This is the wrap up post in my series on whether law firms should utilize the recently released .attorney and .lawyer domains. I looked at a number of topics over the last several posts and couldn’t more strongly believe that attorneys need to plan on integrating these new domains into their firm’s marketing. If your web consultant is telling you that these domains aren’t important, or to “wait and see,” then he or she is doing you a great disservice. Taking a wait and see approach is going to leave you feeling like this guy in the end:
I’d much rather see you feeling like this guy:
Topics I discussed in this series included:
- Why .Lawyer & .Attorney domains matter to a law practice
- How .Lawyer domains will lead to better search categorization
- How these new TLD’s will assist Google by making search less ambiguous
- Why “experts” are wrong in thinking the new .Attorney domains won’t impact search
- How to go about picking a .lawyer or .attorney domain for your law firm
- The fact that .Attorney domains are now appearing in search results
I received a lot of great feedback in online forums on this topic. The thing I find the most interesting is that many attorneys, as of this writing, aren’t seeing the value in these domains. I can’t stress enough that we see these becoming a major factor in search. Any attorney who doesn’t snatch up the ones that he or she reasonably thinks they may use is likely to regret it later.
As a quick close-out to this series I’d like to look at why these domains are going to matter. That reason is the fact that search is not static. Virtually all of the arguments I’ve heard as to why lawyers shouldn’t purchase one of these new TLD’s hinges around the way that Google currently ranks websites. Google, however, changes their search algorithm on a regular basis, sometimes weekly, and its naive to make your future plans based on what Google is doing today. It’s important to understand that the world is changing. The current .com/.info/.net web structure has been around since the early days of the web and is a relic of pre-search engine days. With so much additional content on the web, and with such a need to categorize it, the search companies will be using items like these domains to make their job easier.
Are you going to purchase your .Attorney and .Lawyer domains in preparation of the future or are you going to find yourself saying “I should have acted while I had the chance?”
I am not going to purchase Attorney.com. Or lawyer.com. Too $$$$
Hi Greg. You would want to go with a hyphenated domain, which is far less expensive. So instead of “mycityinjurylaw.lawyer” you would want to use “my-city-injury-law.lawyer” The hyphenated version is better for search and SEO and these domains are typically starting at around $50. The reason why non separated domains are so much more expensive is somewhat ironic. Godaddy and the various providers are basing prices on supply and demand. Because many attorneys don’t know to buy a hyphenated domain they purchase the non-separated ones. This means that far more attorneys want to buy what is actually an inferior product and, as a result, companies like Godaddy are pricing those products much higher. I hope this helps.
Once again you give a really good answer , thank you very much I really enjoying to read the new stuff you post A+