Main takeaways:
- Keyword-rich domains alone won’t guarantee SEO success: While they may offer some benefits, they are not a substitute for a comprehensive SEO strategy that includes content, link building, and technical optimization.
- Misconceptions can lead to wasted resources: Investing heavily in keyword-rich domains without understanding their limitations can result in lost time, energy, and money.
- Long-term commitment is key: For keyword-rich domains to be effective, they must be part of a long-term strategy with continuous development and SEO efforts.
“Ever wondered if buying keyword-rich domains is the secret to skyrocketing your law firm’s SEO? Let’s uncover the truth.”
In today’s episode, we will explore the effectiveness of purchasing keyword-rich domains for law firm websites.
Many lawyers invest in these domains hoping to gain a competitive edge in the SEO world.
However, most don’t fully understand this practice and often waste money.
We’ll explore when this strategy might be beneficial and when it’s not, helping you save money and focus on SEO strategies that truly make a difference.
Timestamps:
Introduction and Overview of Keyword-Rich Domains
Timestamp: 00:00:05 – 00:01:20Common Misconceptions About Keyword-Rich Domains
Timestamp: 00:01:21 – 00:06:53The Reality of Using Keyword-Rich Domains for SEO
Timestamp: 00:06:54 – 00:13:24When Keyword-Rich Domains Can Be Beneficial
Timestamp: 00:13:25 – 00:20:28Final Advice and Long-Term SEO Strategies
Timestamp: 00:20:29 – 00:26:28
Transcription:
00:00:05:29 – 00:00:31:28
Patrick Carver
Ever wondered if buying keyword rich domains is the secret to unlocking huge growth for your law firm? Let’s find out. In this episode, we’re going to cover the effectiveness of buying keyword rich domains for your law firm website. Many lawyers are addicted to buying keyword rich domains, but they don’t often fully understand how to utilize them, what the benefits, what the drawbacks are.
00:00:32:01 – 00:00:57:24
Patrick Carver
With this practice, we’re going to explore when this strategy is effective, when it’s not, and give you a better insight as to what issue strategies actually move the needle so that you can focus on what works. Welcome to another episode of the Optimize Law Firm podcast, minus Patrick Carver. I’m the CEO of Constellation Marketing. This podcast is all about helping you run a more profitable and enjoyable law firm.
00:00:57:24 – 00:01:20:17
Patrick Carver
So try to make this very actionable in view. Good tips that will hopefully help you in your quest to understand marketing, how it can impact the growth of your business and ultimately do what we all want, which is generate more profits due to buying a keyword. Rich domain is not a guaranteed ticket to SEO. Success. Let’s talk a little bit about what this practice is.
00:01:20:17 – 00:01:53:21
Patrick Carver
So if you’re an attorney and you have a pulse, you’ve probably done this at some point in your practice. And what I’m talking about is buying these keyword rich domains. So think if you’re a family lawyer in Tuscaloosa, you’re going to buy a domain like family lawyer, Tuscaloosa divorce lawyer, Tuscaloosa, stuff like that. And then what I also see commonly, or when folks come to me is that they say, hey, I’ve got this whole arsenal of domains that I’ve purchased over the years.
00:01:53:21 – 00:02:23:18
Patrick Carver
I’ve purchased family law, Tuscaloosa dot com dot org, got net let’s use them. Right. Use them so you can get some SEO success and the the truth is that these alone do not it’s not some sort of magic pill or silver bullet that will help you get success with SEO. The the idea of this kind of goes back to Google’s algorithm where they’re looking for signals, right?
00:02:23:20 – 00:02:46:19
Patrick Carver
So every part of your website is going to give a signal. And one of those that does carry a certain amount of weight is going to be what you have in your URL. So if you are attempting to write for a certain type of keyword, you want to be known for something in particular, putting what you do in very plain terms or keyword terms is can be beneficial.
00:02:46:22 – 00:03:21:14
Patrick Carver
So if you if you do in fact own family or Tuscaloosa, that that can be a benefit. Now that is different than a branded domain where you were going to use your your own branding so Smith law firm dot com something like that. And so this whole practice got started a long time ago where it was SEO is not as developed as it used to be or excuse me, it was it was much less developed than it was in the old days as it is today.
00:03:21:17 – 00:03:49:25
Patrick Carver
And so some of these little signals could really drive outsized results for people doing doing the practice right. And so at some point you’ve probably heard that SEO is all about stuffing the right keywords in in your page. And, you know, there used to be an a hack for this where people would throw in hundreds of iterations of the word the keyword that they were going for, but do it in white so they can really be seen on the page.
00:03:49:25 – 00:04:14:22
Patrick Carver
And, and so for a while, stuff like that worked, right? These little hacks where they figured out kind of how Google Signal was, what they were prioritizing. And so they threw these little hacks out there and it would work for a little while until Google figured it out and then they would clip it down. And so this kind of has the feel of one of those hacks, but it’s it’s a little bit different.
00:04:14:24 – 00:04:41:16
Patrick Carver
It’s in current relevance or current tolerance, this can still actually pack a punch, right? It can be beneficial. But there are some caveats. And so we’re going to go into that in the in the next in the next piece. But there are, you know, examples of this working and not working. So let’s let’s get into that and break some of these down.
00:04:41:19 – 00:05:08:06
Patrick Carver
If you think a keyword rich domain alone will put you at the top of Google, think again. Let’s go through a couple of the most common misconceptions before we get to situations when keyword rich domains actually have a value and could be valuable for free law firm and situations, when I would, I would recommend using them. So first misconception around this is that it’s going to be this instant SEO boost, right?
00:05:08:06 – 00:05:28:17
Patrick Carver
And that somehow you can take these domains you’ve been stacking in your GoDaddy account for a year or two and redirect them or to do something behind the scenes and it’s instantly going to blow up the success of your website. And this is just not really true, right? All of these factors that Google uses for their algorithm are all weighted.
00:05:28:17 – 00:05:52:20
Patrick Carver
And so we don’t know the exact recipe of what they do to come up with their algorithm. But we do know from tons and tons of testing that it’s not just one thing, it’s a confluence of a number of things. And so when you’re thinking about SEO success, you really need to be checking all the boxes. You need to have good content building authority through link building.
00:05:52:23 – 00:06:21:18
Patrick Carver
You need to have the a good technical side of your your website’s loading quickly loading on all devices. So those are the most common pieces of the puzzle that you really need to make sure you’re at least doing the basics of those if you want to compete. Because coming in and just dropping a keyword rich domain is really not going to do much, especially if you haven’t done anything with the other components of ACA success.
00:06:21:18 – 00:06:53:12
Patrick Carver
The off page on page and technical aspects, the other big misconception here is that it’s a low cost, high value investment. And so sometimes and this breaks my heart when I hear this is someone has purchased a domain from they’ve gotten an email and it’s it’s like, hey, we you know, we’re the owners of, you know, dog accident law.com and we want we want to sell it to you for just $1,000 or something like that.
00:06:53:12 – 00:07:23:26
Patrick Carver
And they’ll say, Oh yeah, you get SEO benefit stuff like that. This is really the worst case scenario is if you’re spending a sizable amount of money with the with the understanding or belief that it’s somehow going to add to your ability to rank. Now, I know attorneys who have like 50 of these domains or purchases in the past just because they’ve heard somewhere that this practice is is valuable.
00:07:23:26 – 00:07:46:20
Patrick Carver
And just from a basic level of understanding, like a prima fascia, you know, level of thought process here that like, well, it can be a bad thing. Right? And so it’s got to have some value to it. And so if you want to buy expensive domains, go for it. It’s just it’s not going to work. Right. It’s a it’s a really more of a pure vanity play.
00:07:46:23 – 00:08:18:15
Patrick Carver
And if you do think that, for instance, your domain is too long, it’s it’s got too many names in it. Stuff like that. And it’s just way more recognizable and easy to remember for your clientele to put in, you know, family law atlantic.com. Go for it. Absolutely. There is a value with that, right? And so there’s not necessarily an SEO value, but from a branding perspective and a simplistic point of view, you’re absolutely going to get a value there because you can put it on, on, on your cards.
00:08:18:15 – 00:08:42:03
Patrick Carver
You can, you know, give it to everybody and let people know. And it’s much easier than giving them a long domain name that may be difficult for them to remember or come up with or your last name and things like that. So just don’t go into this thinking that you are somehow going to catapult yourself to to the top of of the rankings just because you purchase this domain.
00:08:42:06 – 00:09:11:19
Patrick Carver
Now, the one caveat to this is if you are buying a an actual website asset, so if you are buying a website that has been online for a while, you know, it’s a year, it has content, it’s there’s been some link building, different stuff like that. So it’s it’s actually done some of that formative SEO work that actually makes a difference when it comes to your ranking.
00:09:11:19 – 00:09:34:11
Patrick Carver
So if you if it’s already done some of this off page, some of the content, all this stuff that’s very different than just buying a domain itself. And so the big distinction that I want to draw for you today is that if you’re just buying a URL with no history of SEO development on it, that’s a very low value activity.
00:09:34:11 – 00:10:03:19
Patrick Carver
That is, you are not going to get any sort of SEO boost or anything like that at least immediately. So I’m going to go into the other like when you can actually use this in just a second. So if it does have some some value to it that there’s been content, link building, etc., that actually can be beneficial to you because what you’re effectively doing is a merger of another of another business, right?
00:10:03:19 – 00:10:31:16
Patrick Carver
A merger and acquisition. And so if that website has that, that juice that that SEO value, you can redirect it to your website and you’re going to get that juice, right? You have to there’s some rules with it and you want to do it carefully and with a strategy in mind. But you are then actually buying a an asset, right, that you can combine with yours where you’re going to get some of that value.
00:10:31:16 – 00:10:53:21
Patrick Carver
But the the the rule I want to always remember next time you’re thinking about buying a domain is whether or not it has that that asset component. Has it been developed before? Because it hasn’t. It’s really not worth your time unless you’re thinking of it as a very long term investment that you want to be known as family lawyer, Phenix or whatever.
00:10:53:21 – 00:11:20:06
Patrick Carver
And you think it’s a good branding play for the long run, but it’s not going to give you any sort of short kind of boost with your with your SEO work. The final misconception is that this is some sort of substitute for quality content and SEO strategy. So basically talked about all this before is that this is not a replacement for a comprehensive SEO strategy.
00:11:20:09 – 00:11:50:28
Patrick Carver
This is a hack that doesn’t really work. It isn’t going to give you any sort of tangible benefit by simply redirecting a website that has no links, no content, etc.. And so really what you have to be thinking about is when it comes to your SEO strategy is a long term vision. You need to be thinking about building an asset that is going to grow and be improved over time.
00:11:51:00 – 00:12:30:09
Patrick Carver
It’s the one asset, maybe YouTube videos as well, but not as valuable in my opinion. It’s the one asset that has a compounding value over time. It’s the only type of marketing that performs like the stock market, where you’re going to have these ebbs and flows during the near term. But if you look at it over the long term and you do these basic elements of writing good content, getting links to your website, making improving the visibility, increasing the visibility across the Internet, you are going to get compounding value.
00:12:30:09 – 00:12:56:29
Patrick Carver
You are going to have your visibility grow and grow and grow over time, assuming you have just even a basic SEO strategy, you don’t even really need a marketing agency for it. You just have to be committed to actually writing and doing some of this work yourself. The work’s not going to do it due itself, but you don’t need a highly, highly paid marketing agency to see, see this benefit.
00:12:56:29 – 00:13:24:08
Patrick Carver
You really can do it by yourself. Now, of course we can do it a lot better. And if you work with a good SEO agency, they’re going to do it way better. But ultimately you can still have a say or make a positive impact on your your SEO performance, just you. So moving on to our third and final point, when keyword rich domains can actually be beneficial, so keyword rich domains are not entirely useless.
00:13:24:08 – 00:13:48:17
Patrick Carver
There’s actually a couple of use cases where these can provide a lot of value to you, but you have to do them the right way or else it’s a huge waste of your time, money and energy. So the first and really primary or only strategy that makes sense if you want a keyword rich domain is to think about it for the long haul.
00:13:48:19 – 00:14:19:16
Patrick Carver
So I’ll give you an example of a client. And this client does criminal laws particular location. They’re in the Midwest state and they have the city name plus criminal defense in their their URL. And I believe it is absolutely giving them a beneficial impact on their on their ego. So prior to working with us, they were kind of middling around.
00:14:19:18 – 00:14:46:02
Patrick Carver
They didn’t really have a big link profile. They had some content, yet they had gotten a couple of really good positions that were in line with their city, plus criminal defense lawyer on there. In terms of the rankings of their website. And so why does this work as opposed to just buying a domain on online and kind of stacking them?
00:14:46:02 – 00:15:14:25
Patrick Carver
And then in doing a redirect, the answer to this is all about building the asset, right, building your your website and doing it for a long time. So if you want to use a keyword rich domain, just be prepared to utilize it for the long haul. It’s not a it’s not a quick fix. But remember what I said in the first part of this is that it is a ranking factor there.
00:15:14:28 – 00:15:48:09
Patrick Carver
There is some weight given to this by Google when they see, you know, their crawling your website looking for, hey, what was this website all about? Right. They’re going to look at the URL and that is a big piece of it because if they’re looking at your URL and they see that it is specifically tailored to one type of service, right, in a specific location, they’re going to think, well, this person dedicated the entire URL to this thing.
00:15:48:14 – 00:16:13:15
Patrick Carver
They must be taking it pretty seriously. That must be a really big focus of this website because when Google crawls your website, they’re not looking at it like you were me. They’re looking at it from a code perspective right there. Their crawler is going and essentially reading the text and kind of seeing how all of these elements are what is in all of these elements, like the URL, the site title, all of that stuff.
00:16:13:15 – 00:16:40:18
Patrick Carver
And so if they get there and it’s all about Des Moines criminal lawyer dotcom, it’s going to basically write down in there their big knowledge graph that, hey, this, this website’s kind of primary thing or what we know this website to be about is criminal law in the Des Moines area or whatever city thereafter. And so he uses a different name for his his business.
00:16:40:18 – 00:17:13:06
Patrick Carver
Those businesses not, you know, Des Moines criminal lawyer but he has been able to, I think, get get a lot of benefit from this. But again it’s because he’s you know, he’s done this for the long haul. So when we started working on this domain, it wasn’t surprising to me that when we added a big new chunk of content to the website, got it, got his citations cleaned up, added a bunch of links, it really started to take off.
00:17:13:06 – 00:17:48:11
Patrick Carver
And so we were able to double the traffic of this client’s website in about two months. And now I think the benefit that it was getting from from a keyword rich domain is just being further strengthened and further compounding because that’s the type of content where we’re writing for, we’re writing specifically for this, this main topic. And so it’s all kind of fitting together in meshing together in terms of how Google thinks about the about the website and what it should be known for and how it should be in those search rankings.
00:17:48:13 – 00:18:22:29
Patrick Carver
So if you can do it, I say go for it, but be prepared to do treat it like you would your your regular website. Right. It’s not a hack. It’s not going to be done quickly. You need to be prepared for the long haul to have that actual name. So we also get into situations where somebody is thinking about a new practice area and they they go out and buy a domain and they say, Look, we want you know, we’re doing family law, but we also want to do estate planning about this other Web site.
00:18:23:02 – 00:18:50:16
Patrick Carver
And let’s, you know, let’s start building a website there, because I got this really good domain state planning in Omaha dot com or something like that. And this goes back to the problem of trying to use this is a hack where you’re expecting some sort of outsized outsized benefit for for this by just simply standing up the website.
00:18:50:16 – 00:19:25:22
Patrick Carver
And the reality is it’s hard enough to coalesce visibility, get rankings for your website and convert that into traffic and ultimately business with just one website. So the idea of trying to then do that for two and starting from scratch with this new website, you have a large hill to climb because you need to build links, you need to put content, you need to effectively build your timeline up with Google so that it knows trust and likes your website enough to put it in the search rankings.
00:19:25:24 – 00:19:57:00
Patrick Carver
So same same rules effectively go here that it’s okay if you want to stand up this new website, but you really need to be prepared to do it for the long haul, right? It’s going to require its own its own SEO campaign effectively. And so the idea of just sprinkling a little a few articles there and thinking it’s going to rank is is not practical because you’re not taking into account the fact that there’s plenty of other competitors out there who that’s their only focus.
00:19:57:00 – 00:20:28:10
Patrick Carver
Right. And they’re driving hard just on the estate planning side and ultimately you’re going to there’s no way you can compete with somebody who that’s their their single priority. And and they really want to really want to win there. So in a case like that, I would always recommend continuing to build your website as a single entity unless you have separate budget, you really want to build that as a separate brand and a separate entity.
00:20:28:10 – 00:21:00:15
Patrick Carver
And so if you know, if you’re known very heavily already for criminal law, now you want to, you know, kind of stand up a new practice like P.I. or Immigration or something like that. And you don’t really want to tie it to your existing practice, but you want to do it up. Yeah, absolutely. Set that up as a different website, but just be prepared that, you know, this is going to be, you know, a challenging you know, you’ve got some things to do in order to really get the value out of it that you’re looking for and get the results that you want.
00:21:00:18 – 00:21:29:23
Patrick Carver
The final situation where this can make sense is what I going back to what I talked about earlier in terms of buying a domain that actually has some history to it. So with history I’m talking about it has a timeline, has a footprint. It’s been there for a while. It’s not been spammed out. So often when domains go get get expired, they get purchased by nefarious groups who are going to spam these out to try and sell like sunglasses and weird stuff.
00:21:29:23 – 00:21:56:24
Patrick Carver
And, you know, just weird things happen to it and try to capture some of the juice, the link juice from these websites. So if you are presented with an opportunity to buy a keyword rich domain and there’s some element of, hey, this is going to be an SEO play, go into one of the SEO tools like Age Crafts or Mars or some rush.
00:21:56:24 – 00:22:26:17
Patrick Carver
Any one of those send it to us, we’ll look at it, give you a quick synopsis of whether there’s any SEO value to it and whether it’s clean to clean domain doesn’t hasn’t been spammed out and is going to help or hurt your SEO efforts. Absolutely. Go, go, go look for it, Check it out and there there can again be value, but it still has to fit all of the things that I’ve talked about earlier.
00:22:26:17 – 00:22:48:27
Patrick Carver
As far as a long term play or it’s a branding play that you, you know, you just want something that’s easier, a little bit cleaner and easier to talk about. But, you know, those don’t come along too often. And if you’re not kind of a seasoned SEO person or you have a handle on that, I think it’s going to be not really worth your time to be honest.
00:22:48:27 – 00:23:17:20
Patrick Carver
And, you know, kind of all of this time and energy and focus that’s spent looking for this, this one very niche kind of hack is ultimately just really a drag on, you know, where you should be focusing all of your mental energy, financial resources, everything else you could be focusing on, just pushing out good content, building links, doing it the slow and methodical way rather than trying.
00:23:17:20 – 00:23:51:09
Patrick Carver
It is it is very much a tortoise versus the hare kind of situation here where you really just need to stay the course. And I know that’s often challenging for lawyers because when you deal with SEO agencies that you know are not not great or not good in terms of transparent, you’re probably going to get bad results or you have gotten bad results before and feel, you know, feel really upset about it that, hey, these people promise me a lot.
00:23:51:09 – 00:24:13:12
Patrick Carver
And then the results weren’t there. And so that’s either because they’re just ineffective. The, you know, they did a bad job forecasting. They were too optimistic. And then, you know, sometimes, yeah, these people are, you know, just slimy and not going to give you, you know, they’re going to really take your money and don’t really have an intention of doing it.
00:24:13:12 – 00:24:43:02
Patrick Carver
I think most SEO agents have seen from when we get people is that they they do have good intentions. I just don’t think that they’re they don’t really understand the competitive nature of the law firm market. And so they have some positive results, but they are not built to compete at the highest level. So, you know, unfortunately we that often gives marketers a a bad a bad view.
00:24:43:02 – 00:25:11:02
Patrick Carver
But just remember, like all of the basics are really key here. And if you do those and make sure that you’re adding new content every month and it’s valuable, talking about all of the different components of of your practice area, your city, your location, where you want to get those clients from, you will, you know, ultimately you’re moving towards a an arc that will ultimately reward you in in a really big way.
00:25:11:04 – 00:25:58:13
Patrick Carver
If you’re thinking about buying one of these domains, just remember, there are pros and cons. Think through your specific application and make sure it fits with the type of scenarios that will actually produce results for you. Because if not, you’re just taking away focus, energy and resources from the real SEO strategies that actually move the needle. So unless you have one of those really good specific scenarios where buying a keyword rich domain can be effective, I would suggest just focus on the basics, focus on these strategies that are more going to be better as part of a comprehensive SEO strategy like content writing, link building and technical SEO.
00:25:58:15 – 00:26:26:07
Patrick Carver
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Optimize Law Firm Podcast. I’m here to answer any questions. You can reach me. Patrick at Gill Constellation dot com. I love talking shop. I promise I won’t pitch you. I really just like helping. So if you have a question about a domain you’re thinking about buying, we can do some of that back end SEO analysis and give you an idea of whether it’s it’s worth the valuation people are asking or if it can help in your specific situation.
00:26:26:07 – 00:26:28:28
Patrick Carver
So thanks for listening and keep it real.
