New Female Criminal Defense Team in Los Angeles
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
We recently started working with a new Los Angeles Criminal Defense firm; White Goldstein Criminal Defense.
The women behind the firm are two experienced and intelligent attorneys who have experience working for larger Criminal Defense firms. They are passionate advocates for their clients and personally get involved with all of the cases they take on. They are committed to providing the best possible representation and do not farm out the work to paralegals like so many defense attorneys.
But there is something else unique to the firm that goes beyond their hard work, intelligence and dedication. Many of the firm’s clients have been accused of violent crimes, and as such they are often viewed by jurors as hardened criminals based soley on those accusations. Let’s face it, we are all guilty of pre-judging people. If you are introduced to someone and simultaneously told that they are accused of child molestation or sexual assault, you will view them in a negative light. Yes, we are all innocent until proven guilty, but our subconscious sometimes over-rides that rule. Innocent people often begin their legal fights digging themselves out of first impression holes.
But the same subconscious feelings that damage the chances of those accused of violent crimes often help clients of White Goldstein. Again, this isn’t something that we control nor is it something attorneys try to exploit. But when we see a defendant being represented by an all female team, our subconscious rewards the defendant by finding them more believable and trustworthy. It is a textbook example of pathos at work.
Gender stereotypes exist, and that is as true on juries as anywhere else. Male attorneys can be viewed as deceptive and juries often feel uncomfortable when they cross-examine the accusers, particularly when the accusers are women or children.
But jurors are often more accepting when that same cross examination comes from a female attorney.
Personally, if I was wrongly accused of a violent crime I’d want any advantage I could get.The Po
Facebook Sued Over Privacy Concerns
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
It took almost two years, but the uproar over Facebook’s BEACON TRACKING TOOL and subsequent privacy concerns that this advertising platform raised has finally resulted in a lawsuit.
Five California residents have filed suit against Facebook in an Orange County, California court claiming that Facebooks use of Beacon and it further changes to their privacy policies violated California privacy laws by disseminating personal information posted by users to third parties. The lawsuit further alleges that Facebook engages in data mining and harvesting without fully disclosing these practices its users.
For more on this lawsuit, see here:
ABC News Article on Facebook Class Action Suit
Personally, I don’t think this suit has much of a chance of succeeding. Do I believe that FACEBOOK erred in how it protected people’s privacy? Yes, I do.
But for this lawsuit to have merit, I think the members of the class action will need to show that they were truly injured by the dissemination of their private data. And given what is on Facebook, that is going to be hard to do. Might people have been embarrased by something that was broadcast on Facebook. Of course. But a lawsuit? Probably not.
Of course, this is just my opinion.
Blawg
Thursday, August 6th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Here’s a great source for finding other legal blogs: www.blawg.com
Big News from YouTube/Google
Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
I was originally skeptical when my company started selling video for websites to our clients, but after the first year results I was a converted believer. It wasn’t that our clients’ videos were bringing more people to their sites, but rather that the people who visited the websites were much more likely to pick up the phone and schedule an appointment. And so, sites with videos didn’t increase their traffic (nor their Cost Per Click), but they were certainly getting a much better return on their Cost Per Conversion (CPC).
As great as increased conversion rates are, what would make video all the better would be if on-site videos showed up in the Universal Search results on Google. Sure, YouTube hosted videos show up, but when you click on those you just taken to YouTube, not to the website of the law firm that produced the video. And once someone finishes the video, they are just as likely to click on another person’s “related video” as they are to figure out the URL of the original video’s creators.
Thankfully, all this might be changing. As of today, YouTube is allowing video producers to put clickable, call to actions RIGHT IN THE VIDEO. As explained on the YouTube Biz Blog, video creators who have advertising accounts with YouTube will be able to have a text appear on the screen at a chosen time, inviting the viewer to click that text and be taken to the creators website. (There is no charge for these call-to-actions, you just need to have an account setup that enables you advertise on YouTube.) This, in turn, might be the boost that video has been waiting for. Conversions are great, but marry those higher conversion rates to more traffic, and it becomes harder to discount the importance of video on attorney websites.
Something to note is that the Call-To-Actions only appear when viewing the video on YouTube. If you embed the video on a blog, the ad never appears. For that reason, I am not embedding it here, but if you want to see it, go to this link: CLEAN WATER CALL TO ACTION YOUTUBE VIDEO
By the way, when YouTube tested this out back in March, this charity made $10,000 in just ONE DAY from this video. Yes, my people, video is for real.
New Family Law & Immigration Site for Russakow Ryan Johnson
Friday, May 15th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Congratulations to my client Russakow Ryan Johnson in Pasadena, California on the release of their new Family Law & Immigration Website.
This is the third website we have created for the firm, with the others being their Probate Litigation site and another website that focuses on Business Litigation. All of the sites are custom sites, but they all are designed with the same brand image in mind.
Pages on the new site include:
Family Law Pages
Eye-Tracking & Universal Search
Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Anyone who has spent any time comparing the value of Organic Results vs Pay-Per-Click has probably seen a copy of an Eye-Tracking or Heat Map Study. They are very effective at conveying just how much more important it is to have your site show up in the organic results. Here is an example:
Google Heatmap
I use this image or one like it a lot when I meet with prospective clients who aren’t sure whether they should invest in a better website or more pay-per-click.
But what this heat map doesn’t show is what happens when a search is done that returns results in Google’s “Universal Search” format. For who don’t know, Universal Search refers to Search Engine Results Pages that come back showing a mix of text links, images, videos, local results, etc.
I recently read a blog post put out by Google that shows some incredible changes to the way people looks at results within UNIVERSAL SEARCH.
Put simply, when a SERP pages is broken up with Images and Videos, the tradional heat map is no longer valid. Pictures and Videos grab people’s attention, and their eyeballs will jump to those spots on the page and will then move up and down from there, often times in an “E” like pattern.
And it makes sense that this is so. On a page of mostly text, it only makes sense that a person’s eyes would naturally fix on the thumbnail images. They are different, so they stick out.
I think is another example of why it is so important to consider adding video to websites. If there is ANY chance that your video will show up in a search, then you can only benefit from it.
That being said, I also imagine that over time this advantage will dissipate. Right now, videos on attorney websites are still rare, and properly hosted one rarer still. But in a few years they will be commonplace, and just having a video won’t be much of an advantage.
Still, there is always an advantage at being a “first-mover”, particularly in this age of the Internet.
A few of my clients recently launced video on their websites. I think they are great examples of quality videos for attorney websites.
The Smaller the Niche, the Bigger the Impact
Saturday, March 21st, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
I’ve been writing about Niche Sites a lot lately. I really cannot recommend them enough. I was in a meeting the other day with a prospective client and we were talking about how his website used to do really well when he first launched it in 2003, but now it literally doesn’t crack the top 26 pages of any relevant Google search.
While much of the reason for that is simply that he still has a 2003 website in 2009, that isn’t by any means the only reason. This attorney’s site was a mish-mash of practice areas. Business, Immigration, Contracts, Real Estate – all jammed into just a few pages. There is NO way for a site to look like an authority on any subject when it is constructed in this way.
The next day my colleague Alex Morris, an Internet Marketing Consultant in Phoenix, emailed me about his client, Snyder & Wenner. Snyder & Wenner is a very presitgious Personal Injury law firm in Arizona, and from what Alex showed me they are clearly ahead of the curve with their Internet strategy as well. Besides having a main website, the firm has recently launched sites pertaining to Negligent Security Lawsuits, Medical Malpractice claims, and Elderly Abuse cases.
It was the Negligent Security site that most piqued my interest. I had never heard of such a specialty, but from their site I now understand it. Basically, business owners have a duty to make sure that their property is safe for their customers, and when they fail to do so they can be held liable. It is essentially an offshoot of premises liability law.
Some of their specific examples they mention on the site are:
School & Campus Crime Liability
Aparment Complex Security Negligence
I’m sure this site will do very well for the firm. Congrats to Snyder & Wenner for staying ahead of the competition.
Law Office Of Howard Kornberg
Wednesday, March 18th, 2009 | Attorney Websites, Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Howard Kornberg is an attorney in the Los Angeles metro concentrating on personal injury matters. He has an AV rating from Martindal Hubbell which is the highest rating an attorney can achieve.
Howard has practiced law in California for over 30 years and has an successful track record. He has settled cases for large sums of money and taken other cases to trial for a jury verdict.
I think Howard’s injury website is a great example of a website that brings a little of everything to the table. It has great design, a lot of very specific information & is very easy to navigate. But what really stands out to me is Howard’s use of video. His video is NOT the garish type of video we often see of attorney websites. Instead, it is very tastefully done, has a very high production value, and most importantly gives the prospective client a chance to see what Howard is all about.
There is a lot of confusion about the benefits of video. Personally, I don’t think it helps with visibility all that much, but from a conversion standpoint I think it is incredibly powerful. In many ways, attorneys with videos today are like attorneys who had websites back in 2002. They are much more likely to be contacted by new clients because people searching the web for legal information will fin their sites, watch their videos and feel that they know more about them.
The Value of Niche Topics
Friday, March 13th, 2009 | Attorney Websites, Lawyer Marketing | Comments Off
“Bigger is better”, or so the saying goes. But when it comes to creating content for your site, that really isn’t so. Laser focused “niche” pages actually have a much better chance of delivering you the clients that you want. Likewise, niche sites can do better than big mega-sites if all you are really looking for is one type of client.
I recently met with an attorney (who is not yet a client) who was a Personal Injury attorney in Los Angeles. Although he practiced all types of PI cases, his preferred cases were Bad Faith Insurance cases. While putting together my presentation I looked at the traffic reports for many of our PI and Bad Faith Attorney sites. The general PI sites were bringing in anywhere between 7,500 – 20,000 visits per year, but a small fraction of those visits ever went to those firm’s Bad Faith pages (around 1,000 hits per year tops).
The Bad Faith only sites definitely had less traffic, ranging from 3,700 – 6,800 visits in a year. Yet virtually every visit was from someone looking up Bad Faith Insurance law information. If you are an attorney looking for Bad Faith cases, which would you rather have? More traffic to your site, or less overall traffic but more Bad Faith traffic?
But not every attorney or firm can have multiple websites. Still, the same principals hold true. The more detailed your page subjects, the better. Don’t just have one page for motor vehicle accidents, instead have a page for car accidents, a page for truck accidents & a page for motorcycle accidents. Don’t just have a page for defective drugs, instead have a page for Avandia Injuries, a page for Vioxx injuries, etc. Those individual pages might individually bring in less traffic than one big catchall page, but their combined traffic will most likely be greater and certainly be more qualified.
How to Report Sites Violating Google’s Best Practices
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
I am constantly asked how to report “bad sites” to Google. Personally, its not something I do a lot of as I’m confident that Google will usually root out the Black Hats given enough time. But, for those of you who do want to take action I think Google’s Matt Cutts has some of the best advice.
See Matt Cutts’ post here: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/how-to-report-paid-links/
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