in height 1.65–1.75 metres (5 ft 5 in–5 ft 9 in), and in weight 140–200 kg (310–440 lb). Occasionally, a silverback of over 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in) and 230 kg (510 lb) has been recorded in the wild. Obese gorillas in captivity have reached a weight of 270 kg (600 lb).

In other words, they’re big.

Guerrilla warfare is a form of irregular warfare and refers to conflicts in which a small group of combatants including, but not limited to, armed civilians (or “irregulars”) use military tactics, such as ambushes, sabotage, raids, the element of surprise, and extraordinary mobility to harass a larger and less-mobile traditional army, or strike a vulnerable target, and withdraw almost immediately.

In other words, it’s lean and strategic.

On Wednesday, I listened in on LexBlog’s “SEO for Law Blogs,” free, hour-long webinar. Their approach to SEO in the context of blogging was solid.

They covered some of the basics of blog SEO and how search engines “rank” web pages.

They also provided some actionable tips, specifically applicable to lawyer-bloggers about both what “to do” and what not to do.

And while the specific blog SEO tips were really quite good, it was a point that Kevin made about how a law firm might think about approaching SEO, and internet marketing more generally, that resonated with me.

His point was that if you are a larger firm with a significant marketing budget, who has been aggressively marketing and advertising in the offline world, you will probably approach internet in a much different way than if you’re a small firm or solo, with a very limited (or nonexistent) marketing budget.

In other words, how you approach internet marketing will depend, to a large extent, upon whether you’re more a gorilla or a guerilla.

And while this might seem like an obvious distinction, failing to consider in advance whether you’re more of a gorilla or a guerilla can have a significant impact on whether you meet the goals of your internet marketing campaigns.

Gorillas

Have you historically spent big advertising marketing dollars on yellow book, television, radio, and billboard advertising? Does your firm use direct mailers?

Does it sponsor industry trade shows, seminars, charity events, and scholarships? Does your firm have a recognized brand?

If so, you might be a web marketing gorilla.

Web marketing gorillas typically take an aggresive comprehensive approach to their web strategy. They usuallly commit large budgets to paid search marketing and have professional paid search managers optimizing their accounts.

They may also make significant investments in paid online legal directory advertising, content distribution platforms, and a variety of other internet advertising programs.

Gorillas also invest heavily in web design and development. They often purchase complex websites with custom designs, video integrations, live-chat features, and a host of other web bells and whistles.

Some gorillas will be able to leverage in-house resources like attorney-writers, subject-matter experts (like doctors, engineers, nurses, etc).

Typically, the gorillas we have worked with have benefitted from high-level agency strategy support, managing, maintenance, and consulting.

Whether they’re looking for a quarterback for their existing efforts, or want more turn-key solutions, the common theme is that they want to cast a comprehensive online net and measure, track, and analyze how these different moving pieces are working to increase the firm’s online footprint, and ultimately deliver new business.

They’re usually not interested in getting mired down in all the specific details and prefer the 30,000 ft. view of how the internet is adding value to their practice.

Guerillas

Are you a solo or small firm lawyer? Do you typically stick to only the most proven and efficient forms marketing and advertising? Are you committed to doing most of the heavy-lifting yourself?

Would you rather invest your time than your money into building your practice? Do you find yourself analyzing where the competition is weak and positioning yourself against those weaknesses? Do you prefer the scalpal to the shotgun?

Then you’re probably a web marketing guerilla.

Typically, guerillas put a higher priority on efficiency and effectiveness. They want maximum bang for their buck and aren’t looking for a lot superfluity.

They put a higher priority on marketing strategies that are lean, versatile, and affordable.

They’re willing to spend some of their own time learning and executing proven web marketing strategies.

They want a professional web profile, but not necessarily all the bells and whistiles. They usually handle the majority of content development, link acquisition, and campaign management themselves.

The guerillas that we’ve worked with have benefitted more from individualized education sessions where they can get answers to specific questions about a specific aspect to web marketing.

They’re interested in understanding the role the web can plan in word of mouth referrals.

They usually appreciate someone watching over their shoulder to make sure that they’re avoiding common mistakes.

They like having access to professionals to help point them in the right direciton, but prefer to execute the various strategies themselves.

Why It Matters

Determining whether you’re a gorilla or a guerilla should be a huge factor in how you build your web marketing program.

For example, if you’re a gorilla, you might be disappointed with campaigns that don’t provide you maximum online exposure across several channels in a short period of time.

On the other hand, if you’re a guerilla, and you elect a campaign that attempts to take gorillas head-on, you might find yourself exhausting your budgets before they are able to generate a return.

Understanding your identity in this respect will help you structure your marketing initiatives in a way that makes the most sense for your specific goals.

Nonetheless, whether you’re a gorilla or guerilla, before you spend a lot of time or effort on a particular strategy or to hire a consultant, you should:

• Spend some time learning about how the web and search engines can actually serve to complement your existing marketing efforts.
• Think about your specific marketing message, budget, and short and long-term goals.
• Talk to similarly situation lawyers about their experiences with various strategies, consultants, and vendors.
• Before you hire anyone, ask a lot of questions about “how this stuff works” and what level of transparency, accountability, and reporting is available.

While implenting the “right” internet marketing plan can serve as an excellent piece of your firm’s greater marketing campaign, getting stuck with the wrong plan can put a dent in your pocketbook, harm your professional reputation, or even get you into legal ethics hot water with your state bar.

There’s just no substitute for learning about internet and search marketing before you dive in head first.