Generally speaking, people who are in business are not inclined to give their company’s strategic assets away to the competition. However, many attorneys and law firms do exactly this and they don’t even realize it!

When it comes to online marketing, what many attorneys fail to realize is the actual value of their online presence.

All too often, “beach front property” in the form of a top website ranking on any search engine, is simply given away to a competitor because of what may be good, yet ill-conceived intentions. A typical scenario is when someone at the firm takes the initiative to update or re-write some content on the firm’s website. Without realizing it, their modifications have dropped the website from the search engines rankings, leaving the vacancy for Google to fill with a competitors website instead.

An even worse case scenario that happens quite a bit, is when a firm decides a sleek new website is in order and proceeds to simply replace the old site without consideration of how established that site has become with the search engines, losing every ranking they’ve ever achieved. Ouch!

To put things in perspective and to illustrate the value of a top search engine ranking, let’s take the following example. Imagine your firm’s website ranks among the first five results on Google for a very common search phrase like, “Boston divorce lawyers”. According to Google’s keyword search volume, this particular phrase is searched over 1,500 times per month. That averages more than 18,000 searches per year.

Statistically, the top 5 results will get more clicks than any other result on the page. So let’s conservatively assume 20% of the people searching this phrase click one of the top five results. This one search term drives 3,600 visitors to your website every year. This is not a ranking you want to lose!

So what’s the value of a good ranking?
1. New Clients: If you are a Boston area divorce lawyer, and you have 3,600 people visit your website who have searched specifically for “Boston divorce lawyers” then, arguably you’re attracting highly qualified potential clients. Even if only 1% of the 3,600 visitors decide to contact you, that’s 36 new inquiries for just that one search term. The question is, how many of those inquiries can you convert to clients?

2. Visibility: There is tremendous value in name recognition and branding. Dominating the search engine pages for specific geographic and practice area searches enhance your exposure and confirms credibility to prospective clients searching the web. If you fail to maintain your rankings or if you do something to ‘give it away’, Google will easily replace you with one of its 24,199,000 other possible results – most likely it will be your competition - and you can start over.

I often remind clients that the Internet is a marketplace and needs to be treated as such. If you plan to actively participate in this market to advance your business, then you really should understand the value of what you have and what you’re trying to obtain. Failing to realize the value of ranking on the first page of Google for “Massachusetts divorce lawyer” or, on the flip side, expecting that your new site will rank for “Boston real estate attorney” because that’s what you do, is simply navigating the marketplace blindly. And with any mismanaged investment it will eventually catch up with you.

Ian Bardorf is a Massachusetts Internet marketing and advertising advisor working with lawyers and law firms throughout the region on enhancing their online effectiveness in the areas of SEO, paid search, social media, affiliate marketing, blog and website development, and targeted local search marketing campaigns.

The practice of search marketing has significantly progressed over the past few years and businesses from Fortune 100s to the two attorney law firm in South Boston, are reaping the benefits. However, still most businesses fail to embrace what is arguably the most cost effective means of marketing and advertising their services by continuing to believe that effective marketing on the Internet is simply having a website.

Search marketing is a continual process of integrating and optimizing various online components. The fact is, there is only so much real estate on the search engine result page (SERP) and we all know that Google is not going to present your website ten times as the only choice. The search engines look for variety. They select websites, blogs, directory listings, social profiles, videos, press releases, PDF files, and just about anything digital that they can index.

Effective search marketing converts searchers into clients by ensuring your brand appears within the SERPs in the right place, at the right time and with the right message. Your chances of obtaining optimal SERP real estate for highly appropriate and targeted search terms significantly diminishes if you simply rely on your website alone. Read the rest of this entry »

A quick and easy way to determine if your website has been indexed or is even being recognized by the search engines is to do a simple search engine index check.

Here’s how:

To determine how many of your web pages the search engines have discovered and indexed use the following techniques. If your website has 50 pages and you see that the search engines have only indexed 25, then you know that half of your web pages are not appearing on any search engine result pages (SERPs).

Yahoo! To determine if your site has been indexed by Yahoo! you will use Site Explorer.  This allows you to explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search.

Google: To determine if your site has been indexed by Google, you can simply type “site:yourdomain.com” in Google’s search box. Be sure to enter your website’s domain, and not ‘yourdomain’

Got a question? Let me know if you have any questions about your search marketing strategy.

In an online world where just about everything can be tracked and measured, why do so many marketers have trouble putting ROI on any sort of online marketing, advertising or lead generation campaign?

There was a terrific post by Pat LaPointe on the measurement of Social Media where he adds his comments and insight to an interview with three experts from well-know companies who were asked about the best ways to measure the ROI of a social media campaign.

The bottom line ascertained by the interviews is that it’s difficult and nobody really has a grasp on it just yet. The real message that Pat points out is: Read the rest of this entry »

Social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the rest may have seemed a little adolescent, juvenile, immature (you choose your favorite) just a few years ago but today they are undoubtedly integrated into the vast majority’s daily lives.

A few short years ago many folks, ahemmm, my age, didn’t see the value of subscribing to such online communities believing wholeheartedly that they were for high school and college kids who were living their reckless youth. Forget about the older generations (meaning, older than me) as they feared all sorts of catastrophic repercussions for such reckless online behavior. From simple online privacy intrusions, comparable to the 1980’s telemarketer calling at dinner time (drove my Dad nuts), to the idea that somehow your ATM pin number and credit card information would inexplicably spread throughout the world, the older generation had very little interest in this “fad”.

Well, perhaps these social networks are maturing beyond those awkward adolescent years because today, social networking communities have successfully integrated in to all generations and lifestyles. You can find a community for anyone regarding Read the rest of this entry »

Question: What are some of the consequence for mid to large sized companies who choose not to consider search engine marketing strategies?

For a mid to large sized company who relies on volume business in either BtoB or BtoC, to choose not to consider search engine marketing strategies because they don’t see the value is VERY hard to swallow. The consequences could be numerous but in my opinion the thought of alienating your audience by not being where they are is a certain slow death.

Many traditional marketers like to chalk up their lack of search marketing initiatives by stating emphatically “our audience doesn’t go online.” Which is the equivalent of stating that we’re going to give the online marketplace to our competitors, we believe in spending tons of money to “push” our message out to the masses, and we prefer to keep our COGS higher then necessary doing things the way we know how, the good ol fashion way.

When in doubt - invest in having professionals do a comprehensive opportunity analysis of your online marketplace. At least this way your CEO has the data to make a knowledgeable business decision.

Its amazing how many offline campaigns still launch today without any consideration for the online audience. Yes, this was a common occurrence several years ago as traditional marketers just began to acknowledge that the Internet was an influential medium and not going away. But what about now? How do multi-million dollar offline campaigns ignore their online target audience? Is it still unreasonable to accept that someone watching television will swing their chair around and search Google for a product they just saw on tv or read in the newspaper?

Search marketing taps into a massive online audience that continues to increase every day. More then 225 million Americans have Internet access. Search Marketing can be the most cost effective way to market your business or brand, connect with consumers online, attract qualified visitors to your website, increase brand awareness, increase overall visibility and of course, increase revenue. I just don’t understand what some folks are thinking, and why they choose to continue to miss huge opportunity online.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) leverages search engines like Google, Yahoo! and MSN’s Bing to obtain visibility and highly qualified traffic in the most cost-effective manner.

While most web sites reside passively on the Internet, a growing number of businesses (large and small) have been extremely successful at dynamically leveraging their sites to produce meaningful results and achieve specific business and marketing objectives.

What makes these individuals so successful at attracting customers online? What is it about their sites and their strategy that separate them from their competition? What are they doing right?

The most successful SEO strategies target two entirely different audiences: (1) The Customer and (2) The Search Engines!

Most websites neglect to consider the search engines and thus, their website obtains minimal visibility. That means potential customers will not find you. To optimize your website properly from a search engine’s perspective your site needs to excel in three critical areas. Read the rest of this entry »

The practice of search marketing has significantly progressed over the past few years and businesses from Fortune 100s to the two attorney law firm in South Boston, are reaping the benefits. However, still most businesses fail to embrace what is arguably the most cost effective means of marketing and advertising their services with the continued belief that effective search marketing is simply having a website.

Search marketing is a continual process of integrating and optimizing various online components, including your website, done in an effort to obtain valuable online real estate and prominently appear in the search engine result pages (SERPs) of Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. Search marketing is not an a single “item” like a website, or a one time “event” like launching your new website.

I always say to clients that effective search marketing converts searchers into clients by appearing within the SERPs in the right place, at the right time and with the right message.

Ultimately, one invests in search marketing, which is also often referred to as search engine marketing (SEM), to achieve a defined business goal like obtain new clients, increase visibility and brand awareness, drive qualified traffic, obtain a competitive advantage or integrate off-line marketing initiatives with an online target audience. Search marketing focuses on the organic and paid search listings of every SERP.

At the very basic level of search marketing, there are essentially two components to every search engine result page. They are; Organic Listings which are obtained through search engine optimization (SEO) as well as by establishing and optimizing an arsenal of other digital assets like directory listings, social profile listings, videos, press releases, etc.  and the Sponsored Listings which is paid advertising, like Google Adwords, where you pay for visitors who click on your advertisement and land on your website.

Paid Search is online advertising in the form of ads or text links, which can be found primarily on the top and on the right hand side of the SERPs. Also referred to as “pay per click” (PPC) or “sponsored placement”. This form of search engine advertising means that you can be guaranteed to appear in the paid search results section for the keywords you choose within a day or less. This does not mean you will appear in the organic search results.

Organic Search is the search engine results that are shown due to relevancy to the search terms, not by paid search. Also referred to as “natural” or “algorithmic” search. These are the results that are shown on the middle of the page in the Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search results. One obtains favorable organic search results by implementing an effective search engine optimization (SEO) strategy.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of enhancing a website’s code, content and connections in accordance to a search engine’s algorithmic criteria. SEO is the process of obtaining favorable organic search results for specific keyphrases used by your target audience.

Ian Bardorf is a Massachusetts Internet marketing and advertising advisor working with  businesses throughout the region on enhancing their online effectiveness in the areas of SEO, paid search, social media, affiliate marketing, blog and website development, and targeted local search marketing campaigns.