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A LAWYER'S GUIDE TO MAKING YOUR CORPORATE WEBSITE PROFITABLE
This is the text of a three-part article published in the UK Legal Journal New Law Journal on February 1st, 8th and 15th 2002 written by Philip Gegan. The main principles apply to any kind of business website.
Part 2: Getting Down To Online Business
When he comes to your site, your prospective client has just one thought in his head. "What's in it for me?" He doesn't want to know that the senior partner belongs to a certain golf or Rotary Club. He doesn't want to know that the firm "aspires to the highest standards of integrity in seeking the most effective solutions to the problems facing our clients", or "focuses on the needs of our cients as being paramount . . ."
You think that he'll need reassuring that the lawyers in your firm are good enough to do the job for him and that they won't short-change him? Don't worry - he'll assume that anyway.
Tell Him You Can Help Him
What he wants to know is that you can help him. He's just had a summons accusing him of something he didn't do. The wall of his garage has just fallen down and injured a neighbour. His company has just received what sounds like a good offer of business from someone in Korea. He's just been assessed by the Inland Revenue for tax on money that he never received. Reading about your firm's integrity, or the career history of the planning partner won't help him. He wants to know that you are just the person to solve his problems. So the first thing you have to do now is to get rid of all those pages full of information that nobody reads and replace them with something like:
"Are you a battered wife who just can't take any more? Worried about your children and the house? Well, you've come to the right place. Our domestic violence section can handle this for you. Recently we acted for Miss XG, whose partner took to beating her regularly until she ended up in hospital with two broken ribs and a broken cheekbone. She was terrified that her children would be taken into care and she'd lose possession of the family home. We quickly got her an injunction keeping her partner away, and she is now secure in her home with the children. Just call our Mrs Smith on (0000) 1111111 for immediate help. And click here for a FREE guide as to what information we need from you and what you can do to avoid further violence." People love reading human stories and finding they're not the only ones with a problem.
Or . . .
"Are you one of the recent flood victims who are having difficulty recovering indemnity from your insurers? We have a department specialising in getting justice for flood victims. Click here for a FREE Report on what you need to do NOW. Then ring our Mr Jones on (0000) 1111111."
And guess what? All the free reports and guides that are downloadable from your site will have references to your firm, how good your lawyers are at getting the results their clients want, testimonials from recent satisfied clients (you do ask for and receive testimonials, don't you? - after word of mouth they are easily the most powerful tool in persuading potential clients to give you their business), tips on collecting evidence, how to dress for court, and so on. All this can save no end of time later, as well as convince the potential client that your firm is absolutely the best expert at dealing with the problem he faces.
If no one in your firm or in your web design company can write compelling "copy" then hire a copywriter to do it for you. This will be money very well spent.
Try to get your visitors involved in your site. Invite them to place the site in their Favourites list on their web browser, so they can re-visit at the click of a button. Put a "Guest Book" on your site or, better still, have a forum where people can write about their problems and other visitors can post replies, suggestions, and so on. This almost guarantees your visitor will return again and again, and, more importantly, regard himself as your client before you even know he exists!
Now for the techniques for getting your site to the top of the search engines. While there are hundreds, even thousands, of search engines on the Internet, we only need concern ourselves with the top 15 to 20, which will account for well over 90% of all your search engine traffic.
What's In A Name?
One of the most important factors in search engine positioning is surprisingly simple, yet few lawyers seem to have given it much thought. Get yourself a good domain name.
Most law firms have web sites that have their name, followed by the usual ".co.uk". Some even have their initials only, plus the suffix. The domain name "businesslawyer.com" recently became available for registration. It was quickly taken and is probably worth thousands of pounds. The name "business.com" recently sold for $7.5 million. Why for so much? Because good, punchy, descriptive domain names are in short supply and are now indispensable in "branding" businesses. In addition, many search engines place a lot of weight on the actual name of a website to determine relevancy.
Other things being equal, which name would you think is the more desirable - "www.smithandjones.co.uk" or "www.businesslawexpert.com"? It's obvious, isn't it? "Smithandjones" doesn't tell you anything about the site or the people behind it. "Businesslawexpert" says it all. It will get a higher ranking in the search engines for anything connected with "business" and "law" as well as "business law". It contains three vitally important key words - "business", "law" and "expert", as well as "businesslaw" and "lawexpert".
On top of that, a ".com" name is the top-drawer type of name for the Internet. Everyone wants a ".com" name. But haven't they all gone already? The answer is that most of the good ".com" names have gone, unless you are happy with a name that includes hyphens or random numbers and letters, and that of course detracts from the impact of a precise and potent name.
However, all is not lost. Many ".com" names come back into availability all the time, and it's worth paying your webmaster to monitor availability for a suitable ".com" name. The ".co.uk" suffix is a viable alternative, where it is less likely that the name you want will have already been registered, and is probably preferred by smaller firms who do little, if any, overseas business.
The new suffixes such as ".net", ".firm" and ".law" are also more likely to have the name you want, though names are being registered fast with these extensions. The registration fees are also higher than for the two more well-known suffixes.
Whatever suffix you settle for, a good descriptive name, relating to the work you do rather than the name of your firm, is rapidly becoming a "must". What if your existing site and domain name have made some progress with search engine placement? Well, there's no need to abandon that. Get yourself two or more domain names. For the potential new business they'll bring you, they are cheap. You could have four or five domain names, all descriptive of the main departments of your firm, e.g., commercial law, trade marks law, family law, white collar crime, intellectual law, technology law, and so on.
Opening Doorways
Of course, that's not to say you need four or five different web sites. They can all be "doorway" pages, leading to your existing (improved!) site. On each doorway page you need some valuable, relevant information to help get a high ranking with the search engines. Make the copy snappy and concise, telling the visitor exactly why he should click through to your main site. For example, your intellectual property site could be www.intellectualpropertyinfo.com" (I haven't checked to see if that name is available - it's just a hypothetical example) and consist of a page with the latest intellectual property news, decisions, etc, and a link to the intellectual property page on your existing site.
The next stage is for each domain name to have a separate page specially designed for submission to each major search engine. For example, you may have one page optimised to meet all the criteria that Google places the most emphasis on, and then have that page submitted to Google. Another page may have all the qualities that Alta Vista regards as most important, and that is submitted to Alta Vista, and so on. Your webmaster should be able to advise on this.
Make sure your content is relevant and useful, and not just a link to the main page. Otherwise, most search engines will not rank it highly in terms of relevancy, no matter how relevant the page on your main site may be.
Tips and Titles
Most search engines, when listing your page, will carry a short description next to it. This description will be read by the potential client who is looking for certain information, and will be used by him to determine whether to visit your site, or go further down the list until he sees something that catches his interest.
Each search engine works differently, so it's impossible to lay out hard and fast rules that apply universally. But nearly all search engines will take that description from one of the following: Your domain name, your page title, your Meta tag description, your Meta tag key words, a "comment" tag inserted in your code, the heading of your page, the first paragraph of your text, the first words shown in bold type, or any combination of these.
It's not as daunting as it sounds. But most sites belonging to UK law firms need a lot of work done to them, and soon. Many sites have as their title, "Home Page", or "New Page1". What is that going to tell your prospective client? Only that you haven't got your act together. "Smith and Jones, Solicitors" isn't much better. Rename your home page, and every other page now. Instead of "Home Page", name it, for example, "Business, commercial and litigation law experts who also specialise in intellectual property disputes and mediation".
This wording should be the same as your Meta tags description (this will be covered next week). The more focussed, the better, so for your "mirror" sites with their own special domain name, e.g. "www.fatalinjurylawexpert.com" (again, I can't say if this domain name is actually available) you might have "Accidental death and fatal injury lawyers who specialise in disputed insurance claims." Get the picture?
Two further tips here. Have the page title repeated in ordinary text right at the top of each page, before any graphics or other text. This is important for those search engines that look for an early indication of the first few words of text that display in order to assess the relevancy of the page to the search items and perhaps display that wording against your site URL in the search results. And get rid of any pages whose only purpose is to get the visitor to "click here to enter the site" (often after keeping him waiting for valuable seconds while a flash application downloads and displays bouncing text or whirling logos). These only annoy most visitors, who may easily feel inclined to click away to the next site on the list, and they are of no relevance at all as far as nearly all search engines are concerned.
By the way, does your site use frames? I know they are useful in helping the visitor navigate his way around the site, but get rid of them. Many search engines are not capable of handling frames and will therefore not list your site at all. If you must have frames, order your Webmaster to make an alternative version of each page that is frames-free, and to use the "noframes" tag so those search engines can index those pages. Next week we'll look at the final touches for a winning website.
Click here for Part 3 - A Winning Website - The Final Touches or here for Part 1 - Why Isn't Your Website Getting You Any Business?
Copyright © 2002-2008 Philip Gegan, Leicester, England.