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How to Use the New 'How To Schema'

How to Use the New ‘How To Schema’

Google recently demonstrated some new ways sites can have their content highlighted in search results as a “featured snippet.”

A featured snippet is a block of content taken from a web page and displayed at the top of a list of search results, alongside a link to that page. Its placement is sometimes called “position zero” because it supersedes the page that is otherwise ranked first. How-To schemas, therefore, represent an opportunity to one-up your competition, and should be targeted...

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The 2018 Content Marketing Plan for Law Firms

The 2018 Content Marketing Plan for Law Firms

Content marketing is propelling forward into a modernized world of high expectations for law firms: to be unique and trustworthy for clients with a crisp and transparent online presence. As rough as the roadmap to successful marketing may seem, it is not impossible. The secret is in the flow. Here is how your firm can tackle content marketing today:

Create Your Plan of Action

Break it down.
The simplest start to new beginnings in 2018 is to realign your law firm’s goals...

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How to spot bad SEO and marketing advice

How to spot bad SEO and marketing advice

As I write this post, thousands of others, both bot and human, are also typing happily away, helping create the glut of content that will hit the internet in the next seconds, minutes, hours and days.

As of 2016, sites within the WordPress network — those hosted on WordPress.com or that have the Jetpack plugin installed — published an average of 24 blog posts per second. While WordPress is extremely popular, powering roughly one-third of all websites worldwide,...

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The future of law firm keyword research

The future of law firm keyword research

Keyword research has long been fundamental to achieving SEO goals. In order to drive traffic to your site by achieving good organic search placement, you need to identify words and phrases that are relevant to your practice, that people are searching for, that are not too highly competitive and that convert at a reasonable rate.

Keyword research used to be easy in part because keyword stuffing used to work. Now, however, Google actively punishes content that attempts to rank...

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Is your firm ready for Google's mobile-first index?

Is your firm ready for Google’s mobile-first index?

Google is rolling out a new mobile-first index over the coming months. The official announcement came at the beginning of November on Google's Webmaster Central Blog, although industry insiders have been speculating about the change for over a year. Google says that it is testing the mobile-first index, with the goal of switching to an index that uses the mobile version of a page’s content to serve all results. The process is still in an experimental phase,...

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Insights from BrightLocal's 2016 Local Consumer Review Survey

Insights from BrightLocal’s 2016 Local Consumer Review Survey

For six years, BrightLocal has been surveying consumers to better understand how they evaluate local businesses and make purchasing decisions. This year's survey assesses how consumers interpret and use online reviews to come to conclusions about businesses. Key findings show that people form opinions very quickly and that online reviews play an important role in developing these views.

Why are reviews important?

Online reviews are a form of social proof. A consumer searching for a service can...

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Overcome these top marketing obstacles facing lawyers in 2017

Overcome these top marketing obstacles facing lawyers in 2017

Marketing is a constantly changing practice. What may work one year or even one month may not work the next. What may help one law firm may harm another. For firms of any size, finding the right marketing mix, one that contributes to growth while consuming a manageable number of resources, is an ongoing balancing act.

All industries face marketing challenges, but lawyers face the additional burdens of state bar rules and ethics decisions, which are continually evolving. And...

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5 tips for writing effective practice area page content

5 tips for writing effective practice area page content

Your practice area pages have a lot of heavy lifting to do. A practice area page may be the first and only page a visitor sees on your website. It should be informative, interesting and speak to the concerns of your potential clients. It should hold readers' attention. And a good practice area page should also convert readers into leads and clients.

Know the purpose of your practice area pages

Practice area pages do more than just tell visitors what...

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How law firms can take advantage of evergreen content

How law firms can take advantage of evergreen content

The pressure to constantly produce fresh content is turning many businesses into would-be publishers. Apparel retailers offer tips on clothing fit and accessories. Outdoor outfitters provide resources about backpacking must-haves and publish articles about how to train for specific adventures. Pistachios and Tic Tacs are on Twitter. Online, silence is not an option.

Having a daily article quota may work for journalists, and even big brands, but it is unrealistic for attorneys. Attorneys should play the content marketing game,...

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Google Penguin 4.0 is live and running in real-time

Google Penguin 4.0 is live and running in real-time

Google revealed today that it has rolled out Penguin 4.0, the first confirmed Penguin update in nearly two years.

Google's announcement of the long-awaited release confirms what many in the SEO industry have long suspected (and hoped for). Penguin is now running in real-time. Additionally, Penguin is running at a more “granular” level, meaning it is looking at individual pages, rather than holding a single url's link spam against a whole site.

The current MozCast forecast,...

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