Whether you are launching a new website or thinking about changing domain names, there are some key factors you should take into consideration. Search engines, branding, long-term effects, and domain history should all be taken into account when selecting a domain name for your law firm’s website.
An often-debated topic is the value of including keywords in your domain name. While having an exact match domain has been shown to be beneficial for search engine results in the past, it does not always mean high conversion and the benefits are limited to that one exact match term. Keyword-centric domains like “caraccidentlawyeratlanta.com” are more closely associated with short-term results and lend a generic connotation to the user. As we’ve learned—or as Google has thrown in our faces—making decisions for your website based on SEO trends, or for the purpose of obtaining immediate results is not always the best course of action. It leaves you vulnerable when the next wave of search algorithm changes occurs. With the recent Google Penguin Update, I feel we’ll hear more about exact match domain names taking a hit due to a combination of over-optimization and repetitive anchor text where the website name is used as the anchor text.
Your website is an obvious extension of your business; therefore, it should effectively reflect your brand. Building brand value through your domain name is a long-term investment, but promoting your brand in your domain name increases your brand’s visibility to the search engines which can be beneficial for long term success—think Amazon.com or eBay. While reading up on the topic among current industry blogs, I came across a gem in a post on seo-theory.com that brought on an “I couldn’t have said it better myself” moment:
If you think of your Website as a business, you tend to pay more attention to things like traffic, conversions, brand value, visitor/user experience, and long-term prospects for revenue. If you think of your Website as an asset, possibly one to be flipped, you’re not really motivated to create much value there.
Along with building brand value, some additional factors to consider when thinking about the long-term effects of selecting your domain are name recognition, length, and content structure of the domain name itself. Although these factors may have little effect on your website’s overall success, creating a user-friendly URL that is easy to remember can help direct traffic numbers. I really liked some of Jeff Korhan’s suggestions regarding “The Crowded Bar Test,” which emphasize the importance of being memorable. Your domain doesn’t have to consist of only one word to be easily remembered, but trying to stuff in keywords, hyphens, numbers, or using an extension other than .com can lead to an awkward and lengthy combination. Many web users will not be too gung-ho about typing in a complex URL, or will easily mess up…which could easily lead them to one of your competitor’s sites.
There are a lot of domains for sale out there. If you’re considering purchasing an existing domain, make sure to do your research. Find out when the domain was created. Since older domains tend to have a leg up in the search engines, an older domain shouldn’t be immediately rejected. Also, a domain’s negative history can follow it, so make sure there aren’t past search engine penalties that were caused by the previous owners. Tools like WhoIs and Google Banned Checker can help you determine the history of a prospective domain.
Do you need help selecting the best domain name for your attorney website? Contact the law firm marketing and SEO specialists at Foster Web Marketing today by calling 888.886.0939.
Have you been spamming Google? If so, you might get punished.
Google released its latest algorithm update on April 24th, which is designed with a specific goal in mind—to target websites that are violating Google’s policies. Not playing by Google’s rules might not be a crime, but you better believe there is a stiff penalty for it. If Google feels that you are engaging in spam, say goodbye to a lot of your website traffic.
A little less than a week ago, Google rolled out a change to its algorithm, which has been termed the Penguin Update. Originally, the update was referred to as the over-optimization penalty, but it goes well beyond that. In addition to targeting websites that practice questionable search engine optimization (SEO) tactics, such as keyword stuffing and hidden text, Google is also looking at the links that are pointing to a website.
Links to Avoid
The links you should be avoiding haven’t changed all too much following the Penguin Update, but they are worth mentioning. Below is a short list of links to stay far away from:
Junky directories: In the past, online directories were the way to go to get links fast—it didn’t matter if the directories were questionable. Not anymore. However, industry-specific and other relevant directories are still okay, such as Nolo, Justia and Avvo.
Article marketing websites: If you are still submitting articles to article marketing websites, it is time to stop. That technique no longer works.
Link networks: Link networks are also a thing of the past and should be avoided. Don’t get involved in a link network.
“Spammy” websites: Google is paying attention to what websites are linking to yours. Don’t position yourself with websites that Google considers to be spammers. You will be guilty based on association.
Basically, Google wants your links to be natural and to make sense. If it appears that you are trying to manipulate the system by using artificial links, your website could be hurt.
Your Relationship With Google
What you have to always remember about Google is that they don’t owe you anything. They are a business, just like your firm, and including you in their index is a privilege. It is not your right to be included. So, be sure to play by Google’s rules.
If you are looking for help with Web marketing, contact one of our SEO experts today at 888.886.0939. We focus on attorney search engine marketing and can help you.
Does anyone out there remember Google Buzz? It was Google’s first attempt to compete in the social media world, launched in February of 2010 and it was shut down completely about 18 months later. It aimed to integrate social media with Gmail, which sparked a privacy concern for users. Just for the record, that is 6 years after Facebook launched and 4 years after Twitter launched. To say that Google missed the boat on social media is fair to say.
But being the tech behemoth they are, Google has quite a bit at stake in a market they had yet to penetrate. Bing, who continues to claw away at the search market share, signed a deal with Facebook in October 2010 that would allow them to not only use social cues in search results but to actually include your friends faces in search results. Facebook has over 800 million users and is the most active social media site in the world. This social data could make their search results better than Google’s which had relied more heavily on backlink data. Here is an example of social results in Bing:
Facebook has a direct impact on Bing searches and greatly impacts click-through rates.
You can see in this example of a Bing search result just how important relevant social information can be. These are 3 people that I know personally that have endorsed this page. Of course I am going to click that result rather than another (possibly more relevant and higher ranking result) because I recognize those faces and trust those people.
To maintain search dominance, Google absolutely had to go social. For them, it made sense to create their own network for a few reasons, not the least of which is that they couldn’t get the Facebook data because of the Bing deal. So in the summer of 2011, Google finally launched their long-anticipated rival to Facebook…Google+. Initially, it was an invitation-only service but despite this major limitation, the site had 10 million users in the first two weeks. By the end of 2011, it had over 90 million users.
Because many early adopters were marketers, there was a demand for business pages, which did not launch until November. Google was heavily criticized for their launchsince they couldn’t match the demand for accounts and penalized early users for creating business pages with their personal profiles. Most marketers didn’t care about using the network for personal use, they wanted an early start on the SEO benefit that the site would inevitably provide at some point.
Where are we now?
Google+ has over 90 million users but it in unclear how many of them are “active”.
Google+ connects all layers of Google products, from Gmail to YouTube, Picasa and Search.
Google+ has been integrated in Google search results.
President Obama used a Google Hangout to host a town hall meeting.
More than 70% of Google+ users are male and 35% of them are between the ages of 25-34.
Features of Google+
The only way that Google+ had a chance to compete against Facebook and Twitter was to offer some new features. In fact, they have offered a slew of new features that have been well received and could usher social media into the next generation.
Circles
On Facebook and Twitter, you can filter incoming messages to check the statuses of friends, family or colleagues. This is a basic feature of all social networks now but Google+ introduced us to Circles, which allow users to filter outgoing information to specific groups of people.
To build a circle, you simply drag your contacts into one or more circles. When you share a post, photo or video, you have the option to share with one or more of these groups or make it public. As many recent college graduates know, social media can create problems when applying for jobs. This feature ensures that information is only shared with people that you want to see it. But make sure you keep your circles up to date!
Hangouts
Google already had instant message and video chatting that could be used through Gmail but they took that to a new level with Google+ Hangouts. Rather than just video chat with one person, you can video chat with up to 10 people and an unlimited number of people can listen and watch. President Obama famously took advantage of this feature to hold a town hall meeting on January 30, 2012. Businesses are starting to take advantage of this free tool also.
Google+ Hangouts makes it very easy to hold a video conference, share screen and watch YouTube videos. You can even access Hangouts on their mobile apps. This feature, although it may sound similar to services like GoToMeeting, could eventually wipe out its competitor’s because it is entirely free!
Mobile
To their credit, Google understood that they needed to be mobile from the beginning. They have an easy-to-use mobile website as well as more robust mobile apps for Android and iOS.
Messaging
This is a mobile feature very similar to text messaging or SMS. But just like Hangouts, they have made this much cooler than the average text message. You can communicate with up to 50 people at once if they opt to receive your messages. You can select by circle or just by typing someone’s name into the search bar and you can easily start a mobile Hangout right from a message.
Direct Connect
Still in it’s infancy, Google+ Direct Connect enables qualified websites to allow users to quickly access their Google+ page via Google Search. Test it out by typing “+youtube” into the Google search bar. It will take you directly to the YouTube Google+ page. You can learn more about Direct Connect here.
Integration of Google Services
Google has made it abundantly clear that they want Google+ to be the glue that holds together your Google Accounts. In the past, users have been able to create separate YouTube, Gmail and Picasa accounts. Google wants you to use one login to access all of these services and all the rest…Google Analytics, Google Calendar, Google Tasks, Google Docs and Google Places. And did I mention Google Maps, Google Books, Google Reader,Google Earth, Google News, Blogger, Google Voice and Google Translate. They want to own your web experience in the way that Apple or Windows owns your desktop experience. Increasingly, each of these services is taking advantage of the relationships you have in Google+ to enhance their capabilities.
They have tossed their 60+ Privacy Policies and opted for one privacy policy for all Google users…no matter what service. (Depending on the type of materials you are posting online, you will want to read the terms of services very carefully.)
And a lot more…
While we covered most of the really important features, Google+ does a lot more. For example, it has become a vibrant community for photographers because of the integration with Picasa and the built-in photo editing tools. It’s also been great for businesses because of the obvious benefits of “Search Plus Your World”. They also have a very cool selection of online games, a trending feature similar to Twitter and an integrated YouTube search and video playing platform.
Business Pages: Facebook vs. Google+
Okay, you have one hour to spend today on social media for your business. Should you work on your existing Facebook page that already has a few hundred fans or get to work building that Google+ page?
If only it were so easy. Between Facebook, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and other niche sites likeAvvo, there is no way you have time to manage them all. Here is what we know for sure: Google+ pages are going to impact search results. If it means a little less time on Facebook, that’s okay. Remember that for any social network, your friends, fans or followers will see your information in their feed, not on your page. Spend time creating thoughtful, interesting posts that link to quality information. Optimizing your brand page is a good idea for branded searches but for many businesses, social media is a better tool for marketing to existing clients.
In the dark ages of search, there was only one ranking factor: keywords. And in the early years of social media, it held almost no clout for businesses. Oh, how things have changed! While keywords are still a relevant factor in search rankings, Google, Bing and other search engines measure and employ a number of metrics to determine where, when and how your website ranks. Here are just a few:
Incoming links from relevant and credible sites
Domain age
Quality and quantity of content
Page load speed
Accessibility and cleanliness of code
And the kicker…
Social endorsements
Now keep in mind that rankings are personalized for every individual searcher. There are a number of other factors that are involved in ranking that have nothing to do with your website, but rather the data that Google and Bing can gather about individuals on the web:
Contextualization
Where are you? A search for [rehab facility] in Topeka, Kansas might return search results for celebrity gossip websites while the same search in Los Angeles might provide results for physical locations and directions.
What device are you using? Searching for [pizza] on a mobile device should point you to nearby pizza restaurants while the same search on a desktop
What’s trending? Breaking news completely changes search results. If you search for [presidential election results] in early November of an election year, the results will be dramatically different than in April of a non-election year.
Individualization
Who are you? Search engines collect a massive amount of information about individuals as they search the web. If you are logged into a Google account (think Gmail, YouTube, Google Docs, Google Analytics, etc.) while searching and surfing, Google can collect a ton of information about your habits and activities. They use this to deliver results that they feel are the most relevant to you.
What have you been up to? Even if you don’t have a Google account, they can still follow you around the web. Search engines attach cookies (small files that can collect data) to your browserto find out more about you. They can even track your computer. There is no escaping it. Google will use your previous search history to tailor results just for you.
Do you feel that your privacy is being invaded? You aren’t alone. But as a user of Google’s services and the Internet in general, you agree to this. There are, however, two very important benefits to this. The first is that, for the most part, you get better search results and second is that you can have access to some of this data to make your own web marketing better.
Now that you understand how serious Google is about delivering the best possible search results. And THIS is where social media, specifically Google+, comes in.
Can you imagine how much information is shared on social media websites everyday? And why do people share that information? Because it’s interesting, it’scontroversial, it’s topical, etc. And it’s incredibly valuable to a search engine that is personalizing search results. There is hardly anything more personal than social media.
To make a long story very short, Google would love to have all the data Facebook and Twitter have. But they have a deal with Bing and rather than enter a bidding war,Google has chosen to create their own social network, Google+. Now Google can still understand a few things about posts shared on Facebook and Twitter because there are so many ways to share things. Activity that happens behind the closed doors of Facebook.com and Twitter.com is hard to track. But now that most websites have Facebook “Like” buttons and Twitter “Tweet” buttons, Google can track whether or not users are endorsing thosepages.
All of these leads up to Google’s new “Search Plus Your World” which heavily integrates social cues into your search results if you are logged into a Google account.
You can see in the above examples that there are 160 pages that Tom Foster’s Google+ friends have interacted with, and 19 million other results. Google will let you know the difference between a social result and normal result by putting an icon to the left of the result as displayed below.
You can also turn off “Search Plus Your World” by selecting the globe in the top right of a search results page but it is on by default.
Google is placing a HUGE emphasis on this feature, to the point that users may need to turn the feature to get useful results. Here is Google’s official video on Search Plus Your World. Take it with a grain of salt because it ain’t that cool yet!
Search and social have officially collided. Don’t get left behind.
At Foster Web Marketing, we obviously believe that web marketing works. So much so that we included it in the name of the company and have built our entire business on it. Marketers love using the web to reach clients because the results are tangible and measurable. But there is an important marketing tool that you absolutely cannot overlook that will probably win you the most clients and cases: YOU.
In the months, leading up to the NFL Combine, sports fans are subjected to a flurry of largley meaningless statistics: 40 yard dash times, verticals, bench presses, etc. But you will constantly hear analysts talking about “intangibles” like character, toughness and leadership because they outweigh physical traits by a huge amount. Your law firm is the same. YOU are the most important marketing tool that you have. It doesn’t matter where you went to law school, how many years you’ve been practicing or how many associations you belong to. Web marketing can drive web traffic and leads but no tool is as powerful as your personality to convert and create referrals.
Let’s face the truth. Some people are born with unbelievable charisma and some aren’t. Pennsylvania Trust and Estates Lawyer Dave Frees has one of the most magnetic personlaties Ive ever come across. Does this help his marketing and his law practice? Hell yes! Just check out this video he made in the Fairfax Video Studio:
Not everyone is Dave Frees. But even if you are introverted and don’t enjoy the spotlight, you still possess powerful marketing tools. Every interaction with a potential client or current client contributes to a perception of you as a person and a lawyer. Treating people with genuine (emphasis on genuine) kindness and empathy during stressful times reflects well on you and your firm. And it’s great marketing.
We often recommend that people read Napoleon Hill’s Keys to Success: The 17 Principles of Personal Achievement where he breaks down the traits of successful people. Success is not only defined as financial gain and Hill does an excellent job explaining how every action you take and word you speak contributes to the success or failure of the goals you’ve set for yourself. Its a great read for anyone, not just lawyers or marketers but its vital to understand just how important this is to your success.
So keep at your web marketing. This doesn’t mean content and link building aren’t important but it does mean that you need to hone in on the most powerful marketing tool. And it’s right at your fingertips.
Here is “everything you need to know about image optimization for lawyers” condensed into just a few hundred words. Let’s start at the very beginning. You need images on your site. In the same way video engages web visitors, so do images. And in the same way videos must be optimized properly to give you any kind of juice in the eyes of Google, so too must your images be optimized. If you don’t believe that images are important to SEO, just head over to Google.
Clearly, Google is big on image search.
Google is very deliberate about their user interface. If images is the second tab on a SERP (search engine result page), then you can bet that images are important to them. With that established, let’s dig into how to use images on your attorney website to improve rankings.
It all starts with the file. Whether you have a graphic from iStockphoto or a photo that you’ve taken yourself, you will want to change the file name and maybe even the file type. We recommend working with JPEG files because they are easily recognized by all browsers. Here are examples of default files names that are NOT helpful for SEO:
Note: These are real file names. You will come across file names like this. Before you do anything else, change the file name with your searchers in mind. The file name of the screenshot above is “image-seo-for-lawyers.jpg”. If you are a car accident lawyer in Topeka, Kansas posting a stock image of a car accident, an appropriate file name might be “topeka-kansas-car-accident-lawyer.jpg”. As discussed in this webmaster video with Matt Cutts, you want to use hyphens when separating words in a URL or file name rather than underscores. Hyphens, in the eyes of Google, indicate separate words while underscores do not.
The next step is re-sizing your image for the web. If you are using a photo that you have taken on a digital camera that is 8 mega-pixels, you absolutely want to re-size it before you upload it into your image library. That is a huge file that will slow down your page load time (a big no-no for SEO). You can do this in Photoshop and many other desktop programs but I like Picnik.com when I just need to re-size and not edit. Don’t worry about the exact size of the image, just try to keep the file at something reasonable, like 100kb. Once the file is uploaded, you can alter the size for styling purposes but the file itself remains the same size.
Once uploaded, you will need to surround your image with descriptive text to make sure the search engines understand what it is. This starts with your alt text. Here are some examples, taken directly from Google:
Not so good: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”"/>
Better: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”puppy”/>
Best: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”Dalmatian puppy playing fetch”>
To be avoided: <img src=”puppy.jpg” alt=”puppy dog baby dog pup pups puppies doggies pups litter puppies dog retriever labrador wolfhound setter pointer puppy jack russell terrier puppies dog food cheap dogfood puppy food”/>
You don’t need to dig into the code of your site to add alt text. Every content management system allows you to do this when you upload the image. Here is what it looks like in WordPress:
The "Image Description" is the alt text. The title is the text that appears when you hover over the image or the user chooses not to display images.
Now that you have alt text, proper image size and a clean file name, you can do a few extra things to help searchers find your images AND help the pages with images rank better.
Add an image sitemap and submit it to Google Webmaster tools.
Make sure every image (including file name, alt text, etc.) is relevant to the page you put it on. A stock photo of a lawyer optimized for car accidents should not also be used for medical malpractice. If you want to use the same image twice, start the process from the beginning.
Style your images on the page so that the text wraps nicely around them and keep them above the fold.
Build links to images and pages with images on them.
For more information on best practices for image SEO, check out Google’s official guidelines. Images are content just like text and video. They can help you rank better in search and hurt you if not done properly. One more thing to add to your list but an important one if you want to stay ahead of the curve!
Blogging about news stories is very controversial in the legal field – especially in the personal injury one. Since the general public tends to have a negative attitude toward this field of law, personal injury attorneys who create content around news can be easily criticized as “ambulance chasers.” In many cases, this label might be an accurate description of what a lawyer is engaging in. We’ve personally seen articles written about car accidents, etc. that seem to be directly aimed at reaching the victim and converting him or her into a client.
Don’t do that. It’s rude.
But don’t make the mistake of assuming all news blogging is rude blogging. It’s not.
News blogging, in general, falls in the traffic generation and branding categories. There’s a lifecycle of interest in a news story. Writing in a timely manner on a “hot” subject captures the attention of a larger audience than when the news story has died down (this is where the Google “Freshness” algorithm update comes into play). Blog on a popular news topic and Google will send you a significant amount of traffic. Through this you introduce more consumers to your law firm and educational resources.
Another consideration: people who interact with the news stories you blog on may be going through a similar situation as the characters in the article. One of the worst feelings people can experience is isolation. If people feel their problems are unique to them, the shame from being different may prevent them from coming forward. Covering real news stories about real people experiencing real problems can help third-party readers who are going through similar situations feel more at ease about what they are experiencing. Producing that kind of good feeling is marketing gold – because PNCs are more likely to contact someone who makes them feel better about themselves than a random attorney with a 10/10 AVVO rating.
So how do you do it?
Here are some tips for writing an effective blog post about a recent event:
Eliminate the protagonist and antagonist as audience members. If you are a personal injury attorney, don’t write for the victim to read. If you are a criminal defense lawyer, don’t write for the person arrested to read. That’s ambulance chasing, and your audience won’t stand for it.
Identify the actual audience. Having excluded the characters in the story as audience members, try and determine who will actually be reading the post. Did the Consumer Products Safety Commission just recall a popular baby swing? Guess who cares about that. Did a local high school lose a student in a horrific and avoidable street racing accident? Who’s online looking for information about that?
Identify and write what the audience will appreciate. Were children drugged at a daycare so they would all nap at the same time? People with toddlers want to know a) how this could have happened and b) how to prevent this sort of thing happening at their children’s daycare. Answer both questions. Did a respected teacher at a local elementary school pass away when his motorcycle hit an 18-wheeler? Students who knew and liked him want to pay homage. Write a tribute.
Link to external resources. Is a community having a fundraiser to support the children of parents who died in a vehicle accident? Link to the event page. Tell your blog to open the link in a new window or tab (so that they stay on your website and have a second chance to see it once they are done with the linked-to resource). For you techies, that means adding the target=”_blank” tag to your link. You might also consider using the rel=”nofollow” tag to prevent link juice dilution.
Link to similar stories or category pages on your own blog. Has there been a rash of fatal drunk driving accidents in one city over the last three months? Reference and link to those within your article.
At the Rasansky Law Firm, we have seen cases come in through this strategy (in addition to some nice SEO benefit for other web pages in our network!). Some cases we receive are from readers who saw our post, found that they could relate to the situation, and called for a case review. Other leads we receive are from the victims themselves (two of the examples listed above are actual cases where the victims called us after reading the blog post). We didn’t write the article to attract them, but these clients so much appreciated what was written that when they were ready to hire an attorney we were the ones they came to.
Every market is different. Test for yourself.
One more word of advice – this time from author Seth Godin:
The world is jam-packed with books and manuals on how to do the [magic] trick, whatever the trick is. If it’s so easy to figure out how to do the trick, why do so few people do it? Because, of course, it has nothing to do with knowing how the trick is done, and everything to do with the art of doing it. – Seth Godin, Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us
Knowing how to understand an audience and write for it is much easier than actually doing it. It’s a skill that requires practice – and in some cases – delegation to a seasoned writer or team of writers. Done correctly, reporting on news stories is a fantastic way to generate traffic, build links, and earn cases.
About Steve Wade
Steve Wade is a member of the Rasansky Law Firm’s client relationship team who specializes in developing interactive experiences for existing and potential clients. Joining the team in February 2010, he rigorously applies the never-changing principles of human nature to the ever-changing tools modern client-relationship nurturing requires. Connect with Steve on Twitter or Facebook.
Importance of Site Speed
Site speed takes in to account the amount of time all elements of a web page take to load. This includes images, video, content, etc. Anyone that’s spent time on the Internet knows how frustrating it can be to wait… and wait… for a website to load. In fact, Google added site speed as a ranking factor in 2010 because – as we all know – Google’s search aims to return the most valuable and useful results for search queries and a slow site is, well, just not that useful. Who has time to wait for a site to load when there are nine other organic search results to choose from? I’ll have to agree with Jay-Z and say, “On to the next one.”
In addition to user experience, site speed can also affect how many pages are crawled. According to an article on visiblefactors.com there is a direct correlation between site speed and the number of pages crawled. Simply put, the faster pages load, the more pages that can be crawled. A faster site can also reduce bounce rate and increase the number of pages visited which can lead to more conversions.
Tools for Testing Site Speed
There are tools available for testing and monitoring your site’s load time. Not surprisingly, Google Webmaster Tools and the newest version of Google Analytics have sections specifically targeted to analyze site speed and performance. The Site Speed report was added to all Google Analytics accounts earlier this month, no longer requiring site owners to add an extra tracking code.
Got Firebug? With this plugin you are able to download Google’s Page Speed tool and Yahoo’s YSlow, which analyze individual pages of your site and provide a report of performance issues. Not only do these tools show you areas of concern, but also give you tips on how to improve these issues. The Page Speed tool gives pages a grade on a scale of 100, and while it may be possible to get a score of 100/100 (yet unlikely – Google’s home page has a score of 98/100), this grade is not the end all/be all and your page speed time itself should remain the real focus.
Improving Site Speed
Some of the most common issues affecting site speed and page load time involve website compression, image optimization, and the amount of HTTP requests and DNS lookups. Compressing a web page with a program like gzip can significantly decrease the size of the page that the browser loads without changing the page’s content (this does not include images and media). Optimize images and video by ensuring they are in a web-friendly format like GIF, JPEG, PNG and FLV for video.
Reducing the amount of HTTP requests and DNS lookups will help the page load time by decreasing the amount of external files the browser is forced to load when bringing up a web page. Combine external Javascript and CSS files where possible and don’t go crazy with 301 redirects. Basically, the fewer external files and additional URLs the browser loads for a page the better.
Do you have questions about your attorney website performance? We can help. Give Foster Web Marketing a call at 888.886.0939 or contact us online today.
We knew the day would eventually arrive and it finally has. Google has announced that businesses can now create pages on Google+.
This opportunity is huge for people who want to connect with customers regarding their brands, products and/or local businesses. As Google+ continues to grow in popularity, your law firm has the potential to benefit greatly.
According to Google, if you create a business page on Google+, you will be able to “connect with the customers and fans who love you.” But that’s not all, if you ask Google. They have gone even further to say that “not only can [your clients] recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face.”
What do you need to do to get started? First, visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create. Then, develop your page and start sharing with clients and prospects. It’s that simple.
A Few More Tips for Your Google+ Business Page
Just like a Facebook business page or Twitter account, to truly be successful on Google+, you need to be actively involved. That means you should be sharing helpful and interesting information on a regular basis. You should also be engaging with your clients and fans. View what they are posting and make meaningful comments too.
If you are not convinced that you need yet another social network, you should know that Google is planning to include Google+ pages in search results. You need to make sure that your page is ready and can be found by your prospects!
For information on our attorney Web marketing services, including SEO and social media marketing, give us a call at 888.886.0939.
When it Comes to Google, Fresh is Often Best!
Google has continued to keep Web marketers and search engine optimizers on their toes by announcing another major change to its search engine algorithm.
What You Can’t Forget About Google…
Sometimes one of the fundamental aspects of Google is forgotten – that it is a business. Google is a business that is constantly looking for ways to improve the experience of its users. With that being said, the search engine makes hundreds of updates to its algorithm every year. One of the latest changes, though, is worth your attention. The algorithm modification has been coined as “The Freshness Update.”
The Content That Will be Affected
The new algorithm update is designed to push fresh content that is based on recent events, hot topics, recurring events, or topics with frequently updated information to the top of search results. Keep in mind that this is content that is time sensitive.
For example, if you are an insurance litigation attorney who represents residential earthquake claims, fresh content you write about the recent Oklahoma earthquake could wind up at the top of search results. However, content that is not outdated quickly, such as “5 Ways to Choose an Insurance Litigation Attorney,” wouldn’t be impacted by the new change.
Google describes the algorithm update this way:
“Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers.”
How Big is This Algorithm Change?
Initially, Google claimed that the change would affect about 35 percent of searches, but later clarified this statement. According to Google, the algorithm change “noticeably impacts 6-10% of searches depending on the language and the domain you’re searching on”.
What This Means to You
It’s hard to ignore this latest update by Google. In fact, it is actually a great opportunity for lawyers. Google has made it clear that content is even more important than ever before. That means you should be updating your website with content, and a lot of it.
For information about how we create Web content for lawyers, contact us today at 888-886-0939.
Steve Wade is a member of the Rasansky Law Firm’s client relationship team who specializes in developing interactive experiences for existing and potential clients. Joining the team in February 2010, he rigorously applies the never-changing principles of human nature to the ever-changing tools modern client-relationship nurturing requires. Connect with Steve on 
According to Google, if you create a business page on Google+, you will be able to “connect with the customers and fans who love you.” But that’s not all, if you ask Google. They have gone even further to say that “not only can [your clients] recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face.”
