Your firm's website must play many roles. At its core, your website works as a marketing tool and 24-hour brand ambassador for your firm. However, technology has advanced to such an extent that static sales pages no longer suffice — either for visitors or search engines.
“In the future, the winners in the legal world may succeed by dint of survival of the most responsive.”
–Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers (2008)
Attorney websites are evolving to become client relations...
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A recently published study performed by Backlinko provides insight into the correlation between several page factors and their effects on search engine results. Backlinko looked at a comprehensive sample of 1 million Google search results to determine its findings. The study confirmed some closely held search marketing beliefs while also producing unexpected results. Here is a summary of key findings, along with tips for how attorneys can use them.
Links are still important
Despite Google's apparent...
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Looking forward into 2016, one prediction is certain: Google will continue to update its algorithm, sometimes to the pleasure and sometimes to the dismay of website owners. And, when major shifts occur, as always, search marketing strategies will have to adapt.
Today, however, your firm is competing for elusive, difficult to obtain and extremely valuable placement in the first page of search results. According to an Advanced Web Ranking study, the average click through rate for page one...
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In November, Google released the full version of its Search Quality Rating Guidelines for the first time. Last week, we discussed Google's standards for quality content and website reputation, as detailed in the document. This week, we will delve into the newest section of the guidelines: mobile ratings.
The rating guidelines document is given to Google's human quality raters to help them determine how to rate a series of test queries. The scores raters give pages do not directly...
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For the first time, Google has released the full version of its Quality Raters Guidelines and Handbook. Google provides the 160 page .pdf to its human testers, who perform searches and rate the results based on these guidelines. Google then uses this rating information to enhance its algorithm in an attempt to continuously improve results for searchers.
Raters assign a Page Quality rating based on a sliding rating scale. The scale contains five primary rating options: Lowest, Low,...
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Link building is still a valid and essential marketing tool, despite the bad reputation it has earned over the past several years. Although cries of "link building is dead" have rung out across the SEO community since the first Penguin update in 2012, links, and therefore the need for link building, are still very much alive. According to Moz's Search Engine Ranking Factors 2015 report, domain level link features and page level link features place first and...
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The idea of publishing long articles seems to fly in the face of conventional marketing wisdom. People, we are told, have short attention spans. Content should be bite-sized and concise. Otherwise, you will lose your audience; they simply don't have the patience to read long articles.
Data tells a different story. Long-form content ranks well, gets readers and keeps them engaged. Having long-form content available on your site also helps your firm establish its authority — both with search engines...
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This week, Mashable reported that selfie-related deaths are outpaceing shark attack deaths by 50 percent in 2015. The article comes on the heels of the death of a 66-year-old Japanese tourist, who fell down the stairs at the Taj Mahal while trying to take a selfie.
Falling is the most common cause of death while attempting a to take a selfie. Train-related accidents are the second most deadly.
To be fair, there are extremely few shark or selfie...
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Errors and content inaccuracies are the top reasons people list as causes to mistrust a website. According to a report from Neustar and the Ponemon Institute, 91 percent of consumers claim they do not trust a website that contains mistakes.
Respondents cited frequent downtime as their second biggest concern, with 88 percent saying that they do not trust a website that is unavailable. Load time can also be a negative trust factor, with 67 percent of respondents saying...
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Last month, LinkedIn released a new version of its Pulse app for iOS and Android. According to developers, the service has not simply been modified; it has been rebuilt from the ground up. All older versions have been pulled from Google Play and the App Store, and LinkedIn has said users with existing versions will be able to use them through the end of the year.
Pulse began as a news aggregator app that curated content from various publications...
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