Targeted Marketing

Look upon the following information as a helpful tutorial intended to give you greater insight into the complexities of online legal marketing, and a greater appreciation for how the LawQuo.com network of legal sites may be most effectively employed by you to market and promote your law firm on the Internet.  In summary, we will offer you tips on:

• The Advantages of Marketing Through A Branded Legal Network
• Choosing Legal Domain Names To Target Clients in Your Practice Specialty
• Strategically Locking Up Legal Sub-Categories (for Articles and/or Queries)
• Bidding Strategies and Budget Management
• Ensuring Your Legal Information Articles Are Search Engine Optimized
• Working Together To Build The Legal Network

I. The Advantages of Marketing Through A Branded Legal Network

Every day, more lawyers and law firms are making the decision to market their legal services on the Internet, in recognition of the fact that more and more people are looking online for useful legal information.

However, a large number of  law firms launch expensively designed legal web sites without appreciating the complexities of Internet marketing.  Often, such legal web sites contain virtually no useful content other than a law firm’s contact particulars, with a brief overview of the law firm’s practice areas. As a result, searching online for helpful legal information has become a tedious exercise for the average casual browser, who must navigate through countless brochure sites before finding a legal web site with substantial, and informative, content. In the meantime, your law firm might have useful legal information to offer a potential client, but how will you market your legal services through all the chaff?

From The Potential Client’s Point of View:

Many people search online for legal information, often at times when they are not yet ready to look for a lawyer. A branded legal information network may offer a unique online marketing opportunity for lawyers, signaling to a casual browser that they need not spend their time wading through countless legal web sites of doubtful value every time they go online. A legal information network, that covers a large gamut of legal categories, offers a browser a reliable, consistent, and familiar search environment - one that they can bookmark and come back to as they need.

Should the browser subsequently need urgent information on tax law, insurance, personal injury, real estate, or family law, they will know that they can save valuable time by searching for information pages directly within the legal network.

Here is what a visitor will find when they come to the LawQuo.com homepage:

• Excerpts of legal information articles, with links to the respective web sites on which an article is exclusively featured for the month.
• A searchable legal category bar that opens up into further sub-categories, which list the relevant web sites.
• A scrolling “ticker” bar that lists the legal web sites within the network.

From a visitor’s point of view, they will have the opportunity to stay within the network, searching through an intuitively categorized network of legal web sites as they easily find the information pages that interest them - many of them provided by your law firm.

From The Lawyer’s Point of View:

You want to be noticed. You don’t want your law firm to funnel huge amounts of money into Internet marketing and advertising, only to be lost among thousands of others in an online directory. You don’t want to devote huge amounts of time and marketing resources toward building up links to your legal web site, in an exhausting “arms race” to ensure that visitors will find your web site among the thousands of others being set up by your fellow lawyers.

You don’t want to be the proverbial needle in the haystack.

As part of a branded legal network, you have the opportunity to promote and market your law firm in a searchable network that has a much broader appeal to a larger online audience. A network, by its very nature, already comes with a large number of built-in web links. There are literally hundreds of different paths for a potential client to access the network - and through the network, to the web sites where your legal information is being featured.

But will marketing your law firm through a branded network of hundreds of legal web sites truly get you past the needle in the haystack problem?

With LawQuo.com, yes - for we’ve taken great care to construct a network of categorized legal domains, directing the visitor to a relatively small number of web sites within any single legal sub-category of interest. What’s more, in many cases, conceptually similar legal domain names under one sub-category will be offered - for exclusive article placements and queries - as a set to a single lawyer or law firm.

What this means, in practice, is that you will seldom be marketing your law firm in competition with more than a small handful of lawyers within a particular legal sub-category. And since many legal sub-categories list just one web site or bundled set, quite often, you’ll be the only game in town.

From the lawyer’s point of view, here are the unique features that distinguish LawQuo.com from other other services that offer law firm marketing on the Internet:

• Hundreds of strongly descriptive legal domain names that function as basic legal sub-categories.
• Limited slots, so as to provide a lawyer or law firm an opportunity to “mine” a legal sub-category, and “lock up” the choice domains or bundled sets for exclusive article placements and/or queries. 
• An intuitive interface that makes it easy for a visitor to the network to find you - by employing descriptive sub-categories that will direct visitors to their legal sites of interest.
• Bid-based pricing. By taking best offers, no matter how low, we let you determine the value of any particular legal web site or bundled set of sites. In theory, this means you can potentially lock down a choice legal web site (or a set of sites) for an exclusive article placement, or to exclusively receive legal queries in your chosen area codes, for a fraction of what it might cost you elsewhere to place a single line ad in an online directory.

II. Choosing Legal Domain Names To Target Clients in Your Practice Specialty

In this section, we offer tips and strategies for legal marketing, as you browse our network of legal domain names, looking for the most appropriate domain name - or set of domain names - that suits your legal practice specialty.

As you browse our legal categories and sub-categories, you should get a “feel” of the mix of legal web sites we have to offer. As you will see from the manner by which we have structured our network, the legal domain names themselves serve as signifiers for the kinds of legal content a visitor can expect within.

When bidding for an exclusive legal article placement, or to exclusively receive queries in your chosen area codes, you want to choose the legal domain names that work best for you. Here are some of the questions you should consider:

What Does The Legal Domain Name Signify About The Legal Content?

In terms of Internet marketing, your law firm can expect that visitors to the legal network will come with different viewpoints, agendas, and expectations. Those expectations will, in turn, influence the choice of a visitor to click on a legal domain name that suits their needs at the time.

Some visitors for instance, might respond to legal domain names that appear to be about them (HumanRightsVictims.com, SlipandFallVictims.com, AbusedSpouses.com, InjuredPedestrians.com, LegalBeneficiaries.com, CommonLawSpouses.com, CriminalDefendants.com, DiscriminatedEmployees.com).

Others will respond to legal domain names that skew more toward you and the legal expertise you have to offer (ProductLiabilityAdvice.com, BiotechPatentLawyers.com, TrustLitigators.com, ClassActionSpecialists.com, SpousalSupportLawyers.com).

In some cases, visitors will be more attracted to domain names that signify the legal subject area of interest (ZoningApplications.com, IntestacyLaws.com, MusicRightsLaw.com, CustodyandAccess.com, PrivacyInterests.com, RefugeeClaims.com,TrusteesandGuardians.com, EstatesAdministration.com, RealtyAssessments.com, BusinessFranchiseLaw.com, OccupiersLiability.com).

Some visitors will be attracted to very specific and narrow legal subject areas (ExclusionClauses.com, WarrantyBreaches.com, RecreationalInjuries.com, SupportArrears.com).

While others will be more drawn to very broad and general legal domain names (LiabilityPayments.com, LawsuitDamages.com, HealthNegligence.com, AppealHelp.com, CivilPlaintiffs.com)

What Kind of Visitors Do I Expect This Legal Domain To Attract?

Some visitors to the legal network might seriously be contemplating litigation, and are therefore more responsive to action-oriented legal domain names (WronfulTerminationClaims.com, DivorceClaims.com, PropertyLawsuits.com, ChildSupportClaims.com, PersonalInjuryActions.com, CustodyLawsuits.com, InfringmentClaims.com, SexualHarassmentClaims.com, IntellectualPropertySuits.com).

Or, perhaps the visitor has not yet made up their made whether they want to litigate, even though they have a potential cause of action (LaborComplaints.com, AbuseAccusations.com, DamageComplaints.com, HumanRightsComplaints.com, IllegalDetentions.com, NegligentHospitals.com).

If leaning toward litigation, perhaps they are more responsive to domain names that signify legal parties (InjuredParties.com, ConsumerPlaintiffs.com, ContractPlaintiffs.com, DisabilityClaimants.com, LandlordPlaintiffs.com, EmployeePlaintiffs.com, FraudPlaintiffs.com).

Of course, there are usually two parties to a lawsuit, and so, from an Internet marketing perspective, your law firm might also want to target those looking to defend (FraudDefendants.com, EmployerDefendants.com, HarassmentDefendants.com, IntellectualPropertyDefendants.com,TenantDefendants.com)

Or, you might employ your legal marketing strategy toward attracting those who are in hot water with the authorities (NarcoticsCharges.com, TaxProsecutions.com, TraffickingCharges.com, IllegalGunPossession.com, CriminalAttempts.com, ViolentOffenses.com, SexualAssaultOffenders.com, SexualHarassers.com, DrunkDrivingDefendfants.com).

Your law firm might also want to consider those visitors looking for a very specific legal service (DraftWills.com, ValuingShares.com, SecuritiesPurchases.com, TaxAssessmentAppeals.com, CopyrightRegistrants.com, LandTitleSearches.com, DraftAgreements.com, SoftwareCopyrigting.com, ImmigrationApplicants.com).

III. Strategically Locking Up Legal Sub-Categories (for Articles and/or Queries)

The LawQuoNet.com web site is specifically set up for lawyers to browse the network so as to decide which legal web site, or set of sites, is most appropriate for an exclusive legal article placement, or to exclusively reserve the right to receive legal queries coming from your chosen area codes.

Legal Sub-Categories With Few Domains

In order to ensure that the legal network works best for your law firm's online marketing needs, you should get a feel for the overall scope of the legal sub-categories. You might notice that certain legal subject areas contain more sub-categories than others.

The Criminal law subject area, for instance, comprises 23 sub-categories, while the Landlord and Tenant law subject area comprises four sub-categories. That does not necessarily mean that you will have to lock up more domains under the Criminal law category in order to lock out any competition for a targeted client within your legal practice specialty.

As an example, the sub-category, Burglary Charges, lists just two legal web sites - BurglaryCharges.com and BurglaryCases.com. For the purposes of bidding, those two legal web sites are bundled up as a single set. What this means is that one lawyer or law firm will be able to lock up this whole sub-category - for an article placement or for queries in their chosen area code - with just one best offer. You might then want to lock up a related sub-category like Robbery Charges, which likewise comprises one set. Another sub-category, Extortion Charges, comprises just one web site (ExtortionCharges.com). And so, with only three best offers, your law firm could lock up exclusive article placements, or exclusive queries from your chosen area code, in three out of 23 of the listed Criminal law sub-categories. 

What this means, in practice, is that any visitor to the legal network who has been charged with burglary, robbery, or extortion would only find your legal article(s) on any of the homepages that comprise those relevant legal sub-categories.  All in all, an excellent marketing opportunity for your law firm to stand out in a legal network with literally hundreds of different points of access to your reserved legal articles or legal queries.   

Legal Sub-Categories With More Domains

In order to limit the number of “slots” available to lawyers under any particular sub-category, we often bundle up conceptually related legal domain names as sets for bidding. Since there is no minimum reserve, a winning best offer for a set of four legal web sites can theoretically cost less than a winning best offer for a single legal web site.

Most importantly, legal sub-categories with more domains provide more avenues of exposure for each domain under that sub-category.

How is that possible?

To take the largest (and, hence, exceptional) example on the LawQuo.com network, the sub-category of Wrongful Termination Claims comprises 25 web sites (as of this writing), though a good portion of these sites are bundled up as sets. So, the number of available slots for this highly prized legal sub-category is still relatively limited.

Now, keep in mind that LawQuo.com is the umbrella web site to which hundreds of other legal web sites in the network are linked. The legal web site your law firm chooses may show up in three places on the LawQuo.com homepage:

1. Under the sub-category listing;
2. As a revolving featured website;
3. Through the scrolling “ticker” bar at the bottom of the homepage.

Now, also keep in mind that each legal web site within the network not only features one exclusive legal article on its homepage, but also features:

1. Clickable tabs listing the legal domains within that site’s legal sub-category.
2. A scrolling “ticker” bar that lists the legal sites within the overall legal category.

For a relatively large legal sub-category such as Wrongful Termination Claims, what this means is that all the other legal sites within that sub-category will feature links to your chosen legal site (or sites, where you’ve reserved a set).

Another consideration to keep in mind for large legal sub-categories is that they are large precisely due to the fact that we have mined a good portion of the best permutations of strong domain names in regard to that legal sub-category - thereby increasing the scope of our online exposure for that sub-category.

From an Internet marketing perspective, this means that even if your law firm were to reserve one legal site or set in that legal sub-category, the prospect of being “diluted” on the LawQuo.com homepage is more than balanced out by the prospect of having more online avenues by which a visitor might find your reserved site without first accessing the LawQuo.com homepage.

Additionally, in accordance with your law firm's budget (and the market demand for the overall legal sub-category), you may find it effective to lock up a good portion of a large sub-category in order to have excellent coverage on the LawQuo.com homepage and through each web site in the network under that sub-category.

Securing a Legal Sub-Category Domain Name

Each legal web site within the LawQuo.com network contains a prominent seal denoting it as “A Member of the LawQuo.com Network of Legal Sites.” Clicking on the seal leads to the LawQuo.com homepage, where one may then view the full scope of legal sites listed under their respective legal subject areas and sub-categories.

Since several hundred of our legal sites on the Web link to the LawQuo.com homepage, visible coverage on that homepage thereby becomes a valued marketing commodity for lawyers.

On the LawQuo.com homepage, the legal category menu serves as the means by which a visitor can focus their search for a relevant web site, perusing the legal sub-categories that interest them before clicking on a sub-category to see which legal sites are listed thereunder.

With the sub-categories as a key search feature for the LawQuo.com homepage, your law firm may therefore find it profitable to reserve exclusive placements for a legal web site with the domain name of its sub-category.

Keep in mind, however, that a sub-category domain name is not necessarily the strongest domain name under that sub-category. Under the sub-category of Toxic Injury Victims, for instance, some might consider that ToxicTortClaims.com is more effective than ToxicInjuryVictims.com.

Remember, the legal category menu on the LawQuo.com homepage is but one of many avenues by which a visitor might find your chosen legal site. In all cases, you will be balancing a mix of factors in order to determine which legal domain works best for your law firm's Internet marketing needs.

IV. Bidding Strategies and Budget Management

How high an offer would you have to place in order to secure an exclusive article placement, or the exclusive right to receive legal queries from your area code, in the legal web site or set of your choice?

The bidding system is set up so that if someone has bettered your offer, you will be informed by email, allowing you the chance to stay in the running by placing a new best offer. So, one strategy would be to place conservative bids early on in the month, leaving you enough time to better your offer if you’re outbid. If there are no competing bids received after you’ve placed your initial offer, you might very well have the opportunity to lock up a legal domain, or bundled set, with a conservative and affordable bid.

Locking up valued legal web sites, and/or web site sets, for the month also provides you the added benefit of acquiring a right to match best offers, if any, for those domain rights in the subsequent month. To maintain your right of first refusal for the subsequent month, all you need do is enter your best offer from the previous month and sit tight. If, after the close of the bidding period, someone has presented a better offer, it is then up to you whether you want to match it or concede.

With this policy in place, we want to encourage an element of stability and continuity for those who got in early and won their exclusive article placements, and/or query rights, for the month. If your exclusive rights are continuing to pay off for you, yet more law firms are competing for those limited placements you’ve locked up, they can’t replace you unless you decide it’s no longer worth it to you.

In this manner, we encourage you to grow with us as we continue to expand the reach of our legal marketing network, which, in turn, benefits all those lawyers who are part of it.

With a bidding system in place, we expect a very large spread in bid amounts placed for various legal domains. As you have seen, there are a large number of factors to take into account in order to assess the value for reserving exclusive placements on any particular legal web site or set. And so, we find it most appropriate to let market demand determine the value of your exclusive placements.

This provides your law firm the opportunity to manage its risk of trying out any particular legal domain, as we expect you will bid the amount that is most in accordance with your online legal marketing needs.

However, one factor your law firm should consider is that, as our overall profile continues to increase among lawyers and members of the public (after all, you found us), the objective marketing value of the many legal web sites within the network will inevitably increase. Given the relatively limited slots available for exclusive placements, an aggressive bidding strategy early on, that secures you exclusive placements on treasured legal domains, may pay off extremely well for you as web traffic to our legal network continues to grow, and you elect to continue with your secured slots.

V. Ensuring Your Legal Information Articles Are Search Engine Optimized

In this section, we provide the dirty little secret of lawyer Internet marketing and search engine optimization strategies: Content is King.

To date, far too many law firms expend huge amounts of money to design, advertise, and market fantastic looking legal web sites, yet neglect to devote sufficient marketing resources toward creating legal content that their potential clients might value. And while many law firms often do retain the services of Internet marketing companies to help them in optimizing their legal web sites for search engines, what they often end up with is just a massively expensive effort to gain notice above thousands of other lawyers who are likewise expending huge marketing resources to stand out in that proverbial haystack.

Getting noticed on the Internet is ultimately a numbers game - mixed in with appreciable amounts of sweat. Though each search engine has its own algorithms in place to determine placement for a web page, in general, most of the major search engines look to the following factors in determining the prioritized placement of any web page:

1. The number and quality of links to a web site;
2. The extent of original content on the site;
3. Keyword frequency, and its relevance to the title tag.

Many of the major search engines employ automated tools known as web crawlers to examine a huge number of web sites, prioritizing those sites that are most in accordance with the above-noted factors.

For the vast majority of lawyers, it is often a hopeless exercise in marketing to get noticed online - unless you’re willing to expend a huge amount of money in a virtual arms race to beat out the thousands of your fellow lawyers who are doing likewise. Unless you are willing to pay an Internet marketing company to build links to your legal web site from other sites, or unless you are willing to speculate with a large advertising budget to spread the word on the Internet that your law firm exists, most lawyers often give up on the marketing “arms race” to get noticed on the Web.

LawQuo.com, on the other hand, offers a viable Internet marketing plan for lawyers looking to get noticed effectively on a manageable budget.

As a legal network, we already come equipped with several hundred links from our legal web sites. Looking at it another way, we offer online visitors several hundred different portals to access the legal network homepage, which then provides the categorized framework by which to search the legal web sites within the network.

But, most significantly, our added marketing value comes from you - the content providers for our legal web sites.

As we have structured it, your fellow lawyers on the network are not your competition. If their legal article on our network gets noticed, that increases the chances that your legal article on the network will get noticed. We, in turn, have an interest to ensure that each and every one of you will get noticed as part of that network.

Toward that end, we offer the following simple tips for you to optimize your legal information articles upon submission to us (after you have placed the best offer for your chosen web site or set):

a. Choose a Title With Keywords Related To Your Chosen Legal Domain Names

If, for instance, you have secured an exclusive article placement for HarassedDebtors.com, it would be advisable to come up with a title that employs related words like “harassment” and “debt.”

b. Ensure That Keywords Related To Your Article Title Appear With Sufficient Frequency In The Body of The Article

You need not, however, unduly clutter your content by repeating the same keywords over again, particularly where it makes no sense to do so. There is a fine line between maintaining sufficient keyword frequency and keyword spamming - the act of stuffing one’s web page with keywords in the hopes that your web page will achieve a high search engine ranking.

Always keep in mind that the search engine algorithms are there to ensure the quality and relevance of content - so that online browsers are not unduly burdened by irrelevant web sites showcasing content of doubtful quality.

Those algorithms are extremely sophisticated, and capable of parsing different, though conceptually related, keywords. So, in the case of “harassed debtors”, taking care to include words like “consumers”, “creditors”, and “harassing phone calls” will aid you in achieving sufficient keyword frequency while maintaining the relevance and quality of your content.

c. Ensure That Your Content Is Of Sufficient Length

In our view, the longer the article, the better. However, if pressed for time and at a loss to write anything of more than general information, we recommend a length of no less than 350 words.

Strictly speaking, the length issue is not as important for direct search engine results as it is to ensuring that the largest number of people find your article useful and informative.

An informative legal article will signal to a visitor that you are knowledgeable in your field. If they’ve taken the time to click on your chosen web site, at least give them the courtesy of providing them something worth reading. Remember, your law firm's marketing goal is not that they should move on, but that they should read the legal article, take note of the lawyer's contact information, and contact you if they require your legal services. Which brings us to:

d. Being Specific Will Bring You Links and Visitors

In properly marketing your law practice, you should anticipate the kind of legal problem or situation you might like to address in your legal article. The article is intended for your target client. Toward that end, you might want to discuss or analyze a court case involving a similar legal issue that your intended client has likely experienced - for instance, a ski injury at a resort (ideal for a site like RecreationalInjuries.com).

An informative and specific legal article can bring unintended promotional and marketing benefits for your law firm. A local blogger might unilaterally link to your article as a useful, on-point subject. A legal article with greater detail may also ensure the greater likelihood that the mix of your article’s keywords will align with a casual browser’s search terms. That, in turn, will give the browser the impression that you anticipated their interest.

e. Avoid Referring To Yourself In The Article

By now, every online visitor expects that a lawyer will refer to their considerable experience and impressive qualifications. What is all too rare in the realm of lawyer internet marketing is that lawyer who actually shows them a sample of that analytical brilliance. Your legal content is your advertisement. If your reader is in your city, and is in need of a lawyer’s assistance, your legal article will  provide the sampling of the legal expertise you have to offer. And don’t worry: all submitted legal articles are showcased with the author’s by-line at top and contact information at the bottom, so a potential client will know how to contact you.

VI. Working Together To Build The Legal Network

Once you’ve placed your successful bids, for an exclusive article placement and/or the exclusive right to receive legal queries from your area code, we suggest just one little thing that will work toward getting more visitors to your chosen legal web site.

In three simple words: Link To LawQuo.com.

On its own, your link might not seem to amount to much. But taken together with others on the legal network who will be doing likewise, you’ll all be working together to ensure that the network reaches the broadest scope of online visitors.

So join the Internet's most wide-ranging and attractive network for online lawyer marketing. A rising tide truly raises all ships.

The preceding information is accurate as of the time of writing. The policies and descriptions noted herein may be subject to change from time to time, and therefore should not be relied upon in construing any commercial arrangements entered into with LawQuo.com Inc. Should you enter into a commercial arrangement with LawQuo.com Inc., the terms and conditions of that arrangement shall be governed solely in accordance with the terms, conditions, and representations of any Legal Agreement you have subscribed to with LawQuo.com Inc.