Digital Marketing

I’ve been getting a lot of people recently contacting me and asking me how do I get into Google Maps. Let’s take a look at Google Maps for the term Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer. This maps section is really important because a lot of times, people treat this just like the Yellow Pages.

A lot of times, a decent percentage of phone calls are going to go to these three listings right here. Usually, what it comes down to is the rating followed by the number of reviews.

In this instance, because all these firms have similar ratings, it’s going to come down to the number of reviews. However, if you get too many reviews, I have found that it almost seems fake and some people might not like that. That’s important.

How Google Determines Local Rankings

How do you get in these maps? You can see at support.google.com, but you have to prove your local ranking on Google. But how? First is relevance, which means how relevant are you to the topic. Relevance refers to how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for.

For example, if someone searches for car accident lawyer and you’re a DUI attorney, that doesn’t make any sense. But, if someone searches car accident lawyer and you’re a car accident lawyer, then that’s relevance.

There’s a ton of ways to become more relevant, and that’s for another video. You can probably look back on some of my other videos and see exactly how to become relevant for topics.

Mostly, it’s just making sure that you thoroughly cover a subject and you include all of the actual keywords on there, latent semantic indexing words, etc. There’s a website called text tools.net that I use all the time, and I have some tutorial videos on this that show exactly how to use this software. It makes a big difference when you can do this.

What About Distance?

The second thing is distance. I also created a video talking about why Google is treating lawyers like pizzas, and that directly addresses this distance issue. For this example, I will use Dallas, which is a pretty big area. If you’re on the north side of Dallas and you search for Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer, you’re going to get a different set of results than if you’re on the south side of Dallas.

The reason for that is because Google is using searcher proximity or who’s closer to the result, but what it’s doing is it’s returning results that are closer to the searcher. This is stupid because I have a lot of clients, and not a single one has ever told me that, “Oh, yeah. The client hired me because I was closest to them.” It’s just dumb. If you want a pizza, you want the closest pizza place. If you want a lawyer, you want the best lawyer.

Proving Prominence

The third and final thing is prominence, and this is something that refers to business citations, local citations, etc. We recently discovered something very interesting about the citations. We’ve seen reports on this, and then we actually tested this out on our own, and we found this to be true.

In short, prominence means other websites that list your website, that have all of your information. For example, I’m going to show you two different law firms and let you see what the difference is. These are both for the searches Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer. Here’s a guy, his name is Jerry D. Andrews, P.C., and what I’m looking for is his level of prominence.

Prominence, like I said, is citations. Citations are basically business listings. For example, Foursquare, Super Pages, Info Group, Yellow Pages, White Pages, Facebook, City Search, Insider Pages, Yelp, etc. These all are considered citations. The more of them that you have, the more relevant Google thinks you are.

There’s one thing that is more important than the number that you have, and that is the number that Google has indexed for you. What indexed means is when they actually store it in their algorithm.

For example, let me show you this. This is the Moz local search. You can go to Moz local and search your listings. You can also go to Google and search all of your information. What I did is I took Jerry D. Andrews P.C. 3030 Lyndon B. Johnson Fwy, basically his address and his name, and I put him in Google. I want to see how many citations or business listings actually show up in Google when I search for him.

Keep in mind, Jerry D. Andrews P.C. is number two on page 2 for the keyword Dallas Personal Injury Lawyer. He’s not getting phone calls for this keyword, it’s just not happening. What I did is I searched his information, and I see birdeye.com. Manta, super lawyers, local.yahoo, b2byellowpages, lawyers can help, Easy local, merchant circle, global health homes, yellow pages.

He’s only got nine listings on the first page. Let’s look at his Moz local. These are Foursquare, Super Pages, Info Group, none of these were on the first page. Local Lease, Factual, City Search, Insider Pages.

I’m going to do an index search. The way you do that is you just do site: in front of any URL, and that will tell you if the URL is indexed in Google. You see right here, I did cite, and I did the URL. Your search did not match any documents. This page is not indexed.

Here’s another one. SuperPages. Cite. Foursquare and Super Pages are major citations. This one’s not indexed. Here’s Neustar Localeze Sites colon. Not indexed. See Factual Cite colon. Not indexed. These are the major aggregators and they’re not showing up.

When I look at the number one listing in Dallas, and that is the Barber Law Firm. Here, we’re back to page one. Barber law firm. Let’s see. 3102 Maple Avenue, Dallas, Texas. When I look at that same report for the Barber Law Firm. Keep in mind, their stuff is not totally indexed, but they’ve got something that’s indexed, so let’s look at a few up here.

Let’s look at these three. Super Pages. Remember, Super Pages was not indexed for the other guy. Let’s see if it’s indexed for these guys. It is indexed. You see right here, there’s the link right there to the Super Page. Neustar Localeze. This is not indexed. Let’s look at City Search. Remember, City Search was not indexed. I’m not saying everything’s going to be indexed, but this is indexed as well.

When I search the Barber Law Firm and I put their address here, 3102 Maple Avenue, Dallas, Texas 75201. Let’s look at how many citations they have that are actually indexed. Not on what they have, but how many are actually indexed. We’ve got one, two, Yellow Pages, ARP, Super Pages, Super Lawyers, Univision. Here’s their website. We got a few that are on their website, so that’s seven on page one. Here’s some more of their website. FindLaw. HG.org. Yahoo. Now we’re on page three. White Pages. City Search. Better Business Bureau. Top Choice Awards. Top Insurance Companies. LinkedIn. Locality. Manta. Myeasybz. Get Fave. As you can see, there’s so much more prevalence.

They just have so many more listings that are indexed. What we have found is when you create these citations, they typically outsource the work. I know that we don’t do our own citations, we outsource our citations.

What happens is you provide the NAP, which is the name, address, phone number to the company that’s doing the citations, and then they’re going to want your website address, and then they typically want a description of the business.

The description of the business is where I think people run into a lot of problems because if you have the same description on every page, Google doesn’t index every single page because they see it as duplicate content. What we’ve seen is that if you use a different description for every citation and you don’t recycle content in your citations, then you get more pages indexed. When you have more pages indexed, you’re more prominent. When you’re more prominent, you’ll rank higher.

How To Check Your Local Citations

If you’re not ranking very well, try doing this search. Enter your name, address, and phone number, and see what comes up. Also, go to Moz Local and click check my listing. Enter your business information and then just start pooling those listings and see if they’re indexed.

If you’re having trouble ranking, this could be a big reason why. Everyone says build citations, but nobody says to make sure that your citations are indexed. It’s just something really to think about.

We, as a company called Web20 Ranker, to help us with our citations, and their citations get indexed really well. If you need any help, they’re a good company to go with. If you need help, let me know and I can kind of point you in the right direction for the citations.

A lot of lawyers have Avvo profiles, having received the illustrious 10 out of 10 Avvo rating. A client recently got a 10 out of 10 Avvo rating, and they sent me the badge that Avvo sends them to put on their websites. This brought up a good point that most lawyers don’t realize that by putting that badge on their website, you’re actually hurting yourself and helping Avvo.

Now, I’m not saying don’t use the badge. What we do for our clients is we actually take a picture of the badge, we don’t use the code that they give you, and I’m going to show you why right now.

Alright, so I want to give you an example. Let’s say you’re a bankruptcy lawyer in Chicago. So, let’s type “Chicago bankruptcy lawyer.” Alright, so we got the ads up here, we’ve got four maps listings, and one organic listing, who’s actually a bankruptcy attorney.

Then we’ve got Justia, Yelp, Thumbtack, Avvo, FindLaw, expertise.com. Google likes big brands; so, one of the ways that websites gain their authority is by having other websites linked to them.

For example, let’s say The Chicago Tribune writes an article about bankruptcy, and then they link to a bankruptcy law firm’s website. What’s going to happen is Google looks at that link, and they say “Okay, well we know The Chicago Tribune is not a spammy website. We know they’re an authoritative website, so therefore all of the links that go out, we are pretty confident that they are not going to spammy websites. We’re pretty confident that anyone that they link to is going to be an authoritative website. If anyone has a link coming from The Chicago Tribune, we’re going to basically boost their ratings or their rankings as well.”

How Has Avvo Tricked Lawyers?

Getting links from external websites is a really big part of SEO. So, I want to show you how Avvo and a lot of these other companies have tricked lawyers into completely boosting Avvo’s rating and kind of hurting yours.

If you click on that Avvo listing, what this does is brings up an aggregate of all listings for bankruptcy attorneys in Chicago on Avvo. These first couple are going to be paid listings and then you come down here, and it’s got all the other people on here.

Now, what I want to do is I want to show you that this is the actual URL that ranks in Google. We’ll go to a website called AHREFS, which is an SEO tool that shows sites that link to other sites. We put this exact link in to see who links to this exact page.

All I’m going to do is click that link here, and now I’m seeing some bankruptcy attorneys that are linking directly to this link. I know that this is an attorney named Peter Francis Geraci, I know he’s in Chicago, and that he’s a bankruptcy attorney.

Now if you notice at the top of his page, he’s got all of these Avvo badges. If I click on these, you’re going to see they all go directly to his Avvo profile. But, when I look at this page, I see that there’s a link going from his website to Avvo.com/bankruptcy/debt / lawyer. The actual aggregate page right here. So, how is this possible?

What happens is Avvo gives you the code for these actual buttons, and then people just copy and paste them into their website. It’s really easy, and that’s what Avvo banks on. So, if you click “view page source,” we can see the actual code of this website. This shows that this is linking directly to that website.

Avvo sneaks these links into your website, and if you look on this website, that takes you to his actual Avvo profile. Nowhere on here is it actually linking to the Avvo aggregate page and the problem is the way that this is sneaking in.

How Does This Affect Your Website?

The way that this is hurting this attorney is that when you search “Chicago bankruptcy attorney,” Avvo outranks him and the reason is because they have so many links going to all these different websites that they want to rank.

Let’s be real, Avvo doesn’t give a crap about this guy. What they care about is that they rank right and that’s why they use these sneaky links into your website. If this is frustrating to you, call your Webmaster and tell them, “Get rid of this link, just take the image and just link to my profile.”

Hope this helps everybody and that we can start putting these major aggregators in their place.

Behind the Scenes Look At My Raw Marketing Numbers

It’s challenging, but finding quality writers who meet the standards needed to produce great content can benefit your law firm. In fact, they’re easier to find than you might think.

The Perks Of Finding Skilled Writers

If you’re an attorney, if the writer is worth it, they will know that a mistake in how something is written can create problems for an attorney and their firm. This is just one reason why a small bank of experienced writers might be your best option.

Another reason for building a solid writing team is you’re always assured of a fresh perspective. Many writers have their own clientele that allows them the freedom of writing about the topics they wish.

Again, the good ones are ethical and have no reason to want to jeopardize any client, and the variety their writing skills bring to the table can go a long way in their creative efforts, which can only benefit your site and blog.

Where To Find Consistent, Experienced Writers

So where can you find these versatile and experienced writers? There are countless sites, some better than others. One of the best we have found is a Facebook group, Cult of Copy.

The writers are vetted to some degree, but you’ll want to conduct your own due diligence. A quick search on Facebook will get you to the page.

We might post a request for a blog entry and then select a few of the more promising writers from the comments.

We give a writing test that allows us to see firsthand the quality of writing and the accuracy of their grammar and sentence structure. We pay them for the sample, and the strong writers are added to our writing pool. This allows us to provide our clients with sharp writing that’s varied and professional.

Finding solid writers is like searching for anything else: you’re always going to run into a few that are unable to meet your needs. When you find those who meet and then exceed your requirements, those are the ones to add to your roster of writers.

Most importantly: it frees you from having to write your blogs and allows you to focus on getting your clients the results they need.

Even with the major changes in the media and especially the way news is delivered these days, there remains one form of media that is still appreciated: the local news. Here’s how you can score a segment on your city’s local news.

Building Your Brand Locally

Every community has them: local celebrities and experts on anything from local environmental events to fine dining to even HVAC maintenance.

These are the people whose expertise has not only built a brand, but it has made them the go-to for friends and neighbors who need help with all things related to that expert’s specific field.

If you’ve ever wondered how you can leverage that marketing opportunity while also doing something great for your community and neighbors, here’s an idea for you.

Take advantage of the local network affiliate’s “Submit a tip.”There’s typically a phone number you can call. Ask who to contact in order to submit a story idea.

There’s a good chance you’re already speaking with someone in the newsroom, and that means they will likely ask about your story. They may want you to email it as well.

First things first: you want to be sure there’s a value in your topic and your timing. For example, if you’re a tax attorney, the first of the year is when you need to consider a story pitch. Timing is everything.

It’s A Pitch: Make It Count

Remember that it’s a pitch, which means you’re going to need to offer something from a community value perspective.

If it’s tax season, there may be changes in tax laws that affect small business owners or head of household claims. Bring value to the table.

Just like a pitch to a book publisher, don’t submit to just one news station. Take advantage of the submission opportunities of all of your local news stations. Remember your audience is local.

Unless you’re in New York or Los Angeles, talking about corporate taxes might not be the best avenue to pursue.

Keep in mind that even if there aren’t big changes in federal tax laws, your state might have just revised its estate tax exemptions or changed the way Medicaid qualification is determined. All opportunities for you to take advantage of.

Have Fun And Share Your Knowledge

Remember to have fun and make the most of these few minutes. A good impression is the first best thing you can provide viewers. That’s accomplished via a confident, fact-based interview that invites people to reach out.

Your website is an important element in building both your reputation and brand. You rely on it in the same manner you would any other investment made to promote your firm.

You’ve done everything you’ve been told is necessary to really put your legal marketing into overdrive, but there’s one thing that you might have missed with your digital marketing efforts.

It takes just a few minutes and can significantly improve the way Google ranks your website.

Google Algorithms And Digital Marketing

Google’s algorithms are the driving force in how internet search engine returns are delivered to users. This area of digital media marketing can be overwhelming, partly because the rules and algorithms change often.

Understanding the algorithms and then leveraging them to your organization’s advantage can make a big difference in how your website ranks on search engines. The Google Panda algorithm brought with it important changes in how duplicate content is viewed.

While this applies to plagiarized content, it also applies to content that’s found on your site or blog in more than one place. If duplicate content is found, your site could be penalized.

Lower rankings could affect whether potential clients even find you. If your website isn’t visited as often, your bottom line suffers.

Aggregating Content

Many sites aggregate the content for the sake of convenience. This can help a potential client, especially if he or she’s looking for something specific.

If they’re looking for a blog they read awhile back about DUI laws, they might use your search bar on your site to find it. The returns might show that this post is tagged with different words, such as the year it was published, “DUI laws” or other keywords.

They can then click on the returns from the search, and it will take them to the page they’ve found. It’s convenient, but it can also mean the ranking takes a hit on Google.

Because the content is aggregated with identical text, odds are, it’s also indexed on Google as duplicate content, and therefore, your site is penalized, due to the Panda algorithm.

Avoiding Duplicate Content

There’s a quick and easy way to fix this without compromising the convenience factor for your site’s visitors or the ever-important Google ranking.

There are several websites that will conduct a duplicate content check for your website. It’s fast, and the information you gain from this tool can greatly improve your digital marketing efforts.

One of the better sites we have found to accomplish this is siteliner.com. Type your site address, and you’ll see instantly the percentage of duplicated content and where it is on your website. It checks your tags, author pages, blog entries and any other content you have.

If you find duplicated content, check to see if it’s cataloged within Google. To do this, simply put a “site:” in front of the specific links siteliner.com returns:

site:http://water.com (Note that there is no space added after the colon.)

If the pages are returned in your search, it’s been cataloged, and your site might not be ranking as high as it should.

The fix is simply having your IT people add a “no index” command. Problem solved. There are other ways to make the most of your SEO efforts. To learn more, contact us today.