1. Change Your Law Firm Website From
Liability To Asset

2. About MyCase
About MyCase
MyCase is the premier web-based legal practice management
software. Built as a complete platform, MyCase offers features
that seamlessly cover all the daily functions that a modern, small
law firm requires in one place at an affordable price.
Just $39/month per attorney
$29/month per paralegal or staff

3. About Gyi Tsakalakis
Search Director | AttorneySync
Helping lawyers put their best foot
forward online because that’s where
clients are looking for them.
@gyitsakalakis

4. Change Your Law Firm Web Presence
Change Your Law Firm Website From
From Liability Asset
Liability To To Asset

5. Poll #1
Do people (not in your family) regularly compliment
your website?

6. Liability to:
Your License?
“Of course I’m the best lawyer. It says so right
on my website.”

7. Liability to:
Your Reputation?

8. Liability to:
Your Business?

9. as·set
A useful or valuable thing, person, or quality.

10. Useful?

11. Valuable?

12. Where do I start?
Most people (lawyers & web vendors) want to start here:
Domain?
Images?
Platform?
Layout?
HTML?
Colors?
Disclaimers?
Hosting?
SEO?
Design?
Practice Pages?
Logo?
Favicon?
Typography?
Your Bio?
Security?
Wireframes?

13. Da Coach says: Stop it!
They build websites for themselves.
• They choose domains that they like (or that they think are
good for SEO).
• They choose their favorite colors.
• They write attorney bio pages that impress them.
• They proudly build their own websites (or have their
daughter do it).
• They copy their competitors because it must be working
for them.

14. Lesson from Google
What do analytics users want?
• Client-focused
• Meaningful to clients
• What’s new
• Why?
• Learn
• Event
• Grow

15. Your Audience
Build your website for your audience.
• Who are the people you are trying to attract to your website?
• What are they looking for?
• Where are they looking?
• What do they expect to be able to find?
• How can you provide them with something useful or valuable?
• What do you want them to do?
• Why should they do that?

16. The Relationship Business
Build a website that helps nurture relationships.
• Give.
• More than just an attorney.
• Answer the questions that are not asked.
• Let your personality show.
• Pay it forward.
• Empower your visitors.
• Take responsibility for loses.

17. Clients
What do clients want from your website?
• You’re on top of things.
• Availability?
• News that impacts them.
• Ways to get in touch with you.
• What you’ve done for them lately.
• Portal?

18. Poll #2
Is your domain easy to remember and clearly
distinguishable from other domains?

19. Don’t choose your domain for robots.
You don’t have robots for clients… Yet…
• No hyphens.
• No exact match keyword domains.
• No odd TLDs (.biz, .info, .net)
• No boring domains.
• No [location] [practice area] [lawyer] domains.
• No ridiculously long domains.

20. Choose your domain for your audience.
Make sure your domain is:
• Easy to type.
• Actually memorable.
• Compelling to your target audience.
• Descriptive of what your site is going to be about.
• Easily linked to.
• Short.
• On a trustworthy TLD.

21. Poll #3
Does your website fully load in about 1 second?

22. Even kids know
Fast is better than slow.
• Is your website fast?
• Does it fully load in less than 3 seconds?
• Less than 1 second?
• Have you tested it?
• On your smartphone?
• Google PageSpeed Tools:
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/

23. Does my audience use mobile devices?
Don’t take my word for it, just look around.
• What does your website look like on a smartphone?
• What about on a tablet? Both positions?
• Does it function the same way?
• Can you easily navigate and read your pages?
• Load on the same URLs (not m.yourdomain.com)?
• Does your site respond to its environment?

24. Responsive Web Design
Does your website provide an optimal experience on all
devices?
• iPhone Simulator
• Building Smartphone-Optimized Websites (Google)
• Beginner’s Guide to Responsive Web Design (treehouse)
• WordPress Responsive Theme

25. Poll #4
Does your website communicate what it’s like to
be your client?

26. What do people expect to be able to find?
http://www.nonbillablehour.com/2013/10/your-clients-still-don.html

27. What are you trying to get people to do?
Does your website motivate people to:
• Feel like you know what you’re doing?
• Feel like you give a s***?
• Call you?
• Request more information?
• Email you?
• Subscribe to updates?
• Leave comments?
• Share or link to your pages?

28. Poll #4
Can you attribute new business to your website?

29. Does my audience use search engines?
If so…
• What are they looking for?
• Does your website have that?
• How are they looking for it?
• Do your web pages show up?
• What feedback are you
receiving?
• Are they sharing it, talking
about it, linking to your stuff?

30. Search Engine-Friendly
The Basics:
• Crawl & Index: robots.txt, site: search, XML sitemap, GWMT
• Semantic URLs: /attorneys vs /?p=123
• Title Tag: <title>What this page is about</title>
• Headings: <h1>Use one H1 per page</h1>
• Internal Link Structure
• Structured Data: authorship, review markup, etc

31. Search Engine-Friendly
More Reading:
• Beginner’s Guide to SEO: http://moz.com/beginners-guide-toseo
• SEO Webmaster Tools Help:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35291
• What is SEO: http://searchengineland.com/guide/what-is-seo

32. https://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/

33. http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

34. Own your web presence.
What do people find when they search for you?
• Contact information?
• Directions?
• Happy clients?
• Pictures?
• Videos?
• What you know?

35. Structured Data
Rich snippets attract clicks.
About rich snippets and structured data

36. 2013 Search Ranking Factors
What signals correlate with high rankings?
• Page Authority
• Linking Root Domains
• Domain Authority
• Total External Links to Page
• Google +1’s
• Facebook Shares
http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

37. 2013 Local Search Ranking Factors
What signals correlate with high local rankings?
• Consistent Name, Address, Phone (NAP)
• Physical Address
• Quality of Structured Citations
• Domain Authority
• Verified Local Plus Page
• Reviews
http://moz.com/local-search-ranking-factors

38. Earn it.
Do your pages earn meaningful attention?
Content is earning links.
http://www.willenslaw.com/report-your-accident/

39. Testing… Testing… Testing…
Constantly test your site’s performance.
http://www.google.com/insights/consumersurveys/publishers
Cross-Browser Testing Tools
http://iphone4simulator.com/
Live, Web-Based Browser Testing

40. How do you know if it’s working?
Build, Measure, Learn
• Set specific goals that have meaning to your firm.
• Use web analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) to
analyze how people find and use your site.
• Set up goals in analytics (i.e. phone calls, form fills, etc).
• Encourage and listen to feedback (both direct and indirect).
• Don’t fall in love with your site, it’s not for you. Make datainformed changes based on what your audience is telling you.

41. Contact Us
Gyi Tsakalakis
gt@attorneysync.com
(773) 328-2027
(Feel free to email me with
questions or to request slides.)
MyCase
www.MyCase.com
www.MyCase.com/blog
(800) 571-8062
support@mycase.com
sales@mycase.com
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with MyCase for attending.
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42. Thank You