If You Build It, Will They Come?

You may remember the scene in the movie “Field of Dreams” during which Shoeless Joe Jackson whispers to Ray, the Iowa farmer, that if Ray will build a baseball field in his cornfield, “he will come”. As the film continues, Ray builds the field and when warm weather comes, Shoeless Joe and all his teammates show up to play ball. Now cut from the world of fantasy to the world of technology and think about your law firm’s web site for a minute. Is it enough to simply “build it” and expect that they will come? Of course, by “they”, I mean all kinds of visitors to the site, but ultimately, I mean, potential clients. I ask the question because why else would your law firm spend the time and money it takes to establish a presence on the internet and then, not do what it takes to make it as effective as possible?

Maybe your law firm has been on the web for years. Or maybe your firm is only now waking up to the fact that your clients are to be found on-line. After all, current research shows that more than 73% of American adults use the internet. Either way, you have to grapple with the fact that the information highway has gotten very crowded (with competitors) and its just not as easy as it once was to stand out from the crowd. No, you have to do a lot more these days than just build a website and expect the traffic to come. You have to understand where the traffic is and then find a way to drive it to your firm’s site.

Nearly all internet traffic originates at search engines. Studies show that more than 60 million Americans use search engines on any given day.¹ Clearly, those users turn to search engines to find help on money, health and legal issues. Nearly 75% of search engine users report that they were on line searching for information or service providers in their region. ² That’s why internet marketers and web site developers talk in terms of search engine marketing (SEM) or search engine optimization (SEO). This whole notion of building a website so that it appears more prominently among the search results of the major search engines has become a very specialized subject. I’m going to share some of the basics of SEO with you so that you can see how your law firm’s web site stacks up (or at least so you can have an intelligent discussion with your web site developer).

All the internet marketers and web site developers agree on one big thing: content matters. First, its textual content that search engine “spiders” grab onto, load into their databases and index. Not images, or Flash animation. Simply put, the more bells and whistles, the less fodder for the search engine software that actually “crawls” the web finding pages to load and index. Second, search engines primarily look for frequently updated information. So, it pays to update and freshen the content on your site as often as possible. Avoid the temptation to think of your law firm’s web site as “finished”; its more of a garden that needs constant tending.

What about the language of that content? You really should avoid using legal jargon, if you can. For example, think about whether your clients are more likely to use the words “civil action” or “lawsuit”. I’m guessing “lawsuit”. The language you use on your web site should be the language used by the visitors, or potential clients, you want to attract to your site. In the SEO field, that’s called keyword strategy. Its about knowing what search terms internet users are actually using and mimicing those keywords and phrases to bring those users to your site. Those targeted keywords need to be both visible and invisible. That is, use those words and phrases in your copy. But also use those keywords and phrases in the web site’s source code in title tags and meta-descriptions. SEO experts have called title tags one of the most important factors in boosting search engine rankings.³

Also, all the internet marketers and web site developers agree that “link popularity” is important to achieve high search engine ranking. Outbound links are useful, but the key here is really increasing the number of inbound links from other web sites that drive traffic to your site. You can tell how many sites link to your site by going to www.alltheweb.com, typing your URL in the search box, and checking the results. The more sites that link to yours, the higher your site’s profile. Strategies for increasing the number of inbound links include listing your site in online legal directories and offering some of your content (e.g., articles, white papers) to other topically-related sites.

Finally, search engine optimization is not a one-time event. It’s a continuous process. It requires monitoring the traffic on your site: How many visitors does your firm’s web site attract? What pages do they view? What keywords and search engines do they use to find you? All this information and more is available by using web analytical tools or software to help measure your results. Review the results regularly and republish accordingly.

For more detailed reading on search engine optimization, I recommend “The Top 10 SEO Best Practices for Law Firm Websites”by elawMarketing and “SEO Fast Start: A Simple, Step by Step System for Better Results” by Dan Thies. Just plug in the right keywords at Google and you can find two great articles!