A week after Google updated its review rich results algorithm, as covered and followed by Barry Schwartz of Search Engine Land, review rich results have plateaued around 33 to 36 percent, depending on which analytics tool you use. 

 

 

Mozcast’ SERP Feature Graph showed the largest drop between Monday, September 16th, the day the update was initiated, and Tuesday, September 17th, with a 3 point drop from 39.2 percent to 35.8 percent. From there, it dropped a further 2 points and has stayed steady between 33.2 percent and 33.5 percent. 

 

 

RankRanger’s SERP Insights showed similar results: a sudden drop and a trend towards a plateau. RankRanger varied from Moz by showing the largest drop occurring between September 17th and September 18th, with a difference of 3.8 points. While the days since September 18th have remained between 36.95 percent and 35.34 percent, September 23rd appears to be the start of an upward trend. The 23rd is the first day with a higher percentage of reviews than the previous day since September 15th, before the update.  

This update was made to improve consumer trust in reviews and address the “misleading interpretations webmasters have flagged to [Google],” as stated by Google. This meant removing self-serving reviews, largely posted by the entity under review and posted to their own page. It also meant limiting schema types that trigger review rich results, reducing the number of reviews seen for things consumers may not need reviews for. For more information on why the update was implemented and how to make sure your website doesn’t lose its review rich results, visit Google’s original announcement here.

How do users find your blog posts online? Unless they subscribe to your newsletter or follow you on social media, the answer is likely that they find your content through search engine queries.

Knowing this, it is extremely valuable to develop your content based on what users are searching for.

In a previous article, it was said that to optimize your blog posts for search you should be utilizing keywords. But what are keywords, how do you identify them, and how should they be used within your content?

What are keywords?

According to Moz, “keywords are the words someone types (or speaks!) into a search engine.” There are many factors that determine which result a search engine will serve for a user query, but one major indicator of content relevance is the words that are being used.

Here is an example search query and result:

All of the search terms being used can be found in the title, description, and body of the blog post. This indicates to search engines that the information is relevant to the searcher. In order to have a high performing, traffic and lead driving blog, you must write content that users are searching for.

So, what can you do with this information? Well, you could guess which words your potential audience is using, or you can identify the right keywords like a real SEO pro.

How do you identify keywords?

What is a digital marketer without her tools? When identifying which keywords you should use, it’s helpful to use a keyword planner, such as Moz’s Keyword Explorer.

This tool can help you with your content development with two main features:

1. Explore by Keyword – Type in a word or phrase and get back related keywords.
2. Explore by Site – Type in a webpage or site and get back keywords that it ranks for.

After the list of words is generated, you will need to decide which keywords make the most sense for your content strategy. The two components you should focus on are search volume and difficulty score: The search volume tells you how many people are searching for that keyword each month and the difficulty score will tell you the strength of the pages that are currently ranking for that keyword.

To determine if a keyword presents a good ranking opportunity you must consider both search volume and difficulty.

For example, just because the search volume for a term is low does not mean that you shouldn’t pursue it. If a keyword has a low search volume, but also low difficulty score, you may have a good chance of ranking for that term. If a term has low search volume and a high difficulty score, that may not be a keyword that you should pursue using.

How should keywords be used in your content?

Once you identify the words that your potential clients are searching for, the next step is to implement them into your content.

Topic

One way we suggest brainstorming ideas for blog posts is to consider what questions your clients have asked you in the past. One way to supplement that exercise is by using Serpstat Questions. Once you have identified the keywords you would like to use, you can enter them in the Serpstat and generate popular questions that use that word.

Title & Description

Make sure that you are optimizing the title and description with the keywords that you have identified.

Do Not Keyword Stuff

I repeat, do not keyword stuff. Search engines are not dumb. There was a time in which you could list a bunch of keywords on your page and you might end up ranking. That day has passed.

Today, you must produce quality content that uses keywords organically, not in an unnecessary and contrived manner. Instead of hunting for all of the sentences in which you can cram in your keywords, simply aim to answer the question, the word usage will come naturally (I couldn’t stop using the words “keyword” and “how” in this post if I tried).

Blog Smarter, Not Harder

Many attorneys are of the belief that having an active blog is the key to online success. Most of us have heard the phrase “content is king,” and many of us have bought into it.

While content is important, there is no point pushing out blog posts that no one will read. If you’re currently blogging once a week, but you’re not seeing any results, try cutting it back to once or twice a month, but do your research first. Follow the steps outlined in this article, and keep at it.

You have valuable knowledge, you just have to figure out which pieces of it potential clients are actually searching for.

Earlier this year I joined a quintet of the top legal marketers in the country to put on The Best Damn Legal Marketing Conference (BEDLAM) in Nashville. Attendees were exposed to an irreverent, honest, expert, behind the scenes look into the tactics these agencies use to drive business to their clients as well as dirty agency tricks pulled on the legal community. The content was so good, we were threatened legally by another legal marketing agency. In order to be the best, we did things differently:

• There was an application process and market exclusivity and we only shared tactics with two firms in any given market (practice area + geography). We also turned away a few firms with a history of abusing vendors and/or not paying their bills and ended up turning away about 10% of the prospective attendees.
• No Vendors – no one likes going to a conference with thinly veiled pay-to-pitch sessions.
• There were no sacred cows and we talked frankly about the many systemic technical ways other agencies take advantage of their clients by confusing lexicon, obfuscating reporting and denying access.
• We didn’t distribute presentations and attendees couldn’t photograph or otherwise record the slides.

So back by popular demand, Mockingbird is joining AttorneySync, Juris Digital, GNGF, and Nifty Law to bring you BEDLAM II, held at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, April 1-3.  A few notes:

• As I mentioned at the end of the conference in Nashville – if you’ve already been, I discourage you from attending this followup as much of the content will be very similar.
• We’ve expanded this from 2 to 3 days so attendees have more time to digest the information.
• We’ve added hands on workshops and 1:1 training.
• No Vendors (kind of)…. we’ve invited a short list of market exclusive vendors who all five agencies universally endorse (think CallRail, WPEngine etc.) to attend as our guest…. and still no pay-for-pitching.

Use EARLYBIRD2020 for $200 off the registration fee through the end of December.  

Register

One of the most frequent missed opportunities we see is a poorly defined intake process. For all the effort and expense firms put into getting in front of prospects and encouraging potential clients to call, it’s baffling that the first person-to-person interaction with prospects is so often mishandled.

A well-defined intake process sets the tone for the firm’s success by providing a positive experience from the outset and improving the likelihood that a prospect will be confident signing on as a client.

Even in instances where the firm can’t help or doesn’t have an interest in a particular case, the role of intake is to provide information, and ideally an alternative solution, so the caller doesn’t hang up the phone feeling like the firm was rude, uncaring, or disinterested. One unpleasant interaction over the phone or with front desk staff can lead to a scathing one-star review that paints the firm in a negative light to other potential clients.

Within the legal industry, intake can be exceedingly complex and there are often numerous variables that can make a huge difference in the likelihood of a firm being able to deliver a favorable result. In addition to asking the right questions and getting prospects to share relevant details of their case, the intake staff also needs to maintain a strong rapport with anyone seeking to hire the firm and be available and responsive to any inquiries into the firm’s services.

This means intake staff needs to be:

• Able to reliably answer the phone during business hours
• Capable of responding quickly to online contact forms, text messages, or chat leads
• Empathetic to any hardships or concerns the caller may have, regardless of whether the firm can help
• Great at communicating next steps and making sure the prospective client understands what’s going to happen once they hang up the phone

Very few firms have all of these locked down, but the ones that do are in a strong position to convert their marketing “leads” into actual revenue. For firms that don’t have a reliable intake process (and staff) in place, there are holes in the business that can bleed profit and lead to reputation management issues.

Scenarios that are all too common include:

• Unstaffed phone lines during business hours as employees go to lunch or take breaks
• Slow turnaround time contacting prospects that fill out web forms or inquire through third-party chat vendors
• Staff that assumes callers already understand the legal process or nuances of how their firm works
• Being too quick to dismiss callers once it looks like the inquiry doesn’t align with case types the firm wants or can profit from
• Inadvertently turning away unusual case types the firm does want, but that don’t align with typical inquiries

All of these things can be potentially damaging, and when multiple errors are occurring regularly it’s hard to justify a large marketing budget to drive inquiries that might be mishandled.

Ensuring intake staff are well trained and representing the firm in a professional fashion is one of the most impactful items for generating incremental revenue. Increasing close rates, improving customer experience, and providing a level of service that helps mitigate 1-star reviews from non-clients will go a long way toward improving the overall health of any firm.

If this portion of your practice hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves, contact Mockingbird today for assistance with intake auditing and training.

If your agency dropped off the face of the earth, would you know what tools and logins you need in order to troubleshoot a problem on your website?

If you answered yes, great job!

If you answered no (no shame), here are the most important logins and troubleshooting starting points:

Logins:

1. Website access – you should have full administrative access to your own website. This allows you to add, update, and delete content. It also allows you to manage users, which is very important for when you want to axe your vendors.
2. Registrar – this is where you purchased your domain. Often times, your DNS is managed here.
   • DNS (Domain Name System) – where you connect your domain with certain pieces of information, like an IP Address that displays your website on your domain, or an MX record that connects your email with your domain name.
3. Host – this is where your website’s information is stored, where you can make redirects for pages within your website, and make backups of your site.

*Helpful hint: sometimes your registrar and your host are the same company.

Troubleshooting:

Most big and scary website issues can be solved if you have access to the three tools above. Once you have access to these, you also have access to the support teams for each company. When in doubt, contact support. Most of the time, they’ll be able to pinpoint the problem, and then walk you through the steps to fix it, or even fix it for you.

Helpful Troubleshooting Tips:

1. Make sure you’re using the automatic backup function through your host. We like WPEngine because they do site backups every night. If something breaks on your site, the easiest way to get things back up and running is to restore a backup from when your site was last functioning correctly.
2. Take a screenshot of your DNS records any time you’re about to make an update. If you make a mistake, you can easily revert back to your old settings.

Most Common Reasons Your Site Goes “Down”:

1. Your website hosting server has changed and your IP Address is different. If this has happened, you’ll need to update the “A Record” within your DNS to the new IP address. There are ways to avoid this, like using a nameserver to link your domain and your website, but that’s a lesson for another day.
2. There’s a big red security warning. This is most likely due to an SSL issue. If it is an SSL issue, check with your website host to make sure your subscription is up-to-date. Another reason could be that you’ve added a file or an image that is not secure to a page on your site. The worst case scenario is that your site was hacked. But talking to the support team at your website hosting provider will help you solve the problem.
3. Your domain is for sale because you didn’t renew. Always set your domain to automatically renew so you never lose your domain. If you do forget to renew, login to your registrar and immediately purchase your domain, before someone else does.

This list is far from comprehensive, but these initial steps and tips should provide you with the knowledge and confidence to resolve the majority of unanticipated website issues.

There are many factors that affect the speed of your website. But one that is often overlooked is PHP. PHP is a scripting language used to develop WordPress themes and plugins.

This language is regularly being updated and improved upon, but without regular back end updates, many sites get left in the dust.

The newest version of PHP, PHP 7.3, has just been released. Upgrading from PHP 7.2 to PHP 7.3 can result in a 15% decrease in request processing time (WP Engine).

Speed is a major ranking factor for search engines. Users expect sites to load near instantly, and when they don’t, they move on to the next search result. Knowing this, search engines favor sites with short load times. If your site is too slow, users will be less likely to find your business online.

Even if users do find your business, a long load time may reduce the likelihood that they stay on your site. According to WP Engine, “Slow-loading sites are the number one cause of page abandonment across all audiences.”

Bottom line, a slow website means lost traffic, lost leads, and fewer clients. 

Security

Additionally, PHP 7.3 improves website security. WordPress requires regular software updates in order to ensure security. No major security issues have been detected in PHP 7.2, but it is best practice to keep all components of your website up to date, including PHP. Unlike older versions, PHP 7.3 is actively supported by WP Engine. This means that if vulnerabilities are found, the host will resolve them before a security breach can occur.

Upgrading to PHP 7.3

Updating your website’s PHP is relatively simple, but like any technical change, making this switch does have the potential to cause issues on your site. If you would like your PHP upgrade to be handled by professionals, contact Mockingbird for help.

Your website is ready to launch! Congrats! Now I know you’re excited to get your shiny new site in front of your users, but there are a few critical steps to take before pressing the (figurative) go button.

It may seem like a simple task, but properly launching a website takes technical knowledge and experience. Missing one step can lead to lost domain authority, lost traffic, and bottom line…fewer leads and clients.

Recently a law firm came to us baffled by the fact that their beautiful new website was performing so poorly. Minutes after digging into the site, our team knew that some crucial errors were made during launch. Pages weren’t added and/or redirected properly, 17 backlinks from high domain authority sites were lost, odd pages were being indexed in search results. They spent tens of thousands of dollars on a site that was sinking.

Though these missteps are reversible, it is, of course, better to avoid the traffic drop in the first place.

Here are a few steps you can take to avoid tanking your site traffic:

1) Ensure URLs Match (or Are Handled Properly)

Make sure your new website URLs exactly match your old website URLs. If your old Traumatic Brain Injury practice area page was domain.com/tbi-injury/ make sure it is the same on the new site. If you would like to change it to domain.com/practice-areas/tbi-injury/ make sure that you have a redirect in place. These redirects should ideally be made at the domain level.

2) Uncheck Discourage Search Engines

This may seem like a no-brainer, but this little checkbox can easily go unnoticed. Make sure that you are not asking search engines to ignore your site. Uncheck the box!

3) Update Robots.txt

Make sure that you aren’t asking search engines to not crawl your site through your robots.txt either. The “/” below signifies that you want to block search engines from crawling your entire site. Remove this. Also, not as detrimental, but add your XML sitemap here to show search engines where to find all of your pages.

4) Run a Screaming Frog Crawl

Run another crawl of your site. Make sure that there are no internal 404s or unnecessary 301s within your site. If there are any, fix them!

And much much more…

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to properly executing a site launch. If you truly want to ensure your site launch goes off without a hitch, call a marketing company that knows what they’re doing.

Mockingbird is opening up our Marketing Manger job to someone who hasn’t spent 4 years and a small fortune attending College. The Marketing Manger is an entry-level role designed to transform recently minted College graduates into highly effective tactical online marketers over a 12-36 month period.

I’ve become increasingly convinced that key to success for our clients and therefore my agency, is hiring the right people and providing them with a heavy focus on ongoing training and support combined with the real world, trial by fire reality that is impossible to experience among the vaunted ivory tower of higher education. It has nothing to do with my employee’s alma mater or even their degree. This perspective has been strengthened when I interview business school undergrads – 90% of which can’t calculate a simple ROI.

The reality is that a College degree is simply a marker, albeit a poor one, of the potential in a candidate. And that potential (at least for us) is much more determined by an individual’s analytical curiosity, innate professionalism, genuine nerdiness, and a proactive out-of-the box thinking.

At Mockingbird, our Mission is to “vastly improve the lives of our employees and clients (in that order) through exceptional marketing.” There is no reason that Mission shouldn’t embrace those without the luxury of a College degree. Special consideration for military veterans trying to enter the civilian workforce.