Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer & Attorney : Jamie Spencer Law Firm : DWI, DUI, Drug Possession : Serving Georgetown, Round Rock, San Marcos, Travis, Williamson, and Hays County, Texas

Houston Criminal Defense Lawyer**[see first comment] Mark Bennett pokes some good natured fun at me about a recent post and lists some of the phrases where he covets high Google SERPs:

Austin criminal defense lawyer Jamie Spencer talks about “how to rank high on Google’s natural results.”

I have heard — and it makes sense — that a page that uses the phrase “Houston criminal defense lawyer” or “Houston criminal defense attorney” will rank higher on Google than a page by a Houston lawyer that talks about criminal defense trial lawyering without those words strung together in that order, even though it’s not usually necessary for a Houston lawyer practicing criminal defense to use the words “Houston criminal defense” in a post about the subject.

I’d like Defending People to pop up at the top of a Google search for “Houston criminal defense lawyer” or “Houston criminal attorney,” but blatantly inserting those phrases into a post has always seemed a bit obnoxious. Your thoughts?

[Do I need to reiterate? He’s poking fun at me.]

And what’s his ranking on the phrases he listed? 

Houston criminal defense lawyer: #9. Houston criminal defense attorney: #26. Houston lawyer practicing criminal defense: #11. Houston criminal defense: #18. Houston criminal attorney: #9.

Not bad. Several of those are already on the first page of the results. Some aren’t. But numero uno is always best right? If it ain’t obvious, yes I’m handing out some link love – but, Mark writes a great blog, and recently his RSS feed changed requiring that you reup your subscription – so I’m only trying to help him out , aight? Let’s check back in 6 months and do an update on those numbers, shall we?

On a related note, Dave Matson of High Steppin’ Searches left a comment on that same post:

Certainly it's pretty difficult to rank well without quality content, but the measure of that is links.

Having a quality blog means other quality blogs and sites with credibility link to you. Authority bestows authority.

Being widely blogrolled is a huge benefit to your rankings. And that wouldn't be the case if you didn't write things that people think are worth linking to.

Of course, being on the LexBlog network of blogrolls doesn't hurt, either.

I agree. When folks call me to ask me about LexBlog, “being added to the blogroll” is one of the benefits I list. And no, I don’t get any kickbacks from Kevin for tooting their horn – I actually like talking about blogging, perhaps because it was one more way to postpone actually doing it.

But ‘just’ being added to the blogroll won’t get you anywhere really – not in the long run. As Dave says, you’ve got to write stuff folks think is worth posting about. Google ranks that higher than anything else. In fact, out in SEO land speculation is that they recently changed the algorithm to lower the value of blogroll links.

Having something you actually wrote cut and pasted and then commented on will do you a lot more good. And, that takes us back to rule #1: content, content, content.

Defending People is all about content. Mark ranks as high as he does now based entirely on that. The others in front of him, for now, have SEO folks getting backlinks from other sites, but that won’t defeat good content in the long run.

On a completely side note, if I don’t want to start ranking ‘high’ in the Google SERPs for stuff like Austin SEO, and Texas search engine optimization, I need to get back to substantive defense blogging. It’s fine to take a sabbatical, and start blogging about blogging, but at some point, I’ve got to remember why I started this whole thing in the first place.

With that in mind, I’m about to pen a post I’ve been thinking ages about. So without further ado, here’s a self link to:

My Own Personal Shoplifting Experience.

Enough about ‘blawgs’. Back to criminal defense. If I use the word Google in my next 50 posts, somebody just shoot me. Even I’m tired of the topic by now.

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You Don’t Make Friends With Salad responds to my recent $1,000,000 post:

Jamie is decrying the online ad spending of the local criminal defense bar. According to his estimates, in the Austin market alone, criminal defense attorneys are spending about $1 million per year on Google's cost-per-click AdWords program. I'm not sure that the number is quite that high, but if it's an overestimate, it's not by much.

For the lawyers who are getting in and bidding upwards of $50 for the most popular keywords and phrases, I have to think that Jamie's right. This cost is being passed on to the clients. But lots of costs get passed on to clients: rent/mortgage payments, staff salaries, etc. In a market like Austin where the fight for clients is so competitive, you have to have some way to drive potential clients to call, email, or walk in the door. Referrals are great, especially from former clients, but it takes a long while for a practitioner (however great) to develop a critical mass of new clients based solely on reputation.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong, certainly in and of itself, with passing costs on to clients. And when it comes to professional services, that often includes advertising. Actually, the post was just my amazement at the numbers.

As for the numbers? YDMFWS’ suggestion that I might be overestimating made me rethink. I claimed one million was conservative in the original post. I’ve crunched some numbers.

If you include not just [Geographical Location] criminal defense lawyer, but various individual offenses, such as DWI, assault, marijuana, theft, etc. with [Geographical Location] County Jail, Bail Bonds, etc… well…

It might be an overestimate, after I tried to figure it out. Let me restate.

I’m working with some unknown factors here. I’m going to give the one million dollar estimate a confidence interval of only 50%. Not very confident, for the mathematically challenged. But at five hundred thousand dollars or more?

99% confidence. (N.B. I’m using the Statistics definition of confidence interval.)

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I know just enough about SEO – search engine optimization – to be dangerous.

That is to say, I find it interesting, and I’ve looked into it, but I’m not remotely an expert.

But folks come up to me in the Travis County Courthouse frequently – other lawyers that is – and ask me point blank, “How does your site rank so high on Google?” Or “How do you get to Number One on Google?” As a quick aside, the questions amuse me, because it’s always phrased that way, and never includes the necessary part to make the question sensible, that is… “for the phrase [fill-in-the-blank]”.

After all, I certainly don’t ‘rank’ number one for the queries New York Times; Paris Hilton; Mapquest; or GameCheats for Playstation.  

Back to the original question at hand, though: How do you (Jamie) rank so high for [Austin, Tx, Criminal, Defense, Lawyer, or some other similar combination]?

Now there’s a lot of collegiality amongst the defense bar, at least in Austin, but I’ve always wondered whether anyone thinks about the possibility that I might not want to reveal a ‘trade secret’. After all, these are technically speaking my competitors. (I like to think they ask me because they think I’m a no nonsense guy that says what he thinks. But enough about how wonderful I am.)

Actually, I’m always happy to give them the best answer I know. Like the secret of real estate, it boils down to three basic elements, but instead of location it’s:

• Content
• Content
• Content

Content relevant to the keywords your potential customer is looking for. That’s it.

And blogging is the best way to frequently update your website with good quality content about your practice area – after all, a blog is just a specific type of website, nothing magical, nothing more.

I’ll add three more factors to the mix.

Time: For me, blogging takes time. I enjoy doing it, but it’s not always easy. Bloggers Block happens frequently. So, OK, I don’t post for a while. And then it comes in several productive spurts. Not everyone can be Scott Greenfield, with his 4.5 post per day average. Or is that 45 per day? I can’t keep up.

Knowledge: You’ve got to know what you’re talking about. If you don’t, it will show. That’s fine if Grandma is the only one reading your personal diary type blog – she already knows you’re the dimwitted one in the family and loves you anyway. But if you’re doing it even in part for commercial purposes, that’s going to be a problem.

Style: Blogging is writing, and every good writer worth reading has their own style. Mine probably leans a little too far towards the ‘smart alec’ side of the spectrum for my own good, at least for the ‘commercial purposes’ mentioned above, but it’s still my own tone of voice. I think your style comes through, makes the writing genuine and personal, and let’s the reader know how you feel about the subjects you’re blogging about. When it comes to hiring a lawyer to defend you in court, don’t you want to know something about who he really is?

That’s basically it.

Pretty basic stuff. Ask yourself why you use Google as your search engine of choice. The answer is invariably going to be a variation of ‘because it gives me the answers I’m looking for’.

Right. You went and sat at the computer and Googled the phrase [fill-in-the-blank] because you wanted to know more about [fill-in-the-blank]. You don’t want to see a one or two page static website trumpeting the virtues of Q. Benedict Huntington III, Esquire, with the promise that if you call him and/or pay him money he will tell you all about [fill-in-the-blank].

So put some content on your website (blog) that potential customers are literally yearning for, and Google will give you credit for it, and your rankings will go up.

Just don’t ask me how they do it. They will.

Related Post: How to Give Google A Ton of Money

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Per year. $1,000,000.00 into Google’s coffers.

That’s my guestimate as to how much local defense lawyers are spending in these parts to advertise various phrases through Google’s AdWords program.  I’m going to attempt to make this a substantive post, not just something that Google – or the other search engines – scans and reads for various keywords and phrases, so I’m not going to list what the most popular keywords are… but you can imagine that they focus on a combination of geography and the profession itself.

This guess isn’t just off the top of my head either.

I have it from pretty reliable sources within several of the various law firms that participate in Google’s “Why Don’t You All Just Outbid Each Other” marketing, or often from the horses’ mouths themselves just how much some law firms are spending per month. There are several paying Google more than $10k per month. Some are spending substantially more than that.

Sure, some folks jump into the market at first, and then disappear, when they realize the high cost of being #5 or in some cases #10. But most stick around, and keep driving up those Google profits.

And knowing how AdWords is structured, that is, the higher the ranking in the Sponsored Results, the more the bidder is paying, combined with watching various internet advertising over the last year or so, I’d say one million spent in Austin alone for lawyers advertising criminal defense services is a conservative estimate.

Amazing.

That’s a lot of advertising costs that get passed on to the clients.

Related Post: Ranking High on Google For Free

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