Nolo's Lawyer Blog

Clicks, hits, visits, uniques, impressions, page views, conversion rates, click-throughs, CPM (cost per thousand impressions), RPM (revenue per thousand impressions) CPC or PPC (cost per click), CPL (cost per lead), CPA (cost per acquisition), ROI (return on investment) -- what does it all mean?

Are you drowning in a stormy sea of unfamiliar terms and conflicting information, trying to quantify and measure the success of your online marketing? Are legal marketing companies making promises based on SEO metrics and page one placement with major search engines like Google and Bing?

Value vs. Volume

The bottom line for attorneys, especially solo practitioners and smaller firms: it's a competitive landscape out there, and at the end of the day, you're just trying to attract more clients who want to hire you. You can have all the "traffic" in the world, lots of clicks and unique visitors, but how do we qualify this traffic, and how many of those qualified visitors end up becoming clients?

Let's take a closer look at overall online marketing and advertising strategies and try to get to the bottom of the great traffic debate.

Online advertising continues to drive the majority of revenues with the big four search engines; Google, Yahoo!, Bing and AOL, leading the pack. According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, "search revenue accounted for 47 percent of 2009 second quarter revenues, up from the 44 percent reported in the second quarter of 2008. Display advertising, the second largest format, accounted for 35 percent, followed by Classifieds (10 percent), and Lead Generation (7 percent) of 2009 second quarter revenues", totaling $5.5 billion.

Different advertisers and marketers are paying for different types of online exposure. But exposure alone doesn't necessarily mean more customers. Paying for clicks, hits or visits on one site might not provide the same ROI as another site, depending on visitor demographics and how qualified the traffic is.

Here at Nolo, for example, we pride ourselves on being a full-service legal resource center where millions of visitors come for help with their legal needs. When a consumer browses our thousands of pages of free legal content, we provide geo-targeted attorney listings related to the information our visitors are seeking. A site visitor who clicks on one of those attorney listings should be a more likely client than one who clicked on a paid Google link through a general key-word search.

Despite the promise of absolutely trackable results and metrics for every dime invested in online marketing, the age-old adage of "there are no guarantees in advertising" still rings true -- buyer beware.

Nolo Member Attorney Interview with Blackie Burak

Nolo catches up with busy Walnut Creek, CA DUI attorney Blackie Burak on why he became an attorney, best practices for lawyers just starting out, as well as tips on what makes a good DUI lawyer.

Blackie Burake Interview_edit.mp3

SEM vs SEO - What's the difference and what does that mean for lawyer websites?

"If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it really make a sound?"  If you build a website, and no one visits, how can you generate more business online?  Okay, not quite the same comparison but still applicable for today's internet businesses. How do you promote your website once you've transitioned your law firm online?  It might be time to consider investing in some form of "Search Engine Marketing", or SEM.

Not to be confused with SEO "Search Engine Optimization", covered in a previous post on the Nolo Lawyers blog, SEM is the general practice of increasing a website's visibility in search engine results.  Most commonly, SEM refers to greater search engine visibility through pay-per-click advertising and paid placement.

SEM can be part of a comprehensive overall online strategy to boost your website's visibility in search engine results, but other important factors include unique content, link building, social media marketing, and optimizing a website via SEO. The primary function of SEM is to affect your appearance in search engine results and know that consumers can find you.

There are agencies that can help you implement an SEM program, or you can go it alone with legal directories, Google AdWords, and other forms of paid advertising. When choosing an SEO consultant, make sure to follow some if not all of these best practices.

At the end of the day, it's all about results and the ability to measure them. Make sure that you have a historical baseline of metrics before implementing an online strategy and allow time for your efforts to take hold.  For example, do you know how many unique site visitors you get each month, and what sites they most originate from?  Using a month or two's worth of data might reflect exceptions in the marketplace, or peaks and valleys with times of year, rather than a true reflection of your return on investment.  Metrics also allow you to understand what might be resonating most, or least, among potential clients, and how they're most likely to find you.

Are you one of the shrinking-but-still-confused group of internet users that are still uncertain about the widely used terms natural or organic when it comes to search engines and search results? Let's take a look; it's actually a lot simpler than you might think.

The internet is currently dominated by three major search engines; Yahoo!, Bing and of course Google. According to Nielsen data from August 2009, Google still has the lion's share of domestic queries at 65%. Yahoo! comes in a distant second with 17% of all search traffic and Microsoft's Bing, growing at 22% month over month now accounts for 10.7% of all Internet searches.

One way to look at it is basically the difference between paid vs. non-paid advertising online. Let's face it, most everyone wants to be on the top of the first page of results when users are searching for specific key words or phrases. The easiest way to do this is to pay for terms that people are searching for, usually on a bidding system, so that your website will show up higher than your competitors for a given search result. The second way to look at it is that websites with the most relevant content matching the terms that users are searching for show up higher than those with less relevant content. Part of the recognition for relevancy is also represented by how many inbound links there are to your site from other sites. The more that people point to you, the more of an authority you must be is the basic logic but we'll save inbound and outbound linking for another post.

Let's look at Google as an example. When you type in a term like 'Bankruptcy' into Google, the first thing you'll see in the results at the top left of the page is Sponsored Links, typically three listings in a lightly shaded yellow box. If you look to the right of the page,you'll see in the vertically shaded column additional Sponsored Links as well. (Click on the chart to see a larger version.)

The Sponsored Links both across the top and down the right hand side are all paid advertising. The organic or natural results are then listed below on the left hand side. In this case, the news results for this search are pointing to a Wall Street Journal which mentions bankruptcy and then the US Bankruptcy Court page is next.

Check out an earlier post about Search Engine Optimization basics here. You can also read more about Google's recommended SEO practices here.

While we enjoyed speaking with all of the NACBA attorneys that stopped by Nolo's booth, here are just a few of the things that some of our member attorneys had to say.

"We don't track our advertising too closely but I'd say we've received at least 20-30 clients from Nolo over this past year. Our Nolo advertising paid for itself within the first few months" Holley & Peter Bricks, Atlanta - Georgia








"It was an honor to meet your colleagues. I did not expect to meet one of the author/editors of your Chapter 7 book, which I use on a regular basis.
 
I have a great deal of respect for Nolo, not just for the quality products, but for the ultimate goal that I have seen Nolo carry through the years of educating the public about the otherwise intimidating legal process. I try to serve this goal as well with my clients on an individual basis.  I consider it an honor to have my firm associated with Nolo." Kurt W. Wolfgang - La Plata, Maryland

"I've had so many phone calls and I haven't even completed my Nolo profile!" Selwyn Whitehead - Oakland, California

- Selwyn did confirm with us that she is actively working on it and it should be completed by this weekend!

Tom and I arrived in Tucson, AZ via Las Vegas to clear & sunny blue skies with a slight breeze out of the southwest and an outside air temperature a lovely 92º. After dropping the top down on the Sebring and rolling through a few off-the-beat-and-path construction zones on the southeast side we finally headed west and up into the rolling hills of the Tuscon desert and arrived at the JW Marriott Star Pass resort for the start of the 2009 National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) winter workshops.



More than 500 attorneys attended these Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminars and workshops on topics ranging from better practice management to the finer points of filing a Chapter 13. Approximately 150 attorneys, many of them Nolo members, stopped by our booth for their free books and to let us know how their directory profiles were helping their business. The response from our Nolo attorneys was overwhelmingly positive and over 90% of our attorneys said they were more than happy with Nolo partnerships!



After the conference ended, we headed for the hills, Mt. Lemon to be exact and drove up to 8,000'. If you've never been to this part of the country, this desert, these Saguaro cacti, it's a must see, in our humble opinions.

Nolo's Lawyer Directory will be traveling out to Tucson, AZ today for the winter conference of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) winter conference. Approximately 600 of their more than 4,000 consumer focused attorneys nationwide will be attending this members-only desert workshop.

According to a recent report from Reuters, citing research from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI) and the National Bankruptcy Research Center (NBKRC), 135,913 consumer bankruptcies were filed during the month of October 2009, a substantial 27.9% increase over October 2008. 28.5% of all filings in October were Chapter 13, which allow debtors to keep some if not all of their assets as long as they agree to pay some of their income to creditors to lower the debt. The more common Chapter 7 filing usually wipes out any debt but also forces the debtor to relinquish any property that isn't exempt from seizure by their creditors. For more information about consumer bankruptcy, go to Nolo's Bankruptcy resource center.

Stay tuned for more information, highlights and updates from Tucson as Tom Foley and I set upon our desert odyssey!

The Nolo Road Show in Full Effect

It's 1:30PM PST here in Vegas and the attorneys have just departed for the day. Three Nolo team members - Kay, Kimber and Greg - hit the ground running here at Caesars Palace in lovely Las Vegas on our quest to find the best attorneys that we can to represent our consumers nationwide. We are reaching out to DUI / DWI attorneys attending the 13th annual 'Defend with Integrity' conference. Approximately 550 participating attorneys are here to receive their CLE's for DUI specific areas of their Criminal Law practices.

Our intial response by attorneys has been overwhelmingly positive as we have some of the biggest crowds out of all the exhibitors. Many other exhibitors have stopped by to validate this as well (read - pat on our own back). Our Nolo legal guides for consumers are also very popular with attorneys, FREE for qualified attorneys that will give us five minutes of their time to tell us a little about their practice.

We'll be back at 6:30 PM for the first (of a few) schmooze & booze cocktail hours. Actually, Nolo will be hosting our own informal get together tomorrow night at the Voodoo Lounge on the 50th floor of the Rio hotel - members only. 

Know Your Visitors & Where They Are Coming From

You've got your website up, maybe even a blog. You've committed part of your overall marketing budget towards online marketing and you're using several social media tools like Linked In, Twitter and Facebook to get noticed in the increasingly vast sea of online attorneys. Perhaps you've even enlisted the help of an attorney directory, maybe even an SEO consultant.

For lawyers doing any online marketing, advertising or Search Engine Optimization, knowing who is visiting your website and where those visitors are coming from are two of the most critical components in measuring the ROI for your online marketing.  There are several tools to help analyze your online traffic including demographics and category or topic specific interests.

Here at Nolo, we use WebTrends, a paid service that combines analytics tools with professional services. There's also Mint, which helps web owners better understand their traffic trends at $30 per site. Yahoo also has a free analytics tool but the best bang for your buck is Google's FREE tool - Google Analytics. Google's free traffic measuring tool helps attorneys track their website traffic: where their visitors are coming from, what pages are being visited, how long they stay on a particular page and the bounce rate - how many visitors simply click their back button and leave the site altogether.

Here's a simple breakdown of how to get started with Google Analytics:

• First, sign up for a free Google Account.
  
• Then, use your Google Account information to sign up for Google Analytics.
• Register your site(s) with Google Analytics.
• Cut and Paste the generated code onto your website - NOTE: If you are NOT the person administering your website, you'll need the help of your webmaster or the company that built your website for you. You may even want to check with them before you star.
• Set up reports for your site within Analytics to help better understand your traffic patterns.
  

Take the Google Analytics tour for a brief video overview of their tool.

"By making this powerful service free, we aim to give all websites - large and small - the tools they need to better serve their customers, make more money, and improve the web experience for everyone," says Paul Muret, Google engineering director.  Google Analytics also ties nicely into other products in the Google ecosystem--including AdWords, AdSense, Website Optimizer, Webmaster Tools and more, giving attorneys powerful resources to aid in making valuable decisions regarding their online marketing.

Finally, Google Analytics can be very confusing or even daunting at first, especially for less-than-savvy web users. Don't let this dissuade you from jumping in feet first.

Nolo Blogger Carolyn Elefant has a new blog entry up over at MyShingle:

Opening a law firm by choice or by circumstance offers a chance at a fresh start.  However, it's all too easy to tarnish that bright, shiny new beginning with a nasty ending at your former position.   That is what appears to have happened with Jim Driscoll's departure from St. Louis law firm Brown & Crouppen, as least as described in this article...

Continue reading Don't Tarnish Your Fresh Start With a Rotten Ending.

Tip #2 - Write a Good Tag Line

Next to your profile picture, the second most important part of any online attorney profile is a good tag line. Similar to a headline, you want to capture the viewers interest and attention right up front. Being witty, literary, clever or even cute can be OK but more importantly, you want to get your message across right up front, letting people know who you are and how you can help them right now.

Here are a few key pointers when thinking about a tag line for you and your firm as part of your online social networking profile.

• Keep it Simple - The best tag lines are short, clear, and concise, spelling out exactly who you are and what you do in simple plain English. Good tag lines are typically six to eight words but can sometimes be shorter.

• Be Specific - Grandiose, ambiguous or overly general tag lines take away from you and your core message. "We help people in their time of need" doesn't tell a potential client what you do or how you can specifically help them. "Reputable & Discrete Bankruptcy Attorney Serving Southern California" may not be the sexiest tag line on earth, but it it is a clear and strong message that will resonate with potential clients and set you apart from the pack.

• Borrow from Others - Find other profiles of attorneys that you like and use what stands out. Being totally original is one thing but getting the job done is another. Not that we would even condone plagiarism but use best practices from other attorney profiles can be a good way to help you in developing your own.

• Get Feedback - Typically its best to have two or three different tag lines that you like and then bounce them off of your staff, partners, spouses, colleagues, family and friends to get some encouragement and feedback. Don't try to create something this important in a vacuum.

Remember, your tag line should represent you. Spend some time reviewing your core competencies and strengths and identify the one or two key words that really sum up who you are and what you do.

For more in-depth information on how to create a great law firm tag line, check out Nolo's Legal Marketing Blawg by Carolyn Elefant and her post - 'Tag(line) - You're it!'

Tip # 1 - Start with a good picture

When we think of social networking profiles, whether they are personal or professional, we tend to think of this standard dictionary definition - an informal biography or a concisely presented sketch of the life and character of a person. More relevant to this post perhaps, is this definition - profile is a picture or representation of the side view of a head.

The first and most important part of your profile is YOU! Sure, you can wax poetically about your educational background and your most recent victories in court but the first and most important thing that people are going to see and remember is that profile picture of you.

So of course it makes sense to post the best picture possible. Even though it may be tempting to whip out the ole point and shoot and have your secretary take a snap shot indoors with the flash, here are a few key suggestions to consider when creating and uploading your attorney profile picture.

• Neutral backgrounds are best - Typically we don't tend to pay much attention to the background but often backgrounds can make or break your photo. Unwanted and distracting lines, shapes, colors and textures can take away from the visual impact of your image. TIP: Stand as far away as possible from the background and then have the photographer stand as far back as possible from you, and then zoom the camera lens in all the way!

• Facial expressions are key - It's not just smile vs. frown. It's all about communicating emotion. If you want to show people you are a happy person, think of something that makes you happy and then smile. If you want to communicate strong and aggressive, think about strong and aggressive emotions.

• Get a second opinion - It's always best to have a couple of your favorite images to choose from. Pick your two or three favorites and then Try a couple different expressions and a change of wardrobe and background.

• Hire a photographer - When all else fails, go with a professional. Since your image is so important to your online persona, consider this small but important investment and hire a photographer. In most towns and cities both large and small you can usually find a decent photographer from online classified listings like Craig's List that will do headshots for less than $200 a session. This is usually a small price to pay for someone else to focus on you and to get you quality images of yourself that you can use for both business and pleasure.

A good headshot should just show you; your face, head and shoulders and nothing more. You might want to do some full-length body shots in addition but the primary goal is a good single shot of you.

Finally, you should try and keep your profile picture as current as possible. Sure, we all have that one picture that we like from ten years ago but 21st Century web 2.0 lawyering is all about who you are in the here and now.

Nolo is always looking for great attorneys to help meet our growing consumer demand. Recently we have been seeing a dramatic increase in the number of consumers visiting our lawyer directory looking for Criminal Defense attorneys.

One important way that we reach out to new attorneys is by attending national legal association meetings. Getting to meet face to face and talking to lots of lawyers one-on-one helps us to better understand what kind of struggles attorneys face running their practices and how they overcome those challenges on a daily basis. We also get to share a little about who we are and what we are looking for in qualified lawyers to help our consumers.

This fall, Nolo plans to attend the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) along with the National College for DUI Defense's (NCDD) 13th Annual DWI - Defend with Ingenuity seminar in Las Vegas, October 8-10, 2009. This will be our first time to reach out to these Criminal Defense attorneys at one of their annual meetings.

You don't need a Criminal Defense attorney that focuses on DUI's until you or someone you know lands themselves in jail after one too many before getting behind the wheel. Laws differ from state to state which is why local representation can be very important if you find yourself asking questions about DUI's and DWI's. Soon we'll talk with some Nolo attorneys that specialize in DUI's to find out more about what makes a successful DUI practice.