Righi Hernandez Wins Design of the Month

September Design of the Month

Congrats to the Law Firm of Righi Hernandez and designer Joe Lover on winning Design of the Month for September. The winning site, http://www.rhfirm.com/, will be featured in an upcoming issue of "Attorney at Law" Magazine and will get a permanent link on my website: http://www.arizonalawyermarketing.com/

The brilliant conceptual design won despite a furious late rally by the Law Offices of Raymond J. Slomski who finished in 2nd place.

Did You Know??? Designer Joe Lover plays lead guitar for a popular Minneapolis Cover Band.

Phoenix Employment Law Firm is Hiring

EMPLOYMENT LAWYER –
FLEXIBLE WORK FROM HOME (OR ANYWHERE)

A rapidly expanding employment litigation practice in Phoenix is in need of contract attorneys with a MINIMUM two years of employment law experience. You need not be licensed in Arizona. I will email you the assignment with supporting documentation and a deadline, and the only requirement is that you efficiently produce a finished product that is timely emailed back to me. Paralegal support available. All contract attorneys are 1099’ed. Currently paying $25/hour and can scale the amount of work from only a few hours a week up to 30-35 hours per week.

If interested, email resume AND writing sample to my paralegal at fdias@HallLaw.com.

Sanders & Parks - Unanimous Defense Verdict

Jeff Smith and Robin Burgess received a unanimous defense verdict on October 22, 2009 in a traumatic personal injury matter originally brought against the City of Phoenix. The Plaintiff alleged that she was run over by a City of Phoenix bus, and served a notice of claim for $750,000. During closing, Plaintiff asked for in excess of $500,000. The jury deliberated for ten minutes and found unanimously for the defense.

Did You Know??? As an undergraduate, Jeff Smith was the Captain of the Football team at the University Wyoming and was a first team Western Athletic Conference selection.

Neurolagic Amyotrophy

Readers of this BLOG have probably noticed a drop off in posts recently. This has been quite a tough month for me health wise. It started with a bad case of the flu which had me on my back for 5 days. Then, on October 6th I started having searing pain in my right shoulder and right arm. The pain is incredibly intense and gets progressively worse at night. The pain was so bad that I had to visit the ER twice in the last two weeks. The ER doctors treated me for the pain and took a number of tests. MRIs and x-rays of my back and neck were normal. Thinking it was severe muscle spasms - my doctor prescribed anti inflammatories and muscle relaxants to no effect. In addition to the pain, my right arm is now noticeably weaker - I now struggle to pick up a glass of water. Yesterday I met with a neurologist and he gave me a diagnosis - Neurolagic Amyotrophy also known as Parsonage-Turner Syndrome. I am relieved that I have a diagnosis and that this condition is temporary - usually lasting for a month or so.

While I have tried to continue working - the lack of sleep and pain has caused me to fall very behind with my work. It has forced me to cancel or miss a number of meetings. For this I apologize. Until this condition clears up, I would ask that you contact Adrie Wessels @ adrie.wessels@thomsonreuters.com or my manager mailto:ojason.oneil@thomsonreuters.com if you have an urgent website matter.

Attorney at Law Circulation

A number of emails have asked me how they can get "Attorney at Law" magazine. Supposedly, the magazine is sent out to around 6600 private practice attorneys in Maricopa County. The list comes from the State Bar. If you haven't received your copy yet, please contact me via email and I will make sure you are added to the mailing list.

Attorney at Law Magazine launches First Issue

The New Arizona Attorney magazine "Attorney at Law" published their first issue this week. Besides the back cover advertisement, I was honored to be asked to write an article on online marketing. My article "How to Select a Web Address for your Law Firm" appears on page 21. Unfortunately, when the article went to print a number of words were mistakenly omitted by the publisher - causing some embarrassing typos. Here then is the full article without the typos:

"How to Select a Web Address for Your Law Firm"
By Alex Morris

How to select a Web address for your law firm
When you decide to build a Website for your law firm, one of the first decisions you will need to make is choosing a Web address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). That’s the address potential clients, colleagues and others will type in to find you on the Internet. It will be the address on your business cards, your stationery, your answering machine, your brochures, your ads, and on all the other Web sites that link to yours. In other words, your URL is important.

What URL should you use?
If you already have an existing Website with content, the answer is simple. You will want to use the existing URL. The search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, Bing) consider your existing URL to be an aged domain. An aged domain has built up some trust with the search engines and can be a hugely important factor in search engine ranking.
What about the attorney who registered a URL a long time ago but added no content? In this case there is absolutely no search engine value to consider. That lawyer would be well advised to pick the most advantageous URL possible.

What makes a good URL?
While the URL is a small factor in search engine optimization, the name of your URL does play a role in ranking, particularly in MSN and Yahoo. Maximize the opportunity by incorporating practice-specific and geographic terms in the URL. For example, Phoenix divorce attorney Scott David Stewart selected http://www.arizona-childcustodylawyer.com as the URL address for his custody Website. Almost immediately, the site started ranking well in MSN and Yahoo for competitive searches like “Arizona Custody Lawyer.” The keyword-rich URL is one of the reasons why.

Why not simply use the name of your firm?
Having the name of the firm in the URL serves no advantage for most attorneys. Remember, one of the goals of most online marketing campaigns is to bring in clients who don't already know your name. I usually recommend using keywords relevant to your practice. Besides, unless you have a really bad Web developer, you should always come up in searches for your name.
Another reason not to use the firm name in the URL is that the name of your law firm may change later causing you to change the URL. The only time I would recommend using your firm name in the URL is if you do a ton of advertising or have a lot of name recognition with the public. Otherwise stick to a keyword-rich title if you don't have an old URL.

How do you know if the URL you want is available?
There are a number of places to go to check the availability of a URL. I like to use www.REGISTER.com or www.networksolutions.com. Both sites allow you to type in multiple prospective Web addresses in order to check availability. Often you will find that the .com address is taken but alternate endings like .net or .biz are available. From a search engine ranking perspective, there is no downside in selecting .net or .biz rather than .com. However, many people automatically type in .com, so it’s always best to try and get a .com address if you can.

What if someone else owns the URL I want?
You can purchase an existing URL from someone else. This should always be done with great caution. Like buying a used car, every URL has a history – some good and some very bad. If the former owner of the URL was using unacceptable SEO (search engine optimization) practices or was parking the site merely to get pay-per-click income, the URL could have already been penalized or banned. That means the URL would be invisible to the search engines. The only time I recommend purchasing a URL is if it’s currently in use and fully indexed by Google. In these cases, purchasing an aged and respected URL could actually be a great investment for the firm.

How do you keep your URL?
When you decide on a domain name, be sure to lock it in for as long as possible and NEVER let your URL lapse. Believe it or not, the term of your URL agreement is a small factor for some of the search engines. A URL that is locked in for a long period of time shows stability and will positively affect your ranking. Conversely, if your URL lapses, your site could disappear – and that would hurt your Google rank significantly. Even worse, if you allow your domain name to lapse, the URL could be sold off to someone else. I have seen this happen and getting your URL back usually involves paying a hefty ransom. To find out who hosts your domain and to see when it expires go to www.whois.net.

Scott J. McWilliams wins Design of the Month for August

In a record vote turnout, the law Office of Scott J. McWilliams won design of the month for August. Besides getting a permanent link on the design page of my website, the site will be featured in an upcoming issue of "Attorney At Law" Magazine.

The First Fall Classic - by Mike Vaccaro

Forgive me for this obvious departure from Arizona legal marketing. I got a note today that my friend Mike Vaccaro just released a new book called "The First Fall Classic". The book chronicles the reinvented World Series of 1912 between the Red Sox and Giants. It has already garnered some great reviews.

Mike Vaccaro has been the lead sports columnist for the New York Post since November 2002. Previously, he was a columnist at the Newark Star-Ledger and before that the Kansas City Star.

I got to know Mike when he was the sports writer for the Times Herald Record in Middletown NY. He was a columnist assigned to cover Army Basketball when I played there. Hardly a dream job for a sports writer, Mike made the most of it nonetheless. Mike's amazing writing talent was obvious to all of us and we always knew he would move on to bigger and better things. Congrats Mike on the new Book!