Bright Local recently conducted a Local SEO Industry Survey (.pdf)

Even for local SEO services, it’s rather astonishing that so many folks are paying so little for SEO services. My guess it that the common story goes something like this:

Client: I’ve been hearing a lot about local SEO, sounds like something I should be doing. I think I’ll call up a couple local SEO agencies and get some quotes.

Local SEO: Yeah, we offer local SEO services. We’ve got a bunch of different packages. What’s your monthly budget?

Client: Gosh, I don’t know. How much do you think I should spend.

Local SEO: Well, here’s how local search engines work. Here are a bunch of different things we could do to help your business appear in local search results. If you wanted us to do all this “stuff” you’d probably be looking at a couple thousand dollars per month.

Client: WTF? Really? I don’t have that kind of money to spend. What can you do for a couple hundred dollars per month?

Local SEO: Well, we can claim a bunch of profiles. Make sure your name, address, phone information is consistent across a bunch of the local data providers. Maybe even do some local or hyper-local link building.

Client: Whatever that means. I’ll take it.

At the risk of this post coming across as a transparent shill for higher local SEO budgets, folks need to understand some of the problems with low-budget SEO.

We’ve talked about cheap SEO pricing before. But let’s not limit our discussion to the uber-scammy ranking guarantees. Even “best practice” low-budget SEO can be problematic.

So, what’s the problem?

Well, there are a bunch. But let’s focus on a couple of the more easy to understand. First, head over to the Local Search Ranking Factors. I count 119 (I counted fast so if I’m wrong, I apologize).

And yes, claiming, completing, optimizing and making business information consistent are certainly important factors. And there’s no question that acquiring a quantity of quality local and hyper-local links pointing to your local business’s website is important too.

But ask yourself: What can be done for a couple of hundred dollars per month?

Sure, you might think you can outsource this kind of work to people in countries with very low wages. Of course, you’ll have to trust them with passwords and what not. And hopefully they can understand some of the nuances of specific to different profiles. So maybe you find someone who will work for super cheap and you provide them with a very specific checklist for claiming profiles.

But again, profile claiming only comprises a very small part of an effective local search marketing strategy.

How about building the strategy itself? Can this cheap laborer handle that? Will you? Do you even know what to do? Maybe you do.

So, you know that you should be attracting local links. You know that you should identify local bloggers and find ways to develop content that they will find valuable for their readers. Who’s going to create that content? You? Do you know how? Do you have the time?

Or you’re going to outsource the content? To the same person who’s working for a couple bucks per hour? Do they speak English? Do they write English? Well? In a way that represents your business the way you want it represented? Good luck.

These are the challenges of small budget local SEO campaigns. The client wants the world but doesn’t want to pay for it. The SEO wants the business, but can’t deliver what they really need in order to demonstrate return on the client’s investment. And round and round they go.

Until, the client looks up one day and thinks, “what the heck is this couple hundred dollars per month doing for my bottom line?” And the SEO says, “We’re doing the best we can with your budget.”

But since there’s no demonstrable ROI, the client concludes that this SEO stuff is largely snake oil, and they quit. And they tell their friends about how they got robbed by their SEO. And round and round they go.

Who’s to blame? Frankly, both of them. Most clients don’t get this stuff. So, they shouldn’t buy it. At least not until they have some understanding of how it works and what are realistic expectations for different campaigns.

Most SEOs need to work harder to help clients set realistic expectations. I’m not saying it’s impossible to generate ROI with a couple hundred dollar per month budget. You certainly can. But you should layout your plan, goals, benchmarks, expectations with your client in advance. But that’s too hard, so you probably don’t.

I attended Avvo’s Lawyernomics 2013. So, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts about the conference here. You should know that I contribute to the Lawyernomics Blog and that Avvo gave me a free ticket to the conference. You should also know that from time to time, Avvo refers lawyers interested in web marketing my way. Does that mean that my opinion on their conference is bought? Ha, hardly. But I leave it to you to assess the credibility of my review.

Price

One of the first things folks want to know about conferences is how much they cost. In 2013, a ticket to Lawyernomics cost $499 plus Ticket Leap service charge. That’s pretty good for comparable legal technology conferences. The standard conference rate for ABA Techshow was $850 for early birds and $1,050 after the early bird deadline. A Master Pass to LegalTech was $1,095 (although it looks like they’re raising rates to $1,295).

Of course, whether or not these are “good prices” depends on the quality of the conference.

Speakers

One of the major factors that goes into a conference’s quality is the speaker line-up. You can learn more about each of the speakers here. I’ve added one takeaway from each presentation below:

The LexBlog Network (LXBN TV) also covered the conference and provides speaker interviews on their YouTube channel. You can also download each of the presentations from the Lawyernomics Conference App. However, I did want to highlight one of the most important points to come out of the conference. It’s the confusion between outbound and inbound marketing. Avvo Founder & CEO Mark Britton explains here:

To me, this is one of the main things that separates Lawyernomics from other business of law conferences.

Most conferences are heavily vendor-driven. Therefore, the substance of the discussions tends to bend toward selling. While there’s no question that some of the speakers were at Lawyernomics to build awareness for their companies and offerings (i.e. Twitter, Yelp, Avvo, etc), the presentations were filled with practical information. In other words, the speakers themselves were practicing inbound marketing.

And this theme of inbound marketing was carried throughout the conference. The majority of the presentations demonstrated to the attendees how lawyers can put inbound marketing to work to grow their practices. However, perhaps no one was quite as clear as Lawyerist’s Sam Glover. Again, disclosure, I write for Lawyerist and from time to time Lawyerist sends business my way.

If you haven’t read Sam’s, “Why Your Blog Sucks (and What To Do About It)“, head over there now. While done via his uniquely snarky tone, Sam’s presentation strikes at the heart of what inbound marketing is all about (although I’m sure he wouldn’t describe it as marketing at all).

As an SEO, I was particularly interested in listening to and meeting Nifty Marketing’s Mike Ramsay. Mike knows his stuff and I was really impressed with the quality and accuracy of the information from his presentation. I speak with lawyers almost every day about the role the internet can play in a firm’s business development. I know how difficult it can be to simplify these topics in a way that’s both digestible and understandable for lawyers who don’t have experience with this stuff. Mike did an outstanding job. You should hire him.

Attendees

So, who goes to Lawyernomics? It seemed to me that the attendee demographics and psychographics were all over the map. They were crusty veteran lawyers and baby lawyers. Some were sophisticated marketers who understood some of the more advanced aspects to measuring, monitoring and tracking marketing campaigns. Others were clearly just getting familiar with many of these concepts.

Some were pretty hardcore spammers that I recognized from competitive intelligence analysis that I’ve done for my own clients. Others stuck with the truly white hat organic inbound marketing practices that you’d expect from communities like SEOmoz.

There were plaintiff’s attorneys, criminal defense attorneys and tax attorneys.

Based on questions posed to the speakers, as well as, conversations that I had, I would say the average marketing knowledge of the attendees was rather basic. However, it was probably better than the average at other conferences, bar events, CLEs, etc. The bottom line is that lawyers still have a long way to go. But conferences like Lawyernomics are doing an outstanding job of helping them understanding the more technical and nuanced aspects to marketing a law firm in the digital age.

Whether you’re just starting to get a handle on web marketing and technology as they relate to the business or law, or you’ve been putting the web to work for your law firm for years, I’m pretty confident that you’ll pick-up some new information at Lawyernomics. But you should also go to meet the people. To me, some of the most valuable time at Lawyernomics occurred outside the speaker’s and exhibitor’s rooms. It happened in the conversations at lunch. It happened during the cocktail hours. Lawyers helping other lawyers understand what has worked and hasn’t worked for them. The building, nurturing and solidifying of professional relationships.

Sponsors

The exhibitor hall (room) was more intimate than you’d find at other legal marketing technology conferences. There were some familiar faces and some companies I hadn’t yet heard of:

One thing that did trouble me was some degree of contradiction between what was being said by certain speakers and what was being sold by some exhibitors. I imagine that it might have caused a bit of confusion to hear one thing being preached by the speakers and to hear a somewhat contradictory explanation by a sponsor. So goes the nature of conference sponsorship I suppose.

Our Hosts

In addition to the quality of the conference material, I think the major thing that separated Lawyernomics from other conferences was the team at Avvo. Their folks stood on the front lines answering many questions. And not just questions about Avvo. They were answering substantive questions about putting various tools and strategies to work. They weren’t just selling advertising. They weren’t just selling Avvo Ignite. In fact, from my vantage point, it seemed that they were spending the overwhelming majority of their time answering questions that weren’t really related to Avvo at all.

From what I saw, they were extremely accessible. They were patient. And if they didn’t have an answer, they helped the lawyer who had the question find someone at the conference who did have an answer.

But don’t take my word for it. Ask around. Talk to attendees. Download presentations. Watch the interviews on LXBN. Feel free to comment below.

On Saturday morning, while browsing the fire hose, I had the good fortune of stumbling across this:

I’m practicing random acts of internet kindness,helped someone I didn’t even know on a hangout. Anyone got a question?

— wilreynolds (@wilreynolds) April 20, 2013

To which I responded:

@wilreynolds have you written an operations manual for @seerinteractive? Would you be willing to share it (or parts of it)?

— Gyi Tsakalakis (@gyitsakalakis) April 20, 2013

Which, after some more tweeting, ultimately led to a Google Hangout with Wil.

I had some operations questions and wondered how Wil was dealing with these issues at Seer. The hangout lasted only maybe 20 minutes. But in that time, I got a fresh perspective from another business owner who has faced similar challenges. And that was priceless.

Wil helped validate some conclusions that I had already drawn.

He gave me at least two new concrete ideas that I hadn’t thought of before.

It also inspired me to pay-it-forward.

That’s being helpful. That’s #RCS. That’s eating your own dog food.

So, that’s it. Just wanted to say thanks.

Some people just don’t know it yet. So here’s my advice: learn about how the internet works.

Not you salty Luddite curmudgeon. But maybe your kids? Or are you teaching them that the internet is largely a waste of time? A passing fad?

Here’s what you (they) should do to get started.

Read the Wikipedia entry for the internet. This certainly isn’t the best, most comprehensive explanation of how the internet works, but it’s a decent place to start.

It lays out a basic history and some of the fundamental technologies upon which the internet is built. A lot of this might go right over your head, but that’s ok. You don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car. And you don’t have to be Sir Tim to wrap your head around the basics of how the internet works.

Next up, search engines. Today, that really means Google (honorable mention: bing & yahoo). To learn about how Google works, start here. Spend a lot of time here.

You might have no interest in search engines. You might think SEO equals spam. You might not see how the internet has any bearing on your personal or professional life at all. This post is lost on you. So share it with your kids. Thank me later.

Moving on, the social web. For better and worse, we’re connected. And the line between the online and offline worlds is only going to continue to blur.

I know, you hate this. What about privacy? What about the noise? Yes, these are huge concerns. But you can’t begin to understand and respond to these concerns without knowing how this stuff works. Today, you need to learn about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook & Google Plus.

For those of you who glossed over those links without clicking, they aren’t links to the sign-up pages. They’re links to the respective help sections. I know you are already a Twitter ninja and send auto-tweets of your blog posts 5 times per day. Do yourself a favor and read the help documentation. Read the “how to use blank for business” sections.

Finally, web development. Admittedly, not all of you are going to become hardcore web devs. But you need to know some basics. Forget Spanish, forget Chinese, code should be your second language. Read this. Bookmark this. Get started here, here and here.

These are the new bricks and mortar. The internet is the new Town Hall. It’s the new public square. It’s the new marketplace.

Do you need these tools to survive? Maybe, maybe not. Can a writer survive with a quill and papyrus? Sure. Can a carpenter build with a hammer, nails and a saw. Of course. Can a shop owner keep the books with an abacus? Okay, perhaps that one’s a bit of a stretch. You should get it by now.

Over at RLHB, my friend Kevin O’Keefe writes that Traffic is not the measure of a law blog’s influence.

I have a lot of respect for Kevin. He’s taught a lot of lawyers how to blog, and more importantly, how to blog better. But, to me, his post is a little too dismissive of traffic.

There’s no doubt that a lot of lawyers have the wrong idea about blogging. These folks see blogging like commercial fishing. They think that blog posts are like a big fishing net. They correlate the number of posts that they can get indexed in Google with the size of their net. So they churn out tons of really crappy posts. In fact, calling them “posts” is really a misnomer. They’re really just words on a page. Sometimes full sentences, sometimes not.

They think traffic is the holy grail of successful blogging. Even worse, some of them think rankings are the holy grail. Of course, neither of these, by themselves, has really anything to do with influence, building trust or developing relationships.

My guess is that Kevin talks with these types a lot. They’re constantly looking for something to measure. They want to see hockey stick traffic growth. They spot-check their rankings. They’re looking for ways to calculate the return on their blogging investment.

And Kevin tries to tell them:

Knowing that blogging is about engaging others, the key to growing influence is not traffic, it’s about engaging the right people. Traffic, and even fame, may come from engagement. But they are by-products of engagement, not the primary goal.

Want to increase the influence of your blog and your influence as a lawyer through blogging? Listen to what thought leaders and influencers are saying online. Engage reporters, leading bloggers, and association leaders through your blog by referencing what they are saying and providing your insight and commentary as a follow on. You’ll be seen by these folks and many will begin to follow you — so long as you’re sincere in bringing value to the conversation and not looking to garner attention.

And I agree. If you want something to measure, try these.

So, there’s no argument from me that your purpose for blogging should not be traffic. However, there’s simply no denying that traffic is a metric. It’s just that you should keep traffic generated from blogging in perspective.

Let’s look at this another way.

I used to coach football. And I think most of us would agree that strength and speed matter in football. So, we would encourage players to hit the weight room and attend sprint training sessions. And we’d measure things like bench press and 40-yard dash times. And it should come as no surprise that players who had better scores in these areas, tended to perform better on the football field. At least sometimes.

But we all know that football games aren’t won and lost by bench press numbers and 40-yard dash times. And in fact, there are numerous examples of slower, weaker players being extremely successful on the field. But that doesn’t mean that players shouldn’t work to get stronger and faster. It’s just that getting stronger and faster doesn’t necessarily mean success.

And it’s similarly true for blogging and traffic. You shouldn’t blog solely to get more traffic. And you shouldn’t stop blogging if you aren’t getting more traffic. However, if one of your purposes for blogging is to “engage the right people,” then even traffic has some meaning.

Yes, Traffic. But meaningful traffic.

So, you should measure traffic. But more importantly, you should measure meaningful traffic. Lawyers send me “traffic reports” to analyze all of the time. They’re usually top-level visitor traffic from all sources reports. The problem is that measuring traffic this way is really meaningless.

How much meaning does traffic from Uzbekistan have to you? How valuable is search traffic that comes from queries totally unrelated to you and topics related to your practice?

Not very.

Measuring your top-line overall traffic isn’t going to tell you much. But what about traffic from people who are subscribed to receive your posts via email or rss reader? What about search traffic for searches on you name? Or the name of your blog? Or “your name’s blog?” These are people that are looking for you. And this traffic can be a decent indicator of how your posts are resonating with people.

What about referral traffic? If you’re leaving thoughtful comments on other blogs, you shouldn’t be surprised to see people clicking-through from those other blogs to read more about you. If your posts are being well-received, you shouldn’t be surprised that others are citing and linking to them. Which means that some of the visitors to those sites will click-through to your blog, increasing referral traffic.

Beyond Traffic

I’ve already given you some ideas for other blog metrics that you might want to measure, so I won’t repeat those here. However, I encourage you to shift your concept of effective blogging.

Instead of hyper-focusing on how many hits you’re getting, your rankings, how many keywords to use in post titles, how long your posts should be and how often you should be posting, hyper-focus on writing to motivate your readers to take action.

Maybe you want to motivate them to share your posts. Maybe you want to motivate them to cite your posts. Maybe you want to motivate them sign-up to receive more posts from you.

Provide ways for your readers to give you feedback. Maybe it’s through comments. Maybe it’s through email. Maybe it’s through social media.

Listen to what your readers are telling you. Let that help guide your writing.

Today’s anti- #RCS. twitter.com/gyitsakalakis/…

— Gyi Tsakalakis (@gyitsakalakis) March 20, 2013

As the saying goes, “the cobbler’s children have no shoes.”

And so, we often don’t test and update our site as much as we should. But we finally got around to it. At least parts of it.

One area that was in serious need of update was our SEO for law firms service page.

SEO still hasn’t gone entirely mainstream. Sure, it gets the occasional pop culture nod:

Great.

Explaining SEO to lawyers can be a challenge. And we’re constantly trying new approaches. Our most recent update tries to communicate a couple of essential points.

First, that there’s a difference between paid search advertising and organic search engine optimization. If you’re in the search industry, you might think it’s silly that we still have to explain this. But a lot people still don’t know there’s a difference.

Second, we wanted to arm lawyers with some questions they can ask about SEO and of SEOs. That’s why I created my law firm seo questions slides:

Nothing really revolutionary here. Experienced SEOs will recognize many of these questions from Google’s Webmaster Help, SEOmoz and elsewhere. Where applicable, I’ve tried to adapt them to marketing a law practice online.

Next, we provide some concrete examples. We include a rich video snippet example and some actual organic search traffic and keyword data from Google Analytics.

After that, we attempt to explain the distinction between on-page and off-page optimizations. We reference SEOmoz’s perfectly optimized page (still one of the most helpful pages about on-page optimization, in my humble opinion).

Finally, we get into the value of links and talk a bit about Webmaster Guidelines.

I don’t contend that it’s the very best page on SEO on the web, but I do think it’s helpful to our audience, which is comprised mostly of lawyers and legal marketing types.

In any event, I think it’s a big upgrade from the page it’s replacing.

What do you think? Helpful? What would you change, remove or add?

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries shares one of his favorite questions to ask startups:

Are you making your product better? How do you know?

If you haven’t read it, even if you’re not part of a startup, I recommend that you do.

You see, if you’re starting your own law firm, you’re a startup. And even if you’re at an established firm, you can benefit from validated learning.

As Ries mentions, when confronted with these questions, people always say yes, of course, they’re making their product or service better. They point to recent changes that they’ve made and provide anecdotal evidence that the changes are “positive” because clients and customers seem to like them.

I leave it to Ries to convince you that you need to switch to innovation accounting. However, I encourage you to look at yourself with a very critical eye. What are you doing to make your service better? And what systems do you have in place to validate your hunch that the changes you are making are for the better?

Yesterday, at Lawyerist, Josh discussed the potential problems that call tracking numbers can have for local search visibility. Which prompted this reply from static:

Josh, have you given any serious thought to why you want to be higher on Google than another lawyer? While the idea of getting low-rent, volume clients might seem attractive at the beginning, desperation stage of a new practice, it isn’t necessarily the foundation of a good law practice.

I recall one old timer who was told by a marketer than he had completely blown his presence on local listings, to which the old timer replied he would rather put his needle through his eye than get the type of calls/clients one gets from being on local listing sites. Once you become known as high volume, low price lawyers, it can bery hard to change your reputation.

Followed by this reply from Rick:

I tend to disagree, a bit. (Not with the article, but subsequent comments). Leo references using the old way, which I presume to be the standard of letting your rep outweigh your advertising. I have updated/claimed my profile all over, and would love to be p.1 on Google (I am on some searches). Yes, some calls are tedious, and I agree that I am more surprised when the client shows up, admittedly, but as a younger lawyer it helps to have your name out there. And it’s the best way outside of reputation (which takes time) to get going. More calls do not mean bargain lawyer. I just ensure that me and my staff is up front on fees, and if a client wants advice I ensure they can afford what is imminent. Yes, it’s more calls, and probably a little free advice via phone, but it has helped me refer cases (to lawyers who may not charge as much, or other areas of law, etc) and becomes more common.
I’m regard to the post, one way around this is to have a hard line and supplement with Google Voice. I have a landline in my office, but use GV as my “office cell” for clients. It helps my clients to be able to contact me, and gives me the opportunity to turn it off if I want personal time. Just a thought.

So who’s right? Both are, in some respects.

Static is right in that lawyers should be selective in the clients they take on. And that the web is likely to generate many inquiries, many of which won’t be the kind of clients that you want. Rick is right that, for younger lawyers, advertising can be a more effective short-term way to make the phone ring.

I would suspect that most lawyers would prefer the static approach to building one’s reputation. Without support staff, taking intakes can be, as Rick suggests, tedious. On the other hand, developing a professional web presence does not necessarily equate to a high-volume, low-rent practice. You don’t have to take on every client that contacts you via internet or elsewhere.

Prefer the “do good work and clients will come approach?” Do it. No one is arguing that this shouldn’t be the cornerstone of your practice. But to entirely dismiss the internet as a source of low-rent potential clients is simply nonsense. I know plenty of lawyers that love it when their competitors spread the “no legal internet marketing” propaganda. Help their competitive advantage.

Of course, investing time and money in the internet for business development is isn’t right for everyone. But to summarily dismiss it? That’s just as much a mistake as blindly shelling out big dollars on internet marketing to “make it rain.”

I know, I know. You want to see where you rank in Google.

As I’ve tried to tell you in the past, there are no such thing as ranking reports.

Yet you persist in knowing how you’re ranking for the handful of terms that you think people are using to search for you. So, you type these queries into Google and began to parse the results.

Perhaps you’re using some rank-checking tool to compare prior positions. Hopefully, you’re not doing it by hand.

Maybe you notice that your rankings have changed. If they’ve gone up, you shout, “hooray!”

If they’ve gone down, you pound your desk. Perhaps you call your SEO consultant to chew them out.

But seriously, you’re really missing the point.

First, search results fluctuate every single day (and most likely way more frequently than that).

Second, the terms that you’re spot-checking may actually have little to nothing to do with attracting new business.

Third, these head terms comprise a very small fraction of the relevant search traffic that can actually drive people to your site that might actually hire you.

Fourth, well there are a bunch of other reasons, but if I haven’t convinced you with the first three, it’s doubtful that I’m going to persuade you with these others.

If you want to spot-check something, track your traffic (your organic search traffic not your overall visitor numbers), inquiries and new cases generated from the web.