Commit to an 18 Month Plan for Optimization

I've been in the optimization business for law firm websites for nearly ten years. In that time I've seen very successful stories and I've seen spectacular flameouts. In my own practice, I've seen patterns that prove time and again that you must have patience to be successful in search engine marketing.

I was recently offered a nice amount of money for a mass tort site. The money was good enough that I really agonized over whether I should take it. I hadn't yet even built the site and with a few day's work would make a nice profit. After some thought, I decided against selling and put the site up under my own banner.

Along came July, August, September and October and not a single phone call. I knew going in to it that the number of cases for this particular type of injury were very rare, but I was beginning to second guess my decision. Then in October, I finally got the inquiry I was waiting for.

But this is just a pattern that I've seen time and again. Despite this, I consistently run into lawyers who are unfamiliar with Internet marketing and expect it to work like television or yellow page advertising. These types generate high volumes of calls immediately. They also produce a huge amount of garbage inquiries and can be very expensive.

Marketing through your website will most likely not generate the same volume of calls, but in my experience, the return on investment is much higher than any other form of marketing I have seen. I'm not sure why (I have my theories), but the quality of inquiries that I receive through my websites is substantially higher than those that come through television or print advertising. As such, I don't measure the success of a website by the volume of inquiries. I focus on the quality of cases that I sign.

Getting those types of cases off of a website takes a lot of patience. I've had lawyers spend real money getting a website developed only to walk away from the project in less than a month! Lawyers who stay with a solid Internet marketing campaign long term usually come out way ahead of their investment. Remember, the inquiries are fewer, so you have to allow a lot of time for them to come in. However, the inquiries tend to be higher quality, so with patience, you'll reap great benefits.