At one time, domain names and web site design ruled the day to advertise legal services on the Internet. The same indicators for brick-and-motor success in "location, location, location," translated to the Internet, more or less, with a domain name.
Like I said, at one time; back when the Net was less complex and crowded. One could say those were the good old days. Back when a typo in a URL did not send you to a porn site in a distant land and your e-mail inbox was not a phishing expedition. But so too, those good old days were confusing old days where you had to know where you were going -- sort of like driving in Boston.
Today one needs a search engine like Ask.com, Google, or Yahoo! to find something on the web. Search engines make the complexity of finding pages on the Internet as easy as finding fast food in a city. And instead of "location, location, location" being the keys to success, today it is "advertise, advertise, advertise."
There are two ways lawyers can use search engines to advertise their services and generate leads. One way is to optimize your web site so that it is search-engine friendly, aka search engine optimization or SEO. Another way is to use search engine marketing efforts and buy words used by end-users in searches that make links to your web site display in search results, aka adwords.
As lawyers, we can certainly dig into the workings of how searches operate and optimize our sites. And we can analyze our practice and purchase keywords in searches that will drive users to our sites. But our time is better spent servicing our clients. Toward that end, LexisNexis and Clickable, a search engine marketing service, have entered into a partnership to help market your practice using search engines.
LexisNexis' and Clickable hope to make a potent combination for lawyers in building effective websites, marketing, and optimizing them. The partnership aims at making search marketing simple, instant, and profitable. But there's one more thing, search marketing for lead generation is measurable, unlike those midnight commercials you have been recording.