Change Your Law Firm Website From Liability To Asset

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software. Built as a complete platform, MyCase offers features

that seamlessly cover all the daily functions that a modern, small

law firm requires in one place at an affordable price.

About MyCase

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About Gyi Tsakalakis

Helping lawyers put their best foot

forward online because that’s where

clients are looking for them.

@gyitsakalakis

Search Director | AttorneySync

Change Your Law Firm Website From Liability To Asset

Change Your Law Firm Web Presence From Liability To Asset

Poll #1

Do people (not in your family) regularly compliment your website?

Liability to:

Your License?

“Of course I’m the best lawyer. It says so right

on my website.”

Liability to:

Your Reputation?

Liability to:

Your Business?

as·set A useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.

Useful?

Valuable?

Most people (lawyers & web vendors) want to start here:

Logo?

Design?

Your Bio?

SEO?

Platform?

Wireframes?

Colors?

Disclaimers?

Images?

Typography?

Favicon?

Layout? HTML?

Security?

Domain?

Hosting?

Practice Pages?

Where do I start?

Da Coach says: Stop it!

• They choose domains that they like (or that they think are

good for SEO).

• They choose their favorite colors.

• They write attorney bio pages that impress them.

• They proudly build their own websites (or have their

daughter do it).

• They copy their competitors because it must be working

for them.

They build websites for themselves.

Lesson from Google

• Client-focused

• Meaningful to clients

• What’s new

• Why?

• Learn

• Event

• Grow

What do analytics users want?

Your Audience

Build your website for your audience.

• Who are the people you are trying to attract to your website?

• What are they looking for?

• Where are they looking?

• What do they expect to be able to find?

• How can you provide them with something useful or valuable?

• What do you want them to do?

• Why should they do that?

The Relationship Business

Build a website that helps nurture relationships.

• Give.

• More than just an attorney.

• Answer the questions that are not asked.

• Let your personality show.

• Pay it forward.

• Empower your visitors. • Take responsibility for loses.

Clients

• You’re on top of things.

• Availability?

• News that impacts them.

• Ways to get in touch with you.

• What you’ve done for them lately.

• Portal?

What do clients want from your website?

Poll #2

Is your domain easy to remember and clearly distinguishable from other domains?

Don’t choose your domain for robots.

• No hyphens.

• No exact match keyword domains.

• No odd TLDs (.biz, .info, .net)

• No boring domains.

• No [location] [practice area] [lawyer] domains.

• No ridiculously long domains.

You don’t have robots for clients… Yet…

Choose your domain for your audience.

• Easy to type.

• Actually memorable.

• Compelling to your target audience.

• Descriptive of what your site is going to be about.

• Easily linked to.

• Short.

• On a trustworthy TLD.

Make sure your domain is:

Poll #3

Does your website fully load in about 1 second?

Even kids know

• Is your website fast?

• Does it fully load in less than 3 seconds?

• Less than 1 second?

• Have you tested it?

• On your smartphone?

• Google PageSpeed Tools: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

Fast is better than slow.

Does my audience use mobile devices?

• What does your website look like on a smartphone?

• What about on a tablet? Both positions?

• Does it function the same way?

• Can you easily navigate and read your pages?

• Load on the same URLs (not m.yourdomain.com)?

• Does your site respond to its environment?

Don’t take my word for it, just look around.

Responsive Web Design

• iPhone Simulator

• Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites (Google)

• Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design (treehouse)

• WordPress Responsive Theme

Does your website provide an optimal experience on all devices?

Poll #4

Does your website communicate what it’s like to be your client?

What do people expect to be able to find?

http://www.nonbillablehour.com/2013/10/your-clients-still-don.html

What are you trying to get people to do?

Does your website motivate people to:

• Feel like you know what you’re doing?

• Feel like you give a s***?

• Call you?

• Request more information?

• Email you?

• Subscribe to updates?

• Leave comments?

• Share or link to your pages?

Poll #4

Can you attribute new business to your website?

Does my audience use search engines?

• What are they looking for?

• Does your website have that?

• How are they looking for it?

• Do your web pages show up?

• What feedback are you receiving?

• Are they sharing it, talking about it, linking to your stuff?

If so…

Search Engine-Friendly

• Crawl & Index: robots.txt, site: search, XML sitemap, GWMT

• Semantic URLs: /attorneys vs /?p=123

• Title Tag: <title>What this page is about</title>

• Headings: <h1>Use one H1 per page</h1>

• Internal Link Structure

• Structured Data: authorship, review markup, etc

The Basics:

Search Engine-Friendly

• Beginner’s Guide to SEO: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

• SEO Webmaster Tools Help: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291

• What is SEO: http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

More Reading:

https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/

http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Own your web presence.

• Contact information?

• Directions?

• Happy clients?

• Pictures?

• Videos?

• What you know?

What do people find when they search for you?

Structured Data

Rich snippets attract clicks.

About rich snippets and structured data

2013 Search Ranking Factors

• Page Authority

• Linking Root Domains

• Domain Authority

• Total External Links to Page

• Google +1’s

• Facebook Shares

http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

What signals correlate with high rankings?

2013 Local Search Ranking Factors

• Consistent Name, Address, Phone (NAP)

• Physical Address

• Quality of Structured Citations

• Domain Authority

• Verified Local Plus Page

• Reviews

http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

What signals correlate with high local rankings?

Earn it.

Do your pages earn meaningful attention?

http://www.willenslaw.com/report-your-accident/

Content is earning links.

Testing… Testing… Testing…

Constantly test your site’s performance.

http://iphone4simulator.com/ Cross-Browser Testing Tools Live, Web-Based Browser Testing

http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/publishers

How do you know if it’s working?

• Set specific goals that have meaning to your firm.

• Use web analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) to analyze how people find and use your site.

• Set up goals in analytics (i.e. phone calls, form fills, etc).

• Encourage and listen to feedback (both direct and indirect).

• Don’t fall in love with your site, it’s not for you. Make data-informed changes based on what your audience is telling you.

Build, Measure, Learn

Contact Us

Gyi Tsakalakis gt@attorneysync.com (773) 328-2027

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with MyCase for attending.

Use promo code: WEB13

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sales@mycase.com

(Feel free to email me with

questions or to request slides.)

Thank You