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.
Recently I was having a discussion with a personal injury attorney where he asked me what I thought was the most important thing a client looks for when hiring an attorney. As someone who focuses only on SEO for attorneys, this question was near and dear to my heart.
Based on the data we have collected over the years I talked about what seems to consistently convert better for our clients and discussion included things like reputation, client reviews, and trust signals. This got me thinking and I realized I wanted to run a survey to average consumers to see what they really thought was important. In April 2016 I decided to conduct a study to see what potential clients needing a lawyer are looking for.
I decided to use Google Surveys since it’s easy to setup and add the parameters I wanted. In this survey I decided to serve one question and get back 1,500 responses. The question I asked was:
“When deciding on hiring an attorney what is the most important factor in the decision making process?”
During the month of April 2016 this survey was presented to 23,152 random people in the United States. I collected 1,504 total responses from a group that was 50.3% Male and 49.7% Female. The age range of the participants was 18-65+ with respondents 25-44 having the highest participation rates. You can view the raw survey data here.
The question I asked the participants was an open box answer. I didn’t want to limit the responses or pigeonhole people into picking one of the pre-determined answers from my thoughts.
The initial results were a little bit different than I had predicted. Let’s start off by looking at the non grouped answers. This word cloud below represents the biggest non grouped answers:
As you can probably tell by looking at the graph the top 5 results were:
The initial results seem that money seems to be a big sticking point. But as professional business people we know we should not sell our services based on price. If people are making their decision based on pricing alone they obviously do not understand the value that your services are offering or don’t see the value. In a nutshell if you’re ever competing on price you probably didn’t do something else right, but that’s a topic for another time.
After viewing these initial results I went though and grouped the results by synonym and topic. The results are a bit different which you can see below:
The top 5 of these results were grouped into:
Grouping the answers were difficult since there were so many different synonyms but I believe I captured the most important areas. It’s very clear that price and cost are a huge barrier for those who participated in this study. Like I mentioned above I don’t believe that should you be an issue for you. More on that later. Qualification and ratings seem to be very important for potential clients too. But let’s look at how we can use this data in an actionable way.
I believe having actionable advice from any studies that are conducted. Since I work with many law firms on a daily basis I can take this survey data and tell you exactly how we use it currently and what might be worth trying. You will also notice a lot of potential overlap in the categories. As you read it will become more and more clear that these items should represent your firm’s brand. Let’s address these important survey results one by one.
Keep in mind that when I’m providing ideas I will mainly be addressing your law firm’s website. However, don’t downplay the rest of your online presence including popular web directories that also drive new clients to your firm.
As I have mentioned above I don’t believe pricing should be the reason you get or lose a case. If that happens there are other areas you need to work on. That being said I also believe in transparency. Some services like Thumbtack.com even find contractors based off of price. If you think it will make a difference you can consider adding transparent pricing information but really CONSIDER it. Make sure it aligns with your business goals. For a lot of my Personal Injury clients I tell them they should not compete on price. On the other hand we have some very boutique firms such as criminal firms who only want 1-2 cases a year and want to exclude those who can’t afford their services. This is a scenario where you would probably talk more about it than normal. Keep in mind though that this is also a sales technique called extreme disqualification.
One of the items we commonly showcase on our clients websites are qualifications. People want to know how qualified their attorneys are. This is where firm attorney bio’s come into play. It’s a great place to showcase how qualified an attorney is. List these with pride and remember that pictures are worth 1,000 words. If you can visually show qualifications that will go a long way with potential clients. Don’t make them read tons of words (like my blog posts :P)
Obviously you could group expertise along with qualifications but there are some separate points I wanted to make in regards to expertise. Think about your firm’s case results. Even though you can’t guarantee a case outcome the big numbers work. If you’re a personal injury firm and you have had a million dollar or multi million dollar verdict you will want to showcase that number. It should be visible on the page of the attorney’s involved, the practice area it pertains to, and anywhere else that seems relevant. People like numbers. Numbers prove expertise and showcasing that is important to your potential clients.
Those looking to hire an attorney are also concerned with ethics and honesty. They want to work with someone relatable who won’t screw them. One great way to show this in addition to the winning record is client testimonials. Having clients on video showcasing their satisfaction is a sure way to gain this trust and show that you’re an honest person to work with. Client experiences are worth their weight in gold.
In my opinion trust is a combination of all of the above topics. If your firm charges fair fees, has won awards, has a winning track record, and has positive feedback from those who have hired you, well you have built trust at that point. To build trust you need to build a brand around all of these qualities and not bury them in your website. They need to be easy to find on every page. Once you have earned the clients trust you will earn a client.
This study really proves a lot of the points that we are continually trying to make to potential clients. SEO and internet marketing is not just about doing the technical stuff. It’s about real marketing. It’s about building a long term and strong brand that will last through up’s and downs. It’s about building a strong company with a strong moral compass that is in business to serve their clients to the best of their ability. I encourage you to continue to ask your clients for feedback. Figure out what they find important and build on those areas.
If you have any questions or anything to add to this discussion please add it in the comments below!
In 2016, Darren Shaw from Whitespark presented his results from an interesting citation study. In his study Darren wanted to find out what actually happens when you submit your citations through a variety of different data aggregator citation services including submissions to Infogroup, Nuester / Localeze, Acxiom, Factual, Moz Local, Yext, and manual submissions through Whitespark. To do this he created 7 different electrical companies with unique NAP and tracked their results.
After the dust had settled after a few weeks an interesting observation arose. These are the numbers of indexed citations from his study:
Infogroup: 10
Nuester / Localeze: 4
Acxiom: 1
Factual: 0
Moz Local: 13
Yext: 24
Manual Citations: 49
As you can see by the numbers the highest indexation rate was from manual citations.
The numbers were troubling at first for me and got me thinking. If your citations aren’t indexed they are not going to be providing any weight in the rankings. This means that a citation that doesn’t show up in Google’s search results is not doing you any good. When you consider this plus the fact that services such as Yext submit to 50+ citations it seems a bit concerning. So I decided to do a little research myself to see what I could find.
To see how accurate this information was I took a sample from a variety of clients. Some of these citations were built manually and some were created automatically through services like Yext.
In one test I found that only 6/25 citations were in Google’s index through an automatic citation service.This was a bit concerning to me so I attempted to see if I could change this easily by forcing a crawl of these citation URL’s. To do this I created a page with the citations I wanted to get indexed and submitted a crawl request through Google’s search console. The results worked pretty fast and within a few hours I found that I was able to get 25/25 of these citations in Google’s index.
Time will tell if they stay, but I anticipate that they will. The good news is that you can do this too.
As with any citation building you take on you should make sure you’re recording great data. This includes the login and especially the URL’s of the correct citations. If you have the URL’s of the citations you can try to force crawl them using this method.
A quick disclaimer: I would try this method in small quantities of links. Don’t add 1,000 links to a page and expect Google to crawl them. Furthermore an influx of recognized links like that would appear unnatural. So be careful.
Examples of Citations Not Indexed:
This post was originally published on Avvo’s Lawyernomics blog.
One of several awesome things about the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is that its name is literal. This is a relief because many of Google’s projects are named after animals, which makes things confusing from the get-go.
Here are the key points for AMP:
There’s the 30-thousand foot explanation. If you’re interested, you can read about the technical details here.
Kevin O’Keefe suggests a cautious approach to adoption of AMP, explaining that most legal and professional services publishers likely have higher priorities:
Most professionals have a lot to work on with their existing technology. A significant amount of firms are not even using responsive design which enables a pleasant mobile reading experience. Others have poor hosting and technology resulting in slow load time. Some firms bury their publishing in graphic laden websites, as opposed to publishing for the net on independent sites.
I have no doubt that O’Keefe’s advice is valid for many lawyers and legal marketers. However, that doesn’t mean the technology isn’t beneficial or that early adoption doesn’t have its share of advantages.
For the adventurous among you, I’ve outlined the process for implementing AMP on your WordPress site. I’ve also included instructions for making sure your AMP pages show up in your Google Analytics reports, which is, of course, crucial if you hope to measure how AMP impacts the performance of your posts.
Step 1. Download and activate AMP plugin
I recommend the AMP Plugin from Automattic.
Step 2. Add Google Analytics
This is a critical step. If you’re using AMP but not gathering any data, how will you determine if it’s worthwhile?
To add your Google Analytics code to your AMP page, open your theme’s function.php file. Next, add this code to the file.
Caution: Before making changes to your function.php, understand that this is an essential file to your WordPress theme, so changes should be made with caution.
Additional documentation is available at https://github.com/Automattic/amp-wp.
Step 3. Validate AMP
Next, choose a blog post and add /amp/ to the end of the URL. You should see the AMP version of the page:
Assuming the AMP version is displaying, in your browser add #development=1 to the end of the AMP URL, like so:
/increase-traffic-gsc-keyword-data/amp/#development=1
Then, right click on the page and select “Inspect.” Then, click “Console”:
Step 4. Validate Schema
It’s important that your AMP pages contain valid schema markup. At this time, the best way to ensure this in WordPress is to download and activate the Glue for Yoast SEO & AMP plugin.
Once this is installed, validate your schema using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool.
When I did this, I got an error on the publisher logo. If you get the same error, add this code to the functions file underneath the code you added during step 2. This will allow you to explicitly set your publisher logo.
As of the date this post was written, Google is only displaying AMP pages in mobile news carousel results:
So, right now, there are only two ways for users to access your AMP content:
As an SEO, I am hopeful that mobile users will soon be served AMP content by default. I asked John Mueller, Google’s webmaster trends analyst, about this on Twitter:
Based on John’s response (and on logic), my guess is that soon mobile users will be served the AMP version of content by default, assuming AMP is configured properly. This, of course, would make AMP implementation a must for publishers who care about giving their mobile audience the fastest experience possible.
This could also have a significant impact on SEO. We know that user behavior signals impact how Google ranks search results. If AMP does indeed create an improved user experience by way of its blazing fast speed, its implementation could benefit your SEO as well.
It’s crazy to say in the era of [NOT PROVIDED], but Google is giving me really useful keyword data lately.
This post outlines how I’ve used keyword data from Google Search Console to drastically increase organic search traffic (specifically to pages that already receive some search traffic).
In addition to increasing my client’s traffic, this method has also helped me understand my client’s customers, and their most pressing questions and needs, and adjust content accordingly.
I’ve detailed my process as a case study. The example I use here is the most successful of a handful of “wins” I’ve seen using this method over the past three months. The example is the clearing your criminal record page on Houston defense attorney Fred Dahr’s website.
Before I ask you to read the whole post, I’ll show you the results:
Nice, right? Here’s how I did it:
Identify a page that’s getting some organic search traffic. I would say at least 50 organic search visits per month is a good starting point.
It should also be a page that you care about; one that could generate positive outcomes (leads, referrals, links, social shares, etc.)
Next, launch Google Search Console and navigate to your website’s dashboard. Then, click through to Search Traffic // Search Analytics:
Next, click “Pages” and select your landing page:
Once you’ve filtered by landing page, select “Queries”:
Once you’re here, looking at a list of beautiful search queries that have sent traffic to your landing page, click the radio buttons for “Impressions” and “Position”. This data will prove helpful.
The “Clearing Your Record” page contains information on eligibility for clearing one’s criminal record in Texas with expunction and non-disclosure.
Initially, I assumed that people would search general queries, such as:
But, what Google’s keyword data showed me was that the overwhelming majority of clicks and impressions came from queries specifically related to DWI expunction:
This information is invaluable because it allows me to re-optimize the page, not only for higher volume keywords, but also for user intent.
I started by re-optimizing what is perhaps the most impactful on-page optimization element, the title tag.
Previous Title Tag:
Re-Optimized Title Tag:
Next, I turned my attention to the Heading 1 (H1) tag. The previous H1 tag was: Clearing Your Record.
Because I didn’t want to turn away anyone looking for general record clearing information, I decided not to use the DWI expunction keywords in the H1.
Instead, I added “in Texas” to the H1, since the keyword data indicated that most people add that modifier:
In this case, updating the title and H1 did the trick for me. However, there are plenty of other optimization changes you can make to improve performance for your new target keyword. For example:
After optimizing for my new keywords, I optimized the page according to the lesson the keyword data taught me: That people who land on this page want to know specifically whether they are eligible for DWI expunction.
I noticed that the eligibility information was near the bottom of the page, and not particularly well formatted:
So, I moved it up, and adjusted it the formatting to address people’s most prevalent question:
The final step of my process is to submit the newly optimized page to Google’s index using the Fetch as Google tool, and also to annotate the changes in Google Analytics so that you can measure the results.
By using the keyword data that Google provides in Google Search Console, you can re-optimize your site’s top content, which not only results in higher rankings and more traffic, but also happier users.
Maybe, just maybe, Google will begin to understand that granting webmasters and web marketers access to accurate keyword data will actually improve their most valuable product.
Does Direct Mail Marketing Still Work For Law Firms? Recently I was at a marketing and management conference for personal injury firms. During this conference many law firms will share their tips and tricks on what is working for them and what isn’t. It’s a candid conference and getting to hear the actual studies and tracking methods from people doing the work is helpful. One of the topics that came up during this last conference was direct mail marketing.
While I have primarily been an online marketer I have also helped law firms with offline advertising such as direct mail, Television Ad’s, newspaper advertising, yellow pages, community events and more. Over the past few years most of my efforts have shifted online, but I am a big fan of diversification. If something works and it will help you get a low cost per case, i’m on board.
As with any marketing method it’s important to track your cost per case from start to finish including man hours spent on projects. One project we discussed in detail was direct mail and some firms were able to get their cost per case down to $150 in some cases. While there is no guarantee this will work in your particular jurisdiction it’s worth looking into. In addition to this make sure you check with your state bar advertising guidelines as well to ensure you’re not crossing any lines.
In states that have a 30 day limit you must wait before contacting those injured in accidents the competition can be a bit more fierce if public records are easy to get and victims names are mentioned in accident reports.
The successful law firms participating in this strategy took one of a couple different approaches:
This approach was used to successfully contact victims who have been involved in an accident. Keep in mind that you should avoid this in Wrongful death situations.
This approach was used with success when the plan was followed closely. Hospitals send out lien letters were sent out via certified mail.
Do you depend on referral business from your firm? The best way to get that business is to have another touch point and always be in the clients mind. Once a quarter send a postcard or letter to every single person in your database. Timing is everything. One firm out of Kansas did this and was able to attribute 44 new cases to these simple mailings in a single year.
I of course also recommend that you do this via an email newsletter 🙂
Out of all of the firms I spoke with the cost per case seemed to vary between $150 and $600 per case. This is not necessarily a volume approach but it’s an approach you can take, start implementing, and diversify your efforts to get more cases each and every year.
If it’s worth it for your firm to try, please do so and let me know how it goes. Alternatively i’m happy to hear about stories that didn’t work as well. Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
If you haven’t been using Google alerts you’re behind the curve and it’s time to catch up! Don’t worry though if you haven’t been using this handy free tool because it’s easy to setup and you can get started today.
In a nutshell Google Alerts makes it easy to monitor your brand or your competitors brand with daily email notifications that inform you when and where the keywords you’re following are mentioned across the web. If someone is blogging about you, you will know when Google see’s it by using Google Alerts. Interested in getting it setup? Well then let’s get started.
To access Google Alerts you simply need to login to your Gmail or Google account and visit: https://www.google.com/alerts. From here the interface is easy to use and pretty straightforward.
Once you’re logged in simply enter your text in the search box shown in the graphic below:
Once you start typing in the box it will autofill to show you some useful results. Keep in mind there are a couple of handy tricks you will want to implement here. One of these tips is using quotation marks. Quotation marks will make the search only show results where the exact phrase is displayed. For example if you created a Google Alert for the keyword Mass Torts you would see results that contain either the word Mass or Torts. Adding the quotations around the words will only display results with the exact word combination in that order. “Mass Torts” would be the example you would want to type in.
Below I have compiled a few ideas that you can use to setup some Google alerts right away.
While you can setup alerts for the more popular ones such as Viagra or Lipitor you will probably not find a lot of use out of it. If you want to monitor a topic such as Zoran causing birth defects you can create an alert “zoran”+”birth defects”. This would return only results that mention the name Zoran AND include both the words birth and defects in that combination.
Another way you can use this is to setup Google Alerts for all of the hospitals in your area. You can monitor trends out there like Stryker Hip Cases which may be more geographic centered based on a certain doctor or hospital.
The real key to using this for Mass Tort cases is to be careful and spend a lot of time setting it up to include all of the variants you may need.
Have you ever wondered what people are saying about you? Whether it’s a competitor or your SEO company it’s a good idea to track your firm name and the attorneys names on Google Alerts. This way you will know about the news as it happens and where it’s picked up. If you’re mentioned in a news article you can respond and thank the writer. If you get bad press you will know about it in advance and can start the damage control. If you have a common name make sure to add the words attorney or lawyer to the name to help lessen the irrelevant results.
If you’re like me you spend too much time looking at Backlink tools like Ahrefs, Moz, Majestic SEO, and more. Sometimes these tools are slow and sometimes they’re fast, but it’s annoying to check tools right? To track competitors links and find their sweet news mentions simply setup an alert with their website. I usually do the competitors website in quotes.
Since I have used Google alerts for many years now I have a couple of tips I would like to share tips with you. Here are some I hope you find useful.
I hope you found this article informative and useful. If you have any questions please mention them in the comments below and I’ll be happy to respond directly.
Promoting your website online isn’t just about organic traffic. In fact there are hundreds of other ways to generate leads depending on your practice area and location. In this article we will look at a few of the less common methods of getting more website traffic to your firm’s website.
If you have never used Quora before I’ll start off by letting you know that it’s addicting. So make sure to stay on task and don’t venture too far. To get started you simply need to visit Quora.com. Quora has different topic categories such as https://www.quora.com/topic/Attorneys that you can easily find through the search. Each category has individual topics like the one below:
How Can You Use This to Get More Traffic?
You can use Quora to drive traffic to your website in several ways. First, you need to start by creating a profile on Quora.com and setting up a full bio. Use a great profile picture of yourself in a suit that you use for branding. Make sure to fill out your profile completely and really showcase your expertise. Once your profile is setup you will want to follow topics that are relevant to your practice.
You can of course follow the Attorneys category but if your a Bankruptcy lawyer you might also find a benefit of being in the Bankruptcy category and a financial category.
From here you need to get your name known which you can do one of two ways. Option #1 is to post questions and getting other lawyers to answer them such as “What is a typical day in the life of an elite corporate/bankruptcy attorney?”. However the best option is going to be to respond to these questions with substantial answers. This will give users the ability to click on your profile and back to your website. If you have been good at content marketing (You have right?), then you can reference legitimate and more substantial answers on your website which will earn a link to that page!
Have you heard of the Podcast’s before? If not you may be avoiding social media too much. Podcast’s have always been popular to the tech culture but over the past few years they’ve been reaching further audiences thanks to podcasts like Serial.
If you’re still not sure what a Podcast is, it’s defined as “a digital audio file made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player, typically available as a series, new installments of which can be received by subscribers automatically.’ The podcasts which will get you the most attention will be legal related podcasts or niche related podcasts.
Here are some examples of podcasts
TedTalks Law – http://www.ted.com/topics/law
How Can You Use This to Get More Traffic?
Getting traffic from a pod cast requires some work but I bet your competition isn’t doing it. First off you can start a podcast if your heart desires. Services like Apple make it easy to start your own but that will require some audience building. If you’re looking to get started simply consider repurposing your blog content and recording them as Q&A episodes. If you don’t have that you can have your staff create a list of FAQ and do an interview style podcast where they ask the questions and you respond to them. This could be helpful to someone in many ways and you’ll generate traffic and links.
However, the option of creating your own Podcast is a lot to swallow for some people. Instead you could pitch regularly published podcasts and try to get interviewed. The regular shows usually have to have content on a regular basis every week so if you offer to help with an intriguing idea your changes of getting scheduled are good and the exposure can be huge.
Fun Fact: Did you know I used to run a live radio show?
Have you ever shared content on your social media channels? If you have that’s great! You’re one step above most attorneys. However if you’re serious about building traffic and a following for your law firm there is an easy way to setup some automation. It’s called Buffer. Why would you do this and how does it help? Let me explain…
Let’s say that you have 100 Facebook followers and you share a post on your Facebook page. It may only hit 3 of those viewers. Now just because you shared it once doesn’t mean it’s dead. You want to keep sharing it over time and when you do this you will increase engagement. I should also mention that social media posts shouldn’t all be self serving. You should link and make a lot of posts of relevant information to your audience that’s not your’s as well. But that can be hard right?
How Can You Use This to Get More Traffic?
Buffer makes everything easier. Buffer has a free version you can check out here. This service allows you to easily bookmark interesting content you find across the internet and share it at specific times on specific social networks. So let’s say that I wrote a post and I wanted to reach a wider audience. I would then use Buffer to schedule it several times throughout the week or month to ensure I get a wider audience penetration. Once users see this they will click back to your website 🙂
PRO Tip: If you mention another user in your article make sure to reference them. They will share it too 🙂
Slideshare is a presentation sharing website where you can share a presentation such as a powerpoint presentation. We use Slideshare at Juris Digital to promote presentations that I have made to speak at marketing conferences such as SMX and State of Search.
How Can You Use This to Get More Traffic?
Creating and sharing your powerpoint decks on Slideshare.com is free. You want to start by creating a profile on slideshare, filling it out completely, and linking back to your website. Now however you need to post content to get more traffic. If you don’t have any slides don’t worry. Think about the content you already have on your website. You can repurpose this by topic and post them as slide shows. So let’s say that you’ve created content for “What to do after an accident?” on your website. You can now turn this into a slide deck with Q&A and link back to your website. This gives you a few different benefits including getting a backlink, getting traffic to your site, and possibly ranking in another position for the same topic. The more real estate you control online the better!
I have some mixed feelings about Avvo overall but there is no denying that they already have a lot of website traffic and therefore they do have users. Since there site has very decent authority you can potentially pick up some clients by published legal guides or legal advice on the website. Now keep in mind that this would always come secondary to content on your own website in my opinion.
How Can You Use This to Get More Traffic?
Avvo has a couple of different ways you can get more traffic. The way you will get the traffic is after a user visitors your profile and clicks on your website, so it’s important to have a very strong profile. You can read about how to get a 10 on AVVO which will increase your visibility here. The other ways however are answering users legal questions and creating user guides.
The first example is the Q&A which you can see an picture of below:
Reviewing these questions and posting a substantial answer can not only get you in front of a client that’s looking for an answer, but they’re also indexed by Google which can generate more traffic as well.
Another option Avvo provides is legal guides like this one here. Writing these allows them to get indexed in Google and generate more traffic back to your website. Although I will stress this is a secondary priority to your own website.
I could talk about different ways to bring traffic to your website all day long. The important part is figuring out what is scalable for you and your firm and getting to work on it.
I hope you found this guide useful! If you want more tips like this please share this article and sign up for our newsletter below.
Yelp. Whether you love them or hate them you’ve at least heard of them, and you’ve likely used their website or app to find a good sushi joint in your neighborhood.
There have been over 10mm downloads of the Yelp app in the Google Play store and it’s the 32nd most popular website in America according to Alexa.com. To top it off, Yelp’s data is relied on heavily by Apple Maps (see image to the right).
Between it’s massive app user base, website traffic, and integration with Apple Maps, Yelp is a compelling advertising platform. It’s no wonder that law firms have begun to test whether Yelp Advertisements can be an effective way to attract new clients.
For the remainder of this post we will explore the question, should law firms expect a positive return on a Yelp advertising investment?
Specifically, we’ll look at the fundamental features and functionality of Yelp’s ad products, and we’ll dive into two real world case studies from lawyers we’ve talked to who’ve advertised on Yelp. Let’s go!
Ads are displayed across Yelp’s platforms; desktop website, mobile website, and mobile app. With regards to placement within their platform, Yelp explains:
“Yelp Ads appear in a variety of places including on relevant search result pages and competitor business pages.” – Yelp Advertising
In a nutshell, if you buy ad space on Yelp, your ad will show in one of these two places:
Nope. The Yelp advertising platform does not allow you to target your ads to users based on specific relevancy indicators, such as keyword search or demographics. The process for signing up is pretty simple though. You sign into your account, select your monthly budget, and you’re done. This is an easy process but is it effective?
I’m of the opinion Yelp’s inability to allow marketers to target a more relevant audience makes their advertising platform less effective overall. Any marketer worth her salt will tell you that the ability to target a relevant audience is crucial to effective marketing.
For example, if Sally logs on to Yelp to search for a lawyer to help her with a child custody matter, and she instead is served ads for lawyers who primarily handle personal injury, she is not likely to engage with the ad.
The take away here is that because Yelp does not offer any sort of targeting functionality, it’s impossible to know whether your ad is reaching a relevant audience more often than not.
Now that we’ve established the basics of Yelp’s ad platform, let’s look a couple of case studies and feedback from actual law firms who’ve advertised on Yelp.
As legal marketers we are constantly testing and trying new advertising methods. High keyword rankings and lots of free Google search traffic is cool, but the reality is that we care most about helping our clients sign more cases.
If after testing we find that a certain advertising platform or channel is ineffective, we abandon it. If we find another that is particularly effective, we invest heavily in it. In this example, we were testing Yelp Ads for a Denver based attorney who handles personal injury and traffic cases.
We decided to start off small with a $250 budget. Typically 1 out of every 5 contacts might turn into a case for this attorney so we are shooting to get at least 5 contacts (not clicks) a month. These clicks tend to end up around $10 per click in Denver. Now let’s look at the results.
This is a small sample size but the numbers don’t look promising. Considering the issues that I pointed out above, specifically in an industry that has a general categorization and then sub categories (practice areas), there are some flaws in the system. I plan on keeping this test running for a bit longer and adding more data but so far it’s not helping sign cases.
Another flaw of course is that this is a pay per click product which means I will always pay for these clicks. Some months could potentially be better than others.
For this particular client I am going to suggest that they focus more on building up their Yelp reviews, to see whether that increases click through rates (CTR) and conversions.
This case study is from Jared Staver from the Staver Law Group.
Jared reached out to me while I was searching for more info on attorneys who have had actual experience using Yelp to advertise their law firm. He’s been advertising with Yelp and considers the results lack luster.
The Staver Law Group is a Chicago based law firm with a monthly budget of $500 per month for Yelp paid clicks. Because the firm places a premium on the ability to track where their leads come from (which all businesses should), they use tracking phone numbers, live chats, and contact forms to determine the lead conversion source.
“We are tracking goal conversion for phone calls, live chats, contact forms and emails and for last quarter there were 7 conversions from Yelp. This brings the cost per conversion to $196 per contact. This number alone isn’t too bad for a personal injury lawyer, but it’s not too good either. The appeal of being at a $12.50 per click costs diminishes quite a bit when the conversion rate is only 6%. What this means is that these aren’t really people needing help in our area of practice viewing our profile on Yelp. Of the 7 contacts we’ve received from Yelp, none of them have been cases we would handle. Even though our paid ads with Yelp are only showing up for personal injury, so far it seems people are calling for other reasons or to solicit the firm.” – Jared Staver
Jared seems to agree with my point that Yelp provide a lower conversion rate because of the inability to target relevant users. More importantly, he provides another case study of a monthly budget that did not convert clicks into clients.
“We advertised on Yelp for a short period of time hoping to generate leads for our firm before pulling out. The traffic quality was not great and we were able to get more qualified leads from Google and Bing/Yahoo! PPC efforts on the paid side. When people are searching for a lawyer, they’re more likely to do an organic search on Google as opposed to going to Yelp. We were able to gauge the traffic and conversion data in our analytics before making the decision quickly to move in another direction.” – Christian Denmon from DemonLaw.com
From the data I have the answer is clearly a no talking to these attorneys and other attorneys. As I have written about before, I see Yelp helping your law firm in three different ways, none of which include paid advertising.
If your firm’s Yelp listing is optimized and you have strong reviews you can possibly get some conversions that way. In the meantime, don’t waste your money on Yelp advertising.
Do you have a similar or different experience? I would love to hear from you. Please leave a comment below.
