Search Engine Marketing (SEM/SEO) and Lead Generation for Law Practices

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Autism Speaks

2009-11-02T13:51:00.003-05:00

Autism and related Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDD) is a condition that has affected several members of my family. It impacts the brain's cues for social interaction and emotional development.

What causes it remains a mystery, but it is very common, affecting 1 in 166 children, and perhaps even more according to some studies. The explosion in cases in the last decades is almost certainly the result of aggressive diagnosis. The cause is unknown, but it could be a combination of environmental and genetic factors.

Though there is no cure for autism spectrum disorder, children who are diagnosed early can be helped significantly with early intervention. I have witnessed this firsthand, and owe a tremendous amount to a number of early intervention therapists.

Autism Speaks is the leading organization fighting for autism research.

Here is a list of famous people who may have been autistic to some degree.

Thanks to purposeinc for continually promoting many important causes in the internet marketing community.

Domains Re-Revisted

2009-02-24T11:03:00.004-05:00

The topic of domain names for a site is always a topic of current interest . Last year I wrote about the challenges in assessing the value of a domain name.

The basics of website names are always true. Domains with solid keywords relevant to your business are always a good idea, especially if you are going to build a high quality site around it.

However, it has been difficult to find good keyword dot com domains in recent years. Almost any domain name with a few common words is owned by someone. In the past, domainers even have programs that mechanically purchase domain names with strings of common words, just for the speculation value.

But the domain collector/speculator market is changing. The value of a parked or redirected domain, in general, is less than it once was. Parked domains are not bringing in the revenue they once were, as the economy and the PPC ad market have dropped off considerably. (So my domain collector friends tell me, anyway.)

In this new tougher market, many people who would buy domains just to hold onto them and see if they appreciate are letting annual registrations expire to save the fees on unwanted domain properties. So if you are a site developer, the market for dropped domains is as good as it's been in some time.

I recently picked up kansascitycriminaldefenselawyer.com after someone decided not to renew it. It's a long domain, which means it isn't great for branding purposes - it's difficult to share with someone and get them to remember it. However, it has excellent keywords, and no dreaded dashes! It will make a good site for search engine results & traffic in that market.

Finding Expired Domains

There are many sites that do this, but I've had good luck using snapnames.com. They have a very useful feature where you can set alerts on keywords so that you are emailed when any domains with those keywords are coming available.

Again, you can put a lot of time into these efforts if you are so inclined. I generally don't devote much time to these treasure hunts, myself. But you can definitely get lucky, and pick up domains that used to be live sites, quite possibly with live links to them. I have a friend who even found a domain that still had an active PPC campaign. The former owner was still spending money buying traffic for a domain they no longer owned!

The bottom line is, in this economy, it is a good time to be looking for bargains. You can definitely domains that can be built into profitable sites in your niche, and can bring in revenue well into the future.

SEO Scams and Ripoffs

2008-11-12T12:14:00.002-05:00

I am a big fan of identifying SEO and internet marketing scams.

It is staggering how many bad SEO companies there are out there. I suppose it isn't surprising since the demand for SEO services is so high, given the excellent ROI opportunities that are possible when it is done right.

It is true that the techniques can be arcane, the results not instantaneous, and there are difficulties in measuring direct cause and effect. I think there is a market for honest SEO services brokers, to match the needs of clients with quality SEO companies.

In any case, here are a couple of scam alerts I've come across recently from some very smart people.

Wil Reynolds of ThinkSeer does a nice takedown analysis of a video optimization scam.
Eric Ward, a top old school ethical link builder, flags these guys as his "shitty service of the day".

New SEO and Online Lawyer Marketing Posts

2008-07-28T10:14:00.002-04:00

Over at GetLawyerLeads.com, I wrote a post commenting on an interesting and worthwhile article on lawyer site SEO at law.com.
In a separate post, I break down a paid lawyer directory listing offer, and whether it lives up to the value it suggests.

Marketing Upsell Analysis: Continential Airlines

2008-06-10T16:31:00.003-04:00

Traveling from Seattle to Boston last week, I was thinking about the airline's attempt to up-sell me on an alternate, "faster" route home. It was actually impressive, and had most of the tricky pieces in place for a successful program. Almost, but not quite.

The details: Flying from Seattle to Boston via a change in Cleveland on a red-eye.
Enthusiasm level of flyer: very low.
Opportunity: At the automatic check in, they scanned my itinerary, and said they had an alternate flight that would get me to Boston sooner. Was I interested? Yes.
Details: Alternate flight would route me through Newark.
Benefit: I arrive in Boston 20 minutes sooner.
Cost: $50 to change flight.
Result: Continental fails to make a compelling bid for my $50.

Again, I was sort of impressed that they had compiled this info at the right place where if the offer were good enough, I would have agreed. Imagine the same scenario with just one or two extra details:

Opportunity: Continental tells me that my flight to Cleveland is 99% full. Alternate route through Newark is 50% full. Maybe they even go the extra step and give me an opportunity to lock out that middle seat next to me, or even a whole row.
Result: They have my $50 in a heartbeat. Maybe $100.

No doubt these opportunities will arrive someday, maybe very soon. The future belongs to marketing that provides immediate benefits and customer information transparency to make those decisions.

What Would Seth Say?

Should I Rank? (SEO Magic, part 2)

2008-05-20T16:44:00.011-04:00

Why can't I rank #1, or on the first page for "keyword x"? An excellent question. The answer is - you probably can if you throw enough time and money at it. But that amount may be far more than you should be willing to spend.

A place to start is to objectively analyze the content of your site, compared with the top ranked sites.

Is your site as comprehensive, helpful, and valuable to the searcher as those other sites?
If not, why do you think you deserve to be a top ranked site?

Google and the other search engines have clearly stated their goals are to provide a quality search experience for it's users. Searches are questions - your site should provide the answers.

Of course, this system is far from perfect. We all know that there are many sites with top rankings that are not good sites. They are spammy, scammy, and content free. Some people can game the system get traffic and rankings for those sites. (Many people mistakenly believe this is what SEO is). However,

that person isn't you, and;
if you are running a real business, that shouldn't be your goal.

In most cases, getting a crappy site ranked for good phrases, and getting lots of traffic is, at best, a short term proposition. If you can pull off the slash and burn, and make money at it, then best of luck to you.

But for almost everyone reading this site, that isn't a realistic proposition, and shouldn't be your objective.

If you are running a real business, and plan to be around for a while, your goal should be to build quality, sustainable, defensible site for the long term. Your web site is your front door, and the first impression for many of your future customers.

I Do Have a Quality Site. Now What?

If you have a great site that is a great resource for searchers, with quality content and useful information, then the good news is that a) getting rankings and traffic is much easier, and b) you are hopefully in a position to take advantage of that traffic and convert it into business. Employing SEO/SEM, link building, and blogging will help you get the traffic and business you deserve.

How Can I Rank? (SEO Get Rich Quick Schemes)

2008-05-13T08:49:00.010-04:00

What can you do to get me to rank for "keyword x"? (and how much will it cost) is the classic question I get from people who thing they know what Search Engine Optimization is, but don't know how it works, or what it's about.

"I Have This Business Idea, I'm going to Start Doing X. Can You Get Me on Page 1?"

Quickly? Based on a half a page of content tacked on to your site? Umm, probably not.

Many people think SEO is a get rich quick scheme. If I just get this ranking, then I will instantly profit from it. And most people who think this haven't done any keyword research or comparative analysis of the potential value and competitiveness of the keywords they are fixated on.

In addition, because I've had success getting rankings and traffic for clients, some of them think I can do anything. They think I am just waiting for an offer of enough money to work the magic.

In some sense, that's probably true. If you throw enough money and effort at a site, you probably can get the rankings you want. But it many cases, that number well exceeds the business value of that traffic.

Are You Serious?

I think it is because SEO is perceived by some as a scheme, it can be easy to consider it detached from the real goals of your business - getting customers, and selling them services or goods, at a profit.

SEO/SEM needs to be just like any other marketing effort for a business. Either you are getting a return on your investment, or you aren't. And it is hard for most people to get anywhere with online marketing without putting some thought, effort, and real business goals.

What is a Lawyer Domain Worth?

2008-04-29T12:50:00.004-04:00

I was recently approached about buying a domain. It is a pretty good, narrowly targeted domain name. But what is it worth? This is a difficult question to answer, and it depends on a number of factors.

Open Market Value

There is a huge market in domain names. They are bought and sold on specialized sites like sedo.com and even on ebay. Domain name traders generally value them based on two factors:

Investment Value

Domain names are considered "internet real estate", and this real estate market is booming. Only one person can own "lawyer.com", and the millions of other valuable names. There is considerable speculation in this market about what domains are worth, now and in the future.

Parked Income Value

A domain is "parked" if there isn't a real site behind it. It could be redirected to another site, or it could be parked in a way that generates a page of links that are ads. Most people have seen these sites. You are essentially given nothing to do but click on a link that generates Pay Per Click advertising income for the owner.

For domains that get a lot of referral traffic (a click through from another site) or type in traffic (many people really do just type in "shoes.com" instead of searching for shoes), a good domain name can be a money machine, and is worth some multiple of income value based on standard business ROI metrics.

End User/Developer Value

Domains are generally most valuable to a person who wants to develop a site, and can directly monetize the traffic generated. The two main reasons you may develop a domain are:

Branding

This is fairly obvious. You may want your company or product name in you domain if that brand has marketing value to you. But this can get tricky and expensive if your brand also has significant keyword domain value - you may be competing against people who want the domain possibly for a different market altogether.

Keyword Value

Your keyword is a valuable brand in itself, particularly when it appears in search engine results for that keyword search. If you have search keywords in your domain, it is considered a big advantage. Many people believe that the domain name alone will help you rank for those terms. But regardless of how much it may boost you in the rankings, it is indisputable that when your domain does appear, it will help you in branding, credibility, and click through rates.
A domain with the exact keywords that a person searched for pops out in google search results pages, because the keywords are automatically bolded.
Secondly, when a searcher sees the domain of those keywords, it tends to give you an instant credibility boost - "This is what I am searching for". Of course, you still have to deliver on that promise with your landing page to get anywhere - but that's a separate topic altogether.

So, what's a lawyer domain worth again?

Back to the original question. So any domain has some base value that domain collectors and speculators think it is worth.

However, in most cases a developed site is worth more than a parked site that relies on pure click through ad revenue. That only makes sense - if the site owner is the ultimate destination of those keyword clicks/searches anyway, then you are cutting out possibly several layers of ad delivering middlemen.

In the case of lawyer domains, if you are a New York Immigration Law Firm, then NewYorkImmigrationLawyers.com (just an example) is probably more valuable to you then the average internet domain buyer. But this may be true only if you are in a position to take advantage of the value of the domain. You need to have a site behind it that generates business inquiries (leads) in a cost effective manner, than you are in a position to efficiently monetize.

So, a to a law firm, a keyword rich domain is worth:

(open market value) + (a premium based on the efficiency gained in picking up that traffic) - (the time and effort to actually make that happen).

News Flash: Lawyer PPC avertising is expensive, part 54

2008-04-05T13:23:00.010-04:00

Interesting discussion in the Austin criminal defense blogging community about PPC (Pay Per Click) and online advertising budgets. The cost and value of leads is something I spend a lot of time analyzing.

While PPC can certainly be a great way to market your services, it is also very easy to spend it poorly. I suspect that many firms who get in bidding wars for the top keywords slots quickly burn through advertising dollars at a big loss, if they aren't paying careful attention to ROI.

There is more to successful online lawyer advertising than:

Buy $20-$50 PPC ads for "top local DUI Lawyer"
Pass marketing expenses on to clients
Profit!

What Does Your PPC Ad Buy?

Unlike buying yellow pages ads (where you can also easily spend $5000+/month), there is an intermediate step from someone seeing your ad to generating a lead.

When someone clicks on your ad, all you are buying is someone's attention for a very limited time. Most people click away within 3 seconds if a web site doesn't grab there attention, or give them something they were looking for.

So when that searcher clicks on your ad and goes to your web site (your "landing page"), you need to have to have something both compelling and relevant to what they are looking for. It really has to deliver on the promise of the ad that made them click.

How Often Does A PPC Click Become a Real Live Contact (Lead)?

In most industries including legal, 5%-10% is a very strong conversion rate from a PPC ad to a lead. Keep in mind that many people who are searching are not your target customers. It could be that a person finds out his cousin was arrested for DWI, and it curious what might happen to him. Or if someone famous gets arrested, that can often increase curiosity traffic.

So at a 10% conversion for a $50 click (or a 5% conversion on a $25 click), you are spending $500 just to get someone to call or email you.

Leads to Clients

An attorney who knows what he or she is doing, and who knows how to sell his services can probably convert between 10-20% of leads into clients.

So, at that original PPC rate, you are spending $2500-$5000 in client acquisition costs.

Most marketing experts state that businesses with any significant overhead need to return 3-1 on marketing dollars to make a decent profit.

Now you have to charge you clients as much as $15,000 just to make a decent profit, to cover your time, overhead, expenses.

There are probably only a handful of criminal defense attorneys in any given advertising market who get paid 5 figure fees for a DWI charge.

(I'm not even counting whoever the NFL player hires, or Senator or CEO calls when his son gets busted. Those people aren't searching online, so it doesn't matter how much you spend on advertising, you aren't getting that call.)

And if your fees are that high, your probably can't realistically convert nearly that many leads to clients, since you are pricing yourself out of what most of the market can afford. Especially when most of your competition is charging fees that are a fraction of that.

The bottom line is for a criminal law firm to successfully monetize some of the astronomical PPC rates people pay for the most competitive terms, they have to be at the very top of their game at every level.

I personally believe that most of these firms who continue spending at those rates simply aren't paying enough attention to the ROI. Maybe the firms are successful enough overall that they don't notice the thousands of dollars per month they are wasting. (Why not consider buying criminal leads?)

But I'm sure Google stockholders are appreciative.

Criminal Defense Lawyer Lead Generation

2008-04-01T15:15:00.002-04:00

Since I'm primarily focused on the end result of generating leads, and not so much the tactic of SEO/SEM these days, I put up a new page about lead generation for criminal defense lawyers. I talk about what kind of lawyer or law firm is a good candidate for buying leads directly.

The basic point is that if you already have the infrastructure and overhead to manage more client inquiries and handle more clients, it makes perfect sense to buy any leads for which you can generate a return on investment. This certainly would apply to any small business, but the law field is where I'm focused, and most criminal defense law firms are small firms with just a few lawyers, or sole practitioners.

I don't think analyzing ROI is some brilliant insight, but I am constantly amazed how many people I talk to can easily lose sight of the big picture.

Especially when practically everyone in business is spammed with emails about "getting you on the top of google..", etc. As everyone in the internet marketing business knows, virtually all of these are scams or empty promises.

Buying leads is a relatively low risk opportunity as long as you aren't locked into a long term contract. Calculating ROI is as simple as can be, and you'll know within a month or two, and often much sooner, whether the leads you are buying make any financial sense.

For new clients, we even give them at least two weeks of free leads, so they can determine for themselves the quality and value of the service we provide, with no risk.

Choosing a Domain Name for a Lawyer Site

2008-01-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

I largely agree with what David Ward says on the topic of law firm domain names, but he goes off the rails at the end.

If one of your goals is brand building, and for most attorneys it should be, that you want as simple and memorable as possible. That generally means still with .com only, and don't use any hyphens, since no one will remember them if they try to type it in.

I very much like keyword based domains, like kansasimmigrationlawyer.com, but good names like that are often unavailable. Incorporating your firm name or initials will usually net you an available domain, so if your initials are NJF, NJFimmigrationlaw.com is a workable domain. A well targeted keyword in your domain helps it stand out on a page of search results.

For most people, I would not recommend multiple domain names pointing to the same site. There are many ways for this to be done incorrectly that can hurt you in search engine rankings, if they aren't configured properly as a permanent 301 redirect.

There many be a few good reasons to have multiple domains for a Pay Per Click advertising campaign, but that also strikes me as a very advanced strategy where you can easily go wrong.

And adding misspellings as keywords in a PPC campaign is fine, but is crazy for domain names, unless you are in an extremely rarefied and highly competitive area.

Lawyers in Search of Leads - Go Make a Deal

2008-01-10T11:24:00.000-05:00

One alternative or adjunct to the hard work and expense of generating law firm leads online is to find attorneys or web sites that may be generating leads that they don't want, or are more valuable to you, and make a deal for them.

There are real untapped opportunities for off the beaten path regional leads, as well as many narrow specialties.

For example, if you are a criminal defense lawyer in Western Virginia / Roanoke area, I've got a site that generates at least a few leads a month for Reckless Driving and other criminal charges.

I'm basically throwing those leads away since I don't have the time it would take me to find a good local affiliate attorney to handle the relatively small number of inquiries for that area.

I would bet the situation is the same for many of the top ranked sites for "Virginia Reckless Driving lawyer". So if I were an attorney in one of those less populous areas, I'd be contacting all those sites and try to cut a deal for the leads that are too far out for those attorneys to handle. There are probably enough overflow leads to keep an attorney quite busy.

Lawyers are well versed in the business of referrals, so it only makes sense to seek out those referrals where you can find them.

---
Note: this is part of my new year effort to work, think (and post) more about general marketing issues and insights, and not just pure Search Engine Marketing.

News Flash: Lawyer Pay Per Click Advertising is expensive

2007-12-11T20:57:00.000-05:00

Typical article in the New York Times about what everyone in the online lawyer marketing world already knows - many PPC search terms are expensive.

There was much bemusement that personal injury terms and particularly the phrase "mesothelioma attorney" can go for over $50/click. The implications are that there was something unsavory and/or strange about this fact.

The tone of the article clearly suggested that the writer didn't understand much about lawyers or search engine marketing. Or maybe even business.

The bottom line is that if you can acquire customers at a certain rate, and profitably earn back a reasonable margin, then obviously you do that.

No doubt at $50 just to get someone's attention, you either need to be converting a high percentage of these inquiries, or converting a smaller number of them for an extremely high ROI for it all to balance out.

But that's just an issue of successful execution, the core of any successful business.

Question of the Week - How Does Google Rank a Site?

2007-06-30T20:49:00.000-04:00

Q: For purposes of a websites organic listing, is it only the content and relevancy of the landing page or does google look at the content and relevancy of the entire website? Do I need to just build out my homepage or do I need to build out the entire website in order to increase my organic ranking?

A: Search engines rank pages, not entire websites as a whole.

The reason many home pages tend to be the best ranked pages on a site is because the authority and pagerank that its gets from the links to it, both external links from other sites, and internal links via the navigation of your own site. So putting aside the (critical) issue of the outside links in to your site, the value you can create by building out other pages on your site is tremendous. You have the benefit of complete control over your internal links, so how you choose to link to other pages in your site via the structure of your navigation, and the link text you use is very important.

Also, you can't expect one page to rank for a large set of diverse keywords. No one page can be the best for every search. So you'll want to write other good content on other pages that are thematically related. If the search engines decide that it is a quality page, then the value of the links back to your home page and throughout the site increase.

And none of this considers what is best for your sites' visitors, and for the goals of your site beyond rankings.

Future implied question raised: What makes a quality page?
How should I link throughout my site?
...to be continued in a future Question of the Week.

Google Conspiracy Theories

2007-06-02T22:57:00.000-04:00

I recently had a conversation with someone who expressed a view that there are magical, secret techniques for getting top google rankings. Big companies allegedly pay millions of dollars a year for this information and access. And some SEO firms who are "in the know" can also make this happen.

One piece of evidence was that in one particular relatively competitive niche, "site a" outranked "site b", even though "site b" was clearly "better". Of course "site a" was operated by one of these sneaky SEO firms who had the secret.

Apparently, a number of people in this self-reinforcing circle of Google outsiders agreed that "site b" was much better, and that there was no good ascertainable reason why it was being thrashed by "site a". (Site b wasn't just being thrashed by site a, but by everyone. It was nearly invisible. But I'll address that separately.)

As a Google outsider myself who is vastly skeptical of grand conspiracies (though if someone wants to bring me inside, I'm all for it... email me, I won't tell!), I decided to take up the challenge of looking at both sites and seeing if there might be a simpler explanation.

As it turns out, at least part of the story was true. I agree that "site b" is better than "site a". It has better and broader content, and overall seemed more compelling to me. In fact, site a seemed singularly unimpressive, and in my initial thoughts, it did seem somewhat odd to me that it should rank so highly.

But then a did a little digging. Neither site was all that old, site a went up in 2004, site b in 2005. Site a did have more backlinks than site b, but it was not a huge number, or a massive difference, either.

But after taking a closer look at the backlinks, as it turns out, site a had several extremely strong links from the home page of a very old, extremely authoritative, and topically related site (we'll call it "site x"). Bingo! A quick look at the wayback machine showed that those links had been on that home page for 2 years. Those killer links had been there longer than site b had been in existence! Case closed!

Conspiracy theory? Well, other than the fact that site a and site x were controlled by the same SEO firm, and that the home page links from site x to site a were invisible (no anchor text! - apparently that works if your site has enough trustrank? - slimy, but successful) it all seemed quite cut and dried.

I'll even leave out of the story all the massive problems that site b has (canonical domain issues - some pages in in index as www, some not - lots of pages in the supplemental index - no unique title tags - no meta descriptions tags - possible duplicate content problems - and more), since even if all those problems were fixed, it wouldn't beat site a for the highest traffic keywords, though it would at least get in the ball game.

Ockham, you magnificent bastard, you did it again.

SEO v. Web Site Design

2007-05-27T22:53:00.000-04:00

Nick at Search Engine Optimization Journal says:

"OK, back to the beaten path: SEO requires hours of research. Web design doesn’t. Your web design company does not have to research keywords, competition, or anything else to make your website look pretty. But pretty won’t make you money. Your SEO will affect your bottom line a lot more than your web design company ever will. That’s why you should focus on a search engine optimized website rather than a pretty face. Most people could get by if they slashed their web design budget by 50% and put the savings into SEO work. Not only will that save you money immediately (since SEO work is often less expensive than design), but it will make you money in the long run."

He is absolutely right, and may well be underselling his point. A crappy looking site that is well optimized for search engines (and has quality, compelling content - a critical point that can't be overlooked) can potentially make you serious money. A beautiful site, badly designed for SEO can be invisible to search engines and make you nothing.

Here's another point beyond pure SEO: Many, if not most search engine experts know quite a lot about Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and often offer both services simultaneously. Which makes sense if you think about it. SEO/SEM is quantifiable. It's about traffic, leads, and conversions. It's about continually measuring success and improving.

Design, on the other hand is "fire and forget". The end product is the deliverable of the site design, and that's it.

And I'll also second the opinion that most designers don't know squat about SEO. It does seem surprising that this continues to be the case given how culturally important Google has become. But the fact that anyone would ever consider using a flash intro page in 2007 proves this to me. I still see them on new sites.

Good News story on PPC ads

2007-05-24T17:08:00.000-04:00

It hits many of my favorite PPC tips - negative keywords, use keywords in ad copy, content matching turned off. It works!

PAY-PER-CLICK PROBLEMS: Emeryville gourmet chocolate company has a rough go of it

H/T Aaron

Go Negative!

2007-05-04T21:04:00.000-04:00

I've always been a big fan of negative keywords in your PPC campaign. It can save you lots of money on wasted clicks for traffic you know isn't targeting to what you are offering. Proper use of negative keywords will also boost your overall click through rate, which in turn can move up you ad placement in the listings. Win win!

I'm probably slow to this since I haven't been doing many Adwords campaign updates lately, but the negative keywords option in the Google Adwords keyword tool is quite nice. Easy to use and highly recommended for everyone.

An example of a negative keyword I always use in my criminal defense lawyer campaigns is "-statistics". I think it's a pretty safe bet that someone who's been arrested on a criminal charge and needs a lawyer doesn't much care about crime statistics! That searcher almost certainly is doing some kind of research, and it not my target customer.

SEO Expert poll of key Search Engine Ranking Factors

2007-04-29T16:15:00.000-04:00

SEOmoz | Google Search Engine Ranking Factors

Interesting poll of what is important in the SEO of your site.

I find it particularly noteworthy that there is a strong consensus that Title Tags are the most important on-page attribute, both for positive SEO gains, and the fact that using the same title tag repeatedly across your site can seriously damage your change to get good rankings, and can deposit you in Google's Supplemental Index.

H/T Nick.

Measuring Success in your SEO Efforts - First Page Keywords?

2007-04-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

I was recently asked what I thought about an SEO company that promises "100 first page keyword rankings" if you hire them.

This is not a meaningful measure of a successful campaign. If the "100 keywords" selected are well targeted to the business goals, and generate a lot of search impressions, then there may well be some value there. But it is probably more likely that you'll get rankings for uncompetitive or unimportant searches that generate little to no actual traffic and customers. I

I would not put any trust in an SEO company that offered this as a metric. To me, it means they are either willfully providing a measurement that has no clear intrinsic value, or that they fundamentally don't understand what is important to their customers' business.

Neither is a good answer.

Is There Such a Thing as Freeloader Site Traffic?

2007-04-10T10:07:00.000-04:00

Do you have a commercial site that has a few pages with content that attracts traffic, but doesn't generate any business? Perhaps purely informational content relevant to browsers and researchers, but not customers or clients?

It is easy to fall into the trap of considering this "freeloader" traffic. You can try to dress it up to be more sales-y, by pushing your pitch harder, and doing more call to actions to squeeze commercial value out. Or you could put up more advertising on the page to generate some revenue. Or just ignore it entirely.

But the best option might be to stop fighting it and embrace the nature and quality of the traffic you are generating. It's not easy to become an authoritative source for information, but it can be ultimately very valuable.

Try to determine what those who find your site are after, and make that landing page the authoritative answer to those questions.

The benefits of doing this include:

Credibility. You are building yourself into a subject matter authority, both in the eyes of the general information seekers who are finding this page, and real potential customers who are looking at other parts of your site and may click on this page.
Press & PR. You may get calls based on your subject matter expertise and authority that pay dividends down the road, and further enhance your credibility.
Links! Authoritative helpful information is killer link bait, which can be incredibly valuable for increasing search engine rankings on your entire site.

All these elements have a snowball effect to them as well. More credibility brings more press, more links, more search engine respect, higher rankings, more traffic, and more business.

Example: This site generates lots of informational browser traffic on Melanie's Law, the name of a Massachusetts drunk driving law.

101 Ways to Build Link Popularity in 2006 : SEO Book.com

2006-08-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

Who doesn't love these kinds of lists? And these guys really know what they are talking about when it comes to link building. Great stuff.

SEO and Guarantees: Like Oil and Water

2006-07-03T11:01:00.000-04:00

Comments on SEO firm claims and guarantees.

SEO and Guarantees: Like Oil and Water

How to Measure Site Traffic

2006-06-02T21:24:00.000-04:00

Measuring site traffic month to month is a good way to track how your SEO/SEM efforts are working. But the question is, what to measure?

One of the simplest things to track is Pageviews, but unfortunately pageviews tend to count a lot of useless traffic, such as

bots crawling for email addresses to spam
bots crawling for content scraping to copy and use for scummy fake blogs for Adsense traffic
people or bots looking at sites for link exchanges

Unfortunately, I suspect that this kind useless traffic is growing at a faster rate than actual traffic that is useful to your business, so pure pageviews can give you an inflated impression of your sites traffic levels.

The metric that I believe is most useful is monthly search engine referrals. I track the unique number of referrals from each of the major search engines. There are certainly flaws in this method, such as:

See #3 above. This traffic will often originate from Search Engines (though at least it only counts as one referral hit)
It discounts non-search engine traffic that could actually be worthwhile traffic, such as from other related websites or directories.

For lawyer web sites, you generally don't get that much useful traffic from other sites or directories. But if there are some sites that do provide worthwhile visitors, you could always count those referrals in your own metric, along with the search engines.

That's what I do, anyway. It can be a pain to have do dig through the logs of each individual site if you have a large number of site to manage, but I feel like it an important way to measure how the site is doing.