The headline above was repeated over-and-over again by one the most successful Madison Avenue ad men ever.  I won’t bore you with his life story but I’d wager his efforts increased his clients revenue by tens of billions over the years.

He made this comment in response to the dreary,  mindless and repetitive ads Madison Avenue was, and still is, famous for.  Most ads did not, and still don’t, increase revenue.

I can make that same comment, with a slight twist, about many law firm websites.  Here it is:

You Cannot Bore People Into Calling

When a visitor hits a law firm website, what do they see?

Well, on 99% of law firm websites in the U.S., they see dreary, mindless and repetitive content.

This visitor to your website then clicks the back-button on their browser, never to return….right after they wipe the sleep out of their eyes and the drool off their chin.

Most content on law firm sites….stinks.

And when I get the chance to “suggest” to a potential client that their content needs a little work, I hear every excuse in the book as to why their content is fine – or that their client base is educated and expects a certain image.

Hogwash…..

Many of these law firms are sitting-pretty in the search engines.  They get thousands of visitors a month.  And revenue is down 30% – 50%.

Why?

You Cannot Bore People Into Calling

Give them content they can use.

Tell them how you can help.

Tell them a story.

Do anything – just change what you have on your website now.

Your bank account will thank you.

Need help with your content?  Call me at 859-816-3344.

In case you haven’t heard, Microsoft is buying Yahoo – with regulatory approval expected sometime in 2010.

I’m thinking that this deal will result in Yahoo starting to dismantle its search engine shortly thereafter and dropping Bing (Microsoft’s Search Engine – a darn good one too) in it’s place.

With this merger/buyout, Microsoft will get an immediate bump in market share…from around 10% now to 30% after completion.

So what does it mean for law firm internet marketing?

Well, although a 30% market share is not a huge threat to Google, Bing now becomes a search engine you can’t ignore.

From the research I’ve done, search engine optimization for Bing is no different than Google.  In fact, my clients rank equally well on either search engine for the search results they are targeting.

If your law firm website or blog is not doing well on one of them, it’s probably not doing well on the other either – so maybe a little work on your internet presence is in order.

One other thing you should do prior to this merger – register you law firm with the Bing Local Listing Center.

This product is similar to Google’s Local Business Listing…..and participation will result in client contacts, although at a rate less than Google’s. No surprise there with the market share Bing has/will have.

So hop on over to Bing and get your law firm set up on Bing.

I’m all for a company monetizing a website, but AVVO is beginning to turn to some questionable revenue generating models.

They’ve worked very hard in building traction by offering a great service to those looking for legal assistance.  And they’ve created a good buzz in the marketplace that’s helped them tremendously with the search engines….while managing to not help any of the attorneys listed on the site in that regard (they no-follow every outgoing link).

AVVO has thrived so far (traffic numbers are very good) because they offer an individual the opportunity to review attorneys in a given practice area.  AVVO will even include past client reviews and colleague reviews as well.  It’s all there for the potential client to see – and make a decision if they want to contact that attorney or not.

Now they’ve moved on to squeezing the attorneys in order to drive revenue.

In the last couple or months, they’ve done two things.

One, they offer what’s called AVVO Pro – an opportunity to “Take Your Profile to the Next Level” – their words, not mine.

In my opinion, it doesn’t do much for driving business to a law firm – but it does protect you from the second product they’ve introduced – AVVO Advertising.

This is a sponsored type listing at the top of a practice area search – see this example of an AVVO search for a Los Angeles DUI Lawyer. (FYI – I got an e-mail from an LA Divorce Attorney that said AVVO wanted more than $500 a month for the AVVO Advertising sponsored listing).

There are three attorneys shown – no problem with this at all.  It’s a smart way to monetize the space.

What gives me the heebie-jeebies is this -

If you are not an AVVO PRO member, AVVO is adding one of those Ads to every single attorney profile in that practice area.  In some cases, there are two ads on a profile.

So if I’m an attorney and want to get the other attorneys ad off my profile, I have to pay $49.95 a month for AVVO Pro to accomplish that.

What B.S. – and if was an attorney that worked hard to build my AVVO profile, I would be livid if I saw some attorney that’s willing to write a big check…pollute my profile.

From my perspective…it’s just plain wrong.

Almost a year ago, I was gushing about how wonderful Justia was (see this post) by offering law firms across the country access to a directory where they could list their firm for free while leveraging the power of the Justia URL.

You could set up a profile about your firm and even set up links to point at your website a blog – a huge help in solid search engine ranking.

It was so refreshing to see a competitor of Findlaw offer this service as a counter to the Findlaw directory where they charge an arm-and-a-leg to take advantage of the benefits their directory offers for search engine rankings.

Well, in the no-to-distant past, Justia has turned to the dark-side.  They set their techs loose and did some black-box magic which resulted in this….

Unless you are a paying client of Justia, you will not get any help from being in their directory.  Those that are Justia clients get a lot of Google love.  Those that are not….get none.

In fact, Justia sales reps are now using scare tactics in an effort to force clients to stay with them.

Yep, I’ve had two law firms call me recently – both said the rep indicated that if they left Justia, their directory profile would be impacted and their web presence would disappear.

Shame on you Justia….for changing how your directory was managed internally…and by threatening clients.

You’re no better than Findlaw….and if you read this Tim, that’s a shame, because at one time, you had an ethical and honorable company.

On 11/10, Matt Cutts indicated on his blog that the Caffeine update was going to roll-out to only one data center till after the holidays.  A great move on Google’s part given that the last time they introduced an algo change (Florida) they did it right before the busiest shopping time of the year for many online retailers.

Anyway, I used the Caffeine Sandbox tool (now closed) to check my clients rankings and didn’t really any differences with how they were treated in the search results.

One did jump out at me though – a Craigslist result that was usually at the bottom of page 1 or top of page 2….was at #1.  I thought it was odd but let it go.

So, today I’m doing a bit of research and type in the exact search phrase I typed in several weeks ago.

And what do I see?  The same results I saw several weeks ago using the Caffeine Tool….with the Craigslist search result at #1.

I’m thinking Google rolled out Caffeine in New York – see the video.

Google has just introduced a new ad program (it’s in Beta) that compliments the Google Adwords program…but is not part of it.

The cost to participate, at present, is ridiculously low – and I really don’t know what the pricing will be.  But if they want the small and medium size business to participate and feed the beast that is Google stock, it had better be priced smartly.

Take a look at the video below to get an idea of what it looks like….and I’ll be sure to let you know when it rolls-out nationwide.

If you own or manage a small law firm, have you ever looked at search engine results in your area and wondered why “Big Law” was not plastered all over the first page of Google for search terms related to your practice area?

After all, they certainly have bigger marketing budgets than you, right?

Yet, you rarely ever see Big Law dominate – it’s always the solo and small firms that do.

Here’s an example – if you did a search for “new york injury lawyer” you’d find only one firm (Stark & Stark) shown in the top 10 natural search results that I would consider “Big Law” – and they’re down the page at #8 which is not a premium position.

Nine of the ten are websites or blogs owned by solos or small firms.  That’s amazing, given how how many times that search term is typed in each month (almost 10,000 times) and how lucrative it is.

So the question is, why doesn’t Big Law show up?

The reason is simple – many of them rely on Content Management Systems (CMS), which are complex, database-driven web sites.

That is the complete opposite of solos and small firms which utilize static html, asp or php sites – or blogging platforms like Wordpress.

So why do small firms have an advantage by using these types of systems?

Because the systems they use are designed to be search engine friendly, while many of the CMS offerings that Big Law uses are:

• Not Search Engine Friendly (or Management does not know how to make them that way). Examples would be dynamic URL’s that look like this (http://www.biglaw.com/practice.php?categoryid=1&productid=10) which the search engines can choke on, and duplicate meta tags or tags that are not search engine friendly;
• Managed by outside vendors that don’t have usability or SEO experts on staff.
• Paralyzed by fear because of the huge investment they’ve made and are unsure of what to do.

So while solos and small firms keep adding search engine friendly content to their sites (with a blog) or regularly post to their blog, Big Law keeps spinning their wheels.

My advice to the solos and small firms – keep on adding content and posting to your blog.

Because unless Big Law ‘”gets it” in the very near term, it will be extremely difficult for them to catch you in the search results…never mind leapfrogging ahead of you.

I’ve posted numerous times about the value of Google’s Local Business Listings.  For those of you unfamiliar with this Google product, it’s the map and 10 business names that appear at the top of a Google search results page when someone uses a geo-term – like Los Angeles or Tampa – along with a request for a product or service.

These listings can be very, very lucrative – so much so, that some law firms are paying consultants up to $10,000 for about 11 hours of work (ed’s note – I don’t charge anywhere near that) to get their business listings to show up when potential clients search for legal assistance in their town or city.

This past weekend, Google began showing definitive signs of expanding the capabilities of their local search product by initiating what I’ll call a beta-test of the new Google Local Business search.

Take look at the video below to see what Google is testing….and how it’s going to change the way your potential clients find you.
(if you have trouble viewing this video, click here to see it)

Michael Stelzner, of whitepapersource.com has authored a new report, “Social Media Marketing Industry Report: How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses.”

It’s probably one of the best reports I’ve seen to date about the use of Social Media tools like Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc., for your marketing efforts.

What I didn’t see is this….Can a businesses gain an increase in revenue by using all these social media tools.

The report has a number of  statistics that lend credence to the benefits of using social media tools, but like most reports about this hot topic, there’s no hard numbers.

We all know that blogs lead to an increase in revenue.  But what about Twitter?  What can that do for the small business.  Does it work for them?

Until I have Law Firm Clients tell me that the hours-and-hours they’re spending on Twitter is fattening their wallet….I will continue to say….if a marketing effort is not working – cease doing it.

I know that law firms get an incredible amount of marketing material mailed to their offices – and phone calls galore from sales reps pushing the next “big” idea that will help your online marketing efforts.

And most of the material and content of their sales pitch…is nothing more than jargon-filled drivel.

Well, if you’ve ever wondered where they get all of their useless jargon, I’ve discovered the source!

Go to the Web Economy Bullshit Generator – and have a good chuckle.