Visibility and design count but
with Web sites content is king

Having a professional Web site is a basic for lawyers and law firms today, according to Brett Osterhout of Thomson FindLaw.  Osterhout spoke at the GP/Solo Second Annual Fall Conference in Philadelphia earlier this month.

Noting that 70 percent of American adults use the Internet regularly, compared to 51 percent in 2000 and 12 percent in 1995, Osterhout pointed out that 91 percent of college-educated people use the Internet and 93 percent of homes with incomes of $75,000 or more are online.

He said that an effective, professional site will attract qualified clients while providing content that is helpful to clients and non-clients alike.  With so many people using the Internet, the challenge is in creating a site to reach specific clients.

The three main components of a successful site are visibility, design and content.  Of the three, Osterhout said, "Content is king."

And content needs to reinforce a lawyer's expertise with relevant, fresh information, he said.  "People will come to your Web site for information.  You need to provide it in a way that is usable to them."

Doing so means coordinating content with design and search-engine optimization. "Design allows you to capture attention by focusing on how you want to portray yourself to your clients and prospective clients."

Osterhout suggests that good design means making the site easy for visitors to navigate in order to answer questions they have and find contact information.  "Design elements that support organization add clarity and communicate subtly that the firm represented by the site is easy to work with and organized."

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Part of Web site development is developing a program so the major search engines include the site in their searches.  The top three search engines – Google, Yahoo and Microsoft – account for 80 percent of all searches.  Google alone account for 47.5 percent of searches.

Web site developers submit individual pages in a site to the major search engines, asking to be included.  A page’s ranking, or how high near the top it appears in the list of results, depends on the quality of links and indexable content.

As Osterhout explained it, a lawyer might want to have a landing page for a frequently searched term that leads to a practice area that she controls.  For example, a person might search for a lawyer who handles custody cases in a specific geographic area.  A landing page on custody issues would then direct the person to a page with content on the webmaster's family law practice.  Both the family law page and the custody page can be listed with the search engines.

He pointed out that a Web site can be considered an advertisement.  As a result, appropriate disclaimers should be used and subjective claims should be avoided.  The same standards that apply to other print and promotional materials should be applied to the Web.

Osterhout recommends that lawyers continue to educate themselves about the Web and seek a reputable partner to help develop and manage a site.

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