Google is only lawyer directory to bother with
There's only one lawyer directory that matters, and that's Google, says legal marketing expert, Larry Bodine.
Lawyers are repeatedly seduced and marketers are constantly aggravated to take space in law firm directories.' Which one to choose? How much to pay? Should you pay?' I can make the decision easy for you. There is only one directory you need to worry about: Google...... Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online.
I have heard Larry speak and he's speaking of the importance of Google for all sized law firms, from solos to the very largest.
Other search engines aren't all that important for lawyers either. New research from Compete.com, indicates Google's share of Web searches in September 2007 was 67%, up from 54% in 2006. Yahoo is at 19%, down from 29% in 2006, with MSN at 9%.
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I agree with Larry. Though it may still be worth my while, I never look at Yahoo or MSN when examining the search engine performance of my sites or LexBlog client blog sites.
As for directories such as FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, Avvo, and the like, the most important function they can play is getting the biographical information of your firm and its lawyers indexed at Google. The days of a lawyer directory portal site where Internet users go to look up lawyers are coming to an end.
Larry's comments are consistent with our own tracking at BenGlassLaw.com. About 60% of our traffic is from search engines, the rest basically from links at other sites. Of the search engines, Google traffic beats all other search engine traffic combined.
The on line legal directories, like the actual Yellow Pages, place you right in the middle of your competition and you can't stand out without paying a ton more. With effective search engine optimization for your regular website and a well thought out blog that follows what Kevin teaches, the smallest firm can compete for the valuable Google first page (and win.)
Thanks for the comment Ben. And along those lones, folks should know that generally, 66% of traffic to blogs will come from links at other blogs. That's the discussion component of blogs, with bloggers referencing each other.
With law blogs that percent may be lower because of so many people looking for legal information at Google and blogs performing well in the search rankings there. With non law blogs, the topic of discussion may not be as widely searched for on the search engines.