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.