Legal Search Marketing Blog

Department of Justice Rejects Google's Claims of Privacy Threat

Good article from Internet News about the DOJ rejecting Googles claim that the governments subpoena would threaten a users privacy.

    The Department of Justice (DoJ) has rejected Google's assertion that a government subpoena for search data threatens the privacy of Internet users.

"The government has not asked Google to produce any information that would personally identify its users," according to the DoJ's response filed Friday in a San Jose court.

Earlier this month, Google rejected the government's request in a strongly-worded response to the subpoena, arguing that the disclosure of the information could give competitors insight into its user habits. Search rivals Yahoo, MSN and AOL have already complied with the subpoena.

"Users trust that when they enter a search query into a Google search box, not only will they receive back the most relevant results, but that Google will keep private whatever information users communicate," according to Google.

But the government said Google's objections are "meritless."

Internet Marketing For Law Firms

Good article from Daniel Siegel from The Legal Intelligencer on Law.com about Internet Marketing for Lawyers and how its becoming important to not only have an Internet presence with a web site, but that its key to be found on the search engines for prospective clients that are searching every day.

According to research from the October 2005 Pew Internet & American Life Project report, the following is true of the legal world online:

• 68 percent of American adults (approximately 137 million people) use the Internet
• 65 percent of legal services buyers have gone online to locate a law firm
• 38 percent search online for legal services at least weekly
• 89 percent use search engines to find law firm Web sites
• 86 percent go directly to a law firm's site
• 71 percent enter law firm Web sites through portals such as Findlaw and Martindale Hubbell

Surprisingly, many lawyers and law firms ignore this reality, and have no Internet presence.

I have noticed this more and more lately and have also noticed that the bigger law firms with big expensive sites are no where to be found in the search engines.

To be effective, your Web marketing should include a budget for the Web site and a separate budget for marketing campaigns. Monitor your marketing closely to determine whether you are attracting visitors and turning them into clients. Your competitors also use the Web, and your next new client is almost certainly using the Internet, searching for you. 

This is very good advise for all law firms and its important to make sure your site is found at the search engines for obvious keywords like your firms name and your partners names, but if you want new clients from the search engines and to be found for keyphrases like Chicago Lawyers, you have to do more then the basics and invest some money for long term success.

Yahoo To Ban Bidding On Competitor Trademarks To Stop Comparison Advertising

Search Engine Watch blog has a good post about how Yahoo will no longer be allowing companies to purchase ads linked to the trademarks of their competitors. From what's being sent to Yahoo search marketing advertisers:

On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner's products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser's site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.

Google Rejects Justice Department Bid For Search Info

Google Inc. on Friday formally rejected the U.S. Justice Department's subpoena of data from the Web search leader, arguing the demand violated the privacy of users' Web searches and its own trade secrets.

Read fully story at Yahoo News

Pay Per Click Ad Impressions Grow 16% in 6 Months

ClickZ reports sponsored link impressions on Google and Yahoo! grew 16 percent in the past six months, according to data released by Nielsen//NetRatings .

That study shows that "sponsored link advertising impressions" grew from 55.4 billion to 64.3 billion over the past six months (August 2005 and January 2006).

Google in August 2005 earned 36.2 billion, which increased to 41.1 billion in January 2006, a six-month increase of 14%. Yahoo percentage growth was larger than Google's, accounting for 19.2 billion in August of 2005 with an increase to 23.2 billion in January 2006 or a 21% increase in the past six-months. These figures include all of Google's and Yahoo's search partners and contextual networks.

Does Your Firm Have An Employee Blog Policy?

AlwaysOn network has some interesting survey data on employers' blog policies.

Web blogs are booming, even among lawyers and law firms. However the latest survey conducted by the Employment Law Alliance is reporting that while millions of workers – perhaps as many as 5% of the American work force -- are maintaining the online personal diaries, only about 15% of employers have specific policies addressing work-related blogging.

Searches Up 55 Percent, Google Accounts for Half

Article from MarketingVox....

The total number of U.S.-based searches conducted across approximately 60 search engines in December reached nearly 5.1 billion - or an increase of 55 percent from the 3.3 billion searches conducted in Dec. 2004

Yahoo accounted for 21.4 percent of searches in December, and MSN Search was third with 10.9 percent.

Having High Google Pagerank & Many Links Is NOT Enough

HOW IMPORTANT IS A GOOGLE PAGERANK SCORE?

Google PageRank is a score that Google gives every web site and its from 0-10. Many people think that this is a good way to see how well a web site will do at the search engines. The fact is though the Google pagerank score can be very misleading. Just having a high PR score and a lot of links.

The problem here though is if you don't have other optimization techniques done, like updating each pages title tag or having your keywords within the content of your pages, then your probably not going to be found for keywords related to your practice, no matter how many links you have or how high your pagerank is.

SOLO LAWYERS VS. BIG LAW FIRMS

I see examples of solo attorneys out performing big law firms and saw one today. I reviewed a big law firms site that has multiple locations and over 100 attorneys and they have a very old site that has a domain name from 1994, which is a good thing.  It has a Google pagerank score of 6, which is very good and it has 244 links counted from Google, which is a high #.

These three things combined, an older domain name, a high pagerank score and a lot of links should mean that this site is well ranked but the fact is that its not ranked at all for any keywords related to its practice and in fact many of the partners aren't even coming up if you Google them by name.

I have many different law firm sites, including solo attorney sites that maybe have a PageRank of 3 or 4, have about 20-30 links, yet are ranked in the top 10 for many different keywords and get a lot of web site traffic as a result. This shows you that its a combination of things that have to happen and that certain things must be done in order to get results at Google.

LAW FIRMS ARE MISSING A GREAT OPPORTUNITY

Most law firms have not paid any attention to search engine optimization and are just starting to realize how important it is. If you have a site that has been around for awhile, has plenty of links from other sites, is in the right search directories BUT isn't optimized for the keywords pertinent to your firms practice, then your probably missing out on a lot of focused traffic.

Saving Money On Google Adwords

HOW TO SAVE MONEY ON GOOGLE ADWORDS

If you have an existing Google adwords account and don't pay much attention to it, odds are pretty good that your paying more then you should.

Ive had a number of clients accounts that Ive taken over and each time it amazes me how much I can save them just by making a few adjustments.

An example is a new client that I just looked at today, they have an existing adwords account and they spend about $3,500 per month.  Just by looking at it, I could see that they had set their Max CPC (Cost Per Click) very high at $10 per click. Sometimes people will do this in the beginning  and then never change it, so it carried over to all campaigns and keywords.

What this means is that you can pay way to much for certain keywords and while bidding high is a good way to get to the top and be the #1 listing, sometimes it can be very expensive and doesn't really make much sense.

Just making one adjustment to the account, by bringing the max CPC down to $2, I saved them over $90 per day and the estimated clicks per day are basically the same. This would add up to over $2,500 saved in the first month, just by making one adjustment. We will be able to save them a lot more then that once we make further updates and tweaks.

BOTTOM LINE

Its important to monitor the bids and make adjustments and Its better to adjust your Max CPC to a lower amount and then work your way up. Also make sure that you set a maximum spend limit per day. 

We can assist you with your pay per click marketing needs, contact me for further information.

Steelers Winning the AOL Search Super Bowl

If popularity is a sign of who'll win this week's Super Bowl, the Steelers should have it in the bag, according to new search data from AOL Search.

The predicted close match-up on the field between Pittsburgh and Seattle is much more lopsided online, with the Steelers receiving twice as many searches as the Seahawks.

What that means is bet against the public and go with the Seahawks!

Top Super Bowl-related Searches on AOLSearch.com

1 Super Bowl
2 Pittsburgh Steelers
3 Seattle Seahawks
4 Super Bowl Tickets
5 Pittsburgh Steelers Songs - scary
6 Jerome Bettis
7 Ford Field
8 Rolling Stones - which team does he play for? ;-)
9 Ben Roethlisberger
10 Troy Polamalu

Source: Marketing Pilgrim