Braden Pollock: Founder of Legal Brand Marketing

BluShark Digital

Welcome to the SEO Insider with your host, Seth Price, founder of BluShark, taking you inside the world of legal marketing and all things digital.

Seth Price

We're thrilled to have Braden Pollock here today. A serial entrepreneur, a person who has been a legend in the legal marketing space, is always up to new things. He, to many of you, is known as one of the nation, if not the world's top domainers, Braden. Welcome, welcome, and thank you for being here.

Braden Pollock

Thank you, thanks for having me. But my first question to you is who is "we", you said "we" are thrilled. And I mean, I only see you sitting there.

Seth Price

You see me, and I am doing this on behalf of Blushark Digital, our digital agency, which has, you know, 50 plus team members and hundreds of happy lawyers that we've scaled from when you knew me as just a law firm owner of Price Benowitz, swapped out our internal team to, to a group that has just built something remarkable and special. And, you know, love to have some time to catch up with you about it today.

Braden Pollock

It's a good thing we're all wearing blue to represent.

Seth Price

It was a paid, paid endorsement. I appreciate that.

Braden Pollock

Yeah, yeah. You know, it's true. I have known you for a really long time. I think you were still in diapers? It's been a, it's been a really long time. 15 years maybe? How long has it been 12, 15 years?

Seth Price

Since we've known each other, absolutely. I was sitting in your conference room in LA, when I had a piece of paper that I circled that said, "better figure out SEO". And, you know, you appreciated what you and Bubba had put together in the DUI space, and realized that if I wanted to get serious about scaling a law firm, that I was gonna have to figure this out for myself, and went off to sort of the back alleys of Vegas and PubCon and other places to sort of learn how people were doing it right and not right. And, you know, charting a path through those waters, that scaled Price Benowitz to a 40 lawyer firm. And I know you've done a remarkable stuff at the Bloom Firm. And, you know, tried to now leverage and help other lawyers, as I know you have through legal brand marketing and lead gen. A lot, a lot of law firms owe you a lot for how they've scaled over the years. I wanted to start with domaining, though, that was, that's sort of one of those areas that you are ahead of the curve on. And, you know, speak internationally on wanting to get a, you know, one of those things. So for many of us who are not domainers, our idea of domaining is getting on GoDaddy late night and buying a bunch of names, we think may at some point be useful for us. Talk to me about your journey with that, and ways that you see that investing in domains and or leveraging them for your own properties may be something that entrepreneurs should be thinking about.

Braden Pollock

Yeah, so, so first, I would say for all of those that, that get on GoDaddy with a glass of wine and start registering a bunch of names, stop doing that. Because those are crappy names. It might seem like a good idea at the time, particularly after a glass or two of wine, but the fact that they are still available means they're probably not worth much. Just because they've got the the keywords that are appropriate for your firm, in mixed up order, you know .org with dashes and what have you, that does not make for a good domain. You're, you're better off taking all the money that you would spend on those, those 15 decent, you think are decent names, and just buy one good name on the aftermarket. There are lots of people like me that have been doing this for a long time, I've been buying domain names for investing in domain names for 15 years, 16 years. And there's people that came before me, you know, this is a 35 year old game. Those names are available there for sale, and they might be more than you expected, maybe, but they're out there and they're better. The better names are being held by investors oftentimes.

Seth Price

What, what is the advantage would you say of the, what you're calling a better name, over a game that has a defect in it, a dash and/or a .net versus .com, etc.

Braden Pollock

Good question. So, in general, people will default to .com, right. So if you have a .net, .org and .co, you know, .io etc. There's, there are literally 1500 extensions. If you have something other than .com, and let's, let's, let's assume that everybody here's a lawyer representing law firms here, because there, there are some categories where other extensions are appropriate. So in gaming, they use .gg. In tech, they use .io, venture capitalists use. vc. There's .ai, which has application so so there are other applications. But for law firms, .com, we're talking about kind of the general consumer, and .com is king. If you have something other than .com, there's a good chance that when people remember your domain, they will remember .com versus your .net or .co. Which means that they will end up on the wrong website. But more importantly, they will screw up your email address and see that email and maybe that's an initial contact, right? That will go somewhere else, or nowhere, and then you have not responded to them., because you didn't get it. And then they move on to the next potential lawyer for that, right. So that's, that's the biggest problem with having a non .com. That said, you know, it just depends if you want a high value keyword domain, that's, that's expensive or unavailable, then don't go beyond net and org. At least for a lawyer. I don't think you should go beyond that to any of the other extensions. I don't think it's, I don't think it's worth it. There's, there's .law, there's .legal and .esquire and...

Seth Price

And you were involved with a lot of that early on. What's, what's, so look, in hindsight looking at it today. What is your advice to somebody who's like, hey, can I go with the .legal .law, .esquire?

Braden Pollock

Like, I'm of two minds. They, I think, eventually, there will be some mindshare, and they will be the beasts of adoption, and people will understand what they are. Most people today, just don't recognize that there's anything other than .com. .net and .org, right, they just, they just don't know it exists. They don't know there's a .guru and and .club and a .law. I bought some .lawyers and .attorneys and I have some high value ones and, and they have sold. There's, you know, there's some six figure sales in .lawyer and .attorney. It's, it's decent, it's a decent name, but understand that there will be some confusion on the part of your clients and potential clients. In a few years, there'll be some more adoption and, and people will understand a little bit better. Today, it's, there's still a little bit of a learning curve. So you just need to keep that in mind. But if you want, you know, bankruptcy.com you're going to spend the money, real money, you know, you know, six figures. If you want bankruptcy.lawyer, you're, you're still probably going to spend six figures, but it might be available versus not being you know, not being available at all. But it's not as good, right?

Seth Price

Understood, have you seen stuff, as an SEO snob I've always sort of like, until I could see that, those other domains, those other nomenclatures ranking, I've sort of said, Hey, I know .coms work .nets, but I have not seen people crush it with time and expense. Have you seen people take those, or are those usually vanity URLs where you just haven't seen people put equal effort into ranking those in competitive spaces?

Braden Pollock

They still rank. You know, Google, my understanding, and, and I'll preface this with, I'm not an SEO expert. Right. domain expert, yes. SEO? No, I certainly know enough about it to get myself into trouble, but not an expert. My understanding from what I've read, by the SEO guys that have tested is, Google ranks them just as well. They are at, at the, at the least, at the very least they are neutral. The extension is neutral, with the exception of some of these other country code, top level domains. So that's that's a different story. But com, net, org, guru, law lawyer, at least they're neutral at, but best case scenario is they will look at the, the value of the keyword. So if it's, if it's, you know, bankruptcy.horse, but that doesn't make any sense., right. So my understanding is they do, they do apply some value as it relates to the definition and the category. Because it is a key word, right? It's just to the right of the dot. But it's, that's the value of those names. So you could have, you know, bankruptcy.lawyer as opposed to bankruptcylawyer.com.

Seth Price

Yeah, and that was gonna be my next question. So the difference there, obviously, bankruptcy.com is going to be a very, very valuable URL, when you get to lawyer if lawyer attorney singular, plural, you have some options that you can go with. But the idea of using a .lawyer, so that you can have something truncated, where you could use your brand with lawyer and pick, pick things up. You know, part of it was in again, there was a lot of fanfare when it came out, and a lot of joint ventures that were going down. But it was too early to tell and that, you know, age of domain means so much and in the search history that you was, you know, I was always squeamish that until I knew that, that it genuinely was a level playing field, that I was nervous about paying a premium for something with that, you know, rather than finding a creative .com, even if it wasn't, as you know, that there was a, you know, it was in less risk in the sense that you knew that it was going to be able to rank-able versus you assumed it would, there's no reason it wouldn't be. But that was, that was always that, you know, it sounds like there's been enough data in those intervening years that you're comfortable now, that they're, you, what would you go for if money was not, was not there, .lawyer with a tighter, a tighter name, or the slightly longer .com?

Braden Pollock

Today, I would choose the slightly longer .com. Because of confusion, right? Confusion means leakage, leakage of traffic, leakage of email. But in the future, that, that will hopefully change, I think that, that they'll they'll both get ranked the same by Google. Shorter, the better. The caveat being the potential confusion, so is .law better than .lawyer because it's shorter? No. I don't know. You know, .lawyer has sold better as far as the last time I checked. So, it's, there's, a there's a preference. I mean, I've talked to people and you know, they want one over the other and they don't care what the data is. At the end of the day, I think that domains are budget driven. And I think that you should buy the best domain that you can afford, and, and maybe even stretch a little bit, buy the domain that you can't quite afford, right? And grow into it. Because what you spend on the domain today is going to save you in the future, right, you're gonna be more memorable, it's going to be more targeted, it's going to be, it's probably going to rank a little bit better depending on what you're getting. And, you know, you really want a good memorable brand. And the fact is that, particularly as it relates to law firms, the name that you don't buy today isn't to be purchased by your competitor.

Seth Price

You know, one of the things that, you know, there are a lot of different ways to make a buck or save some people like saving, trading cards, some people might want 800 numbers, you know, understanding you look at this as an investment, if somebody is looking to dip their toe in, how would you advise somebody to look at the market of what has where you would see potential opportunity for increased value over time? Where would you be investing today based on the market?

Braden Pollock

And I didn't think you were gonna ask me that question. This is what I normally talk about, just in the domain investment community, not, not with law firms. I would say, start with, if we're still talking to lawyers, by a name that you can utilize, right? Because it is an asset, well, while you will probably take that domain and and depreciate it down to zero and write the whole thing off as a marketing expense, fine, but you do own a, an asset that has value. So if you own bankruptcy.lawyer or bankruptcylawyer.com or, you know, DCbankruptcylawyer.com any of those, they can be resold. And I know this because I've sold 1000s of legal names right? Over the years. So they definitely have value. So you can at some point, if you move out of that practice area, retire, what have you, you have this asset that you can now sell. Now, if it's your name/lawfirm.com, it probably has no value. With the exception of going back to SEO, the exception of, you know, the SEO value of your, your domain and website, right, it might have some some link juice. But that is probably minimal, right. But if you want to invest in a name, invest in a name that you're going to be utilizing, right? So you get to monetize it while you own it. And then you can sell it off later, when you're done with it. That's, that would be my suggestion. Now, if you're talking about just, in general, the sky's the limit. In just investing in domain names. There is a fairly substantial learning curve, as it relates to domain investing, just like you know, anything else, like I couldn't go and buy, you know, Faberge eggs, you know, because I don't know, or Pokemon cards that are literally selling for $350,000. I haven't the slightest idea what makes a Pokemon card worth $350,000, right? But, people are doing it.

Seth Price

Ask my 12 year old, I'm sure he could tell you.

Braden Pollock

Maybe. But other than saying, well, it shouldn't have big corners or fingerprints on it, or what have you. I know nothing about it. So, so there's no learning curve. Now, we do have a resource called dnacademy.com, dn like domain name, dnacademy.com, which is extremely robust. Domain, domain investment lesson plan, and it covers everything from how to register name, how to evaluate name, how to find buyers, and do outbound marketing, and you name it, it covers everything, it's a pretty long course. It's like 500 bucks. So I mean, it's pretty inexpensive, and well worth it. Because it's hours and hours and hours of I mean, it takes you weeks to go through the thing. So that would be the first thing. You know, first thing is don't register a bunch of domain names late at night on GoDaddy with a glass of wine. The second thing is sign up for dnacademy.com, which I have no connection to at all. I mean, I know the guy that, that, but I don't have any financial stake in it. That'd be the next thing.

Seth Price

Putting on the SEO hat for a moment, one of the older sort of strategies that isn't talked about as much, but I'm sure it's still out there is the expired domain or buying a domain with SEO value, is that a world that you've played in or advise people in because, you know, Google's not stupid, they know that when something gets back to a registrar that it's a new that it's a new owner, there's always been a big pop, if you do have a great link portfolio, and it's hit or miss. Sometimes it works great. And if you build it back with similar work, or, you know the old story of backfilling it with the content for the Wayback Machine, what do you, what do you see working today in that space?

Braden Pollock

So there are, there are a couple of good, so, so yes, there are. There are a lot of investors that are focused on SEO domains that expire, so you're not going to accidentally stumble across one, because there are people that have written scripts that are looking for these things that as soon as they pop up, you know, they're already acquiring them. Your, your best bet is to go to a site like seo.domains, for example. And I think seodomains.com is another one. I don't I'm not sure exactly address, but they have SEO domains, listed by category. So you just, you just, you know, click down to legal, and you can buy, I actually just recently bought one myself, that was an old MADD site, about the Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and pointed it to an appropriate DUI page. And it was, it was inexpensive. It was, I don't, I don't remember, like $169 or something. And it had, you know, it was, obviously it wasn't a super valuable domain, but it had some a few dozen backlinks that were alcohol and DUI related. So it was, it was worthwhile for us. And it was certainly cheap enough. But something to keep in mind, particularly if you're spending 1000s of dollars on one of these that has hundreds of 1000s of backlinks that you should probably build it. So if you only redirect it, you will eventually be, you'll eventually lose those links as the, the linking sites clean up the broken links, right? So you know, anybody that's maintaining their site is going to clean them out. You probably provide this advice to your customers, right? You kill bad, bad links. And so if you're redirecting it as a bad link coming from that site from their perspective If so eventually, a lot of those will be cleaned up, not all of them, some will stay on forever. But if you can rebuild the site, then those links will probably stay. And so you'll get, you'll get a little bit more juice out of it that way.

Seth Price

Hold on to it for longer. What about from the point of view of making sure, like you get the most out of it? Yes, rebuilding it. But are there any techniques that you've used, where you can get stuff even before it is fully aged out? And clearly a new, a new owner of the site? Is there, are there any techniques you use to get those sites earlier in the cycle to give you a better shot at better SEO juice and not being sort of looked at by Google as somebody who acquired in an older domain?

Braden Pollock

I see. No, I mean, look, the fact is that once the domain transfers ownership, Google's gonna see that. It still maintains those links, though. And the sooner you develop that site, the more likely you're going to keep those those links or at least a majority of them. And the closer the site is to what it used to be, which you can, you can look it up. Now, I'm not suggesting that you, you know, you copy, you know, pixel by pixel, the previous website, because then you run into some issues with the previous owner. But if you can make a very similar site, to what was there, and you can look in archive.org, and see what used to be there. If you can kind of recreate it? Of course, not copy but recreate something similar, then the chances are, you're going to keep a lot of those links. And the sooner the better.

Seth Price

You know, in your experience. Is it a, is it, has it stayed consistent, or has Google got any tighter at identifying when something is not like, have you seen any trends with that? Or is it just been basically, if you're, if you're staying in the same subject matter area, you'll continue to see some some love. But if you sort of take something completely out of its original element, that it's less likely, what, any sort of, you know, generalizations that you can see having been in that space and watch people transfer domains over the years?

Braden Pollock

Again, I don't, I don't do this, I'm not-

Seth Price

Understood, I'm just asking for, from 10,000 feet looking down.

Braden Pollock

And I'm not, I'm not, I'm not studying it. So if there's some recent change in Google-

Seth Price

Understood, that wasn't, I was talking about generally overtime.

Braden Pollock

Don't put me on the spot, Seth! It My understanding is that, the sooner you do it, and the closer the site is to what used to be there, the better off you'll be, and that you're not getting penalized. There is a change of ownership that has some effect is my understanding, but not a massive effect. And unless you're spending 10s of 1000s of dollars, you're not taking a massive risk. Right? It just it just something consider, but look, the fact is, if you buy an aged domain that has link juice, and you build a legitimate site, and add content over time, or continue to add content and continue building links, you're going to be good, you have a head start. And that's, that's better than starting from scratch with a fresh domain. And, you know, fresh everything, you know, with no links, you're better off building off something that used to be there.

Seth Price

And it sounds like you walked the talk. I mean, you've done this with a number of different properties historically, for and built entire businesses out on them, which is pretty cool to watch. You know, wanted to get your thoughts, you know, you're probably one of the last remaining independent significant players in the, in the lead gen space. And wanted to just talk to you a little bit about about that, and where you see lead gen now and your thoughts on that industry. Because it's come a long way. You know, there was a point where you could, you know, just throw a site up and all of a sudden you're getting viable leads, you know, your, your take on the lead gen space today?

Braden Pollock

Yeah, it's funny, because when I started 16 years ago, and we were only doing DUI back then, you know, you talk to the lawyers and and, you know, they would say what do I need a website for? Right? I mean, literally, that was a question we got all the time. And no one. I mean, it's probably been years since anyone's even uttered those words, right? Everybody knows why you need a website. And the funny thing is that we weren't even offering them a website. It was our website, and they were, it was at the time cooperative advertising pre lead gen. It wasn't even, you know, the bar, all the state bars wouldn't allow lead gen, we couldn't sell lead gen because they considered it capping, fee splitting. And then, you know, then Google was was selling clicks. Right? And, and eventually, you know, we have this, this big lawsuit with, like 22 state bars or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, I contributed and you know, a bunch of us contributed to the defense. And, and we won. And because we said, look, we don't have any stake in the outcome, right? You pay a flat fee at the beginning, just like a click. So lead or click, what's the difference? And so, so we won, and then within we were able to provide, you know, we were able to sell leads, and that, that changed things. Thanks, goodness. And now that your brand marketing does a whole bunch of practice areas, and DUI is actually one of our smallest, believe or not, it's, which seems so funny, because for years, that's all we did was DUI. But you know, with COVID, there's-

Seth Price

No, thank God we diversified too because if we were still a DUI shop, it would be a brutal time right now.

Braden Pollock

And we, you know, we pivoted a few years ago, but you know, thankfully or we would have been crushed. Yeah, I mean, I have, I've certainly fielded some offers for legal and marketing. Because the larger lead gen companies, you know, want to acquire what we do. You know, we were the, the, probably the largest DUI leads provider for many, many years. We were the first DUI leads provider.

Seth Price

I remember, I was a buyer.

Braden Pollock

Yeah. And, and we maintain that position for a super long time, because the whole industry knew who we were. And we had a good reputation, we still have a good reputation. And we branched out. And so we are probably the only, probably the biggest independent at this point. We're certainly much bigger than than we used to be. I think we have about 15 people on staff, and I know there's a couple of positions open, they're trying to hire. And, you know, which, which is a lot of people for for a data company, right? I mean, it's all software. It's just data that flows through our system. But you know, you need customer service people and account managers and sales team and that sort of thing. And so, you know, we're holding on, partly because I don't do anything anymore. It's replaced a company that, you know, you know, Darby who runs that company has been with me for literally 13 years.

Seth Price

I remember, she was an early salesperson.

Braden Pollock

Yeah, you know, she doesn't need me. So I tried to stay out of their way, they have a fantastic team and a lot of experience. There are people in our, our bizdev, our VP bizdev has been in the space for, I think 14 years, almost as long as I have. And in our head of sales, I think is something like eight or 10 years as well. So really good experiencing.

Seth Price

As far as getting the traffic to produce those leads. Talk to me about it, sounds like you're kind of hands off, and you have good people. Where have you seen that that continuum go? As I said, it was very, very easy when you started what have you, you know, what have you done over the years to make sure you stayed relevant?

Braden Pollock

Yeah, so it definitely has changed. When we first started, you know, I put up this massive site, I think it was like 40,000 pages, right? It was in the, you know, not even very good pages, a lot more shitty content, but it was okay, back then. And so we would rank extremely well, particularly in markets that are not very competitive, right. So I could, you know, it within a matter of a few days, I could rank number one organically and you know, Montana, and stuff like that. You know, things are different now. They, the evolution was after the easily easy organic rankings. We started buying traffic from Google placing, placing ads, and that got expensive over time. I remember what we decided enough was enough was we were spending $250,000 a month on on Google ads. And we're going back, you know, more than 10 years when turning $50,000 a month was a lot of money.

Seth Price

Now that'd be like four clicks.

Braden Pollock

Right. And so, you know, we said we need to, this is not getting any better. It's only going to get worse. And so we, we pivoted that point, went back to to focusing on SEO, and then since we've, we've continued to evolve. So a lot more partnerships, I started partnering with, with various other publishers many years ago. And, and we've maintained that since we have partnerships with, with everybody that you can imagine that in the legal space, including the, including the big boys, you know, the, the, you know, no logos of the world, internet brands, and everybody else. And it's worked out pretty well, because we can kind of toggle the areas that we need, and the practice areas that we need more easily. Which is important when you have somebody that you know, client that comes aboard or leaves and so you need to be able to kind of quickly modify so that you're not you're not spending money that you can't get recoup.

Seth Price

The wholesale market or retail market, you know, if you have excess inventory, you need to be able to do something with it and making sure that you cashflow, cash flow appropriately.

Braden Pollock

Yeah. And when you have volume, you can, you can set up those accounts. Right. So if you, if you don't, if you have the occasional, you know, lead here or there that you can't place, you can do anything with it. But you know, if you've got hundreds of thousands then you can set up these deals.

Seth Price

Right, because they they need you as much as you need them. Right. My favorite part, as we get towards concluding this, I am always amazed at what you're up to, what is, what are you up to today? What are the, what are the recent projects that are exciting you and what are you working on? I remember back in the day, you were very excited about the interlocks and sci-fi, what is the, what is the focus today for you?

Braden Pollock

Um, well, I've...where do I start? In the legal space or outside the legal space?

Seth Price

We'll start with legal then we'll go outside.

Braden Pollock

So we're building a platform to find temporary, to outsource legal work. So there are a couple of competitors, we think we can do better.

Seth Price

What type of stuff, consumer, like consumer focused law firms or big law, what type of work are you looking to outsource?

Braden Pollock

Either, you know, criminal, or, you know, civil, doesn't matter. If you need a motion written, if you need research done. You can sub it out by the hour or by the project and get a lawyer to do the work for you whether you need the lawyer in your state or a lawyer in another state, which oftentimes, you know, you can use a lawyer in another state that, you know, literally you can find somebody that's, that's unemployed or underemployed and might work for $25 an hour. And it's maybe just that, you know, eight to 10pm window that they have available after they get to go to bed and they just may work for two hours and then make an extra 50 bucks in there and they're happy. And for you, if you've got some overflow work, you can get it done quickly.

Seth Price

So the Uber of legal work.

Braden Pollock

Yeah. Right. So, so that's one of the things we're doing in the legal space. And nonlegal space, I continue angel investing, I do, I do a lot of that. And I'm an advisor to a lot of the companies. And on the board of a few I'm talking about, I mean about 30 companies roughly. I continue to buy companies, small companies roll them up, and hopefully sell them for, for more than I paid.

Seth Price

What are some of the your favorite angel shops right now that were most interesting maybe to the, to our audience?

Braden Pollock

To your, you know, most of what I do is tech. So it's big data, SAS, AI, stuff like that. So I don't know if it's if it's necessarily of interest to, to this audience, because it's, those deals are not legal. Well, they're legal, but they're not-

Seth Price

Like, as I've learned from you over the years, look what people were doing outside of legal, because that's where the, the, the innovation is going on and then see what you can bring back to the legal arena.

Braden Pollock

Yeah, well, that's, that's, that's true. And certainly there's a lot of technology that's, that is applicable to the legal space. So there's a lot of things that that lawyers can do to streamline what they're doing, whether it's better CRMs, better practice management, you know, better sales tools, SEO, you know, litigation support, there's you know, a ton of that kind of thing that, that is raising a lot of money. These companies, I just saw Disco raised a lot of money for litigation support. And so, you know, 10s of millions of dollars, I think it was just this morning. The other thing that I, that I am working on, I spend a lot of time on now is is domain investing, which is where we started in this conversation, but my focus is premium oneword.com. So, domains that sell for, you know, from mid six figures into the seven figures. A lot of that.

Seth Price

I am always inspired, always pushed to make sure that I'm not being complacent after speaking to you, the gears start turning, you're like, okay, gotta stop feeling sluggish and keep, keep plowing ahead. But thank you so much for taking the time, it's been a lot of fun and inspirational. I'm sure our viewers will enjoy it. You just, you've always figured out how to be one step ahead of the curve. And it's just awesome to watch all the different permutations that this, this beautiful mind has created.

Braden Pollock

Well, thank you for the kind words, I hope to live up to them.

Seth Price

Very good. Thank you so much. Hope to have you back soon.

Braden Pollock

Thank you.

Blushark Digital

Thank you for tuning in to the SEO Insider with Seth Price. Be sure to check back next week for fresh insights into building your brand's online presence. Episodes are available to stream directly on BluShark Digital's website.