Episode 122 – Is It Dangerous To Have Two Law Firm Websites For SEO?

Let me just say it outright: having two law firm websites for SEO is NOT bad! It will not hurt your Google ranking! They will NOT compete with each other! Yes, that’s right. In fact, I’ve shared a case study in this podcast to answer all your concerns regarding having two websites. You can listen to the audio below or download it.

 

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Today I have an interesting case study for you, the tale of two attorneys. Now, this is a true tale. That’s something recently that happened, it’s very instructive. The question of “Should I have more than one website; and if I do, will it hurt me?” The answer I think you’re going to find is very unexpected.

I have a number of clients that have two websites and more. And from what I see on the web, the top guys in any state, in any metro, have three, four, five, even 10 websites. So first of all, having more than one website does not hurt you; otherwise the top guys in every practice area and in every state would not have it. And secondly, in my own experience, which is vast, I have plenty of clients that are happily getting lots of leads from two and more websites. So that’s not true, just want to let you know that right now. But there are factors that could confound at you if you have two websites such as if you have the same address that appears on website A and website B. Yes, they do compete with each other in Google a bit. So does that mean should you just give up one site? No. What you can do is make the address on one site appear there, on the other side, making an image. Google can’t read an image, so the next will still show up and look like text on the site but again, it’ll be an image Google can’t read and now you can have your address appear on both sites and you’re not going to have any problems from Google.

Another thing that causes two sites to be a problem is if you have the same articles on each site, it’s called Duplicate Content. So a few articles that are same, not too bad; tons of articles or the entire website copied on multiple sites, yes, that will hurt you. Google doesn’t want unnecessary clutter. There are a lot of people on the search engines, and if two websites are the same, how does it know where to send them, so it will discount one and praise the other. You don’t have control over how that decision is made, you don’t want that happening to you. So if you have duplicate content on two sites, change the content on one of the sites by at least 40% to make it unique and that’ll also solve that problem.

Phone numbers, some people said “Oh, if you have the same phone number or a tracking phone number, it hurts you”. Again, not a problem. There are ways around this and plenty of people have tracking numbers, the best lawyers do, so they know where their leads come from. You definitely want to have tracking numbers and do not be afraid of having them.

All right, back to this case study I was talking to you about. So, one of my clients calls recently and says, “Hey Rich, we are getting all kinds of people telling us that having two websites is bad and they compete”, and I can hear that this guy is just not going to take no for an answer. I explained to him why it’s fine and he just doesn’t want to listen. So I think to myself okay, well if I don’t combine his sites, someone else is going to do it. I am going to lose the business and they are likely to do it in a way that will hurt him, so I better figure this out. So I analyzed both sites. And what I see is this. Website A gets about 5% of his leads; website B gets 95% of his leads, okay. Website A however is stronger than website B. Now, this makes the decision more difficult. Stronger I mean SEO wise. So I look through all these factors and what I come to see is that again, website A gets far fewer leads but it’s a lot stronger; website B is weaker but it gets more leads. And since this guy is insisting upon combining the two sites, we’re going to go ahead and do it but what we’re going to do is this. We’re going to take website B and redirect it to website A because website A is already strong. Website A will now get the power from website B, the two sites having been combined. And the guy has two addresses, which are both going to go on website A. So now, he’ll have one site that’s stronger than both previously and in a few weeks time, the power from B is going to transfer to the power of A and he should be back up and running with about the same lead flow that he was getting before. So that’s how we solved his case.

Another case, it’s a more difficult. Another client I happened to be looking at, he has three websites. But the problem here is website A gets 40% of the leads, website B is about 50%, and website C is 10% and they all have relative strengths, so what do I do here? Well, it just so happens that his law firm name is changing, he took on a partner and named him in the firm, so it’s like Smith & Jones instead of just Smith Law Firm. So, a fortuitous thing that we figured out to do is we’re going to combine all these three sites and we’re going to put up a new site called smith&jones.com, for instance, and redirect all the other sites to that site. Now that new site, instead of starting out new and weak, will have the combined power of all three of his other sites and it solves the problem of his name being correct now because he’s changed the name. If we went and changed the name on all the other sites, it may have caused them problems but since this is what’s going on, there is what we’re going to do. And all his lead flow should add in and combined to leave him better off in a short period of time. So that’s what happened with that case study.

So this leaves an interesting question. Again, if you have a website, should you start another one? Well, you may say no because you don’t want to hurt your existing site but again, I’ve told you you won’t, but I’ve found the reason to say yes to do a second site. And here’s why. The other website is doing well and let’s say you do a second one, and over a year you build up the second one so it has moderate strength and it’s getting some leads. And at that point, you redirect the second one into the first one. Now, the first one has an additional boost, additional power because you’ve redirected the second one into the first one and you spend all that time building up the second one and you haven’t lost it, now it adds into the first one. So you’re stronger than you were before. The alternative is to be too afraid and not do a second site and not to get that benefit. A year down the road, yes, the SEO will strengthen your main site but you’re missing out on having this extra site help you out and get you leads and increase the power of your first site.

So I hope all this makes sense. If you need any help in sorting this out if you have this situation where you have one or more websites and you don’t know what to do, if you don’t know the relative strength to them, if you’ve been told to combine and if you’re afraid to combine and if you want to start a second site, any of these questions, we have the capability to answer and answer intelligently and put you in a better place lead flow wise. Do so and find out by calling 888-225-8594, or email me Richard.Jacobs@speakeasymarketinginc.com. Thank you.

 

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