Interview with Los Angeles, San Diego and Phoenix Law Marketing Expert JP DZahr
In the event you don’t know Mr. DZahr’s background, it’s listed in the footer of this article. Whenever I review a new client’s web site, the first things I do (forget the hype and get the facts) is to check the visibility of the Law Firm and the value of their visibility.
Most of my clients don’t know this secret tool–it’s been a developers’ tool for ages, but the common business web site owner is unaware of the value of this profound information. Knowing this information gives us a road map of what is missing and what improvements can be done organically within just a few weeks. We all understand what a phone book is: thousands of pages and millions of listings, but your business is listed only one time. So if a potential client is looking for an attorney, the likelihood of finding your Law Firm is all based on chance or perhaps seeing a ½  or full page ad in the yellow pages. Even so, it’s very difficult to stand out in the yellow pages and very expensive in order to get your law firm a phone call from a potential client.
So now let’s go to the internet. The search engines are really like the yellow pages, but online, and people who don’t know your firm will begin by looking up a keyword phrase, such as perhaps injury attorney, criminal attorney, or family law, etc. The reason for the keyword search is a potential client may not know of an attorney, so they are searching using a targeted keyword phrase, even though these are still fairly broad search terms. The next step in a search would be GEO targeted searches, as an example: Scottsdale injury attorney, Scottsdale criminal attorney, or Scottsdale family law. These would be the better targeted searches.
That said, let’s get to the secret tool that is 100% FREE to everyone and can be used to see your Web site results and your competitions results. What we are looking for is to know how many listings does your Law Firm have in Google or any of the other search engines and if the listings are keyword driven. If you could do the same thing in the Yellow pages of the phone book, imagine being listed on every page of the Law Firm section of the yellow pages, and then when someone searches the yellow pages, the likelihood of finding your firm is very high. We can do this exact same strategy online with the search engines. So let’s check right now to see how your firm stands with the number of listings in Google and you can even check your competition doing the same thing.
Type the following in the search FIELD of Google with your own domain name. I’m showing a LIVE example of how Google will show only your Web site results or the competition’s. So click on the live link below, then change the lawinfo.com domain to your own, then hit “enter” to see your own Web site listing results.
site:lawinfo.com This Web site is actually a Law directory showing thousands of attorneys’ paid listings and shows over 1.75 million pages of content in the Google search results. The Web site gets millions of visitors per month and generates income from many online services as well as providing lead packages for attorneys. An individual attorney or even a large law firm would be hard pressed to compete with this giant. However, your goal is to compete with all the other attorneys that are competing with your niche law practice in your area.
Here are 3 sample Scottsdale and Chandler Attorney Web sites, who are not my clients. It’s evident their web sites have a low number of listings in Google. I have hidden the law firm URLs for privacy reasons, so you can see the number of their listings in Google. These were  Attorney web sites I pulled randomly for the term criminal law.
In the third Law Firm search above that has just 1 listing, you’re probably thinking like me, it’s got to be a brand new law firm since the Lawyer has just one listing in Google. So I did a quick search for the date of creation, and below is a screen grab showing the Web site to be 1 year and four months old as of today. Well yes, the site belongs to a fairly new attorney, however, he’s been online for a long time and only has one listing, guaranteeing he literally has no internet business from online searches.
You can find out how long your Web site or your competition has been online by checking the domain name lookup data. Here’s a link: you can copy and paste your domain by replacing DomainName.com with your own domain name at the end of the URL link to find this same info. Paste this link in the browser URL field, not in a Google search field.
https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=DomainName.com
OK, so we have just checked the visibility of a Law Web site, now we need to check for the value of the visibility. What’s the value? It’s based on the keywords that a Web site produces for the search engines and it can be seen in the general listings of a search engine. A quick search for Scottsdale criminal attorney shows results below. The 1st listing is from avvo.com–another Law directory with 2.5 million resulting listings in Google and then the Web sites with the keyword phrase Scottsdale criminal attorney. The keyword phrase is part of the Web site title. This is the first step to getting listed for a keyword phrase in all the search engines. So is this the answer (well not completely) when doing more research with Googles own  KeywordPlanner . If you know how to data mine you can begin to create your own database of valuable keyword phrases to target market on your Web site.
Below is Google’s own data I researched which needs to be data mined and then imported into my own proprietary database, which I created in FilemakerPro. The keyword data has been parsed, cleaned of duplicates, and shows daily searches of a keyword phrase as well as any data available to the cost or value of a keyword phrase that is used in your Google AdWord campaign. Also notice the value or cost of several keyword phrases in the $30 to $55 range per click. In some instances keywords can be VERY Expensive as seen here , ranging from $200 to $425 per CLICK, most of which are in the Law Industry. So getting RANKED for any one of these Expensive Keyword phrases can save you a TON of Advertising dollars. These are keyword phrases other attorneys are competing for in the PPC arena. You’ll also notice that Google found 277 other keyword phrases matching, relevant, or similarly searched to the original phrase Scottsdale criminal attorney which provides 216 searches per day. Having all these keywords listed in Google gives you a broader target market and will get you more visitors to your Web site’s niche practice.
So if your Web site could harness all 277 keyword phrases instead of just the one, you would have an additional 276 page listed in Google. In fact, if you developed your Web site with WordPress, you have the ability to use the CMS (content management system) to generate dynamic pages with your keyword phrases, thereby populating the search engines with additional content. In order to put WordPress on super steroids, you’ll need your own server, as the server needs the horsepower to deliver the data optimally not found on a shared $15 per month hosting service. Now with this knowledge, instead of having an Attorney Web site with just 29 pages to a few hundred pages, you can have 5,000 to 10,000 pages listed in Google, based on each Law practice and expanding your reach through the search data Google offers for FREE.
WORDPRESS is the modern-day approach to using a CMS (content management system), which can deliver dynamic pages via its advanced CMS delivery system. WordPress is considered the #1 used CMS system in the world today, and for good reasons! Just see the major companies around the world, see links below that have adopted to WORDPRESS. This enables for better SEO in the hands of a WordPress and marketing professional. This is critical since most business owners claim they know their own product and service better than anyone else, even a marketing expert. However, it’s far from the truth when working with an experienced researcher and keyword analysis expert. Even many Web Designers are unfamiliar with the power of the CMS system the WordPress offers. It’s like a Master Sushi chef with a set of knives costing $10,000. Just having those knives does not make you the Master Sushi chef. You need to have years of proper training and experience as the tools are just tools. In our industry, SEO is a fine-tuned craft. It requires dedicated research of top keyword phrases being searched online for the Law Industry, knowing the number of searches per day and the cost or value of a keyword phrase, if you were to use them in a GOOGLE AdWords campaign. These keywords are very expensive in the Pay Per Click (PPC) arena, so if you could be found organically for those keyword phrases and not have to pay Google for them, it would certainly have a high value proposition for your law firm.
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If you already have a WordPress Web site with just a few pages listed in Google like some of the above examples, it can be put on super steroids and get the listings you need to cover the entire Google recommended keyword search spectrum. If your Web site is not a WordPress site, I recommend a second Web site so you can see the difference in performance to your other site and you can achieve 10 to 20 times the organic listings for your new Web site. As an idea of numbers, you already need to have some content to get the super steroids working. If you don’t have the content, it needs to be developed, and then you can start competing properly. I used to work at Lawinfo.com and I developed over 1 million keyword phrases used for their directory system, which became categories for the various Law Practices as seen here. That project took six months of research for me and another colleague who is a research scientist and content writer.  We then utilize the terminology and the placement of these keyword phrases for critical internal linking within the Web site and external inbound links from other authority Web sites, giving a client’s  Web site the needed popularity from another authority Web site linking back to theirs. You can ask me more on how to obtain these authority Web site inbound links making your site popular with the search engines.
There are several other crucial SEO Checklists and Top 10 Internet Marketing Secrets and Strategies for Law Firms which are considered ongoing marketing to then rank as many of these keyword phrases as possible. This is the True Marketing and SEO foundation of your Web site, and with monthly marketing campaigns your Law Web site will surpass your competition. Lawinfo.com is a prime example of this accomplishment. Prior to my arrival at Lawinfo.com the site had only one revenue generation method using a call center. I showed Lawinfo.com how to cut a $500,000 per year PPC campaign to less than $100k and how to generate an additional $1 million in online revenues they never had before.
If your Law Firm is in need of a proven successful marketing expert (and USA based!!)
please contact me through this LINK.
WARNING: This article is not intended to be a tutorial, as it requires Webmaster level coding and trying this at home could be harmful to your marketing efforts. Only work with experienced and knowledgeable Webmaster coders.
FOOT NOTES:
Mr. DZahr’s career started as an Early Adopter, Alpha, and Beta tester of Photoshop, Color Studio by Letraset, Image Studio by Letraset, and Live Picture from France. Live Picture was a revolutionary digital imaging software package costing $10k in 1996 and rivaled a high-end Silicon Graphics workstation (SGI) costing $500k in those days. He ran Special Interest Groups, SIGS (today similar to Meetups.com) for both applications Photoshop and Live Picture in Bellevue, WA during the mid-1990s. Microsoft employees showed up at his presentations and he was soon hired to train the first group of employees transforming from traditional press paste ups boards to digital prepress and digital imaging for all of Microsoft’s packaging department.
Mr. DZahr has been marketing Web sites since his early days at Boeing where he was one of 10 Head Web Masters running the entire Boeing internet and extranet (the private side of Boeing). He was then scooped up from Boeing in Seattle by a proprietary banking entity in southern California, San Diego, to develop a new banking language and marketing platform for 250 banking brands with 90 other developers where he was the content branding manager for the banking division.
From his vast marketing and development experience in Fortune 100 companies, he was hired by Lawinfo.com to fix and turn around losing revenues on a major law directory, namely Lawinfo.com. He’s been attributed to having “produced over $1,000,000 in additional revenues as a direct result of working with JP and implementing his strategies and recommendations. And the best thing is that most of that money is pure profit! “ Bill Auger Operations Manager at Lawinfo.com
LawInfo.com was acquired in August of 2013 by FindLaw, a part of Thomson Reuters to become the leading brand in lawyer ratings for consumers and in lead solutions and online marketing for its attorney clients.
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