Massachusetts Legal Designs
Massachusetts has a lot of legal websites. Its amazing how many more law firms are needed when all real estate transactions require a lawyer! After looking at well over a 2,000 legal websites in the State, I have a few observations:
-Massachusetts is a great State for FindLaw. Whereas FindLaw has struggled mightliy to retain clients in competitive cities like Boston, they have flourished in the many small suburbs that make up most of Eastern and Central Massachusetts. In fact FindLaw has 204 active legal websites in the State as of this posting. You can read my theory on why FindLaw is a good option for these smaller suburbs.
-Boston is a Justia town! There are 31 Justia site in Boston alone. 18 of which are primarily marketing personal injury. This is after they lost 3 PI clients in the last 15 months. (Sugarman, Lowney Law and Fernandez). Justia has had two clients that have dominated for years (Bwglaw.com and Jeffrey Glassman) in most competitive PI searches. While they still have great rankings, they have been displaced recently by serious SEO competitors (iLawyermarketing, Apricot Law and ConsultWebs). While their top two clients have prospered, you can see how most of their clients struggle to rank.
– The herd mentality in picking a legal website company is not exclusive to Boston personal injury lawyers and Justia. 9 lawyers in the small town of Pittsfield MA used Hibu for their attorney marketing. Hibu is very strong in Massachusetts with 65 active sites in the State.
-For animal lovers, Massachusetts has a Dog Lawyer Site and a site full of zebras!.
-Marketing Education law in Massachusetts is surprisingly competitive. There are at least 20 sites that market for that business statewide.
-The local company with the largest footprint in the Massachusetts Legal Market is Bardorf Legal Marketing. This small firm seems to specialize in taking over old FindLaw sites in the Northeast. In Massachusetts I count 36 law firm sites that bear their logo. Most of their sites use the old FindLaw design, however, there have released some of their own designs which are very similar. This site seems reflective of their recent designs.
Best Legal Design in Massachusetts: There was two excellent legal sites released in Boston in 2017: Law Office of Frank Fernandez (Gustonquon) and Sugarman (Unknown). Each feature great custom photography and some very cool design elements. But the best legal design in Massachusetts remains www.sweeneymerrigan.com from iLawyermarketing. Released in 2015, the site features incredible custom photography along with slick interactive design elements. A highlight is the interactive timeline at the bottom of the home page. Thanks to great content like this, the site enjoys top rankings for most personal injury and medical malpractice searches in the hyper competitive Boston market.
Honorable Mention: Brad Bailey Law – Boston(Scorpion), Keren Goldenberg – Lowell (Nifty), Bowditch Attorneys – Worcester, Daviau Law – Worcester (FindLaw), Lieberman Law Office – Newton (BluDesign Studio), Goldberg & Weigand – Cape Cod (FindLaw)
The Massachusetts Legal Sites that Should Upgrade Their Design…..
This first one is a fix. The belongs to Lian Zarrow. This firm was with FindLaw and then decided to move on. So they purchased an End User Interface or EUI. This is a collection of web files that needs to be redeveloped into a site. As was the case here, FindLaw stripped out all of the onsite SEO – so no more title tags. Worse they put in a landing page that advertises for FindLaw that appears for a second or two everytime you load the site. This is what you briefly see when you go to the Lianzarrow.com site today:
When people sign up for FindLaw – they are told they can take their site design with them via the end user interface. However, an end user interface in its current form is terrible. This is the problem with working with a company with their own “proprietary platform” as it makes leaving them difficult. This firm will now have to hire a developer and a SEO to clean up this site.
Another firm that should consider redesigning their site is – Smeloff & Associates. The largest BK filer in Massachusetts. The site is a busy mess. I counted over 10 different fonts on the site, pictures are of very low quality and content is hard to read. Onsite SEO is also very bad, unfortunate because with the age of their site and content, the site should be ranking much better. That said this site does have good map visibility and is no doubt working to bring in clients. In fact the firm may suffer from a “DrudgeReport” mindset – the idea you dont change a website that is working, no matter how ugly the site might be. I would argue they are losing clients with this design and that they should consider uprading with a reputable SEO/Design firm that would at a minimum preserve their existing traffic.
These sites could also use an update:
http://www.scottvictorlaw.com/
http://www.papouliaslaw.com/
http://www.janiaklaw.com/
http://www.martignettilaw.com/
Need Help Marketing Your Massachusetts Law Firm?
-My company, iLawyermarketing has just 2 sites in Massachusetts: Sweeney Merrigan and family law firm Wilkinson Finkbeiner who ranks well in Boston and New Bedford divorce and family law searches. If you are a Massachusetts lawyer who wants to improve your web presence give me a call at 480-889-4216.