07/05/2010 // West Palm Beach, FL // Rene Perras…… Le Buzz // Rene Perras
“Get out of the Yellow Pages now” by Kevin O’keefe’s real lawyers have blogs, a couple of years ago Kevin wrote about his experiences with the yellow and white pages. I am sure that he did not fully realize the force of his message and how right he was then to warn his fellow attorneys about the real impact that yellow pages could have on their law firms.
Traditionally lawyer advertising dollars have been spent on the yellow page phone books. The yellow page sales force, arguably one of the most effective sales teams ever, built an empire for most of the telephone companies with yellow page revenues running into the billions. For years attorney advertising asked one simple question, “how large should my yellow page ad be?” As the Internet grew in importance, yellow page revenues declined. AT&T and the rest of the Baby Bells started introducing their own online yellow pages without much success. The yellow page brand was associated with print in the minds of the majority of consumers and without any Internet expertise behind it; the online yellow pages floundered for years. Online yellow pages continue to be an under performing web entity, although a potentially dangerous one for lawyer internet marketing firms trying to generate online sales and prospects for their law firm clients. Never has the expression ‘buyer beware’ been truer than in relation to online yellow pages and attorney online web marketing.
Here are three important facts attorneys need to know about their online lawyer marketing websites in relation to their local online yellow pages.
1) Yellow page Internet micro sites can destroy your organic search engine rankings.
2) Similar law firm domain names to promote these websites can eliminate your natural website search engine results.
3) Duplicate content from your own law firm website used in these mini web sites will make it impossible for your primary website to ever achieve any kind of organic search engine status or to become an Internet brand.
These micro sites and similar web products offered by the majority of the online yellow page directories will continue to victimize unsuspecting lawyers who are losing substantial web marketing dollars as a result.
Understanding the problem is the first step, and only a very small fraction of law firms will ever actually become aware of this situation. Devising a solution will be a painful process for law firms, which will require money, effort and a long-term vision in order to regain their lost website rankings. The first reflex is typically to blame the drop in rankings or failure to rank on an ineffective web promotion effort, and on the head of your search engine optimization team or search engine engineer; but replacing him or her will more than likely not resolve the problem.
Knowing how to properly evaluate your web marketing professional’s web expertise, understanding that your lawyer TV advertising, attorney radio spots, and your online yellow pages are all interrelated will become critical in securing your law firm’s wealth and future success. How all of these components are managed and coordinated will become the key to a successful attorney marketing program and search engine promotional effort resulting in a prosperous law firm for years to come.
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