10/26/2011 // Palm Beach, FL, USA // Rene Perras…… Le Buzz // Rene Perras
Palm Beach, FL — I’ve often been asked by clients if it’s really necessary for their law firm to purchase a domain name for their attorney website, thus owning their own law firm website. Without hesitation, I have always replied with: Yes!
What people often fail to realize is that when you hire a lawyer web designer to create your attorney website, they often purchase and register the URL for you. This means that marketing company owns your domain name, not your law firm. When and if you decide to hire a new web designer, that previous marketing company still has ownership of your URL and your law firm may not continue using it. Instead, Cepac lawyer marketing advises law firms to purchase their URL, before hiring an attorney web designer to build their website, ensuring that the law firm will be able to continue using that domain name as they wish if they choose to hire another provider.
Attorneys need to know that it is critical to have your own URL for your attorney website so that you have complete control over the content allowed to establish your brand. Creating a brand is establishing an identity for your law firm on the Web. If you don’t own your URL, you could lose that precious real estate to someone else if you ever decide to redesign your lawyer website with another provider. You might as well trash your whole lawyer Internet marketing campaign if you lose the valuable URL, that your law firm has built its brand and presence on the Web around.
One of the biggest advantages—besides creating your attorney brand—is having the ability to employ search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to achieve page one ranking on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. SEO begins with choosing your own keyword-rich URL, which should be one of the foundation building blocks to creating a lawyer website presence. You may be limited in what SEO tactics you can do when someone else owns the site, as you can only do what that firm provides in services.
In addition, did you know you that don’t own your Facebook, Myspace, WordPress, pages or that blog page that you use for your lawyer website? The social network or blog provider does, which means you have to operate by their rules. If you violate that provider’s terms and conditions, they have the authority to take down your law firm page without notice, potentially destroying your whole lawyer Internet marketing campaign.
By being the CEO of your own website, you have more range and ability as to what kind of search engine marketing (SEM) tactics you can use. Your law firm has the ability to redesign and re-brand itself when you feel it’s necessary, hire and fire providers, employ state-of-the art SEO efforts and have the overall final say.
Other benefits of owning your own lawyer website URL include:
1. Your law firm can gain credibility with potential clients.
2. Smaller law firms can compete with other large law firms who already have established a presence on the Web.
3. Owning your own lawyer website means you have the ability to experiment with the most cutting edge website tools, not what is just available by a single provider.
4. Your law firm doesn’t have to worry about whether it still can be found on the Internet in five years; whereas investing in a social media network page is only as good as the network’s traffic and social relevancy. Remember how Myspace went from the most popular social media site to a ghost town after the introduction of Facebook?
In the end, you wouldn’t want your law firm in the hands of someone else, so why shouldn’t you take ownership of your own website URL? Owning the URL is an investment in your law firm’s brand and Internet real estate, which is yours potentially forever.
About the writer:
Rene Perras is a search engine optimization consultant, who has helped law firms of all types with attorney websites for over 20 years. For a free consultation about lawyer marketing and attorney websites, please contact Rene Perras at 720-ONE-RENE or visit Cepac.com.
Media Information:
Address: 315 South Olive, West Palm Beach, FL 33401
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