If you own or manage a small law firm, have you ever looked at search engine results in your area and wondered why “Big Law” was not plastered all over the first page of Google for search terms related to your practice area?

After all, they certainly have bigger marketing budgets than you, right?

Yet, you rarely ever see Big Law dominate – it’s always the solo and small firms that do.

Here’s an example – if you did a search for “new york injury lawyer” you’d find only one firm (Stark & Stark) shown in the top 10 natural search results that I would consider “Big Law” – and they’re down the page at #8 which is not a premium position.

Nine of the ten are websites or blogs owned by solos or small firms. That’s amazing, given how how many times that search term is typed in each month (almost 10,000 times) and how lucrative it is.

So the question is, why doesn’t Big Law show up?

The reason is simple – many of them rely on Content Management Systems (CMS), which are complex, database-driven web sites.

That is the complete opposite of solos and small firms which utilize static html, asp or php sites – or blogging platforms like WordPress.

So why do small firms have an advantage by using these types of systems?

Because the systems they use are designed to be search engine friendly, while many of the CMS offerings that Big Law uses are:

• Not Search Engine Friendly (or Management does not know how to make them that way). Examples would be dynamic URL’s that look like this (http://www.biglaw.com/practice.php?categoryid=1&productid=10) which the search engines can choke on, and duplicate meta tags or tags that are not search engine friendly;
• Managed by outside vendors that don’t have usability or SEO experts on staff.
• Paralyzed by fear because of the huge investment they’ve made and are unsure of what to do.

So while solos and small firms keep adding search engine friendly content to their sites (with a blog) or regularly post to their blog, Big Law keeps spinning their wheels.

My advice to the solos and small firms – keep on adding content and posting to your blog.

Because unless Big Law ‘”gets it” in the very near term, it will be extremely difficult for them to catch you in the search results…never mind leapfrogging ahead of you.