E-A-T: SEO 101

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Researching how to produce the best content can lead a person down a rabbit hole of optimization. Countless articles explain how H1s and H2s can both make and break a page. That adding images will improve your ranking until they slow your page down. Then you find E-A-T. You’re not sure what it is, but you know it relates to the quality of the page.

 

What is E-A-T?

Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. These are the guidelines that Google uses to evaluate the quality of your page. Some of them can be achieved through simple quality content, and some need some outside work. This is why your content department needs to be multifaceted; creating great web pages is a team effort.

Expertise

Part of quality content is quality info. If you aren’t an expert in the area you are writing on, you need to cite your sources and maybe bring on an expert to help you write your piece. Google claims to use a holistic approach to ranking pages, meaning the actual content gets evaluated not just fed through an algorithm. 

A good rule of thumb: if you are providing advice or information, you need to make sure that the information your giving can be backed up by people way more qualified than you.

Authority

Authority is proving your expertise. It means that the author should be clear to the reader and any visitors can easily contact the company or learn more about it. If you are speaking with authority, you need to be able to explain where your attitude is coming from.

Domain authority is important for this and this is where you might need to do a bit of PR work. Chances are your website doesn’t have a high domain authority if it hasn’t been fully established yet, but luckily there are websites that do. This is an opportunity for link-building, or getting articles on more authoritative sites to link to your piece. Either that or you could reach out to more authoritative sites and ask if you can guest-publish an article on their site, linking to your site. Either way, it helps you look like you hang around with a good crowd.

 

Trustworthiness

Is your page a safe space? Do users feel like they might get a virus if they click on anything? Users should feel comfortable exploring your website. Beyond that, your web page should have a point. It should exist to help someone. The purpose of your page should be clear, as should the purpose of the website as a whole. 

 

How does E-A-T affect my page?

It’s important to remember that E-A-T are guidelines and not hard and fast ranking rules. Google has, on multiple occasions, explained that there are no algorithms that spit out ranking numbers based on E-A-T. Instead, there are hundreds of ranking algorithms that all work together to create a page’s rank.

Instead of thinking of E-A-T as a series of gymnastics elements that must be perfectly executed to achieve a score of 9.8, think of it as a way to ensure your posture, uniform, and style are optimized before going out and dancing before the judges (I don’t know gymnastics I’m sorry to any gymnasts who might be reading this). They don’t judge directly on those aspects, but they certainly help.

 

I’m still confused. Can you just do this for me?

If you are a law firm, then yes! Mockingbird works in website building and maintenance to make sure it looks trustworthy, PR for link building, and can help to plan content production. Contact us today to help you understand your website!

BEDLAM Named One of the Top 11 Legal Conferences Lawyers Need to Attend

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The first BEDLAM Conference took place only 8 months ago, and it’s already gaining heat in the legal marketing world. Answering Legal recently dubbed BEDLAM one of the top 11 legal conferences lawyers need to attend.

Creating the Best Damn Legal Marketing Conference

We try our best to be humble, so pardon our bragging, but we believe the rank is well-deserved. The BEDLAM Conference is the culmination of years of combined experience in every facet of the legal marketing industry. Mockingbird’s founder, Conrad Saam, began his career in legal by running marketing for Avvo. When Conrad began at Avvo, it was just a spark of an idea:

One of the keys to [Avvo’s] success was a very deep understanding of search engine optimization. Through our skill in search, Avvo surpassed the established players in the legal industry – Conrad Saam

After leaving Avvo, Conrad took the knowledge he gained and created Mockingbird: an upfront, honest agency made up of data-loving nerds with business mindsets.

Throughout his career, Conrad has made connections with the top minds of the legal marketing industry. Among them are four of the speakers at BEDLAM:

  1. Mike Ramsey, Founder of Nifty
  2. Gyi Tsakalakis, Founder of AttorneySync
  3. Mark Homer, Founder of GNGF
  4. Casey Meraz, Founder of Juris Digital

The Agencies I’d Refer My Brother To

At Mockingbird, we take our ten commandments very seriously. Among our commandments are:

#2 – We are Responsible for our Clients’ Livelihoods
#5 – White Hat to a Fault

We rely on these commandments to guide us in every facet of our business — including who we choose to partner with.

Beyond their expertise, the speakers (and vendors) at BEDLAM are trustworthy, no BS individuals. They are the sort of people who will answer your questions honestly, whether you like the answer or not. This is why we chose to partner with them to create this truly one of a kind conference.

The Knowledge

Over the course of three days, these legal marketing experts will take a deep dive into just about everything related to legal marketing, including:

  • Website functionality
  • Speed improvements
  • Review management
  • Google Analytics setup
  • Link building tactics
  • Advertising strategies
  • Lead tracking
  • And more…

We encourage attendees to come with all of their burning questions. But like I said, we pride ourselves on zero BS so prepare yourself for the honest answer:

Commandment # 3 – Don’t Make Clients Happy – Make Them Successful

Don’t pander to misguided strategies or humor foolhardy requests from clients just to keep them happy. We will argue with a client instead of wasting her money.

We Hope to See You There!

Learn more and apply to attend BEDLAM, here.

The first 50 applications get $200 off with code: EARLYBIRD2020, so get on it!

How AI and Machine Learning are Helping Your Website

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Computer systems have been learning on their own since the 1960s, and they have been advancing rapidly in recent years. The most notable recent addition to the AI family is BERT, Google’s new user intent interpreter. BERT, like many search engine programs, is designed to improve user experience and can help to improve site metrics for webmasters. For it to do this, it first needs access to lots of data.

 

AI vs Machine Learning

AI and machine learning can look similar from a distance; both are programs that work to mimic and understand human behaviors. The difference between the two is largely semantic, and one cannot exist without the other.

Machine learning is a key aspect of how AI is designed. The process of machine learning is characterized by feeding the program huge amounts of data to the point where it can replicate and predict human behaviors. Machine learning is the process and AI is the product.

 

How they affect your website

Your website is constantly being reviewed by automated programs, whether they’re crawling, indexing, analyzing, or simply learning from it. The most benevolent of these programs can use machine learning to prevent employee fraud and track third party cookies. 

The more malevolent of the programs are searching for insecurities and opportunities to compromise the security of the website for its makers and users.

 

Optimizing for AI

Since AI is built from machine learning, and machine learning is built from large amounts of data created by humans, there is no solid way to optimize for AI-run search engines. That means that BERT cannot be negotiated with.

The best way to optimize for machine learning and AI is by producing good content and a website that follows SEO best practices.

Why You Should Be Checking Your Bounce Rate

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Relatively underrated compared to such metrics as “pageviews,” a page’s bounce rate shouldn’t be ignored. It’s important to know how many of your website’s pages were the first and last of your website a consumer ever saw. Knowing this might help you to improve your pages.

 

Judging Bounce Rates

Just like limbo at a party, you want it as low as possible for everyone. That being said, different pages will inherently have different bounce rates. Informational pages are likely to have higher rates due to the audience’s ability to get the information they were looking for and leave. Contact pages are likely to have lower rates because very few people click into a contact page from a browser. 

When looking at bounce rates, it’s important to remember page content and user intent. 

 

Improving Bounce Rates

If you want to improve your bounce rate you have to focus on user experience. This means optimizing everything.

 

Page Speed

Nothing gets a user to leave like making them wait. Compress your images, check your loading speeds, and making any necessary changes.

 

Page Design

Look at your pages as if you had never seen them. Are they visually appealing? Are they thematically consistent? Do they make you trust the website? Would it be easy to find an enticing next page to visit? 

If the answer to any of these questions is “no,” fix it. Your page is your front entryway. If a visitor enters and doesn’t feel comfortable they’re going to leave.

 

Optimize Content

Content should be optimized for fast reading. That means short sentences and short paragraphs. It also means that the content needs to be useful and relevant. Don’t sacrifice quality for brevity; you can write a longer piece if you really need to.

 

Internal Linking

If your page is well written, interesting, well designed, and loads quickly, one of the best ways to get people to go to a different page is with internal linking. This allows easy access to other pages on the website. We’ve all been down Wikipedia rabbit-holes and ended up learning about the history of some bridge in North Dakota.

If you think your website needs to improve the bounce rate on some (or all, we don’t judge) of its pages, contact us and we can help you figure out how to find and improve your bounce rate.

Why Did Google Remove My Reviews?

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Getting a good review is one of the best things for you as a business. It’s a great feeling to receive affirmation from a client that you provided superior service, as well the fact that it helps to persuade potential clients to hire your firm. It can be frustrating as a business owner when you realize that one of your hard-earned Google My Business reviews has been removed. But where did it go and why?

Reasons That May Cause a Review to Disappear

There are a few reasons why Google may have removed a review from your profile. The most common is that Google’s spam detection algorithm has flagged some of your reviews, and they have been removed from your company’s listing. The review could also have been flagged for review by a competitor or any other user that felt the review did not comply with Google’s Guidelines.

Here are some of the common elements that may cause a review to be flagged and removed:

  • The Review Contains a URL
  • The person who wrote the review is an account manager or employee.
  • The review was left from the same computer/IP address that you sign into to manage your listing in Google My Business.
  • The review was left from the same IP address as other users who left you a review.
  • The client tried to post a review for you several times on different dates.
  • You hired an SEO company to post reviews for you.
  • The review was left from an onsite review station at your location.
  • You are offering incentives for clients who wrote the reviews.
  • The review contains a word that is against Google Guidelines.
  • The reviewer is not in close proximity to your business.

Outside of these common infractions, it could be due to a bug that is affecting the platform.

What you can do

Depending on the reason why the review was removed, it can be difficult to have the problem addressed or have the review reinstated. If a legitimate review was detected and accidentally removed by Google’s algorithm in an effort to remove fake reviews, it may or may not be restored. Even reaching out to support will not prove to be very helpful as they are unable to view or restore reviews that have been removed as part of spam-fighting efforts.

If you think it may be related to a recent bug, only time will tell whether the issue gets resolved. There is nothing account owners can do as the problem is all on Google’s end.

If you still maintain a great relationship with the client, they may be able to edit and repost their review to meet community guidelines. This may cause the review to be displayed on your company’s listing again.

Even though it’s frustrating when legitimate reviews are removed on accident, I choose to remain positive that Google is trying to solve the growing problem of fake reviews online and will continue to get better at identifying and removing reviews in the future.

The Effects of Google Search Console’s Speed Reports

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Google just announced the rollout of a new report in their Search Console, a report six months in the making. Designed to let webmasters quickly identify problems and areas for improvement, the new reports will show which pages have fast speeds and which are slow, as well as which pages have identifiable issues. The speed reports will have a ripple effect on page quality and views. 

 

Graph showing sample speed report
Sample Speed Report, from webmasters.googleblog.com

 

Bounce Rate

One of the main causes of a high bounce rate is slow loading speeds. With the technology to identify which pages are slow, webmasters can improve bounce rates. This will help to increase conversions and site visits in general.

 

Identifying Updates

Knowing when to upgrade plugins can be difficult for novice webmasters, at no fault of their own. Running a website means keeping track of many moving parts, often while also running a business. Having speed reports can help webmasters identify which pages need their plugins updated.

 

Improving Site Design

Many slow sites can find the culprit for their speed in the design of their site. This could mean that they’re using too many fancy features, their images are too large, or they’re using embedded videos. If a page is being marked as slow without having an issue, it could be an indicator that it should be optimized.

Running a website is tough work and can require a level of expertise and commitment that not everyone is willing to devote. That’s a role that Mockingbird Marketing is ready to fill. We build and manage websites for law firms, including doing routine maintenance and technical audits. If you want to know more about how Google’s new speed reports can help your business, call us!

BERT: The Newest AI

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It’s Halloween today and I tried to think of something spooky, and an AI that can think like a human is normally pretty scary. Sadly, a program named BERT that’s just trying its best to help people find what they’re looking for isn’t exactly the Skynet scenario that’s built to frighten. Anyway, onwards with the informative part:

 

What does BERT do?

BERT is Google’s most advanced user-intent AI. Its algorithm will help the search console decipher vague queries. Google has employed user-intent AI’s in the past, but BERT is more advanced than the past programs could have ever dreamed to be.

 

What results does BERT affect?

BERT is still in the process of being rolled out but is expected to impact upwards of 10% of searches. It will affect rankings on those searches and can also impact featured snippets. What’s important to remember is that this update is designed to improve user experience, not webmaster experience.

 

Can I optimize for BERT?

Nope. BERT is not designed to be optimized for. If your content is relevant and well designed for the user’s intent you might have a better chance of ranking higher than in the past, but that is up to BERT. You cannot negotiate with BERT.

 

How does BERT work?

BERT was designed through open sourcing, machine learning, and many Google employees working overtime. It is described on the Google AI blog as “deeply bidirectional, unsupervised language representation, pre-trained using only a plain text corpus (in this case, Wikipedia).”

 

So how should I proceed with my content?

Keep making good content, keep making it relevant. The same rules that applied before still apply now. 

If you’re unsure how to create a content plan or optimize your website for the modern age, contact Mockingbird Marketing and we can talk about it!

Hosting Hack: PHP 7 Vulnerability

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The Vulnerability

Over the weekend, a vulnerability was found within recent versions of the PHP7 programming language. The vulnerability allows hackers to take over servers through a remote code execution (RCE). Luckily, not all PHP servers were affected.  More technical information can be found here. 

Our Clients

Thankfully for Mockingbird’s clients, who host through our provider (WP Engine), the vulnerability was not an issue.

 

“WP Engine Security has reviewed the recent PHP vulnerability and have determined that we are not vulnerable because at least one of the NGINX prerequisites is not present.” -WP Engine

Next Steps

If your site is not hosted by WP Engine, I strongly advise that you reach out to your host and have them check your server settings for the vulnerability, and then update to the most recent version of PHP.  If the host has not already handled this, It may be a good time to think about switching to a new hosting company.

How We Can Help

At Mockingbird, we realize that you have way more important things to worry about than technical maintenance and hosting issues. That is why we recently launched our maintenance package. Our goal is to bring you peace of mind, knowing that the technical aspects of your site are monitored and maintained. Not to mention, top of the line hosting on WP Engine is included!

Call us today to learn more about our maintenance package, and any of our other digital marketing services.

Please Spend Time on Your Practice Area Pages

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Imagine a consumer going through a crisis. A legal crisis. They turn to your practice, visit your website, and check your practice area pages for the crisis they’re currently in. What do you want them to see?

 

The Bare Minimum

If you want that consumer to become a client you need to show them what they need to see. That is:

  • Whether you cover their type of case
  • Some advice on their crisis so that they know you know what you’re talking about
  • Assurances that you have experience
  • Personal touches to prove that you aren’t just a machine that spits out legalize 

 And, most importantly:

  • More than a single paragraph that briefly describes their crisis and then tells them to call

 

Flesh It Out (Just a Bit)

So now you have the basics of what your page should have. Let’s add some more.

Things that aren’t difficult to add to your page but really do help include:

  • Pictures
  • FAQs
  • Links to resources
  •  Internal linking
  • Past case results
  • Reviews/testimonials

Some of these (FAQs, results, testimonials) might already be available elsewhere on your website. Put a few of them on your practice area pages as well. Give the consumer more information than they need, make them feel like you’re willing to put in the effort. 

 

Content is Worth It

Organic traffic is the most common form of internet traffic, by far (pdf). Failing to adapt your pages for SEO is turning away potential clients before they even get to the door. We get it, lawyers are busy. You shouldn’t be spending your time writing and designing practice pages. Luckily, you can pay other people to do that for you.

If you would like to set up a plan for your website’s content, contact us and we can help you figure out what you need. You might be busy, but, with our help, your firm might be a lot busier.