Google Penguin Got You Down?

Every year, Google makes around 500 changes to their search algorithm but when April of 2012 rolled around, Google unloaded a whopper in their Google Penguin release. A lot has been recently written about the impacts of this release and we are still measuring the effects. The bottom line is that a lot of websites were affected both positively and negatively and most people want to know why. Google won’t tell us because they make money selling their paid advertising which is the one thing they will help you understand.  What we do know is the following:

Link Building Just Became More Complicated

Receiving links from “irrelevant websites” can hurt you…and hurt you bad. Google now wants to see links coming from websites and web pages that are related to your website. If you are an attorney, you ideally want links for other legal related websites and web pages – not from Viagra sites and unrelated blogs. Getting relevant links is nothing new but now getting penalized for having bad links really is.

WHAT TO DO: Generate links from relevant websites and/or web pages. If you are a divorce attorney, try to get links from other divorce attorney websites, blogs and/or legal directories

Having good anchor text in a link has always been a good way to send signals to Google as to what the linked to page is all about and how to rank it for that term. The problem is that too much of a good thing looks unnatural to Google and they will now penalize you for it.

WHAT TO DO: Diversify the anchor text from your inbound links. Use a number of keyword variations and no keywords (eg your URL address) in some of your links as well. If a link’s anchor text reads “personal injury attorney”, it is best to have the anchor text on a website, blog and page that also makes mention of those same keywords in the text and tags.

Keyword Stuffing & Placement Just Became More Detrimental

Far too many law firms get hung up on ranking at the top for one or more specific search terms. This is certainly not a bad thing but it does come at the expense of where the majority of your traffic will come from: long tail search terms. Long tail search terms tend to be more case specific searches and commonly lead to higher conversions. These are also searches were you don’t typically see Google Places listings along with the organic search results which allows you to better compete outside of the Google Places envelope in which you reside.

WHAT TO DO: Diversify the optimization and keywords used in your title tags, H tags, and content on each page. They should read natural and not like a broken record.

Other Things to Consider

• Unique content means more than just passing a copyscape test. Building unique content means creating unique content value that can be measured in natural inbound links, page views and citations from social media and other sources. 

• Creating your own content and controlling those content locations have become even more important. Clearly it is effective to generate authority from relevant sources and the best way to do this is by creating and controlling your own by adding additional relevant websites, blogs, social media etc.

• If you have seen a significant drop off in your website traffic since April 2012, the first place you need look is at your link building. In many cases, rogue link building that took place months and even years ago can now come back to bite you. Run a link analysis on your website and try to clean up all the bad links coming in. 

• This will not be the last Penguin update so be prepared for more changes and gyrations in the months and years ahead. Clearly Google made some mistakes in this current release and as always, they will continue to tweet and tune as they move forward. Remember, Google makes their money by selling advertising, not in helping you understand why they intentionally keep you guessing.

4 Steps To Create An Effective Online Review Strategy For Attorneys

Yesterday online review company Yelp Inc. exploded onto the scene with a strong IPO with first day trading up 61% from their strike price – not bad! Yelp’s IPO follows recent IPO’s of GroupOn and Angie’s List, with Angie’s List still fairing the better on the two on the street. Yelp currently averages around 66 million unique visitors a month and users have created more than 25 million consumer reviews to date.

Why Are Online Reviews Important to Attorneys?

There is a 90% chance that somebody has already written a review about you online. To date there are at least 20 major online review sites where anybody can write anything about you and your practice and unsolicited reviews are very often negative! How long will these reviews remain online? Well, according to recent IPO’s like Yelp, it looks like forever at this point!

As we have previously reported - according to studies by AC Nielson; 70% of people now indicate that they trust online consumer opinions. This is second only to opinions received from friends (90%). The question of whether or not you need an attorney website and/or an online reviews strategy is no longer optional when reviews about you and your practice are now being written online – like it or not.

Impacts of Online Reviews on Your Referrals

As yourself a question about how you behave today before you buy a product or service. I know when I buy a book, product or get a referral to a service provider; I almost always look online at what people have said (online reviews) about each before I contact them. Your clients and referrals now behave in the same manner. In the world of the internet, your referrals now have something they had never had in the past- a fast an effective means to help validate, measure and compare the quality of a referral.

In today’s world, attorney referrals are commonly given out in numbers – thanks largely to a process fostered by your insurance companies in their malpractice avoidance procedures. Because of this, a referral to you may also include a referral to 1-2 other attorneys that the potential client must now consider and compare. In the past, they would simply call you and the others and make decisions from the phone call. Today, referral clients look online and make judgments about you BEFORE THEY CALL YOU based on such items as how your website, blog, news and online reviews are in comparison to the other attorneys referred to them. Still think online review management is not important? What do you think happens when they see at least one negative review online about your practice? Your chances of converting that referral business just went down and that negative review is costing you money!

4 Steps To Building a Successful Online Review Strategy

1. Start by creating a proactive review strategy for your practice. In this case, create a preformed email that includes a link directly to the reviews section of your Google + Local Page and Your Yelp Page. Send out these emails to all of your clients who had a successful outcome with you IMMEDIATELY AFTER that outcome – this is the best time to ask them to create a positive review for you online. Follow-up with them as needed in order to get a steady flow of reviews in Google. 
2. Ever wondered why some Google Local and Yelp listings have those 5 gold review stars listed and others do not? That is because the listings with the stars have more reviews – typically 7 or more to display prominently in the search results. Set a goal to have at least 7 positive reviews to help improve your conversions and performance from your Google Places Listings
3. Check your reviews on a regular basis. There are at least 20 places to check: Google Places, Yelp, Ask, CityVoter, CitySearch, iBegin, Bing, Dogpile, NoMoreClipboard, Yahoo, Blogs, Demandforce, SuperPages, Mojopages, Manta, Local, Yellowpages, Lycos, Avvo, and FindLaw.com.
4. If you have negative reviews written about you, try to track back who the client is and request that they remove the review. If you are unsuccessful, write a response to the review (in your Google + admin screen) or simply be proactive and push the negative review down the list with more recent positive reviews. Remember, the more positive reviews you have listed at the top, the least likely the negative review will impact you.

If you need help in setting up and executing your online review strategy, contact us today for more help…

Top 5 Tips To Maximize Attorney Referrals Online

We recently worked with a very prominent attorney who for years said that he didn’t need a website and if anybody wanted to see anything about him, they could just Google his name and see all the results. This all changed when we finally received a call from the client saying that he now wanted a website. When we asked him why he changed his mind, he had indicated that the night before he was at a dinner party with a major celebrity who had not retained his services. When asked, the celebrity indicated that he did not choose our client because he did not have a website and he was impressed with the other attorney referrals that did.

The Opportunity Cost of Managing Your Legal Business

Most attorneys look at legal marketing expenses as what they gain by taking action. This includes building up referral networks of other attorneys and formal clients, advertising on TV, radio, in print publications, directories, etc. This also includes the visibility you can receive (or not receive) through the use of a legal website. In 2009, the ABA Journal found that 65% of people indicated that they now start their search for an attorney online. But what is important to note is that attorney searches also begin at the point of referral. Since most attorneys give out referrals in numbers (which most malpractice insurance coverage companies encourage), people are increasingly looking up and researching their referred attorneys online BEFORE they decide to contact them.

The Power of Controlled Content

Without a website that you can control, you as an attorney are at the mercy of the alternative websites and directories that will ultimately end of controlling your image online for you. If you don’t have a optimized website (or no website at all), try Googling your name and look at the results. These will likely include attorney directories, ratings agencies like AVVO, news, press releases, case summaries, etc. You may even see Google Places listings with customer feedback (positive & negative) about you. Even though you may not be aware of these things, your clients and referral clients are. In most cases, you have little or no control over these sources of information about you – especially if you don’t have a plan to manage them online.

What Your Referrals Want To Know About You

When people receive attorney referrals, they want to know information about you in order to determine if you are the right attorney for them. Traditional sales psychologists indicate that the average person will go through three stages during a sales process: Needs, Proof & Risk. Clearly in the case of the referral client, they seem to have a need which is what led them to you. At the point they receive information about you, they are considering questions dealing largely with Proof & Risk which includes questions dealing with:

• Does this attorney have the experience and expertise to handle my case?
• What results has this attorney received for other clients and does he/she have a solid track record?
• How much will this attorney end up costing me and what value do I get in return?

Because of these questions, it is little wonder why I typically see web pages dealing with results and/or testimonials at the top 5 most trafficked pages on a good attorney website.

Top 5 Tips To Maximize Your Legal Practice Online For Referrals:

1. Make sure your website is fully optimized for attorney searches. Go on Google and type in your name along with lawyer and/or attorney and your location and see what comes up in the search results. If your profile on your website is not ranked #1 for this search, you need to contact a legal SEO consultant to help change this for you. It important to point out that the #1 ranking in Google gets 36.4% of the clicks on the first page so your goal should always be to achieve that position. If you don’t have a website today, get one now – waiting will only make things worse for you.
2. Design your website to appear more professional than your competition. Studies have shown that most people will make a decision on the quality of a website within less than a second. In short, you have a very short window to impress your referral clients online BEFORE they decide to let your competition do the same. If you know who are commonly provided as other attorney referrals along with you, take a look at their websites and see how you stack up. If you are unclear of your competition, simply ask your referral clients on a regular basis and take note of who else is commonly mentioned to them.
3. Utilize social media with an active content strategy. Since most attorneys get business from client referrals, what are you doing to actively keep you in their minds? Marketing experts agree that you need to be in front of people 7-12 times a year for them to actively remember you WHEN THEY NEED YOU. One of the best ways to do this is to create an active content strategy so they will see you on a consistent basis when they are on Facebook, LinkedIn and/or Twitter.
4. Claim and optimize your Google Places Listing. If you have no idea what I just said, then once again you should rely on a legal marketing expert to help you at this point. This is critically important when people do searches for you by name and also include where you are located in the same search. Google will make this connection and in many cases, will propel their Google Places listings at or near the top on the results. Once claimed and optimized, these must then be monitored, controlled, and improved upon by encourage customer testimonials and removing or displacing any negative comments as well.
5. Monitor and edit third party sources involving your name. In addition to your website, you will still have other web pages displayed for searches involving your name. There are three things you can do to best manage these third party sources:

• Try to edit any third party attorney profiles that appear on the first page of Google. Some of these like AVVO will allow you to claim and edit for free while other sources such as Martindale may require a fee to claim and modify these listings and/or to make them more comprehensive and complete.
• Promote positive third party search results to higher positions on the first page of Google. Do any of the search results involve newspaper and/or TV articles about major case wins? How about positive press about an award you may have received or something else that positively reflects on you? Through the use of targeted inbound link building, you can actually help promote and improve these search results by creating targeted citations from other web properties.
• Remove and/or diminish any negative results or articles dealing with you. If somebody has said something negative about you in a blog, in a news article and/or other content sources, you may have little recourse to have it removed if any of that information may be factually correct. If you cannot have them removed, you next best option is to simply diminish their visibility by promoting other positive web sources to appear above them. In short, you can push down bad results by promoting positive results above them. Again, this involves targeted link building strategies which a good legal SEO consultant can help you with.

If you would like to learn more about how you can improve your marketing online to better promote attorney referrals and conversions, please contact the SEO Consultant Firm today to see how we can help you better grow and promote your practice online. www.SEOConsultantFirm.com. Free CLE New York

Do Online Legal Document Services Provide High Quality Work?

It is hard these days to turn on the TV and not see ads for various online legal document services – especially for LegalZoom. But recently another company, Rocket Lawyer has been making waves and according to Compete.com has recently surpassed LegalZoom in total unique visitors.

Rocket Lawyer recently raised and investment round of $18.5 Million and according to Forbes has around 70,000 users per day. A recent search in Google also shows that there are around 429 Million results for the search term “online legal document forms” and 90.6 Million results for “online legal document service.”

What about Quality?

One of the biggest questions surrounding the use of these low cost alternatives to legal documentation is how good is the quality of work? Consumer reports recently went out to three of the leading online document service providers (LegalZoom, Rocket Lawyer and Quicken WillMaker Plus) to create a will and here are the key findings from their test:

• Although the results were better than having no will at all, they were very simple and typically not a good fit for many complex legal needs and guidance.
• Many of the wills produced potential pitfalls and lacked important and timely information ranging from outdated tax laws, little guidance on state laws, ability for the user to modify and add potential conflicting provisions, limited abilities to create special needs trusts and little or no tax guidance.

What Consumers Need To Know

When it comes to good legal service and documentation, you get what you pay for. Many years ago, I tried filing taxes on my own only to learn that a good accountant will save me far more money than they cost due to their expertise, service and thorough understanding of the tax code. A good attorney should provide the same type of value.

If you are initially concerned about the costs involved with the legal documentation you need, ask a number of lawyers for quotes and be candid with them about your budget and what you are willing to spend. In many cases, a good attorney will work within your budget or recommend somebody who will. In addition to providing legal documentation, a good attorney should also provide you with guidance and a better understanding of state laws and tax issues that may be lacking with the low cost online alternatives. Once you have exhausted the potential attorneys at your disposal, then you can consider these online alternatives.

Contact the SEO Consultant Firm if you would like to generate more clients for your law firm

Google’s Market Share in NYC

It is commonly stated that Google has around 66% of the search engine market with Bing and Yahoo picking up most of the remainder. But just how accurate is this number?

A recent article by search engine land sparked my interest to once again review data from a number of law firms here in New York City to determine what percentages I am typically seeing. This is certainly not scientific by any means by here is what I found across all my attorney websites and practice areas:

• Google: 83.8%
• Yahoo: 6.1%
• Bing: 5.2%
• All Others: 4.9%

Again, this data is not scientific but is was surprising how little this data varied from one attorney website to another – no matter the practice area or authority of the site. Clearly from an SEO and PPC (Pay-Per-Click) perspective, Google remains the 10,000 pound gorilla for search engines in NYC.

Contact the SEO Consultant Firm if you would like to learn more about how we can help your law firm internet marketing online.

Building Search Engine Strategies Around Google Places

With the advent of Google Places (formerly Google Local) listings within the search engine results pages, law firms continue to realize the importance (and limitations) of a good Google Places Optimization strategy. But Google Places are NOT displayed with every search result which means there are additional ways to take advantage of Google Places...especially when they are NOT displayed.

Google Places are displayed around common searches

Google Places are displayed when a more common search term or phrase is used within a specific geographic region. For example, a personal injury lawyer search in most towns and cities will provide a list of Google Places listings while a search for a mail fraud attorney will not.

Not all practice areas are displayed in a Google Maps

Some of the most common attorney practice areas tend to display Google Places listings by virtue of their commonality and frequency of repeatable search. Naturally, the larger the metro area, the more common you are to see these places results - and visa versa.

Google Places listings can be limiting for law firms

If you are a law firm with multiple practice areas, you may find optimization of your Google Places listing to be limited. For example, there are only 5 business categories (aka practice areas) you can select for any one Places listing yet you may have dozens of Google Places results (or more) for your various practice areas. In these instances, attorneys will often times have to prioritize which areas are the most important to include in their places listings while forgoing the rest.

Build Targeted Pages & Websites around those search areas that do not involve Google Places

As more and more attorneys are marketing online, the competition for the coveted page one results are becoming increasingly fierce and expensive. If you are a personal injury attorney, divorce attorney or criminal defense attorney in a larger city, you know exactly what I mean.

But just because you may not be able to compete for these important positions doesn't always mean that you can't compete for new clients online. For example, say you are a criminal defense attorney in New York City who wants more white collar crime cases. In this case, you will find both the criminal defense and white collar searches include a map. If however you look more specific into a white collar case type, you will commonly find that such areas as: mail fraud, tax fraud, mortgage fraud, etc. DO NOT display Google Places in the search results - almost completely organic results are displayed.

Are these as heavily search terms as criminal defense? No. But does this mean that even in smaller quantities these are not value cases with potentially higher relative conversions? No. To add further, how would a potential #1 position of mail fraud in NYC which gets around 36.4% of the first-page clicks in Google compare to the 5th position for criminal defense attorney that only gets 6.1%? In this example alone, you could get around 6X the number of clicks for mail fraud over criminal defense. Remember, in the end, ROI is all that matters and just because you think you have an acceptable showing for a given term (criminal defense) doesn't always mean that this will translate into a better return than an alternative top position (mail fraud).

Allows you to better market beyond your current geography

So what if you practice beyond the scope of your current office location? In most cases, attorneys are either left with no Google Places result for that area or have to find another office to use to help support another places listing - no small effort. But does this mean you have to market yourself in the same manner as where you office resides? Not necessarily. As we described above, not all practice areas have a supporting Google Places listing. This means that the only real limitation for your competitive positioning is your on-site SEO and link building efforts to your practice area pages on your website.

So in following our example above, you may be a criminal / white collar attorney who handles mail fraud cases in your hometown of San Diego but with good SEO tactics, your mail fraud page, with proper on-site SEO and deep linking can potentially perform just as well in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well.

Summary

As you can see above, Google Places optimization for law firms is clearly important but certainly not the only strategy in your legal marketing efforts. As deep linking becomes increasingly important to improve the important of your targeted practice area pages, it is equally important to know how these various pages will display in the search engines like Google in order to determine your strategy for success online.

The SEO Consultant Firm provides advanced law firm search engine optimization. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your firm...

NEW CLE Seminar on Social Media & Its Impact to your Practice (April 26 in Philadelphia)

Pennsylvania Association for Justice is offering a NEW CLE Seminar on Social Media & Its Impact to your Practice on April 26 in Philadelphia.

CLE Overview:

The use of social media by your clients and how it affects your case, the use of it by you in your practice and the use of it by potential jurors are some of the biggest issues facing you today. The law is developing. Attend this highly relevant program to learn the pertinent issues, including the ethical implications regarding methods used to access information discovery on social networks about defendants and potential witnesses. You will also learn Social Media Tools and Strategies for law firms.

Course planner, Dennis Feeley esq. has recruited Jon Acklen esq. Greg Spizer esq., Dan Siegel esq. and Dustin Ruge (Lawyer Search Engine Consultant) to speak on this program.

Location:
Radisson Plaza-Warwick
17th & Locust Sts.
Philadelphia, PA 19103

9:00 am - 1:30 pm 3 Substantive & 1 Ethics CLE Credit

Click here for more information or to register. Or call the PAJ office at 215 546-6451”