Freedom from Google

[diogenes]

I was looking at a blog site and the owner is claiming a very high number of hits per day, I forget maybe it was 200,000 a month or something like that. His site is about "self improvement" so it is a general interest site, so I understand traffic is high for this type of site.

The interesting thing is that he claims that he gets only 1.5% of his traffic from Google. The rest is mostly referred traffic that he gets from other blogs and sites where they have posted his link and people actually click on it. NOw while a lawyer site is unlikely to ever be popular like that, ithe idea of having an internet marketing strategy that is not subject to the vagaries of Google , the Panda and other algorithm changes, etc is quite interesting. This guy said that he has totally emphasized having great content and not SEO tactics or marketing tactics.

Would this concept make sense on a lawyer site? Does anyone have any thoughts?

thx

Paul

[RyanKent]

This guy said that he has totally emphasized having great content and not SEO tactics or marketing tactics.

For the most part, great content is the cornerstone of solid white hat SEO and marketing.

Work such as optimizing meta tags, robots.txt files and similar search engine specific activities are an extremely small percentage of a SEO's time. A much better use of time is spent on content related activities. A few examples:

• determine which topics are most popular. You can write a fantastic legal article on the insanity defense, but how many people are interested in that topic? You may find a "how to beat a speeding ticket" article will be a LOT more popular.

• ensure the topics are relevant to your services. Perhaps you are a one attorney office and you specialize in the insanity defense. In that case, even if your main topic is unpopular, you can only handle one client at a time so the insanity article would be the best topic.

• the basic English and marketing strategies you have learned in school are all relevant to great content. Grabbing the reader's attention with a title such as "How I beat my last 7 speeding tickets" is often very successful. Writing articles in a wikipedia like fashion is not done for search engines, but for readers. See how they do it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speeding_ticket

• proper "link building" shouldn't be about grabbing links for search engine purposes, but instead earning links for direct traffic.

Try this approach. Pretend Google and search engines did not exist. Now write your articles and try to popularize them. What would you do differently? For my part, nothing would change with respect to the content itself.

Some suggestions: write the best article you can, let everyone know about it via social networking (twitter, facebook, etc), publicize the article anywhere you can think of where readers can find it. These tactics will be great for direct traffic, but they will also be great for search engines as well. Realistically speaking, if you provide great content and present it properly, you can promote your web pages "normally" without adjusting for search engines and the pages should do very well in search results.

PS. Please forgive my judgment, and I humbly admit I could be wrong, but I call bullsh*t on the guy who claims 200k visitors a day with 1.5% being from Google. It is entirely possible, but would be a very poor business strategy. The site is likely either in Russia or another country where Google is not a factor, or it is highly probable the statements are severely inaccurate or misleading.

[EGOL]

Lots of people who have kickass traffic from sources outside of Google are getting that traffic from subscriptions.  If you have a blog that has, say 20,000 email and RSS subscribers and you post every day, then you could easily get x00,000 visitors per month from your subscribers.

You could also get a lot of traffic by having your blog feed posted out to your facebook and twitter accounts.  If you have a lot of friends and followers it will get passed along.

The key to getting big traffic outside of search is developing an Audience.

[ShaMenz]

Hi Paul,

Great answers from Ryan and EGOL.

The other thing to keep in mind is that traffic doesn't automatically equal business.

While it may seem attractive to be "free from Google" and other search engines, there is an important consideration that must not be forgotten.

If the Lion's share of your traffic is perhaps from RSS subscribers or referrals from more general sites, how many of those visits are actually delivering you people who need a lawyer?

When I need a lawyer for myself or a family member (when my need is immediate and I am ready to contact the one that seems best able to help me), what am I going to do?

Will I:

• Look for a blog to subscribe to?
• Surf around and read other websites looking for links to lawyers that might help me?
• Go to my favorite search engine and search on a term that will take me straight to a list of local law firms in that practice area?

While diversity of traffic sources is important, the reality is that if they were not the most useful means of finding what you want on the web, search engines would not still hold the place they do.

I have a number of clients who are lawyers and would agree that the approach Ryan has described for you is the best way to go. In addition to that I would say that the key in developing content for them has always been remembering the mindset of the client. A person who needs a lawyer is a person who needs help. The practice area and seriousness of the situation will dictate what type of help.

Hope that helps,

Sha