One of the great things about advertising on the Internet is the ability to track your results. With any marketing plan, it’s important to be able to see if the marketing plan is working. If your law firm has a website it is important to have a web analytics program installed on your website. Web analytics basically measures visitor behavior on a website. Having a “counter” on your website is not even close to enough to track results. With a good web analytics program installed on your website, you can track:

Why is all this important? Let me break it down for you.

Number of visitors: This is important to know to see how many visitors are coming to your website. Is it 20 a month? 200? 1000? You need to know how much traffic your site is getting. If you aren’t picking up any new cases from the Internet it may be because you’re not getting very much traffic to your site.

Number of UNIQUE (new) visitors: This is one of the most important stats. How many new visitors are finding your site each month? Repeat visitors are great, but for law firms that are looking to generate business on a regular basis from the Internet, new visits are especially important.

What keywords are people using to find your website?: These stats will tell you if people are finding your site for targeted search terms that are bringing you the type of visitors that are actually looking for a lawyer.Additionally, these statistics can give you ideas for other ways to improve traffic. For example, not every searching for a personal injury lawyer is going to type in (ex.) “Miami personal injury lawyer”. Many type in “auto accident lawyer” or “dog bite attorney”, meaning often time people type in a specific term related to their problem. This is important to know if you want to grow your business.

What search engine were you found on? You want to know what search engine you’re being found on right? You’ll notice that for the most part, you will only see referrals from 3 different search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. If not, your site has a problem since these 3 search engines provide roughly 90% of website traffic. If you’re not getting traffic from Google, you really are missing out.

What other websites sent you traffic? If you pay to list in certain web directories such as Findlaw, Yellowpages.com or Lawyers.com, you should know if these websites are sending you traffic. Especially if your paying big bucks to be in those directories. Knowing these stats will help you in determining whether or not you want to renew your directory listings.

How many pages per visit your visitors are averaging: This can be a very telling statistic. If your stats show your visitors are averaging 1.5 pages per visit, that typically means that your website design is poor and is not compelling enough to keep visitors on your site. It could also mean that a visitor can’t find the information they’re looking for on the page they visited. You really want to see at least 2-3 pages per visit which shows that people are interested in reading other pages of your site.

How long the average visit to your site is: Again, a very telling statistic. If people are leaving in less than a minute, their not staying to read your content. This is typically due to a poor or outdated web design or a lack of high quality content on your site.

What pages in your site are the most visited?: Finding out which pages of your site are the most visited can help you improve different things on those pages to help you improve conversions. Getting a visitor is great but if they don’t call or email you as a result of that visit, then it means nothing to your bottom line. Your most visited pages should be the strongest pages in terms of their ability to convert your web visitors into a potential client.

There’s even more that web analytics can do, but these are some of my favorite things that a web analytics program can do. If you don’t have a web stats program on your website, GET ONE!

For most small law firms and sole practitioners, marketing their practice is a crucial part of business success. When it comes to law firm marketing, their are plenty of ways to market your practice but few with the potential that the Internet provides. I’ve been working with law firms for over 8 years and in my experience, the Internet has provided the best ROI of any marketing venture for firms that understand how to successfully advertise on the web. Now, that being said, most firms do not do a good job of Internet marketing. Those that complain that the Internet does not work are firms that have an outdated law firm website, do not show up for the most popular terms used by consumers searching the web for an attorney, and/or have limited content on their website. I’ve said this before, if you want to have success on the Internet you need to have great visibility for targeted search terms, a good looking site design and your site needs to be informative to your visitors. So how do you find the right company to handle your firm’s Internet marketing? You probably have had plenty of calls from law firm marketing companies, right? Here are some tips to help you find the right company to market your practice.

1. Can they show you 1st page results for their existing clients on Google?

Without question, the most important part of successful Internet marketing is for your site to have great visibility on the search engines. Hands down, the search engine that provides the most traffic is Google. There are plenty of search engines out there, but really only three that matter. Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Market share for each as of December ‘06 was 47% for Google, 29% Yahoo! and 11% for MSN according to comScore. When I analyze traffic, even for sites that have good visibility in all three search engines, percentage of traffic provided by Google is much higher than 47%. I’ve seen it provide over 80% of traffic so the one search engine you really should care about is Google. Can the company selling their lawyer marketing services show you results on the 1st page of Google for commonly used search terms? Everyone searches a different way, but most consumers search the web for an attorney with this formula:

How Consumer Search = (city/state)+(practice area)+(attorney/lawyer)

For example, “California personal injury attorney” (without the quotes) or “Las Vegas immigration lawyer“. Do their clients show up on the 1st page of Google for those types of searches?

Make sure you understand the difference between organic results and sponsored listings (paid listings which appear at the very top of a Google search in blue and on the very right side of the screen)

2. How many competitors of yours do they work with?

This is especially important. Many companies that do Internet marketing for attorneys will take an unlimited amount of clients on. What does mean? Well, the 1st page of Google only has 10 results. Even if they are good at search engine optimization for Google, not everyone is going to be happy if they take on too many clients. You really need to be on the 1st page of Google if you want to see good results. So, if you meet with any company selling you their marketing services, ask them how many clients they work with in your geographic area that handle the same practices you do. If it’s more then 3, you may want to look elsewhere.

3. Do they have impressive website designs?

An often overlooked but extremely important part of the formula for successful lawyer marketing is having a great website design. Consumers tend to judge a law firm by the way their website looks. In many cases, it’s their first impression of your firm. I’d compare it to the first time someone steps in the door of your firm. If your firm is in a bad part of town or is dirty and unorganized, that’s not going to leave a very good impression on a visitor to your firm. The exact thing can be said about your web design except it’s a hell of a lot easier for them to leave your site. A poor or unorganized design, and they are gone in a flash. You have essentially 3 seconds to impress a visitor to your website and I’ve even seen studies that say website visitors make a judgment in a blink of an eye about you just by glancing at your site. Blink of an eye, 3 seconds…whatever. The point is you need a great design that will convince a visitor to stay on your site. Now design is completely subjective so everyone will have a different impression but it needs to look professional. A site put together by your nephew or your son is not going to cut it (I’ve probably seen 1 good design out of 100 by attorneys who had a relative or friend design their site). The rest made me throw up a little in my mouth. Don’t go cheap on web design. It makes a HUGE difference and could be the difference between you getting a big case or someone that has left your site because your website gave them no confidence in your firm. In the mind of a consumer, a better web design means a better lawyer. Not even close to true of course, but that’s what they think. So, have them show you some of their best law firm web designs and hopefully you will be impressed.

4. Do they include web analytics on their websites?

Web analytics measures visitor behavior and traffic to your website. It can monitor things like how many visitors came to your site, how they found your site, what they typed in on the search engines to find your site, what website referred them, how long those visitors stayed, how many pages they viewed on your site, what are the most popular pages people look at on your site, etc. Analyzing web analytics is crucial to improving performance of your law firms website. Any company that does not regularly include a web anlaytics program is obviously not very good at marketing. Understanding your web visitor’s behavior is extremely important and can also help you get new ideas for improving your website.

5. Do they lock you into long terms contracts?

I hate the long term contract. With Lebron James or Peyton Manning it’s fine because you know what you’re getting. But in the world of Internet marketing, often times it’s like what Forrest Gump said about life and chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get. Once you’re locked in to these contracts, they make it practically impossible to get out of. For me, a long term contract could be a deal breaker. Where’s the motivation for the company once you’re locked in? I’ve seen way too many lawyers who were incredibly unhappy about their Internet marketing but they were locked in to long term contracts and just stuck. Read the fine print! (Do I really have to be telling lawyers this????)

Of course, you must always keep in mind price. Good companies are never cheap but the right one can give you an incredible return on your Internet marketing investment. If you’re spending $4,000 a month but generating $20,000 a month on average, that’s a good spend of your money. Just don’t go for the cheapest one or you really will pay for what you get.

So there are tons of lawyer directories out on the web. There’s larger ones like Findlaw, Lawyers.com, i-Lawyer Source Lawyer Directory, iLawyer Directory (that one’s a Southern California directory) and then there are tons of other small directories organized by either geographic location or practice area. So which ones should you list your practice in? Well, that depends on a few things. Most importantly, what is the goal of getting your firm listed in these lawyer directories? Is it to get traffic to your website or is it for link building purposes? Of course the bottom line is you want to generate more cases for your practice, but let me talk about those two reasons for getting a listing in an attorney directory.

1. You want to generate more traffic to your law firm’s website

All lawyers get calls from companies who offer marketing for lawyers on a daily basis. These companies are selling law firm website design, law firm directory listings, search engine optimization services, etc. etc. When it comes to the directories, how can you tell which ones are right? Simple. Do some searches on Google and Yahoo and see if those legal directories are showing up. For example, if you’re a Seattle divorce lawyer, do a search for “Seattle divorce lawyers” or “Seattle family law attorney” on Google. Now, it’s always better if the directories show up in the organic (unpaid) search results. If you can find directories in the organics, those will get better traffic than legal directories that only show up in the “sponsored” listings on the very top (shaded in light blue) or on the very right side of the screen. However, people still click on the sponsored listings on the top and right as well so as long as it’s the 1st page of results than people will still find those directories. Now, just becase a directory is on the 1st page that doesn’t mean it will work. The most important question is how easy is it for a visitor to find your listing if you get placed in one of those directories? Take for example Findlaw’s listing. In Findlaw’s directory, they place 5 law firms at the top of their page. Those top 5 results appear in random order each time the page is visited. If you’re not in the top 5 however, the situation is not as good. If you’re not aware, Findlaw has 3 different tiers. “Top spots” which allow up to 5 law firms, then the 2nd tier listings are called “spotlights” and then general listings. Spotlights appear below the “topspots” and also appear in random order. The reality is you probably won’t get too much traffic in the 2nd and 3rd tier listings. However, it all comes down to ROI. If a 2nd tier listing costs $150 a month, we’re talking $1800 a year. You just need to pick up one case to make it worth while right? Probably worth the cost then. Take the same evaluative approach with the other directories you see (Findlaw is one of the more expensive directories so you can usually find better directories at a cheaper price).

2. You want directory listings for link building purposes

Link building is important if you want to improve your website’s rankings in the search engines. Many companies offer link building services, but few actually do a good job of link building. The reality is that most links out there are virtually worthless from a standpoint of improving your rankings. Why? Many pages that your link would be listed on are not cached (part of the index) of Google or Yahoo or they have no “link juice” (a link that gives your site a boost in the rankings). I don’t want to get into the technicalities of this on this post, but I will say that many links are not direct links to your website. Sure, click on the link and you will end up on your website but that doesn’t mean that’s how a search engine spider sees it. Many links are redirected links (take for example the links in Findlaw’s directory). If you’re looking for links that will give you a boost in the rankings, make sure that # 1 the page you will be listed on is cached by Google and # 2 the link is a direct link. You can determine this by right click on the link and selecting “properties”. Look at the “Address (URL)” and this will reveal the actual URL a search engine spider sees.

Hopefully this helps you in choosing the right law firm directories to list your firm in.