Want Proof That Google Doesn’t Like Black Hat Tactics?
Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Although I’ve never heard it firsthand, a lot of my clients tell me about solicitations they get from other website developers and SEO companies and how they claim that their companies can get away with certain “Black Hat SEO” tactics because they have a special relationship with Google.
Now comes proof from Japan that Google doesn’t play favorites, even going so far as punishing themselves.
That’s right, when Google Japan played some games with their own PageRank, Google responded by lowering their PageRank. So, to continue my train of thought, wouldn’t it seem very odd for Google to punish themselves but let other companies get away with Black Hat techniques because of a”special relationship?” Of course that is absurd.
As I always tell my clients, Black Hat tactics can work for a while, and in some businesses with short shelf lives that might be fine. But if your plan includes using your website for years into the future, it makes no sense to risk all of your hard work on a little bit of gain. As this story from Japan shows, if Google feels you violated their Best Practices, you will be punished.
Congratulations to Fierstadt & Mans On the Launch of Their Website
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Fierstadt & Mans
An overdue congratulations is in order for Jack Fierstadt & David Mans on the launch of their new Real Estate Law website. The firm decided to go with a conventional looking site, but they executed it in a very “classy” way. The Los Angeles and Pasadena city shots, including the Disney Hall photo, do a great job of expressing the geographic focus of the firm.
The firm actually practices in areas outside of Real Estate & Real Estate Litigation, and the site focuses on those areas as well. On the site you will also find pages on Business Formation & Business Litigation as well as Personal Injury.
The site has been up a few months now and already the firm has been getting great traffic & is showing up really well in the Search Engines. One page of the site seemed to get immediate traction, even on Statewide searches; Landslide Litigation. The power of this page is its uniqueness, and that is a direct extension of the firm’s unique experience with this complex case type. There just aren’t many lawyers with experience in landslide cases, so not many lawyers market that as a strength. The rest of that equation is pretty clear. Since so few firms handle these cases, very few sites include content on the subject, and therefore good content on the subject quickly bubbles up to the top of Google searches.
The lesson here for all firms is to market to your uniqueness. If you are an attorney who has handled cases that most others have not, make that the focus of your site. Instead of just talking about Criminal Defense, market your experience as a Fraud Defense Attorney. Instead of just being a Bankruptcy Attorney, market the fact that you are a Mortgage Modification Lawyer. Google loves unique content, and your potential clients will love reading about your experience in their specific case type.
A Video From Google Explaining What They Display on Search Engine Results Pages
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Many of my clients ask how Google decides how to display their results on the SERP pages. Rather than just giving you my own explanation , I thought it might be helpful to hear for yourself via the following video. Matt Cutts is a Google Engineer and currently the head of their Webspam team. More important to us, he is generally regarded as the man who enforces the Google Webmaster Guidelines and helps educate the public on how to improve their visibility on the Google Search Engine Results pages.
In this particular video, Cutts discusses “Snippets,” which is the term used for the information Google displays on the Search Engine Results Pages about each site.
One of the most interesting parts of his example, I think, is his explanation of what are called SiteLinks. In the video, it is the section at the bottom of the snippet that looks like an index of the Starbucks site used in the example (Store Locator, About Us, etc). Many of my clients ask how they can get this added to their sites.
Important to know about SiteLinks is that it isn’t something you create or request. It just happens, and it only happens if your site is laid out in a Google friendly manner and on sites with a good bit of quality content. Most importantly, it only shows up for the top listing in any search.
For people who want to fully understand what Google is displaying and why, I recommend watching the video.
Google’s Search Wiki Explained
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing, Uncategorized | No Comments
On November 20th Google launched a new version of their flagship search product that they are referring to as Search Wiki. I actually came across this product back in January 2008 when I noticed it on the computer of a potential client. I went home and tried to get it for myself back then, only to discover that it was being “bucket tested” for random selection of Google users. Apparently those 10+ months of testing led Google to believe that the product was something that people would want and use, and that might eventually be true. In the past 3 days, however, I have seen it cause a good bit of confusion with my colleagues and clients.
What is Search Wiki? I’ve heard people describe it as a DIGG for search, and it certainly LOOKS like Digg with its up and down arrows. I’ve also heard people who latch onto the term WIKI and insist that it is some sort of collaborative ranking system. So far, neither of those seem to be true.
As of this moment, whatever effort you put into “voting” for search results is only for your own personal use. Your votes DO NOT affect the SERPS of any other Google user. To see for yourself, log out of Google and see how the voting disappears (in fact, you can only vote if you logged in).
The only indelible mark you can leave on the SERPS is with comments. Comments ARE viewable by other users, and the thinking goes that users will get the most out of searches if they get the SERPS from the traditional algorithm but can then discern value of those results by reading the comments of searchers who came before them. It’s actually an idea with great merit (I look at Amazon reviews before buying anything), but unfortunately they still have to work a few kinks out.
The biggest problem so far is that it took about 5 minutes for spammers to start seeding the comments sections with their advertisements. Likewise, I am sure that people will start to setup fake Google accounts so that they can write terrible things about their competitors. The nice thing about the traditional Google algorithm is that it really cannot be gamed so easily. We trust the Google “reference librarian” and assume that the sites that are recommended are given to us based on an objective, not subjective formula.
So while I see some value to Search Wiki, here is hoping that Google keeps its impact to a minimum. I’d also like to see them allow users to turn it off without logging out. As a Gmail user it is getting annoying having to log out of Gmail just to do a traditional Google search.
One final note to my clients & prospects who often meet with companies that tout how they can move you up in the Google results. Anytime someone is demonstrating how well their sites do in the organic results, make sure they are LOGGED OUT of google. If you see Green Arrows on the page, or their email in the top right corner, then they are logged in and potentially manipulating the results. This has actually been a best practice for a while since Google has been personalizing results for a few years now, but Search Wiki has made it all the more important. Don’t let some snake oil salesman fool you.
Google has posted a You Tube video explaining Search Wiki. I’ve embedded it below.
Google SearchWiki video
Why You Should Market Your Legal Services For Timely Events
Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
First, let me say that I realize this is a touchy subject. No one wants to come off as an opportunist, and certainly that is something a law firm risks when they market their services to victims of a headline grabbing accident.
That being said, victims of accidents like these certainly do need representation. A recovering victim or the family of a deceased victim are almost certainly not experienced (and too grief stricken) to navigate through the confusing waters of major litigation. In fact, it is in the interest of the victims that a Law Firm with experience handling such cases SHOULD market those services.
Case in point, the recent Los Angeles Metrolink Train Accident in Chatsworth, CA. Twenty-eight people have died, well over one hundred have been injured. There is no doubt that many of the victims and their families will require legal assistance as they determine their rights. Some will have the resources to find the right attorney, but most will not. How can these victims find the RIGHT attorney for their case, and how can attorneys make sure that their firms are found?
Clearly old guard marketing efforts like the Yellow Pages can’t help wih these timely events. Radio/TV/Newspaper advertising can be timely, but when your audience is only a few hundred people it really doesn’t make sense to use such broad-spectrum methods.
On the internet front, Pay-Per-Click is an obvious answer. You can change things on the fly and quickly adjust keywords so your firm shows up for certain searches. But just having a Pay-Per-Click campaign isn’t enough. It is also IMPERATIVE that you ammend your website to include content on the timely subject. If your site is well positioned with the search engines you’ll be amazed at how quickly your new content will show results. More importantly, potential clients will see that you are specifically reaching out to them once they get to your site. That is precisely what my client Binder & Associates has done with their website, with content on both their homepage and on a specific Los Angeles Metrolink Accident page.
Another great method for adding timely content is by having a blog for your law firm. Since the nature of a blog is to have a constant update to the content, the search engines more readily index the pages of blog sites. This can allow you to show up in the search engine results pages within HOURS of publishing, a great advantage for marketing to timely events. The downside is that you really do need to keep your blog fresh at all times (at least a few times a week) or it will lose this quality, and most attorneys just don’t have the time.
If you are an attorney and you are interested in blogging for your firm, or if you have someone on staff who can do it for you, please don’t hesitate to contact me to find out how to get started. I can be reached via my website, www.losangeles-lawyer-marketing.com.
“Google Suggest” – The End of Long Tail Search?
Friday, September 12th, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Let me first answer my own question: No.
But, I do think that Google Suggest will change the way people search. If you use an iPhone you’ve most certainly experienced Google Suggest, but you’ve also probably encountered it if you’ve downloaded the Google Toolbar for Firefox or the new Google Browser, Chrome.
For those of you who do not know, Google Suggest has been a Google Labs project for a while now and what it basically does is predict what search you are going to do by what you have already typed. This is based off data on Google’s servers, not previous searches that YOU conducted on your computer.
So basically, if I type “Divorce At…” it will offer up “Divorce Attorneys”. But more interestingly, it also suggests several more searches, including some that are city specific, and one that is “Divorce Attorney for Men”.
Google Suggest - Divorce Attorneys
Imagine you are a man doing this search. Might you be inclined to take this suggestion instead of typing in whatever search you were planning on doing. Even if you were about to type in “Divorce Attorneys for Dads,” it is not unreasonable to think that you might switch. Just like we users end up trusting Google’s results, we might decide to trust their search suggestions too.
That being said, I think Google Suggest actually has a much bigger impact on Vanity Searches than on Long Tail search. There are only so many suggestions that Google can make (7-10 usually), so they tend to concentrate on the obvious searches. And Google also seems to not be targeting everything yet. ”Divorce Attorney Pa…” gets the suggestion “Divorce Attorney Pasadena” but “Divorce Attorney Glen” does not get the suggestion “Divorce Attorney Glendale”.
However, I do see a use for Google Suggest when it comes to SEO strategy. Typing in “Pasadena Divo..” offers up “Pasadena Divorce Lawyers” & “Pasadena Divorce Lawyer.” That’s it. No “Pasadena Divorce Attorney” or “Pasadena Divorce Law Firm”. If I’m strategizing on what comes first in my SEO plan, I use what Google is going to suggest.
pasadena-divorce-lawyers - Google Suggest
As of today, I DO NOT believe that this is something that everyone needs to worry about. No one should rush out and change their tags or keywords just yet. But it is certainly worth monitoring.
If you need help with Law Firm Website Optimization, please visit my website at www.losangeles-lawyer-marketing.com
Hello Wordpress…
Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 | My Blog | No Comments
My recent lack of posting has been due to my decision to take my blog off the Blogger platform and move it to my own hosting service utilizing the Wordpress software. I’m pretty sure its almost good to go, so I’ve started moving over some of my old posts to the new platform (unfortunatley, the import function on Wordpress isn’t working for me).
For any of you out there contemplating doing a similar move, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
“Why Doesn’t Google Know How Important I Am?”
Monday, July 21st, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
While no one has ever used those exact words, I do often hear from attorneys who are frustrated that their own websites show up lower on Google searches than the websites of other, less experienced attorneys. I once even received a call from a non-client who was angry that my client was coming up #1 on a search for Immigration Attorneys. For some reason he felt the need to tell me off and let me know that HE was a much more accomplished attorney than my client, and that it was wrong that his site didn’t come up first in the search. (Sadly, he was so angry he refused to meet with me to discuss his own site.)
One of the analogies I like to use when first meeting with a potential client is the Library Analogy. To explain how Google works we ask the attorney to think of the Internet as a vast library and Google as the librarian. Continuing the analogy, we ask the attorneys to think about how Google the librarian decides what “books to pull from the shelf.” Obviously if you don’t have a book (website) or if that book isn’t filed correctly (SEO, etc), your not going to show up very high in the results. The “library analogy” has really helped many of our clients grasp why it is not only important to build a website, but to build one the right way.
And yet, it dawned on me this weekend that as much as I like the “Library Analogy”, it still comes up short in explaining how important it is to build a website the right way. That being said, it is still the best analogy we have, as nothing really compares to either the amount of data Google has in its reference or to the method at which it gets dispersed.
I was catching up on last month’s WIRED MAGAZINE and read Editor Chris Anderson’s article on THE PETABYTE AGE. The first thing that jumped out at me was the fact that Google processes 1 PETABYTE of data every 72 minutes. To put that in perspective, the entire printed volumes at the US Library of Congress take up about 10 Terabytes, which is 1/100th of a Petabyte. That is a staggering amount of data.
The other thing that jumped out at me was the concept that Google doesn’t “know” anything. As Anderson says, “Google can translate languages without actually “knowing” them (given equal corpus data, Google can translate Klingon into Farsi as easily as it can translate French into German). And…it can match ads to content without any knowledge or assumptions about the ads or the content.”
Most relevantly, he points out that “Google’s founding philosophy is that we don’t know why this page is better than that one: If the statistics of incoming links say it is, that’s good enough. No semantic or causal analysis is required.”
And so, it is not really that Google doesn’t know how important you are, it is that they neither need nor care to know it. Google merely uses applied mathematics to sort through its huge mass of data, and so far that has ruled the day. Might this change in the future? I suppose it could, particularly with growth of reviews that are included in things like Google Local. But even reviews don’t convey stature, so I think for the foreseeable future this will not be part of the equation.
What I am certain of is that if you want to grow your business using the Internet, it is more important than ever to have the guidance of an Internet Marketing professional. There are just too many moving parts and the system is too complicated to do this on your own, particularly if you are practicing law full time.
If you’d like help with your law firm site, please contact me via my website at http://www.losangeles-lawyer-marketing.com/.
Use of Flash Leaves No Doubt Who This Site is Being Marketed To
Monday, July 14th, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
The site also experienced a sea-change from a design perspective as well. (Note: I particularly like the color combo, as evidenced by my own new site at http://www.losangeles-lawyer-marketing.com/ ). The first thing that stands out when you land on the Gill & Baldwin page is the Flash header featuring images of construction sites. There are different ways to use Flash on a site. Some use it to animate a logo, or to have a scrolling list of recent court victories and settlements. Personally, when appropriate, I like to use it to really highlight a specialty.
A visitor to http://www.gillandbaldwin.com/ will immediately know what kind of cases this firm specializes. It is not merely an image of a bulldozer, or of a courtroom, or the scales of justice. If I worked in the construction industry, and I was looking for someone who I knew was dedicated to my kind of cases, I would certainly pay attention when I landed on this site.
Of course, once you get the potential client’s attention, you need to keep them interested, and this site delivers with real content as well. The site features pages on the following:
Construction Litigation & Appeals
Mediation & Arbitration on Construction Disputes
Contract Negotiations
Extra Work/Change Orders
Construction Collections
Mechanic’s Liens
Bonds & Stop Notices
Material Suppliers’ Rights
Bid Protests
Congratulations to Kirk MacDonald and the whole firm at Gill & Baldwin on the launch of this new site.
A Beautiful New Design For Family Law Attorney Demetria Graves
Sunday, July 6th, 2008 | Lawyer Marketing | No Comments
Glendale Family Law Attorney Demetria Graves unveiled a new website last Friday, and I for one think it is one of the best looking sites I’ve seen. Family Law websites present tricky design issues since you need the sites to convey both the strength AND compassion of your law firm. Demetria Graves has accomplished this with the release of her new site. The site is loaded with information, conveys Demetria’s experience, and has an organic look to it that fits well for a Family Law site
The Law Offices of Demetria Graves were early adopters of using the Internet to market their services to people needing family law help in Southern California. For the past several years, the firm’s site was a template design with a few pages of content written about the firm’s services.
With the release of this new site, Demetria Graves can highlight all the work her firm can perform in many different aspects of Family Law, including:
Divorce
Child Custody & Visitation
Child Support
Community Property Division
Congratulations to Demetria on the release of this new site.
If you would like a website developed for your law firm, please visit http://www.losangeles-lawyer-marketing.com/ to learn about how we can make your firm’s website your leading source of new and better clients.
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