Case Study #2 - Proner & Proner, Attorneys at Law

Product History

The attorneys of Proner & Proner began their search engine marketing campaign with Einstein Law in 2002. After initially purchasing LawyerShop listings, the firm soon expanded its campaign to include LawyerShop listings for the New York city area, three custom Traditional SEO websites (prolaw1.com, motorvehicleaccidentlawyer.com, bikerhelp.com), a Pay-Per-Click campaign, a Spanish-language version of their personal injury website, and the National Legal News newsfeed.

In January 2007, Einstein consolidated Proner & Proner's three websites into one comprehensive online resource — prolaw1.com. The updated custom Traditional SEO website includes Flash, Video Website, the National Legal News newsfeed, and Spanish-language pages. Proner & Proner is already enjoying excellent results from the consolidation, with a dramatic increase in website visits each month. Although the client dropped the PPC campaign in October 2006, prolaw1.com regained the lost PPC traffic after the domain consolidation was complete. May 2007 was the second highest traffic month for the website, with 4,462 visits to prolaw1.com (even when controlling for the traffic that was previously maintained by bikerhelp.com and motorvehicleaccidentlawyer.com). As the updated prolaw1.com website has more time to be indexed and crawled by the search engines, we expect to see further increases in website traffic.

Product Timeline

• 2002: LawyerShop listing purchased.
• 2003: Priority LawyerShop listing, two Auto Accident State listings (19-month deal) purchased. Traditional SEO on bikerhelp.com goes live May 2003.
• 2004: Two Traditional SEO websites (motorvehicleaccidentlawyer.com and prolaw1.com) purchased and released live in March. Pay-Per-Click campaign also initiated in March.
• 2005: Eight new LawyerShop listings purchased.
• 2006: National Legal News newsfeed, Video Website, and Spanish version of prolaw1.com released live in May. Pay-Per-Click campaign dropped at the end of October.
• 2007: Domain consolidation project, including a new custom Traditional SEO website, Flash, and Call Stats released live in January. Impact Auto Responder also purchased for mass mailing and other online marketing.

Search Engine Marketing Results

SEO Keyword Rankings

Prolaw1.com can be found on the first page of Google™, Yahoo!®, and MSN®'s organic search engine results for a number of highly competitive keywords, including:

• personal injury lawyers new york city
• wrongful death attorneys new york city
• auto accident attorneys manhattan
• auto accident lawyers manhattan
• motorcycle accident lawyers new york
• motorcycle accidents new york

Website Visits

This graph trends website traffic for the client's three SEO domains. The Traditional SEO for these domains were released in 2003 and 2004.

During 2004, 2005, and 2006, we saw a steady upward trend in traffic for all three domains, most notably on bikerhelp.com. (Note that traffic drops off around November 2006 - the client dropped the PPC campaign at the end of October 2006. PPC advertising accounted for about 50 percent of total website traffic in the first 10 months of 2006.)

May 2006 saw the largest amount of traffic to all three sites, with 5037 visitors. This month coincides with the release of the National Legal News newsfeed and Spanish-language version to prolaw1.com. Following the May spike, we saw a drop in traffic, especially after the drop of the PPC campaign in October 2006. However, since the January 2007 domain consolidation, website visits have rebounded to their previous levels and are projected to surpass all previous highs by the end of 2007.

LawyerShop Visits

Since the LawyerShop listing for prolaw1.com was purchased in 2002, website stats have shown the following increases:

• Traffic resulting from LawyerShop listings increased from 53 visitors in August 2002 to 350 visitors in June 2007.
• Visits from LawyerShop listings peaked in September 2006, with 454 potential clients finding prolaw1.com through the LawyerShop directory.

Website Contacts

The number of visitors who have contacted the practice via the website's email contact form and Call Stats phone number have increased since domains were consolidated in January 2007:

• The number of phone calls to the practice has been on an upward trend, rising from one phone call in December 2006 to 66 phone calls in June 2007.
• March, April, May, and June 2007 emails have increased an average of four emails per month over the same period of time the previous year.

Pay-Per-Click vs. Organic: Is Investing PPC Funds into a Broader SEO Campaign a Good Idea?

It can be. During the first 10 months of 2006, prolaw1.com received 5,321 visitors via the client's PPC campaign, comprising 48 percent of the domain's total traffic for those 10 months. Although prolaw1.com lost some traffic when the ads were initially pulled, the website has rebounded following the consolidation and updates, and is now back to the traffic numbers the website achieved when the client was spending an average of $3,000 a month on PPC. In this case, it did benefit the client to invest more money into the Traditional SEO campaign.