Google Erroneously Labelling Lawyers with Professional Misconduct

Written by

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?

Written by

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

FindLaw’s take on the new .law domains….

Written by

We wrote last week about the sales hype being drummed up for the new .law domains. Afterall, these babies are being advertised between $200 and $350 a year – a bit of a premium from the $14.99 you’ll get from GoDaddy.   Afterwards the post, someone forwarded me an article from FindLaw’s Lawyer Marketing Blog “Understanding the New .law Domain.”  Here’s FindLaw’s Mark Jacobsen’s take on the .laws TLDs (my emphasis):

From both a consumer and an SEO perspective, a verified, restricted top-level domain provides a level of confidence that you know who you are dealing with online. Which leads us to today and the .law domain.

Note that FindLaw claims about these restricted top level domains provide a level of confidence for SEO run 100% contrary to Google’s guidelines.  From John Mueller (of Google):

Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
…understand there’s no magical SEO bonus…

But if you are unconvinced and still think FindLaw might know more about Understanding the new .law domains than Google does, you can buy one from….. FindLaw.

Foolish Lawyers Lining up for .law domains

Written by

dot lawSo – this morning I’ve received emails from 3 smart(ish) people asking about an ABA Journal article titled the Latest Online Goldrush for Lawyers.  Starting October 12, you can now buy .lawyer Top Level Domains (TLDs).  Think billjones.lawyer or personalinjury.lawyer or seattledui.lawyer.  The new .law TLD can only be purchased by lawyers (although apparently it can be transferred to a non lawyer as long as its initially purchased by a lawyer.  Hmmmm.)  Oh – and its just a cool $210 bucks a year.  Per domain.  Delicious if you are selling these things.

“It’s incredible,” says John Morgan, chairman of the new domain. “It gives everybody the opportunity to have a one-time reset for the domain name of their dreams, and it will probably never happen again when you have a domain like this in a field like ours.”

TLDs and the Promise of SEO Success….

The article goes on to espouse the .law domains as a key to SEO rankings and clients.

A firm’s search engine strategy should also be taken into account when choosing a domain name, Corcoran adds

So the pitch here is that one of Google’s ranking factors is going to be the TLD.  From the nic.law site:

Since only lawyers can own .law domains, lawyers and law firms will be able to increase credibility in search results as compared to other top level domains.

Hmmmmm…. because presumably, notwithstanding structured markup identifying attorneys (https://schema.org/Attorney) and Google My Business Categories defining businesses as “law firm”or even “divorce law firm” the engineers in Mountainview are having trouble identifying sites owned by…. lawyers.

A (Very) Brief History of Domains and SEO

Back in the day, a long long time ago, in an SEO galaxy far far away, exact match domains did carry the day.  Simply put – the site seattleduilawyer.com was presumably about Seattle DUI Lawyers and therefore would rank for that exact match term.  This was killed in October of 2012.  Some of the value of exact match domains  was anchor text (now dead) driven – so if your domain was DUILawyerSeattle.com, people would like to you with the anchor text Dui Lawyer Seattle, which in turn would help you rank for …. yeah, you get it.  But of course, anchor text got killed back in January of 2013.

Now, lawyers have been buying up vanity domains and exact match search domains for years.  Its rare that a kick off meeting with a new client doesn’t include something like: “and I also own drug-lawyer-seattle.org and dui-attorney-washington.com and BestEverDrunkDrivingLawFirmLawyerAttorney.co.au and … and… and… and…”  So far we’ve never done anything with any of domains.  And the recent availability of .attorney and .lawyer TLDs has certainly NOT shaken up the online marketing world.

What Does Work (and why we don’t care about TLDs.)

I’ve yet to talk to any reputable search nerd espousing TLD tactics for success.  Even the luster over backlinks from .edu’s and .org’s and .gov’s (which was the rage back in 2008 era) has dissipated as we’ve discovered that these domains don’t intrinsically carry any extra authority or value due to their TLD. What works is the hard part of SEO – a solid platform with great content sitting on a highly authoritative site.  A new TLD isn’t going to solve any of those problems.

The only people who are going to make it rich here are those selling the domains – the registrar companies estimate lawyers will blow a cool $200 million on the new TLDs…. annually.

Moz’s Local Ranking Factors Report

Written by

Every year, I get an email from Moz asking for input into their Local Ranking Factors survey.  The survey is conducted amongst a small group of SEO nerds. Due to the competitiveness of legal marketing, be glad to know our niche is especially well represented- I’m joined by legal marketing geeks, Mike Ramsey, Gyi Tsakalakis and Casey Meraz.  This year, the study came out shortly after Google launched the snack pack (catch up here), so the results are particularly interesting.

If you want to geek out, you can read the full Moz study here.

Overall Ranking Factors

Ranking Factors continue to diversify – meaning there are a wide array of things you need to get right.  Vendors who provide just one piece of the puzzle are rarely going to be enough to drive success (and yes – I fully acknowledge this is a self-serving comment.)  The factor consistently gaining in significance is behavioral performance (i.e. click through rates, time on site etc.) – this has been backed up by numerous studies.  In legal, this emphasizes issues like brand, meta descriptions, a site’s look and feel/user interface and accessibility of information.

And despite the ongoing assertions of social media pundits – Social is entirely immaterial to local performance – coming in dead last among all ranking categories.  Joy Hawkins (who is our secret go-to person when we get utterly stuck on a complex Google My Business issues) explains social and search:

I gave social signals 1% for organic impact because I do think it’s possible that they could impact ranking – I have just never seen a single case where they did. I always quote Matt Cutts where he indicated that when it comes to social signals it’s a correlation and not causation. Businesses that are active on Facebook also usually care about their ranking on Google and are actively trying to improve it. One doesn’t cause the other.

David Mihm, the author of the survey, offers his take on the waning (if not entirely dead) impact of Google+ in ranking:

At this point, I view Google My Business essentially as a UI for structured data* and a conduit to AdWords. While Google’s original “business builder” vision may still come to fruition, it clearly won’t be under the social umbrella of Google+.

Top 10 Ranking Factors for Local (now Snack Pack)

  1. Physical Address in City of Search
  2. NAP Consistency in Structured Citations
  3. Proper Google My Business Categories
  4. Proximity of Address to the Point of Search (i.e. physically where is the searcher)
  5. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations
  6. Domain Authority of Website
  7. Product/Service Keyword in Google My Business Business Title
  8. City, State in Google My Business Landing Page Title
  9. HTML NAP matching Google My Business Location NAP
  10. Click Through Rate from Search Results

Of particular note is the focus on quality including the prevalence of accuracy in Google My Business information (note David’s comment above).

Ranking Differentiators for Competitive Markets (i.e. legal)

My favorite facet of the survey is the focus on competitive markets – essentially almost all of the legal marketing space.  After getting the fundamentals right, this becomes the tactical focus of our engagements and frankly, these are often the hardest components of search – the stuff that can’t be automated, simplified or easily copied.

  1. Consistency of Structured Citations
  2. Domain Authority of Website
  3. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Domain
  4. Quality/Authority of Structured Citations
  5. Proper Google My Business Category Associations
  6. Physical Address in City of Search (in the past month, we have been consulted twice on helping law firms decide what building to move in to.)
  7. Quantity of Native Google Reviews
  8. Quality/Authority of Inbound Links to Google My Business Landing Page URL
  9. CTR from search results pages
  10. Quality/Authority of Unstructured Citations (i.e. Newspaper articles)

Note the heavy heavy focus on quality above.  You don’t achieve these tactics through $10 for 1,000 twitter followers or a paid citation campaign.

Non Local Local Results

Heh?  This is really localized natural search – i.e. results for local queries (even those without a geo-modifier) that return typical SEO results.  I don’t want dwell on this, as this is a post about Local (i.e. mapped) results, but for natural search with a local component (which represents at least 95% of legal searches – the focus is on providing accurate location signals through Google My Business and a heavy focus on site authority (i.e. high quality links).  In fact the top 2 signals according to the survey are link related.

Negative Ranking Factors

Of course, no SEO conversation would be complete without a discussion of penalties.

  1. Incorrect business category
  2. Listing at false business address
  3. Mis-Match NAP or Tracking Phone Numbers
  4. Presence of malware
  5. Reports of Violations in your Google My Business location
  6. Mis-matched NAP/tracking phone numbers on Google My Business page
  7. Mis-matched Address on Google My Business page
  8. Multiple Google My Business locations with Same Phone Number
  9. Absence of NAP on website
  10. Address includes suite number similar to UPS Mail Store or other false address.

The negative ranking factors center around incorrect NAP as well and inconsistent information in…. here it is again…. Google My Business.  Given the prevalence of geo spam among lawyers (i.e. “virtual offices” or fake offices shoehorned into your friends insurance office), I expect we will continue to see a greater focus on reporting of non-real offices.   Frankly, the only impact we saw among law firms with the Pigeon roll out was severe penalties on some significant local spammers; so none of this really surprises me.

Snack Pack

Acknowledging that the Snack Pack launched just prior to the survey (and so the following is probably more intuitive rather than based on any studies, Moz asked about change in tactical focus given the snack pack.  Across the board, the increased focus was on quality signals (NAP, Authority, Citations).  The only quantity factor was Google specific reviews (i.e. the more the better but note the focus on Google, NOT reviews across the web – Avvo, Yelp etc.).   Tactical losers focused on quantity (which I read to mean low cost, low value, low authority – easily replicable) links, citations and…. my favorite punching bag…. social shares.

Facebook Advertising: The Importance of Extreme Targeting

Written by

Many lawyers and law firms are hearing about the upside of Facebook advertising – and the trick here is to use Facebook to deliver extremely targeted  ads.  And I can’t emphasize the importance of the phrase extremely targeted here.  This really is a needle in the Facebook haystack you are looking for and targeting includes both geo and demo and requires pretty good timing too.  And often, you’ll get it all wrong – which is why having a reporting infrastructure that tells you when its working instead of burning money is of utmost importance.

And remember – in legal – the vast majority of people aren’t looking for a lawyer right now.  Extreme targeting simply increases the likelihood that some of those seeing your ad are.  This is one of the reasons that retargeting on Facebook works so well.

Its very easy to burn money on Facebook advertising.  Here are a few obvious mistakes from companies paying to get in front of me on my Facebook feed this morning:

Missed Demo Target

While WeddingWire recognized that I’m in Seattle, its pretty easy to identify (and therefore exclude) married, 41 year old men from your advertising set.  Now perhaps I have some compatriot searching for a wedding venue for his daughter, but this is about increasing the liklihood of finding a buyer within your target.  So targeting unmarried ladies, 20-30 is probably going to return a much higher ROI, than middle aged married dudes.

Wedding

 

Missed Dates

Lots of legal issues are time specific, so getting that timing correctly is pretty important.  Here’s an ad this morning for the Tough Mudder race – which I ran YESTERDAY. Lets not ignore the irony of their tagline – “When is the last time you did something for the first time?” The race isn’t going to return to the Seattle area for another 363 days. Well played – you may as well throw a Go-Pro camera into the lime green water under the Funky Monkey 2.0 obstacle, assuming it will float.

 

Mudder

 

Flagrant Targeting

On the other side of the targeting effectiveness spectrum is the ad that flagrantly showcases their targeting.  In call caps: ATTENTION MARRIED BUSINESSMEN.  Now I’m guessing the targeting here is based on a few items – my age, marital status, and probably my MBA.  And the ad copy calls each of these items out – literally telling me, “this is here just for you and people like you.”

Wake Up

HOT: Google Updates Local Results

Written by

Fresh from the web comes this update about Google’s recent changes to the local pack.

The local 3-pack

Google’s local results, AKA the “Local” or “Map” pack, just got streamlined from seven results to three.

What is it?

The “Local Pack” is the list that appears on the left of your screen when you search Google for a local service or business. As an example, here’s an image from a post last year:

What’s Changed?

As you’ll note below, the local pack just slimmed down. It lost four listings, doesn’t feature a phone number and no longer shows the Google+ page. The number can be found by clicking the listing: More on that in a bit. Businesses still show star rankings where applicable. Street names are now used in lieu of full addresses. Hours of operation will show either opening or closing times, depending on the time of day.

Attack of the 3 Pack
LA Area Search for “Los Angeles Personal Injury Attorney” – 2:30 PM, 8/7/2015

Previously, clicking a link in the local pack would have the listing’s knowledge graph page fly-out to the right, as detailed here. In this new iteration, clicking the the listing (and not the website or direction links) brings up an entirely new pageLocal Pack Click-Through

This new page now features the business knowledge graph card. Users can now find the full address and phone number here. This page also features a total of 20 business listings, and links to more at the bottom.

So what does it mean?

The obvious first thought is that it just got harder for folks that were ranking 4-7. Does this mean it’s time to up your Adwords advertising spend? Perhaps. It could also be a boon to companies that rank #1 or #2 organically but don’t show up in the local pack. That the local list is now shorter means less scrolling to get to them.

Time will tell if users adjust to this new “local pack lite” and click through to the 20 listing page.

We’ll keep an eye on this for you. In the meantime, redouble your local SEO efforts: The bar just got higher.

Is LawDingo Rolling Over Dead?

Written by

I’ve watched the legal lead generation site LawDingo with a level of interest over the past year or so… the company matches prospective clients with an attorney in real time via phone or chat.  This is obviously the direction the industry is moving – as people expect expertise on demand.  Avvo’s foray into Avvo Advisor – which promises “a great attorney on the phone in minutes” is the other big example.   I personally believe the future of legal involves technology bringing lawyers increasingly close to new clients who wouldn’t have otherwise been able to afford counsel.

But LawDingo was in a tough spot – watching them early on they relied intensively on PPC arbitrage – i.e. buying leads through Adwords/Bing and then selling access to those leads to attorneys via a monthly subscription.  This business model is extremely difficult to maintain – especially in legal, where lawyers implement irrational (read: unprofitable) bidding tactics in their irrational desire to “win” SEM.  And for LawDingo, as a lead generation service, the upside value of those PPC clicks is much lower than for an attorney who can gain a new client. The other option – SEO driven traffic is an extremely expensive undertaking.  So – from a pure economics perspective, I thought it might be tough for LawDingo to make a go of it.

Because of these economics, I’ve never had a client on LawDingo (i.e. why pay a vendor to pay a advertiser, when you can go directly to the advertiser), but I’ve been curious to see how this direct access to attorneys model performs.

But it looks like this month, LawDingo may have pulled the plug on PPC:

LawDingo

Now the data above is from Spyfu – and for smaller sites, I’ve found their data is rarely accurate, but directionally relevant. I called LawDingo and they said that yes they had dropped their ad spend (although they didn’t specify how much), but that they were still up and running.   But if the Spyfu data is even moderately accurate, I’m not sure what their advertisers are actually getting.  I’d love to chat with any subscribers to hear your experience in inquiry volume in July…

 

 

 

 

Linkwheel Spam, The Truth Network and Judith Swift

Written by

The purpose of this post is to demonstrate just how far the search engines have to go in combating spam.  (Alternatively, its a callout to force the issue for law firms to make a very careful decision about where you want to stand on the black hat vs. white hat tactical spectrum.)

Mockingbird sees a lot of legacy spam tactics; in fact a large portion of our engagements start with what we internally call Janitorial SEO – cleaning up the messes generated by previous agencies to regain lost business. Every now and then we see one of those ancient tactics that still seems to work. What follows is a Link Wheel case study – a tactic that could have generated manual penalties back in the 2010-2012 era and should have been obliterated during the multiple Penguin updates, starting in 2013.  (And no, I don’t have a Dallas bankruptcy lawyer looking to burn this firm.)

First, let’s start with what looks to be a rudimentary implementation of a linkwheel.  Check out the Copyright notice in Judith Swift’s footer:

CopyrightOr should I call it the C o p y r i g h t (complete with spaces)?   Roll over each of those letters individually and whoo hoo…. its links to some new content on Judith’s page.  [And let’s ignore the geo spam while we’re at it, although I have to call out the spectacular brazenness of the “SEO by TheTruthNetworks.com” sitting right next to this.]

Linkwheel 2

Wonder what happens when I click through….

Linkwheel 3

That, my friends, is an old school linkwheel – a series of sites literally linked together in order to drive search engine traffic. Enjoy the disclaimer which includes “the links are provided solely as a convenience to users of this web site.”  Right, because someone looking for a bankruptcy attorney in Texas, might simultaneously be looking for a new home in Toronto, or a photographer in Colorado, or an English bookshop in Tokyo, or “premium virgin hair extensions”, which makes me wonder what non-premium, non-virgin hair is.  But I digress.

Of course, none of this matters – perhaps we’re really just looking at a dated legacy site – if the site doesn’t perform.  But we find that not only does it perform, it performs really well….

.  Linkwheel

That’s a pretty strong showing for Judith Swift – 2nd ad, 2nd local result and 2nd natural result.  So… is this really an active, functional linkwheel?  Are there unrelated sites propping up judithswift.com?  Let’s see….

Here’s one from a Canadian bridal boutique…

Linkwheel 6

And a retirement home directory…

Linkwheel 5

A Floridian patio furniture retailer…

linkwheel 4

My favorite is the UK based eyeglass retailer who includes the following disclaimer on their page:

The following links are not recommended or approved by us.  They are simply members of the same programme to help encourage visitors to each others sites…

Linkwheel 7

All in all, hundreds and hundreds of domains with these links – and you could suggest that perhaps they’ve gone through a disavow process BUT – the linkwheel is still alive and kicking on judithswift.com.

Summary

I don’t know Judith and I don’t have any clients in Dallas – for all I know, she knows nothing of her marketing tactics. I’m simply trying to demonstrate a) how very far the search engines have to go and b) that black hat tactics really do work – even tactics that should have been burnt years ago. This is why by-the-book SEO can be extremely expensive.