Last month, Jabez LeBret and Mark Homer attended Pubcon New Orleans, where they were both asked to speak on various topics related to search engine optimization, local search, and social media. While we’re sure they impressed everyone with their knowledge, we were more curious about any trends they heard from the other search engine and social media experts attending and speaking at the event. Upon their return, we got what we wanted: we spent several hours with Mark and Jabez reviewing what we are doing for our clients, matching it to trends, adjusting where appropriate, and analyzing guidance and case study examples to gain new insights. (The old adage “be careful what you wish for” applies here.) 

One of the most-discussed topics at Pubcon continues to be the increasingly improving ability of search engines to detect “spammy” search engine tactics. Old-school link building, spammy and duplicate content, sites that are wide but thin in content, and article marketing, among others, continue to produce little to no results following the big Panda and Penguin Google updates. Many people at the conference continue to gripe about how hard it is to get sites to rank and remain frustrated at “the Google” for ruining all of their easy yet spammy tactics.

GNGF, happily, has always felt that quality content, good links, and an active online presence—not quick and dirty tactics—make up the best long-term approach. Few of our clients were hurt by the Google algorithm updates that took place this past year; those that were hurt turned out to have employed a previous SEO company that did the kind of old-school link building now penalized by Google. Quality, updated content, onsite optimization, consistent business citations (with the correct name, address, and phone number) and real, searchable, linkable content around the Internet (like videos and infographics) comprise the forward-thinking strategy for getting ranked properly in search engine results. 

Two trends that Mark and Jabez talked about last fall were still highlighted at Pubcon: authorship and social media influencing search. In summary, authorship is Google’s attempt to put a quality score on WHO is writing the content, not just WHAT the content is about.

Social media’s influence on search was a hotly debated topic: everyone believes it is coming, but no one really has an exact grasp on how. Currently, there isn’t any hard evidence proving that it is being considered by Google and Bing, but all indications are that they will. These indications, along with the introduction of Facebook graph search, have led GNGF to work with our clients to increase their interaction on key social media platforms, namely Facebook, G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn. We have begun incorporating this into our work with all of our clients over the past few months and are monitoring it very closely.

At minimum, we recommend creating a presence for your company and posting a couple of times a week to each platform.  At first, this can simply be posting links to your blog or YouTube content on your social media pages. But over time, you should start listening and interacting with a community made up of your peers, influencers, and possibly even prospects. 

We understand that it is extremely difficult to stay one step ahead of Google and that it can be tempting to resort to the spammy, easy methods touted by some companies. We’re here to tell you, though, that these methods will betray you in the long run. So continue with your efforts to create good content that people will actually want to read, to update your citations, and to create a genuine presence on social media platforms. 

Make sure to check back with us for more important insights about search and social media—we’ll keep you updated. And for up-to-the-minute updates from the search engine world, don’t forget that you can follow Jabez (@jabezlebret) and Mark (@mark_homer) on Twitter.

Edits go live more quickly

According to the Google and Your Business Blog, “Most edits made via the upgraded user interface now appear on Google Maps and our suite of other services within 48 hours.”

We cannot overstate our joy upon hearing this news. Google has long been notorious for its slow approval pipeline for edits, which business owners and SEO firms could (and did) complain about endlessly. It was as if you wrote down your edits for your law firm’s listing or reported a problem—then chucked them directly into the nearest bin. (Do not pass Go. Do not see your edits live on Google.) We’ll see how Google follows through on their promise of faster edits, but for now, we’re excited. And you should be, too: the sooner that your Google listing is verified and updated, the closer your law firm is to moving up in the local rankings and being seen by potential clients.

Edits given status updates 

Along with quicker approval for edits, we’re going to chock this one up as a positive for the updated dashboard. It is definitely helpful to be able to see the status of updates made to your firm’s listing. With this new feature, it should be more readily apparent whether the edits are moving through the approval process nicely or whether further action is needed. 

Easier interface and management of Places and G+ pages

Another thing that Google is known for? Releasing new or updated products or services without guidance, watching the masses scramble. When Google announced that business owners could merge their Places page with their business’s G+ page, many were left in confusion about how to do so, which G+ pages qualified (only local), and where best to manage the newly merged page: the Places dashboard? the G+ dashboard? 

In the newly updated Places dashboard, law firms will be able to manage both pages. This post on Google’s Product Forums gives a handy chart outlining the types of Google pages, where to manage them, and where to find support. 

Custom categories now gone

Google has slowly been moving toward the demise of custom categories. With this update, custom categories received the final deathblow. This is an unfortunate change for many businesses that relied upon extremely specific categories to reach their customer niche. (The category Medicaid Planning Attorney, for example, is missing from the list.) Google now only allows categories from its dropdown list.

Note that not everyone is getting the updated dashboard all at once. Google is rolling out the dashboard to business owners in the U.S. in the coming weeks. After that, the update will roll out internationally.

This new dashboard marks the next move in Google’s quest for social search: unlike the Places dashboard of yore, the new dashboard has a tab for a firm’s G+ page, where you can manage social features. Though not in effect yet, soon law firms will be able to merge their Places page with their Google+ business page from the Places dashboard.

Before:

After: Check out the pictures at the Google and Your Business Blog.

For more news about Google, local search, and what in the world it all means for your law firm, check out the rest of our blog!

We cover directory listings and their importance in an earlier blog post, but we’ll recap to save you the extra click (we’re just helpful like that).

Directory listings (aka citations) are a mention of your law firm online, typically including your firm name, address, and phone number (NAP). Many (but not all) directory services also offer space to include more information about your business, from a description of your services to your website URL.

Directory listings are a very important aspect of Google’s ranking algorithm. When your citations are correct, consistent, and not duplicated, you are signaling to Google that your firm is a real, credible business, which prompts Google to raise you in the ranking. (As we’ve covered before, you want to be on the first page in the top three slots to get the most exposure to people searching for your services.) Good citations validate your location to Google and also increase your visibility to clients who might be searching on websites other than Google (such as Yellowpages.com, for example). 

It is a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake to create these listings and then forget about them.  Because the information you put in directory listings (or already exists online) spreads across the web and because directory listing services can change, you have to keep up with your listings to make sure that they stay correct. Directory services frequently pull new information from other websites, and the correct listing that you created months ago may have changed and become incorrect without your knowledge. (Please don’t shoot the messenger; we wish that this didn’t happen and that it were easier, too.)

You should examine your list of directory listings that you control on a regular basis. When was the last time you updated these listings? Ever? Has anything changed in your firm that needs to be updated online? (Maybe you moved offices, changed your phone number, or added a new partner to the firm and need to update your firm name.) Log into your accounts for these listings and make any needed updates.

Note: some directory websites will require you to re-verify your listing if you make changes to the name, address, or phone number.

Even if all of your information is correct, you still want to do a periodic update of your listings. Google (your most important listing!) is notorious for frequently updating the layout of the Google+ Local listings. 

Just recently, Google updated the layout of Google+ Local pages. The cover photo increased in size, from 890×180, to 2120px by 1192px. The page’s profile photo is different, too: now a circle instead of a square. You can see the new layout below, from the Angry Birds g+ page: 

Angry Birds, everyone’s favorite app

You should make sure that your listing’s images are properly sized on Google—and other sites—so that they reflect the professional image you want to portray online.

We’re over halfway done with our SEO Resolutions Series. (My, how time flies!) Check back with us next time, when we cover your firm’s online review strategy.

 GNGF moved into a new office just this past month, and we are more than a little excited about it! (You might notice the moving theme throughout this newsletter.) After we unpacked our boxes and dusted off our furniture-building skills, the GNGF team got to work updating all of our local search signals online. Like us, your firm might have recently moved or is considering a move. What you need to know is that when you move your office, your firm’s directory listings that exist online will remain outdated and incorrect, even becoming picked up and spread to other websites. You must (we cannot stress this enough) update your website, your Google+ Local page, and your listings with your new address. If you do not do this (or you only fix your website or your Google listing), Google’s search algorithm will become confused by the inconsistent listings pointing to two different locations and will drop you in the rankings—thereby preventing potential clients from finding your website. (Not to mention, you don’t want potential clients finding the wrong address for your firm.) Make sure that your website is updated with the correct address and Rich Snippet language after you move. To find incorrect listings, search for your old address on Google in quotation marks, and edit any outdated listings that come up in the results. (You can also find incorrect listings using tools from GetListed, BrightLocal, or WhiteSpark, but we recommend doing a search first.) Your move doesn’t have to undo all the work you’ve done to rank locally: just update your listings! Read our extended post at the GNGF Blog!

Read our extended post at the GNGF Blog!

>>Check Out Our Latest Blog Posts

GNGF SUCCESS: Heiting & Irwin Attorneys at Law

You can imagine our over-the-top excited reaction when we observed that our newest success story—Riverside, California personal injury law firm Heiting & Irwin Attorneys at Law—received no fewer than 10 appointment requests from their website in the month and a half after the new, custom, optimized website that we created for the firm went live. The first appointment request came in just one day after the website went up, and requests have continued at a steady pace since then. We are thrilled that Heiting & Irwin is already seeing great conversion results from their updated and improved website and online presence (though we feel that we might have to apologize to the firm’s staff, who are presumably running around with their hair on fire, fielding all of the requests for consultations).

Congratulations, from everyone at Get Noticed Get Found!

The 500 Hats of Mark Homer and Jabez LeBret

SEO and online law firm marketing experts, speakers, authors, entrepreneurs … construction workers. Mark and Jabez wear many hats. For our move, Mark and Jabez donned their hard hats and tool belts to skillfully design and build several huddle/meeting rooms for the new office. (Though by “skillfully,” we mean no one lost an appendage or went to the emergency room because of a nail gun accident. We don’t recommend that you hire them to build your house.)

MEET THE TEAM: NEW OFFICE

Have you met the new office? We think you’d like it as much as we do. In a word, it’s awesome. We’re loving the trips to IKEA to find new rugs, furniture, and decorations to make the new space our own. (Even if we don’t much like the furniture-building marathon that happens afterward.) Most importantly, the new office doesn’t have the monstrously hideous green carpet of the old office. What’s not to like?

Our New Address:

1776 Mentor Avenue

Suite 179

Cincinnati, OH 45212

KEEPING UP WITH #TRENDS

# Based on the continued growth of mobile users and the expectation that Google will receive more search queries from mobile than desktop devices this year, Google announces Adwords Enhanced campaigns. The goal is to make it easier to target and bid for different devices and locations so that the 70%+ of small to medium business Adwords advertisers can more easily get a share of mobile traffic.

# Google is implementing a new, easier procedure for businesses that have moved and need to update their verified Google+ Local page. The new method lets you edit the address in your Places or Google+ dashboard and re-verify, replacing the previous method that required you to create a new listing entirely, verify it, and close the old one. (Business owners should still keep an eye on their listing after the edit to close the old listing if a new listing is created as a result.)

March 2013 Calendar

3/6 Jabez LeBret at Chester County Bar Association

3/14 National Pi Day

3/16 Kelly’s Birthday

3/17 St. Patrick’s Day

3/21 March Madness Starts

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Before the GNGF team arrived

Not quite finished decorating, but all the essentials are in!

But unfortunately, the move does not stop there. Over the next week, the team will be painstakingly updating all of the key local search signals about our company and our new address. The move and this effort reminded us of a few grains of wisdom that are important to share with you regarding moving your office and local search.

As a law firm, local search is extremely important for you. Having a properly established presence online, with a highly ranked website on Google, helps people who were referred to you or other potential clients in your area find, contact, and hire you. To get to the top of the rankings in your area and stay there, a lot of work is involved. You need an optimized website with good content, a Google+ Local page, a steady blog, frequent press releases, videos, numerous citations, etc. 

When you move offices, you unfortunately throw a wrench in all of the work that you’ve done to establish yourself online in a particular location. It used to be that moving your business was easier: along with the details of the move, you just needed to update your business cards and letterhead, tell the post office to forward the mail, and call it a day. Then, you only needed to make sure people knew where your new office was. Today, however, moving your business’ location is a veritable quagmire. Information that you’ve put online about your business (or, very likely is on a plethora of online directory sites without your knowledge) stays there and proliferates, even if it is outdated or completely wrong.

Failing to fix any outdated information can seriously harm your law firm’s online presence and jeopardize your ranking. We’ve talked before about how citations (any mention of your firm’s name, address, and phone number) are an important part of Google’s ranking algorithm. In order to benefit you, your citations have to be not only correct but also consistent. Having half of your citations point to your old address will only serve to confuse Google’s algorithm and cause it to drop you in ranking. And your citations should be correct and consistent not only for search engines but also for the people that find you online. You certainly don’t want potential clients looking for you online to be directed to the wrong address or unable to call you because they have the wrong phone number. 

How do you fix your citations and preserve the online presence that you’ve so carefully and thoroughly built up?

First, you should make sure that your address change is reflected on your website on the “Contact” page and any other pages that have your address. Ask your webmaster to be sure your new address and phone number is programmatically marked-up on your website using a Rich Snippet language like HCARD Microformat or Schema. If that made no sense to you, that’s ok. Just be sure to copy and paste it into an email to your webmaster. (If they don’t understand it, you might need a new webmaster.)

Then, you should access all of the citations that you’ve created. These could be your Google+ Local page, your Yelp page, your AVVO profile, etc. Update your address on these citations, and make sure they all match. Note that some of the directory listing services will make you re-verify your citation via phone call or postcard if you change the address. 

When you’ve updated the citations you control, there is still more to do. Information about you online tends to spread: there will be citations on directory websites and review sites that you did not create, and these sites will have gotten their information from other sources on the web. To find these sites, search for your old address in quotation marks (ex. “100 Main Street, Cincinnati, OH”) on Google. If you see any search results that have a listing of your firm with the old address, click on the link to the site and follow the site-specific directions for claiming and editing that citation. If you also changed phone numbers during the move, search for your old phone number with the area code, in quotes, and edit any citations that feature your old phone number. There are some tools that can help with this (see link below), but we still recommend double-checking things right in the search engines.

While working on this blog post, a colleague mentioned that renowned local search expert David Mihm just wrote a piece a few weeks ago about this very topic on the SEOMoz Blog.  I was about to put up detailed screenshots and examples, but it looks like David did such a great job that I will be a good Internet citizen and just recommend you get the details there.

Moving your office is just a bump in the road: it may cause more work for you, but it does not have to undo all of your efforts in local search. Simply make sure that your address is up-to-date on your website, Google+ Local, and other citations. In fact, moving into a new office is a great idea for a press release, which is extremely beneficial for your online presence—so take this opportunity to make the most of your move! 

If you have moved in the past couple of years, it might be worthwhile to perform some of these checks on your old addresses just in case.

Oh yeah, and if you need to reach us, our new address is 1776 Mentor Avenue, Suite 179, Cincinnati, OH 45212 – same phone number, though: 513-444-2016

Also you can like us on Facebook or follow us on G+ or Twitter to get our latest updates.

As an attorney, you know that reputation defense is part and parcel of your responsibilities. You put years of effort into building up your career, practice, and firm, and it can be devastating to see negative or untrue comments about yourself or your firm online. Furthermore, you might even be shocked by what you see being said about you online. We recently spoke with one attorney who, upon searching for his name on Google, was appalled to find that search results were bringing up his name and practice below results for a registered sex offender. This was not the attorney but someone who shared the same name. We knew that, he knew that, but a potential client who was referred to him may not take the time to figure that out.

If you find negative comments about you online, what can you do? Demand that the person take down the comment? Pay a reputation management company?

Actually, the answer is neither. Writing to a webmaster or writer to take down a negative comment will likely only draw more attention to the comment, which is exactly what you don’t want. In the case of the attorney who shared the same name with a sex offender, this tactic wouldn’t work, anyway. Reputation management firms often over-promise and under-deliver. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of reputation management firms that promise to protect attorneys from negative attention; however, these companies frequently do little more than try to game the system through shady SEO tactics (which Google recognizes and does not reward) and through creating fake positive reviews (which are usually obvious and cringe-worthy).

If requests to take the negative comment down and reputation management companies do not work, what is a law firm to do when they want to ethically, effectively manage their online reputation—preventing the nightmare situation above?

We always say that the best reputation defense is a good offense. The goal of online reputation management is not to get rid of negative comments after they happen but to bury any potential negativity. Most people, when searching for something online, never click to the second page of Google. Data shows that less than X% click to the second page of results. Even fewer click to the third page of results, and so on. When something negative is said about you on the Internet, making it invisible is more efficient and almost as effective than trying to spend time and dollars to get something taken down.

In order to bury any negative comments, your goal should be to control the first page of Google. You can do this using content you create, like your website and blog content, which contains your firm name or your name. Create citations for your firm, issue press releases about noteworthy events happening to your firm or attorneys, and post to your blog and social media channels regularly. All of this online content that you create and control should come up in searches for your firm name, thus virtually eliminating the chance that something negative pops up high in search.

The approach we recommend is to catalog the first three or four pages of Google on the search of your name or firm name. Then, categorize each result as something you directly control, can easily influence, or do not control.

1. Directly Control: Content here is on domains that you own and fully control. Typically, these are your firm website, blog, and maybe a personal website.
2. Easily Influence: These are sites where you can generally edit the content directly. However, you do not own the domain, so the rules could change on you without your permission. These are things like your Google+ Local Page, Facebook page, press releases that you syndicate, videos you have on YouTube, images on Flickr, etc. These sites, like  Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, have a strong Domain Authority and thus will often show up on the first page or two.
3. Do Not Control: These are sites that you are unable to edit or control or are nefarious websites that allow negative comments to be posted and ask for payment to take them down (Ripoff Report being the biggest one of those). 

Look at your catalog and see what is from category 1 and shows up on page 2 or 3. See what you can do to increase the authority of that page. Maybe a few internal links on your site will do the trick. Then, look at category 2 and think about the same thing. How can you adjust what that page says? You may need to build up some links to your Twitter or LinkedIn profile so that they move up in the rankings. 

This will not be an overnight victory, but as we always say, things you do that are real and genuine have a longer impact. That holds as true as ever in Law Firm Reputation Defense – or should we now call it  Law Firm Reputation Offense!

If you have questions about specific things you can do, feel free to give us a call or email us. We would be happy to offer some suggestions.

Take this longer-term approach to protect your hard-earned reputation and the reputation of your firm. On a related note, next on our SEO Resolutions list we’re going to talk about reviews: how to get them and how to respond to both the positive and negative ones.

The newly announced Facebook update, Facebook Graph Search, has compelling implications for law firms.

Facebook Graph Search turns the social media network’s old search model on its head: before, Facebook users would type in a term into the search box and receive results fitting that search (à la Google and other search engines). Now, however, Facebook users can search for things like  “Attorneys in Cincinnati that my friends like.” The “like” button is key here, serving as an implicit recommendation for legal services. Law firms that have a presence on Facebook and a few “likes” could eventually see new prospects finding them on Facebook via Graph Search.

Read our extended post at the GNGF Blog!

>>Check Out Our Latest Blog Posts

GNGF SUCCESS: Martinson & Beason, P.C.

GNGF would like to extend a well-deserved high five to our latest success story, Martinson & Beason, P.C. The Huntsville, Alabama law firm’s website recently went live! The new website, a complete redesign of the firm’s previously existing site, includes a host of new features that are sure to drive new business to Martinson & Beason, P.C. The GNGF team, working in close collaboration with Morris Lilienthal from Martinson & Beason, P.C., created new content to reflect the firm’s expanded practice areas and services, in both English and Spanish. In addition, the team edited and transferred the considerable content from the previous site, including dozens of webpages and blog posts, to a better platform for the firm. With Martinson & Beason, P.C.’s outstanding level of involvement throughout the process, the firm’s custom, complex, and optimized new website went live in just a few months.

Congratulations, from everyone at Get Noticed Get Found!

All right stop, collaborate and listen.

There are very few things that the GNGF team disagrees on; it is honestly quite awesome how well everyone gets along at the office. However, there is one aspect of office life that cannot be agreed upon: temperature.  It appears that while one individual is Getting Hot In Here, another is simultaneously feeling like Ice Ice Baby. We will refrain from wearing any cut-off sweatshirts while feeling like a maniac on the floor, but we will continue to allow copious amounts of fleece jackets, space heaters, UGG boots, and blankets in the workplace. (Did we mention that all of these items can be found in one person’s “creative” workspace?)

MEET THE TEAM: CREATIVE LEAD

A woman of many talents, Haley consistently amazes the team with the “raise the roof” level of awesomeness she exhibits. Not only is Haley the Creative Design Lead at GNGF—bending HTML and Adobe Creative Suite to her will to create phenomenal website designs, logos, newsletters, and more—she has oodles of other gifts that enrich the office on a [near] daily basis:

Gordon Ramsay level of cooking: Haley can cook with the best of ‘em. (The French macarons that she brought into the office were to die for. Seriously, several members of the GNGF team fought to the death over the last one.)

Social media prowess: Haley has the whole #hashtag thing down to a science. She also Instagrams like nobody’s business.

Sabering a champagne bottle with a knife: This trick is cooler than Ice-T. You can watch Haley’s performance here.

KEEPING UP WITH #TRENDS

# The Facebook Graph Search release causes a wave of awkward, specific searches, such as “Google employees who like the iPhone,” which brings up more than 1,000 people.

# The suspicion that dieting is a short-lived New Year’s Resolution seems to be confirmed by Google. The New York Times reports that Google searches for diet-related keywords jump 29% around the new year and fall every month after.

# Google has created a dedicated phone number for businesses to call when experiencing errors verifying their listing. (Upon learning this, everyone in the office erupted in exclamations of joy.)

February 2013 Calendar

2/8 Jabez LeBret speaks at the Alaska State Bar Association

2/12 Get Noticed Get Found Annual Meeting

2/15 Cincy Winter Beerfest, Cincinnati, OH

2/14 St. Valentine’s Day

2/20 GNGF moves to new office building!!!

2/26 Jabez LeBret speaks at the Lehigh Bar Association, PA

2/28 Only two more years until the next leap year.

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Graph Search is seeking to upend the way Facebook users search, replacing its former, traditional search model—where you type in a search term and Facebook gives you results—to a “social search” model. Before Graph Search, I could search on Facebook for my favorite Cincinnati pizza place (which is Dewey’s Pizza, by the way), and it would look like this:

Google and other search engines work in much the same way, though Google (and Yelp) have the distinction of customizing search results to your location. I could look up “pizza places” in a Google search, and Google would automatically detect my location and give me restaurants that serve pizza in my area. ((It’s worth pointing out that Google is increasingly looking to +1’s, the Google+ version of the Facebook “like,” to give credibility to search results—making social search on Google probably inevitable.) 

The new Facebook Graph Search, however, offers more dimension. Graph Search allows me to do multi-faceted searches—for something as innocuous as “Movies my friends like” to other things more detailed, even strange:

(Tesco, a British supermarket, was recently caught selling hamburgers containing horsemeat, thus the humor.)

Graph search works by mining the data that Facebook users make publicly available: what they’ve written in the “About” section of their profile, whether they list themselves as single or married, what they’ve “liked” on Facebook, and so on. Using this data, Graph Search’s platform can give you results for mind-bogglingly specific searches, such as “Family members of people who live in Ohio and like winter.” (Actually, no one would likely pop up in that search: no one likes Ohio winters.)

This social search, if it catches on, will be especially helpful for those who are active on Facebook and whose friends are active. The search could be great for professional recommendations. Looking for a lawyer? A doctor? A dentist? Now you can find out what attorneys your friends and family recommend—without ever having to ask them—by typing in “Attorneys that my friends like.” Note that a business has to be present on Facebook, either by having a Business Page or Place, to be found on this search. The business also has to be “liked.”

The “like” button is key to the search and is now more important than ever before. When Facebook first introduced “likes,” many law firms went a little overboard, getting as many “likes” as possible without any customer engagement (or even paying for “likes” from random people all over the country). While having a lot of “likes” gives a good impression, a “like” without follow-up of engagement has never done much to increase your customer base or foster good relationships with existing customers. With the introduction of Facebook Graph Search, however, having a decent number of “likes” could get you found on Facebook and serve as an implicit recommendation for your business. In the near future, businesses may ask customers to not only leave them reviews on Google+ Local (enormously important) [link to review blog post] but also “like” them on Facebook.

According to SearchEngineLand, Facebook is hoping that the new search will encourage users to be more engaged on Facebook: “There are now new reasons to make these connections. We’re hoping the existence of that will encourage it,” stated Facebook director of product management Tom Stocky.

However, it’s possible that the opposite will also occur. Graph Search (though still in beta and not fully released to the public) allows you access to unprecedented information. Granted, this information was already available on Facebook if you combed through individual profiles, but few people did that. The new search is effortless, exposing personal information in unexpected ways. Consider another set of results from Facebook Graph Search, found on the wildly popular Tumblr “Actual Facebook Graph Searches”:

“Ashley Madison” is a website for people who looking to cheat on their spouses, and the above search looks for “Spouses of married people who like Ashley Madison.” Oops.

Many are a bit shocked at the amount of personal information available through Graph Search. An article on PBS goes so far as to call it “creepy” and notes the possibility for unsavory characters to use the search for their evil ends. The search is a wake-up call for many who might not have realized previously just how much they are sharing with the world. Few have really considered the consequences of hitting the “like” button before now. With the realization that everything they post online is public and open for consumption, it’s possible that people will choose their “likes” more carefully, now that it could soon be construed by your friends, family, and even strangers as a recommendation. The popular practice of “liking” businesses, public figures, or places “ironically” might also be dead for many. Those that are concerned with privacy may revisit their privacy settings to prevent their information from being public on Facebook.

Despite the potential for abuse, Facebook’s Graph Search could be a useful tool for consumers to find recommendations and for law firms to gain more exposure.

Now, let’s dive into your website a little deeper: the analytics. If you do not have Google Analytics set up for your website (or if your webmaster hasn’t set this up for you), you are missing a crucial aspect of your online presence.

Google Analytics is a tool that allows you to track and monitor what happens on your website. (It’s also free!) Tracking your website’s progress is enormously important when building a successful online presence for your firm. If you create your website and then leave it to languish, it’s a waste. Without tracking, you’ll never know if certain elements aren’t performing well, and you won’t know to fix them so that your website brings your firm as much new business as possible.

The following are just a few of the essential factors that Google Analytics tracks as well as why they’re important. (See the images below to view how this data looks in Google Analytics):

• Visits: Google Analytics tracks the number of people that visit your site during a specific time period. (In the example below, you can see that the data is from the last month, but you can create a custom date range to see the data for any length of time.) Tracking visits to your site is important for obvious reasons: you need to know if your site is being found by potential clients! A website that no one visits is not worth much to your firm. As your website becomes established online—as you add new blog content, build links back to your site from directory listings and press releases, etc.—the number of visitors to your site should increase.

• New visitor percentage: In the pie graph below, you can see that Google makes a distinction between new visitors to your site and returning visitors (people who have visited your site before). The example below is what you should strive for: you want the majority of people visiting your site to be new visitors; this way, you know your website is reaching more new potential clients online.
• Visit duration: Visit duration is the average length of time that a person stays on your site, reading the content, browsing your practice areas, etc. The average time that you should work toward is around two minutes. That may seem low to you, but remember that the number is an average. It will be dragged down somewhat by people who leave your site immediately. In reality, your website should be designed to get people to set up an appointment, email you, or call you. You don’t need a potential client to spend 20 minutes reading every piece of content on your site as long as they end up contacting you.

• Bounce rate: “Bounce rate” refers to the percentage of people that leave your website immediately after the site loads. It is not at all uncommon to have this happen; in fact, it happens to every website. A person “bounces” from your website, usually by clicking the back button on their browser, when they realize that the link they clicked on from search results doesn’t fit what they were looking for. You want this percentage to be low, but the more your SEO starts working and the more you get ranked in organic search, the higher the likelihood that your site comes up in searches that is not exactly the right fit for the searcher.

• Traffic sources: Where your visitors come from online is just as important as how many visit your site. In the image below, you’ll find that a majority of the traffic comes from search, a smaller percentage comes direct, and the smallest percentage comes from referral. What do these mean? 
  • Search: Search traffic refers to people who find your site via a search this means your search engine optimization is working. Note: you can – and should – further differentiate search traffic using a custom report to distinguish “non-branded” keywords vs. branded keywords. A non-branded keyword is one that does not include your firm name or an attorney’s name, such as “criminal defense attorney Denver, CO.” A branded keyword would contain your actual firm name, or your name, or other partners in the firm. Your website should have a majority of its percentages come from search traffic with a large majority of that traffic coming from non-branded keywords—meaning that new potential clients who have not heard of your firm before are finding you.
  • Referral: Referral traffic refers to people who visit your site by clicking on a link to your website on another site. This link could be a link to your site from your Facebook page, AVVO account, online directory listing, an email campaign, press release, online videos, etc.  
  • Direct: Direct traffic refers to people who type your firm’s website URL into the address bar of their browser. This is highly likely that tis person already knows you. Unless you are running some direct mail, radio, or TV campaigns, it’s important that the percentage of direct traffic be lower than that of search traffic: your website should be reaching as many new potential clients as possible to bring in new business for your firm.

Google Analytics will also track which keywords people most use to find your website, so you can see if the keywords you’re using are the ones that people actually search for. The tool will also give you data for how often your website was seen by people who typed in a specific keyword and how many people clicked on your site after seeing it in search results.

This tool gives you a vast amount of information that can help you analyze your website’s performance. Using the data, you can find where you may need to improve. If your average visit duration is very low, for example, you may need to revamp the copy to keep people on your site and encourage them to call you.
 
Run, don’t walk, to set up Google Analytics. When you’ve done that and learned where your website needs improvement, we’ll discuss five more SEO resolutions you should have on your list.
 
To get started, here are some good resources for Google Analytics:

Google Analytics Get Started Pages
Occam’s Razor by Avinash Kaushik

Another year behind us, and the GNGF team is looking forward to 2013. In the spirit of making New Year’s resolutions, we’ve made a list of SEO resolutions that we follow and recommend you add to your must-do list for the new year. (We plan on keeping these SEO resolutions. Whether or not we keep our resolutions to drink fewer caffeinated beverages and eat fewer Busken cookies is up in air—we’ll keep you posted on that.)

 1. Check your website. Does it match your professional offline reputation?

2. Look at your Google Analytics. Where is your traffic coming from, and where should it be coming from?

3. Google yourself and browse the first couple of pages. Is anything inconsistent with your reputation popping up?

4. Is your firm name, address, and phone number data consistent across online business listing websites (especially

important if you moved offices in 2012)?

5. Examine your review strategy. Is your strategy getting you the reviews you need?

6. Check your website content, keywords, etc. Are you sending the right signals to Google?

7. Look at your website and mobile site. Have you made it easy for people to contact you? (Better question: do you even have a mobile site?)

We’ll be posting a series on how to keep these New Year’s SEO resolutions on our blog, so check back!

GNGF: OUR YEAR IN REVIEW

Change in logo and branding:

o We do practice our own advice. Since GNGF’s inception, we’ve updated our branding to reflect the reputation we present online.

Getting clients live faster:

o Clark & Lord, Attorneys at Law still holds the record for fastest time to a live website, at one month. We plan to break that record!

Distance between clients, in 2011 and now:

o 2011: Atlanta, GA and Marin County, CA

• 2,501 miles, 37 hours

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