It can be pretty daunting trying to figure out how much to spend on a law firm website these days.  There are companies charging tens of thousands of dollars and promising the moon, and there’s always your cousin’s friend from college who would do it for a case of beer and a bucket of chicken.

Sometimes it helps to just set some expectations.  Your mileage may vary according to your goals, your geographic region etc, but here are some ballpark figures that will give you a good sense for what you should get for your dollar, and help you figure out just how much you can afford to spend.

So let’s kick this off at the bottom.

Less than $500

The old adage goes, you get what you pay for.  This bucket usually contains either family friend discounts, students doing the work, or your run of the mill website builder like GoDaddy or Wix.

If your goal is just to have a site that you can point people to, and don’t intend to do online marketing, blogging, lead collection etc, this might be the way to go.  Be careful here though.  A lot of times the website builders are loss-leaders for the business.  For example, GoDaddy makes the website builder cheap to get you to do your web, email and domain hosting with them, which often ends up being a more expensive and lower quality offering than going out and getting decent options separately.

For example, I use DNSimple for domain and DNS hosting. I can’t recommend them enough. And for email hosting, $50/year for Google Apps is an absolute steal.

$500 – $1500

This is a tough range.  It’s tough because it’s likely that you could find someone to do the work for the price, but it’s going to be very difficult to judge the quality beforehand.  A developer that’s worth their salt will be able to charge A LOT more than this, so here, you’re typically dealing with local developers that might not be around very long. You want someone that will be around 2 or 3 years from now and who can answer an email at the drop of a hat if there’s a problem.  Now, if you’re willing to take a bit of the management tasks on, you could probably find a very talented international developer on oDesk that could do a great job for this price.

$1500 – $5000

This is what I would consider the sweet spot for most solos.  In this range you can get a good developer to do a basic site that’ll cover the bases for most of you.

When I say “cover the bases” I mean:

• Uses a nice responsive theme (looks great on mobile devices)
• Uses a Content Management System like WordPress or Drupal. Avoid hard-coded sites as you’ll need to contact your developer any time you need a change.
• Has a BUILT-IN blog (I saw a recent post that suggested attorneys should have a separately branded blog. That is such terrible advice that I would consider it dangerous.)
• Uses best-practices like semantic markup to make your site more easily parseable by search engines.
• Basic setup with Google (Google Analytics, Google Authorship)
• Can offer limited tech support for the foreseeable future.
• A classic looking, basic typographic logo if you don’t have one yet.
• Redirects from your existing site if you have one. Basically, make sure that anyone linking to your existing site ends up on a relevant page on your new site.  Without this, any SEO clout you’ve built up will disappear.
• And the ability to walk you through how to do basic edits (like writing blog posts) yourself.

What you likely won’t get at this price point:

• Custom photography
• Custom graphic design (the theme you use will be the “web designer”)
• Custom copy
• Comprehensive branding

$5000+

Once you go over $5k, the sky really is the limit.  You could get a custom graphic designer to do a completely custom design just for you.  You could get a marketing consultant to do your bidding.  Really, at this price range, it’ll be really confusing because it’ll likely be a much larger to-do.  There might be an law firm SEO consultant or an AdWords consultant.  All of these things can be positives, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed and there’s a lot of sharks at that price point that’ll promise you the world and never deliver.  If you’re spending that kind of money, make sure you get references and demand quantifiable proof that the investment was worth it.  If they’re good, it’ll be more than evident.

Whatever you decide make sure the following:

Make sure that your domain name is registered under an account you can access yourself and that it’s registered TO YOU.  As I mentioned, I really like DNSimple for this.  They’re great people and they make managing domains really simple without some of the spammier upsell practices of companies like GoDaddy.  Also, don’t let your developer own this account.  If he’s out of business in 2 years, you’ll have a really hard time getting control of your domain (if you can at all).

Be wary of SEO sharks that mention link-building or keyword density when pitching SEO services.  SEO is almost entirely based on writing good content that answers questions that people want answered.  There is very little left that can “game” the system.  Anyone that tells you they can get to the first page of Google for something like “DUI attorney Nashville, TN” and doesn’t immediately follow it up with a year-long content strategy is selling you a bag of goods.

Make sure you understand the ins and outs of your Content Management System before you sign off on the project.  If you’re not completely comfortable with the process of updating your practice area pages or writing a blog post, you never will, and that’s the quickest way to make your investment depreciate like an abandoned house.

When in doubt, feel free to ask for help. I see all of the shady stuff targeting my wife’s practice and I want to scream, so I’m happy to share unbiased advice.

I hope that clears up some of the confusion in the space.  If you have any questions, feel free to let me know and I’ll do my best to answer them…

Just about every law firm blog post needs an image. At the very least, it’s a nice visual introduction to your post. But finding high-quality photos that are free and not likely to get you busted for copyright infringement is tough.

After all, when you pull out Google Image search, besides the dubious quality, it’s hard to tell if you have the right to use the image. And it’s likely that you don’t.

Here’s how to find a high-quality, free-to-use image for your blog post.

The long story short is that we use Flickr’s Creative Commons image search to find photos that are licensed to be used for commercial use, providing you attribute the author. Then we show you how to correctly add that attribution to your blog post.

Here’s a quick video to see how to add a great looking image to a WordPress blog post in just a few minutes, and how to add the same image to an AmazeLaw blog post in just a few seconds 🙂

Not too shabby huh? It’s fairly easy and yields great results that aren’t likely to get you sued.

Starting your own firm is hard work. You don’t have the same resources that big firms have to market yourself. But luckily, what you lack in budget you gain in scrappiness. You can move quicker and with less oversight. You can ditch the BigLaw stuffiness and appeal directly to the clients you want to help.

Here’s our promise. We will deliver an actionable plan every week that can be implemented in less than 30 minutes a day, that, applied consistently, will provide you with an audience of prospective clients that lets you focus on the law instead of glad-handing at every networking event that rolls through town.

Remember, consistency is key if you want to build up that consistent stream of clients. Consider us your coach. We’ll give you a plan, every week.

Want to get early access to these tactics? Sign up for the email list and we’ll deliver them right to your inbox, every Monday morning. If not, check back on Fridays for that week’s plan.

The focus of a website is to receive the most clicks that provide a steady stream of traffic and leads to an increase in business and clients. The means that every business (and law firm) is fighting for the front page of Google.

Visitors arrive to your website in a variety of way. One way to receive free, organic traffic is by ranking high on search engines via keywords. The content you provide and the keywords included on your pages will be selected by search engines that best match the query.

An alternative to free, organic traffic is PPC (Pay Per Click).

PPC is a highly competitive advertising strategy that can place your website and business pages on the front of Google and other search engines. Due to the changing nature of the online world, PPC for lawyers is going to be much more difficult to come out on top.

What Is PPC?

Pay per click advertising is a method of attracting new clients to your law firm using specific and targeted keywords used by those seeking a lawyer.

Successful campaigns use a landing page that has a distinct message and a clear call-to-action. This means that whenever you advertisement is clicked, that person will be landing on a webpage describing a solution to their problem (i.e. call 123-456-7890 for a FREE CONSULTATION).

PPC campaigns can be set up in a variety of ways with specific ad groups targeting the following:

• Bankruptcy Lawyer
• Business Lawyer
• Divorce Lawyer
• Family Lawyer
• Medical Malpractice Lawyer
• Personal Injury Lawyer

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, Yandex, and Bing allow you to design text based ads that will appear when those keywords are entered into the search bar. The concept behind PPC is that you will only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad leading to your website or landing page.

There is potential to create some successful advertisements that allow you to discover new clients, however many of these keywords above are highly sought after by other law firms. In addition, the nature of PPC and how advertising is permitted on these search engines are constantly changing.

The Changing Nature Of PPC

Back in February 2016, Google rolled out a few changes to their some changes to the way they show ads in the search queries. They removed the longer text ads that showed in the right sidebar. This is a complete overview of the changes Google made:

• No more text ads in the right sidebar of search results on desktop
• Up to 4 text ads will be shown above the organic listings for “highly commercial queries” (before, up to 3 were displayed)
• Up to 3 text ads will show at the bottom of the search results.
• The maximum number of ads to be displayed will be 7 (before, there were up to 11)

Google defines “highly commercial queries” as the keywords that are in high demand in certain industries.

What Does  This Mean for Lawyer’s PPC?

 When you are choosing the right keywords  to setup a PPC campaign, there may be a highly sought after keyword that drives up the prices. Let’s saw for example, “New York Lawyers” is a highly searched keyword. Due to popular demand, you can see yourself paying tens to hundreds of dollars per click.

Consider this. “Lawyer” and “Attorney” are the most expensive keywords used on Bing. They cost over $100 per click when used with search queries like these: “personal injury lawyer” or “accident attorney colorado.” Your monthly PPC campaigns could cost in the thousands with a return of investment being entirely uncertain. Bing is known to be the cheaper advertising platform and Google is likely to be much higher.

With the changes made by Google, this puts increasing competition on keywords but also to a top ranking position in the search queries. Where before prices may have varied from a dollar up, the supply and demand can push your PPC campaign budget beyond its limits.

The Downside Of PPC Campaigns For Lawyers

 PPC offers a paid alternative to getting your website noticed by potential clients. However, these campaigns are based entirely on bids and competition for keywords. If there are a lot of advertisers bidding on the same keyword, the price goes up.

Unfortunately, PPC advertising does not guarantee that every click will lead to your next client. In fact, you could be losing a significant amount of money at each click when no one is contacting you for your legal services.

This document from Google detailing factors that influence your PPC viewability, claims that 56.1% impressions are not actually seen. This implies a considerable amount of loss and uncertainty when relying on PPC to find new clients and grow your firm.

Now, here’s something that you have to be aware of. Since you are not the only one competing for “high commercial queries” there are occasions of click fraud.

Click fraud is an extremely shameful marketing practice where one of your competitors will continually click on your ads until your budget is depleted. While Google does provide protection from fruad, there are still ways to get around this.

What Can Lawyers Do?

Paying $100 per click may not be a viable solution for small law firms.

As an alternative to pay per click advertising, lawyers can start their own blog and generate organic traffic to their websites. Although this too requires a significant amount of keyword research, time writing articles, and consistency with posting, the investment are for those seeking long term returns.

Having a blog can bring a flow to steady clients without having to spend thousands on advertising. By utilizing your knowledge and expertise in your field, you can provide solutions clients are searching for and direct them to a direct method of getting in contact with your legal services.

When combined with social media and other marketing strategies, blogging can be a relief to highly competitive and sometimes fraudulent ways of PPC campaigns.

We get it. You’re busy! On the long long list of things you have to do in a day, marketing is probably one of your least favorite and often gets lobbed to the end of the todo list.

But successful marketing depends on consistency, and we all know what happens to the tasks at the back of the to-do list.  So let’s set up a plan that will allow you to be consistent without causing the dread of staring at a blank screen wondering what to do.

We’ll start today with social media.  Yes. The amorphous, ubiquitous, and perpetually misunderstood side of marketing.

It can be a pain to sit down and come up with a single Facebook post let alone creating an entire social media strategy.

Well, what if it only took 20 minutes while you were sipping your morning coffee? Well that’s more manageable right? Today we’re going to outline a process and tools that will help you to do just that.

We’ll cover three components of a social media strategy that will allow you to create a bustling social presence without needing to spend all of your time dinking around in the productivity sucking waste-pool that is Facebook.

Without further ado, our first focal point – curation.

ABC – A – Always, B – Be, C – Curating. Always be curating!

What is curating you ask? Curating is collecting and filtering content from across the web that will interest your ideal clients and allow those ideal clients to interact and share with you, and more importantly, their peers, that are also ideal clients.

Everyone is drinking from a firehose these days, and with so much awful content being spewed into the ether by “marketers” it’s harder than ever to filter out the good stuff.  Your goal in this exercise is to be that filter for your ideal clients.

This does two things.  First, it distinguishes you as a thought-leader in your space, and second, it makes you the source for all things true and helpful.

Another way to think of your role in all of this is as a magic flower. No, I’m not on some other magical substance writing that. Your goal is to be like the magic flower in Super Mario Brothers.

For the uninitiated (read: those over 40 or under 25), the magic flower turns regular old Italian plumber Mario into Super Mario. Super Mario is bigger, faster, and stronger than his wrench-wielding alter-ego, and he’s also invincible.

Through your carefully curated information, you can make your ideal clients into super heroes.  They’ll be more on point with what’s going on in their industry. Able to impress their bosses, their clients, and maybe even their spouses with how in tune they are with the world of [insert ideal client’s industry here]. They might get promoted. They might close that deal. They might get their spouse to stop rolling their eyes (unlikely).

But you see where we’re going with this. By giving your ideal clients those super powers, who do you think they’re going to turn to when they have a problem even their super powers can’t handle?  That’s right.  You.

So how do we do this?

First we need a way to keep track of the content we find worthy of sharing. The goal is to find something that you have available at any time, because you never know when you’ll come across something you want to share.  The best tool is the one you have with you.

For capturing content as it flies past you, we recommend an app called Pocket.  Pocket allows you to instantly save the contents of a website while you’re looking at it.  They have a great mobile app so you can just quickly “share to Pocket” and the article gets saved for later review. They even have a browser plugin so when you’re come across a good article at your desk or on your laptop, you can quickly save them there.  You can find Pocket at http://getpocket.com.

But if Pocket isn’t your thing, Evernote’s web clipper can do a great job as well (though if you use Evernote for other aspects of life/business, it’s a little hard to control the clutter of constantly saving articles). And if you don’t want to learn a new tool, a simple note taking app on your phone or (gasp!) an actual notebook, work just as well.  Point being, find a tool that works for you.

So, when you are listening to the news in the morning, scrolling through Facebook or Twitter on your lunch break, etc. always be on the lookout for those magic flower articles.

What do you do once you find one? If you’re using pocket, just save it to Pocket. If not, take down the URL of the story, and then write down the first “take” you had on it. Your thoughts on where it was great or missed the mark slightly, or how it might fit into the bigger picture for your ideal clients.

Then move on, you’re all set.

Now you might be thinking, “Wait, I’m always doing this? I thought you said 20 minutes!” Well, you’re right. You need to be on guard 24/7. But the real benefit is that this takes just a few seconds as you come across great content, and it allows you to do GREAT things in just 20 minutes if you already have a starting point when you sit down each morning.

This next part is where we get into the meat and potatoes. The 20 minute social media habit.

Habits are super powerful when it comes to compounding the returns on your time investment. That’s our goal, to layer up little marketing habits that set you up for that month down the road where you’re suddenly turning away clients because you’re too busy, or thinking about hiring that associate to handle the workload.

So let’s commit to it, right now.  Let’s commit to 5 week days in a row of curating and scheduling social media each morning.  Then we’ll revisit.  Figure out what isn’t working, make tweaks and commit to another five days. Rinse. Repeat.

Here’s the 20 minute morning routine.

First 5 Minutes – (Gasp!) Original Posts

Original posts are always the hardest. But we don’t want to derail the process because we have writer’s block.  Give yourself 5 minutes to come up with an original post or two or three. But stop after 5 minutes, and don’t beat yourself up if you can’t think of anything. That’s why we have that hopper full of curated content, so you don’t always have to be on your A-game.  The juices will start to flow over time, so don’t get hung up here.

Next 10 Minutes – Queue up Curated Content

Next, dig into your treasure trove of curated content, and pick out three or four posts that you can share.  Use a tool like Hootsuite or Buffer to create posts on Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn. Link to the articles, write in your “take” as the post content, and then get ready to schedule those posts.

Last 5 Minutes – Scheduling for Long Term Success

The powerful part of this plan isn’t necessarily that you’re generating social media posts every day, it’s actually that you’re going to be generating social media posts for weeks or months in the future. To the point that there will be a morning in the future where you’ll sit down and realize you already have two or three posts ready to go for the day.

So here’s how we schedule them.

First, you need to decide how “evergreen” the content is.  Once you figure out which bucket this falls into, follow the scheduling guidelines below.

Breaking News

This content is usually only good for one, maybe two days. Think – a comment on a big supreme court ruling, an announcement of a new staff member, or a comment about a the latest corporation to screw up, etc.  For these posts, we suggest scheduling the post to go out on each of your various channels today. Post once on Facebook and LinkedIn, and consider posting two or three times on Twitter.

Timely

This content is something that is useful now, and likely for the next few weeks or months.  For example, an article about this year’s trends in industry X, how a certain technology is affecting Y, etc.  For these posts, I’d schedule one post for today on each of your channels, then create posts for each channel that are 4, 14, 30, and 60 days out. Note, those numbers aren’t set in stone, but rather ball park values. The idea being to keep the posting going but at larger and larger intervals until you think the article won’t be relevant any more.

Evergreen

These are the holy grail.  They’re the articles that keep on giving, and they’re rarer than one might think. These articles are the ones that will be as useful today as they will be in five years.  For example, with attorneys, these might be articles that relate to handling common situations that ideal clients might not know about. They might be articles about how to think about a particular issue.  And sometimes they come in the form of an article so good that you couldn’t imagine someone covering the topic more completely (like, for example, a 1500 word lesson on how to do your social media in just 20 minutes 🙂

For these posts, schedule out as many as you can forever. For example, post one today, and then repeat monthly or bi monthly for the next year. Basically, for as long as you can go before your 20 minutes runs out.

Conclusion

And that’s it.  If you follow this plan for even a month, you’ll find that your social media hopper is filled out for weeks and months into the future. Your facebook page will no longer be a dormant ghost-town where we promoted that one blog post we wrote 2 years ago. Your twitter account will start to accumulate followers. You’ll start to hear the phrase “oh I saw you posted about that a few weeks ago” at random networking events from people you’ve never met before. You’ll get a referral and when you ask who it’s from, it’ll be from a person you’ve never met, and when you Google them, you’ll see that they’ve been following you for a few months on Twitter.

In short, you’ll start to see why social media can be a real benefit to your firm, and you’ll laugh at the big firms that don’t get why.
Finally, reach out to use here at AmazeLaw. Tell us how this is working for you.  Suggest tweaks. Let us know when you get that superfan client that you realize has been stalking you just a little too creepily on Facebook.