Should I Think About Gender When Considering My Audience?

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The most important thing about marketing is knowing your audience. You want to design your content and advertising campaigns built around your clients. But how in-depth should you go in your targeting? Where are the lines between catering and discriminating?

 

Let’s start by saying I don’t have any solid answers to these philosophical questions. I’m not a gender studies expert, but I do know my way around Google Analytics.

 

How to Find Gender in Your Audience on Google Analytics

Audience → Demographics → Gender

Gender is located in the demographics section of Google Analytics and provides a selection of data sets including average bounce rate, session duration, and conversion rate for both parties. 

 

Unless your product is specifically targeted at a certain gender (i.e, child custody lawyers for men, maternity discrimination employment lawyers, you get the idea) narrowing down your market is probably not the best for business. Don’t cut your audience if you don’t have to.

 

How to Utilize the Gender Data in Google Analytics

So you have bounce rates, conversion rates, and various other datasets. If you add the secondary dimension of “Landing Page” you can see which pages are driving which traffic. Some pages will perform better among men, some will perform better among women. That’s pretty normal. 

 

What you really want to look for is when your firm isn’t offering a gendered service, but one gender dominates sessions and conversions. Or, alternatively, sessions are roughly even, but one dominates conversions. This indicates that something in your content is more appealing to one gender. 

 

Bounce rates and session duration are good indicators of this. If both genders have roughly the same number of unique sessions, but one immediately bounces away, you are actively sending away half of your audience. 

 

If you’re okay with this, you can lean into it. Incorporate gender biases into your content and your marketing. I personally don’t feel like this is your best option, but It’s not my call.

 

If you’re not okay with this, you can try to adapt the content of your site to be more welcoming to everyone. This might help you build out your audience. You can begin by looking at which pages have the highest bounce rates among your non-dominant audience and trying to understand what’s causing those drop-offs. 

 

When you actively try to be more open to all clients, it helps more clients come to you. You shouldn’t limit your audience by metrics that aren’t relevant to your business.

Everything to Know About Featured Snippets

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There are some terms that are thrown around among SEOs that can be loosely understood through context clues, but are easy to confuse. A good example of one of these is featured snippets and their siblings, knowledge panels. We’re going to be talking about featured snippets today.

 

What are Featured Snippets?

Featured snippets show up at the top of the organic search results and quickly answer questions while linking to a site. 

This is different from a knowledge panel, which appears on the side of the search results. You’ve seen them if you’ve ever searched for an actor, writer, or city. 

 

Why are SEOs Obsessed with Featured Snippets?

As with everything SEO, featured snippets provide an opportunity for users to see their site as an authority and will increase organic traffic. When it comes to Google rankings, snippets count as a rank of zero; as good as it gets. As far as things SEOs obsess over, Google rankings are pretty high up there.

 

SEOs have recently been focused on snippets because Google has been going back and forth about whether to remove the website from the first page of organic search results. Until the recent uncertainty, if a page both ranked highly and got a featured snippet, they would appear twice in the search results. This increases the chances of driving traffic. If Google follows through on the change, the page will only rank once: for the snippet.

 

Obviously, ranking twice is doubly as great as ranking once, so the idea of Google de-duplicating the results aren’t making people very happy.

 

How to Get a Featured Snippet

Ready to go down a spiral? No one can guarantee to rank for a featured snippet. There are clearly ways to improve your chances, and things you can do that will make it incredibly unlikely for you to get the slot, but beyond that, it’s up to Google. If you want to learn more about the nitty-gritty technical side, I recommend Brodie Clark’s article on MozBlog on the featured snippet algorithm. 

 

For a reference on what our snippet page looks like, here it is:

If you want to know the basics on how to set up a page to be snippet-ized, here are a few simple steps:

  1. Write informative content that is in demand. If you can answer a common question in an accessible way, that just might be snippet-material.
  2. Format it for Google. Organize your page with bulleted lists and headers. This helps Google know exactly what’s on your page.
  3. Follow Google’s best practices. There are some types of content that are banned from being in Snippets. There are pieces of content that include material that is:
    • Sexually explicit;
    • Hateful;
    • Violent;
    • Dangerous/harmful; and
    • Topics without public consensus
  4. Improve your domain authority. One of the highest factors in Google’s ranking decisions is how trustworthy your site is. This means improving your link building networks and getting some referring sites with some authority.

 

While none of these things can guarantee a featured snippet, they all help your chances of getting one.

The Ups and Downs of Facebook Marketing

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Facebook Ads and the legal industry have had a complicated relationship. Due to the private matters covered by lawyers and the very public venue of Facebook, clients aren’t always jumping out of their seats to click on ads about the more sensitive issue in their lives. Even if they do click on the ad, they often won’t convert immediately.

 

This can be brutally obvious when you look at where your website traffic is coming from, and what’s turning into conversions. This is a screenshot of the result of traffic from Facebook, both as referrals and as paid advertising. As you can see, it’s not very impressive.

Then there’s the other hand when targeted Facebook ads are more efficient than most PPC. Here’s a different site, from the same period:

Facebook is a necessity for firms to have from a business perspective. Having a business page is incredibly beneficial when it comes to reviews and having an online presence. Facebook advertising is more of a game of give and take. 

 

What’s important to know is that Facebook ads are rarely used for directly converting clients, but rather for visibility and remarketing. The platform is designed for very specific targeting and practically unlimited visibility. Want to show the same person the same ad 10 times every day for a week? Facebook lets you do that. 

 

This doesn’t mean that the person is going to click on the ad, rather the ad is meant to make an impression. A person who sees the name of the same law firm 10 times a day is going to remember it. The ad may never get clicked, but the person may turn into a client down the road.

Monitoring Your Internal Linking on Ahrefs

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Internal linking is a key aspect of on-page SEO, but can sometimes be hard to keep track of or remember to do. When you’re writing content it’s likely that creating anchor text is the last thing on your mind. If you want to learn more about why internal linking is important, visit one of our old blog posts. TL: DR; internal links help users navigate the site and search engines understand which pages are more important.

 

Using Ahrefs

Here at Mockingbird, we use a tool called Ahrefs to keep track of our and our clients’ top-performing pages and linking. One of the datasets it provides is the number of referring internal links for each page. 

 

Finding the Dataset

Image showing screenshot from ahrefs where location for the data set can be seen in the menu and the number of internal dofollow links can be seen for each page
From Ahrefs.com

 

The information you’re looking for can be found under the Pages → Best by links section, then select the Internal tab on top. 

 

When you sort by Dofollow links you’ll probably notice that the pages with the highest URL ratings tend to have the most links. This isn’t entirely coincidental, as you’ve probably guessed. 

 

Why Internal Linking Matters (to Ahrefs and beyond)

When a site has thorough internal linking the user is able to navigate the site easier and is more likely to visit the pages that are being linked to. The more unique visitors a page has, the higher it’s URL rating. This is why homepages often have high URL ratings: the homepage is usually the most visited page.

 

One of the major benefits of internal linking is that it’s a free way to improve your URL Rating. Unlike link building campaigns, you don’t need to call anyone. It’s a simple way to improve your site.

 

How to do Internal Linking

Just in case you made it to the end of this blog post without knowing how to do internal linking, this is for you. 

 

Internal linking simply refers to when one page on your site links to another page on your site. Two pages within a domain, linking to each other. The pages should be relevant, see the links above to previous blog posts on this subject. For law firms, this can be as simple as linking to your car accidents page in your blog post about a local car accident.  

 

In Conclusion

Now that you know what internal links are, how to create them, why they’re important, and where to check in on them, go out and build your internal linking networks.

Using Google Analytics to Improve Page Speeds

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The uses and functionality of Google Analytics can sometimes feel endless. On that note, let’s break into page speed insights.

 

Finding Page Speeds

Behavior → Site Speed → Page Timings

Behavior → Site Speed → Page Timings

Knowing which of your pages are slowing your site down is key in optimizing your entire website. You can find individual page loading times under “Page Timings.” Within this dataset, you can toggle page views, average load time, and bounce rate.

By selecting a comparison view for the data visualization you can see which of your pages are taking longer than the site average. 

Once you know which pages are being problem children, you can begin to fix them. 

 

Fixing Page Speeds

Behavior → Site Speed → Speed Suggestions

Behavior → Site Speed → Speed Suggestions

Not only does Google Analytics tell you which pages are slow, they give suggestions on how to fix them. When you go to “Speed Suggestions” you can get suggestions on pages that aren’t even below the average site speed. 

Clicking on the suggestions will take you to a page that gives you the diagnostics on both your desktop and mobile pages. Since Google indexes on a mobile-first basis, neglecting your mobile site-speeds is probably a bad idea.

When you scroll down on the page you can see suggestions and how to implement them. Many of them can be solved using plug-ins, some of them can be solved by just reducing image sizes, and some can be ignored. These decisions are up to you as a webmaster. Or they’re up to us if you’re paying for on-site optimizations.

No matter what you decide to do with this information it’s good to have. Knowing what’s happening with your website is key to knowing what’s happening with your business.

Why Does Search Intent Matter?

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In the early days of digital advertising, search engines used keywords to understand their users. This is how SEOs optimized pages to get higher and higher page ranks for their clients. Things have changed a bit since then, and not in the least regarding how search engines work.

 

The Great Intent Shift

Search engines have been getting better at understanding user intent over user keywords for the past few years now. Using open-source machine learning, Google created BERT, a robot designed to understand intent, and released it into the world in the Fall of 2019. 

 

The release of BERT indicated a shift of intent over keywords. If you want to know what this looks like, imagine a person trying to figure out the visa process of moving from Guatemala to America. They search “Visa process Guatemala to united states.” With the keywords being “Visa,” “Guatemala,” and “United States” they Google might give them an onslaught of news stories about new policies. Other than maybe influencing them to move to Canada instead, these results won’t help them learn what they need to do. 

 

When you change the situation to user intent instead of keywords, the person is more likely to get links to the DHS immigration page or a blog post from an immigration lawyer. The point is, they are more likely to get what they intended to get. 

 

How This Helps You

While keywords still matter, they no longer need to be the focus when you’re creating content. Instead of stuffing H1s and H2s with various repetitive synonyms, trying to rank for as many keywords as possible, you should focus on writing the most accurate and helpful headers you can. It’s a lot easier to write quality content if you’re not fighting for every word. 

 

So how should you focus on intent? Provide quality content and write out the straightforward questions with straightforward answers. This is where blog posts, FAQs, and other resources will benefit you. People want straightforward answers to their legal questions, and that’s something you can provide. Search intent might just be what helps you get the traffic (and clients) you want.

Link Building: Where to Start

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Starting a Link Building Project

Link building is one of the building blocks of SEO. It helps to make connections, building domain authority, and motivating you to create interesting content. We all know this, but where do you start? Well, let’s start with where not to start.

 

Avoiding Schemes and Scams

There are countless businesses around promoting opportunities to buy lots of links for cheap. Don’t utilize them. Link building schemes are great for short-term growth and long-term destruction. And the growth isn’t even real since the incoming traffic rarely converts or interacts. 

Bottom line: don’t buy links.

 

Finding (Legitimate) Opportunities

Looking for places that will provide you with links or are willing to collaborate is hard work. It helps to begin where you are more likely to get a response. This could be directories, local newspapers, even alumni newsletters. These are examples of places where you can simply add a link to your website’s homepage or your attorney profile and call it a day.

 

One technique we like using here at Mockingbird is Lookback Link Building, a termed coined in-house. It can help get high-quality links without asking publications to change recent pieces.

 

The next level of link building is guest blogging or writing content that sites want to link to. This usually takes either an extreme talent for writing alongside high subject matter expertise or a longstanding and good reputation in the field. You should always aim for creating the highest quality content as possible, but the bar is a bit lower if you’re already a well-known name.

 

Building Connections

Making connections is hard in this world, and it’s even harder when you’re asking for a favor. Prepare yourself for a lot of rejection and even more indifference. A lot of your requests will be ignored. You learn to live with it.

 

So what do you do once you make a connection? If the type of link you’re requesting is just putting a link in an article where the firm or attorney is mentioned, ask for that. Explain how it will help the readers who might want to learn more about the subject. Try not to make it sound like a business transaction. People don’t like feeling like they’re giving you something for free.

 

Beyond singular links, you need to build connections with publications and websites that might be open to collaborating with you as a subject matter expert. This means that they would be open to you writing guest pieces or linking to your content. This is a great position to be in. If you find yourself with these types of connections, don’t piss them off. They’re your ticket to a high domain authority.

 

The Benefits of Link Building

If you aren’t convinced that an improved backlink profile will help you out, we have multiple case studies to show you otherwise:

 

Let’s Make 2020 the Year of No Long Term Contracts

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Here at Mockingbird, we have made our disdain for long-term contracts well-known. We have seen too many law firms fall victim to the predatory practices of FindLaw and other such agencies. Too many of our clients have come to us after being stripped down by contracts designed to empty their wallets. It’s because of this that we want to warn you of the dangers of signing onto a long term contract and how to avoid it.

 

The Dangers

Domain Ownership

Ownership of the website often sits in the fine print of these contracts, and it rarely benefits the law firm. This is one of the ways agencies trap their clients; they can’t leave without losing their website. 

 

Content Ownership

Right alongside domain ownership is content ownership; the agency owns all the content on the website. This means that even if the client manages to leave, they can’t keep anything from the website they might have been adding to for years.

 

Upselling Poor Service

When you’re trapped in a contract the agency has little motivation to provide you with the service you deserve. When you find them failing to deliver, they might even ask you to pay more for certain features that should be included or are completely irrelevant. Suddenly the contract is more expensive and the service is just as bad.

 

Our Experiences

We’ve been in the business for a while, and we’ve had more than a couple of firms come to us desperate and without a website:

Helping these firms get back on their feet has made us painfully aware of how damaging long term contracts can be. That’s why we’ve built a guide for escaping FindLaw. 

 

What to Look for When Signing a Contract

As a lawyer, you’re probably used to the implications of the fine print. The fine print for your marketing agency shouldn’t be given any less attention than what’s in your clients’ cases. Here are a few of the things you should keep an eye out for and flag:

  • Domain ownership
  • Content ownership
  • Termination penalties
  • End dates

If you see yourself about to sign a contract that will hold you for years, stop and think: is there a better way?

 

There is. Don’t make bad decisions in 2020 that will follow you for the next decade. Don’t sign the contract.

Impacts of Google’s January Update on the Legal Industry

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Google released a new core update in mid-January, most of which has been rolled out at this point. As with all updates, Google reassured webmasters that no specific sites or industries were targeted. That being said, some industries saw greater impacts than others. And since we’re a legal marketing agency, we like to focus on the impacts on the legal industry. 

 

Based on research from SEMrush.com, the legal and government industries have seen a fair amount of volatility over the past week. The peak days of change were January 14-16, and things appear to be back to normal now.

 

But just because things are no longer changing doesn’t mean there wasn’t an impact. SEMrush works to track SERPs (search engine results pages) in a number of categories, from featured snippets to reviews. 

 

By looking at a selection of these SERPs (not all of them are relevant to the legal industry, such as shopping results) we can get an idea of how legal websites might have been affected.

 

HTTPS Usage

From semrush.com

 

HTTPS usage saw a drop when the update was rolled out and has been steadily declining since. Fortunately, it looks like it might be bouncing back. 

 

Local Results

From semrush.com

 

Local results, or “Local pack” as it’s called on SEMrush, consists of location-based results that appear on the map and the first three results (see below).  After an initial dip, local SERPs seem to have bounced back to where they were before the update.

Reviews

From semrush.com

 

This metric refers to the number of organic results that appear with a star rating under the URL. As with the local results, there was an initial dip immediately following the update. Fortunately, this result is also creeping back up to where it was.

 

Top Ads

From semrush.com

 

Top ads refer to the ads that appear at the top of the page of search results. These have been seeing some serious fluctuations over the past 30 days, but seem to have been on a steady increase since before the update.

 

What Does This Mean

So what do these metrics really mean for you and your business? Mostly it means that there might be a bit of instability in your traffic for a little while after this update. Unless your website is seeing a long-lasting and extreme drop in traffic, it’s nothing to worry about.