An extract from on online interview with Delia Venables, Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law, and Tim Bishop, Senior Partner, Salisbury Solicitors, Bonallack & Bishop

Q. What made you try them?

A. The need to attract new clients and develop new sources of work. Having grown by 1000% in 12 years we have further plans for £1/2m growth in the next three years.

Q. how you actually create them (are they all completely separate?)

A. They are all completely separate -- although, to date, all follow a similar template but with different names, images and content.

Q. Do you buy the domains (if so, who from) or do you invent new ones, which cost almost nothing?

A. With one sole exception when I did buy a domain from a third party (the Probate UK site) , the domains are all new – with .co.uk domains costing just £5.98 plus VAT for two years registration. 

Q. How much of the design work can be "reused" from one site to another?

A. The general website templates are identical. Images are generally unique for each site, although we do have a few sites which are similar to use such same artwork - such as the Lease Extension UK  and the Extending A Lease websites)

Q. How much work for you is involved (including how you get your lawyers to write the interesting parts)?

A. There is a considerable amount of work involved in getting to where I am now – significant research to understand all about SEO and massive ongoing keyword research – to pick the right domains in the first place and optimise for the right phrases. That work was all mine. Content writing is mainly a combination of myself, my marketing manager and a law graduate I have been using the last year. Some of my lawyers have written material for the various websites – though I tend to use their input very sparingly -- few of them write succinctly or with enough relevance for clients – I think that's probably typical of the profession as a whole. I write the front page and then rewrite/optimise the remaining site content.

Q. Do the sites bring in additional new work?

A. Yes – a combination of natural traffic and pay per click traffic is currently driving new work to the firm. However with many of the sites being relatively new ( such as Freehold Purchase and  Contesting A Will UK ) we are still only creeping up in the natural rankings. I am completely confident, however, that we will really start seeing the significant benefits in the next three–six months.

For further information, please contact Tim Bishop on 01722 422300 or via email.