Keeping Up With The Jones, ESQ s How to improve your law firm s presence on Google by George Murphy, The Search Ninjas
Hello! I am George Murphy - Owner of The Search Ninjas, located in Baltimore, MD. Web design and SEO provider for law firms. - Worked with law firms from all over the country and in a wide variety of practice areas. Contributor to Avvo Lawyenomics blog, Lawyerist, others. - Volunteer soccer coach for Baltimore Armour, player, fanatic. - Twitter: @george_murphy
1 Your Website s Content Key to a successful search engine presence.
Is Your Content Helping or Hurting? Google Panda is an algorithm update which was first introduced in February 2011. Panda penalizes websites with low quality content. There have been a number of versions of the Panda update rolled out since, with 4.1 being the most recent version. Good Panda BAD Panda - Unique, informative content that is wellwritten (shorter sentences, no misspellings, etc.) - Content that loads quickly, is responsive based on user s device - Websites that improves user experience: do users click on other web pages and spend time on site, or do they come, read, and leave? - Misspellings - Grammatical errors - Thin, short content - Low click-thru rates - Low average time on site
How do I know if Panda is Nom feeding on my website? Google Analytics- what pages have higher exit rates? Low average time on site/pages per visit? Nom Nom... -Hungry Panda Google Webmaster Tools- what pages don t load, causing crawl errors? Where your website s content are these broken links? Screaming Frog SEO Spider- which pages have lower word counts? Are there pages indexed which have no content at all?
Google Analytics
Google Webmaster Tools
Screaming Frog SEO Spider
Creating New Content Adding content to your law firm s website on an ongoing basis can help in a number of different ways. Not only does Google prefer sites which are updated regularly, but there is also a chance of your website ranking for more long tail keywords that you can research and target through content development. Good Panda BAD Panda - Writing FAQ pages which answer common questions based on your practice area(s). - Writing blog posts about recent events, topics, op-eds, etc. - Building out your resources section to link to authoritative, relevant websites (.gov,.edu, etc.). - Writing pages dedicated to each practice area, city, county. - Copying and pasting content from other websites - Spinning content - Including the same keyword over and over, writing for search engines - Writing content in Word, pasting in CMS, not re-formatting - Not including options for users to share on social media, engage
What are some ways to come up with ideas for content topics? Google AutoComplete- put in queries relevant to your practice area(s) and see what they suggest. Ubersuggest- suggests keywords relevant to your search query Keyword.io- similar to Ubersuggest, free tool which suggests relevant keywords
Google Suggest
UberSuggest
Keyword.io
2 The Mobile Revolution Is Your Website Responsive?
If your website isn t responsive-meaning that it adapts and resizes based on the user s device (desktop, mobile phone, tablet, enormous movie projector)- we re probably going to penalize you. -Google (this is not actually a quote from Google, but they ll still penalize you)
MOBILEGEDDON!!! As of April 21st, 2015, websites which are not mobile-friendly will be removed from the Googleverse.
Am I Mobile Compliant? Do a Google Search for mobile friendly test, the first result should be on Google.com. Put your website URL in, and match up your result with the information below. Move along people, nothing to see here. Hey. Where is everybody?
Improve mobile conversions Menu Do you want to present mobile users with the same options as desktop users? Less is more, so if you have a long desktop navigation menu, focus on trimming it for mobile/tablet users. Content Once again, less is more. If your slider isn t responsive, or you have longer home page content that forces mobile users to scroll for hours on end, look into changing. Click to Call A big green phone icon button at the bottom of the screen can help to increase phone calls.
3 Load Times Are You Winning the Race?
People Hate Waiting. Google is no different. If Google s spiders crawl your website and find that your site takes longer than your competitors to load, there s a good chance that they will drop you in the rankings.
How Do I Test My Website s Load Times? GTMetrix.com Tools.Pingdom.com Webpagetest.org
Common Load Time Improvements Caching Make sure your website is optimized for caching. If using a Wordpress site, install caching plugin. Scaled Images If images have to be resized each time they load, it can add on unnecessary seconds. Optimized Images You can condense an image s file size while keeping quality in tact through tools such as smush.it CDN Serving content from a content delivery network (CDN) can speed things up. Defer Javascript Try to load javascript at the end of the website, when everything else loads. Hosting Sometimes your hosting company s server can keep you from hitting your peak speeds.
4 Links, Citations, etc. Off-Page SEO Is Still Important
Inbound Link Profile How many links a website has from other websites is still a major ranking factor. But when it comes to backlinks, focus more on QUALITY and less on Quantity. Good Link Signals - Links from other websites with diverse anchor text distribution. - Links from relevant websites. These can be relevant to your practice area(s) or location(s). - Links from websites that are trusted by Google, who don t link out to hundreds or thousands of other websites. - Press release links, Niche directory links, etc, still work if done in good taste. BAD Link Signals - Over-optimized anchor text - Links from websites which aren t indexed by Google - Links from web pages which link to a variety of niches - Blog comments - Footer/sitewide links
Place your screenshot here Citation Sources Trusted directory sites which Google+ Local pulls from to verify business information.
Local Citation Sources When it comes to your law firm being listed on trusted citation sites, it s imperative that your law firm name, address, and phone number is consistent across the board. Good Citation Building BAD Citation Building - Using WhiteSpark Citation finder to find citation sources. - Using the same firm name, address, phone number on all websites. - Implementing schema.org markup for your NAP on your website. - Request our free Local SEO Audit to see how your law firm appears on trusted citation sites. - Attorney name listed instead of law firm name - Suite number not included - Different phone number listed - Duplicate listings - Incomplete information
Thanks! Any questions? You can find me at: http://www.thesearchninjas.com LinkedIn, guest posts, etc. can be found by searching for George Murphy SEO on Google.