Internet Marketing News

Google My Business (GMB) For Attorneys 2019

Featured Content, Google My Business, Google Search Engine, Internet Marketing News /

Google My Business Lawyer Marketing Google My Business (GMB) is more important than ever and should be one of the first things that you do for your law firms Internet marketing strategy. This is basically a big part of what Local SEO is, getting your GMB listing to show up in the Google 3 pack for searches related to your firm’s practice areas. Google is obviously the most important search engine but most people think there is just one set of rankings at Google and usually think of the organic results. Yet there are multiple sets of search results usually. First, you will see the Google paid ads at the top, then you will see the Google map listings, which come from your Google my business listing.  Then you will see the organic search results. Yet really it’s possible that even if your firm low or no organic rankings, you can possibly dominate the local seo results.   What is Google My Business? Google My Business is a free service designed to make it easy for local businesses to manage their listings in Google search results. Anytime you search Google for local services in your area, you have likely seen Google My Business at work. It displays results on a map and lists other important details about businesses, including their contact information, website, and even reviews. Since Google is the premier search engine online, listing your law firm with Google’s My Business is essential for proper search engine optimization or SEO. Your Google my business listing is what controls your listing that comes up in the local search and map results at Google. LAWYER GOOGLE MY BUSINESS MARKETING TIPS 1. Claim your Google My Business Profile If you haven’t claimed your law firms GMB profile, which stands for Google My Business – also known as the local 3 pack – then you need to get this done right away. GMB profiles are some of the first organic listings people see when searching for attorneys and law firms. By default, many firms already have a GMB profile created by Google and sometimes you will find that certain lawyers will have a GMB profile that is created by Google, and sometimes your clients will find this and even though you haven’t claimed or verified this listing, they still can leave you a review. So it makes sense to claim these listings so that you can not only optimize it, but you respond to any reviews you might get. Walk through the following process to claim it: Search for your law firm or attorney name in Google When you see the Knowledge Graph card for your firm, click on the ‘Are you the owner?’ link near the bottom. Start the process of verifying the firm’s ownership. Note that Google will want you to verify ownership in one of two ways – either by phone or through regular mail.  Once you’ve verified ownership, you can edit your GMB profile. 2. Add Photos & Videos to your GMB Lawyer profile Make sure your GMB profile is complete and contains consistent contact information.  Then adding as many images as possible of your law firm can help it rank far better in the local 3 pack.    So add all the existing images you might have put on your blog and facebook. Then create more images and get creative.  Try to have a LOT of images, like 30 – 50! You can do it over time and it seems to make a difference. Here are some image ideas to get you started: show your legal offices on the inside and outside show your firms team, partners, and you describe the areas of law that you practice show your firms logo include your firms’ tag lines, quotes, or other marketing messages You do not want to put generic stock images or videos into your Google listing.  Google wants images that are related to your firm and what your firm does. So this means photos of the people who work at the firm, photos of your locations and the type of law you practice.   If you are a personal injury lawyer, you want to have a number of different images related to personal injury 3. Onsite Website Optimization Onsite SEO are the things done to your website structure to make it rank well, This is one of the most top tasks you can do to achieve good local rankings. Start with a location-based page: Create a location-based page for the keyword phrases you want to rank for. An example could be ‘Chicago auto accident lawyer’ or ‘Michigan Malpractice Attorney.’   Then you can create other location posts for all the different cities, zips, neighborhoods in your area and then interlink them together. Here are some other tips: Include the location in the copy of the page Include the keyword phrase in the title, the headings, meta description and URL of the page Include the keyword as an image file name of any images on the page Include the keyword in any alt attributes of images on the page Add your firms NAP (name, address, phone number) to the header: Your firm’s name, address and phone number should be on the header of every page, but especially on location-based pages or pages that link to your Google my business – GMB profile. This should also be the same information used in other listings around the web. Make sure it’s all consistent. Substantial quality content: Include a lot of useful content on your pages. Most short articles are like 300 words. So articles longer than 500 words is a good start and the longer the better. 2000 words is a really good start and if you are trying to rank for highly competitive keywords, then the longer the better. 4. Citation signals: Mentions of your firm NAP across the web Citations are like links and are the fuel towards getting higher Google local rankings. Building citations is one of the most influential strategies

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2018 New Google SEO Ranking Factors for Lawyers – Part 3

General Search Engine News, Google Search Engine, Google Updates, Internet Marketing News, Law Firm Marketing, Lawyer Marketing Tips /

Google SEO For Lawyers Ranking Factors – #41 – 75 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 and 2019 to get your lawyer website ranked higher, so you can start getting more leads from clients looking for your legal services. I have gone over the first 40 in other posts and am listing the next 35 here.  Then I will create a post on what the TOP 20 overall ranking factors are out of these 200 possible factors.   Bottom line is there are a LOT of different things that go into ranking your website, so you cant go overboard on any 1 thing, other then creating high quality unique content.    If you do that, you will have a big advantage. Yet if everyone else is doing that, then it will come down to who is doing the most of these 200 different factors. Previous Post ====> RANKING FACTORS 1-20 – Google SEO Ranking Factors 21-40 SEO Ranking factors from Google for Lawyers: 41. “Hidden” Content on Mobile: Hidden content on mobile devices may not get indexed (or may not be weighed as heavily) vs. fully visible content. However, a Googler recently stated that hidden content is OK. But also said that in the same video, “…if it’s critical content it should be visible…”. 42. Helpful “Supplementary Content”: According to a now-public Google Rater Guidelines Document, helpful supplementary content is an indicator of a page’s quality (and therefore, Google ranking). Examples include currency converters, loan interest calculators and interactive recipes. 43. Content Hidden Behind Tabs: Do users need to click on a tab to reveal some of the content on your page? If so, Google has said that this content “may not be indexed”. 44. Number of Outbound Links: Too many dofollow OBLs can “leak” PageRank, which can hurt that page’s rankings. *** So this is interesting because it makes sense that you dont want to include a ton of links, BUT it can help to include a couple of outbound links to authority websites.   45. Multimedia: Images, videos and other multimedia elements may act as a content quality signal. For example, one industry study found a correlation between multimedia and rankings: *** No doubt having more images and videos will help you rank better and keep people on your site longer, which is key.   46. Number of Internal Links Pointing to Page: The number of internal links to a page indicates its importance relative to other pages on the site. *** So this means you should make sure that you links other pages together, especially when they make sense.  So if you do a blog post on divorce law, link to the divorce law practice page, and other related posts.   47. Quality of Internal Links Pointing to Page: Internal links from authoritative pages on domain have a stronger effect than pages with no or low PageRank. 48. Broken Links: Having too many broken links on a page may be a sign of a neglected or abandoned site. The Google Rater Guidelines Document uses broken links as one was to assess a homepage’s quality. 49. Reading Level: There’s no doubt that Google estimates the reading level of webpages. In fact, Google used to give you reading level stats: But what they do with that information is up for debate. Some say that a basic reading level will help you rank better because it will appeal to the masses. But others associate a basic reading level with content mills like Ezine Articles. 50. Affiliate Links: Affiliate links themselves probably won’t hurt your rankings. But if you have too many, Google’s algorithm may pay closer attention to other quality signals to make sure you’re not a “thin affiliate site“. 51. HTML errors/W3C validation: Lots of HTML errors or sloppy coding may be a sign of a poor quality site. While controversial, many in SEO think that a well-coded page is uses as a quality signal. 52. Domain Authority: All things being equal, a page on an authoritative domain will rank higher than a page on a domain with less authority. *** So here you want to get quality links from authority websites in your niche, this will help raise your domain authority score.   53. Page’s PageRank: Not perfectly correlated. But pages with lots of authority tend to outrank pages without much link authority. 54. URL Length: Excessively long URLs may hurt a page’s search engine visibility. In fact, several industry studies have found that short URLs tend to have a slight edge in Google’s search results. 55. URL Path: A page closer to the homepage may get a slight authority boost vs. pages buried deep down in a site’s architecture. 56. Human Editors: Although never confirmed, Google has filed a patent for a system that allows human editors to influence the SERPs. 57. Page Category: The category the page appears on is a relevancy signal. A page that’s part of a closely related category may get a relevancy boost compared to a page that’s filed under an unrelated category. 58. WordPress Tags: Tags are WordPress-specific relevancy signal. According to Yoast.com: “The only way it improves your SEO is by relating one piece of content to another, and more specifically a group of posts to each other.” 59. Keyword in URL: Another relevancy signal. A Google rep recently called this a “a very small ranking factor“. But a ranking factor nontheless. 60. URL String: The categories in the URL string are read by Google and may provide a thematic signal to what a page is about: 61. References and Sources: Citing references and sources, like research papers do, may be a sign of quality. The Google Quality Guidelines states that reviewers should keep an eye out for sources when looking at certain pages: “This is a topic where expertise and/or authoritative sources are important…”. However, Google has denied that they use external links as a ranking signal. *** Everything Ive heard is that this is a ranking signal, if you link out to the right sites that

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Why Chatbots Make Perfect Sense for Lawyers

Chatbots, Facebook, Internet Marketing News, Lawyer Marketing Tips, Legal Internet Marketing /

Chatbots for Lawyers Chatbots are here to stay and I can see why.   They basically are assistants that work 24/7 365 days a year.  They can serve in a customer service function and make it easier for people to find answers they might have.    They also can help generate leads and be used in combination with facebook ads. Chatbots are one of the hottest tech tools on the market today.  Almost every business is looking to use chatbots for customer service. LIVE AGENT CHAT IS DEAD ALSO for a few years now, CHAT has been somewhat of a hot topic in the legal industry.   It seemed that having a LIVE CHAT option available made perfect sense because you could get an overseas person to easily read a script and take down basic contact info, and then pass it along to the law firm,    YET I aways thought that wasnt that great of a solution because Each lead can costs upwards of $30.  As you can imagine, this gets expensive fast.  Paying someone to collect data from prospects 24/7 often becomes too expensive for many law firms to utilize for the long term.  Cost, therefore, is a major drawback when using live agent chat. CHATBOTS MAKE MORE SENSE People are worried about Robots and AI and rightfully so.  When Elon Musk says hes worried about it, you take it serious.    Yet at this level, bots can be very useful and provide a lot of value.      I mean the chatbot can replace the Live Chat system that many law firms have right now.    I mean whats the big deal about a live agent collecting info from a potential client?  They are just reading a script and probably have a worse personality then most bots!  Then they pass on the info to the lawyers, ok and for that firms are being charged a big setup fee, monthly fees and per lead fees? I would say WTF?! SETTING UP CHATBOTS You can setup the chatbot on your facebook page so that when someone trys to message you, the chatbot will take over and have answers to any questions the person might have.  Then you can also set it up on your site in a few different ways, including like I have right now on this site at the top of the page.     You can also setup a landing page where you can send people to engage with your bot, or send someone a link to your bot, OR you can also setup facebook ads and send people to messenger instead of your website. So once the chatbot is setup and programmed to answer questions, you can then connect it to your site and facebook page.  Once its setup, then its ready to work for your 24/7, 365!  There are many advanced things you can do here as well, like collect email info and pass it on to your email program. The language used in a chatbot should be: Short (one or two sentences) Conversational Simple (avoid heavy legal terms if possible) If you’re building answers into your chatbot, make sure you structure them in a way that it is easy for the user to read and understand. Effectively using chatbots on your law firm’s website can help improve the customer experience and save you time and money in the long run. You can also use Chatbots to generate new leads. You can use facebook ads along with facebook messenger to build up leads and usually for much cheaper then Google adwords.   This is a more advanced service, but really just the customer service assistant part of this should be enough to convince any lawyer to utilize a chatbot. Also to replace any live chat system that is setup.    I mean why not instead pay a fraction of the price to have chatbot for your firm that will serve as assistant, as well as possibly a lead generation machine. Contact us today at 630-202-9208 or fill out the contact form below. [Contact_Form_Builder id=”11″]

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