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Jan 21, 2017
# The Team Investigates an Impressions Spike
When people think of SEO, they tend to think primarily of on-page elements—keyword density, alt-tags on images, H-tags, and so on.
Google’s algorithm is quite a bit more nuanced than that, however. 
In this video, the team discusses a previously under-performing page that has recently seen a huge increase in its number of impressions.
Over the course of the discussion, we identified three often-overlooked factors that were changed just prior to the page taking off: Schema markup, meta titles and meta descriptions, and the anchor text used to link to the page from other .
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Jan 14, 2017
# Is Your Law Firm Ready for Google’s New Mobile Index?
A separate mobile index. That’s what Google has been saying it plans on rolling out (or more than likely, already has).
I didn’t really understand what that meant when I first heard it. With regard to links and content, the mobile version of our site is the same as the desktop.
Especially since our site is responsive and not a separate site shown only to people on a mobile device.
Both have the same URLs, the same content, the same internal page structure, the same internal links, and (usually) the same navigation.
So what difference does it make if Google has one index for mobile webpages and another for desktop pages?
Especially if the only difference between the pages in each index is the way they appear to visitors based on the device that they’re using to view it.
And that right there is the difference that matters: user activity.
We’ve known that user activity and people finding what they’re looking for on your site has been a ranking factor increasing in weight over the past few years.
Google measures this according to metrics such as time on site, bounce rate, and pages visited, just to name a few.
Up until now, Google ranked your site based on how people used your  on a desktop computer.
That is what will be changing this year.
Google is flipping the type of device-use measured so that your site will now rank according to how people use it on a mobile device—not a desktop.
That’s HUGE!
How many law firm websites do you know of that were built with the mobile user as the primary focus?
Right . . . not many at all.
Every other huge company (think of Facebook and their most recent acquisitions) is putting mobile first. It’s about time that Google did, too.
How are you serving mobile users?
What’s on your mind? Tell us below.
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Apr 18, 2016
# 5 Expert Marketing Tips for Law Firms You Can’t Afford to Ignore
We all know that  is a necessity if you want to ensure that you’re getting your website in front of the right people and grow your practice, but it can be pretty overwhelming. People make full-time jobs out of Internet marketing, so how are you, as a busy attorney, supposed to make heads or tails of where to begin?
While law firm marketing isn’t a simple process – nothing worthwhile ever is – there are a few steps you can take today to ensure that you’re moving forward instead of letting your competition trample all over you.
## 5 Marketing Tips for Law Firms from the Experts
If you want your practice to be successful, you have to stay on top of the marketing game. That means you need to find what works for your firm and work hard to keep at it.
1. **Be yourself.** Let your personality shine through everything you do to market your firm – and that includes everything from the text on your website to the personal signatures on your holiday cards. People can sense a fake a mile away, and if they get that vibe from you, you’re not going to be the one they work with when they need legal help.
2. **Focus on the work that you’d like to be doing, not the work you’re doing but don’t enjoy.** When you start marketing your services, aim high.
3. **Show up at bar association events.** They’re not just great networking opportunities (they are); they’re ideal for expanding your expertise and using as something that sets you apart from every other lawyer who’s hung out his or her shingle in town.
4. **Diversify your marketing efforts.** You don’t have to stick to Google’s pay-per-click campaigns; you can try new things, such as Facebook ads, sharing content that goes viral or making videos that explain legal scenarios to people who need to learn more.
5. **Do everything you can to turn your website into something that’s about your potential clients, not about you.** Don’t use your website to brag about your credentials. Use it to help your readers solve problems and illustrate how you’re the one attorney who knows exactly what they’re going through.
## Marketing Tips for Law Firms: This is the Tip of the Iceberg
You can’t get by doing these things alone (although they will provide you with a substantial advantage over most of your competitors, because most attorneys believe that business will generate itself).
*Enter SEO Tips for Law Firms.*
SEO Tips for Law Firms is the premier tip app for attorneys, and it’s the only one of its kind. It’s packed with valuable marketing tips for law firms (more than 400 and growing every day, in fact) that you can use to make your practice far more successful than it’s ever been before.
This iPhone and Android app is broken down into six sections to help you market your firm more effectively:
* Link Building
* Content Creation
* Social Media
* Grow Your Practice
* On-Site SEO
* Recent Posts
Each section is brimming with the latest and most successful marketing techniques for you to use online and offline. The app is incredibly user-friendly, and you can even email useful tips to your team right from the tip screen. You’ll find the latest best practices that are in sync with Google’s most recent algorithm updates, and you can take comfort in the fact that every tip has been used to make law firms like yours more successful online.
Call for consultation: 877-203-0751
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Sep 02, 2015
# What Does Hummingbird Have to Do with Law Firms?
Google’s Hummingbird algorithm, which they started using near the end of 2013, rearranged the way that the search engine delivered results.
As an attorney, you want to attract Hummingbird. It’s good for your site – provided your site has what it wants.
## So what does Google’s Hummingbird want from your website?
What Hummingbird Has to Do with  Hummingbird changed the entire search landscape. Prior to its release, you could get all the wrong results from a search query. Back then, SEO professionals were stuffing keywords into every nook and cranny they could; that inevitably meant unpredictable results that may not ever lead searchers to an answer.
The new algorithm jostled the rankings, and sites that had been using the old method of over-optimizing webpages with keywords saw an immediate decline in traffic; sites that provided real value started to climb.
## How Does Hummingbird Work?
Google’s Hummingbird algorithm combines the best technologies to help the Googlebot – the crawler that visits, indexes and ranks pages – understand what pages are about. These functions are called semantic search and latent semantic indexing, and they’re remarkably good at helping law firms with great content rise to the top.
According to Danny Sullivan, Hummingbird lets Google “combine meaning and predict how to match your query to the document in terms of what the query is really wanting and are the connections available in the documents – and not just random coincidence that could be the case in early search engines.”
## How Can Law Firms Benefit from Hummingbird?
As long as you have well-rounded content on your site (and you’re not cannibalizing your keywords), you’ll be able to surpass your competitors when it comes to quality. If Google believes you have a quality page, they’ll deliver it to searchers long before they’ll dish up a thin, somewhat useless page.
Naturally, there are plenty of other factors that come into play, too – but you won’t get anywhere unless you start with improving user experience.
Google has repeatedly insisted that they want websites to focus on users, not search engines. (Matt Cutts even said that we should stop calling it “search engine optimization” and start calling it “search experience optimization.”)
One of the best ways to do that is to answer their questions by providing knowledgeable, valid and in-depth answers.
You really only have 3 to 5 seconds – 10 if you’re lucky – to convince users that you have the answer they need, that you’re trustworthy and that they can find the answer easily. If you can capitalize on those things, Hummingbird will help you get your firm’s site in front of all the right people.
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Aug 20, 2015
# How Does Google Handle lawyer Domains
If you’ve been paying attention to the latest buzz in SEO (who hasn’t?), you’ve probably heard about all the new generic top-level domains – especially the “.lawyer” one.
## What Are Generic Top-Level Domains?
Top-level domains, or TLDs, are the three-character extensions at the end of a web address, such as .com, .edu and .gov.
Generic top-level domains are top-level domains that have three or more characters. These are typically called gTLDs, and they include all of the newest top-level domains, such as:
* .lawyer
* .guru
* .expert
* .engineer
* .company
Many attorneys were initially excited about the .lawyer domain names, but rumors started circulating about Google treating these gTLDs differently from the way they treat .com addresses – and that took the wind out of many lawyers’ sails.
## How Does Google Treat .lawyer Domains?
Google recently came out and said that they  they treat all of the other domain extensions.
What that means is that you won’t gain an advantage by having a .lawyer (or .guru, .expert or .company) domain extension. You won’t be penalized, either.
Google’s Gary Illyes said that having a relevant TLD won’t give you a bump in the search engines, but he did say, “Users might trust them more and hence you might get more traffic, but there’s no inherent ranking benefit at all.”
## How Do You Get a gTLD to Rank in the SERPs?
The same things that are important with TLDs are important with gTLDs, including:
* Working toward appearing in 
* Creating strong  around your site
* Building a healthy  profile
You also need to ensure that you have solid content across the board. It needs to be informative, engaging and useful to searchers.
## Should Lawyers Buy New Domain Names?
Because there’s no difference in the way that Google treats TLDs and gTLDs, you could buy a new domain name with one of these interesting extensions. However, if you do that, you’ll need a separate website with separate content from what you already have… and then you may have to worry about competing with yourself.
You’ll also need to remember that people are used to saying “dot-com.” It could be tough for people to remember these new gTLDs, at least for a while, so if you’re considering buying one, that should be part of your decision.
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Aug 19, 2015
# Panda 4.2 Did it Affect Your Law Firm Website
Google rolled out their latest algorithm refresh, Panda 4.2, during the end of July – and it has left many SEOs waiting for results. Representatives from Google suggested that it could take months for the rollout to wrap up, and in the end, it will affect between 2 and 3 percent of English-language searches.
In order to understand whether Panda 4.2 will affect your law firm’s website, you need to know what it is, what it does, and why Google created it.
## **What is Google’s Panda?**
 weeds out low-quality sites, and it made a huge impact on the search engine results pages, or SERPs, when they introduced it in February 2011.
The targets were websites that had copied content directly from others and sites that had what they consider “thin” content.
Remember that Google is in the business of delivering high-quality results – so it’s no wonder that they want website owners to provide great content that gives users plenty of information. (It’s also why you need to have plenty of content on your site, which we’ll get to in a moment.)
## **Refresh vs. Update: Panda 4.2 is a Refresh**
When Google “refreshes” the algorithms, they sometimes add a few new features. However, they also reapply most of the signals the original Panda rollout used; this way, they’ll catch low-quality websites that have slipped through the cracks or are teetering on the razor’s edge.
An update is more like an overhaul. Panda itself – the original Panda, that is – was an update to Google’s algorithm. So was Mobilegeddon, and so was .
## **How Does Google’s Panda Affect Law Firms?**
Panda 4.2 is another “quality” update. If your website is low quality or doesn’t have enough text to answer users’ questions, you could be affected by the latest refresh.
If Panda 4.2 is going to affect your law firm’s website, keep in mind that Google continually refreshes and updates their algorithms. You can still make your site better, ensure that you’re following the latest best practices and keep updating it with .
## **How Do I Make My Site Better?**
Most law firms know that they need an Internet presence, but beyond that, things get a little fuzzy. The first step is to claim your free 20-minute site audit, where we’ll go over your site and point out its strengths and weaknesses. We’ll analyze your competitors, too, and then we’ll provide you with a clear plan of action that you can begin using immediately.
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