One of the ways for law firms to be found on the Internet is to get listed in popular lawyer directories. Although the majority of your business may be through referrals from past clients, most consumers do not know the name of an attorney when they are looking to hire one. Even when consumers do know the name of attorney, they still conduct research online to make sure they are hiring the best one. Consumers turn to the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN to try and find local attorneys. The only way you can be found on the Internet is if your website appears on the first two pages of the search results or if it appears in a lawyer directory that does appear in those searches. The way that most Internet users search when looking for an attorney is:
(location)+(practice area)+(lawyer(s) or attorney(s))
For example: Riverside, California criminal defense attorneys
If you are a criminal defense attorney serving Riverside, the directories that appear on the first page are great directories to list in. The is one way to make your site more visible on the Internet and it’s smart marketing to get listed in the popular directories if the price is right.
Certain directories provide added benefits such as links to your website which in turn help to raise your websites rank in the search engine. We’ve discussed factors that search engines use when ranking a website and the most important one is inbound links, which are links on other websites that link to your site. Not all links are created equal however. Many lawyer directories use what’s called a “redirect”, and most redirects give no “boost” to the ranking of your website. To find out if a link is a “direct link” (which is what you want), right click on one of the links on the directory that links to the lawyers websites. For example, here a link to Findlaw’s directory. On the page, the names of the firms are linked to the firm’s website. Right click on the name of “Estey & Bomberger ” and select “properties”. You’ll see http://stats.findlaw.com/prod=dts/cid=3405749/msa=292/pa=139/sub=770452/*http://www.personal-injury-attorney-in-san-diego.com
This is a redirect. It takes a site to http://www.personal-injury-attorney-in-san-diego.com, Estey & Bomberger website, but this type of link does not provide any link benefit to the site. By link benefit, I mean the search engines don’t recognize it as an actual link to the site. Even without the link benefit, a listing in Findlaw is still valuable as it will provide traffic to your site.
Now let’s take a look at a directory link that provides an actual direct link. Here is a page from the Internet Lawyer Directory, a California attorney directory. This page is from the San Diego personal injury attorney section of the directory:
http://www.ilawyerdirectory.com/attorneys/personal_injury/0/1/san_diego
Notice the listing for the Pacific Law Center, whose web address is http://www.pacificlawcenter.com Right click on “visit website“, select properties, and you’ll see their website address. This is an actual direct link and this link helps to give their website rankings a boost in the search engines.
So, get listed in lawyer directories that appear on search results in Google, Yahoo and MSN and especially in those directories that provide actual “direct links” to your website.
