Don’t Neglect Your Firm’s Social Media

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We live in a social world, and if you fail to participate you are failing your business. While many aspects of social media are fast-moving and trendy, near impossible for a hard-working firm to keep up with, simply having a presence will help build organic traffic to your website. Luckily, social media pages are easy to set up.

 

The Basics

To set up a basic social media presence, stick to the main 3 platforms: Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. To be honest, you probably don’t even really need Instagram unless one of your attorneys has a passion for taking artsy photos of just out of focus legal briefs. As for Facebook, you can set up a business page with all of your information, which you should do. A Facebook business page gives you a platform to keep all your information. Even if you have a Google My Business profile, the more places you have your information the better.

The basic information you want to have on Facebook and Twitter is about the same as your Google My Business profile: address, hours, contact information, link to your website. Social media will also allow you to present your business to a wider audience. Make sure photos of your firm and your lawyers are easily accessible on your page(s). This adds credibility to your business and gives your internet presence a more personal feeling.

 

Adding More

Once the basics of your page have been set up, you can further increase traffic by uploading regularly. You can do this simply by connecting your legal blog to your social media firm. This will help your social media feed to remain active and increase the readership of your blog. If you don’t have a blog, consider starting one. If you don’t want to start one, try just sharing relevant articles. Active social media feeds let clients know that your business is still running with lawyers that keep up to date with current events. Post business updates: new hires, successful cases, attendance at conferences. Every detail about your firm will be a deciding factor for your potential clients, so give them as many good and honest details as you can.

 

If you already have a social media page make sure to check on it regularly. If you change offices update the address. Check and see if the page has photos. Think of your business as a person: if you (not your business) got contacted by someone you didn’t know and when you looked them up all you could find was a Facebook page with no photos or posts, that was made in 2007. You wouldn’t trust that person. The same goes for your firm. Make sure your firm is more trustworthy than the twelve-year-old empty profile of a stranger.

For advice on building a social media page or resources on improving your website’s traffic, contact us. We love lawyers!

You Need to Improve Your Firm’s Brand Story

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So you have a good business, you treat your clients well, your firm works hard, and yet your presence is barely felt online. You’ve worked on SEO, PPC, and every other acronym your digital marketing team has thrown at you. Maybe you need to improve your brand story, for both you and your clients.

 

The Client’s Story

Unless they’ve been referred by a friend, it’s unlikely that your client will show up at your website without first doing research into their case and other lawyers. This is that client’s story you need to work on. They need to go from not knowing you, recognizing your brand, to trusting you, to converting. 

This process begins with the client researching their problem, which is when you can come in with information. This is why having an informative and accessible blog is essential. If you’re a personal injury firm, maybe your client will find a blog about settlements from trampoline-related injuries when they’re researching how common the injuries they sustained on their friend’s trampoline are. 

Once they decide to take action, they will hopefully have your brand in the back of their heads as they research local law firms. Once the name is familiar, they are more likely to look into your firm. As they’re comparing firms, you need to make sure your personal brand story stands out.

 

Your Brand Story

Remember the three arts of rhetoric: Pathos, Ethos, and Logos. That’s right, we’re going back to High School English. Consider what makes your firm different, what gives it the upper-hand. 

What brought everyone into the firm and why do you do what you do? Pull those pathos strings; get them emotionally involved.  

What makes your lawyers so good? Was it their schooling? Their years of experience? Maybe they clerked for superior court judges in their youth. Show your potential client that you have the knowledge and authority to win the case. You must wow them with your ethos.

Finally, explain why your firm is the practical option. If you’re a personal injury lawyer who only charges a contingency fee, you’re probably more practical for someone trying to repair their life that a lawyer who costs $1,200/hour. If you’re a local business you are easily accessible to anyone nearby and know all the local regulations. You are the logical option, and you need to prove it with logos.

 

What If My Story Isn’t Interesting?

Any story can be interesting if it’s told correctly. Focus on emotions where the details get dry, focus on details when there aren’t many emotions to talk about and talk about your hopes for your brand’s future when there’s not much to say about emotions or details. Every person has some motivation for being where they are, and yours and your clients’ need to align when they find your website. Whatever you do, don’t make up your story. Fabricated details and emotions are easy to sense and can push potential clients away, even if they aren’t quite sure why. People respond to honesty. 

If you need help building your brand story or increasing your brand awareness, contact us and we will help you plan a comprehensive marketing strategy.

Structuring Your Page for SEO

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Whether you’re building a page for an article, a blog, a product review, or a practice area, the way you structure your page is vital for Search Engine Optimization. From the design to the programming to the writing, you should always keep the big picture in mind before publishing.

 

Design

Your webpage should also be user-friendly first. This means the visuals are pleasing and the color scheme is easy to read. If the website looks good enough for the consumer to stay and read its contents, you’re on the right track. For improved reading and improved SEO, make sure you use headings in your text. These allow readers to easily scroll through your text to find the section they’re looking for, and it lets Google know the contents of the website. Don’t be afraid of having multiple “Heading 1’s,” as Google has ensured webmasters that despite certain less than honest tactics, the search engine can look past them.

 

Programming

The success of your site should rest on a foundation of solid programming, with special consideration taken to page speed and crawler accessibility. I’ll be honest, I know nothing about programming or coding, but if you’re building a website you or someone on your team should. 

 

Writing

As mentioned before, make sure your content is properly labeled with headings. As for the actual writing, try not to be Hemmingway or James Joyce. You want your writing to be comprehensive, but not rambling. If possible, work links into your writing as naturally. This will help Google connect your page to other pages on your website, as well as other websites. 

Your website is your company’s connection to the largest human network in history, and if you don’t set it up for people to visit you are wasting time and money. If you need help setting up a website for your law firm contact us here at Mockingbird Marketing. Optimizing web pages is what we do!

If Google Ads Runs Itself Now, What do We do?

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Google Ads have been getting more sophisticated and closer to full automation over the recent years, all the while causing panic for those who make their living in SEO and PPC. This is a well-known never-ending crisis, as evidenced by blogs and articles from the early 2010s. Recent developments by Google have done very little to quell these fears, as updates introduce features like automated ad suggestions and automated extensions, which write, design, and post ads with little to no help from the human in charge. This leaves the question: what is our role?

 

Just Because its Automated Doesn’t Mean it Has to Be

 While Google Ads have the capacity to be fully automated, they probably shouldn’t be, for the good of your campaigns and your wallet. Many of the default options for Google Ads serve Google more than you. You know your target market, and it’s more narrow than Google’s Display Network. Until further notice, you and Google have conflicting goals: Google wants your ad to be seen by as many people as possible, and you want your ad to be seen by people who are likely to click-through. SEO experts will always have a place as long as there are options to customize ad reach and visibility. 

 

Content Works Best When Written By Humans For Humans

We’ve all read scripts written by ai, and we all know that people still have the upper hand when it comes to writing for human readers, for now at least. Humans, and SEO experts, in particular, are particularly skilled in writing content that optimized for the guidelines of Google rankings as well as holding the interest of a human reader. We have that touch of emotion and a unique voice that has yet to be properly replicated.

 

Humans Can Connect Broader Concepts

Direct traffic has little data connected to it, making it difficult to use in analytics. Luckily, SEO experts are able to make sense of where traffic can come from, even if they don’t have an accessible browser history. They can see that the person went to the website from a mobile device shortly after their ad was played on TV. People have a better ability to think outside the box, which is why advertisements look different than they did in the 1970s. Times and trends change when people try new things, a concept that doesn’t work as well for computer programs.

 

In Conclusion, Your Industry Is (Probably) Safe

While automation has a tendency to remove people from certain steps of the digital marketing equation, it has yet to make them obsolete, and since this worry has been pretty consistent for almost a decade now without the disappearance of the industry, you will probably be fine. Just remember to hold onto the skills the robots can’t replicate.

Title Tags: What They Are, How They Work, and How to Write Them

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Those working with WordPress/Yoast SEO will know title tags from setting up their homepage, but not much beyond that. Due to this, it can be easy to neglect title tags when building a website. This is a mistake, and I’ll tell you why.

 

What they are

Title tags are incredibly important to SEO and page rankings by helping to communicate the purpose of the page in its code. HTML title tags are similar to page headlines but are often more to the point and describe the basic function of the page. A seen below, the page title for the New York Times is “The New York Times,” but the title tag (visible in the scroll-over text in the upper left-hand corner) is “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia.” 

 

How they work

Title tags work by telling search engines the content of the page. This is how title tags can improve rankings: a well tagged page will make it easier for the search engine to connect users with the website. If the tags are relevant to the page, it will show up in relevant searches, even if none of the keywords from the page title are searched.

 

How to write them

As previously stated, title tags need to be relevant to the content of the page, with specific enough keywords for search engines to be able to categorize them. This focus on keywords might make it tempting to cram your title tag full of any relevant word or phrase, but be warned: Google automatically trims long title tags. This can be seen above, where “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia” is cut into “The New York Times – Breaking News, World News …” If Google considers your tag too long or insufficiently informative, they will rewrite them. If your title tags are concise and informative, Google will probably leave them as you wrote them. In summary: you can make your title tags long if you want to, but Google might take over.

6 Ways for Clients to Find You (SEO 101)

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If you are a veteran to SEO and digital marketing, you probably already know the ins and outs of search engines, internal linking, and any way a client might be able to get to your page. If you’re not a veteran, all these terms might be a bit overwhelming. This is a list of the six basic types of traffic your website might get, and this is for you.

 

1. Organic traffic

Often considered the best type of traffic, organic traffic describes when a client searches something related to your business and ultimately find their way to your page. You don’t have to pay to get them there, they find you on their own. It’s the romantic meet-cute of web-traffic.

The best way to increase your organic traffic is to improve your website SEO. Work with Google’s algorithms to increase your page rankings, and make sure to have content the client both wants and trusts. 

 

2. Paid Traffic

Paid traffic is made up of clients who got to your page by clicking through an advertisement. There’s some overlap between paid and social traffic, but for the sake of this article let’s say that paid traffic is any advertisement on any web-platform. 

Advertising will only increase your customer base if the page they land on is well built. If a client clicks on an advertisement and finds a slow page with bad content, they’re likely to bounce (leave the page in less than 10 seconds without interacting with any aspect of the page). Advertising costs money, so make sure you make it worth it for the people who click-through.

3. Social Traffic

Social media is a huge opportunity for growing your brand presence, and if you don’t have a solid presence on whatever platforms are popular in your country you’re neglecting a huge portion of your market. Not only will a presence on social media open you up to a much larger client base, but it will also help to build your brand identity. At the very least, it will be an easy access point for customers to find information about you. Even if you never post anything make sure to put all your information on your social media platforms. Business location, hours, contact info, all this will make your business feel more trustworthy and accessible.

 

4. Local Traffic

Local traffic is only really relevant if your business has a physical location that customers can visit. If this is your business, its vital that you set up your business information on the main Location Citation Sources. This will help build your local customer base and increase the trustworthiness. 

Local traffic is the more palpable version of social traffic: set it up well and people will find you without knowing who you are; just set it up and people who know who you are will be able to find you.

 

5. Referred Traffic

Referral traffic comes from clients following links from other webpages. Maybe they found their way to the website of your furniture business through a link you put on a Smithsonian article about antique chairs. Maybe they found their way to a legal blog through a random link to a 2017 post about the State of New York banning child marriage. Referral traffic is a significant percentage of web traffic, and link-building is a task that shouldn’t be neglected. The number of links referring to your website helps to build your page rankings in search engines like Google.

 

6. Direct Traffic

Direct traffic comes from people typing your URL into their browser or clicking on a bookmarked link. Direct traffic can be hard to analyze, as there’s no real information on why or from where the client decided to visit your website. This isn’t ideal for tracking client behaviors or knowing what changes to make to optimize your online presence, but it is traffic.  

 

There is overlap within these subsections of web traffic: Facebook Ads blending from paid into social, links in Twitter posts sitting on the intersection of referral and social, a local news article linking your local law firm bridging the gap between local and referral. The best way to increase your traffic from all origins is to make sure your website follows SEO best practices and is prepared for optimal user experience.

Branded and Unbranded Keywords: When to Use Which

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Consumers have a better and better idea of what they’re looking for when they search for something online, whether they care about specific brands or not. This allows them to use keywords that your brand can benefit from. The problem comes when trying to decide whether or not to have your keywords or phrases as branded or unbranded. As it turns out, distinguishing between the two is simple.

Branded keywords work best when referring to features of the business that may not be present in other locations. If the manager of a hotel in a chain wanted people to remember that their branch has a breakfast with espresso drinks they might want to capitalize on searches for “[hotel brand] in [location] with espresso” and “[hotel brand] near [location] with good coffee.” 

A business that already has a strong local foundation is optimized for branded keywords. They help repeat customers to find businesses they enjoyed or had unique features they wanted to revisit or comment on. 

Unbranded keywords help to build a business and only work well when sufficient details of the business have been provided. Google’s local searches won’t help you if Google doesn’t know where you are. Make sure you have your address, phone number, hours, and website easily accessible. These are important for both branded and unbranded searches.

When choosing unbranded keywords, focus on the foundational aspects of your business. Are you a family/locally owned, vegan cafe? Those are your keywords. The consumers performing unbranded searches are the easiest to convert into first-time customers. If they cared about brands, they would have done a branded search. Unbranded keywords are your opportunity to catch the attention of new customers, while branded keywords help you to convert them into a reliable consumer base.

When deciding on branded and unbranded keywords, it’s not a question of “either/or,” both are required to keep a business running and customers spending.

9 Keyword Research Tips and Tricks

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Simply put, you should be writing content that your customers need. The goal is for a potential client to stumble across a page on your site and think, “these people know what they’re talking about, I’ll give them a call”. Given that basic premise of content writing, there are a lot of ways to go about getting inspiration for what your customers need to find. Here are 9 quick and easy ways to figure out what you should be writing about, drawing on personal experience and two great articles by localvisibilitysystem and Moz.

1. Google Ads Keyword Planner

This is the default source for most SEOs. Log into Google Ads, “Tools and Settings”, “Keyword Planner”, “Discover New Keywords”, and start firing away. This tool will give search volume for any term you type in by location, which can guide you as you build out content addressing high search volume phrases to start competing in search results. It’s worth a look to check search results for content quality on a given search term to see you if might outperform it with better content of your own. At the same time, this tool is helpful for identifying content opportunities for lower traffic, more specific topics.

 

2. Google Trends

This tool is helpful for identifying popular search terms. I’ve found this to be more helpful on a larger scale, helpful at the beginning of your keyword research to get a general sense for where things are heading. This tool has location settings in addition to timeframe settings. A helpful tip for using this tool is the “Related Topics” section. Whatever keywords you add will be followed by similar but different suggested terms, very helpful when piecing together what you need on your site. Below I typed in “Family Law” and Google Trends came back with a number of specific related terms.

3. “Google Suggests”

It sounds simple because it is. Just type in the beginning of a search term and see what Google recommends you finish it with. These are popular searches that Google thinks you might be going for. Below are a few opportunities for content based on typing in “Family Law”

4. Competitor Analysis

Check out what your competitors are writing about. This will not only give you ideas of where you need to build out content on your site to start competing directly with those pages you find, but can also lead to inspiration for spin-offs and similar-but-different pages for you to start working on.

5. Moz Keyword Explorer

Similar to to Google Ads Keyword Planner, Moz’s tool will give you related terms for inspiration as well as SERP analysis and other functionalities for a new perspective. Unless you’re paying for Moz Pro, this has a monthly quota.

6. Your Own Reviews

Moving on to a few more creative ways to gather keyword research, try checking out your own review. After running down the reviews you’ve been collecting over time in Google My Business, Yelp, Facebook, Avvo, or anywhere else, see if you can pick apart any trends. Reviews will tend to mention the things that are important to them in reviews, wether that be a particular type of case, product, or service. It’s often the case that at least a few of the things mentioned in reviews are being sought after by other people and warrant a page of content.

7. Competitor Reviews

Just like your own reviews, competitor reviews can unearth valuable trends. See what your competitors clients liked/didn’t like, and write about that.

8. Competitor’s QAs in Google My Business

The QA section of your own and competitor’s Google My Business listings can bring valuable insights into what people want to know. This is basically a tiny version of a search engine with some users putting exactly what they’re wondering straight to your listing. Trends in what customers are wondering can often be valuable as pages.

9. Directory Categories

Run through some online directories like Avvo, Lawyers.com, or Superlawyers to see what categories they are using to segment out a given practice area. More often than not, these categories are heavily researched by the directories, doing some of the work for you. This can be used as a baseline to make sure any category showing up popular directories is showing up on your website as well.

 

 

Yoast Opting Users In to Snippet Update

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Google’s recent core update included a feature, or at least the announcement of an upcoming feature, changing the search engine’s “Opt-Out” policy regarding snippets and website previews to an “Opt-In” policy. The update will give webmasters a variety of options regarding snippet word-count, preview video length, and whether or not to show a snippet at all.

Why

This update, set to launch late-October, is in response to a recently implemented French copyright law requiring search engines to offer “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” options for webmasters. This is the first implementation of Europe’s new copyright laws, which Google is complying with by providing more snippet options.

Will it Affect Me

Users of Yoast SEO don’t have to worry about their Google snippets vanishing and costing them valuable web traffic; Yoast announced a company-wide policy that they will still offer the “Opt-Out” option for their users but will have all their websites automatically opted-in to snippets unless they were opted-out before the update. 

What Should I Do

While Google’s update isn’t set to launch for another few weeks, Yoast SEO has announced its update for October 1st. George Nguyen, in a blog post for Search Engine Land, recommends that Yoast users who aren’t interested in the new snippet features shouldn’t update to version 12.2, and for those who do want to take part in the new features to keep track of their max-snippet limits for each of their pages.

 

 This new update won’t have an impact on your Google rankings but could affect your rich results if you get opted out of snippets. This could affect traffic to your page the previously came from rich results, which is why Yoast SEO automatically opted its users in. If you are a Yoast SEO user who does not want to take part in Google’s snippets or rich results, make sure your preferences say so before or after Yoast’s version 12.2 update. If you do want to take part in snippets, still check and make sure all your preferences are up to date and to your liking after the update October 1st.