The Social Media Sites You Shouldn’t Ignore

Social media is a medium that can’t be neglected when building an online business profile. It provides an opportunity to interact with your community and control your online persona. According to a study, social media can also help build your page ranking.

 

In the study, which looked at results on branded searches, social media profiles and pages ranked page one in a high percentage of searches. One site that stood out for branded searches was LinkedIn, which was the most commonly appearing website in the study.

 

From searchengineland.com

 

Facebook was the second most common website, showing up for 246 out of 500 companies. 

 

So what does this tell us? 

 

For one thing, it tells us that having a social media presence is vital for online reputation management. You have full control over your LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, you have less control over your reviews (but you still have some). When a potential client hears about your firm, the first thing they will do is look you up. By having multiple sites you control on Google page one you are crafting your image.

 

So how can we take advantage of this?

 

Well, you can build out your profiles. If you don’t have a Facebook or a LinkedIn business page you should build them. If you already have them, update them. Post regularly and maintain your presence.

 

Will Mockingbird help me make a Facebook?

While the team here at Mockingbird will help with online reviews and social media advertising, we do not maintain our clients’ profiles. That’s something you’ll have to figure out.

Low on Funds? Don’t Get a Custom Site

Custom-built websites are beautiful. They can be technological cathedrals of web-design and intricacy. And, sometimes, they are wholly unnecessary. Many firms don’t need a complicated site, just a functional one that the lawyers understand and the clients can navigate. 

 

This is where websites from templates come in. A well-designed template is fast to set up, cheap to launch, and easy to manage. 

 

We’ve all seen bad lawyer-websites. They aren’t intuitive, have outdated designs, and don’t function very well. Maybe you own one of those websites. It’s understandable; being a lawyer is busy work and you probably don’t have time to manage a website, especially not a complicated new website. Unfortunately, a bad website can scare away potential clients. If it’s especially outdated it might not even show up in searches. 

 

A well-designed website template is easy to update, add to, and navigate. 

 

This is why law firms should have the option not to pay for a brand-new custom website, especially since it’s a luxury that not every firm can or wants to afford. Any service that says a fully custom website is a necessity is a scam.

 

So what firms generally benefit from template-built websites?

 

Firms that generally benefit from template-built websites are those looking to save money. This might include immigration lawyers, criminal defense lawyers, and solo firms.

If you are interested in building your website from a template, contact Mockingbird. Our Echo websites are fast, easy, cost-effective, and beautiful.

How Google’s Ever-Changing Search Experience will Impact the Legal Industry

Google is constantly updating, improving features, removing bugs, and changing user experiences. This is quite noticeable for those of us in marketing, who make it our job to keep our finger on the pulse of changes in the search engine world. 

 

How Ads are Changing for Services

Google provides opportunities to advertise just about anything under a variety of categories from restaurants to stores to legal services. You have probably noticed this on Google Maps and might have noticed this when you search for flights. Different categories are being provided with different user experiences. 

 

For legal services, the ads have remained relatively unchanged upfront. Plug-in options have increased, targeting options have changed, and contact options have improved, but these might not be as immediately visible to consumers. This is how legal ads currently look:

 

 

 

This isn’t anything we haven’t seen before; nothing to write home about. However, a recent Search Engine Land article showed how different services’  advertisements differ:

 

 

One of the potential reasons for Google’s delay on local service ad upgrades could be the category’s susceptibility to spam. It’s not unheard of for multiple fake businesses to appear in searches, oftentimes almost indistinguishable from legitimate businesses. 

 

The future of local ads could see more protections going up to fight spam, more carouselling ads, and more individual add-ons based on the business type. It’s hard to know what’s coming for legal advertising, but we know we’ll be ready.

Is Your Agency Selling You More Than You Need?

Judging Your Marketing Plan by Your Firm

Law firm marketing is an industry full of swindlers. Bad marketers are always trying to sell you more than you need, won’t tell you how their add-ons are helping you, and don’t produce the results they promise.  Scams are all over, which is why you need to be able to recognize when you’re overpaying or are paying for the wrong things. 

 

But what are the things you should be paying for? This depends on your practice, your firm, and your goals. Any marketer who says they have a one-size-fits-all, guaranteed to work plan is lying. No marketer can guarantee digital marketing success unless they’re physically (and illegally) paying off someone at Google, and every plan should be customizable. Every firm is different.

 

What Does My Practice Need?

Every practice has its strengths and weaknesses. Personal injury firms tend to need large amounts of advertising due to the highly competitive market and can afford it because of their high case values. Immigration lawyers, on the other hand, tend to have high caseloads with lower case values, meaning they need specific and cost-effective advertising. If an immigration lawyer is being sold an expensive new website and thousands of dollars in monthly ad-spend they are likely being ripped off. 

 

Before speaking with a digital marketing firm you need to make sure you know your business. What is your budget and what are your goals? A good firm should be able to work with your needs. If they are pressuring you to spend more than you are comfortable with without providing data to support their suggestions, run. 

 

But what does your firm actually need? This depends on the infrastructure you already have built up. If you have a functional, scalable, beautiful website ready to go, you shouldn’t have to purchase a new one. When you already have Local SEO services set up you might not need to purchase more. If you are just starting out, you might need to invest a bit more. The best way to avoid being scammed is by doing research into what’s typically needed for a firm of your size and practice.

 

Ask Questions

The best indicator of a scam is a lack of transparency. If the firm you are talking to refuses to answer your questions directly you might want to raise a red flag. Marketers are good at making their product sound appealing, and rhetoric can be powerful and deceiving. Make sure your questions get answered and keep an eye out for non-answers. If you realize they didn’t actually tell you anything, press them harder. Make sure you know exactly what you should be getting and why you’re paying for it.

 

Talk to a Firm You Can Trust

If you’re curious about a trustworthy firm, call Mockingbird! We’re proud of our transparency, work ethic, and relationships with our clients and would love to talk with you about your firm.

The 3 Best Resources for Beginner Website Owners

Running a website for a business is complicated and sometimes frustrating, and when you add advertising on top of general up-keep it gets even more complicated. When an issue arises, you might not even notice until you check back through your ad results. There might be a sudden, unexplained drop in conversions or interactions, and you’ll be left wondering if the problem is with your website or the ad platform.

 

Lucky for you, there are plenty of good resources to help you figure out if the problem is on you or Google:

 

1. Google Webmaster Central Blog

From the horse’s mouth itself, Google’s webmaster blog is one of the best places to hear about news and updates that could impact your website. You’ll learn about new features available through Google Analytics and Search Console and how to access them.

 

2. Search Engine Journal

SEJ publishes multiple blog posts every day from various experts in the field of digital marketing. Even if you aren’t a digital marketer, many of the posts are useful in providing tips and tricks of the trade. If you think an update is screwing with your data, just glance at SEJ. If there was an update, they’ll be the first to know.

 

3. Google Webmasters Help Community

Any question you have has probably been asked before, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask it again. The Help community is made up of seasoned webmasters, experts, and Google employees. You can learn from other people’s misunderstandings and get answers for yourself.

 

Of course, there are hundreds of other resources you can use. Knowledge and helpful guides saturate the internet. Go out and learn! Find your own path! Running a business is hard, but it’s always an opportunity for personal growth.

If running a website and a law firm is more of a time commitment than you can make, we get it. Leave the website to us. Mockingbird runs websites and advertising for law firms and knows how to keep up with the constant changes. Contact us to learn more.

Why Optimizing for Mobile is Necessary for Law Firms

Mobile users are a growing segment of all internet traffic. Between 10-50% of traffic going to legal websites being from a mobile device, with some dependence on practice area. That’s a large audience that you don’t want to turn away with poor web design.

 

Why Law Firms

Law firm websites provide vital resources for people in crisis when they might not be able to reach their computer. This means that all aspects of the website need to be optimized, not just the home page. Blogs, FAQs, and any other resources need to be easy to access and fast-loading, and contact info should be on every page. You want to make it as easy as possible for a consumer to find your resources, get the info they need, and call you to schedule a consultation.

 

Why Optimize

There are a few different ways to set up your website, and not all of them work for mobile. Some websites are designed solely for desktop, so when a consumer visits the site from their phone it looks exactly the same as the desktop version. This doesn’t work because the differences between the dimensions and user interfaces of a desktop and phone are completely different. Navigating a desktop-designed website from a phone is difficult and slow, and users are just as likely to go find a different website and a different law firm.

 

Why Google Cares

One final, extremely important reason to optimize for mobile is Google’s Mobile-First Indexing (MFI). Beginning in 2016, Google started indexing mobile versions of websites as their primary version. That means that if a website’s mobile version is slow, it’s page rank will be affected. If the content isn’t the same, Google will take the content on the mobile version as the primary version. When a website has a terrible mobile user experience, it’s page rank will likely be affected.

 

What You Can Do

Make sure your website is optimized. Ensure the images are scalable and the text is legible. If you have an old website, you might want to consider getting a new one. If your website needs maintenance, invest in it. If you need help with any of that, contact Mockingbird.

Keeping Your Site Stable During Google Updates

2019 saw a series of Google updates big and small, impactful and unaffecting. Many sites saw drastic changes in their rankings, traffic, and leads during this time, not all of the bad and not all of them good. But as with anything, even the small changes caused unrest in the SEO community.

 

Change is inevitable, so fluctuations in traffic should be expected whether or not an update has happened. That being said, there are measures you can take to reduce the influence updates have on your site. You can’t stop an earthquake, but you can make sure your furniture won’t fall on your bed while you’re sleeping.

 

Follow Best Practices

This should be relatively intuitive. Keep producing content that users find useful and Google finds relevant. By following best practices, you are showing Google that you are respecting their guidelines. Google likes that.

 

Organize Your Website 

By properly organizing your title tags, meta descriptions, and headers you are telling Google exactly what is on each page on your website. This helps the search engine to properly categorize your content and provide it to the most relevant users. Simply keeping Google up to date with your website will help it maintain its traffic during updates.

 

Keep Your Finger on the Pulse

Things shift, sometimes at a glacial pace, sometimes extremely quickly. Take keywords: not too long ago, SEOs would pile keywords onto every page, taking into account every synonym and potential phrase. With AIs designed to determine user intent, exact keyword matches are no longer a priority. By keeping up with current events in the industry you are ensuring that you won’t be blindsided when updates reflect where the industry is naturally going. 

No one knows what updates 2020 will bring, but the best way to be prepared for them is by keeping your website up to date and well maintained. If you think your law firm could use assistance in any of these areas, contact Mockingbird. We work hard to prepare for and manage changes from updates.

When We’re Happy to See Clients Go

We love our clients. We love getting new clients and keeping our more senior clients. There are law firms we’ve worked with for years; working relationships that sit at the very core of our company. We value all of them and hope to see our partnership last long into the future. That being said, losing a client isn’t always sad.

How We Know We Did Our Job Well

Our team always puts in 110% to ensure our clients’ successes, and it’s satisfying to see it pay off. There are single-attorney firms we’ve worked with that started without a website, without ads, and barely with a budget to grow. Once they get to the point where they’re able to hire an in-house marketing team, we know we’ve succeeded. 

 

Not the End of the Road

Just because a client is ending their contract doesn’t mean it’s over. We like to keep in contact, not close any doors. 

 

We also like to keep the door ajar by offering consulting, reporting, and/or collaborative services. Like doting parents watching their kids move out, we’re always here for support and want to know how their lives are going. 

 

The Mutual Benefits

When a client leaves us, we make sure to use that to both of our advantages. We make all of their resources as easy as possible to transfer to their new team, and we ask them to leave us an honest review. This helps us know how we can improve and lets potential clients know the quality of our services. We both walk away better off than when we started.

 

How This is Relevant to Your Firm

Saying goodbye to clients is a staple of running a business. People move, grow, shrink, and change, and it’s a good thing. Unless you’re a corporate lawyer, there aren’t many instances in which you want recurring clients. A divorce lawyer probably doesn’t want to have the same client over and over again; that client isn’t doing well if they’re getting divorce after divorce. You need to know how to say goodbye to your clients. 

By keeping your door open and parting on good terms, that client might not come back but will refer others to you. Turnover is a good thing. If you don’t think so, check out our reviews.

Finding the Secret Pages that Drive Conversions

A lot of value is given to landing pages and top converting pages, and a lot of value should be given to them. They’re what hook consumers in and eventually turn them into clients. 

 

But that isn’t always the whole story. Users tend to spend some time on the website before picking up the phone or filling out a form, so how can you know the full story? Which pages are consistently convincing clients halfway through their journey?

 

Luckily, Google Analytics can help show you exact user paths and accurate conversion assists.

 

What Won’t Help

Goal URLs

 

The Goal URLs tab in GA seems useful until you open it up and see that most of your conversions occurred on your “Thank You” page. Unless Ernest Hemmingway is writing your thank you page, it is unlikely that this is the place where consumers were truly convinced to become a client. 

 

 

Assisted Conversions

 

Assisted conversions are a step above goal URLs, but still fail to tell the whole story. I set up my assisted conversion page to show landing pages, but the default for GA is to show sources. This is great for knowing if your site is driving conversions through SEO and content or through ads (it should be some combination of both), but it isn’t great for knowing user paths once they’re on your site.

 

 

What Will Help

Reverse Goal Path

 

Your reverse goal path tab is your friend. It will show you the three pages the user visited prior to converting, giving you some idea of what pages visitors find intriguing without yet fully convincing them to convert. They gain trust, build interest, and lead the user towards the last-click pages. Remember how a good chunk of our Goal URLs were thank you pages? Check out how many of our goal completion locations are thank you pages, and how many different paths the users took to get there. 

 

 

Another benefit of looking at reverse goal paths is that you can see how well specific pages are doing. The page might not show that it assisted in any conversions, except it might show up in goal paths. If you’re curious, you can search for the page name and see how many conversions it actually assisted in:

 

 

Why You Should Know This

Knowing the path your users take is vital for designing your website. Think of the natural flow provided by internal linking, design, and access to contact info and forms when building your website and adding content. Your users’ goal paths, especially the successful ones, will tell you where to invest your time and energy.

If you feel as though you aren’t getting enough information from your Google Analytics setup or that your website could be improved, contact Mockingbird.