How to clean up your local citations (and why it matters for law firms)

How to clean up your local citations (and why it matters for law firms)

Local citations tend to proliferate regardless of whether you are paying attention. Even if you have done very little active citation building, your firm's local information is likely listed tens if not hundreds of places across the web. If you are working actively on local SEO, you will likely find thousands of sites on which a you can build a listing for your firm.

Ensuring the accuracy of your local citations is critical to your firm's SEO efforts. Search engines...

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Google updates its mobile algorithm: how your firm can stay on top

Google updates its mobile algorithm: how your firm can stay on top

In February of 2015, Google made waves in the SEO community by announcing a major algorithm update before rolling it out. The change, which went into effect two months later in April, expanded Google's use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. The ensuing rankings shake-up, hyperbolically dubbed “Mobilegeddon,” did push website owners to make significant changes. According to Smashing Magazine, eight months after the event, 25 percent of websites that were not previously mobile-friendly had made the...

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7 ways to hold visitors' attention and keep them on your site

7 ways to hold visitors’ attention and keep them on your site

Two metrics that are often used to determine a website's performance are time on site and bounce rate. Bounce rate is the percentage of times a user clicks on a page and leaves without visiting any other page; in other words, the percentage of single-page visits. A high bounce rate can indicate that your landing pages are not providing visitors with the information they need. However, a high bounce rate paired with high conversions can indicate that people are...

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How attorneys can use remarketing to get more leads

How attorneys can use remarketing to get more leads

Successful marketing campaigns prompt people to take action. Whether the connection is direct — a prospect sees an advertisement and makes an immediate purchase decision — or the result of a sustained brand awareness effort, marketing works when people are convinced to do something.

In the case of law firm SEO, getting people to your website is step one. Once visitors have landed on your site, you must convince them to stay, look around and ultimately to contact your...

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Google Drops Location Feature but Your SEO Team Can Still Monitor Your Local Results

Google Drops Location Feature but Your SEO Team Can Still Monitor Your Local Results

Google recently removed a search feature that was a favorite among SEO professionals, but an alternative remains available.

Until recently, Google search users could set a location and view search results as if the user were in that location. This was provided alongside other filters such as date range, which are accessible by clicking on “Search tools” at the top of a results page. SEO professionals used this to understand how results differed for users in various locations. Travelers could...

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Link building for law firms: tips for creating linkable content

Link building for law firms: tips for creating linkable content

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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Google's RankBrain brings machine learning to search results

Google’s RankBrain brings machine learning to search results

Last week Google revealed it has been using RankBrain, a machine learning process, to help return results for a large number of search queries. Google began a slow, quiet rollout of the update in early 2015, and RankBrain has been completely live and in use for searches globally for the past several months.

With the addition of RankBrain to its algorithm, Google is attempting to better predict what information people are searching for by using past queries to learn...

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The beauty of simplicity: How to be heard in an oversaturated market

The beauty of simplicity: How to be heard in an oversaturated market

One piece of advice included in almost all articles about branding and design is this: simplify everything. Reduce noise and clutter in your design, distill content down to is essence and stop trying to shout louder than everyone else to be heard.

Marketers give this advice because it works. Having too many choices prevents consumers from making a purchasing decision. Being confronted with too much visual noise prevents visitors from being able to effectively navigate a website. Simplicity is...

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How Long-form content can boost your firm's visibility

How Long-form content can boost your firm’s visibility

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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High Ranking Law Firms No Longer Counting Links

High Ranking Law Firms No Longer Counting Links

You could read 50 articles about modern SEO tactics and probably discover 50 different theories. But our friends at the Custom Legal Marketing Lab are less interested in theories and more interested in science. Recently, they conducted hundreds of searches in all practice areas and many major cities in the United States. Then, they conducted a link analysis on the top 2 ranking law firms in each of these markets.

The result? The No. 1 website does not have...

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