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:

Hotel Security Negligence

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.

Tags: attorney videos, Howard Kornberg, website video, websites for attorneys

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.