Death of the Yellow PagesThe Sad Tale of Maurice Bennett

Wake Up Call

Americans conduct 22.7 billion searches monthly

Wake Up Call

10 million fewer newspaper subscribers between 2008 and 2009

Wake Up Call

82% of people search for local businesses online

Wake Up Call

Source: 2007 Nielson study

Search Engines Yellow Pages Online Yellow Pages Newspapers0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

Seaching for Local Businesses

Wake Up Call

80% of people research products online before buying them locally.

Wake Up Call

86% of searches start at a major search engine

Source: 2007 Microsoft study

Wake Up Call

“Yes, but I’m a lawyer, it’s totally different for us.”

“I get all of my business through word of mouth.”

“I’m a professional not a plumber.”

“You can’t rate lawyers like restaurants.”

Questions answered on Web

“Maurice Bennett is a great attorney. You should hire him”

Informed Consumers

Informed Consumers

Referrals

“Maurice Bennett”

The Search Stool

TechnologyContent

Authority (Links)

“Maurice Bennett”

“Maurice Bennett”

“Maurice Bennett”

Leg 1: Content

What is a webpage about?

Key Factors• Keyword density • Important Indicators

– Title Tag– URL– H1 Tag

– Meta description– Meta tags

• Uniqueness and freshness of content

Title Tag M

eta

Des

crip

tion

Content: Anatomy of a Webpage

Title Tag

URL

H1

Common Mistake:A page about everything

Common Mistake:Copying content

Inlinks: 68Inlinks: 121

Leg 2: Links

How important is a website?

Key Factors• Number of links• Quality of links (Page Rank of of linking site)• Anchor Text

– Click here– Avvo– Rate your Lawyer

• Attracting Links

Common mistake:

Not optimizing anchor text

Common mistake:

Static Sites aren’t Linkworthy

Leg 3: Technology

Can the search engines find and read the webpage?

Key Factors• Simple URL’s in plain English• 1 Page : 1 URL• Standard links

– Avoid:• Flash• Java• Images

• How to surf like a spider– Turn off images– Turn off javascript– Turn off flash

According to Google, these are different pages:

http://avvo.com

http://www.avvo.com

http://www.avvo.com?pageid=458

http://www.avvo.com&reference=msn

Common Mistake:Google can’t navigate a site

Common Mistake:http://website.com vs. http://www.website.com

The Name Curve

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 270

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000

18,000

20,000

Thomas Smith (282)

Jennifer Johnson

(129)

Robert Shapiro

(64)

John Browne

(16)

“Maurice Bennett” (1)

Name Confusion

Ashley Dupree Russel –

Austin, TX Lawyer

Ashley Dupre -

Washington, DC Callgirl

Name Competitiveness

Paris Hilton Paris Hilton

Maurice Bennett

Online Reputation Management

Facebook

Avvo

LinkedIn

The Bleeding Edge of Search

Social SearchCustomized Search

Someone Online Hates You

Google Alerts

Google Alerts

10 Things you can doin 10 Minutes

Competition1. Benchmark where you rank on Google for:

• Your name• Your geo/specialty

2. Understand your website’s authority• PageRank• # of inlinks

Content3. Ensure your geo/specialty is the focus of your homepage.

• URL• H1 Tag• Title Tag• Content

4. Optimize your bio page for your name.• URL (www.website.com/bill-smith)• H1 Tag• Title Tag• Content

5. Remove your firm name from every title tag and rewrite them to focus on the specific page’s content.

10 Things you can doin 10 Minutes

Linkbuilding6. Claim your Avvo profile and link to your website.7. Make sure the links on your website are descriptive.

Technology8. Are all of your pages indexed?9. Type in yourwebsite.com into the browser toolbar. Does it

automatically redirect to http://www.yourwebsite.com?10. Review all of your URLs for a ?, #, =, %. If you find any, they can

probably be optimized.

Avvo

About Avvo• Largest Legal directory• 2 million monthly visits• 150,000 contacts/month

to lawyers• 10% of practicing lawyers

have claimed their profile

Following Us

conrad@avvo.com

Twitter.com/conradsaam

Facebook.com/avvo

LinkedIn: Avvo Lawyers