Wondering whether your website is properly optimized for mobile devices?
We have several clients whose mobile traffic constitutes over 65% of their total website traffic. Needless to say, if your website is poorly optimized for mobile device browsers, you’re missing out on potential new business.
Below are 5 common examples of poor mobile optimization. If you’re site suffers from any of the following issues, you’re likely leaving money on the table.
Almost all of our clients tell us that phone calls are their preferred form of contact with new clients because people who call tend to convert into clients at a higher rate.
As such, we make it a priority to ensure that our client’s mobile websites make calling the firm as simple as possible:
As you can see, we utilize a “sticky” bar at the top of the viewport to allow visitors to click and call the firm from anywhere on any page of the site. At the very least you should make sure that wherever you list your firm’s phone number on your site the number is coded properly to enable click-to-call functionality.
We’ve talked before about the importance of site speed, especially on mobile devices. If a page loads slow on desktop browsers it will load even slower on mobile browsers.
Two of the biggest contributors to slow loading pages are poorly optimized images and iframe embeds (eg. Google Maps) which require an external request to load.
Make sure that your top trafficked mobile pages contain properly sized and compressed images, and do your best to avoid using iframe embeds. Screenshots are often a much better option than embeds.
It’s 2017. You should not be using different URLs to serve up well optimized mobile pages for your visitors. Rather, your website should be coded to be responsive which allows you to maintain just one version of each page on your site, and deliver the same user experience regardless of browser or device.
One of the most common challenges for mobile websites is delivering intuitive navigation so that people can quickly find the information they are looking for. Offering a prominent site search bar on every page of your mobile website is a great way to do so.
On mobile devices the viewport is obviously much smaller than on desktop, laptops, and tablets. If you have a gigantic sticky header menu, and a livechat option, you may be creating a frustrating user experience by blocking the majority of the actual content viewport.
Thanks for reading! What mobile optimization mistakes did we miss? Please let us know in the comments below!
Backlinks continue to be the primary driver of high search engine rankings.
Why? Because backlinks are normally very difficult to get, and a site that does get them is seen by Google as an “authority” website.
One of the simplest ways to get backlinks is to buy them. But are paid links effective in terms of boosting your website’s rankings?
Let’s explore.
It’s no secret that paid links go against Google’s quality guidelines. Google has held this position for years:
But like many of Google’s statements regarding SEO tactics, one look at real world search results indicates that not only are paid links not punished by Google, they’re rewarded.
To illustrate how Google appears to be all talk when it comes to enforcing paid link abuses, let’s look at a website that ranks in the top three organic results for highly competitive keywords:
URL: https://baumgartnerlawyers.com/
Keyword Example: [houston personal injury lawyer]
Suggested CPC: $135.11
Google Ranking: #2 Organic
Of this website’s top 30 backlinks, 10 are obvious paid links:
Another nine of the site’s top 30 links were gained as a result of a scholarship contest that the firm offers. While this does not involve an explicit exchange of cash for links, one could make a strong case that it still goes against Google’s guidelines, since the links would never have been placed without the firm offering up cash:
So, at the very least, ten of this firm’s top 30 backlinks are explicitly paid links. Another 9 of them were gained as a result of the firm’s promise to pay out cash to a scholarship winner. That means that two thirds of this top-ranked website’s best links are of the paid link variety.
This example is NOT an outlier. We see legal websites whose best links are paid links performing well in incredibly competitive markets all the time.
Reality is this: Even though Google doesn’t want to reward sites that buy links, in many legal niches, you’re unlikely to rank highly for your primary keywords in the absence of paid links.
If you do decide to pay for backlinks to get your site moving, it’s critical to consider the following factors.
In general, you want to avoid paying for links on websites that have nothing to do with your firm’s services or mission. If your law firm does business litigation and you find yourself considering purchasing a link on a technology forum, think again.
Alternatively, if you’re a business litigation law firm and you’re considering sponsoring a local non-profit that helps encourage young entrepreneurs, this makes much more sense because this group’s website is relevant to your firm’s services and mission.
If you’re spending good money on a link it’s crucial that you know the “authority” of the page that will contain the link to your site. Notice that I’m not saying that you need to know the authority of the website overall, but rather, that you need to know the authority of the specific linking page.
For example, have a look at this page:
http://lawyers.findlaw.com/lawyer/firm/personal-injury-plaintiff/houston/texas
Using the Moz Open Site Explorer, I can see that this page has an authority of 35/100:
This is a pretty good page authority. But, what happens if your link doesn’t get placed on this page, and instead is buried in a deep archive page:
http://lawyers.findlaw.com/lawyer/firm/personal-injury-plaintiff/houston/texas?random=656&stq=80
All of a sudden, you’re getting a lot less value for your money.
If you’re going to spend good money on a link, it’s essential that the link be of the followed variety. Many sites that sell links do not make it clear that the link you recieve will be a “nofollow” link.
While there is evidence that nofollow links could still have positive ranking benefits in certain cases, they’re certainly not optimal, especially when your paying for them.
The BBB is a great example of this. You can pay $600+ per year for a listing on BBB.org, but you’ll get the same nofollow link as their free, non-accredited profiles.
Is it your ultimate goal to rank high in Google for search queries containing [your practice area + your city/state]? Of course it is! And I sincerely hope you’ve already reached that milestone.
What you’re probably missing, however, is how to make the content on your practice area pages relevant and useful for users, and perhaps even more important for SEO, how to make it unique from the competition’s.
There are only so many unique things you can say about auto accident cases or DUI defense for a given city. And guess what? You are saying the same stuff as all of your competitors, which means that your content isn’t standing out, neither to your site’s visitors nor to Google’s crawlers.
Ok, at this point, you’re probably thinking, “Who cares? I’m ranking #1. I’m on top of the world! I just need to keep cramming more keywords and backlinks in to stay on top, right?” Wrong! Actually…
Google’s business model thrives on advertising, which only works if they have a steady stream of users. People like to use products that work well (obviously), so Google only maintains its dominance by feeding users the best possible content to answer their queries.
And so on that principle, the search engine came into existence. But their plans were foiled by some meddling kids SEOs who realized that they could game the system by cramming the most keywords onto their page. Of course, that resulted in such masterpieces of content as:
Our Denver law firm has the best lawyers in Denver! Hire our personal injury attorney to handle your car accident case today. Our lawyer practices law from a law firm in Denver, and serves all of the Denver suburbs in personal injury cases, including Lakewood, Littleton, Englewood, Centennial, Aurora, Arvada, and any other place where car accidents happen and a person could use personal injury services.
Thrilling…
Because of the above-stated business model, Google didn’t really love this, so for many years, they have been developing more and more complex algorithms to find sites that really give the user the best experience. While some have claimed that this means that Google is trying to eliminate SEO, the reality is that they are just changing the factors of SEO (for the better). These days, having good SEO means providing a good user experience.
So how do you make your content more awesome? Here are some simple ways to make your practice area pages better, in the eyes of both humans and Googlebot:
You want your content to represent the needs of as many users as possible, and videos are a great way to target people who are either visual or aural learners. They can accompany your main content to give users a quick and easy breakdown of your main points. Here are a few tips on making a great video:
Video has a reputation for being expensive and complex. However, it need not be, especially for small or solo firms. Here is the investment required to make perfectly adequate videos:
What’s that? You don’t have the skill to do video?
You don’t want to pay anyone?
Just ask yourself one simple question:
What information does the person who will be watching this video need the most?
If someone either landed on, or clicked to, your auto accident practice area page they are likely interested in information that will help them determine whether they should contact an attorney about a potential law suit. In your video, give them information that will help them make this decision.
Transcribing your videos will add a few hundreds words of completely unique content to your page. Here is an example of a lawyer doing this.
Here is an example of a law firm that is doing a great job using quick videos to make their practice area content better.
As you can see, this attorney didn’t spend thousands or come up with some elaborate, highly creative concept. Hell, he didn’t even write a script.
He simply talked to his online audience the same way he would talk to a client in his office.
It’s really hard to get clients to leave you a review online. What isn’t hard is taking 5-10 minutes each time you help a client to write a quick synopsis of their case and how you were able to help them.
This type of content is amazing for SEO purposes for several reasons:
Here is an example of a small firm that is using case stories effectively.
As I mentioned above, it can be very difficult to get your client to leave you a review online. However, what we see quite often is that clients are willing to write-up kind words about your legal services in an email or even speak them over the phone, but they just won’t get online to leave the review.
In these cases, use the client’s review on your practice area pages!
For example, if you help a client with filing for bankruptcy, and they send you an email thanking you for your help and quality services, ask them if you can use this as a review on your website.
Also be sure to ask if you can use their name. At a minimum you’ll want to include their first name, and the initial of their last name.
Beyond injecting unique content into your practice area pages, and potentially improving the conversion rates of those pages, adding reviews to your pages using schema.org will also make your important pages eligible for review star rich snippets:
Here is a free tool I created for easily generating the schema.org review code: [Schema.org Review Generator for Attorneys]
Here is an example of a law firm effectively using client reviews on their practice area pages.
If your practice area is personal injury, you don’t have to tackle car accidents, slip and fall, and brain injury on one page. Instead, talk generally about personal injury and your firm’s experience in it. Make subpages for each of the more specific practice areas that fall under the category of personal injury, and include a list of them (with links) on the main personal injury page. You may include a short blurb about each, but don’t chase a rabbit down a hole.
While conciseness is important, don’t let that get in the way of fully explaining the topic. Practice area pages are well suited to long-form content, and Google will reward your completeness. If there is a subject that you feel warrants mention, but is too specific for that page, and you don’t have any information on your site, consider linking to an external source. There are SEO benefits to outbound linking, which are rarely mentioned.
You could also consider including related blog posts at the bottom of each practice area page.
This firm does a great job of staying on-topic and guiding users to more specific details.
Humans have short attention spans. If your practice area page is just a wall of text, users will find it daunting and probably won’t make it through the second paragraph. To keep users’ attention, you’ll need to spoon-feed them information, by breaking it into digestible chunks. Here are some steps to help:
Here is a screenshot of a blog post with little formatting. After updating the post, it looks like this.
By incorporating short videos, client case stories, client reviews, and engaging formatting, as well as keeping your topics relevant, you can not only improve the SEO of your most important practice area pages, but also provide your potential clients with the information that they need to make the best decision possible.
Are you in the process of researching legal marketing agencies? If so, you know that it can be difficult to prioritize the qualities to look for in the agencies with whom you speak.
In this post I’ve tried to make that task easier by explaining what I consider to be the most essential values and capabilities that are shared by the best legal marketing agencies.
Hire a legal marketing agency that has these values and capabilities, and your odds of a successful partnership will be strong.
When you hire a legal marketing agency for your law firm it is essential that the agency embrace transparency. The agency should go out of its way to share the goals of their strategies, the specific details of their tactics, and then of course the data that speaks to the efficacy of those tactics.
A high level of transparency indicates that the agency has a specific plan for achieving your goals, and that they are using data to measure whether that plan is producing the desired outcomes. It also indicates that the agency values your investment and wants to show your that by continually earning your trust.
A great legal marketing agency must value empathy, which is the ability to share in the feelings, thoughts, and emotions of another.
Simply put, great marketing is impossible to achieve without the ability to be empathetic. Your legal marketing agency must be able to empathize with your potential clients in order to produce marketing materials that will address their most fundamental issues.
A high level of empathy indicates not only that your marketing agency will be able to effectively market your services, but also that they will be able to understand your priorities and points of view.
Exclusivity refers to the agency’s willingness to work with your competition. Some of the biggest and most well known legal marketing agencies in the world (coughFINDLAWcough) do not value exclusivity, and frequently work with numerous law firms who all compete for the same business, in the same market.
If a legal marketing agency is willing to work with your top competitors, they cannot possibly act with the best interest of your firm in mind throughout the duration of your relationship.
If the legal marketing agency you hire does not create and present a compressive strategy for achieving your goals, that’s a bad sign. Great marketers will insist on what we call a measure twice, cut once approach. They will use all available data to create a marketing strategy with defined, measurable key performance indicators.
If strategy development is not a line-item on the marketing proposal you receive, consider this a red flag.
The legal marketing agency you chose must have strong technical capabilities. This refers to all things digital technology; web development, basic software development, technical SEO knowledge, etc.
The agency you hire ought to have in-house technical expertise in order to ensure that your firm’s digital marketing initiatives are not inhibited by any technical limitations.
One way to think about marketing is as a pursuit to not only get in front of your prospective clients, but to look your best when you do. Many of the less effective marketing agencies you’re likely to come across in your search will neglect design. After all, it’s a specialized and not particularly cheap skill set to hire.
The legal marketing agency you choose ought to have in-house design talent. This will ensure that their deliverables always achieve the goal of making your firm look good whenever it’s found, online or off.
When people are in a situation where they’re considering hiring a lawyer the stakes are normally high. For that reason it’s critical that your legal marketing agency have the ability to produce accurate legal content that not only addresses your potential client’s questions, but does so in a way that does not mislead them or violate your state bar’s law firm marketing rules.
Every piece of content that is published on behalf of your law firm reflects on you. The legal marketing agency you choose must use qualified legal writers who will ensure that your content is not only highly accurate, but more importantly, that it does not open your firm up to liability.
If you’re in the process of researching legal marketing agencies for your firm and have questions about the process, please feel free to leave them in the comments below!
Effective legal marketing starts with strategy. A strong foundation provides a platform from which you can build and manage campaigns. Creating client personas is an important part of the planning process. Personas will help you target and refine your marketing efforts to maximize ROI. By identifying the common traits of the people that need your services, you’ll avoid wasting marketing spend.
Not sure what a client persona is? Don’t worry – it’s simple:
A client persona, commonly referred to as a customer or buyer persona, is a semi-fictional profile used to represent your ideal client. The persona aims to define targeted demographics, attitudes towards services, behaviors, objections, and other essential information.
To put it bluntly – yes. Legal marketing is intensely competitive. The bigger your market, the tougher it is to create and execute effective marketing strategies. In recent years digital marketing has made competition tougher. It’s also made personas more important. The ability to identify the typical buyer’s journey and adjust strategy accordingly is crucial. A client persona will aid immensely in those efforts.
You’re on board. It’s time to create client personas and tweak your digital marketing strategy. But where do you start?
Right here on the Juris blog, of course. We’ve got all the info you need to create client personas today. Check it out:
Start by reviewing existing client profiles. Look for trends. Common age range? Similar occupations? Where do they live? Work? How did they find out about your firm? What motivated them to seek your services? Record all information that might be relevant for your client personas.
Your website is the most powerful marketing tool you possess if used correctly. Contact forms are an excellent opportunity to capture information relevant to client personas. For example, you might ask for a potential client’s location in addition to other standard information.
Analytics information can also be relevant to client personas. Do most of your clients find your firm through organic search, or are they using other methods? What type of device do potential clients usually browse your site with? This information, along with other KPIs, can be especially helpful in building personas.
Using existing client profiles and your website can help with a hefty portion of your client personas, but key information will still be missing. Talking to past and current clients is a great way to fill the gaps. You can ask pertinent questions that will provide enlightening answers.
For example, you can inquire about your client’s biggest objections when considering various legal providers. You can also ask about hobbies, interests, fears, and their end goals in hiring you.
Here are a few tips for recruiting interviewees:
Now that you’ve gathered the data it’s time to build the profiles. Start by outlining the information that each persona will include. Check out the list below to see some of my recommended persona details. After you’ve got your outlines, can you give each profile a name and start to complete the information. Keep in mind that you may have some commonalities between personas, and that’s totally fine.
Sifting through this much data can be tough, so I recommend using a tool like Microsoft Excel to organize the information.
Client personas differ based on the type of law you practice, your location, and other factors. However, we’ve put together a list with some essential details that shouldn’t be left out:
TL;DR – Client personas are essential to effective marketing. They are profiles of ideal clients, and they can be created by using existing data and talking to past, current, and future clients.
If you like to discuss personas further or talk about SEO and digital marketing as a whole, we’d love to chat. Reach out today!
Have you ever wondered which of your digital marketing efforts are actually producing leads, and which aren’t?
To make sure that your law firm spends it’s digital marketing dollars on the most effective channels possible, it’s essential to track the conversions that your website produces. Without conversion tracking set up it is impossible to tell which aspects of your online marketing are working, and which are not.
Below I’ve defined “website conversion”, and provided the process we use here at Juris Digital for tracking our client’s most important website conversions.
A “conversion” on a website means that an action was taken by a visitor to contact your law firm. These are referred to as ‘leads’ and ‘goals’ as well. Ultimately, conversions are an empirical mark to help gauge a website’s performance.
A few examples of conversion types are:
Each of these conversions can be tracked accurately in Google Analytics. This will produce insights that you can use to better understand where your leads are being generated from and how this changes over time.
For a long time call tracking has been a taboo subject among local search marketers because of concerns surrounding NAP consistency. We’ve seen this become less of an issue with local SEO over the years, which could be attributed to the call tracking platforms giving more consideration toward local SEO concerns. However, it most likely reflects the advances in Google’s local search algorithm.
While implementing is critical, it’s important to understand how call tracking works. We’ve found the greatest success with a service called CallRail. Despite trying several different services over the years, this has been the best and most accurate.
Call tracking is a simple idea that can become complex very quickly. The principal is that you have different phone numbers displayed under different circumstances to track different marketing channels.
For example, if you are looking to track calls that were a result of visits from a specific channel (eg. Paid Search), then your call tracking program should display a specific phone number on your website under that circumstance. In this way, if a visitor calls the number, it is attributed to that channel.
There are two ways to track calls from your website:
We prefer using a pool of numbers because it allows us to further segment where the conversion originated from.
One draw back to using a pool of numbers and showing them dynamically depending on the referrer is that your clients or peers might copy the dynamic number and use it instead of your primary number.
This raises a concern because ideally you want the primary phone number being used to avoid data inaccuracies or missed calls if you ever discontinue use of the call tracking service.
Pro tip: set up Google Alerts for your tracking numbers that way you are noticed if they are used across the web and can take action if needed.
If you’re using a service like CallRail, you can easily integrate your call tracking in Google Analytics. This is a feature to look for if you’re shopping around. Some services might have their own tracking but it is hard to draw performance conclusions without relating the conversion data to site traffic. This is the most accurate way we’ve found to track phone calls.
Contact form conversion tracking is very simple to setup within Google Analytics. To do this you will will need just two things: A editable contact form on your website, and Google Analytics.
Here’s a more in depth procedure on Setting Up Your Google Analytics Goal Tracking.
Form conversion tracking has a few options outside of counting the notifications that are sent to your inbox. The two methods we use depending on the situation and form type are:
Once you are tracking this data, you’ll see where your contact form conversions are coming from in the Conversions section in Google Analytics. You can even take a look at the different paths taken to reach that conversion with the attribution metrics.
Many of you may recognize the live chat as the disruptive box that asks you if you need help, but how can we tell if the disruption works? The efficacy of a given Live Chat service depends on how it is setup to work both for the user and for your law firm.
Most Live chat services are staffed externally. For this reason, especially for law firms, it is best to give explicit instructions to your Live chat provider for how the chat should be conducted. Obviously how a chat is conducted will vary between different fields of law so here are a few guidelines for setting this up for a conversion:
There are many companies who offer live chat services. Make sure you choose one that will operate and track your conversions in the desired manner. After purchasing and implementing chat, give it a test to make sure the operators are conducting the chat and make adjustments as you see fit. Often, this is overlooked when implementing chat and can actually greatly impact the conversions themselves.
In most cases Live Chat conversions are all tracked within a proprietary dashboard, but in some cases they will integrate with Google Analytics. For Live Chat, since there is an operator, you want to track two important metrics:
Initiated chats will help you understand if the chat box is prominent enough on the site for visitors to use it and seeing the drop off between the qualified leads will help you understand if there is a possible issue with the chat dialogue.
When trying to set up your live chat to work with Google Analytics it will be best to inquire with your specific live chat representative. Every chat service is a little different in the set up and what they define each conversion as.
On the Google Analytic side, live chats are tracked as either Events or as Goals. Despite the array of Live Chat offerings some services will openly admit they cannot accurately track to Google Analytics, so if you’re shopping around be critical on your choice depending on how they are able to track your conversions.
Data. Data. Data. Conversion tracking provides empirical data to help you understand which marketing sources are working best. The data can also help you make decisions which improve the conversion rate of your website.
Either way you decide to look at the data, there are actions to be taken from it to help guide further your success in lead generation. When compiling your information, I recommend trying to keep the majority of the data in Google Analytics so you can compare your conversions to your site traffic easily. May the conversion tracking be with you!
Navigating legal marketing is like digging for gold in a minefield. There are a multitude of options and it seems like everyone has the silver bullet. The problem is that most of the marketing endeavors you discover are a waste of money; a land mine.
According to a survey by the tech firm Software Advice, 56% of web users have used live chat to engage a company or brand. The feature is especially popular among millennials who are 20% more likely to use chat than a baby boomer. Live chat is gaining in popularity across all industries, but does it work for lawyers?
As with most questions of this nature, the answer lies in the details.
Before we get too far along, let’s quickly address what “Live Chat” is and what purpose it serves. Today’s world operates on demand. We don’t want to wait for our Amazon order, we don’t want to wait on hold on the phone, and we want to talk to someone who can help ASAP. Enter live chat.
No longer do you have to fish around on a website for a contact form or even click the phone number to dial. When a site features live chat, a box will pop up in the browser asking some version of “how can I help?”
To some, this is a helpful tool that puts them in contact with the information they need right away. Others, however, could see this as yet another intrusion in their already compromised web-browsing experience.
It begs the question; what are the advantages and disadvantages of live chat for lawyers?
Let’s start with the disadvantages to live chat.
Questionable Value for the User
Most live chat solutions for law firms are staffed by people who are not associated, at all, with the law firm. This means that whenever a potential client initiates a live chat, they are not going to get any actual answers about their situation.
Live chat implemented this way simply replaces the experience of a contact form with an experience of actually “chatting” with a person. However, that person is not going to be able to give any useful information. The best they can do is pass along what the user says to you, the law firm.
Intrusive User Experience
Many legal live chat providers, nGage especially, preach the efficacy of the pop-over live chat. You’ve experienced this before: You hit a page and within a few second you get a big annoying pop-over asking, “HOW CAN WE HELP YOU”.
While this may be effective in terms of pure conversion rate, it can also be off putting to some visitors, and who knows, maybe those visitors would have been great clients, but instead they got annoyed and bounced.
Remember also that older generations are not as likely to appreciate live chat options, and even some younger people would rather use alternative methods. There should always be an option to easily dismiss the chat window.
Now that the unpleasantries are out of the way, we can move on to the benefits of live chat for law firms.
Let’s take a look:
One must consider the potential for conversion theft. For this reason, accurate tracking and reporting are crucial. Adding the expense of live chat can be a benefit if it’s bringing new conversions or better leads, but if people are simply chatting but not signing on as clients, you may be better served to eliminate the option.
Most websites, especially those that don’t have a high number of conversions, will benefit from live chat.
For more on tracking conversions, check out this post: How to Track Conversions on a Law Firm Website.
Live chat is definitely worth consideration from attorneys and marketers trying to maximize the value of a website. As with any endeavor, individual results vary based on your target audience, goals, and the efficiency of your campaign.
To get you started in the right direction, let’s check out a few tips for effectively integrating chat on your website:
TL;DR Live chat can enhance law firm websites by boosting interactions and conversions. The value you get from live chat relies on your execution. Reach out to talk to the Juris team to discuss the potential of live chat for your firm.
In an increasingly competitive market, it’s worth considering how your law firm can differentiate itself from the competition online.
One effective way to accomplish this differentiation is to proactively work towards getting lots of authentic reviews on Google.
Google reviews benefit both your law firm’s search engine rankings and your law firm’s online reputation. But how do you convince your clients to leave good Google reviews?
Here are a 5 tips that will help your law firm get more Google reviews:
This really should go without saying, but sometimes it’s important just to remind yourself of how impactful each interaction with your clients can be. It’s a well-known fact that unhappy clients will leave bad reviews. But satisfied clients aren’t likely to leave a review at all. In order to get five bright stars to appear, you’re going to have to make your clients absolutely ecstatic about the service they received.
Your receptionist is the first person who can make a huge difference toward this goal. I can personally attest that on more than one occasion, the impression made by the office staff has been strong enough by itself to garner a review from me.
Buckle in, because the next couple of tips involve outreach. But if you want to do that in the most effective way possible, you’re going to need to optimize the process. Making a URL that is easy to remember and type will reduce the friction your clients experience when trying to leave a Google review, and they’ll be much more likely to do so.
First, visit our review link generator tool to create a link that will take users directly to a review box. All you have to do is enter your business name, and choose the right one. You’ll have a couple links to choose from, depending on the style of review box you want to use, so just pick whichever one you prefer. Copy that URL to your clipboard. If you aren’t using WordPress or a 301 redirect tool like Simple 301, you’ll want to use the short version of the URL and skip the next step.
If you are using WordPress and a redirect tool, we’re going to head over to your website. These steps might be a little different depending on what redirect tool you’re using, but either way, the goal is to redirect a clean URL, which we’ll create, to the Google review URL we just grabbed from the link generator tool.
If you have Simple 301, you can go to Settings > 301 Redirects. Now, in the left column make a new entry for a simple url. You can pick anything you’d like, as long as it isn’t a page that exists on your site. For this example, we’ll use /google-reviews/. Paste the link you got from the generator in the right column, and click save.
Now, if we go to yoursite.com/google-reviews/, it’ll redirect to your Google review box. Now let’s put that link everywhere!
So you’ve closed the case, and your client is about to walk out for the last time. Why not hand him or her a business card? I would venture to say that it’s probably pretty likely that most lawyers do this anyway. If the client liked you, they’ll hang it on their refrigerator, and perhaps even give it to a friend who needs legal help one day.
We can be even more practical here by putting a little message in the corner or on the back. Something like “If you felt like we delivered top-notch service, we’d really appreciate a review. Just go to [insert the link we made above right here].” The advantage is that by giving this messaging to a client via a business card or other document right as you’ve completed your services, you’re putting the bug in their ear at the exact moment when they are most likely to actually leave the review.
If you’ve kept track of your clients’ contact information, you can reach out to them again to request a review. Monitor your reviews to see if any recent clients have already left a review, and then make a list of everyone who was a client in the last month and hasn’t already left a review. You can shoot off a quick email to each of them, or even do an email blast if you have a lot of clients. Use similar wording as on the business card, and include the review link.
Pro tip: If you do an email blast, avoid using design-y template emails. Your clients will see right through this. They want to feel that it’s a personal message, so just go with a simple email like:
Hi [John],
I hope things are going will with you. I just wanted to reach out and ask for a small favor. If you feel like you had a good experience with our firm, we’d really appreciate a Google review. You can just go to [yoursite.com/google-reviews/] to leave it.
Thank you so much!
Everything we’ve done so far has been for the general population of clients. But there are always those very special clients who have seen the best you can offer, and they’re simply blown away. These are the ones who will be your brand ambassadors, and if you just ask nicely, they’ll give you the moon.
As soon as they leave your office, you’ll want to right down their name on an ongoing list. Then, if a couple of weeks go by with no review from them, it’s time to reach out personally.
Email always does its job, but it’s usually too cold for this sort of outreach. If you must use email, make sure to mention a few things you remember about the client—“Did you enjoy that vacation to Florida that you were talking about?”—It just makes things more personal. However, the better option is a phone call, or a hand-written letter. These small details really go a long way to make your clients feel very special.
You made it to the bottom; thanks for reading. If you have ideas for how law firms can get more Google reviews please do chime in using the commenting below!
Local search results have seen a lot of changes recently with the most significant being the addition of the local finder and then having paid ads in the local finder. These changes really got me interested to find out where users are most likely to click and what may influence their click behavior. This is a follow up study to our 3 pack click test study. This study focuses solely on the local finder in desktop results since phone and tablet results likely have more local intent by proximity. A mobile study will be coming at a later time.
For this study we had 300 total participants contribute over 3 different click test studies. We used law firms for all three examples. Keep in mind that there are a lot of variables that will go into a clicking or transactional decision. In this study we will mainly look at the impact of reviews and ads.
Knowing where users click in search results and understanding the customer journey will help you focus your efforts on what efforts are going to deliver the strongest ROI for your business.
As a search marketer I’m biased and trained to not click on the paid ads. As a matter of habit I skip right over them as I explained in my search behavior journey on my most recent post on Moz.
My hypothesis was that paid ads, position and star ratings will have the most impact on when a user clicks. I believe that many users will bypass the ads and even the number 1-2 ranking positions if other business listings above the fold contained more stars than the top listings.
Let’s see what the data showed…
Since I didn’t want to gear these results towards a specific demographic I used UsabilityHub.com’s click testing software with the random demographics information. The respondents were mostly US based users who were given a simple question with a screenshot of the results and then asked why they clicked where they clicked.
Unfortunately we are not able to test the emotional response of users who were actually making the search in a time of need which is of course another variable.
In this test we served our users with a simple question: “Imagine you’re looking for a lawyer on Google. Which result are you most likely to click?”
They were then served this image of the local finder which contained 5.5 total results. Out of the results we had 1 ad in the finder in the #1 position and basically 2 results with varying review scores. We served this to 100 survey participants to get an idea where they would click. Although you will find that the user base is diverse the biggest demographic was males between the ages of 25-29.
The results were definitely different than I expected. As you can see by reviewing the heatmap below we saw many clicks to the Ad, the #2 ranking law firm, and the #5 ranking law firm.
Breaking it down into an easier to see format you can see the results of the first click test we did. In the end based off of the randomized demographics we saw 34 clicks to the ad, 33 clicks to the #5 listing, and 21 clicks to the #2 listing.
Based off of these findings it appears the #1 position with the ad carried a lot of weight as did the local (free) listing with the highest number of reviews.
After looking at this data I wanted to find out how these results would vary or if they would if I just looked at the survey participants in the United States. Looking at the screenshot below you will see that the placing remained the same with the ad winning the most clicks, the most reviews winning second place, and the #2 listing winning 3rd place.
So what made users want to click this result the most? My hypothesis because I hate ads was due to the stars. During the survey we asked our participants to let us know why they chose the result they did. Look at the result below. What are your thoughts?
The participants who provided feedback were clear and the most recurring answers were that it was first and it had star ratings.
This can be further proven by looking at the word cloud of the 100 responses below. In a word cloud the most repeating words will appear bigger:
Although First is one of the prominent words the biggest seem to be rating, reviews and good which made me wonder if reviews are more heavily weighted in users eyes then positioning.
In this test we served our users with a simple question: “If you were looking for an attorney, which result are you most likely to click?”
This search result was chosen specifically because it contained 5 search results, 4 of which had reviews in which the number of reviews varied from 8 to 45. Since reviews were a prominent fixture in the first click test study I thought it was important to get more data. Just like study #1 we got 100 click responses from a wide variety of users.
With this result we have a few more variables than last time. We see various listings with star results but also results with spammy business names that SEO’s would be sure to avoid. Let’s see what decisions users made with these diverse examples.
You can see from the results below that these results were different from the last study. The majority of the clicks went to the #2 position in this example.
If you look at the number breakdown below you will find that the #2 listing had 46 clicks which was more than double the amount of clicks from the advertisement. If you looked at the example above you will notice that the #2 listing had the most reviews out of any of the other listings on that page.
Those who were surveyed provided some interesting insights this time that I thought were very intriguing. These are below:
Notice how stars are once again prominent. Interestingly enough we have two examples of people who think like me and skipped the ad just because it was an ad. Another interesting note was of course the business name factor where a user indicated that the company “619 Divorce” looked like a scam. I can relate with this because when I want to work with someone, I want to work with a company that appears to be legitimate.
The people that we surveyed also created enough data for us to create a word cloud. The results that stuck out to me most were Reviews, Rating, Star, Ad, Number, High, and Best. Take a look at the word cloud below. 
In this test we served our users with a simple question: “Which result are you most likely to click on when looking for a lawyer?”
This was also a random demographics based survey. I picked this search result because I was able to get 5 business listings above the fold, two of which were ads WITHOUT reviews, and three free listings which had reviews. You can see what this search result page looked like below:
Looking at the results above you can see that the non paid listings all have reviews ranging from 5-13. Although the scores vary from 4.3 – 5.0 you will notice that the stars basically looked all filled in at a quick glance. To me there is not a major visual distinction between the rating and how the stars display.
It will be interesting to see where the participants clicked. Drumroll please…
As you can see above the users clicks in this example were mostly to the number 4 and 3 positions in the local finder with the majority going to listing #4. In this case the #4 listing has the most reviews and the highest aggregate review rating as well.
The breakdown of this data is rather interesting. The majority of clicks from all users went to the #4 result which won with 47 total clicks. This is over 3 times the number of clicks the top AD without reviews got.
Another interesting takeaway is that the listing that got the most clicks also added a city modifier to its business name (which is against Google’s guidelines). Most of the comments as to why users clicked on the results they chose were again related to reviews. But there were also some interesting ones that I want to share as well:
It’s clear that every searcher is unique and has their own opinions when deciding which result to click on. It’s interesting however that most of the correlation for this result was also review and authority based as you can see in the word cloud below:
Again we see popular words like rating, best, highest, rated, etc. as popular key words used by the respondents of the survey. So what are the key takeaways here?
To me this study is just the tip of the iceberg in learning what impacts user behavior. Knowing where users click can really help you focus in on the strategy that’s going to have the most impact for your business. Here are some of the key takeaways from the three tests we conducted:
Although I’m still not a big fan of ads its clear that there are many people out there who do make that click journey. If paid is within your budget it may make sense to try it after you’ve achieved your desired star ratings for your results.
I welcome your feedback, thoughts, alternate conclusions, and data on this post. Please post them in the comments below and thanks for reading!
Over the past 10 years in digital marketing I have met very few lawyers who know what remarketing is and even less that engage in it. This is a huge missed opportunity. Even if you’re not sure what remarketing is right now, I’m sure you’ve seen it before just surfing the web. Have you ever looked at a product online and then over the next 30 days you’ve seen ads following you around the internet for the same product? That’s remarketing.
If you’ve visited our website before you may have noticed an ad similar to the one below on other websites like CNN.com and popular webistes you visit. If you haven’t noticed it before you might now 🙂
Remarketing is pretty simple to setup. Depending on what type of law you practice you can choose to use a service like Choozle or you can go directly through Google Adwords to reach Google’s display network.
You can choose to just show people your ads on websites or you can even integrate it into social media platforms such as Facebook. It works by simply installing a cookie on your computer or device that stays with you on average for about 30 days.
Figuring out who needs to use remarketing depends on your practice. It can be an ethical question as well. For example if you’re a divorce attorney this may not be the best bet for your firm. Let’s say that mom is using the family computer researching divorce attorneys. The next day dad is using the computer and sees ads for divorce attorneys coming up. This situation might not create the best experience.
On the other hand lets say that you’re a contract lawyer. Someone looking for a contract lawyer might do some research. Let’s say they stumble upon your website but then decide to shop around a bit. They get busy and forget. A few days later your face and logo appear. This is another impression you’re getting. You can easily win business back using remarketing. Timing is everything and people on devices are easily distracted.
You should use remarketing first and foremost because it can help you get more traffic and sign more cases. Some people need to see your brand and your message many time before they build trust. In this way it can work to grow your brand as well. Display ads whether you’re doing remarketing or just sending them out to websites that your customers hang out on are very effective. They’re the one type of paid advertising which is typically very low cost.
Let’s take a look at the graph below. You will see a variety of metrics. In this graph you can see that we ramped up our remarketing in January and since then have gotten over 4 million brand impressions on our ads.
The brand exposure is nice but the better part is 9,052 clicks we got back to our website at a pretty low cost for acquisition.
Remarketing is one of the pillars in our marketing programs. For most of our clients we recommend using this, trying different ads frequently, and measure the results. What have your experiences been using remarketing? Let me know in the comments below.