You Don't Have to Outrun the Bear

You’ve probably heard this joke:

While two men are camping in the woods, an angry grizzly bear approaches their campsite.

Seeing the grizzly, one of the men, named Joe, pulls off his hiking boots and begins furiously lacing up his running shoes.

“Joe,” says the other man, “I know you’re fast, but there’s no way you’re going to outrun this bear.”

“I don’t have to,” Joe replies. “I only have to outrun you.”

As is true in many competitive situations, an important first step is recognizing who your competition is so you can determine how to beat them. In the joke, Joe realized his campmate was his competition and that to “win” he only needed to run faster than his competition, not the bear.

We can apply this same analogy to both litigation and search engine marketing.

In a trial, your goal is not to give the greatest opening argument or the most in-depth presentation of the facts; rather, it’s simply to win. Sometimes a shorter opening argument or less in-depth presentation better serves your goal.

Similarly, with search engine optimization, your goal should be to land at the top of the search results page for terms prospective clients of your firm’s services use. Where your firm ranks for “best law firms” and other search terms not keyed to your services are irrelevant.

As part of our search engine program, Esquire Interactive conducts a keyword analysis to determine what keywords those seeking the services your firm provides are actually using. Once we know the appropriate keywords, we analyze where your firm’s website ranks for these keywords in comparison to your competition across the major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft Bing). Once we understand the competitive market for these keywords, we can advise you on how you should change your website so that your firm’s website will rank higher in the search engine results.

EI Ten Word Learning: Know your competition so you can beat them.