A lawyer has tons of choices and the really cool thing about Internet marketing is that its easy to test....first, are you appearing on the first page of Google for search terms applicable to your practice? Easy to test.

If you aren't, somebody else with something interesting to say probably is...so now it doesn't matter much how pretty your MH site is, its not being seen.

Once you are on the first page of Google, you gotta be interesting... make an offer (not 'free consultation").... again, as far as I could tell, none of the Findlaw or MH reps that I spoke to in my office or at meetings ever understood much about marketing at all, and certainly not to the level you really need to understand it in this very competetive biz.

So Kevin's Lexblog, Dale Tincher's Consultwebs and Tom Foster's Foster Web Marketing (and others, to be sure) are able to offer both great internet info (what is SEO, how to I improve my SEO) with really good thinking about marketing.

MH and Findlaw will keep going, no doubt, because many lawyers tend to be lazy about marketing. They'd rather hand over their dollars and say "do it for me" than go the library or over to Amazon and read 10 non lawyer books on marketing and 10 internet marketing books.

Lawyers should not conclude that effective Internet marketing is all about search engine performance though. Sure, it's nice to be at the top of search engines, but I was able to effectively market my plaintiff's personal injury law firm on the Internet back in 1996, 97, & 98 before we ever heard of search engines.

Effective Internet marketing allows good lawyers to establish themselves as a 'lawyer's lawyer,' by doing those things that enhance one's reputation as a reliable and trusted authority.

Martindale (lawyers.com) and Thomson FindLaw are at a disadvantage in that they've never been lead by a lawyer who reresented consumers or small businesses as a practicing lawyer and had first hand Internet marketing experience. I'm not sure they really ever understood effective law firm Internet marketing and I'm not sure they do today.

You're right that lawyers willing to learn how Internet marketing really works will be far ahead of lawyers.com and FindLaw.

I have seen great marketing programs with Martindale.com, and I have seen not so great programs with Martindale.com. All of the sales reps I support as the SEM Specialist in the Western USA do their best to put together programs that will be successful for their attorneys.

Martindale.com/Lawyers.com have changed significantly over the last 10 years, and even in the last 2. If you are a customer of LN/MH it is very important that you take the time to speak with your rep about how you can increase the Return on Your Investment with Martindale. I find that attorneys who have programs that truly are not providing maximum value have not adjusted their approach with how they are utilizing the service. They are still trying to use MH the way they did years ago.

There are many free and low cost Internet Marketing services you can utilize on Martindale.com, Lawyers.com and our entire network. While a few years ago we were not offering SEM services that were as advanced as some of our competitors’, in my opinion we leapt ahead of our competitors this year offering some of the most advanced and successful SEM services available to attorneys.

For a free consultation, please feel free to call me at 720-985-7945, or visit my blog: www.lawyermarketingexpert.com. I do not have time to update the site more than once or twice a month, and I spend very little time optimizing it, but it has a lot of good and free advice on SEO, PPC, and other Attorney Marketing strategies.

Good luck to all of you in all of your Internet Marketing endeavors.