Google Rolls Out Huge Changes to Search Results

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Expect your PPC campaigns (and therefore probably your SEO traffic) to go a little haywire this week.  Google has abruptly rolled out a very large change to the search engine results page (SERP) interface…. removing all ads (and apparently everything) from the right rail – see Siberia below.

Siberia

Here’s What We Know

  • The changes impact desktop searches only.
  • There are now four ads above natural search results and three below.
  • The changes only impact “commercial” queries – presumably most of the more transactional legal terms, but probably less so for queries researching a particular issue (see example below).
  • The change is permanent (for now).

BAC

What it Means (I think)

  • Clearly pushing more ads above natural search is going to shift traffic from organic to paid…. SEO players lose, PPC players gain (and so does Google.)
  • In the already overpriced legal PPC market, there’s even more competition for just 4 prime spots (remember, SERPs used to have up to 11 ads, including most legal queries) which is going to drive up already irrational (read: unprofitable) PPC bidding among lawyers.
  • (Smart) lawyers will look to diversify their paid marketing channels – driving up bids in Bing.  (For more on the economics of this see my 2013 post – Google Adwords Costs 150% More than Bing Ads.)
  • Local now becomes even more important for lawyers (and remember, it was just August when the number of local results constricted down to the three firm “snack pack”.

 

In summary, there are fewer ads total; however, they take up more of the prime real estate – which impacts both natural and paid results.

The Decline of Reviews in Google SERPs?

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stars

Those lovely stars showing up in the SERPS…. just might be fading  away…. starting on February 15, the number of queries that returned results with review snippets has dropped by roughly one third.  Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land posits that this may  just a bug, not a feature change and Google hasn’t responded to questions about it.  Furthermore, I can’t imagine reviews are going to decline in impact for local results AND asking your customers to crow about you online is still a best (marketing) practice – so I wouldn’t change anything at the moment.

Here’s the drop-off visually from Moz’s SERP feature tracker:  Moz Stars

UPDATE:  Looks like this was indeed a bug over at Google:

 

recovery

 

Why You Shouldn’t Let a PR Agency Run SEO

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Seems like an obvious title, but at least one Personal Injury firm in LA apparently needs this heads up.  About 5 years ago, I wrote a post for Search Engine Land about the value of good PR for linkbuilding.  The fundamentals remain true today and I can’t stress enough how good PR, working in tandem with smart linkbuilding can score big time for law firms.

But….

Unfortunately, every man and his dog is getting in to the legal SEO business – frequently to the detriment of their own clients.  Social Media gurus, networking mavens and today…. PR “professionals”.

From LinkedIn email today:

Conrad,
I’m working with an LA-based lawyer and wanted to run a cross-promo idea past you. Let me know if I can send you some info.

-Veronica

OK. I’ll bite….

sure – give me a call 206 486 2087 Conrad

Reply:

Hi Conrad, Thanks for LinkingIn. As I mentioned, I am working with a Los Angeles personal injury law firm. We are looking to collaborate with firms you represent to cross promote blog posts with the goal of increasing both of our online visibility. Below is a brief overview. Let me know if you are still rep-ing lawyers and if this interests you. Thanks, -Veronica

CROSS-PROMOTION OVERVIEW SUMMARY: A Los Angeles personal injury law firm is looking to partner with law firms you represent to help build online visibility for both firms.

HOW IT WORKS: We would mention “your firm” and link to your website in one of our blog posts or feature a “guest post” by your firm and link back to your site. In return, we ask that you do the same.

WHY: Peer recommendation, third party acknowledgement and “soft “referrals can build firm recognition with the intent of increasing our respective client base. Since we are in different states, this partnership will allow us to cross-promote without competing for potential clients.

GOAL: To acknowledge each other online, linking back to each other’s sites.

Uggg.  My reply:

So – you are interested in endorsing firms you’ve never worked with and ignore that what you are proposing is most likely going to incur an SEO penalty if done at scale?

I also sent Veronica to Google’s Guidelines about reciprocal links and just so you don’t have to read through:
  • Excessive link exchanges (“Link to me and I’ll link to you”) or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking
  • Large-scale article marketing or guest posting campaigns with keyword-rich anchor text links

Don’t get me wrong – PR can be amazingly valuable for SEO.  But not like this.  I’ve invested hundreds of thousands of dollars of lawyers’ marketing investment unravelling backlinking schemes like this that have decimated law firms business.  Hopefully by reading this you’ll never have to spend those dollars with us…. unless you happen to be a certain LA based PI firm… we’re here to help.

Google Core Algo Update this Past Weekend

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Looking for patterns in web traffic for law firms between November and February is extremely hard given the natural fluctuations drop in lawyer interest that occurs over the holidays and the spike that occurs in January (and for divorce – sadly around Valentine’s day).

It just got harder.

Google confirmed that a core ranking algorithm update was pushed out over the weekend.  SEO nerds around the world are calling this “massive”.  Of note – this is NOT Penguin related.  So strap in, check your GA numbers and see what the impact is to your business.
John

 

2015 – The Year That Was

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First off – We wish you the best in all that you do in 2016 – Happy New Year!

Thanks for following us here at Mockingbird! As we look forward to the future, we wanted to also present you with some of our most popular blog posts from the past year.

As a reminder: You likely only need one domain name. If that one domain happens to be www.practice-area-your-city.com then good for you. You don’t need the neighboring town(s).

https://mockingbird.marketing/attorneys-need-stop-buying-domains/

We also dove into what you should be paying for legal websites, hosting , registration, and professional marketing services.

https://mockingbird.marketing/how-much-legal-website-cost/

According to Google, doorway pages “…are sites or pages created to rank highly for specific search queries. They are bad for users because they can lead to multiple pages in user search results, where each result ends up taking the user to essentially the same destination.” If this sounds like pages on your site, read more to see why you should get to removing them now.

https://mockingbird.marketing/say-goodbye-to-doorway-pages/

As I mentioned above, you probably only need one domain name. in 2015, new .law top level domains were released. Read the article below to see why you can save your money on this one.

https://mockingbird.marketing/foolish-lawyers-lining-up-for-law-domains/

We also had a great piece that discussed six great ways to get your site and content in front of your target audience. This fantastic piece has a lot of amazing information, so be sure to check this one out.

https://mockingbird.marketing/6-content-marketing-tactics-for-lawyers-that-actually-work/

In 2015, Google let everyone know that Mobile-Friendliness will become more and more important. The future is here, and mobile views have surpassed those one desktops. If you haven’t already switched to a mobile optimized site, you should be concerned.

https://mockingbird.marketing/google-mobile-friendliness-ranking-factor/

Have a great 2016, and stayed tuned for more important news about legal marketing!

It Might Not Be Our Fault, But Its Still Our Problem

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We do more than SEO.

Sometimes we do more than marketing.

Long ago, I learned that my SEO clients often turned to me as the solution for any and all technical issues they may have (or think they have.) Kind of like having your mother in law set up her wireless router at Christmas time. We’ve solved all sorts of problems – from email configurations to hacked websites.  I’ve helped clients install plug-ins, set up in-office data backup systems and select the right smartphone that will work with their case management system.

Sometimes the tech goes south and no one knows why.  This is exacerbated by the undertrained, inexperienced IT “experts” who know just enough to be (very) dangerous, who frequently serve the legal industry.  And when the tech goes south, everyone is quick to shout “not it” and point fingers.

This is why we’ve codified our approach to problems in our 10 Commandments:

10.  It May Not Be Our Fault, But It Is Still Our Problem

Clients want problems solved.  Period.  The blame game can happen later, but the immediate issue is to solve the problem.  And we’ll work with or through whomever is necessary to get the job done. It means we need an extremely experienced, technical staff with a curious problem-solving orientation.

The following quote is lifted from an email that went out to a client today.  Unbeknownst to her, her  IT “expert” had changed the MX settings on their domain – clustering email delivery for days. He had no idea what he had done and declared a big “not it” when her email stopped arriving. Our work in identifying the root cause was a long (2 days), frustrating, disruptive, circuitous detective project.  Fixing the problem required painstaking handholding of said expert.  But the firm is now getting their email again.  And thats what really mattered in the first place.

Thanks for your patience while I worked with your IT department to resolve this problem. I hope you don’t have any reservations about how hard we work for you, even when the problems is unrelated to your website and marketing. We value our clients to the point where I will learn a new professional trade in order to solve an issue.

And twice, it was our mistake – so its best to always assume its our fault instead of hope that its not.

Ranking Reports (email exchange outlining the uselessness thereof)

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First the Backstory:  We have a particularly prickly client in the car accident space who started with a pretty big mess and we’ve been doing some janitorial SEO for them for roughly a year.  The client has been aggressively courted by another agency (who will remain nameless) during our entire tenure, via emailed doomsday ranking reports (that the client forwards to me):

May 5:  I wanted to send you your current ranking reports for the major cities in XXXXXX.  Please take a look at them when you can and call me when you are ready to discuss them.  I am going to have to send you 3 separate emails because of the attachments, so I apologize in advance for cluttering your inbox

August 18: There is another lady in my office marketing XXXXXX accident as we speak.  Can I expect the signed agreement back today so I can get you up and running?

August 21: Let me know which cities you want to start off with and I will send you out the proposal so you can read it and view our written guarantees.

October 26: I have attached your current ranking report to this email.  You are nowhere to be found on Page 1 anymore.  Are you ready to remedy this yet?

Not our style to be so aggressive; but I’m a big boy.  More importantly, it gave me an opportunity to go back to the client and show how actual business results don’t correlate with ranking reports.  My email exchange with the client from the latest doomsday ranking report is below.

Client:

what do u guys make of this?

Mockingbird

It confirms the uselessness of ranking reports.

Your organic traffic is up 16% since his last “report”.  Your business from organic has more than doubled since his last “report”.  Your local traffic is up 27% since his last “report”.   The specific terms in this “report” that you “aren’t ranking for” are centered around car/truck accidents.  Yet over the past 30 days, 5% of your traffic enters your site on pages about car and truck accidents and you’ve appeared in queries including truck car or auto over 3,000 times.
Your impressions on Google searches are consistently increasing – over the past 90 days you are up roughly 50% (see graphic below.)
Inline image 1
Oh – and below is a list taken from Google’s own reporting on your site over the past 30 days that shows queries for car, auto or truck in which you’ve actually appeared on the first page of search results.  (And remember – these results are fluid and personalized so you won’t be able to replicate exactly what their reporting shows, but….)
truck accident attorney XXXXX
XXX XXXX truck accident lawyer
XXXXX truck accident lawyer
XXXXX hills truck accident lawyer
car accident lawyer XXXXX
XXXXX car accident lawyers
car accident injury lawyer
XXXXX hills car accident lawyer
XXXXX car accident lawyer
truck accident attorney XXXXX
lawyers for car accident
truck accident attorney XXXX XXXX
XXXX car accident attorneys
XXXXX car accident attorney
car accident injury attorney
truck accident lawyer XXXXX hills
attorneys for car accidents
car accident attorney XXXXX hills
XXXXX truck accident lawyer
car accident attorney XXXX XXXX
car lawyer
car injury lawyers XXXXX
XXXXX XXXX car accident attorney
truck accident attorney XXXX
XXXXX truck accident attorney
XXXXX truck accident lawyer
XXXXX hills car accident attorney
truck accident attorney XXXXX hills
truck accident lawyer XXXXX
XXXXX truck accident attorney
car accident lawyer
XXXXX car accident lawyer
car accident attorneys
car accident
car accident lawyers XXXXX
car accident near XXXXX XX
truck accident attorney XXXXXX
car accidents lawyers
trucking accident lawyer
XXXXX county car accident lawyer
car accident lawyers XXXXX county mi
car accident attorney XXXXX county mi
XXXXX county car accident
truck accident attorney XXXXXX
XXXXXX car accidents attorney
XXXXXX county car accident
car accident attorney XXXXXX
car accident attorney XXXXXX
truck accident attorney XXXXXX
XXXX county car accident
XXXXX county car accident

Client:

thanks i think this means they r full of shit.   evan will be helping me with my ads now so i don’t go jumping in bed with every scum bag operation that sends me what looks like the next coming  of our savior

Coudn’t have said it better myself.  Beware anyone who offers guarantees OR ranking reports.  And be double aware of anyone citing both.

 

Google Erroneously Labelling Lawyers with Professional Misconduct

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Google’s Answer Box is a simple function that provides answers to basic questions directly in the search results. For example, “what time is it in London” or “how many square miles in an acre?”  The goal is to utilize content from extremely trusted websites to answer simple user questions without requiring a click through.

Answer Box results haven’t shown up heavily in legal.  Although that might have just changed – specifically for lawyer name searches.  Google is now pulling data directly from Avvo profiles for name search information – pulling Titles and work history directly into the search results on a simple name search.  This also includes a click through to the Avvo website – which could provide Avvo with a huge traffic jump.

Legal Answer Box

But note the horrible implementation – the title of the Answer Box is “Professional Misconduct” (not say…. the lawyer’s name).  At first blush (don’t make me think) it looks like poor Martha has been sanctioned in all of her jobs, going back to 1984.  (If you actually click through to the result, you’ll find that the Martha Patterson listed does NOT have any professional misconduct history.)  So – great idea, but horrendous implementation from Google.  This is a particularly tricky match – there are probably hundreds of Martha Pattersons in the US – and seven Martha Patterson profiles in the Avvo directory.

Now its highly possible that Google is just testing this among professional service providers (and the bad user experience above suggests that is the case) and is going to ratchet it back; although my instinct tells me your are going to get more and more information about individuals directly in the search box.

LMQ #16: What is the Google Snack Pack?

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Conrad Saam discusses the recent changes to Google’s local results, now know as “The Snack Pack.” Some changes include: fewer results, the interface itself, phone numbers were removed (and have since been re-added), display, description content placement, and Google reviews focus.

Want an answer to your Legal Marketing Question? Send them to us at questions@mockingbirdmarketing.com