When building a legal website, one of the first questions that needs to be addressed is, What domain name or URL should I use? If the client has an existing URL with content, the answer is simple. We will want to use the existing URL as it would be considered an aged domain by the search engines. (An aged domain is hugely important to the search engines- see my post on
September 13th on this subject)

But 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 advantage and the lawyer would be best advised to pick the most advantageous URL possible. So what makes a good URL? While a relatively small factor in search engine optimization, the name of your URL does play a role in ranking, particularly in MSN and Yahoo. Therefore, you want to maximize the opportunity by incorporating practice specific and geographic keywords in the URL. Phoenix Divorce Attorney, Rebecca Owen, did this when she selected http://www.arizona-divorcelawyer.com/ as the URL address for her new website. A brand new URL, the site already ranks well for very competitive keywords like “Arizona Divorce Lawyer” in MSN. The keyword rich URL is one of the reasons why.

“Shouldn’t I use the name of my firm as the URL name?” Having the name of the firm in the URL serves no advantage. Remember, one of the goals of most online campaigns is too bring in clients that don’t already know your name. So I usually recommend maximizing the search engine marketing of the title. (Besides, we will always ensure that your site comes up in searches for your name.) Another reason not to use the firm name in the URL is that law firm names tend to change over time, which may require you to change the URL later. The only time that I recommend using your name in the URL, is if you do a ton of advertising that would create name recognition of the firm name. Otherwise stick to a keyword rich title if you don’t have an old URL.

*Both Networksolution.com and godaddy.com will allow you to select different URLs and determine the availability.