Following up on yesterday’s JD Supra launch post, I’d like to illustrate how The Scoop portion of the site works. I don’t believe either of the following two stories have hit Google news yet, but both are supported by some of the latest legal filings under The Scoop:

• In re Dell, Inc. ERISA Litigation laintiff’s Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Motion to Dismiss – “The Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are investigating claims that Dell inflated financial results by engaging in improper revenue recognition and accounting practices. Dell began reducing sales and profit projections as the Company began missing its own revenue, earnings per share and unit sales growth targets, causing significant declines in its stock price.”
• Perfect 10 v Google (Amended) Opinion – “… While it leaves some questions open, the bottom line is that the Court upheld important policies of fair use and freedom online and resisted Perfect 10′s plea to put copyright owners completely in charge of how and when search engines and other online intermediaries can provide their users with links to images. EFF filed an amicus brief on behalf of Google to beat back Perfect 10′s overreaching copyright claims.”

Now I’m not a journalist, but can certainly imagine how the first document could turn into a story like “SEC Investigates Dell Accounting Practices“; or how a journalist could have fun with the second document, and publish “EFF Defends Google Too“, reflecting that Google isn’t always the bad guy when it comes to EFF support.

For lawyers & law firms, The Scoop is a real opportunity to work with the media. To get your court filings & decisions working on your behalf. And for investigative journalists looking for unique stories, it’s a great tool to monitor possible leads that are backed up with substance.

Sounds like a winning proposition for everyone. Right?

Stem Legal is proud to congratulate client JD Supra on today’s launch of their new website & accompanying blog – JD Scoop! JD Supra is a new website dedicated helping lawyers & law firms share legal documents, forms, pleadings, judgements, research, and other professional support materials.

As I wrote a few months back, I think JD Supra is going to stand out because of the site’s approach – there’s a definite collection mandate for the content & a targeted community of contributors. As a foundation for any website, that’s a huge starting point.

I also love this site’s ability to link a lawyer’s marketing presence back to substantive work product. It just makes sense. Not only does it create an incentive for sharing work product and a useful tool to help others, but it represents a qualification tool to measure professional experience. Whether you’re looking to hire a lawyer, or a member of the media needing a quote in a niche subject area, finding a lawyer who can backup their claim of expertise is important. Don’t just tell me you’ve got 20 years experience, show me your track record!

JD Supra enables that. And that’s unique.

The other aspect I’m really proud of is how the community is rounding out. The fact that both big firms and solos are seeing the value to participating. On one side we have larger firms like Morrison Foerster, Mintz Levin, Lane Powell and my former Canadian law firm Clark Wilson. And on the other side, great contributions from solos like Lisa Solomon, Doug Cornelius, Amy Becerra, Mitchell Matorin and Stem client Florida criminal lawyer Ron Chapman. Add in academics like John Hagan, interest groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cato Institute, and you can just imagine the content mix we’re heading for.

So I offer my congratulations to the entire JD Supra team… Adrian Lurssen, Eliot Gersten, Larry Bodine, Brittanie Williams, the group at POP Interactive, and especially JD Supra’s founder Aviva Cuyler. I know everyone will continue to work hard on improving this website, especially in the coming days, but launch day is always a milestone. A time to celebrate… This site has a huge future ahead!

The February edition of my Web Law Connected column is now posted over on Slaw. In this month’s article, Closed Networks & The Problem with Facebook, I address some of my biggest concerns with social networks (or any web product for that matter) that attempt to exist in a vacuum.

This is a bit of a turn-around for me. I’ve always liked the potential of Facebook, and what it could potentially deliver for professional networking. And for the most part, I still see that potential. But, as it exists, with a distinct lack of content ownership for authors, and its data stores shut down to the rest of the Internet (including Google indexing), my opinion is definitely headed south.

Now, I’m not advocating that lawyers go and shut down their accounts. At least not yet. :) But I do think it’s time for everyone to ask the question: Is this the best use of my marketing time & effort?

Writing this article also pushed me to reconsider how I approach Facebook. I want to be investing my marketing time into public-facing web technologies, like blogging or micro-blogging, and specifically in tools where I maintain control over the original content. I will continue to import my content into the Facebook sytem – eg. automating the imports of blog posts or twitter exchanges. And I still see value in having a Facebook profile. The small amount of time it takes to manage FB relationships frankly isn’t prohibitive. But when it comes to drafting original commentary, or documenting anything important via their in-system messages, I’m afraid I’m out. That type of content must always be free for me to use, and at my whim.

I’m going to break a personal rule today. I don’t normally reproduce entire blog posts, but this is a situation where I was the original source of the content, and I really like what the exchange says. So I’ll make an exception. :)

Quoted below is a Q&A session published this past Friday by Lexblog’s Rob La Gatta. It’s fairly concise, but I think it reveals a lot about my personal approach to law firm SEO — what it is; qualifying an SEO to help sell professional services; why good SEO is often misunderstood; and why blog commentary can be an important piece to the puzzle.

1. Rob La Gatta: In layman’s terms, what is the purpose of search engine optimization?

Steve Matthews: Keeping this as jargon free as possible, I would say ‘SEO’ or search engine optimization is about using search engines like Google to expose ‘something’ to the right audience. When it comes to marketing professional services, that ‘something’ can refer to the firm brand, a service line, a lawyer’s individual profile, articles & content, or some combination thereof.

Firms that employ an SEO strategy build a portfolio of search terms targeted around their subject or service expertise. Those firms know exactly which phrases are being searched for because they utilize keyword research tools. Pages are selected as ‘landing pages’ for particular keyword combinations, and then optimized to rank well. And to rank well, pages must be properly coded to reflect the subject of choice, and more importantly, be cited – via links – from other web pages on that same topic.

2. Rob La Gatta: As the Internet expands and the value of high search rankings becomes more apparent, it seems like there are a lot of so-called “SEO specialists” coming out of the woodwork. How can someone tell whether an SEO consultant is legitimate?

Steve Matthews: I would start with a cursory review of their work. Ask to see a comparable client in a different market, and see how their site ranks. While requests for client confidentiality do occur, most professionals should be able to give samples of their work.

I would also listen to their proposed strategies, and specifically how they intend to acquire links to your website. Remember, your site will be evaluated by the company you keep. I would also make sure they understand marketing professional services, and have experience beyond product-based search marketing.

The difficult part of the evaluation will be telling if the practitioner has the skill to rank for highly competitive search phrases. I would ask to see some of their top results for two word search phrases. Rankings gets increasingly difficult as the number of words in the search decreases. If he or she can hit a top-10 rankings for two word searches (and preferably two words that combine for a recognizable phrase), that would be a good sign they are capable to building your firm a ‘portfolio’ of three word searches.

One last hint: if you’re not sure which searches are competitive, have a look at the number of accompanying advertisements or ‘sponsored links’ on the right hand side of the page. Paid results almost always correspond with desirable, and usually competitive, search terms.

3. Rob La Gatta: What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about SEO and its purpose?

Steve Matthews: One of the biggest misconceptions I come across is the belief that SEO is somehow based upon programming tricks. I routinely run into people who believe that SEO is no more than stuffing keywords into the meta tags or title tags, or that if you *gasp* stuff keywords into your marketing copy you’ll get to the top of search results.

My take is that a successful search strategy can be broken down into: 30% on-page factors, and 70% off-page factors. It’s much more important to have a quality network of links coming into your website than to let someone alter your message. And when you do hit those top rankings, it’s the pages with quality copy that will convert to leads.

Here are the facts: Marketing copy should be drafted for its intended audience, and always be natural. A good SEO should be able to work with clean copy and make it rank. That doesn’t mean that on-page factors aren’t important – as an example, well designed title tags are very important – but a good rule of thumb in my books is that SEO should never trump exposing your firm brand or alter your marketing copy.

4. Rob La Gatta: I’ve read that blogs naturally perform better in search engines than static websites. Do you believe this is true? If so, why?

Steve Matthews: Not to be picky, but we must compare apples to apples here.

Blog software is classed as a Content Management System, or “CMS”, and most modern CMS products already have the on-page SEO factors baked into their product. If we’re talking about hand-coding static web pages, then yes, a developer could overlook some of the basics – which would make it seem like blogging software has an advantage. But otherwise, most web designers will employ a CMS, and these products can compete with blog software.

The practice of blogging, however, does bring a number of attributes to the table that are unique.

First of all, blogs are content based marketing, and the breadth of content that a blog can deliver is very powerful. What many people are calling the long tail, blogs allow an author to cast a very wide net around their subject of expertise. And it’s this ever-growing body of work that gets indexed within the search engines.

Situated properly, a professional blog can build individual lawyer’s profile, and work as a more casual lead-in tool for the firm’s website, which is geared more toward services, expertise and experience. In other words, get to know the lawyer in question, and then decide if that person is qualified. Even with SEO, you must consider the entire online decision making process.

The second SEO factor I’ll note is the number of trusted citations that blogs produce. Lawyers need to understand that links are the currency of the web, and that blogs are not just a publication opportunity. If they were, why wouldn’t you just convert all your newsletters into blog software? It doesn’t work. It’s only when blog authors engage the social side of blogging, and begin to link out to other bloggers (who eventually reciprocate) that blogs begin to have a dominant effect on the search results.

A big thank-you to both Rob La Gatta and Kevin O’Keefe at Lexblog for this opportunity! The Lexblog Q&A series is very distinguished company, and I feel very lucky to have been included.