In fact, the moment I talk with one attorney in any geographic area about his or her web presence it is a necessary exercise for me to do a complete analysis not only of that firm’s website, but of all of the competing firms as well. How can you be competitive if you don’t know what you are competing against, right?

There are several typical practices that I see in regards to domain names (the website address) that I want to discuss with you. In this post I give some bad examples and then get to my thesis which is that the domain name is THE most important part of your website. Here are four bad practices:

1. The vanity name: Perhaps the most common domain name type that I see used by firms that are less than happy with their firm’s web ROI is the vanity (or ego) domain name. By this I mean a URL that is a version of the firms name. For instance, Dewey Cheatham and Associates, PLLC might choose the domain “DCAss.com.” While the domain name may be a perfectly appropriate description of this (randomly made-up and fictional) firm, without knowing anything more about the URL, I’m going to think it’s got something to do with politics. It tells me nothing about what the attorneys do. In fact, it doesn’t even tell me who the attorneys are. Vanity names are great for business cards, but not so great for attracting new business through search engines or pay per click advertising. If your firm has a vanity domain, chances are you are not getting as much focused traffic as you could.
2. The “public” domain name: There are many places where you can get a “free” blog on the internet. The most popular is Google’s Blogger or Blogspot. It’s a great platform. And anybody can set up a blog in less than 10 minutes, at zero expense. And they even look pretty good. These are great if you are doing a temporary blog about your travels, or what to show off the collection of cats that you are fostering and trying to adopt out. But if you are an attorney and trying to build your online infrastructure, why would you share a common top-level URL with everybody else (i.e. – “yourblogname.blogspot.com”)? You do not own that domain name and you never will. When you want to switch to your own domain (and you will), you will have to start over, nearly from scratch, and build the credibility and trust of the new domain.
3. The general website: By this I mean a general law domain name, such as “thebestlawyersaround.com” in which a firm highlights multiple areas of practice. I think it is a dangerous practice to focus on more than one area in any given website. This is because niche sites convert better than general ones. Your DUI clients will be highly suspicious of any firm that does medical malpractice and DUI. Any educated client will assume that the DUI cases finance the higher-end contingency fee cases.
4. The landing page masquerading as a niche domain name: Ever clicked on a website you wanted to visit and discovered that the site looked robust, with many topical links? But then, when you click on any of the many links, you are transported to a different website? Some firms that have multiple practice areas think that it is sufficient to erect a one page website on a DUI-related domain name that refers people back to their general site. This is like putting a DUI related caption on a motion or brief that you file in a DUI case, but all subsequent pages are about an unrelated divorce case. While I’m sure everybody knows a judge or two who never reads any defense brief, this is still malpractice per se. Not only is it a web strategy that is unlikely to pay off, it is also deceptive to users of the website.

Original domain names are cheap. They can be registered for as little as a buck or two. Then again, you could pay thousands of dollars for a decent domain name (one without hyphens, numbers, that is a dot-com with practice and geographical specific keywords in it).

Whenever possible, it is better to have an exact match domain. This is a domain that is the exact thing that qualified users search for. As an example, in 2002 or 2003 I acquired the domain “duiarizona.com.” I got a great deal on it, but in all honesty I would have paid a couple of thousands of dollars for it if I had to. In real-estate, location may be everything. On the web, your domain name is the most important piece of your initial investment in your online infrastructure. While “yourcityduionline.com” may be available for original registration for $7.99, if you can get “yourcitydui.com” (without the trailing “online”) for 100 times that price, “yourcitydui.com” is a MUCH better bargain.

Attracting good clients online used to be cheap, or free, when everybody was still under the spell of the phone books, and spending their money there. Now that the smart money has shifted online, a sound investment in a good domain name just makes sense.

Yahoo and Microsoft are the second and third. According to most major sources, including HitWise, Google has upwards of a 70% search market share. In theory, it means that 7 out of 10 of your potential clients who are seeking DUI help through search go through Google. In reality, it may be even higher than that, given that people often search multiple sources.

Behind Google is Yahoo, at around 14% of the market, and Microsoft’s Bing at around 10%. If those numbers are correct, that leaves around 5-6% of the remaining market to other sources, the biggest of which is thought to be Ask.

While it appears that Yahoo’s search market share is on the decline, Bing appears to be heading up. Given that Yahoo and Bing are merging their search business, their piece of the pie looks to be between 20 and 30% in the next year or two. And given the vast amounts of money that Microsoft is spending to compete in search, it would not surprise most people if that share goes up.

So when it comes to evaluating where you website is, and where it needs to go, the first thought should always be about Google. Google’s search product is the best out there, and if you optimize for Google, you are probably doing a pretty good job for the other search engines too. But don’t forget to check Bing and Yahoo and know what your competition is doing there, and to discover the strengths and weaknesses in your overall online strategy.