1% for Good: Challenged Athletes Foundation

Written by

Well, it’s been a year since we started the 1% For Good Campaign at Mockingbird – which provides regular donations to charities.  Our first ever donation was to The Challenged Athletes Foundation.  In support of my brother, who has made CAF a regular part of his life, this year, we’ve come back around to supporting CAF – contributing a small portion of the more than $1.1 million dollars raised at this year’s Challenge.

The San Diego Triathlon Challenge

Every year, CAF puts on The San Diego Triathlon Challenge – a fundraising race where a mix of physically challenged athletes and able bodied athletes complete a grueling triathlon on a very hilly course in San Diego. It’s a mile swim, 44 mile bike and 10 mile run.  Imagine completing that on prosthetic legs, or with the help of a guide because you are legally blind.  1511760_851744784849157_5009061916467516567_n

A Note from Paul

The people we support in this endeavor are not the type to let a challenge or some discomfort stop them from achieving their dreams.  It’s time for me to meet the challenge and raise critical funds for the military personnel who lost limbs in service of our county, the children who have had limbs ravaged by cancer, and the survivors of horrific accidents who refuse to hear “you can’t do that.”  As I told you last year, I truly believe that outside of being a husband and parent, this is the most important thing I do every year.

Note the rainbow socks Paul is  wearing – they were in the athletes’ goody bags and were a subtle tribute to Robin Williams, who was heavily involved in CAF.

New Panda Rollout Helps Lawyers (we hope)

Written by

Last evening, Pierre Far from Google announced a new rollout of the Panda algo (remember that Google change targeted towards identifying thin, weak and otherwise low quality content).  Don’t go checking your Google Analytics just yet – the rollout will take a week to full deploy and impact 3-5% of search queries.

Most notably Far announced:

This results in a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher, which is nice.

So it is interesting that in a very brief statement about Panda, Google is specifically calling out benefits to the little guys.  Reading the tea leaves here, I’m hoping this is in some degree a response to the backlash from Pigeon, which benefited the large directories at the expense of small businesses.

Google Authorship is Dead (or is it . . . .)

Written by

Last week, John Mueller over at Google announced authorship would no longer be shown in search results. In case you forgot, authorship was the nifty gizmo that made your picture appear in the SERPs next to content you wrote. Or at least, it did until this past June when Google removed the photo and just left your name.

Here’s what Google Authorship looked like in its glory days:

authorship 2

And here’s what it looks like with the removal of authorship:

authorship gone

boo boo!  Sad Trombone . . .

Why did Google (say they) got rid of authorship?

In their analysis of authorship, Search Engine Land cites two reasons. First of all, a low adoption rate by authors. Not many authors were implementing authorship code, suggesting that many content providers weren’t interested in it or didn’t understand how to use it. Secondly, a low value to searchers. Although authorship was originally intended to provide users with another indication of the validity of your content, it turns out that seeing your pretty face wasn’t really helping decision making.

Why do (we think) Google got rid of authorship?

Generally at Mockingbird, we take most of what Google says at face value. BUT – – – let me uncharacteristically offer a contrarian view:  Google got rid of authorship because we (the scummy, spammy) SEO industry transformed it from a positive quality signal into a spammy marketing tactic.  Especially within legal – where social media marketing consultants and SEO hacks desperate to demonstrate some tangible benefit to their clients went overboard with authorship.  Remember how FindLaw spammed authorship by attributing blog posts from old clients to their new clients? Hardly a legitimate quality signal and FindLaw wasn’t the only one.  My take is that it is highly possible that Google has removed the tangible benefit of authorship (that ego-boost of your picture right within the results that made lawyers salivate and social media marketing something to do) but has quietly held on to the concept of author rank.  Getting rid of “authorship” is going to remove (some) of the low quality signals that SEOs foisted into the author rank concept.

What does this mean?

Thankfully for website owners, Mueller says, “removing authorship doesn’t seem to reduce traffic to sites,” so you shouldn’t be too concerned on that front. However, folks in the SEO community have been spending time and energy on this since 2011, when authorship was first introduced.

Authorship was always about much more than the silly little picture . . . and for our clients we’re staying the course – building the authority of individuals.

Why It Takes 5 Years for Email to Generate 1 Law Firm Client

Written by

Fortunately, lawyers haven’t stumbled all over themselves in a rush to adopt email marketing in the same way they have social media . . . BUT I still see email marketing being pitched as a primary client development tool.  And rarely does the email newsletter pan out.  The reality is, there are many many steps in the law firm email sales funnel – and every step can torpedo this channel. Here’s the simple math you need to consider when investing in an email marketing campaign:

  • Decay Rate of Email List:  Emails don’t tend to hang around for long – people change jobs, cancel addresses or simply abandon a legacy address.  Towerdata states roughly 2% of an email list is lost every month.
  • Deliverability Rate:  Not all commercial email ever makes it through to an inbox due to spam filters and the like.  ClickZ sites an 88.5% deliverability rate for commercial email.
  • Open Rate:   Mailchimp sites an open rate for 21.33% for legal emails – essentially meaning for those emails that do make it to an inbox – only one in five is actually opened.
  • Click Through Rate:  The same Mailchimp study points to a 3.25% click through rate (note that a good email should have your phone number so they can call you directly.)

Now, let’s make some optimistic assumptions about law firm marketing:

  • Small to medium sized law firms get roughly 300-800 visits monthly.  Let’s round up and call it  1,000 and very optimistically assume one out of every twenty five visitors signs up for your newsletter (resulting in 40 addresses a month).
  • Visitors to law firm websites call at a rate between roughly 2 and 5% depending on the quality of the site’s marketing.  We’ll use 5%.
  • Of phone calls to law firms, roughly one in four is from a qualified prospect – i.e. a potential good client.
  • Law firms close half  of the business they want.

That’s a sales funnel with a daunting eight steps.  Here’s what it looks over a year if we deploy a monthly email campaign:

Email Sales Funnel

 

So after a year, based on these assumptions (and feel free to come up with your own conversion assumptions and play this out for yourself), that’s 0.015 clients – – – – put more simply, even with these optimistic growth rates, on average it will take four and a half years to generate one client.  Some more back of the napkin math: between content development, CAN SPAM compliance, unsubscribes, email capture, we spend 2 hours developing each email at $100 an hour – that’s a cost per client of $10,800.

The Exception

By all means use email (even automated campaigns) to proactively communicate with vetted prospects.

But harbor no illusions that this channel is the answer for filling the top of your sales funnel.  The reality is, email requires a very large volume of recently sourced addresses to make an impact.  Still hopeful? Consider the last time you easily gave up your email address online – and then look at the “Promotions” or “SPAM” tab/folder on your email provider and consider the last time you opened one of them, let alone clicked through.

Most law firms, simply can’t generate enough addresses in the top of the email marketing funnel for anything to come out of the bottom.

WordPress 3.9.2 Update Addresses Security Issues

Written by

Because WordPress is the most easy to use and widely available website platform it is heavily targeted by hackers.  And a hacked WordPress site can be almost impossible to fix . . .  we’ve actually rebuilt client sites from scratch in the past instead of managing headaches around hacking issues.

Yesterday WordPress just launched 3.9.2 to address various security concerns.  So if you are running WordPress – make sure you’re updated to the current version.  And if you are one of Mockingbird’s hosted clients . . . don’t worry, we updated you last evening.

Oh – and how can you tell what version you are running?  Just log in to WordPress and look at the bottom right hand corner of any page . . .

WordPress Version

 

That’s all . . . carry on.

The Pigeon Mess . . .

Written by

Last Thursday, Google quietly released a new algo update targeting improved search results that had a local component (i.e. almost all legal related searches).  Note that Pigeon impacts both local and natural searches – so the reach for law firms is very significant.  The early results are in to Pigeon and they aren’t pretty.

Here’s why:

Pigeon Favors Directories Over Law Firms

Like the most recent Panda algo update, Pigeon seems to have favored directories over the actual businesses in these directories.  There is widespread agreement among local search geeks – Mihm, Blumenthal, Shotland and more that directories have indeed benefited.  Andrew Shotland noted a 5-10% traffic increase for some of the directories he works with following Pigeon. Counterpoint: I pinged the guys at Avvo who didn’t acknowledge anything dramatic.

I should note that this direction continues to surprise me.  Cutt’s has often made comments to the contrary so I see the possibility of a  large reversal in the horizon (although I’ve been envisioning it unsuccessfully it for a while.)  It is highly possible that Google’s focus on “brands” and the rewarding of brands in search results is to explain – i.e. the Avvo’s and FindLaw’s of the world have established brands while branding for law firms, especially small law firms is essentially impossible – especially as a computer would view a “brand.”

There’s also an argument (and I think a good one) that this update is a hastily rolled out response to Yelp’s recent sniveling about anti-trust . . . Pigeon, which rolled out just two weeks after the leaked TechCrunch article  has very directly benefited Yelp.

Shake-up of Local Results in a Bad Way

In many cases, mapped results have changed almost completely.  We’ve also seen the reduction of the frequency and sized of mapped results – i.e. some formerly mapped results don’t deliver at all and some seven packs have been replaced  by three packs.  I had one attorney call me insisting that his claimed Google profiles were no longer appearing and yet some unclaimed satellite offices had suddenly shown up in the mapped results.

Remergence of SPAM Results in Local Pack

Michael Ehline at the Circle of Legal Trust noted that Avvo was now showing up as a local personal injury law firm in Los Angeles.  I dug in and found what looks to be an old spam tactic – piggybacking a local company to the strength of a large, relevant domain to win in local results.  This is more widspread than this example – the travel site, Expedia is now a small hotel on Madison Avenue in New York  . . . . at least according to Google maps.

Circle of Legal Trust

I looked further into the los angeles PI example and found the following result.  Note that both Avvo and Lawyers.com are listed as a mapped business for the “los angeles personal injury attorney” query.  Also note that neither of them have a physical address and both of them have the identical phone number (which incidentally, you may not be shocked to learn, does NOT in fact ring to my old friends in Seattle.)  Also note both of them (and Farar & Lewis) are keyword stacked with “Personal Injury Lawyer” in the name of the business . . . . another rudimentary local search no no.

Avvo and Lawyers Local

You’d think that Google local results, with the focus on things like NAP consistency might be able to algorithmically detect that two different business within the same result have the exact same phone number.  Apparently not. Ehline insists that this result didn’t exist before Pigeon – and I tend to believe him.  The only thing he fears more than the Government removing his AR-15 is the Google removing his rankings.  While clicks go through to the appropriate directory, the phone number doesn’t – a quick search on that number brought me to an instagram (yuk) account that was associated with  . . . . a los angeles motorcycle accident attorney:

CycleLaw

Hope you are proud of yourself, Attorney Robert Brenner – but don’t expect this flood of new business to last, after which it may well dry up forever. This is an old spam technique (and I won’t encourage it by telling you how) that Google’s quality update (read: Pigeon) re-enabled. Good job MountainView. This is why I believe Pigeon to be a hastily launched response to Yelp’s whinings and I would expect more turmoil as they work to (hastily) improve upon it.

 

 

The Worst Legal Marketing I’ve Seen

Written by

What follows is the most abjectly stupid online marketing I’ve come across. From a company that really should know better.

I found a legal website proactively advertising the services of a direct and hated competitor.

Advertising simply does NOT belong on the website of any service provider.  You don’t want someone considering hiring you for their car accident to get distracted by a display ad for Nikes, the new Toyota Camry, a WonderBra . . . or worse . . . your competitor (more on that later.)  It seems pretty obvious . . . your site is there to sell your services and not generate some residual revenue as a publisher of display advertising.

Over the years, I’ve collected examples of law firm websites that contain third party display advertising . . . usually they are old, outdated or abandoned sites (frequently blogs). But sometimes they are a firm’s primary current site, hoping to generate a little extra income as a Google AdSense publisher. I’ve filed away a collection of screenshots with the intention of eventually writing this post; but just today I ran across something so spectacular that I dropped everything to write.

Check this out:

FindLaw Avvo
Ironically, the screenshot above is a “best marketing practices for small business” article from my good friends in Eagan, MN at FindLaw.  And there, perched brazenly on the right rail, is an advertisement for Avvo’s Ignite product. Avvo, the company that has dethroned FindLaw – advertising directly on the FindLaw site.  And as if it couldn’t get any better, the Avvo tagline reads:

“The antidote to clueless lawyer marketing.”

I can’t make this stuff up.

I know this is a mean-spirited post and generally I’m not so flagrantly cruel, but are you serious?

Now clearly, this is a remarketing campaign from Avvo and not a direct display ad buy.  But, at the very least, it is mindnumbingly easy to exclude competitors’ advertisements on your own website with even the most rudimentary ad vendor.  But really – this isn’t about appropriately configuring a website – its about recognizing that the primary objective of your site is to get people to engage with the services you provide – and ads on your site detract from that objective.  So if this is in any way unclear:  If you sell a service, third party advertisements do NOT belong on your website.  Doing so enables your competitors to directly target your audience.

As for FindLaw . . . think very carefully before placing your marketing investment in the hands of a company so spectacularly inept that they display competitor’s advertisements on their own website.  Clueless lawyer marketing indeed.

Latest Google Algo Change Hits Local: Pigeon

Written by

Pigeon UpdateGoogle local results have long been a mess; complicated by semi-annual rebranding.  Frankly, local results have been a hodgepodge of mistakes and spam, so I’m not surprised to see an algo update – pushed out quietly late Thursday night.

What exactly changed?  It’s very hard to say, as the announcement was phrased as the lovechild of geek and marketing speak that even I can’t decipher anything substantive:

“the new local search algorithm ties deeper into their web search capabilities, including the hundreds of ranking signals they use in web search along with search features such as Knowledge Graph, spelling correction, synonyms and more.”

They also announced improved signals around distance and location – which seems strange as that doesn’t seem like a very difficult factor to measure.  The update is currently rolling out across the US – so you may see some variability within local search results in the upcoming week.

The Results so Far?

Early results indicate improved performance for major local directories which I find both surprising and disappointing, as it seems counterintuitive to the entire concept of local search. You’ll remember that the results of the Panda 4.0 update were large improvements for Avvo.  Given some of Cutt’s comments, I’ve long believed that Google will back off the directories in favor of smaller businesses.  The directory angle may be a response to Yelp’s recently leaked anti-trust whinings pointing out that even branded searches were failing to reach Yelp.

The Important Takeaways

  1. Pigeon impacts both local AND natural search results – so for law firms, the overall impact may be fairly significant.  Cross your fingers and watch your natural search traffic over the next two weeks.
  2. Google remains in the middle of an anti-SPAM rampage.  Combine that with the rampant spamming of localized results and I wouldn’t be surprised if Pigeon may also have teeth – negatively impacting those of you (and yes there are lots of you) who are faking your office locations – to the detriment of your actual office location.  (This is 100% conjecture.)
  3. Care about your Yelp profile . . . . I hate to say it (and never advertise with them) but customers vetting lawyers may increasingly be led to Yelp.

How We Replaced PPC with SEO and Saved $30,000

Written by

These are the results I love to share.  Back towards the beginning of the year, I spoke with someone who was concerned about  high PPC budget – she was spending roughly $2,500 monthly on Adwords and weren’t sure if the spend was paying off. In looking at the site’s performance it became clear that the client had most of her eggs in a poorly structured, untargeted PPC basket AND the site seemed to be grossly underperforming in SEO.

Over the past 6 months, we’ve turned her traffic upside down . . . . resulting in PPC savings of roughly $30,000.  While traffic is down about 15%, we’ve replaced the PPC spend with (free) SEO traffic and restructured an unprofitable advertising spend.  Here’s how:

replacing PPC

Step 1: Assess PPC ROI

We did a thorough business review of her PPC campaign – to assess just how much business the spend generated and calculated what her cost per client was for this channel.  (It was really bad.)  Armed with 8 weeks of eye opening data, we drastically cut the Adwords budget and launched a (small) Bing campaign at the same time . . . with CPC’s roughly 90% lower than her original bids. Take note: PPC is never the only answer.  If you look really carefully, you’ll see that we never entirely did away with PPC – its still bumping along, delivering a small trickle of traffic from both Adwords and BingAds – – – generating business at a very low cost per client (read: extremely high ROI).

Step 2:  Fix SEO Problems

Once we dug in, we found the client’s site had some major SEO problems and while they took some time to fix – roughly 3 months – the changes resulted in a 400% increase in her natural search traffic – essentially replacing the traffic drop from cutting the PPC budget.  Interestingly, even if the SEO hadn’t been borked we still would have killed the PPC campaign as it was literally costing her more than she was making from the clients.

Step 3:  Slowly Dial Advertising Back Up

Moving forward – now that we have solid business tracking (so we can ID cost per client by each marketing channel) we’ll slowly dial her PPC campaign up so her margins reflect her business objective:  ie. cost per client makes business sense.  We can also explore additional advertising venues and measure them on their ability to hit these cost per client benchmarks.

 

The net result?  The client is now bringing in roughly three times the business with the same marketing spend.  AND she could cut off her SEO spend and unlike and advertising spend, the traffic would continue.