Speakeasy Authority Marketing

You probably upgrade your office at least every two years (or sooner if your law practice is doing well). Your online presence and your law firm's website are no different. When was the last time you updated your website? Is your website mobile friendly? Is it user friendly? Is your website easy to navigate? Is the content on your site easy to read? In this day and age technology changes so rapidly, newer and better things come up that can significantly improve your online presence, build your reputation and help you grow your law practice.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_169-Would_You_Hire_An_Attorney_Who_Is_A_Dinosaur.mp3

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I want you to imagine today that you have a legal problem and you talk to a number of attorneys. And there is one that you really like and you are thinking of hiring but they admit to you "I haven't practiced this area of law in a couple of years so I am not really up-to-date on latest and greatest and the new case law and the new decisions". You would think "what?" And you would never hire that person for fear that they would do a terrible job for you. Well, guess what? Even though you don't want to worry about it and it seems like a tacky, nerdy thing, it is important to look at your website and your online presence and make sure that you are up to speed on what's going on. All the Google updates, all the latest to greatest because if you are not and for instance, your site isn't mobile friendly, or Google's new pronouncement of pop-ups having to be modified, the live chat having to be modified taking affect this coming January, if you weren't aware of these things and you didn't get them handled and updated, that's a perception that you are giving to potential clients that you are not up to speed, that you are behind the times and that you are not the one that should be hired. And you may not even know that you're doing this. So there are definitely a bunch of things that you need to pay attention to. I am going to list a few of them quickly now. There are more but just a few quick ones. One, when was the last time your website was recoded using the latest coding, either WordPress or Microsoft or any of the latest coding methods? If it's been a few years, you should look at having your website reprogrammed, so it's the latest and greatest. Is your website mobile friendly, have you looked at it personally on a Smartphone in landscape mode and in vertical mode, have you looked at it on an iPad or a tablet and does it look right to you, are the elements out of order, are things cut-off, is it easier to read, does the website adapt to all these mobile platforms, have you personally looked at it because if you haven't, you may be surprised at what you see and you may be unhappy with what you see.

Another thing; when was the last time you Googled yourself? When was the last time you put in "John Smith, Florida Lawyer" if that's what you're doing, that's what your name is? What comes up? Do you have rip-off report complaints? Do you have a presence with no reviews in Google, or do you have videos, do you have reviews, do you have tons of listings under your name, does your website even come up when you Google yourself? So very important. You got to look at that too. On your website, go to your own website, navigate for a minute or two. Are there pop-ups or live chat that can be annoying or is that a useful to you? Can you find your way around your own website very easily? If you pretend in your mind that you have legal questions about your practice areas, are the answers readily apparent or do you have to go find them where are they located? Also very important. Another thing is look at you on website and use — and do it from a Smartphone. Let's say you look at your website and you are pretending, "Okay, I like this attorney; I want to contact them". How do you do it? Is your contact form readily accessible, do they have to fish for it, do you have a Contact Us page, how about your phone number, is it listed at the top right of every page of your website or is it hidden? How about when you touch the phone number on your website, is it a vanity number that you have to memorize, convert mentally to digits and type in or is it a number that as soon as you touch it, it loads up in your dial screen and you are ready to call that person? Next step. Call your own office and do a quick mystery shop of your own office. Ask for yourself, see how the secretary responds, is he or she loud or are they mumbling? Do they say, "Please hold", or do they say, "I'm sorry, him or her is not in. You'll have to call back later"? Do they push you away or are they welcoming and friendly and trying to help you out? So these are at least some of the things that you should be doing to make sure you are up to speed for 2016, 2017, you are not behind the times and you are not outdating and dating yourself and you're giving that perception to clients that you don't know what you're doing and you should not be hired because it could be happening and it could be significantly affecting your results and your ability to get clients.

Now, if you want this type of diagnosis, even more in depth for your online web presence not just your website, we'd be glad to do that for you for free. Just ask for a report, ask for an online presence report and we'll evaluate you in 10 different ways, all the ways that we know of to let you know of your online presence is optimized or not and give you specifics, what's lacking, what's a fix and what to do, not just generalities. So if you want that, email [email protected], or call 888-225-8594. Thank you.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_169-Would_You_Hire_An_Attorney_Who_Is_A_Dinosaur.mp3

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Google just announced that websites with "intrusive" mobile popups will be punished and they'll lower the rankings of these websites starting from January 2017. Listen to the audio below to learn about the new update and how you can continue to use live chat pop ups on your website.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_168-Google_2017_Updates_About_Pop_Ups_And_Live_Chat.mp3

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Today, I want to talk to you about an important issue that has recently popped up, actually pun intended. Google just released a statement talking about pop-ups on websites. So this includes live chat, forms that you have to fill in and all of that stuff. Their motivation is that they say mobile is now the predominant force in how people view the web. Most emails are opened up on mobile devices, most website visits now are mobile, not laptop, not desktop. So I talked about this before, a very, very important issue, and here we have Google talking about it. They talked about it at April 21st last year. They want the websites to be mobile friendly or else, meaning they would penalize your ranking. Now, just about a week ago, they came out and they said that you have to change and watch out how you are doing pop-ups on your website, live chat, that kind of thing, otherwise we're going to penalize you as well. They are giving everyone a grace period. It's not till January but January will come very quickly. So what do you do? Does this mean you can't have a pop-up? No.

We looked at Google's guidelines specifically because we have live chat on a lot of our clients' sites and live chat gets leads. And some of them, there will be pop-ups or forms that kind of thing. So what Google suggests to do is look at your website on mobile, on vertical format on a mobile device and look how the live chat box pops up if you have it, look at any other pop ups you have, make sure that they don't cover too much of the screen. Well, here is where it gets kind of dicey. So I would say less than half is probably safe according to their guidelines. Too much is the whole thing. Half, I bet, anything that's most of the screen, which is more than half, you're going to get in trouble. So do less than half. So you are going to have to have your live chat modified if you have it; again, if you have a form, same thing. It can't take up the whole screen. The reason it's saying is basically the reason they say for everything is they are obsessively focused on their users' experience. Do people have a good time using Google, do they get the result they want right away, or do they get irrelevant garbage. And when they go to the website, they'll show up in Google, do those sites help them or do they have articles stuffed full of keywords like "Los Angeles Injury Lawyer", "Injury Lawyer Los Angeles", do they have pop-ups that cover the screen that they can't click off of or get rid of or forms and all of that stuff. Another thing too is do the pop-ups and the forms come up immediately as soon as you get to the site or do they come up after a delay, 30 seconds or a minute. So we have that delay built-in but it's something you got to look at is on mobile, are your pop-ups and everything delayed or they're coming up immediately. Why, why is that bad? Because the person doesn't have a chance to look at your site. It's like someone coming into your store and you jump in front of them and say, "Hey, buy this or sign up for this right now", and they haven't even seen the store, they didn't even know if they want to buy or not. So same thing with your website visitors. They got to get there, look around just a little bit and decide good site, bad site, stay or leave, then you could put a pop-up in front of them.

Well, some people think, and I am going to go into this briefly, that pop-ups are annoying. They can be but one thing is your experience is not necessarily your potential client's experience. You are not your potential client, please remember that, especially because you have been an attorney for X number of years and you have expert training, there is no emotion tide into what you do on any one particular case usually, so even if you are defending someone for murder, you have far less emotion in it than your client and it's actually a good practice not to be emotional because then you get sucked in and make [inaudible – 0:04:21.7] decisions and you know the deal. So when looking at your site and looking at all the stuff, look at it the same way as you are as an attorney, look at it with a dispassionate eye, don't get caught up in "Well, I like this", "Well, I think that people would like that, I think this color is pretty", or, "I like that, I don't like how this — what you think and what you like – a), I got to break it to you – doesn't matter. Even what I think and I like doesn't matter. I have more of an educated view on it, sure, but that doesn't mean if I like something that it's going to get people to call more often or click more often or engage. So we do a lot of testing. You should do the same. Again, don't just go with I like and I want. Same thing with pop-ups. Don't just assume, "Oh, this annoys me so they are no good". Our testing and our actual empirical data show that live chat, for instance, will help get you 5 to 10 per cent more leads. That'll help, that's why I want to put it on your site. Other things hurt but this is just again databased analysis instead of "I like, I want, I feel, I think" analysis which really serves nobody.

So hopefully this helps you. If you need any help in getting ready for the January update, if your website is not yet mobile-friendly, you got to get on that. But if you are worried about what's going to happen come January, the time to act is now, not the last second before Google penalizes you. So to take action now, call 888-225-8594, or email [email protected].

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_168-Google_2017_Updates_About_Pop_Ups_And_Live_Chat.mp3

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Just like a fortune teller, hunched over their crystal ball, attorneys get reports from SEO companies that scare them with generic statements, such as: "Your website is not optimized for the right keywords", or "You are not showing up in the search engines properly", or "Your law firm's listing has serious errors in these 84 directories". When you look deeper, you see most of these reports are shams, full of generic statements, like "I can sense you have had trouble in your life, but you overcame it", or "You tend to react harshly to bad news, but at times you keep your emotions in check and react with professionalism and restraint". Seriously? Who DOESN'T fit these statements? Today's podcast discusses just how complicated it is to successfully market your law practice in 2016 and beyond.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_167-Generic_Statement_Specific_Aswers_For_Lawyers.mp3

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We had a really interesting call today with one of my clients that I want to tell you about. He says I got this report from a SEO company and they said my site is not localized for the right keywords. It's more statewide so we need to localize it for the right keywords. I said okay, what does that mean? He said I'm asking you, you are the expert. I said Alright. The reason why I say that is a very nebular statement and we get tons of people sending reports to our guys and gals and everybody making these gypsy fortune teller type statements over the crystal ball. Your site is not set properly for this set or the other.

Let's dissect what they just said. Your site is not geared towards local keywords, it's geared towards national. I said take out your phone, I said put in Starbucks. okay what do you see? He said I see Starbucks listings. I go okay, what do you notice about them? They are in distant order to you right? He said Yeah. First one is 0.8 miles away on ABC road, second one is 1.4 miles away on XYZ avenue. I said exactly. So by using Google we can tell what Google does and we can figure out why. So based on where you are, Google knows your location and knows where you are searching from your phone.

Most people search nowadays from phones. It knows that, first of all. Other people that search for lawyers, it knows where they are searching from too. I said now do the same search again but first turn off the location settings from your phone. Okay, he does it, does the search. He says the phone is asking me to turn on my location. I say exactly because Google wants to know where you are searching from. If you don't let it know which most people don't do, they don't leave the location on, it's going to ask you. It's the same thing as using a laptop or tablet or Smartphone.

Google knows where you are searching from. I say let's try it again. Keep location settings on but log out of your email account. He does it and then he searches and he's like okay, Google's prompting me to log in. I say exactly. Because Google wants you to be logged in so it knows your search history and it knows your location because it is going to customize what you see based on that. Again, it looks at your location. So that lady is right. That fortune teller is right. Google is highly into local.

But here is how it actually works. The address on your website is what Google looks at. It says that's where you are located because you told it that's where you are located. So if I have my Smartphone and I'm sitting looking at my computer or I'm doing my research, where am I in relation to your office address? am I down the street? Am I 10 miles away? Am I 15 miles away? Just like that Starbucks search, Google is going to show me all your searchers' local results. Why? Because think about it. If I want a Starbucks, I'm not going to drive 30 miles away. I want Starbucks now. I want it a half mile away. I would love it if it was 50 feet away.

That's how people search and Google will show them the stuff that is physically closest to them. So if you think about your law office now, you will naturally show up most strongly in Google, the closer someone is that searches to your location. So one way to expand your presence and get more business is to have more locations. I'm not talking about a full fledged office, I'm talking about an executive suite, a regent suite, a by appointment only conference room that you can rent from a friend or a fellow business owner etc. Google will send a post card to that address with a pin and if you verify that, now you have a new address and you put a second address on your website.

Now what does Google see? Google sees you are in City A and it sees you are in City B. So now you've got two bites of the apple. Two places where people can see where you are and Google can see it and it can localize information for them. So we continued on and he said they said something about keywords and I said let's talk about that. If I come to a page on your site and you are in let's say Los Angeles, let's say you are a divorce lawyer. I come to your site and I see "Facing Divorce in Los Angeles? A Los Angeles Divorce Lawyer Can Help You With Your Los Angeles Divorce Case. Call A Los Angeles Divorce Attorney Now.

I said how does that read to you? He said that sounds like crap. I said exactly. That's what a lot of people do because they think, Local, local, local or keyword, keyword, keyword. That's not how Google wants things to look because as a searcher it looks like garbage and you would leave that page. As a human being, if you need legal help, you would much rather go to a page that does identify Los Angeles divorce attorney, sure but then it immediately goes into how you can help and why you are different and all this other stuff. It doesn't want to see a page chalk filled with keywords stuffed in there.

That's not a good solution. So I go what else? Where are you getting clients from? He says I really want to get clients from this one city. I said alright office address is why you are not getting any clients from there. It's about 17 miles away. You are really not going to have much power there. We can try to stuff your site with keywords and all that but it's really not going to have a good effect. It's trying to force Google to do what you want instead of you doing what Google wants and it rewarding you. Google is far bigger and uglier and more capitalized and meaner than you. If you mess with it, it's going to flick you like a gnat off it's back and you will smash and be dead.

This happens to websites, they get de-indexed and get lost. Then he says what else can we do. So we keep going into this conversation, I won't go on forever but I'm going to tell you a few more things. I said alright. Let's look at your top 10 pages that people look at when they hit your website. he said what do you mean? I said when someone Googles something they don't always go to your homepage. They go to different pages of your site. He said oh really. let's go look at the top 10 pages.

One of them will always be the homepage. Yes it is true. he said, go. I see a lot of people go into my attorney bio page. I see a lot of people go into my divorce page, I see a lot of people go into my child support page. Those are crap cases. I said that's fine. You don't want to deal with child support. You'd rather deal with divorce. You think that's more relevant. But now at least we know. These 10 pages, they comprise 85% of all the people visiting your website. I said that's called the 80/20 rule.

When we are going to work on your website, what should we work on? The top 10 pages. Of the Top 10 pages there are a few here that we should work on amongst others and a couple that are not helping you. Maybe we can kill off those pages or redirect those pages. On the pages that are good, what can we do to improve them. Can we add a video to those pages? Can we write more about that subject? Can we provide links to related articles on those pages? Are there any clutter on those pages? are they hard to understand? Are there any tables we can include? Calculations or numbers?

How do we flush out those pages to make it really good and really compelling? What is the best bang for your buck? So we get into that. Then he goes, Oh. I've heard about bounce rate. My site has a high bounce rate. I said what is high? he said I don't know it's 75%. I said actually bounce rate is the culmination of all the pages in your site. Some have low, some have high. How long do people spend on a page? anyway, I'm getting into the weeds here but at the end of the conversation he said to me, My God. This is really complicated stuff. I said yeah you are right.

You see how many different ways there are to approach this and what goes on beneath the hood. I said that's why when people tell you stuff like a fortune teller saying I sense a disturbance in your site or I sense that you have had good business and bad business or I sense that the keywords are not optimized, take it for what it is. A meaningless statement backed up by nothing without any deep facts. I hope this helps you, I hope this hasn't bored you but it is important for you to know that there is a lot going on in your marketing, in your website and no you can't pay attention to all of it but yes you can work with someone that knows enough of it to even pay attention to all of it.

If things aren't working out for you there are people out there who do know what is going on and how to diagnose and not just give you boiler plate generic aphorisms. So that's what I would seek. If you are having a problem and you need help diagnosing it, we are one of the companies out there that can help you to do that. So if you want this help for your website and your business call me (888) 225-8594 or email [email protected]. Please make sure you subscribe to this podcast and review it. It helps us get in front of more attorneys just like you. Than You.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_167-Generic_Statement_Specific_Aswers_For_Lawyers.mp3

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Leads are the Life Blood of your law practice and of course, you want to get a lot of them. But you have to be sure your marketing is producing the right kind of leads, getting more (low level) clients isn't (always) better.

So you need to think through and ask yourself, "Who is my ideal client?" "Where they are?" and "How can I get them?"

When you've thought through the kind of leads you want, your ideal clients and where they come from, your law practice will grow and prosper. Find out more about this in the audio below. Make sure you subscribe and post a review.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_166-How_To_Diagnose_The_Lead_Problems_For_Lawyers.mp3

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Today I'm going to talk about how to diagnose based on what kind of clients you are getting and how many you are getting. How you can make improvements to your law firm. The first thing to do is to be able to track who is calling you and what source they are coming from. That's probably for another podcast on how physically to do that but this one is to tell you once you are tracking where your phone calls and your emails are coming from accurately, not just I think or people say this or that because people don't always speak the truth or even know where they came from.

They'll say I came from Google or the Internet and that may not be true at all. So you definitely want to track them accurately but once you are, what is your situation? Are you getting not enough leads? If not, okay fine but what are you getting what kinds of clients are you getting calling? Where are they calling from? Are they calling from the areas you want them calling from or are they calling you from towns and cities that aren't relevant to you? from other states? What kinds of things are they telling you over the phone? Are you getting a lot of tire-kickers or price shoppers? Are you getting a lot of people that have piddly cases that wouldn't be of use to you? Not relevant stuff.

Are you getting good people that maybe don't call often but have serious legal issues that you can help? What kind of people are calling you? Are you getting more men or women calling? Young or old? What kinds of calls are coming through and it's worth paying attention to this in detail because it'll tell you where to go next and what to do. So even if you have a low volume of calls, look at what you are getting and if you need to look at 6 months of it, fine. If you get a high volume, then you can look at just the past 3 months, for instance. That's fine too.

So what happens if you have certain things going on, what can you do? Let's say you are a divorce attorney and you are getting a lot of people that want to do uncontested divorces but you don't make a lot of money from that. You want people with high net worth, long-term marriages, that kind of stuff. Now, we can look at that. What kind of content do you have on your website? What kind of articles? Do you have articles on just the basics of divorce or do you have articles for high net worth of individuals? Those people usually own businesses, they may be in long-term marriages. Do you have articles that talk about that? Perpetual alimony, spousal maintenance?

These people tend to have grown children, so children may not be a factor. What's the age demographic of the people that you are looking for? They are not going to be in their 30s, they are probably more likely to be in their 50s. Again, they'll have companies, what industry? So they are going to be self-employed. How does that affect divorce? Division of assets is going to become very important. So you've got to know your customer profile or who you want and create articles on your website and videos and marketing promotion type stuff that speaks specifically to that kind of person.

If you do that, you'll start getting more of them because Google will see that content on your site and on YouTube and on Facebook and wherever it needs to go. People who are attracted to that kind of stuff, that fit that profile will say, "That attorney does exactly what I'm looking for. That's my situation. I'm going to call them. You can't just hope that by ranking through a keyword or two, that it's going to solve your problems and get you the cases you want. It won't. For instance if your keyword is Houston divorce lawyer, again what kind of divorce?

Long-term marriage or short-term marriage, self-employed, divorce with bankruptcy in it, divorce with domestic violence implications, divorce for company owners, all these things that cannot be compressed just into that keyword. So that's why you have content on your site that specifically speaks to these kind of people. Let's say you do criminal defense. as you know, within criminal defense there are many things. Traffic tickets which aren't worth much, DUI which could be okay, there's sex crimes which pay quite a bit, there's domestic violence, there's theft crimes, there's assault, there is a lot in there. What are you putting out there that you want to attract?

Do you want to attract murder cases? Are you older and you just want to deal with misdemeanors only? Do you want to do felonies? Death penalty cases? Do you like domestic violence? Do you hate doing sex crimes representation and refuse to do it? So whatever you put out there will come back to you. It's not just a Fu fu mantra or saying, it's actually true. Google and YouTube and Facebook and all these web properties, whatever you put out, they will put out to your audience and that's what your audience will see and that's what they will respond to.

This is really at the heart of diagnosing where you are and what kind of leads you are getting and what kind of leads you want to get and making a change that actually happens for you. You can't force it, just because you hire another marketing company doesn't mean it's going to happen, focusing on a few keywords is certainly not going to make it happen. I think you understand why now. So you've got to have a plan where you've got to take action. So this is my suggestion for you. If you just want more clients, fine but a better typical response is I would go deeper. You want more clients, great. What kind of clients do you want? Do you want just more low level ones or do you want more high level ones? Okay, that's very different from just wanting more clients.

Who wants a whole bunch more tire kickers? Who wants a whole bunch more $100 traffic tickets? Who wants a whole bunch more uncontested divorces? Some do but many don't and if you consider that low end junk that you don't want or accident cases that will barely pay you anything after 3 years of work, then don't target it. Target the good stuff and this is how you do it. So if you need any help doing this in your firm, email me [email protected] or call (888) 225-8594. Thank you.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_166-How_To_Diagnose_The_Lead_Problems_For_Lawyers.mp3

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What effect will Uber & Lyft, Autonomous Vehicles (self-driving cars), and other disruptive technologies have on legal trends?

How will your practice area(s) be affected in 2017 and beyond? Make sure to subscribe & post your review.

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Today I am going to talk to you about some issues I don't know if anybody has talked to you about. I'm here to talk about trends that are happening in our world that will influence the legal profession and why you should care. One thing is Uber and Lyft, I'm currently in Austin Texas and Uber and Lyft had a fight with the local government here and they pulled out. So as of May 9th 2016, quite a while ago now, Uber and Lyft pulled out and thousands of drivers were stranded. So there has been an unemployment spike because of that.

But what was kind of anticipated and what actually did happen is that DWIs have gone up quite a bit because now there is no way for the people to just call a taxi and get home. The traditional taxi services here are pretty miserable as they are in most places and there's not a lot of them and now when you call for a taxi, you are put on hold for 30 or 40 minutes before you even get through and then it will take the taxi another 30 or 40 minutes to get through to you and the person driving the taxi doesn't have a GPS for the most part. They will ask you where they are going and won't even know how to get there half the time. They'll be on the phone, not even paying attention to the road and it's just a mess.

What was a great technology that really helped a lot of people, that brought employment to normal people that reduced DWIs and traffic tickets and all that is now gone and who knows when it's going to return. In other states, it's a different situation, Uber is there, Lyft is there, It's pretty strong. Taxi companies have seen their revenues go way down but if you have ever taken Uber or Lyft, I bet you've had what's been an amazing experience. I never waited for more than 7 or 8 minutes for one , the taxis have always been spotless, the people that drive them are nice people, normal everyday people making a nice income, and it was just effortless to use, it was a pleasure. So much better than taxis.

But what could be unfortunate for you if you are in criminal defense or especially DUI or DWI is that those kinds of cases may have gone down significantly in your area. I've talked to some attorneys where that's affected them. So what do you do? Do you just stick in that practice area and be pissed off about it? Do you add on practice areas and expand your scope. Let's say you just did DUI. Maybe now you need to expand to Criminal Defense in general. That kind of action-reaction is very important for you not to get stuck when something like this happens to you. Again, what I've seen some lawyers do is expand their practice areas, add a practice area and just be aware of this early on before you wake up and you realize this year was terrible in terms of revenue.

You are getting fewer calls and now you are in trouble because you don't have any money saved up and you don't have any money to do marketing to get you out of this mess. I would say pay attention to these things happening. The legal landscape of technology affects you for sure. It affects everybody, so be aware of it. Let's talk right now about driverless cars. They are coming,. I see them on the roads, the Google cars. They will be selling sitting in them and no one is driving the car. Tesla motors, they have some driverless cars, Uber is working on it big time, Ford just announced that by 2021 they expect to have many of them on the road.

So it's coming and it's coming very soon. How is it going to affect you if you are a personal injury lawyer? Auto accidents, what's going to happen if no one is driving a car? Who is going to be at fault if there is a driverless car and it gets into an accident and it injures your passenger, who is to blame? Is it the person's insurance company that is going to cover it? Let's say it gets into an accident with someone else, is insurance going to cover that? Are you going to have to attack the people that wrote the program? Is it the car itself that could have had a malfunction? This makes it a very tricky thing, so will the number of accidents go down? What will happen? Then the car itself, people are talking about the driverless cars as a wonderful panacea.

You know human nature. What will happen at first is people will start using them and they will want to be in control and drive it. Then at some point people will say, I'd rather just be jamming around , I don't want to drive, I'm lazy and then legislation will likely come where you won't be allowed to drive a car unless it's an emergency or at all. Because driverless cars may cause less accidents therefore the local government may mandate that you have a driverless car or they may penalize you if you don't have a driverless car because you are more prone to have accidents and hurt people. These are all issues that could affect you depending upon your area of the law.

Again, what do you do? Let's say you deal with trucks, I just wanted to make you aware of trends that were coming and how they may affect you in ways that you don't anticipate and to align yourself so that you are not in trouble. Last example, Bankruptcy attorneys having tremendous problems the last few years. Fees are locked in for the most part for 13s and 7s. Fees are very low. Bankruptcies have been in decline for a couple of years now. They may come up again but bankruptcy filing has been way down. What a lot of bankruptcy attorneys have done is they've gone to TCPA violations, FDCPA violation, and those kinds of things.

Student loan debts, they had to do it to survive because bankruptcy as a legal profession has just really gone down and the lawyers ironically, sadly that are doing bankruptcy are headed towards bankruptcy themselves. So if you are in that area and that's all you do you've really got to pay attention because things are changing there big time. These 3 examples. This may be a very sobering podcast but it's just something to be aware of. It's very important, if you get ahead of these things or if you get a handle on what you are going to do, when they come they will affect you greatly and you either win or you lose. There's always winners and there's always losers. Which side do you want to be on? So I hope this helps you. Talk to you soon.

If you need help with your marketing or anything in your practice email me [email protected] or call (888) 225-8594. Thank You.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_165-Legal_Trends_For_2017_And_Beyond.mp3

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What you like and what you think unfortunately may be or may not be what the potential client likes or thinks. It's a dangerous thing to go with what you like and what you think. So what's the alternative? I've talked about it in this episode, listen to the audio below or download it.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_157-How_to_become_a_prestigious_law_firm_part_1.mp3

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This is the start of a 3 part series that's going to go over a dozen or more ways you can become the pre-eminent or most respected law firm in your metro, in your practice areas. We are going to cover 3 areas of how potential clients find you and eventually retain you and how you can make changes to your marketing, your online presence and other tweaks so that you are perceived by them as the firm to hire, as the lawyer to hire, as the most pre-eminent and highly respected attorney that they are seeking among others.

The 3 main areas that we are going to cover is, before clients ever call you when they are searching the web, they are looking at Google, they are looking at reviews and all that stuff. Then we are going to cover for when they get to your website. What things you can do to get them to call you and consume your articles and then get on a phone with you to get an initial consult. Then the third area after the website is the actual call to your firm and the follow up or lack thereof. What happens when somebody calls your firm? How are they treated? are scripts used? How are they followed up?

How do you reduce no-shows? Think it over? Price resistance? Priced shopping? That kind of thing. These are the 3 stages. Research by the potential client before they ever call you, getting into your website, checking out your credentials online, making that decision to call you. Then once they call you The initial consultation all the way through that to retaining you. we are going to go over strategies, tips, techniques on how to improve all these 3 areas. This will get you more clients and the reason being, as I said, you being perceived as the top person to hire.

This podcast is first we are going to go into the first of the three. when people are searching the web, first of all, will they find you and if they do, what will they find. Let's talk first about places you want to be found. There's millions of legal directories out there. There's many sites where we can get reviews. I've found that there's really only 4 places that are really important for online reviews. AVVO, your website, Yelp and Google Maps or Google+. Those are the 4 places.

The great thing is you can pretty much ignore all the other areas to get reviews and focus on these four because these are the four spots that command top ranking in Google search and Google search is the majority of all search. Yelp is used heavily by many people. AVVO is pretty huge and used by many people as well and of course, on your website. These are the four places you want reviews. Why are reviews important? Because they are a third party proof that you are a good attorney to hire.

The next thing is reviews can come from past clients. They can come from current clients whose cases are not over yet. They also can come from fellow attorneys. There is nothing wrong with an attorney writing a review for you saying, "I'm not a client of John Smith but I know John Smith professionally. We practice in the same courts. I've known him for 10 years. He is zealous advocate for his clients. He does a great job, he is very thorough. He tends to get good results from what I can see because he spends so much time on his cases." etc. That is a great powerful review. It's a very honest one.

It builds you up, it builds up what people think of you. People search whether they are looking to eat Chinese food tonight or to hire a lawyer. They look at reviews and they want to make sure that you have good ones. The next thing is that the threshold is not so high. So I am just Googling now, Los Angeles Divorce Lawyer, and the top 3 people that appear in Google maps have anywhere from 10 to 12 reviews. That's kind of less. Restaurants have hundreds, hotels have thousands, you only need in many cases, 5, 10 or maybe 15 reviews on Google Maps. It sure takes time to get them.

Once you get to the 5 review threshold on Google Maps or Google+, you will get gold stars next to your name. You will get 5 or 6 gold stars that will make your listing really stand out. It's a sign of prestige to have it because a lot of firms don't have any reviews. The nice thing is if you have multiple locations, you want to get reviews for all of them and your initial threshold, like I said is to get 5 reviews that will get gold stars and it will make your listing stand out. It will help build an image of you. A big question that people have about reviews is what if I get a negative review? What if I get a bad one?

Well, it happens. It's far better to ask for reviews and to have 5 good reviews and one bad one than to have one bad one and no good reviews because now it's in context Almost everybody runs into problems with clients, some of them are just mean and nasty and no matter what you did for them, no matter how much money you won for them, no matter how well their case was or it got totally dismissed, some of them just are thankless and they'll write bad reviews, it happens.

The answer is not to live in fear and not ask anyone for reviews; the answer is to ask everyone for reviews because you're going to get bad ones every once in a while, it happens; even rip off report, that happens. But I know attorneys that still succeed in spite of that because that bad review is in context with many other good reviews. Always ask and don't be afraid of bad ones because you will get good ones. Another fear attorneys have is, "I do criminal defense or I do divorce and people are embarrassed and they don't want to put reviews online". Actually it's not true. If you Google criminal defense or DUI in any city in the US, you're going to see reviews from people.

Those people aren't embarrassed or afraid to post reviews; why would your clients be embarrassed? Some of them will, sure, but a lot of them won't and they'll post for you. It's not a problem. You got to ask them. If you don't ask them, you won't get. You've got to be in it to win it. Some attorneys seem to have unassailable positions because they have 20, 30, 40 reviews. I've talked to some of these guys and girls and asked them how do they do it, the surprising answer was "Hard work, consistently over a year's time or two years' time", they ask everybody, all their past clients, attorneys and friends and they slowly build up reviews.

The nice thing is if you do this, if you stick with it and you get to that 5 to 10 mark, maybe 10 on Google Maps, 10 on Yelp, 10 on your website, 10 on AVVO, if you got a high AVVO rating, you're covered. You'll show up in all these areas that are important, you've got a good amount of reviews, don't stop but at that point, it's really going to kick in and start to get you a lot more clients. So you definitely want to work in this process. If it takes two years, so what? Are you going to be an attorney for two more years unless you're at the very end of your career? Yes. Once you're an attorney, a lot of attorneys stick with it for life. Life is long, this process doesn't have to take that long.

About a year or two is definitely worth your time and attention to build this stuff up for you. Now that we've covered reviews, we are going to talk about what else shows up when people Google you. A good thing to have is videos of yourself, not just commercials but question and answer videos. On YouTube, you can post them and you're picked up by Google search because Google owns YouTube. I don't know if you knew that. YouTube is searched alone billions of times a month; Google of course is tens of billions of times a month and Google actually shows YouTube results in some of its listing.

If you do videos on yourself and you answer legal questions, short and sweet, those videos may show up when somebody Googles your name. "John Smith, Houston Divorce Lawyer", when they Google that, either nothing can show up or your website can show up or your website and your maps listing or your website and your maps listing and your pay-per-click ad and pictures of you and videos of you, it can look quite impressive if you have all these elements going for you. The full display that you'll see on Google is called the knowledge graph. If there is a picture of you on the right and there are reviews and there is maps listings and there are videos, you have what's called the Knowledge Graph. You put enough of the stuff about yourself online, Google will recognize you as an authority.

If you want an example of this, type in Albert Einstein. If you do that, you'll see the entire page is about him, he's got tons of information on him and he's got this knowledge graph on the right side, images and everything. It's not too hard to get that but you got to work on it a little bit, so you need some photos of yourself on your website so they can get indexed, some YouTube videos, just a few is fine, photos on all your profiles like AVVO and Yelp and Google Maps and all of that stuff. Then you'll appear in the knowledge graph, which is great. It makes you look a lot more preeminent, a lot more respectable because you have all this information about you on the website, you seem to dominate for your name and that's what you want. If your name is common, I understand it's harder to do that but let's say your name is so common that someone else eclipses you because they are a movie star or something.

If someone clicks on your listing or hovers over your listing, a knowledge graph will appear for your specific listing, it'll still work even though you may not be the top one on the page. So, don't be discouraged if your name is John Smith or something very common. I know one of the DUI attorneys Lawrence Taylor, there's the football player but if you still put him in, he shows up and he has the knowledge graph and all of that stuff, so that's doable. Don't give up on it. What else can people run into before they even come to your website? So there is media publicity. Have you written any articles for local magazines or news? Have you been interviewed? Do you have any media publicity? Have you done press releases? All that stuff helps because it shows up in Google search, sometimes it shows up above everything else.

If you can get any of that done, and the secret sauce is to consistently ask local news outlets if they need an opinion on divorce, let's say a celebrity divorce, or a famous person that gets a DUI, or someone famous dies and they have a big estate, so whether you are estate planning or injury law, family law, it doesn't matter your practice area. There are always opportunities to get into the media, even immigration. There are tons of immigration stuff going on nowadays, business litigation, whatever it is. There is always legal stuff going about you should keep your eye on the news periodically and how do you capitalize on it, editorialize on it, make comments. If you're tied to the news, if you're tied to any of these media outlets or press releases, that's very, very prestigious and that'll help you show up.

Clients really like to see that. It gives them a great feeling that you're the person that they want to hire above anyone else. That's just a "me too" that just offers the same free consultation. Where else can you show up before if people even get to your website? There are other third-party sites, not a lot but some. Many of my clients, we've helped them writing a book, "Surviving divorce in Minnesota", "What to do if you're arrested for DUI/DWI in New York", "How to plan your estate so that the relatives you don't like take all of your assets in California", we've done these books. We get them self-published on Amazon and on Kindle and sometimes on Audible. Amazon listings show up.

If you've done a book, not only can people find that information on Amazon and that's a great thing to become pre-eminent and respected is to write a book for the layperson in your industry, not just for other attorneys, but both are good. But they see on Amazon, Amazon is a platform that has a lot of credibility, very important and Kindle too, so that's yet another way that even before people get to your website, you can appear and show up and get a lot of notoriety. One last way before I beat this to death is AVVO. AVVO is a really great place to answer questions that people have online, you want to have a good profile, good rating there. This is all free, so you can work on this for free.

They'll go crazy answering questions everyday but one a day, even one a week is fine on AVVO. People will see that you answered questions, people will see that you have a profile there, not just reviews but a profile, and that'll help you as well. I hope you keep all this in mind and this is a very important part of the process because if people don't see you, you don't stand out before they even decide to click on your website. Your website may not get clicked on, it may not even show up in the search results, so it's very important to have all that stuff going. One thing I forgot that's actually pretty obvious, ranking in Google, getting to the top of Google.

I am not going to go too deep into this because this is a whole huge Pandora's Box of stuff but what I will say is you do obviously want to be at the top of Google, but here is the twist. There are a few commercial keywords that everyone thinks, "If I was just at the top of Google for those keywords, my life would be beautiful and that's it". Things like New York DWI Lawyer, Houston Divorce Attorney, San Diego Estate Planning Lawyer, Seattle Injury Lawyer and that kind of stuff. Yes, it is good to be at the top of Google for those keywords and that shows prestige, which is great. But before people will type in those commercial keywords, I call them, they type in what I call question keywords.

Let's say for DUI. "Got pulled over in Lakewood, blew at 0.12, will I go to jail", they'll ask questions like that. "Officers said I failed the breath test but I tried to blow, will I go to jail", "Second DUI, how long is the jail time", they'll ask those questions before they'll type in "San Francisco DUI attorney". That's what people tend to do. Google themselves show that people take a path. They'll go up from questions and they'll refine their search queries until they get to the point where they're ready to make a decision. So what they'll do is they'll type in something in Google, they'll go to one or more websites, they'll read about it, they'll research, then they may or may not find what they want, and then they'll type in something else.

They'll go from question to question until they get to this point where they're ready to "Buy". You're not ecommerce but buy means call and engage the services of an attorney. So if you are there only for the last keyword they'll type in, which could be, "Minneapolis Bankruptcy Attorney", you're missing out on all these question keywords that they are typing in. Again, this is verified by Google who is overseeing trillions of searches now. Do you want to be there for just a last thing they may type in and to show up then or do you want to show up for all the different questions they have? Imagine if someone's searching and they type in 4 or 5 different things. And every time they do it, your website is there.

They start to get the opinion, "This attorney Sara Smith, she's there for all the questions I'm looking at. I'm going to give her a call because she's shown up every time I've typed something in, this lady is everywhere. She is all over Google, she's got good reviews, let me Google her name, she's got videos, she's got reviews, she's got articles. I'm going to go check out this lady's website and go deeper. I think I'm going to call her", that's the effect you want. That's when people have respect when they are less likely to price shop, when they call you and they're a better qualified person to talk to. That's what you want. Your first job, out of these three stages, is to create that image and prestige and these are a lot of the ways that you can do it.

In next podcast, we're going to get to when people actually come to your website, what else can you do to further that image to really cement it so you get them to pick up the phone and call, or to touch that number that appears on their Smartphone and call because believe it or not, that's a really big stuff. It's not like just a minor thing, it's a really big stuff for people to do that, they're scared, they don't know about the law. Before I get more into this, let me end this podcast. But this is one of three, I hope you find this valuable, I trust that you will. But if you master these three areas, you're going to just grow your law firm like crazy.

You're going to get better clients and you're going to do phenomenally well. If you want help with any of these three stages of the process, call me at 888-225-8594, or email [email protected]. Look forward to talking with you or you hearing from me.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_157-How_to_become_a_prestigious_law_firm_part_1.mp3

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There's no denying that reviews have become very important for any business and specially for law firms. Today's episode reveals an effective idea for attorneys to get more reviews from their current and past clients. Listen to the audio below to discover how this is done.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_163-An_Effective_Idea_For_Getting_More_Reviews_Of_Your_Law_Firm.mp3

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I was talking to a friend of mine, who is in the marketing business for attorneys. He runs an ad agency over in Florida. His name is Al and he is a great person to bounce ideas off of. He really understands the market for his clients. He tends to focus on the personal injury guys. I noticed because I worked with him and one of his clients. His client had been getting a lot of reviews lately. Yelp and Google and all over the place. I said to him, "Hey Al, what's up with the reviews. I see that Attorney so and so has been getting a lot of reviews." He says, "Yeah." I said, "What are you doing?" He said, "In office they started a contest, where the person that gets the most reviews from clients gets a $200 gift card and then there are runners up and all that stuff."

I said, "Wow! How many reviews have you gotten?" he said , "We had 2 up to a month ago and now we have 40." "Wow! that's crazy! That's great Al." I told him. I started thinking about it and I asked Al what was happening before. He said you know the deal, you ask your staff to get reviews, you try to get reviews but there's not much incentive there and they just don't get done. People feel bad, they think the clients don't want to review them etc. but just with this incentive, they are really getting a lot of them. I said they are not offering incentives to the clients themselves to review. No, no, no. We are offering incentives to the staff. I said, "Well Great. There are no problems with that. It's now part of their job and they are happy to do it."He said, "Yup it's working really well." He said we've gotten three calls in the past month alone that said I want to hire your attorney because of the reviews.

So the reviews are definitely helping and I've heard this comment from many attorneys myself that have what I call enough reviews. So reviews are just becoming super important online. If you look at Amazon, which has hundreds of thousands of products, nearly all of them have reviews and of the best sellers, I recently saw a statistic that 99.3% of them have good or bad reviews. I just thought that was very interesting. when I buy at Amazon, just to let you know, I look at the best reviews and I look at the worst reviews because it gives me an idea of what the product is or hidden problems with it. But I buy anyway even though every product pretty much has bad reviews.

So this leads to another aspect in getting reviews. A lot of attorneys I've talked to, they are afraid to get reviews, they are afraid to ask for them because they think Oh, what happens if I get a bad review? Well I want to tell you that it happens. This particular attorney that I am talking about that my friend Al is working with, he had a couple of bad reviews. But they took action, they did this contest and now they are doing it ongoing and now he's got thirty some positive reviews in context with a few bad ones. As you can see from his comment to me that he is getting clients and the clients are seeing the bad reviews. they are seeing them but they are seeing them in context. It doesn't look so bad. I want you to remember that. So don't be afraid to get reviews because you tell me what's worse; to have 10 good reviews and two bad ones or to have one bad review and no good ones? The one alone is far worse.

A lot of attorneys that I speak to, if they don't make any effort to get reviews, what happens is eventually you are going to have someone that's disgruntled and they are going to put something online and then it's going to make you look bad. For some reason it seems to be easier to get someone on their own to put up a bad review than to put up a good review on their own. so don't just leave it to chance. don't be afraid, solicit reviews from your current and past clients so when a bad review comes and they will, at some point in the future. Someone is just not going to be happy no matter what you did for them. Even if you won them a million dollars or you got them off their 4th DUI.

Someone is going to complain. There are always people out there who do and if they do post a bad review, it will be in context with all your good ones and it really won't be that bad of an impact for you. So, that's today's lesson. Make sure in your office that you are asking your personnel to solicit reviews. You can have a contest or you can have an award even if you have one staff member. Even if you just have an admin and you and that's it. You are a small firm and pretty much you are solo. tell your admin, Hey Susan or Hey Mike, we really need to get reviews. I want you to start calling past clients, current clients we have. I want you to ask them and if you get extra reviews in a given month, I'm going to give you a bonus. That's a nice incentive for them to go ahead and do that.

Just like my friend Al's example, you may be surprised at the results. The last thing I'll tell you is what it's done for this attorney is that he is getting into what I call the unassailable position. In any given market, I talk to attorneys about this, when they see that guy or that gal that has 20,30 or 40 reviews, they think, "I can't get that many reviews, my clients won't review me. I can't compete." Then they feel demoralized and that happens a lot especially in the PI world. People feel demoralized by the big PI guy spending a hundred thousand a month or a million a month. Good reviews and a whole bunch of them are a good way to demoralize your attorney opponents and your competition because they'll feel like they just can't do that. So the threshold to get to that point in the market is far lower than you think.

It may only be 10 reviews on Yelp or Google+. It may be even 5 in your area if nobody has any reviews. So the thresholds really aren't that high. If you were a restaurant, if you were a hotel then sure, you need hundreds and thousands of reviews but you are not in that game, thank goodness, so you just need a few. Look at who is ranking in your area for the keywords you want and then look at what you need to do to get to that level and above it. You will be surprised. You will see in many areas, again, it could be 5 reviews, 10, maybe in some areas as much as 20. But you know what, that's like a year of work. If you are going to be an attorney for 10, 20, 30, 40 years in the future or even 5 more years, that year of work is going to be worth a lot to you.

It's going to pay you back 20, 50 maybe a 100 times. that's how powerful reviews are. I hope this pep talk helps you. If you need any help with the mechanics of doing this, of getting this done, we've got a few tricks up our sleeve to talk to past clients and even current clients and to get reviews from them in an ethical way but in a way that actually gets it done, let me know.

Email me at [email protected] or go to the website speakeasymarketinginc.com or call (888) 225-8594 and last thing, if you would subscribe and rate the podcast, that would be a great help to us to get this message out to more attorneys like you. Thank You.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_163-An_Effective_Idea_For_Getting_More_Reviews_Of_Your_Law_Firm.mp3

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It might be surprising for you know that older people in your market(40-65+) respond better to attorney marketing, and often have the money to hire an attorney vs. younger folks. Don't forsake the older part of your demographics because that's where the money is. They are more likely to read, listen, take in, and act on your marketing messages. Find out how to cater to the older market to make more money and have less price resistance.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_162-There_is_Gold_In_The_Old_Market_Demographics_For_Attorneys.mp3

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This the secrets of attorney marketing podcast from Speakeasy Marketing. Discover how to enhance your reputation as an attorney and out-market your competitor. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast and post a review.

Hello this is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. Today we are going to talk to you about the age of your market. You may be surprised to know but millenials, people under 40, they are an up and coming group. They are erratically different from older folks, Generation X and then Baby Boomers. Everybody seems to be in love with them, they think, "Oh! We've got to get young people in here. We've got to get young people as clients" and all that stuff. I'm here to tell you from direct experience that the money, the good clients that can pay are the older people, 50s, 60s, 70s, that kind of thing.

Depending upon your practice area this may be very easy with estate planning or this may be very difficult with maybe DUI but the older you can go with your market, the more money they will have, the more stable they are the better clients they will be, the more they will respond to your marketing and be willing to listen to longer phone calls, to longer written type stuff, everything. So being in love with millenials or younger people is actually not a good thing for your business. I recently just gave this advice to my friend that works in the travel agency business.

He got on a call with travel agency company and they told him, "We are making no money on these young people that want to go on these trips. We make far more money on older folks that want to do trips." So I gave him some advice on that. But I'm seeing it in my market too. My market is to help attorneys get more clients and guess what? My best clients are attorneys that have been practicing 20, 30, 40 years, that are 50, 60, 70 and up. They have money, they understand what they need to do and they are much better clients. I've had very few attorneys that are in their 30s. Some of them are in their 40s but mostly it's 50 and up. There is nothing wrong with younger people.

I certainly take them. If you are one of them, don't take this as an admonishment, take this as some actual good advice. You want to reach to the older part of your demographic because that's where the money is. That is where you are going to have better success and less price resistance. They are more likely to read, to listen, to comply, to have respect for authority, to have respect for you as an attorney, all those things. So doing that in your market may be somewhat of a trick but there are things you can do to appeal to older people.

I don't mean old people. I mean older people. Don't take it as I think these people are old, I'm in my 40s so I'm certainly no spring chicken. Anyway, how do you do that? How do you cater to older people? One real simple way is to think about their needs. Even if you think you are in a tough market, where you don't think there is anyone old, like DUI, how do you find older people and older in that market means being in their 40s. It may not even be their 50s, 60s, 70s, it may be in their 40s. Fine.

The older the better. In a DUI, you don't want a college kid. They have no money. Guess who pays for their DUIs? The parents. I'm sure you know that. You want to look for older folks, so how do you do that? Where do older folks get caught with DUI and under what circumstances? How are they different from younger people. I'm not going to go further in that thought process right now but this is just the way of thinking. Personal injury, so younger people that get into an auto accident, for instance, they would tend to have certain injuries I would bet and older people would tend to have probably more catastrophic and different types of injuries.

They may drive different cars, they may get into accidents in different places and scenarios than younger people. They may get into accidents because they can't see because they are really old. It could be all kinds of things but the marketplace is different. Let's say you do estate planning, well there it's easy. You've got the adult parents of someone who is maybe even a little older. 50, 60, 40, that kind of thing or it may be the elderly parents themselves, 70s, 80s. Depending on where you are in that market, you may be appealing to one or the other.

Let's talk about Family law. In family law you are looking at people with long-term marriages. You are looking at people with substantial assets, maybe kids that are grown or kids that are at least in high school, business owners, that kind of thing. Let's say you are in bankruptcy, you want someone that is older, someone who owns maybe a house, they have assets, that kind of thing. So there's different slices of your market depending upon age and circumstance that you can cater to and again, to summarize once more, I would look towards the older demographic because that's where the money is.

I hope this helps you, if you need help in figuring out how to do this in your market, email me [email protected] or call (888) 225-8594. Thank You.

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Google's goal is to provide a great 'user experience' with all its products: YouTube, Google Search, AdWords, Gmail, Calendar, Maps, and more. The sooner you understand what Google wants to see from your law firm's website, online marketing, and SEO, the more exposure Google will give you and the more clients you'll attract.

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Today, I'm going to talk about what Google wants and why we should care about it. First of all, I'm not a Google employee, I don't profess to secretly know what Google really wants. I just know what they state publicly and I align our company and the work it does for attorneys with what Google publicly says it wants and I've never run into a problem. The two seem to be working, the methodology seems to be working. So, what does Google want and why should you care? First of all, you should care because Google is responsible for about 80% of all search queries. Yahoo, Bing, Ask, all these other search engines combined make up rest of the 20% of search queries. Some say, even less. Google is by far, the most dominant one because they do a really great job of providing search results.

Not only that, in case you didn't know, Google owns Youtube. Youtube is the world's second biggest search engine now and is searched billions of times a month, actually billions of times a day. People search videos for all kinds of "How to" situations. How to get out of a DUI? How to file for divorce? How to write up a will that's unbreakable? Those kinds of things. People search Youtube quite a bit for legal information. Between these two, Google, like I said is the dominant force on the Internet and as everyone has now come to see, people have smartphones in their hands wherever they go. They are playing Pokemon Go and walking off cliffs to their death, walking into traffic. There's even a term for them called smombies; smartphone zombies. Everyone is on the internet. A lot of marketing has shifted to the internet. Not all of it but a lot.

These are the reasons that you should be paying attention as if you were Zoe Greenspan or Baracki the Fed to Google this persona as staying online. With all that being, what does Google want? What does it publicly say? Before I can even answer that, I am going to give you a unique insight. What Google says it wants supports what it really wants. What it really wants is to provide a good user experience to it's users. That's what it calls people that use it's search, that watch Youtube, that use Gmail and all that stuff. This is Google's main theme. They want to have a good user experience. They want more business, they want people to say, "Man, their search engine is the best. Gmail is awesome. It filters spam. Youtube, I love it. I can watch anything I want, anytime I want." That's what they want. They want people to be in love with their products. They want what they call a good user experience.

Everything they do is geared towards that because that's how they make their 6$0 billion a year plus. So when you think about your website, your law firm, your online presence and all that you do, do you want to go against Google and create a bad user experience for people by trying to get in their system or you want to go with Google and help Google do it's job? Because guess what? If you scratch that gigantic back of Google with your little finger or your website then you get them to scratch your back with their gigantic powerful brush, giving you many people coming into your website and calls and business. That's how it goes. That's the game. How do you help Google provide a good user experience? Let me give you some examples. Do not have duplicate articles on your website or another websites.

Duplicate means over 50% or 60% of the article is the same. Thesis plagiarized, copied word for word, that kind of thing. You don't want that on more than one location on the web because that hurts the user experience. It creates clutter, people can see the same stuff in different spots. They don't want that when they are doing a search, they want unique information. Number 2 is the information you put, don't stuff it with keywords. Don't say San Diego Divorce Lawyer, Divorce Lawyer San Diego, If you are facing divorce in San Diego, you need a San Diego Divorce Lawyer for your San Diego Divorce case. Divorce, divorce… Don't do that in your articles. Use natural speech, natural text and answer questions people have, legal questions. That kind of thing. That's good content.

That is useful to people searching. You as a Google user yourself undoubtedly, you don't want to do a search and have the five top websites come up with garbage, do you? No. You don't want to have unreadable text that makes no sense to you and frustrates you, making you search again. No, you don't want that. You want that medium sized pair of purple polka dot socks to come up immediately if that's what you are searching for. You want an attorney that handles high net worth divorce, long term marriage with kids, all that to come up immediately if that's what you are searching for. You don't want garbage in your way. Help Google, help yourself and answer many, many legal questions on your site with lots of great articles that speak in layman's terms. Don't obfuscate and try to tell people that just come into the office and we'll let you know.

Sure, make your disclaimer say, "Every case is different. This is not legal advice. This does not create an attorney client relationship." No problem. Say all that. It's fine. It keeps you compliant but give people information that they can use. The funny thing is what Google wants and what you should do and what clients actually like, Thank God, happen to be the same thing. If you provide really good useful information on your site and it's not duplicate, people will tend to look at that, read it or at least skim it, watch a video on it and then call you because you have given them an answer to their question and now they have confidence in the answerer of that question meaning you and your firm. They are more likely to call you. I've seen this phenomena many times. The more you tell, the more you sell, remember that old adage. It is true in Law too.

When I compare clients that I work with that say, "Just come into the office, I can't say any more until you come in", they tend to retain far less, they tend to get a lot more no shows and lose out to competition and have price problems. The guys and gals that spend twenty or thirty minutes on the phone and telling prospects everything they need to know, giving them a layout of what might happen with their case, the possible defenses, etc. The people that do that, they tend to retain far more often, have very little price problems and they tell me, "My website is really doing great and getting me a lot of business." This is the division. Which side do you want to be on? This is what you want to do. Have a lot of content, have it be useful, easy to read and answer as many legal questions as possible.

Here is another tip on how to make that a better process. What kinds of legal questions should you answer besides everything because that could be a lot. There are certainly ways to look online and find the top searched terms in your practice area and the top questions you get asked. Think about the top questions that you get asked week in, week out, month in, month out by prospects. If five people a week are asking you about something, chances are 500 people have that problem but just haven't connected with you and are searching the web for answers to that problem. That's what you should start with and put on your website. That's the most frequently asked questions. A couple of reasons for that. First of all, so you can save your breath a little bit by not having to answer this stuff 10,000 times over.

Secondly, you are appealing to the largest number of people that have these valid legal questions. That's what I would do. Here's a couple more things that you can do to help position yourself and align yourself with Google's interests. Mobile search. I've seen it firsthand. Last year, our mobile search got up to 30% or 40% of all search. This year and we are getting close to the end of it, actually, but mobile has risen to about 60% of all visitors. So now, mobile beats out laptop and mobile includes tablet but mostly IPhone and android type devices. There is a new shift in thinking and Google has been re-aligning itself to be more mobile friendly if you've noticed. Now if you look in a Google search you will see ads at the top of a listing and there is nothing on the "right side" because they are seeing that most people search mobile, so there needs to be no right side.

Phones tend to have a very vertical narrow format, so Google has changed it's search results to model after that. If Google does it, you should do it too. Last year, it was April 21st to 27th, Google publicly said your website has to be mobile friendly otherwise you are going to get penalized and not rank as well. When you look at your website and you look at how people will interact with it, look at it first on a smartphone and then look at it on a laptop because it forces you in that small space to make difficult choices about what's above what, what is the flow, what is the first thing people see, what shows up on the screen, what's off the screen. Do that first and then look at laptop because then otherwise you will be creating your site and designing it in such a way that the user experience and user is more mobile now, will not enjoy it.

They may find it hard to read, you may have grey text on a light grey background, or on a white background, hard to read. You want black text on a white background. If any of your clients are over 40 years old, as you know, your vision suffers a bit especially at 50, 60, and 70. Nothing wrong with that but picture yourself or people you love looking over the top of their glasses at their phones, it's hard to see because things are so small nowadays. Make sure your website is easy to read and if you are older, that's actually a bonus because if you can't read it, your clients are not going to be able to read it. If you have to squint and it's a hard thing for you to read something on your site, guess what? The best clients that have money tend to be older or they have the same problem and leave your website to go to another one. All this is baked into user experience.

Think about it, work on it with your SEO or web people and make sure that the site looks appealing especially to older eyes that need bigger pictures and clear text. A couple of more things before we beat this to death. Let's say that someone searches your site and they decide they want to call you or email you. First of all, you know, a call from a prospect is infinitely better than an email with a prospect. A lot of emails are ghosts, they never respond. So you want more calls. The whole point of your website should be to get people to call your number. You want your number to appear at the top of the screen on every single page of your website. If someone has to go look for it, they are lazy, they are not going to. People are so distracted in today's world with smartphones and Twitter notifications and Facebook and all that stuff, you can lose their attention in half a second. It's very easy to do.

I'm sure you find yourself fragmented and pulled in a hundred different directions, your customers do too. The more distraction you have, the more of a problem it is. I'll get into this in a second. As for contacting you, make it easy. Have that phone number appear at the top of the screen and have it stuck there. So no matter where they are on your website. Whether they are at their laptop or on mobile or IPad, whatever it is, your phone number is there. So any time they want to they can see, there's the number, touch it and call. A couple of things on that. Do not use vanity numbers. 1-800-Call-Bob or 1-800-DUI-Yes. Don't use those because they don't work on smartphones. You touch them and they are not going to load up in their dial pads where they can be called.

In the old days, the payphones, remember, the 2 button was ABC, the 3 button was DEF, the 4 button was GHI, now on phones, people don't know, they don't care, and they don't use their mental capacity to translate letters into numbers. Do not have vanity numbers. They will just hurt you. Just have a regular phone number and make sure that when someone touches it, it loads up into the dial screen because if it doesn't and I have to remember the snippets of a phone number and go to my dial screen and come back on your site and go to my dial screen, guess what? It's a waste, it's annoying, it's frustrating. I might as well just leave and go to another site. You'll be shocked at how easy it is for someone to give up especially nowadays and just go somewhere else. You have the barest sliver of someone's attention and that can evaporate in two seconds. I'm mixing metaphors here.

The last thing that we are going to talk about before this gets into a whole one hour lecture is the terms of usability on your site. So I can call you, that's great, it's wonderful, your site has nice and clear text and you can navigate it, great. Now, let's talk about navigation. If I land on the wrong page of your site or a page that doesn't tell me what I want to know, how easy is it for me to look, click a menu button or see related articles to what I'm looking at and click on those. Or is your navigation in such a way that I'm on an article but I'm trapped there and I have nowhere to go. As I'm researching a particularly legal topic and I'm looking at answers to questions, I'm going to have ancillary questions and questions related to them. Let's say I am facing a DUI. I may have had a problem with the breath test, so I am looking at that. I'm also looking at driver's license suspensions, I have a question about that.

Then I look at Jail, I might have questions about that. If I can't navigate to those other articles or I'm stuck in a dead end of your site, guess what? I'm going to leave and go back to the web and search again somewhere else. Don't let people do that. Make sure that they can navigate easily and move around and not get stuck in any corners and there are related articles based on what they see so they can pick up on those. This is plenty to have covered. I am actually going to do another one in this series. I'm going to talk specifically about link building because this is such a hotly contested topic and it definitely plays into usability and user experience but for now, that's it. Hopefully, these tips have helped you to align yourself with almighty Google and to prosper from it instead of fighting it.

This is Richard Jacobs with Speakeasy Marketing. If you need help with your marketing, email me [email protected] or call (888) 225-8594. It would help if you would subscribe to this podcast on ITunes and to write a review. It would help us get the message out to more attorneys like you. Thank You.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_161.mp3

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What does your website and online presence say about you? Are you positioned as a respected attorney with high status or a run-of-the-mill, low-cost lawyer – i.e. a commodity? Discover how a potential client's perception of you can make or break your law practice.

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_160-What_Does_Your_Online_Presence_Say_About_You_And_Your_Law_Firm.mp3

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Today, I have an unusual podcast and question for you. I ask this question because it's a question I want answered, I don't know the answer to it. It's regarding Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and the 2016 presidential race. I read the news everyday and I probably shouldn't but I've just gotten sucked into it. When I am seeing and just seeing although I am not saying Trump is good, Trump is bad or Hillary is good, Hillary is bad, so this is not a podcast about that. It's about something different that I noticed.

What I noticed is Trump will go and speak somewhere or say something and news articles will come pouring out about it the same day. If you compare what the actual interview or speech of whatever it is that Trump gave and then the news articles that come out of it, they are very different. The news is spinning what he says like crazy, like unbelievably. Yes, they do the same thing for Clinton, yes they do the same thing for everybody but Trump is like a big loud guy in front of the room right now, so I am going to comment on him. I was amazed to see this and I also feel my perception of him being changed by what I read.

I feel a sense of alarm, I feel a sense of liking him or not liking him, I feel all these triggers happening inside of me and feeling's changing as I read articles. I'll start to believe one thing and then maybe I'll go back and read the original transcript or speech and believe another thing but I am feeling myself swayed big time and my emotions being activated. How does this relate to your law practice and how does this relate to clients in how they perceive you? Actually it relates quite a bit. I want you to think now what is your website communicating and what are reviews saying about you and what does your online presence look and feel like?

What I encourage you to do is go online and Google yourself and see what comes up. I know no one likes to do it, it's like stepping on the scale and seeing, "Oh no, I am 250 pounds or something like that". It's not fun. It's like you want to cover your eyes but it's important to do. But what I want you to do it from a detached point of view, if possible. Look at it, evaluate yourself and think how am I actually coming across? Am I coming across in the way I wanted to, as prestigious and respectable? Would clients want to click on my website and find out more about me? Do I have good reviews? Do I have bad reviews? Do I have no reviews? Do I have problems? Is there a Red Bluff report, for instance, online?

What's going on with your online presence? Go to your website and look there, look through the homepage and other pages, the about you page and all that. What kind of perception are you giving? Are you giving a prestigious and elevated status one or does your website kind of look like junk or not updated lately? What are the big and the little things that are going on with your online presence that you don't like or that you feel maybe giving you an unfair perception because even though it is a media that you control somewhat unlike the regular big media. It still will work people's perception of you and sway their opinion. The specific guidelines on this are coming and I actually have talked about them in other podcast.

This is more of a generic take a look kind of thing. In addition to you taking a look, I want you to have other people that are not your family, that are not your staff that are not going to feel pressured to give you the happy answer that you want. I can do this for you, or any SEO company. But have someone that truly is a third party, maybe even someone that you know but you're not really buddies with around the courthouse.

Ask people that you know and respect that won't feel compelled to give you just a blow smoke up yours or you know what and see what they think, see what they feel, ask for their honest opinion. You may be surprised. Hopefully, you're happily surprised but you may be surprised in a bad way. I think if you do this, and I need to do the same obviously, I do it periodically, you may be surprised at what you find. I hope this helps.

If you do need help in doing this for your website and your online presence and improving it based on what you see, email me [email protected], call 888-225-8594. Remember, please subscribe to the podcast and write a review because that helps us getting information out there more consistently to attorneys like you. Thank you!

https://media.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/p/content.blubrry.com/speakeasymarketinginc/Episode_160-What_Does_Your_Online_Presence_Say_About_You_And_Your_Law_Firm.mp3

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