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Law Firm Logos – Update Your Law Firm Graphics

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Law Firm Logos – Graphics for Law Firms

Two things you should go overboard on when setting up a new law firm website. Your website hosting and your firms logo.

The first thing people will see is your logo and they will usually see it on every page. So makes sense to spend a little extra and get a great designer.

Does your law firm have its logo updated? You might want to consider updating your law sites logo to a more modern and sharp design.

If you are updating your website, makes sense to update your firms logo possibly.  Unless you are married to your existing logo and have it in all your branding, then it might make sense to upgrade it and get something that fits your company.

New Logo Process

1- Find other logos that you like and send URLs

2- Describe what you like in other logos and what you want in your new logo

3- Send images to use in new logo if desired

Thats all it will take to get a brand new logo for your law firm.  The cost of logos varies greatly from $10-5,000. Yes Ive seen someone with the balls to advertise a $5,000 logo!  I mean how good can it be?!

We have numerous designers who can get the work done cheap and offer great value.  Logo for law firms cost anywhere from $150-500.   Contact us for more information.

 

2018 New Google SEO Ranking Factors for Lawyers – Part 2

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Google SEO For Lawyers Ranking Factors – #21 – 40

As many lawyers know, Google has recently once again updated how they rank sites and its now more important then ever to have authority on your site and demonstrate that you are an expert in your legal field.   That combined with links, content and other things will get your site ranked higher in Google these days.

Google recently released a document which shows that there are at least 200 Ranking Factors, 200!   Some obviously are more important then others, and some have almost no influence.   So its key to know what works in 2018 to get your lawyer website ranked higher, so you can start getting more leads from clients looking for your legal services

I am going to cover the next 20 ranking factors today and then make this a 10 part series that covers all 200 ranking factors.

Previous Post ====> RANKING FACTORS 1-20 

21. Page Covers Topic In-Depth: There’s a known correlation between depth of topic coverage and Google rankings. Therefore, pages that cover every angle likely have an edge vs. pages that only cover a topic partially.

22. Page Loading Speed via HTML: Both Google and Bing use page loading speed as a ranking factor. Search engine spiders can estimate your site speed fairly accurately based on your page’s HTML code.

23. Page Loading Speed via Chrome: Google may also use Chrome user data to get a better handle on a page’s loading time. That way, they can measure how quickly a page actually loads to users.

24. Use of AMP: While not a direct Google ranking factor, AMP may be a requirement to rank in the mobile version of the Google News Carousel.

25. Entity Match: Does a page’s content match the “entity” that a user is searching for? If so, that page may get a rankings boost for that keyword.

26. Google Hummingbird: This “algorithm change” helped Google go beyond keywords. Thanks to Hummingbird, Google can now better understand the topic of a webpage.

27. Duplicate Content: Identical content on the same site (even slightly modified) can negatively influence a site’s search engine visibility.

28. Rel=Canonical: When used properly, use of this tag may prevent Google from penalizing your site for duplicate content.

29. Image Optimization: Images send search engines important relevancy signals through their file name, alt text, title, description and caption.

*** This is something not many other people do, so this can help not only get some traffic via Google images, but more important help establish RELEVANCY

30. Content Recency: Google Caffeine update favors recently published or updated content, especially for time-sensitive searches. Highlighting this factor’s importance, Google shows the date of a page’s last update for certain pages:

31. Magnitude of Content Updates: The significance of edits and changes also serves as a freshness factor. Adding or removing entire sections is more significant than switching around the order of a few words or fixing a typo.

32. Historical Page Updates: How often has the page been updated over time? Daily, weekly, every 5 years? Frequency of page updates also play a role in freshness.

33. Keyword Prominence: Having a keyword appear in the first 100 words of a page’s content is correlated to first page Google rankings.

34. Keyword in H2, H3 Tags: Having your keyword appear as a subheading in H2 or H3 format may be another weak relevancy signal. In fact, Googler John Mueller states:

“These heading tags in HTML help us to understand the structure of the page.”

35. Outbound Link Quality: Many SEOs think that linking out to authority sites helps send trust signals to Google. And this is backed up by a recent industry study.

*** This is no doubt IMPORTANT Lawyers, add links out to other authority sites within your blog posts.

36. Outbound Link Theme: According to The Hillop Algorithm, Google may use the content of the pages you link to as a relevancy signal. For example, if you have a page about cars that links to movie-related pages, this may tell Google that your page is about the movie Cars, not the automobile.

37. Grammar and Spelling: Proper grammar and spelling is a quality signal, although Cutts gave mixed messages a few years back on whether or not this was important.

38. Syndicated Content: Is the content on the page original? If it’s scraped or copied from an indexed page it won’t rank as well… or may not get indexed at all.

** You must create new fresh content on a constant basis.  You can borrow stuff and reword it, but the content must be fresh in order to rank better

39. Mobile-Friendly Update: Often referred to as “Mobilegeddon“, this update rewarded pages that were properly optimized for mobile devices.

40. Mobile Usability: Websites that mobile users can easily use may have an edge in Google’s “Mobile-first Index”.

Be mobile friendly for lawyers is an obvious one these days.  More people then ever will visit your site from a mobile device. It used to be 10-20%, now its like 60% or more. So think mobile first.

The next 20 Google ranking factors coming soon.

The bottom line with all these factors, it comes down to new fresh content, establishing your an authority and expert and getting solid backlinks to your website.

We help solo lawyers and small law firms with Internet Marketing services including:

Create a new wordpress lawyer site, Social Media Management, organic SEO for lawyers, PPC Marketing for attorneys, MOBILE For Lawyers, Content Creation, Logos, Chatbot Marketing and Facebook Messenger Marketing.

2018 New Google SEO Ranking Factors for Lawyers – Part 1

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Lawyer Google SEO Marketing in 2018 – Top Ranking Factors (1-20)

As many lawyers know, Google has recently once again updated how they rank sites and its now more important then ever to have authority on your site and demonstrate that you are an expert in your legal field.   That combined with links, content and other things will get your site ranked higher in Google these days.

Google recently released a document which shows that there are at least 200 Ranking Factors, 200!   Some obviously are more important then others, and some have almost no influence.   So its key to know what works in 2018 to get your lawyer website ranked higher, so you can start getting more leads from clients looking for your legal services

I am going to cover the first 20 ranking factors today and then make this a 10 part series that covers all 200 ranking factors.

RANKING FACTORS 1-20 ; 

1. Domain Age: In this video, Google’s Matt Cutts states that:

“The difference between a domain that’s six months old versus one year old is really not that big at all.”

In other words, they do use domain age…but it’s not very important.  SO maybe its time to get some new domains?

2. Keyword Appears in Top Level Domain: This doesn’t give the boost that it used to. But having a keyword in your domain still acts as a relevancy signal.

*** So this means that if you are a Las Vegas Accident Lawyer, there is some benefit of having a domain name of Las Vegas Accident Lawyer.com vs. Smithlaw.com.

3. Keyword As First Word in Domain: A domain that starts with their target keyword has an edge over sites that either don’t have that keyword in their domain (or have the keyword in the middle or end of their domain).

4. Domain registration length: A Google patent states:

“Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain.”

** SO This is one of those factors where its a NOBrainer and make sure you register your name for at least 5 years, if not 10.   Its a small thing, but they will add up.

5. Keyword in Subdomain: Moz’s expert panel agrees that a keyword appearing in the subdomain can boost rankings.

6. Domain History: A site with volatile ownership or several drops may tell Google to “reset” the site’s history, negating links pointing to the domain. Or, in certain cases, a penalized domain may carry the penalty over to the new owner.

7. Exact Match Domain: Exact Match Domains may still give you slight edge. But if your EMD happens to be a low-quality site, it’s vulnerable to the EMD update.

8. Public vs. Private WhoIs: Private WhoIs information may be a sign of “something to hide”. Googler Matt Cutts is quoted as stating:

“…When I checked the whois on them, they all had “whois privacy protection service” on them. That’s relatively unusual. …Having whois privacy turned on isn’t automatically bad, but once you get several of these factors all together, you’re often talking about a very different type of webmaster than the fellow who just has a single site or so.”

**** SO This means do NOT use privacy on your domain name

9. Penalized WhoIs Owner: If Google identifies a particular person as a spammer it makes sense that they would scrutinize other sites owned by that person.

10. Country TLD extension: Having a Country Code Top Level Domain (.cn, .pt, .ca) can help the site rank for that particular country… but it can limit the site’s ability to rank globally.

PAGE LEVEL FACTORS

11. Keyword in Title Tag: Although not as critical as it once was, your title tag remains an important on-page SEO signal.

*** This is super key to make sure you have unique TITLE tags for each page and try and utilize these to get higher rankings for a wide variety of keywords. Use YOAST SEO to accomplish this

12. Title Tag Starts with Keyword: According to Moz , title tags that starts with a keyword tend to perform better than title tags with the keyword towards the end of the tag.  —> So this means

13. Keyword in Description Tag: Google doesn’t use the meta description tag as a direct ranking signal. However, your description tag can impact click-through-rate, which is a key ranking factor.   Also Google will point out if you have duplicate descriptions tag, so it makes sense to optimize these all.

14. Keyword Appears in H1 Tag: H1 tags are a “second title tag”. Along with your title tag, Google uses your H1 tag as a secondary relevancy signal, according to results from this correlation study:

**** You should only have ONE h1 tag per page.

15. TF-IDF: A fancy way of saying: “How often does a certain word appear in a document?”. The more often that word appears on a page, the more likely it is that the page is about that word. Google likely uses a sophisticated version of TF-IDF.

16. Content Length: Content with more words can cover a wider breadth and are likely preferable in the algorithm compared to shorter, superficial articles. Indeed, one recent ranking factors industry study found that content length correlated with SERP position.

17. Table of Contents: Using a linked table of contents can help Google better understand your page’s content. It can also result in sitelinks:

18. Keyword Density: Although not as important as it once was, Google may use it to determine the topic of a webpage. But going overboard can hurt you.

19. Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords in Content (LSI): LSI keywords help search engines extract meaning from words that have more than one meaning (for example: Apple the computer company vs. Apple the fruit). The presence/absence of LSI probably also acts as a content quality signal.

20. LSI Keywords in Title and Description Tags: As with webpage content, LSI keywords in page meta tags probably help Google discern between words with multiple potential meanings. May also act as a relevancy signal.

There are 180 more factors that Google uses! We will be covering them all.

We help solo lawyers and small law firms with Internet Marketing services including:

Create a new wordpress lawyer site, Social Media Management, organic SEO for lawyers, PPC Marketing for attorneys, MOBILE For Lawyers, Content Creation, Logos, Chatbot Marketing and Facebook Messenger Marketing.

 

Personal Injury Lawyer Links & SEO Marketing

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SEO Marketing for Lawyers – Personal Injury Back Links

One thing that still holds true is that LINKS are important and a key part of the overall Lawyer Internet and SEO Marketing strategy. It doesnt matter what kind of lawyer you are, personal injury, DUI, criminal defense, bankruptcy, everyone needs solid backlinks to their lawyer websites in order to have the best possible Google SEO organic rankings.     Links are only part of the formula but as always an important one.

So links come in many different shapes and the bottom line is if you can somehow get a backlink to your lawyers website from a bar association, law school, other lawyers websites or blog, or a local area business, do it!  Links are not easy to get usually, but in some cases all you have to do is make sure you have an account setup and you claim your lawyer listing.  Then you can optimize the listing and include a link to your website.    These are the obvious links that most all lawyers will have, but you better have those if you have any chance of ranking high. Then the trick is to then make sure you have more links then your competitors, and not just any links, high quality relevant links from authority sites.

Good Personal Injury Links:

Here are some starter links for all personal injury and car accident lawyers to have to their lawyer website.  The key here is making sure that you claim these lawyer listings and then update them and include a link to your website.   In some cases you will have to pay a premium fee to get a link to your website.   In some cases it will be worth it and thats the trick here, knowing which listings to pay for.

Good Directory Links 

  • HG.org

  • Justia.com

  • AVVO.com

  • lawyer.com

  • martindale.com

  • superlawyers.com

  • justlawlinks.com

  • injurylawyers.co

  • list-lawyers.com

Good Review Sites:

  • birdeye.com

  • credibility.com

  • merchantcircle.com

  • Yelp.com

Social Links:

  • Google+

  • Scoop.it

  • Pinterest

  • YouTube

  • Storify

  • LinkedIn

  • Medium

  • Tsu.com

  • Ello.com

Google AdWords for Lawyers: Example of how to save money for Law Firm Ads

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Adwords for Law Firms – How to Save Money on Campaigns

Google Adwords is the main way your going to do Pay Per Click Marketing for attorneys usually.   Its a pretty simple thing where you pay Google to show your ads when a user does a search for your practice area keywords.

Is Google AdWords worth if for solo lawyers and small law firms? YES! 100% for sure if done right, you will get new potential clients contacting you.

Yet many lawyers will waste 1000’s of dollars because the campaign is not setup right. There are a lot of different options with Adwords and the problem comes when your bidding on SUPER PRICEY Keywords for Lawyers.  Personal Injury, Bankruptcy, Family Law and a few others are really really expensive.  I mean its no big deal if your paying 40 cents a click BUT if your paying $30-200 per click, then it get get bad really quick.

Ive seen a lot of lawyer campaigns where they are bidding way to high, or not setting a budget, or bidding only on broad match keywords and a number of other things that will make your campaign not a winning one.

*** Here are a few TIPS to make your lawyer AdWords account work better.

#1-  Setup Conversions in your AdWords campaign to measure the ROI of your campaign.

#2- For Every Ad, have a Landing Page that fits the keywords you are bidding. Do not use the HOME Page.

#3- Organize your campaign into different AdGroups

#4- Have at least THREE Ads for each Adgroup

#5- Research your competitors to see what Keywords they are using

RECENT CAMPAIGN FOR LAWYER USING GOOGLE ADWORDS – Huge increase in Impressions, Clicks & Lower Costs

I had a lawyer client recently who wasnt thrilled with the last couple of months of Google adwords advertising because they spent about $2000 and only had one conversion and no real leads.  This is what can happen when your bidding on personal injury or car accident terms.

Lawyers will bid as high as $200 per click, Ive seen it as high as $721 and Im sure someone will pay $1000 per click if they feel it will lead to a new client.

SO with this lawyers campaign at Adwords, I was able to login and review it and could see a few issues right away that could be improved. Some of the issues that I saw:

  • The bidding strategy was setup so that Google would decide on the bid and the max bid was set to $75

  • The landing pages were almost ALL the sites home page instead of practice specific pages.

  • No contact form on the landing page

  • Broad Match keywords resulting in searches that were not related to personal injury

—> Numbers from Previous Adwords Campaign for 12 day period…..  (7/23 – 08/03/18)

(Practice Area Campaign #1…)

—> Total Impressions = 389   (The ads didnt really run much because the budget was spent so quick after just 1-2 keyword clicks)

—> Total Clicks =  7

—> Avg Cost Per Click = $35.00

—> Conversions = 0

—> Total spend = $230.00

 ****************************************

(Personal Injury Campaign #2…)

—> Total Impressions = 777

—> Total Clicks =  12

—> Avg Cost Per Click = $40.00 ……

—> Conversions = 0

—> Total spend = $474 + 230 = $704.00

So here you can see they spent $704 on ONLY 19 clicks from those two campaigns. Since they cost $35-40 per click, it was more expensive and the campaigns had to be shut down early and why the impressions are lower.      Then the even bigger issue was the ZERO conversions.

19 Clicks for $704  vs. 110 Clicks for $515 

I created a new Campaign with multiple adgroups and ads.  Instantly the cost per click went from $35-150 down to $2-15 tops. Also because the past campaign was setup so the price was so high, the ads stopped running and the total impressions were low.

New Campaign I setup for PI keywords and that has run for past 12 days…

—> Total Impressions = 4,300 

—> Total Clicks =  110 

—> Avg Cost Per Click = $4.95 

—> Conversions = 2

—> Total spend = $515 

BETTER RESULTS IN 2 WEEKS – Lawyer PPC Marketing

* Impressions went from 1000 to 4000 over same 2 week period.

* Clicks went from 19 to 110 over same period

* Total cost was lower ($515 vs. $704) and Per Click went from $40 to $5.

Then even better the campaign got 2 conversions and a number of phone call clicks.  So this is an example of how you can #1 lower the overall cost and #2 Improve the Google Quality Score and conversion rate.

Google AdWords for Lawyers 

If your law firm needs assistance with Pay Per Click Marketing or Google AdWords assistance, please contact us for a Free Estimate.

Lawyer PPC Site Analysis

We can review your existing PPC campaigns or setup a new Google adwords and Bing Ad campaigns for your law firm.
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