Why You Should Completely Own Your Law Firm Website

Imagine for a moment that you buy a house. Over the years, you pay
the mortgage company and finally, you owe nothing. The mortgage company
then tells you that you have to buy your house (the house you just paid
off) in order to truly own it. You would not let that happen, so why do
some lawyers agree to such a practice with their website?

When having a website built for your firm, it is important to own
your website. Your law firm’s site is a lot more than just an
advertisement. Over time, it is going to be a financial investment as
well as a time investment as you work with your marketing company to
add content to the site and turn the website into a powerful marketing
tool.

Some legal marketing
companies design websites that are only leased to your firm and then if
you leave, they sell your website to you to take somewhere else. Of
course if the site was built on a proprietary content management system
(website editor), you will have to pay to have the design programmed
into an out of the box content management system. Once you calculate
the cost of buying your website (again) and having it programmed into a
content management system, it is generally less expensive to have a new
site built from scratch.

Here are some important questions to ask your prospective legal marketing/website design company.

1) Who owns my custom website design and content? –
If the answer is anything but an unconditional “you,” run away. Unless
the company is offering a discounted template based plan (in which case
they rightfully own the design), you should own the design and all
content that was custom created for you.

2) Is the content management system proprietary? –
If the company uses a proprietary content management system, your exit
strategy is going to require an additional re-programming investment of
$1,000 – $4,000 depending on the advanced features of your site. It is
best if the company uses an off the shelf or open source content
management system because that makes your site compatible with 90% of
standard web hosting companies.

3) How will my website be found? – The value of
your website will forever be unknown if nobody finds it. If the company
says “we build links” or “we optimize your site,” you should demand a
detailed outline of how this is done. Adding one keyphrase on your home
page or linking to your site from one of their directories is not a
sufficient search engine optimization
strategy. Request details. Good companies are generally eager to show
off their robust marketing packages if they truly stand above the
competition.

To learn more about legal marketing, law firm marketing, and attorney websites visit SEOLawFirm.com or call 1.800.728.5306.

Other Resources: Find a Lawyer | Law Firm Social Network