My advice is to use your gut when it comes to adopting someone’s traffic-enhancing “tip”. You should know your intended audience well enough to know whether the tip will pay off.

Search Illustrated: Google PageRank Explained

What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters.

So, if hits aren’t important, what is?  That’s a tough question, and one subject to reasonable debate, but for lawyer web sites, the most important metric should be the number of unique visitors.  That is, how many different people visit your site each day.  Unfortunately, there is no exact method to determine unique visitors, somthing discussed in this New York Times article (October 22, 2007).  As they say, “nobody can get the basic visitor counts straight.” Understandably, the lack of accuracy frustrates most lawyers because they see things like web site analytics and SEO as snake oil.  When you add all the marketing firms promising nonesene, like “we can get you the top search engine spots”, it only makes matters worse.

I would suggest that most lawyers concentrate on unique visitors measured over time (which is what I do).  This is particluarly important when you first launch your site.  If you’re doing the right things, you should see a pretty steady increase in traffic.  The upswing will probably flatten out over time, but it still should give you an idea as to whether you are making the right moves to attract new visitors.

Solos and small firms should take note of the trend, however.  Recruiting trends should be a few years ahead of other business marketing trends because recruiters have to appeal to the next generation, not the one currently making decisions.  These recruits will soon be making the important decisions - like which lawyer to hire.

So what are you doing to attract that type of client?

It also raises the issue as to whether successful blogging is about nature or nurture.  Those selling blogs will tell you that anyone can learn to be an effective blogger (by, for example, engaging in blogging best practices, like “just talk about it”).  I’m not so sure.  I read blogs where people have either a unique perspective or expertise on a particular topic.  All lawyers should fall into the latter category and make blogging work for them.

People find your site based, in part, on what your site already says.  Those words and phrases are in your analytics reports because they either already appear on your site pages or are used in links pointing to your site.  Now you can increase traffic by optimizing for those keywords, but it doesn’t answer the more fundamental question: what keywords are searchers using to find the service you’re selling?  Your analytics shouldn’t answer this question because they’re based only on what your site already “says” (in quotes because I mean that in the largest sense of the word).

Put more simply, if you’re an employment lawyer in New Jersey, you shouldn’t find the following keyword phrase in your analytics report “treatment for low voltage electric shock” (an unfortunate search I recently had to run ).  That phrase wont be there because you don’t deal in that subject matter.  The important thing to note is that you’re not going to find “New Jersey whistleblower laws” if your site doesn’t already address that topic.  The bottom line is that your first SEO mission is to ensure that your site discusses all of the legal topics that your ideal client is likely to face.  Once you’ve done that, you can then sort out which phrases are driving the most traffic.

Thanks!

1. Refocus Your Home Page

I think this is probably the biggest mistake that solo practioners make when it comes to their website.  Most lawyers simply don’t ask this basic question: “who is my ideal client?” Your homepage should be geared toward that (hopefully) small group of people.  Young (meaning new) lawyers might have the urge to appeal to a broad range of prospects in the hopes of securing a client base, but as the old-adage goes, “if you want to broaden your appeal, narrow your focus.”

2.  Move Your Useful Links to the “Small Window Fold”

The idea here is to have your key links in the place visitors will most likely be looking—the upper-left hand portion of your page.  Not everyone expands their browser window to accomodate your site design, so you want key links to appear in the portion that’s most likely to be in view.  Key links for lawyers include the profile pages (firm and lawyer) and contact us links.

3.  Use Your Most Used Links for Navigation

If your site has been up and running for some time, you should have internal search reports that include the most commonly used site search terms.  If a large majority of your visitors are searching for “age discrimination” it’s probably a phrase you want in your “nav” bar.

4.  Don’t Use More Than Three Columns

I don’t have the evidence to support this claim, but Sherpa swears it’s true.  90% of the sites I visit have three or less columns, so I’d bet that more isn’t very useful.

5.  Dump Adsense

Some lawyer sites (particularly blogs) have started running banner ads in order to generate some extra income.  I cannot imagine that these ads make any significant amount of money and it sends the wrong message to prospective clients.  Would you hire a lawyer that needs extra cash from banner ads?

6.  Use Bigger Typeface

It makes sense, but I think the underlying message is: make your site easy to understand.  Your prospects should know within 90 seconds whether you can help them.  Bigger typeface might not help, but if you can’t fit your current text in 12 point font, then you probably have too many words.

7.  Fast Load Times

There is no reason for a lawyer’s home page to load in more than 10 seconds, no matter the connection speed.  To me, graphics are just wasteful (particularly flash) because clients don’t hire lawyers based on visual presentation.

8.  Sell The Sizzle

Your home page has to answer one basic question: how can you fix what’s broken?  It may seem simple, but people need lawyers because they have a problem that they can’t fix on their own.  Your home page needs to convey that sentiment - that you are the person who can solve their problem.  A prospect doesn’t really want to know that you handle sexual harassment cases, she wants to know that you can stop her boss from making unwanted sexual advances.  So write about your clients first and then let them know how you can help them.

So how does this relate to legal marketing? I think the same holds true—if you’ve got a lot of competition in your space, you should spend more time and money branding yourself. To that extent, you should ask how your major competition is branding itself, for better or worse. I don’t think you have to worry about creating an opposite, but determining a solid distinction on which you can rest your brand.

It’s just that simple.  How do I know?  I’m really not that good at it.  It takes me a long time to sort out what to write about and how to write it (like not ending a sentence with a preposition).  Maybe I’m dense, but I’m fairly certain that I can do more productive work than hunch over my keyboard for 30 minutes writing a one paragraph, not so interesting blog post.

Of course, the blog experts will tell you how wrong I am and how much money rolls in because of their blogs.  To me, it’s like Tiger Woods saying “of course you can hit a 350 yard drive, all you need to do is strike the ball like this....”

Now, I would encourage everyone to try blogging.  It shouldn’t be that expensive or time consuming.  As long as you give it a fair and honest shot, you’ll know within a few months whether it’s right for you.