The Attorney Marketing Blog

Late last week, I finished the “website tune-up” for Mike Kondoudis, the SEO contest winner. Over the course of the prior 30 business days, Mike and I talked on the phone for well over 5 hours in total with much of the discussion focused on his business goals, and our strategy for utilizing his new website to market his practice.

As you might recall, Mike is an Intellectual Property Attorney practicing in Washington DC. His ideal clients are U.S. and International Law Firms and Corporations looking for a DC based attorney to handle Patent, Trademark and Copyright issues.

Over the last month or so, we’ve modified the website a bit and changed the focus of the site more than once to meet his revenue goals (which are largely impacted by the amount of patent work). Because of that, it did take a bit longer to finish the site than either of us expected.

The search engines have bounced his site around for the keywords he needs to rank well for, but the end result is a website with a laser-like focus that Google and Yahoo pay attention to.

In an earlier post, I showed how his website was ranking in early July for critical search terms his potential clients use every day. Overall it was impressive, but the terms we were trying to rank well for were far too many. I didn’t want the search engines to believe that Mike was a “jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none” regarding IP legal services.

So, we made changes to the site to focus on Patent work because the largest number of searches that are related to Mikes practice center of patents - and that type of work has the greatest impact on his bottom line as well.

And since the average monthly search related to “patent attorney” with the geographical locater of “washington dc” is just over 4100…that’s what we went after….and this is where Mikes website is at today for those search terms.

For the search “dc patent attorney” there are 1,300 searches on average per month on Google alone. Mikes website sits at #3. On Yahoo, it sits at #1

For the search term “patent attorney (in) washington” there are also 1,300 searches on average per month on Google. Mikes website sits at #3 on Google for that term as well. On Yahoo, it sits at #1.

But not everything is rosy…the third most popular search term is “patent attorney (in) washington dc” with 880 searches on average per month on Google. Mikes website sits at #23 on Google. But 20 days ago it was #38, so it’s on the way up. On Yahoo…it sits at #1. (**Update: Four days after this post (8/5), Mikes website moved to the second page of Google and now sits at #11 for this search term)

So, Mikes website is fast becoming an integral part of his marketing strategy. In fact, since I completed the site a week ago, he’s had 5 potential clients contact him. And one of them has already retained his services. Twenty percent is great way to start, isn’t it.

If you’d like to find out what Mike thought of this process and the impact on his practice, you can e-mail him at mkondoudis@mekiplaw.com.

For almost a decade, whenever I wanted to research popular search terms related to a clients business, I’ve had to rely on a combination of keyword phrase search tools (they show what people are actually typing in the search engines) and each of them carried a heft yearly subscription.

Besides the cost, what really gave me heartburn was Google searches were never included because Google, since its inception, has refused to release actual search numbers and only referenced their numbers as Low, Average or High.

The problem with that reference is, who knows what low, average or high means. Does low mean 100 searches a month? Or 500? So, in practice, I had to estimate Google numbers based on their market share of total searches.

Two weeks ago, with not a press release in sight and no fanfare, that all changed.

I was doing a bit of research for a clients Pay-Per-Click campaign and clicked into my Google Adwords Account.

Lo and behold, right there on my monitor, were actual search results with two sets of search figures.

One showing the number of searches for the prior month, and the other showing the monthly average.

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven!

So, what does this mean to you, the attorney?

Simply this, if you’ve ever wondered how many “potential clients” are really looking for your particular expertise, you can immediately get a look at actual search numbers from the search engine that 60% - 80% of Internet users in your area are using.

All you need to do is put in the geographical location and your practice area(s) - like so:

Divorce Attorney in Charlotte or Bankruptcy Attorney in Orlando.

So head-on over to Google Adwords Keyword Tool and start typing (and make sure to check the synonyms box).

Then, if you’re brave enough, hop on Google search and see how your website stacks-up against your competitors for the search phrases you found.

It’s been twelve business days since I began optimizing the website of Attorney Mike Kondoudis, the winner of the SEO contest. Over that time, I’ve spent almost three hours on the phone with Mike and have another 15 hours invested in repairing his site.

In an earlier post, you might recall that Mike had gotten a head-start on the site after reading my e-book and had made a couple of mistakes. Nothing major - only a couple of hours of clean-up so the search engines didn’t penalize the site.

And I hope you remember the simple change Mike made to his site that vaulted his website from obscurity to the first page of Google results for two very competitive phrases - DC Patent Attorney and Patent Attorney in Washington. The search engines were not showing a lot of love for other popular search phrases.

But just doing well for those two was impressive. In fact, his site wasn’t even showing in the top 1000 for some of the most popular searches.

Well, in the last 12 days, I’ve edited the site and conducted both on-page and off-page optimization.

The end result- his website now shows up for a large number of competitive search phrases that his potential clients use to locate his practice specialty.

Here’s a sampling of search phrase results from both Google and Yahoo gathered on 6/30/08. They’ll show how far Mike’s site (www.mekiplaw.com) has come in 12 days, and where it’s headed. The results show the search phrase, what page his site shows on for that search, and where it ranks on that results page.

Oh, and by the way, the total number of these searches is in excess of 1000 per month….that’s 1000 potential clients.

Google Search Results

• washington patent attorney - 1st Page #6
• washington patent attorneys - 1st Page #10
• patent attorney in washington - 1st Page #3
• patent attorneys in washington - 1st Page #8
• dc patent attorney - 1st Page #6
• dc patent attorneys - 1st Page #5
• dc ip attorney - 1st Page #7
• dc ip attorneys - 1st Page #2
• washington ip attorneys - 1st Page #7
• ip attorneys washington - 1st Page #8
• washington trademark attorney - 1st Page #9
• washington trademark attorneys - 1st Page #3
• dc trademark attorney - 1st Page #9
• dc trademark attorneys - 1st Page #4
• patent attorney washington - 2nd Page #18
• patent attorneys washington - 2nd Page #12
• contact us patent law attorney - 2nd Page #12
• contact us patent law attorneys - 2nd Page #11
• contact us patent attorney - 2nd Page #19
• ip attorney washington - 3rd Page #21
• contact us patent attorney - 3rd Page #24
• washington dc patent attorneys - 4th Page #38
• washington ip attorney - 4th Page #37
• washington dc trademark attorneys - 4th Page #33
• washington dc trademark attorney - 5th Page #41
• patent attorney in washington dc - 6th - Page #56
• patent attorneys in washington dc - 6th - Page #60
• washington dc patent attorney - 6th Page #56>

Yahoo Search Results

• washington patent attorney - 1st Page #2
• washington patent attorneys - 1st Page #3
• patent attorney washington - 1st Page #3
• patent attorneys washington - 1st Page #2
• patent attorney in washington - 1st Page #3
• patent attorneys in washington - 1st Page #3
• patent attorney in washington dc - 1st Page #2
• patent attorneys in washington dc - 1st Page #1
• dc patent attorney - 1st Page #1
• dc patent attorneys - 1st Page #2
• contact us patent law attorney - 1st Page #7
• contact us patent law attorneys - 1st Page #7
• dc ip attorney - 1st Page #1
• dc ip attorneys - 1st Page #1
• dc trademark attorney - 1st Page #4
• dc trademark attorneys - 1st Page #1
• washington trademark attorney - 1st Page #1
• washington trademark attorneys - 1st Page #5
• washington dc patent attorney - 1st Page #1
• washington dc patent attorneys - 1st Page #2
• washington ip attorney - 1st Page #3
• washington ip attorneys - 1st Page #2
• ip attorney washington - 1st Page #10
• ip attorneys washington - 1st Page #5
• washington dc trademark attorney - 1st Page #4
• washington dc trademark attorneys - 1st Page #1

Overall, it’s impressive. But you’ll notice that Yahoo is treating Mike’s site considerably better given all the 1st page rankings. That’s expected, since Yahoo is much quicker at indexing pages and reshuffling results.

Additionally, I had to make some changes to the site to meet an ethics requirement - so Google is mulling over the changes and in due time will positively reflect those changes.

And Mike? He’s going to find that his phone is ringing regularly and his inbox will get a workout.

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If you want to chat about your website and the part it plays in marketing your practice, shoot me an e-mail at tom (at) the-attorneys-atm.com.