Welcome to SEO for Lawyers

by Jeremy Francis on July 1, 2014

By: Keith Bennett

Why Launch This Site?  —  Why is SEO for Lawyers Needed?

A resource for Success Focused Lawyers.SEO for Lawyers. My name is Keith Bennett. A dear friend and client, Deanne Watts, sent me an email June 26th that had a slew of questions about her Google+ and Facebook social media accounts. She also reminded me I have never written any articles about websites that are mobile-friendly. Such sites are called “responsive sites” which means that a website is configured to recognize WHICH devices are being used to visit a website (iPhone, iPad, Android, Tablet, etc.) and then the website is “responsive” in the sense that it will re-configuring itself to be a good user experience on whatever device. Deanne’s email got me to thinking. She was right! I need a portal where I can publish up-to-date SEO and attorney marketing articles for my clients and their legal buddies too.

I’m Launching a Turn Key SEO & Web Marketing Service for a FEW Law Firms – July 21, 2014

No press releases. No marketing efforts. No need. I’ve been pestered for years and finally agreed to offer a new service –limited though it will have to be. That leaves me but 25 short days to set up this website. Ahem… In my “spare & leisure time…”

In just the past few months, I have been approached by a few law shops to see if I would be willing to become their entire web marketing department. Over multiple conversations with different firms I’ve come to understand that the primary benefits to the law practice include:

  • No hefty compensation “hit.” A decent web marketing expert will demand $6,000 – $12,000 mo.
  • No payroll overhead, Payroll taxes, Workers Comp issues, ObamaCare issues, etc.
  • Stop wasting big money to LexisNexis, Justia, FindLaw that result in fancy reports, but little or no new clients.
  • No need to carve out office space in their current leased facilities.
  • No need to for an upfront investment in furniture & fixtures including computer and minimum 4-6 big screens.
  • No more messing around… Past in-house attorney-marketing attempts have started strong but invariably peter out.

SEO For Lawyers will feature regularly-posted Articles about SEO and Lawyer Marketing

Facing the new SEO management service starting July 21st, that will consume all my time going forward, I decided that I would launch this new site SEOforLawyers.pro while I still have some “free and leisure time.” After the site is set up, posting articles, while time consuming to compose, will be fairly easy. I hope to post at least 4 SEO-related articles per month —maybe more. I will be regularly posting topics of interest to my lawyer clients about SEO for Lawyers and why it matters to the success of their law practice in the age of Google; understanding the ever-changing best practices of Search Engine Optimization for Google, Bing and Yahoo; how easy and satisfying it is to market your law practice; general lawyer marketing ideas and success stories; and Social Media Marketing (Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, & others) which will leverage a law firm’s digital brand and bring law practices more and more of the best possible clients and cases one could hope for.

SEOforLawyers.com is being set up as more of a BLOG site for mission-critical articles specifically of interest to lawyers and their staff tasked with growing a law practice in a world of sophisticated and hungry competitors. This site and its articles will help your law practice leverage your digital marketing efforts such that you are positioned to leap ahead of your competitors.

Frustrations of Communicating Evolving SEO Concepts to Lawyer Clients

Virtually every day I am talking to a lawyer client and wish to expound on a particular Internet marketing concept that is important to us and critical their their law firm. To type it up in an individual email would take hours and leave no time for what we do here. IF ONLY… If only I would set aside time to write well-drafted articles that are SEO related or attorney-marketing related in scope so I would then be able to email over a link on the topic of discussion. My handful of articles on another website proved the effectiveness of having our concepts and experiences available for sharing online in real time.

Useful Reading for Lawyers Venturing into their Own Practice

We work 6 days a week building websites, crafting and co-branding Google+ Author Profiles, Google+ Business (Entity) Profiles, Google Local & Places Pages, Facebook Business Pages, LinkedIN and AVVO accounts, running SEM campaigns (think: Google AdWords), and providing ongoing SEO efforts for many law firms that don’t want the expense and overhead of an in-house marketing department. My attorney marketing experience has grown and evolved since we started building lawyer websites way back in the horse and buggy days of 1998 when several of my acquaintances stated unequivocally:

“I don’t need Email, and I will NEVER use Email, Email is a stupid fad, the post office is all I will ever need.”

I am painfully aware that law firm owners would better appreciate the importance and value of their digital footprint if they knew the SEO BASICS of what we have learned from the school of hard knocks. If we could only do a mind-meld!

Did you see the 1999 movie The Matrix? There is a scene where Neo (Keanu Reeves) asks Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss): “Can you fly that thing [helicopter]?” Trinity responds: “Not yet…” In moments she learns how to fly a B-210 Helicopter. If I can sync with my clients to learn their niche markets I can become a Ninja-like resource for them. If they can sync with what we do to market them on the Internet they not only appreciate it, but many begin to shape their law practices into savvy firms that do all the necessary little steps to become well-known to the potential clients that will make them successful in ways only dreamed of in the Yellow Page days of the 1990’s.

That is the WHY of this site.

Time for a Lawyer Joke?

Things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down by court reporters:
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan! **

My Other Websites

  • LawSites.pro is a site for Lawyers looking for a new or makeover website. Whether you are looking for a Masthead Website (business card site), or a ‘Marketing Website” that targets a specific law section or legal niche, LawSites.PRO is worth looking at.
  • WhyLaughlin.com is a website to help tourists, gamblers, golfers, boaters, and adventurers find Hotels, Casinos, Restaurants, Concerts, Events, Colorado River adventures and things to do in Laughlin, Nevada and the surrounding Tri-State area where California, Arizona and Nevada converge. This site is my in-house “fun site” where I get lots and lots of feedback and insights that legal sites just cannot provide.

Share Your Unique Marketing Successes

Contact us if you have any comments of want to contribute something of interest to your fellow colleagues. If you are working at marketing, striving to get Google to notice you, you’ll appreciate the value of posting an article here with your Google+ Authorship and having it backlink to your own website.

Enjoy this Article? Please Circle My Google+ Page so we can Stay in Touch


** from a book called Disorder in the Courts Disorder In The Court!

[Tweet “A boat is a hole in the water in which to throw money.”]

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