“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
Someone recently asked me the question: “How important is the domain name of your website?” Unlike in Shakespeare’s example the simple answer to this question is that domains are “very important”! The right domain name will help you grow your law firm by making it easy to find you on the web. The wrong domain name may hurt you because even existing clients might not be able to find you easily.
Although a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, it might not be as easy to spell its name! The spelling of your domain name should be as intuitive as possible. Although many law firms take pride in the names of their founding partners, these names might not be easy to spell. Your law firm’s name might also be fairly long in letters, which increases the risk of typos and misspellings. As far as domains names are concerned, the shorter the better.
Short domain names are hard to get! All three letter domain names, which are great abbreviations, are already registered. When they are put up for sale on the domain aftermarket or at an aftermarket auction, these domain names can fetch prices in the six and seven digit range.
A great alternative to a very short domain name is a descriptive domain name, which is especially useful in some legal markets. A good example I came across is provided by San Francisco attorney Eric W. Newton. The law offices of Eric W Newton have a homepage under NewtonLawOffices.com, yet they also own SanFranciscoDivorce.com, which includes a geographic component. In addition, there’s evidence that there about 62 other active domains associated with this law firm. Ideally, these domains also use descriptive and geographic name elements.
When a user searches for San Francisco Divorce in Google, SanFranciscoDivorce.com is listed among the organic search results on the first page, providing this law firm with plenty of highly targeted organic (free) traffic.
This is an example of a smart domain strategy that’s easily replicable by any attorney. Finding the right domains for your practice will take a lot of time and it has to be coordinated with the rest of your online marketing activities. A useful tool to start with can be found at www.domaintools.com. Here you can research available domains, domains for sale in the aftermarket, and you can learn about upcoming domain auctions. In addition, Domain Tools provides you with free access to the WhoIs database, which allows you to identify domain name owners.
Talk to your agency or marketing department and find out how well your domains are set up today and if you have a full strategy in place. Also, you can always reach out to the AdVolt Legal team for advice and information about the right strategy for your law firm.
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AdVolt Legal offers its clients several years of both online advertising and legal industry experience. The legal marketing company was founded by Fabian Ahmadi and Crystal Perkins who respectively spent several years working in the legal and online advertising (SEO, SEM) industries. The two decided to merge their passion and talents to build a company devoted to providing online legal marketing solutions for small and medium size law firms. Our name, AdVolt Legal, epitomizes an important goal of our legal marketing company: to create powerful ads for the legal market. AdVolt Legal understands that operating a successful legal practice requires great legal skills as well as business skills. As such, we are committed to providing you with premium online legal marketing solutions, including SEO and PPC advertising, to help you grow your practice. 
[...] your domain name is a basic element that can contribute or hinder your success. I wrote a short article about domain names a few months ago, outlining the key points to consider when choosing domain names and developing a [...]