Conrad Saam from Avvo talkes about search in terms of competition, content, linkbuilding and technology at the Radius of Influence 2010 Conference in Tampa, Florida. Hosted by the Injury Board and the American Association for Justice.

1. Death of the Yellow Pages
The Sad Tale of Maurice Bennett

3. Wake Up Call
Americans conduct
22.7 billion searches
monthly

4. Wake Up Call
10 million fewer
newspaper subscribers
between 2008 and 2009

5. Wake Up Call
82% of people
search for local
businesses online

6. Wake Up Call
Seaching for Local Businesses
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Search Engines Yellow Pages Online Yellow Pages Newspapers
Source: 2007 Nielson study

7. Wake Up Call
80% of people
research products
online before
buying them
locally.

8. Wake Up Call
86% of searches start
at a major search
engine
Source: 2007 Microsoft study

9. Wake Up Call
“Yes, but I’m a lawyer, it’s
totally different for us.”
“I get all of my business
through word of mouth.”
“I’m a professional not a
plumber.”
“You can’t rate lawyers
like restaurants.”

11. Questions answered on Web
“Maurice Bennett is a great attorney. You should hire him”

12. Informed Consumers

13. Informed Consumers

14. Referrals
“Maurice
Bennett”

17. The Search Stool
Content Technology
“Maurice Bennett” “Maurice Bennett”
Authority (Links)
“Maurice Bennett”

18. Leg 1: Content
What is a webpage about?
Key Factors Title
• Keyword density Tag
• Important Indicators
– Title Tag
– URL
– H1 Tag
– Meta description
– Meta tags
• Uniqueness and freshness of content

19. Content: Anatomy of a Webpage
Title
Tag
URL
H1

20. Common Mistake:
A page about everything

21. Common Mistake:
Copying content
Inlinks: 121 Inlinks: 68

22. Leg 2: Links
How important is a website?
Key Factors
• Number of links
• Quality of links (Page Rank of of linking site)
• Anchor Text
– Click here
– Avvo
– Rate your Lawyer
• Attracting Links

23. Common mistake:
Not optimizing anchor text

24. Common mistake:
Static Sites aren’t Linkworthy

25. Leg 3: Technology
Can the search engines find and read the webpage?
Key Factors
• Simple URL’s in plain English According to Google, these are different pages:
• 1 Page : 1 URL
http://avvo.com
• Standard links
– Avoid: http://www.avvo.com
• Flash http://www.avvo.com?pageid=458
• Java
• Images http://www.avvo.com&reference=msn
• How to surf like a spider
– Turn off images
– Turn off javascript
– Turn off flash

26. Common Mistake:
Google can’t navigate a site

27. Common Mistake:
http://website.com vs. http://www.website.com

28. 20,000
The Name Curve
18,000
16,000
14,000
12,000
10,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
2,000
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27
Thomas Jennifer “Maurice Bennett” (1)
Robert John
Smith Johnson
Shapiro Browne
(282) (129)
(64) (16)

29. Name Confusion
Ashley Dupree Russel – Ashley Dupre -
Austin, TX Lawyer Washington, DC Callgirl

30. Name Competitiveness
Paris Hilton Paris Hilton

32. Maurice Bennett

33. Online Reputation Management
Facebook
Avvo
LinkedIn

34. The Bleeding Edge of Search
Social Search
Customized Search

35. Someone Online Hates You

36. Google Alerts

37. Google Alerts

38. 10 Things you can do
in 10 Minutes
Competition
1. Benchmark where you rank on Google for:
• Your name
• Your geo/specialty
2. Understand your website’s authority
• PageRank
• # of inlinks
Content
3. Ensure your geo/specialty is the focus of your homepage.
• URL
• H1 Tag
• Title Tag
• Content
4. Optimize your bio page for your name.
• URL (www.website.com/bill-smith)
• H1 Tag
• Title Tag
• Content
5. Remove your firm name from every title tag and rewrite them to focus on the
specific page’s content.

39. 10 Things you can do
in 10 Minutes
Linkbuilding
6. Claim your Avvo profile and link to your website.
7. Make sure the links on your website are descriptive.
Technology
8. Are all of your pages indexed?
9. Type in yourwebsite.com into the browser toolbar. Does it
automatically redirect to http://www.yourwebsite.com?
10. Review all of your URLs for a ?, #, =, %. If you find any, they can
probably be optimized.

40. Avvo
About Avvo Following Us
• Largest Legal directory conrad@avvo.com
• 2 million monthly visits Twitter.com/conradsaam
• 150,000 contacts/month
to lawyers
• 10% of practicing lawyers Facebook.com/avvo
have claimed their profile LinkedIn: Avvo Lawyers