What You Can Learn from Dick’s Sporting Goods (i.e. How to Monitor for 404s)

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Today’s internet lesson brought to you by a retail anecdote from Dick’s Sporting Goods: yesterday I purchased a new lacrosse stick with the lowest of expectations for my retail experience. Instead I was delighted to meet Tucker, a retail associate who blew me away with his knowledge, service and genuine enthusiasm in helping my 8-year-old, first time lacrosse player. Upon checkout (which Tucker walked us through) our receipt included a link to leave feedback on our in-store experience – Tucker, knowing we were grateful and delighted customers wrote down his name and asked for a submission. (Turns out Tucker knows more about generating solid reviews than most lawyers…)

This is when it went sideways for Dick’s.

The Dicks.com/feedback URL redirects to a misspelled URL: dickssportinggoods.com/fedback (not feedback) and 404s….

A simple typo that’s soured my great experience.

Had Dick’s been monitoring their 404’s in Google Search Console, they would have been alerted to a spike in people getting an error page, been able to investigate it, and simply correct the misspelling. (I did send them a message over Twitter, which included a short, albeit predictable detour of searching Twitter for “dicks”, but I digress.)

How to Look for 404’s On Your Site Using Search Console

You can find error pages on your site in Google’s Search Console, under “Coverage” and “Excluded” you’ll find a list of different types of pages that are excluded from Google’s index. In my extreme case example below (disclaimer, not our client) just 8% of the pages on their site are actually indexed. (This is just yet another reason for you to have admin level access to Search Console – if your agency hasn’t set you up with that or (especially) if they refuse to give you access…start looking for a new agency.) Below that report, look for links to both soft and hard 404 errors.

Hone in on the “Not found (404) errors” to find broken pages on the site. In our example here, the site has fixed many of these errors over the past 3 months. Even better you can find that actual broken URL’s which are listed below the graph – making it super easy to fix.

And Dick’s – if your social media people end up reading this…fix that redirect and then make sure you give Tucker in your Issaquah store a raise…he could be working at Nordstrom. 🙂

How Our Client Got Scammed (& How We Played a Part in It)

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Perhaps I should have thought long and hard before posting this, as Mockingbird unwittingly played a part in one of our clients dealing with a huge online headache.  But…I’d rather share our experiences so that others might avoid them, than cover things up to make us always look great.

Here’s the story:

One of our clients had their email account hacked. Hackers set up forwarding rules on that email account so that anything coming from us bypassed the client and were forwarded to them. They then replied to an existing current email thread with us, asking for a password to the website backend to make some basic content changes. The client had unfortunately used that same password for a variety of different accounts. Chaos ensued….

How to Guard Against This….

  • Use a sophisticated password management system. (We use LastPass).
  • I’d strongly recommend that law firms connect with your agencies and put in place a strict policy of ONLY sharing passwords over the phone.

There have been an increasing number of scams impacting small businesses – especially the legal community, if the chatter on solosez is any accurate indication. Protect yourself.

Avvo Accidentally Emails Thousands of Lawyers with Cancellation

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This just in:  Avvo seems to have accidentally emailed thousands of lawyers with a cancellation of advertising services email.  The problem… seems that these are going out to non-advertisers (if not their entire database) as well.

Subject Line: Your advertising contract with Avvo is about to be canceled.

Your advertising contract with Avvo is scheduled to be cancelled.

We are sorry to see you go. Before we part ways, we would like to know what we could have done to keep your business.

Take a moment to answer this 5-question survey so we can understand how to improve our products and services.

We will send you a $5 Starbucks gift card as a token of our appreciation.

The cynic could suggest that this is just a smarmy, albeit desperate sales tactic to drive inbound conversations with the Avvo sales staff (and more than a few on Solosez have.) However – I suspect this is really a genuine mistake; although it won’t do much to engender any more goodwill for the online directory. The sheer volume of the emails (and time of day) makes it unlikely that this is a desperate attempt to have lawyers call into Avvo. Having said that, I’m pretty sure Julie Clarkson never would have let this happen!

(Of course, it would be funny if everyone “took” the survey to get the $5 Starbucks gift card…. just sayin.)

UPDATE: I asked the Avvo marketing peoples to weigh in….

The email attorneys received from Avvo earlier this morning was sent in error; please disregard it. We apologize for any confusion.

 

 

Google Ads Taking Steps to Combat SPAM in Call Only Campaigns

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One of the upsides about being a Google Premier Partner is that we have a direct line to Googlers to whine about terrible behavior on behalf of some advertisers. One of the bugaboos we’ve been whining about is law firm marketing agencies pretending to be law firms and competing with our clients for business. This has been true in local results as well as call only advertisements.

Starting in December (although our notification didn’t mention exactly when in December, but it could be as soon as…tomorrow) Google is updating their Call Only Policy with the following requirements:

  • Service providers will now be required to use their actual business name in call-only ads. Service providers can no longer advertise with a business name that doesn’t represent their specific business or clearly disambiguate from similar businesses
  • When answering calls from users who’ve clicked on their call-only ad, advertisers must begin the call by stating their business name, as it appears in their call-only ads.

Note this not only impacts the spammers but also legit businesses, as you now need to ensure your front desk answers appropriately. (No more, “law offices” as the salutation…which I’ve been trying to get you all to change anyway.)

You can check out the call only ad requirements directly from Google here.

And to all of you lead generation companies masquerading as a law firm…you’re welcome.

Advanced Website Launches the Mockingbird Way

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Rob and I sit down and share our process – built on the experience of launching almost 100 law firm websites – for launching, relaunching or migrating a website.  Frequently, great designers miss these technical elements.  Many “SEOs” don’t know a darn thing about the technical pitfalls of rebuilding a site.  If you’ve recently relaunched a site and seen a drop in business generated by the web… this might be the root cause.  We see these problems over and over and over again when taking over accounts.

Upfront apologies that this is nerdier and more technical than most of our talks, but you can’t raise these concerns without understanding the technical components.

 

 

We F’d Up…

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This post is meant to highlight three things:

  1. We are not infallible.
  2. Our job is to candidly advise on the status of marketing, even when problems are self created (see above).
  3. Being extremely selective in choosing exceptional clients fosters a genuine partnership where that honesty is appreciated.

Last week we f’d up. This was for a large, long standing client who has spent well over $200K with us. The long and short of it…while building out a Google Ads campaign for a client’s new office, we inadvertently deleted an existing one – and historical data, drives quality score and quality score drives economic efficiency – therefore the ads aren’t going to perform as well (for a short time). Our error is going to cost the client some money.

Here’s the exchange that happened between my AE and our client late Friday afternoon:

I have some bad news. While I was helping get the XXXXXX campaign edited, I accidentally removed the XXXXX campaign. I called support to try and get it back but they said there’s nothing they can do. I was able to duplicate the campaign, so it’s currently running on the same settings, with the same ads and keywords.

Since the original campaign was removed, we essentially are starting over with a brand new campaign. We still have access to the data from the original, but any authority that it had is now gone. It’s going to take a while for the campaign to start running the way it was.

Again, I’m very sorry. Please let me know if you have any questions or want to discuss this further.

That was at 5:22 pm on Friday. Client wrote back at 8:20 on Saturday morning:

I thought it was super classy for you to let me know about the XXXX campaign. I’ve used so many marketing firms and the reason why I was so attracted to Mockingbird was because Conrad was so upfront and honest with me. And I believe this extends to the entire company. Basically, other marketing companies tend to [be] very squirreley and Mockingbird is so honest, and that’s why I love working with Mockingbird. For example, you consistently say, “XXXX, you should use us for this…” and you also say, “Dan, I’ll be honest, you may be able to get a better value somewhere else.”  I really appreciate that candor.

I think the XXXXX campaign is a perfect example of why I enjoy working with Mockingbird so much. There was virtually no way that I ever would have realized that the XXXXX campaign was deleted. I’m just not smart enough to figure that out. But you saying, “look, XXXX, although you would have never realized this, I mistakenly deleted the XXXXX campaign and the paid searches may not be as good as before” was a super classy move.

So, final thought:

First, thank you for letting me know about what occurred with the XXXX campaign. I greatly appreciate your honesty about that.

Second, do not worry about. Mistakes happen, so not a big deal.

Thanks, XXX

One of our 10 Commandments is “Proactively Deliver Bad News.” This is vital in our role as consultants/advisors/experts. News from the marketing side of things is not always positive and a good agency won’t shy away from delivering bad news…even (or perhaps especially) when its our fault. And clients…you should recognize that us technical agencies almost always have the ability and access to hide any mistakes or concerns from you. That should never be our role, but as our client pointed out…he most likely would never have noticed. Ask yourself: when is the last time your agency told you things aren’t going well?

Martindale-Hubbell Aggressively Marketing Their LinkSpam Network

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Psssst…buddy…you…with the struggling website…yeah you. Want to buy a link? How about 5? I’ve got some nice, hot, untraceable links right here in my coat.

In the past 10 days, I’ve received questions from three different legal marketing agencies about Martindale’s new SEO product: The Martindale-Nolo legal marketing network which includes Nolo and Lawyers.com. It’s essentially a mass purchased linkbuilding scheme and people want to know: does this violate Google’s SEO guidelines against LinkSpam.

Short Answer: Yes it does.

But first, let’s hear from Martindale directly:

 

Hmmm…key messages are:

“providing stronger link value…helps increase links through our legal network of websites…help you gain higher search engine rankings”

Also…it’s “affordable” – meaning it’s paid. Isn’t this the flagrant buying and selling of links? Yes it is.

FindLaw Linkspam Provides Historical Context

Back in 2008 Findlaw got exposed for doing exactly this: mass emailing their clients with the offer of purchased links. This was called their: SEM-C product which enabled customers to purchase links and even specify the anchor text (remember anchor text?). You can find a copy of it here. This program got blown up quickly and received widespread backlash among the knowledgable (albeit small back then) legal online marketing community.

So, I didn’t think anyone would be so stupid as to replicate this experiment. Apparently I was wrong. Another variant of Martindale’s marketing materials states:

“This helps increase links through our legal network of websites and directories back to your firms website. Gaining stronger authority and helping you gain higher search engine rankings.”

Google Guidelines Violation

Does this really violate Google Guidelines?  Yup. Yup and Yup. Read excerpts of those guidelines below and ask yourself if there’s any possible way Martindale isn’t setting themselves and their clients up for failure:

  • This includes any behavior that manipulates links to your site or outgoing links from your site.
  • Buying or selling links that pass PageRank.
  • This includes exchanging money for links or using automated programs or services to create links to your site.

Note the key concern for law firms here is that these penalties impact not only the seller, but also the buyer of said links.

The Avvo Question

Now speaking of legal directory links, I’d be remiss in noting that AVVO recently sold to Internet Brands, who is also the owner of…Martindale. Back in July of this year, I reported that Avvo was removing contact information unless one purchased Avvo Premium. It was unclear if this included a link to the website. It’s also unclear if Martindale’s “network of legal websites” extends to Avvo as well, but it’s not too hard to connect these dots. I did reach out to the new Avvo people to discuss this further, but they demurred. On a personal level, I’d find it tragically ironic if Avvo is included within this scheme.

So…what’s going to happen?

If history repeats itself, all of these sites (both the sellers and buyers) may have a negative impact on their search traffic. According to the SEO rumor mill, the FindLaw link selling scandal generated a significant and protracted decline in traffic – although I frankly didn’t hear any rumblings of how this impacted the purchasers of said links. Granted that was way back in 2008, but I don’t suspect Google has gotten specifically dumber as it pertains to linkspam over the past decade. Further note that Google relies heavily on algorithmic learning and have been seeking out link networks for about 15 years now. Hiding this network from Google, especially with the large and prolific footprint of Martindale/Nolo/Lawyers.com (and hopefully not Avvo) would be extremely difficult. All Google needed was the linkbuilding smoking gun…an offer to sell links. And apparently, Martindale has just mass emailed that smoking gun to all of their customers (including agency owners who know better.)

Google Doesn’t Care About “Fresh” Content (So Says Google)

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I’ve been writing about how Google doesn’t care about your “fresh” content for ages now. Mockingbird’s analysis of hundreds of thousands of pages of legal content (and I use the term “content” liberally here) across hundreds of law firm websites have confirmed this.

And yet, the legal marketing industry keeps telling you to publish publish publish in order to make The Google happy. As an industry, it’s super convenient to blame our failings on your lack of feeding the content beast. Or, it’s super convenient to have contracts that promise we’ll vomit out poorly rewritten news articles at a pace of X per week. Tangible, predictable projects to validate a bloated retainer that funds an offshore “writer” at exorbitant margins. One vendor claims as their tagline: “real lawyers have blogs” – as in, you aren’t a lawyer unless you feed The Google a steady diet of (largely unread) blog pages.

Except of course, all of this focus on bloated website pagecount rarely translates to increased traffic, calls or clients. That’s because of the fallacy that the frequency of publishing is a major SEO factor. You may have also heard this referred to as “fresh content.” The reality is, there are some industries (legal being one of them) in which “fresh” content isn’t necessarily better. i.e. It’s very difficult to have fresh content about trucking accidents on a regular basis.

But, like lemmings intent on a final trip to the sea, the legal marketing industry keeps reciting the mantra: “content is king.”  We keep pushing you to sign engagements in which we promise we’ll deliver 4 blog posts a week.  (and if 4 is good, wouldn’t 40 be better? Can I get a 104?) We wax poetic about the long tail and the need for more and more content to catch this elusive tail. We tell you that Google wants your content to be fresh as a baguette at a quaint French cafe at 6am.

Finally, straight from The Google’s mouth, the answer to the question: “Does Google favor fresh content?” in two characters:

Hat tip to Barry Schwartz (who apparently has more time to follow John Mueller, than I do.)

If you feel like diving deeper, feel free to peruse any of the following articles I’ve penned panning our myopic love of content:

SMX: More content, less traffic
SMX: More content, less traffic: Part II
Mockingbird: SEO Regicide, Content the King is Dead
Mockingbird: Another Indicator that your “SEO Content” is Awful
Mockingbird: Your Legal Blog Content isn’t as Good as you Think it is.

On Being Different Instead of Better

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Once a week, on my commute in to work, I listen to a podcast called Two Bobs that helps agency owners make their agency outstanding. More often than not, the concepts that apply to the highly creative and technical world of online marketing apply just as readily to legal.

“Sometimes it is better to be different than to be better” – David C. Baker

Lawyers have a very hard time differentiating themselves among other lawyers – especially from the perspective of potential clients. It’s not that it’s hard to do, it’s just that most lawyers wrap themselves in lawyerly imagery – scales of justice, gavels, middle aged white men with red ties etc. Most lawyers make the mistake of positioning themselves as…lawyers…or at best, in David’s construct…the “better lawyer.”

Quite obviously, being a lawyer is not a differentiator from which a prospective client can select among a sea of potential legal representation. Even being the “best lawyer” is hard to truly assess. This, despite the slew of award icons prominently displayed on legal websites – AV Rating, Avvo Rating, and even entirely fake and bogus paid awards like “Lawyers of Distinction.” In the marketing world, we call these “trust marks” – and they are a visual attempt to convey “best lawyer” positioning. The problem, of course, is that there are a myriad of these trust marks, most of which are completely meaningless to average Joe Consumer. Being “best” is simply a very difficult position to hold – especially in the awards arms race of legal marketing. This extends to the personal injury world where the arms race is self aggrandizing award boasts. “Over $300K recovered…more than a million dollars in awards…largest settlement…” Blah blah blah.

Being different isn’t difficult.

Being different is easy.

It requires courage to embrace the fact that lawyers compete not on the “best lawyer” continuum, but on the, “why should I hire you?” continuum. And the reality is that most prospective consumers know they can’t accurately assess “best” and instead try to answer the second question.

Being different is a positioning that transforms the lawyer selection process in the prospect’s mind from, “which lawyer do I want to hire?” to “which person do I want to work with?” And in the prospect’s mind, being different never has anything to do with evaluating lawyers on the lawyerly continuum. Try as they might, lawyers simply can’t be more lawyerly than other lawyers.

On the other hand, a lawyer or law firm can be an openly gay lawyer, the expert in self driving vehicles, the immigrant lawyer helping others follow in her footsteps, the city’s oldest law firm, the lawyer who used to be a cop/prosecutor/in-house at Allstate, the law firm supporting black lives matter, the state’s largest law firm, the athlete who organizes local road races and happens to practice law (h/t to Turkowitz), the tech nerdy paperless firm, the ex JAG, or the small town lawyer who grew up just a mile from his current office.

To the right prospect, each of these differentiators above is much more personally appealing than sifting through countless lawyer profiles trying to identify the better best bestestest most lawyerly lawyer lawyer.

Because, sometimes, its better to be different than better.