While many law firms shifted their emphasis and advertising budgets to online legal marketing long ago, some firms have been slow to make the transition from traditional forms of advertising to the Internet. Despite the explosive growth in the number of people who use the web for the majority of their professional service needs, a surprising number of law firms still have no law firm website, or they have very primitive, self-made websites that look unprofessional or provide virtually no information to consumers. Attorneys still looking to develop law firm websites are definitely at a disadvantage entering the market so late in the game, but even firms going online now can still make a big impact with a professionally designed law firm website.
It is important that attorneys who launch a law firm website avoid making certain key mistakes. Below are some of the most important things to consider when building a law firm website:
Lack of Visibility: Many law firms focus only on website development without considering that even the best designed website has little value unless it can be found online by potential clients. When building a new law firm website, it will be very difficult, expensive, and time consuming to show up in organic Google search engine results. A cost-effective approach to creating maximum visibility for a law firm website is by listing your new website in online directories. Many online directories are relatively inexpensive and come up near the top of the search engines for relevant search terms. A law firm can link its website to a directory listing to quickly achieve prominent visibility in search results. Some legal directories and sites also have free listings where a website can be linked, which can help increase website visibility. A law firm should also link a new firm website to other free websites, such as social media pages like Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace, as well as sites like Craigslist, since these sites generate huge numbers of user visits and can benefit the law firm website through clicks from those popular sites.
Unprofessional Design: Law firm websites do not have to be particularly complex or sophisticated in order to be successful, but they do need to look professional. A visitor will generally make a judgment about a law firm website within three seconds of visiting the site. Many law firms still rely on a simple landing page or bare bones website created by a staff member at the firm. The law firm’s website is a reflection of the firm, so an unprofessional site creates a poor impression with consumers and potential clients. It is best to hire an experienced firm to design a professional looking site, but keep in mind that “professional” does not necessarily mean expensive. Many legal marketing companies that offer website design services will also offer packages that include some sort of search engine optimization (SEO) package and placement on other marketing programs offered by the company, such as legal directories, which will give the website immediate visibility. A law firm can often achieve substantial financial savings by purchasing a bundled package including many services compared to hiring a standalone law firm website design company.
Complexity of Use: Many law firm websites are very busy and have many buttons and pull-down menus for users and potential clients to navigate in order to find what they are looking for. While menus and lots of information about a firm and the legal issues the firm handles can be helpful to consumers, ease of use is more important. A clean, simple, and professional looking law firm website is typically more effective than an extremely busy looking site with complex navigation options.
Lack of Original Content: An effective law firm website must do more than simply list the firm’s practice areas, give a basic biography of the attorneys and staff, and provide contact information. The website needs to offer information that distinguishes the attorney or firm from other law firms. The more informative the content on an attorney’s website is, the more it makes the attorney look like an expert. Content that discusses and provides overviews of relevant legal issues in a firm’s practice areas can inform clients and make them more inclined to contact the firm. Also, the more original content on a law firm website is, the better the website will perform in searches. Search engines prefer websites with a lot of high quality content because such sites offer the most help to consumers. Duplicate content that is taken directly from other websites generally is discouraged by Google and other search engines and will hurt a law firm website’s performance on the search rankings.
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