Implementing a strong local SEO strategy can benefit plastic surgeons in a variety of ways. First and foremost, it can help them connect with prospective patients in their local area, who are more likely to convert into actual patients. In addition, a local SEO strategy can help plastic surgeons build brand awareness, increase their online visibility, and establish their practice as a trusted authority in their local community.

Go get yourself a drink and maybe a little snack—we’re going to provide a comprehensive guide to local SEO for plastic surgeons. We’ll be covering everything from keyword research and on-page optimization to off-page optimization and tips for reputation management. We’ll discuss key differences between traditional SEO and local SEO, as well as provide tips and strategies for maximizing your local reach. 

Whether you have a good understanding of plastic surgery SEO or you’re just getting your practice’s local presence off the ground, this guide will help you optimize your online presence and attract more, and better leads to your practice.

Understanding Local SEO for Plastic Surgeons

Having an understanding of local SEO is essential for plastic surgeons who want to attract more patients in their geographic area. Local SEO is simply the process of optimizing your website and online presence to improve your visibility in local searches. This means that when potential patients search for plastic surgery services in your area, your practice will, hopefully, be more likely to appear in the results pages (AKA SERPs).

The relevance of local SEO for plastic surgeons is that most people use search engines to find local businesses, including plastic surgeons. In fact, according to recent research, almost half (46%) of all Google searches are looking for local information. Optimizing your site for local SEO will help you tap into this market and attract more patients to your practice.

When it comes to local SEO, Google uses a unique set of ranking factors for local results. The most important local search ranking factors include proximity to the searcher, relevance of your business information, consistency of your business information (at least on major directories) and the prominence of your online presence.

Proximity to the searcher refers to the location of the person searching and how close they are to your practice. Google uses this information to deliver relevant local search results to the searcher based on their location. 

The relevance of your business information refers to how accurately and comprehensively your practice’s information is listed online—and how well it meets what the searcher is looking for. This includes things such as your address, phone number, and hours of operation. This also applies to making sure you have the best category selected in your Google Business Profile and you have consistent business information listed across the major, relevant directories and websites (think Yelp, Healthgrades, Bing). 

The prominence of your online presence is determined by the quantity and quality of the information about your practice online, including your website, directory listings, and social media profiles. You can think of prominence in this case as Google trying to determine how well known your practice is (based on the above factors).

The key differences between traditional SEO and local SEO for plastic surgeons lie in the focus and tactics used. While both have the same goal: ranking well; traditional SEO is more focused on improving the ranking of a website on a global level, whereas local SEO is focused on optimizing for location-specific keywords to improve the visibility of a website in a specific geographic area or in Google Maps. Traditional SEO tactics include link building, keyword research, and on-page optimization, while local SEO tactics also add-in building local citations, optimizing your Google Business Profile, and getting positive online reviews.

The key to success in local SEO is understanding and working to implement local search tactics that influence ranking factors of proximity, relevance, and prominence. 

Keyword Research for Plastic Surgery Local SEO

Keyword research is a crucial part of any local SEO strategy, as it helps plastic surgeons identify the most relevant and valuable keywords to target in their online content. By targeting the right keywords, plastic surgeons can improve their search engine rankings and attract more qualified leads to their practice.

The importance of keyword research for local SEO is based on the reality that it allows plastic surgeons to understand the search terms and phrases that potential patients are using when looking for plastic surgery services in their local area. By understanding these search terms, plastic surgeons can create content that is optimized for these keywords, which can help them appear higher in local search results.

To identify the right keywords for plastic surgery practices, it’s important to focus on both the services you offer and the geographic area you serve. For example, if your practice specializes in breast augmentation and serves patients in Los Angeles, you might target keywords like “breast augmentation Los Angeles,” “breast implants in LA,” or “top breast augmentation surgeon in Southern California.”

To conduct keyword research for local SEO, follow these steps:

Brainstorm potential keywords: Start by brainstorming a list of keywords and phrases that are relevant to your plastic surgery practice and the services you offer. Think about the types of procedures you specialize in, the geographic areas you serve, and any other relevant factors.

Use keyword research tools: Once you have a list of potential keywords, use keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner (you’ll need an Ads account setup), Ahrefs, SEMrush, or our favorite: Mangools KWFinder, to determine the search volume and competition level of your targeted keywords. These tools will also provide additional keyword ideas that you may not have thought of.

Analyze the competition: Research the keywords your competitors are targeting and how they are ranking for them. This can give you insights into what works well in your local area and help you identify new opportunities.

Choose your target keywords: Based on your research, select the most relevant and valuable keywords to target in your online content. Make sure to focus on keywords that have a high search volume and low competition level.

Incorporate your target keywords: Once you have identified your target keywords, incorporate them into your website content, blog posts, and other online marketing efforts. Be sure to use them naturally and avoid “keyword stuffing,” which can hurt your search engine rankings.

Conducting keyword research is a critical step in any local SEO strategy. By identifying the most relevant and valuable keywords to target in your online content, you can improve your search engine rankings, attract more qualified leads, and ultimately grow your practice.

On-Page Optimization for Local SEO

By optimizing your plastic surgery website content and meta data for local search, you’ll improve the site’s visibility in search engine results and attract more local traffic to their website.

On-page optimization allows plastic surgeons to communicate to search engines what their website is about and where they are located. This, in turn, helps search engines deliver more relevant results to users who are searching for plastic surgery services in their local area.

To optimize website content and meta data for local search, follow these tips:

Incorporate location-based keywords: Use location-based keywords throughout your website content, including your headlines, headings, body text, and title tags and meta descriptions. Be sure to use these keywords naturally and do not overuse them.

Include local contact information: Include your practice’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) on every page of your website (you can add this in a footer or header section). Make sure that this information is consistent and accurate and matches your information on Google Business Profiles, directories and other platforms.

Create location-specific landing pages: If you have clinics in multiple cities or operate in different towns, create landing pages on your website that are specifically optimized for those local areas. These pages should include location-based keywords and information about your practice’s services in that area.

Optimize images and videos: Optimize images and videos on your website by using location-based file names and including alt tags that describe the image or video and its location. This can help improve your search engine rankings for local search terms.

Use structured local schema markup: Use structured data markup to provide search engines with more information about your practice, such as your business hours, services offered, and customer reviews.

Off-Page Optimization for Local SEO

While on-page optimization refers to optimizing website content and metadata, off-page optimization involves (obviously) activities that take place outside your website, such as building citations and getting backlinks from authoritative sources in your local area or in the healthcare and plastic surgery industry.

Off-page optimization is important because it can improve a plastic surgeon’s credibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. Building high-quality and consistent local citations and getting backlinks from high quality sources, plastic surgeons can signal to search engines and potential patients that they are a reputable and trustworthy source for plastic surgery services in their local area.

To build high-quality local citations for your plastic surgery practice, follow these tips:

Ensure NAP consistency: Make sure that your practice’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) is consistent and accurate across all local directories and platforms. This can help improve your local search engine rankings and make it easier for potential patients to find and contact you.

Choose high-quality directories: Identify high-quality local directories and directories relevant to the healthcare industry and ensure that your practice is listed in them.

Optimize your listings: Optimize your listings in local directories by including accurate and up-to-date information about your practice, including your NAP, website URL, and a brief description of your services.

To earn backlinks from authoritative sources in the plastic surgery industry, follow these tips:

Create high-quality content: Create high-quality, informative content on your website that is relevant to the plastic surgery industry. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, case studies, before and after progressions and other types of content that provide value to your audience and prove your surgical expertise.

Reach out to industry influencers: Identify industry influencers and thought leaders in the plastic surgery industry and reach out to them with your content. Ask if they would be interested in sharing your content with their audience or linking to it from their website.

Participate in online communities: Participate in online communities and forums in the plastic surgery industry. Share your knowledge and expertise and provide value to other members of the community. This can help you build relationships with other professionals and earn backlinks to your website.

Building high-quality local citations and earning backlinks from authoritative sources in the plastic surgery industry, you’ll improve your  local search engine rankings and authority—which should lead to more qualified patients.

Reviews and Reputation Management

Reviews and reputation management are another important aspect for improving local SEO results for plastic surgeons. Online reviews are a critical factor for search engines when ranking local businesses but they’re also hugely important to searchers when trying to determine the best surgeon or clinic to visit.

To manage online reviews and reputation for plastic surgery practices, here are some of our best practices:

Claim and optimize your business listings: Claim your business listings on major review sites other than just Google. These other important sites include: Yelp, Healthgrades, and RealSelf. Optimize your listings with accurate information, including your name, address, phone number, website URL, and business hours You should also optimize your practice’s social media pages on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Monitor and respond to reviews: Regularly monitor your online reviews and respond promptly and professionally to both positive and negative reviews. Responding to reviews shows that you care about your patients and their experiences, and can help improve your online reputation.

Encourage positive reviews: Encourage your satisfied patients to leave positive reviews on your business listings. You can do this by adding a call-to-action on your website, sending follow-up emails after appointments, or including a review request in your patient newsletter.

Address negative reviews: It’s near impossible to avoid negative reviews, so when you receive one, it’s important to respond in a professional and constructive manner. Acknowledge the reviewer’s concerns and offer to address the issue offline. This can help mitigate the negative impact of the review and demonstrate to potential patients that you take their concerns seriously.

Use feedback to improve your services: Reviews can provide valuable feedback that can help you improve your plastic surgery practice. Use the insights you gain from patient feedback to identify areas for improvement and refine your services.

By managing your online reviews and reputation, you can help improve your plastic surgery practice’s visibility in local search results and attract more qualified leads to your website. A positive online reputation can also help build trust with potential patients and foster long-term patient relationships.

Local SEO Tools and Resources for Plastic Surgeons

There are several tools and resources (many free) that are available to help maximize your local reach. Here are some of the top local SEO tools and resources that we recommend:

Google Business Profiles: Formerly or more commonly known as Google My Business, is a free tool that allows you to manage your online presence on Google, including your business listing and local search results. In reality this isn’t an optional resource—any business interested in having a local, online presence needs to verify and optimize their Google Business Profile. Fill this out with accurate information (including the best category for your practice), photos, and reviews, your list of services and you will  improve your visibility in local search results.

Google Analytics and Google Search Console: These free tracking tools are embedded and connected to your website and will provide regular information about the number of visits your site receives, which pages visitors are landing on, how many clicks you’re receiving, goals and conversions you set up and more. There is a definite learning curve to understanding all of the reports that are available, but this is a critical resource for anyone wanting data on how their site is performing. 

Moz Local: Moz Local is an affordable local SEO business information tool that helps you manage your online listings and monitor your online reputation. With Moz Local, you can manage your business listings across major review sites and directories, monitor your online reviews, and track your local search rankings. Another option is Yext, but for a budget conscious choice, Moz Local is a good option. 

BrightLocal: BrightLocal is a local SEO tool we use virtually every day. BrightLocal provides a range of services, including local keyword rank tracking, local citation building, reputation management, along with a host of audits to help you optimize your Google Business Profile and website. 

Yelp: Yelp is a popular review site that allows consumers to search for local businesses and leave reviews. By claiming your business listing on Yelp and optimizing it with accurate information, photos, and reviews, you can improve your visibility in local search results.

RealSelf: RealSelf is a review site and online community for people interested in cosmetic treatments, including plastic surgery. By claiming your profile on RealSelf and engaging with patients in the community, you can build your online reputation and attract more qualified leads to your practice.

When selecting local SEO tools and resources for your plastic surgery practice, consider your specific needs and goals. Look for tools that provide the features and functionality that you need, such as local citation building, reputation management, and local search rank tracking. Consider factors such as pricing, user-friendliness, and customer support when selecting tools and resources for your practice.

Local SEO is not just a “nice-to-have” strategy, but an indispensable one that can make or break the success of your plastic surgery practice. By implementing a comprehensive local SEO strategy, you can set your practice apart from the competition and reach more qualified leads in your local area.

If you need help with your local SEO strategy, contact Dagmar Marketing. Our team of experienced plastic surgery marketing experts can help you optimize your online presence for local search and attract more qualified leads to your practice. 

Don’t wait – contact us today to take the first step toward maximizing your local reach.

The post Dominate Your Local Market: A Comprehensive Guide to Local SEO for Plastic Surgeons appeared first on DAGMAR.

If you’re a lawyer or the owner of a law firm, you know how important it is to have a strong online presence, especially a strong local online presence. 

And, probably the best way to establish and maintain that local presence is through your Google Business Profile (GBP).

If you’re not familiar with GBP, it’s a free tool offered by Google that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google, including search and maps. GBP was previously known (and is commonly still referred to) as Google My Business or GMB. By optimizing your GBP profile, you make it easier for potential clients to find and contact your law firm.

Here are five reasons why claiming or creating and optimizing your law firm’s GBP profile is so important to your lawyer SEO strategy and to your practice in general:

Improved search visibility for your law firm.

Getting your GBP setup is the first step to help your law firm show up in local search results. When someone searches for a lawyer or law firm in a specific location, Google will display a list of relevant businesses, along with their locations, reviews, and ratings. By optimizing your GBP profile, you can increase the chances that your law firm will appear in these search results.

First, you have to claim (or create) a profile. Claiming your profile ensures your business information is accurately represented in Google search results and Google Maps. This includes the name you operate under, your proper address (including suite numbers if you are in a shared space) and the best phone numbers for your practice. 

Go to https://www.google.com/business/ then sign in. If it’s the first time logging in or setting up your law firm’s presence, you should see a dashboard that gives you the opportunity to search/setup your business.

If you’ve previously added a business to GBP, you should see a list of your profiles and a button to “add business” — this will give you the opportunity to put your business info in and either claim an existing listing or create and verify your new profile. 

Increased credibility of your law practice.

In addition to showing up in local search results, a verified and optimized GBP profile can also help establish your law firm as a legitimate, credible and reputable business. 

When potential clients see your business listed on Google with positive reviews and ratings, they are more likely to trust you. Which in turn gives them a good reason to consider using your law firm for legal services they need.

Enhanced accessibility of your law firm website.

An optimized GBP profile makes it easier for potential clients to find and contact your law firm. 

By including your business’s address, phone number, and hours of operation, you can make it easy for people to find your location and get in touch with you You’ll want to include a link to your website, which can help potential clients learn more about your law firm and the services you offer (you would be surprised how many profiles are in maps without a website link). You can also setup calls through your profile allowing potential clients the ability to call you directly from your listing. Just be aware that means you will likely have less visit through to your website, but engagement and conversions could improve.

Increased engagement with potential legal clients.

GBP allows you to interact with your clients and potential clients through reviews and messages. 

By responding to reviews and answering any questions that potential clients may have, you can increase engagement and build trust with your audience. This is especially important for a law firm, where trust and credibility are crucial.

To increase and improve your reviews and ratings, you should have a review acquisition strategy and process for soliciting reviews from former and current clients.

Better traffic to your law firm’s website.

Optimizing your GBP profile can also drive more traffic to your law firm’s website. 

When your business appears in local search results, potential clients can click through to your website to learn more about your legal services. More website traffic leads to potentially more business for your law firm.

How do you optimize your law firm’s GBP profile?

Here are a few tips:

• Make sure your business is listed accurately. This includes your business name, address, phone number, and hours of operation.
• Use high-quality photos to showcase your law firm and its services. Include real photos of yourself and other lawyers in your practice.
• Encourage your clients to leave reviews on your GBP profile. Positive reviews can help improve your visibility and credibility.
• Respond to all reviews, both positive and negative. This shows that you care about your clients and are willing to address any concerns they may have.
• Fill out your services section. If you’re a lawyer that specializes in different types of law, you’ll want to add the different legal services you offer and a brief explanation of your expertise. 
• Keep your profile up-to-date with any changes to your business, such as new services or changes to your hours of operation.

By following these tips and optimizing your law firm’s GBP profile, you can increase your online visibility, credibility, and engagement, which can all lead to increased business for your law firm. 

Don’t neglect your GBP profile – it’s an important tool for any lawyer or law firm looking to succeed online.

The post Google Business Profiles for Lawyers appeared first on DAGMAR.

Updated November 2022

If you’re responsible for running a website or creating marketing campaigns, you want to know as much as you can about where your traffic is coming from.

In a perfect world, you would simply log in to your Google Analytics account and all of the information you need would be automatically available to you—but we don’t live in that ideal marketing world. Fortunately, there are workarounds and our friends at Google have created a nifty little tool to help us: Urchin Tracking Module (UTM) codes.

Here are the basics of what UTM codes are and what they do.

Why should you be using UTM codes?

UTM tracking is one of the easiest and most effective ways to track where your site visitors are coming from.

Using UTM tracking provides marketers and business owners with quantitative data, which is especially important if you are trying to determine where to focus your attention for the best return on investment. As magical as SEO and digital marketing can seem, the ultimate driver for what works and what to do is data and UTM tracking provides users with the information they can use to make sound decisions.

It also allows users to dig deeper into their Google Analytics—you may already know you get a lot of visitors from your Facebook page, but you may want to know if a specific status update drove a lot of new traffic, whether that email you sent to your subscribers led to new visits, or if visitors came from a new banner or image link you created on your site. Traditional analytics data does not give you much of this information and that’s where UTM tracking codes become so much more powerful and beneficial.

So what are UTM strings anyway?

UTM strings are tags or add-ons you put at the end of URLs you want to track. When someone clicks on a URL with a proper UTM string, this event is recorded in your Analytics account. Again, this is extremely useful to track visits from different social media sites or even specific updates on each social media site, links in your emails, directory links (good for Service Area Businesses/Small Businesses), and virtually anything you can think of that has a URL.

How to create effective UTMs

The simplest way to create an effective UTM is to use Google’s free URL builder.

The UTM builder has been updated — make sure to select “Web” to generate your URLs because the Play store and Apple App store use different methods

Let’s breakdown the components of a good UTM string. Note: you don’t need to include every component in your strings, but the more components you use, the more detail you will get out of your campaigns.

Website URL: Copy and paste the URL you want to track. This could be your homepage or a blog post, or any other URL you want to get information on.

Campaign Source: Groups all of your data into one campaign within your analytics account. The campaign source identifies the source of your traffic, such as Facebook, a newsletter, Google My Business page, etc. This is a required component and appears as: utm_source=googlemybusiness

Campaign Medium:* Another required component for identifying the medium your URL was used upon such as: email, CPC, or some other method of sharing. This is the ‘medium’ where your traffic came from. One of the main ways we use this is to track Organic Traffic from a client’s Google My Business page. This appears as: utm_medium=organic

*note: whatever term you use here for ‘medium’ will create a new “bucket” of traffic in your analytics. This can cause reporting issues especially for your organic traffic information — this is why we label this as organic (when the traffic we’re wanting to follow is truly organic).

Campaign Term: This parameter is used for tracking paid terms in PPC ads. You can set the parameter to be the keyword you are paying for. This is an optional tag and can be skipped if you have connected Adwords and Analytics accounts that have auto-tagging feature turned on. Looks like: utm_term=homes+for+sale

Campaign Content: Optional parameter used for A/B split testing to differentiate your content. It can be used to differentiate ads and links that point to the same URL—example: utm_content=bannerlink or utm_content=textlink

Campaign Name: Required and lets you identify specific campaigns you are running such as a special promotion, or product sale and also helps you with keyword analysis. Appears as: utm_campaign:annual_sale

You should be aware that UTM codes are case-sensitive—if you use abc on one campaign link (say on Facebook) and accidentally use ABC (on Twitter), these will show up as separate campaigns in your Analytics. Also, the UTM URL will show up in a user’s search bar—nothing is hidden, so it’s advisable to not use any terms in your components you wouldn’t want visible.

How to find your campaigns in Google Analytics

Log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the Acquisition section click on Campaigns and click All Campaigns in the dropdown:

Here you will see the different campaigns you’ve set up. You can click on each one to get more detail.

Using an example from one of our clients, one of the ways we’re using UTM tracking is to identify how much traffic the client’s Google My Business profile is sending. We can see how many visits are coming in from a local search result. In the case of this client, they have locations throughout the state and we’re tracking to see which locations are being visited (in Maps or Local search results):

Clicking on the Campaign brings you to more information identifying the source/medium of traffic. In this case, we’re able to see which Google My Business profiles are driving the most traffic:

One of the problems I have with the UTM strings is just how ugly the URLs are and for some users this is a problem. Some people instinctively avoid clicking on URLs that have special characters in them or are just very long because they tend to appear spammy and untrustworthy.

The easy fix for that is to use a URL shortener such as bitly.com or the UTM builder from Google has a link shortener (which uses Bitly).

Here are some of our favorite uses for creating UTM campaigns

Directory Profile Tracking

This is one of the ways we like to track things for our clients. We have a lot of local SEO clients and for some of them, their directory profiles make up a good amount of their traffic. To have an idea of which profiles are getting clicks, we create UTMs for their different profiles.

For example, we can create campaigns for their Google My Business profile, their Yelp profile, their Yahoo! Local profile or any other we want data on. Some of our clients are on the Yext Platform and we create UTM codes to see how effective the Yext directories are for sending traffic.

Directory Profile UTM Examples:

Social Media Tracking

Using UTM codes within your social media accounts and sharing lets you figure out which sites and accounts are helpful at sending you clicks and traffic. You can easily create different codes and campaigns for multiple sites and multiple URLs.

Social Media UTM Examples:

Newsletter Tracking

If you regularly send out emails or newsletters to subscribers or customers, you can track all types of information from your messaging. Each newsletter you send out can have its own campaign and you can even drill down further by creating UTMs for different links within a newsletter or for different sections of your emails.

Newsletter UTM Examples:

Keeping track of your UTM strings

With all of this customization at your fingertips it’s easy to get disorganized and let things get out of hand. We recommend creating a simple spreadsheet that allows you to keep track of all of your UTM codes so you’re not racking your brain figuring out which code was with what link or recreating the same code over and over again.

We’ve put together a simple Google Sheets document you can use.

Open the spreadsheet here — click on File then Make a Copy and you now have your own editable UTM tracking spreadsheet.

The only way we can optimize our marketing campaigns is by having useful data and information. As marketers or business owners, the easiest way to get that data is by utilizing UTM tracking wherever you think it would be helpful to have information. From your social media blasts, banners and links on your site, to blog posts and email newsletters—set up your UTM codes correctly and you will have all the data you could desire right at your fingertips!

The post Understanding Where Your Traffic is Coming From with UTM Tracking Codes appeared first on DAGMAR.

You can determine this for yourself by doing a local SEO audit. Read on to find out how to do an easy but thorough local SEO audit in less than an hour.

Why should you perform a local SEO audit?

An SEO audit is a great tool to help focus on areas of your online presence that need attention. From a business owner’s perspective, doing an SEO audit will help you determine if the money you’re spending on an SEO agency is worth it: Are they completing important aspects of a digital marketing campaign? Are they providing everything specified in your contract? Is it helpful to your business? You may trust the marketing company you work with, but you should also verify you’re getting what you pay for.

How often should you audit your local SEO?

There’s no hard and fast rule for conducting audits. We like to do audits on our client’s sites every six months or so. As a business owner with other things on your plate, once a year would be a good benchmark to shoot for.

Tools you’ll need for a quick local SEO audit

• Google Search Console—Similar to analytics, Google Search Console is a free tool that provides tons of information about where your clicks are coming from, what pages are getting lots of visits, submit new pages for Google to crawl, and importantly see queries that led to clicks (this is a big deal, because you cannot see this in Analytics without a PPC account).
• Screaming Frog—This free tool is available as a paid version, but for most small/medium sized businesses the free version is sufficient. This tool allows you to crawl your site and see what pages are being found by bots and any issues such as 404 pages, 500 errors (something is wrong on your server and the page/site cannot load), missing information on title tags and descriptions and more. The free version will crawl up to 500 URLs, whereas the paid version is effectively unlimited.
• Ubersuggest—To understand what your potential or ideal customer is searching for, you need to have some idea of the keywords and queries they use when searching online. A keyword research tool is critical for this. In the past, Google’s keyword planner was a free tool you could use for this information. We’ve found Ubersuggest to be a great alternative that is free for most everything you would need. One drawback is you will not get localized search results (you can’t see what people in your area are specifically searching, rather you will see nationwide results). If you need definitive info on local keywords, we’d recommend KWFinder, and you can get a free 10 day trial when you register—this tool is actually our preferred paid keyword research tool for local information.
• Copyscape — if you need to find out if you have duplicate content on your site or if your content has been plagiarized, Copyscape is the best tool to find this info out. While the plagiarism checker is free, there are some paid aspects that may be worth your while and the cost is relatively minimal.
• PageSpeed Insights — This is a free web-based tool offered by Google to gauge the PageSpeed of your site. This will give you an idea how fast your site responds to server requests. This is technical, but you’ll want to save your score so you can review it with a developer. Alternatively, you can also use GTMetrix to see how your site performs and to discover opportunities to speed up your site.
• Google Docs Sheets — Create a google docs spreadsheet where you can copy and paste information to make todos and things you will need to correct or focus on.

Now you know some of the tools you’ll need to have access to, let’s get started—we want to try to crank this out in about an hour. But for more in-depth insights you’ll want to block out a few hours or so.

Steps to doing a quick and simple local SEO audit in under an hour

While most people would immediately go to their website and start looking at technical things, we suggest starting off where your potential customers will start: with keywords. Starting off we want to do some quick research on keywords and queries that your ideal customers would use to find a company just like yours.

Do your keyword research and query checks.

Keyword research for search volume and ideas

Tools to use: Google Search Console, Ubersuggest or KWFinder

Keywords are the terms you want to be found for—these will determine your page title tags, meta descriptions, your URLs, the headings and subheadings on a page, and possibly even blog articles and content you’ll produce for your site. This is why understanding your keywords and what people are searching for is important.

To see what customers are searching for we have a few steps you’ll want to do.

We’re going to start with manual searches—you’re going to want to open an incognito browser for this.

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You’re going to pretend you’re a typical customer and do some keyword searches for 5-10 of the primary keywords you want your website to rank for. This is also a good way to gauge who your top competitors are and what they’re doing.

Here’s an example: if you’re an HVAC repair company in Dallas, Texas you are going to open an incognito browser and run various searches around the terms you would search if you were looking for your services.

Here’s what you want to look for:

• Do you see local results for your terms (local results are maps box results on the first page).
• Is your business in the local results? Are you in any of the organic listings below the local results?
• Go through the maps listings and the first 3-5 pages of search results—note your rankings.
• Look to see which competitors are running ads for keywords.
• Look at the ‘searches related to’ section at the bottom of the page for more keyword ideas you may not have thought of.

Now if you have access to your Google Search Console account, you’re going to login at search.google.com and check your clicks and queries.

When you login click on Performance → Search Results then look at Query and make sure you’re sorted by Clicks from High to Low (arrow pointing down)

These are queries people are using to click on your site. Alternatively, if there are low numbers of clicks, these are queries that have caused your site to show up in a search result somehow but you’re not getting clicked. Review the queries to get an idea of what terms people use to find your business. You should be able to tell which of these terms are more important to you and which aren’t as important. Add the queries you’re most concerned with to your list.

Next take your list of keywords and any additional keywords you want information for and go to Ubersuggest or for more accurate localized information, KWFinder.

You’re going to copy your keywords and search for the search volumes. These are rough estimates of how many times that term is being searched monthly. The higher the number of searches per month the more people are searching. But this also usually means those keywords are more competitive and potentially harder to rank for.

Now, open a spreadsheet and copy this list of keywords and search volumes into it. You’re going to refer to it again shortly.

Take a quick NAPS.

We’re not referring to a refreshing afternoon snooze.

NAPS is an acronym local SEOs use when referring to a company’s Name, Address, Phone number and sometimes Site.

Why do you need to check your NAPS? Because this is a quick way to ensure information and data about your business is accurate. The thing you’re wanting to see is if there are multiple versions of your business information floating around online. While Google and other search engines have gotten much better at consolidating and clearing up conflicting information, it’s still helpful to ensure your NAPS are as accurate as possible.

Checking your information

Open your spreadsheet and create a new tab for researching your NAPS info. You’re going to want to keep note of incorrect and outdated information that will need to be updated.

The first thing you need to do is search for variations of your business name and your address. There are a few different searches you’ll want to do:

“Name” + “Address”

“Name” + “Phone Number”

“Address” + “Phone Number”

“Name” + “Zip Code”

“Name + “Old Address(es)”
“Name” + “Old Phone Number(s)”

Note: searches with quotation marks tell Google you want exactly what is inside the quotations. We call this ‘exact match search’.

What you want to do is look quickly at the search results that show up. You’re likely to see mostly directory listings such as Yelp, Manta, BBB, etc… You want to see which if any have incorrect information. Just quickly copy any listings with inaccurate information into your spreadsheet. Review the first 2-3 pages of Google results for the different searches you’ve done.

Check your Google My Business page:

Google My Business (GMB), if you’re not aware, is a free page Google will create and verify to ensure your business is legitimate. Having a verified GMB is critical to being able to show up in local search results and maps. If you do not have a GMB already, you’re going to have to create one—but that won’t help with this audit.

**IF YOU DON’T HAVE A GMB ALREADY—STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING, GO TO BUSINESS.GOOGLE.COM AND START CREATING YOUR GMB PAGE. ALSO FIRE YOUR LOCAL SEO AGENCY—THIS IS BASIC STUFF FOR AN SEO COMPANY AND THERE’S ZERO EXCUSE FOR THEM NOT TO HAVE THIS DONE FOR YOU (IF YOU’VE BEEN WITH THEM FOR MORE THAN A MONTH)**

If you do have an existing GMB but you don’t at least manage it or it’s not claimed you must get it controlled and verified.

Hopefully the above isn’t relevant to you, so we’re assuming you have access to your managed and verified GMB page. Now check the following things:

• Is the most relevant primary category for your type of business selected? (example: Southern Restaurant)
• Are secondary, relevant categories also on your GMB? (example: Brunch Restaurant, Breakfast Restaurant, Seafood Restaurant)
• Do you have a good, keyword friendly description for your page? Keyword friendly means that the most important keywords for your business are included in the description—additionally you would want your city/area your serve in the description too (example: Pest Control company in Charleston, SC)
• Do you have your logo, a banner, and photos added to your GMB? Ideally you’ll have at least 5 photos but more would be better. Include pics from indoor, outside the business, some of your employees.

Check your website’s on-page optimization for local SEO signals

Now we’re going to dig into your company website. We want to try to look at this from a technical perspective. We’re not focusing on design elements really, just how a non-feeling Google bot would see your site—but if there are obvious user-experience things you feel should be corrected, keep a note of these changes you would like to make.

First, you’re going to review your site’s title tags and meta descriptions.

You might be thinking “what are title tags and meta descriptions?” These are pieces of code, more accurately HTML elements that tell search engines the title of your page (title tag) and a brief explanation of what the page is about (meta description). When you do a search, the prominent titles and short paragraph in results are a page’s title tag and description. Title tags are a ranking factor, they have the ability to affect how well your site ranks in Google searches. Descriptions are not a ranking factor, but they can affect if someone clicks through to your site.

Tool to use:

You can do this manually, but it is easier and quicker to use the Screaming Frog crawler tool we recommended earlier.

If you want to do this manually, you’re going to visit your site → right click somewhere in the body → a menu should pop up and click “view page source.” This will open a new window/tab with your site’s HTML code. Then do a CTRL-F or CMD-F and search for “title”

Better option: install/open Screaming Frog and input your site’s URL and hit start, then choose “HTML” to get all your pages. Now go through your homepage and main/most important pages looking for:

• Does the homepage title tag include the main/most important keyword and location/city as well as brand name if appropriate? (i.e., Pest Control Jacksonville, FL)
• Do your other pages/service pages have title tags with relevant keywords and city/location business targets?
• Are there a lot of duplicate title tags throughout the site? Usually this occurs when you have a template setup that automatically puts a default title tag if one isn’t set. NOTE: You don’t want duplicates.
• Check that URLs are reader friendly (i.e., no weird symbols or parameters, they use words)
  • They should be relatively short. At least short enough to convey the information of the page.
  • They should have main keywords in the URL (i.e., companyname.com/bed-bug-removal-jacksonville

• Do you have the NAP in the header or footer of your site?
  • Extra credit: is it properly marked up in Schema

• Do you have pages that target the services you provide in a city/location? Ideally, you would have a page per major service you provide.
• Is there a blog? And is it active with good articles?

Now you’re going to look at the site from a customer’s perspective—just to get a feel for if it’s user-friendly.

• When you look at the menu, is it easy to find information a user might need?
  • Are service pages easy to find and click on?
  • Is there a way to easily contact you or schedule service? Ideally you have a contact page as well as contact forms and clickable phone numbers. This is really helpful for visitors who are viewing the mobile version of your site.
• If you have a business that clients come to you, is there a map embedded on the contact page?

Quick content review

Next you want to do a quick content review of what is on your site and blog. You’re not going full-on Editor-in-Chief here. You just want to make sure your content isn’t being duplicated everywhere (or isn’t plagiarised from somewhere else) and the content is not spammy or reads like it was written by a 3rd grader.

Tool to use here: Copyscape or Siteliner

Open up Copyscape or Siteliner and put in your homepage URL—this will run a scan and see if the content on your homepage is duplicated elsewhere. Do this with your most important pages and any major blog posts you have on your site. Take a note of any pages that appear to be duplicates or have a high percentage of on-page content that is copied on other sites.

Note: if you’ve used a copywriter to create content for your site you should always check the content they provide is unique. For a small fee—minimum purchase is $5.00 or $10.00 if using Paypal—you can purchase Copyscape Premium credits which allows you to run searches on specific pages, copy & paste content, and batch search your URLs.

Run a PageSpeed Insight analysis

I feel the need…the need for speed!

When it comes to your website you want to be like Maverick and Goose (before the tragic accident that is). You want your site to be fast.

PageSpeed is important because it affects how quickly your site will load for a user and how quickly search engines can crawl your site. This affects everything from rankings to how long someone may bother staying on your site. The tools you’re going to use here are Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool and GTMetrix.

PageSpeed Insights is a web based tool Google provides which will give your site a score from 1-100. There are separate scores for both your mobile and desktop versions of your site. The analysis will give you specific insights that can be addressed to improve PageSpeed. These are usually technical fixes meant to address things at the server level. Just take note of your results as you will have to give this report to your developer or whoever you use to maintain your site.

Use PageSpeed Insights tool to find out your score on mobile and desktop along with the opportunities and diagnostic fixes recommended.

If you have a developer, you may need to have them fix/address any issues found on PageSpeed Insights tool.

GTMetrix is another useful tool to help you gauge the speed of your site.

Generally speaking the things these tools are going to give you information about is how to:

• Reduce your server’s response time to improve how quickly your pages, images, other resources are served up.
• Minimize the number of HTTPS requests
• How to minimize redirects. The more redirects a page/site has, the slower it will take to load.
• Optimizing images. The bigger, more resource heavy images you have the slower your site will be.
• How to enable caching. When a browser loads your site, it has to download all the files so everything displays properly. Proper caching allows certain aspects of your site to ‘pre-load’ reducing demands on your server.

These two reports taken together will give you an opportunity to have your web developer address issues to improve speed on your site.

Do a quick social review of your online presence.

Checking your social presence is an important way to ensure you control your branding. Branding is, in our opinion, a potentially major ranking factor and will continue to grow in importance as Google evolves its algorithm.

First check to see what social networks your company is on. If you’re an involved business owner you probably already know most of this, but it helps to double check and verify.

• Are there any social sites relevant to your business, that you’re not on? If so, make a list of sites you should be on (or that you have competitors on) and plan to have pages created at a later point.
• Of the sites you are on is your page active? Are regular, relevant posts being shared on the social channels? Are you engaged with followers?
• Is your business information—NAPS—correct on the sites that allow that information?

For most companies, Facebook and Twitter are almost mandatory. Depending on your niche Instagram, LinkedIn, Youtube and others may be important to have. Make sure you’re on any relevant social channels.

Check your online reviews.

Online reviews are critical to local businesses. 82% of consumers check reviews for local businesses and they read about 10 online reviews before deciding if they can trust a business.

Reviews are not easy to get—rarely does your business just generate tons of reviews without having to do anything. That’s why it’s so important to pay attention to your online reviews and implement a strategy to constantly get new reviews.

First, you need to see how your reviews are online. What is the general sentiment about your business in online review sites?

You need to search your company online for reviews or go directly to sites you know have reviews for your company.

An easy way to start is to do a Google search for “my business name reviews” (I hope it’s obvious that you have to replace my business name with the name of your company)

Now, in that spreadsheet you’ve created, add another tab. Here you’re going to copy the URLs for important review sites and keep track of your overall ratings on those sites.

Additionally you want to look at:

• What is the overall sentiment of your company? Are reviews generally positive? By the way, you don’t have to have 100% glowing, 5 Star reviews. All businesses are going to have customers that cannot be satisfied, if you have the occasional negative review don’t stress about it.
• Are the reviews you’re getting generally unique?

Next head over to your Google My Business page to check reviews on here. Arguably, GMB reviews are the most important of online reviews you can have. Most customers start their journey via search, as opposed to going straight to your site. With local search, and GMB your reviews are going to be front-and-center. Keep track of your overall ratings here as well.

Although this is additional to an audit, checking your online reviews should drive home the importance of having a strategy for getting new reviews. At a minimum your review acquisition strategy should:

• Have a way to reach out to new and past customers to ask them to leave a review or give feedback about your service.
  • One way to do this is to have a page on your site that links to preferred review sites
• Respond to ALL GMB reviews, positive and negative.
  • In some instances a negative review can be turned around just by showing the customer you’re aware of their concerns and willing to work with them to correct whatever their negative experience was.
• Do not offer anything in return for a review.

So you’ve spent about an hour or so doing a quick local SEO audit—has anything stood out about your online presence? If there are any glaring issues you’re noticing, now is the time to schedule a chat with your local SEO agency and discuss the things you’ve noticed and things that need to be corrected.

Looking for a new local SEO agency? Contact us today to schedule a chat and evaluation of your company’s needs!

The post How to Conduct Your Own Quick Local SEO Audit appeared first on DAGMAR.

Although there are a number of elements that go into a top-performing pest control local SEO marketing campaign, keywords top the priority list.

Here we’re going to provide some tips on how to do keyword research to help boost SEO for pest control companies.

How to Discover Keywords

Are you using the right keywords?

Are they generating the right amount of traffic, or is it time to discover some new keywords? Is your company entering a new season?

What keywords are your competitors using?

If it’s time to discover new keywords, and optimize your existing content, then there are some free or affordable professional keyword research tools you can try:

• Ahrefs
• Google Keyword Planner (may require an attached PPC account for good info)
• KWFinder
• SEMrush
• Ubersuggest
• SpyFu
• Moz

Which Keywords Are Relevant?

Let’s say you’ve discovered some new keywords to use in your campaign. How do you know if they are actually good keywords? How do you know if they are relevant? One of the best ways to do this is to focus on “search intent”.

What is “Search Intent”?

Search intent refers to understanding what users are searching for and why. This could be questions, phrases, product names or services, or even products or services in a specific location.

Not only is search intent important for determining which keywords are relevant for your campaigns, but it is also for Google. Optimizing your existing content for search intent will also help you boost SEO.

Ultimately, your keywords should have the following:

• Research intent – Searchers who are trying to solve a problem. These keywords often begin with “why” or “how”.
• Transactional intent – The “buy” intent. Searchers are looking for specific products or services. Transactional intent keywords typically convert at a higher rate.
• Commercial intent – these searchers are ‘warm’, they’re almost ready to convert but still need more information. These can be “X product vs Y product” type searches, reviews, or price comparisons. 
• Educational intent – Searchers are interested in learning more about a specific topic.

Pest control companies can use a blend of these keywords, but for different purposes and stages in the buyer journey. For example, pest control companies can use research intent keywords or educational intent keywords as blog topics, such as “How to Get Rid of Bed Bugs”, “How to Protect Children From Mosquitos”, or “Why Are Ants in My House?”

Why Location Keywords Are Important for Pest Control Companies

Since pest control companies serve local customers, location keywords are important to build into your content. Most searchers will enter the following keywords, or similar key phrase into Google or another search engine: “Denver pest control”, “pest control company Denver, CO”, or “best pest control companies Phoenix, AZ”.

If you optimize your existing content with these types of local keywords, then you boost your chances of ranking on the first page of Google, which will also help your pest control company beat the competition.

Furthermore, seasonality is important to consider when researching keywords. Most pest control companies experience different seasons throughout the year when some keywords are more relevant than others. For example, the keyword “Jacksonville mosquito control” keyword is more popular between the summer months than the winter.

What Keywords Are Your Competitors Using?

By using some of the tools above, such as Ahrefs and Moz, you can see what the monthly search volume is for keywords related to your industry and niche as well as what keywords your competitors rank for.

Another way to see what keywords your competitors are using is to simply type in a keyword into Google, such as “pest control companies Austin, TX” and see what comes up in the search results.

It’s important to periodically review your keyword research to make sure you are using the right keywords and phrases to attract the right audiences and to also keep up with the competition. Some pest control companies do this monthly, quarterly, or even annually. Find out what works best for you, and be sure to weave this step into your regular SEO audit.

Common Questions about Keyword Research 

What is the Best Free Keyword Research Tool?

Many pest control companies might worry that webapps and software for research will cost them a fortune. The truth is there are a number of keyword research tools available that you can use for free, without sacrificing quality.

As mentioned above, some of the best free keyword research tools include Moz, Ahrefs, KWFinder, and more. These services will give you plenty of information for free, but may limit the amount of keywords you can find. But using their information and your own intuition about the industry should help you generate plenty of keywords you can use to boost pest control SEO.

What Pest Control Keywords Should I Use?

Before you can determine the best pest control keywords to use in any campaign, you first must consider the nature of your business, what you offer, your location, and season. As mentioned above, seasonality and location are two of the most important factors to consider when researching keywords.

Using a blend of keywords such as “Denver pest control”, “pest control company Denver, CO”, or “best pest control companies Phoenix, AZ”, or even “mosquito control AZ”, are all good examples to start with.

Boost Your Pest Control Marketing

It can be overwhelming to develop effective online marketing campaigns. However, now that you are armed with some great tips and great keyword research tools to use, you should now have a better understanding of what you need to do to boost your pest control SEO—and how to do that without breaking the bank.

If you still have questions about how to do keyword research or how to make sure you find the best pest control keywords for your company, then give us a call. We would love to help manage your pest control digital marketing and SEO campaigns!

The post Pest Control Marketing Tips: How to Do Keyword Research appeared first on DAGMAR.

We all know this is a crazy time and there’s all sorts of uncertainties surrounding the impacts this pandemic is going to leave behind.

One of the immediate effects has been the shuttering of businesses (voluntarily or mandated). Many of these are the small businesses that we frequent day in/day out—and we recognize that we need to do our part to help ensure they can remain afloat during and after this has all passed.

While we’re doing our part for social distancing and limiting going out and visiting places, there are ways we can continue to help other businesses (and by extension their employees) as we stay home trying to avoid infection.

On top of buying gift cards or ordering takeout—one thing I realized that can have a knock-on effect is to leave our friends reviews on their business pages.

I know, you’re probably thinking this sounds like one of those “I’ll do something without actually doing something” type of actions, but it’s really not.

In our industry we cherish reviews. They can be the difference between a potential client calling our business or some other competitor. We make recommendations to our clients how to improve their own review gathering strategies. And more importantly—reviews are one of the main ways a customer decides whether to trust and patronize a business. We’ve seen surveys that show 82% of consumers read reviews for local businesses and the majority (52%) of 18-54 year olds “always” read reviews.

That should give you an idea of how important reviews are to a business—and when businesses are struggling, reviews can be even more powerful.

So here’s our suggestion: if you’re one of the lucky ones who are home and healthy with your family, able to work remote and have some free time, start leaving reviews for the businesses, services, and restaurants you frequently use. You need to step up away from COVID-19 coverage for your own mental health, and leaving positive reviews will help clear your mind.

Best Places to Leave Reviews for A Business:

Google

This is an obvious one. Search for the business you want to review and normally their Google My Business page will show up in search results. Click the “reviews” link and you’ll get a pop up with all reviews, and a nice “write a review” button in the upper right corner. Start typing away.

Facebook

This is often another important one for small businesses. If you’re having trouble finding the business Facebook page, go to their website and look for the social media icon for Facebook. That should link you to their page and you can leave your review there. Facebook is a good one to leave reviews on because in many community pages, when someone recommends a business that page often shows up in the comment with the star-ratings and people can check out the reviews.

Yelp

Same deal—if you leave a review on Google may as well jump over to Yelp and leave a review there as well. Spread the love we say!

Some Alternative Ideas for Reviews

These review sites are obvious—but they’re not the only way to show appreciation for a business you’re fond of and highlight why you like them. Here’s a couple more ways to have an online impact on some local businesses:

Reddit

Reddit is a great place to leave a review. Why? Because they often have forums (subreddits) dedicated to your town/city. And this is a great place for locals to stay on top of news and information around town. It’s also a great place for engagement. I would recommend going on Reddit and searching for a subreddit related to your area. Once you’ve joined the subreddit go ahead and leave a review (always helps to have a catchy title as well).

Twitter

Another off-the-beaten-path way to expose the good a local biz does is via Twitter. Here you can find hashtags that are relevant to your area or to a businesses niche and share a quick review/explanation of why you’re recommending them. Make sure to tag them assuming they have a Twitter handle.

Personal Blogs

If you have a personal blog you can always write up a review on your site. In the future if someone searches for “Business Name reviews” your site with its glowing recommendation might just show up in search results.

Couple of Other Things

Pictures are a great way to enhance your reviews. We’re a visual species, we love to see pictures and what’s better than seeing the actual food you’re recommending or a nicely framed picture of that cappuccino you could die for right now? If you have pictures you can share on a review, make sure to do so!

When you leave a review somewhere that’s not a ‘traditional’ review site (i.e., Google, Yelp), try to leave a link to the company you’re reviewing. On sites like Reddit, Facebook, blogs all you have to do is copy the URL of the business and drop it into your review and it should automatically link to their site.

This pandemic is looking to be devastating to our friends in the hospitality industry and while we’re doing our best to limit social interactions, this is one way to help their business in some non-traditional ways. Once things are back to normal, your reviews will be able to help them generate new business and hopefully lead to better economic times for our communities.

The post How to Help Local Businesses During the Pandemic appeared first on DAGMAR.

On one hand, you’ve probably been told that it’s critical for improving search engine optimization (SEO) and drawing prospective clients to your law firm website. On the other, you’ve likely been warned that link building can be dangerous—that if you use some of the commonly-suggested techniques to build links, you’ll risk being penalized by Google. Your site could even be de-indexed, meaning it wouldn’t show up at all.

And that is all true.

Link building can boost search engine rankings, increase organic traffic from Google and other search engines, and draw traffic from other websites. But, if you engage in “black hat” link building activities, you could pay a heavy price. So, it’s important to understand exactly how link building helps increase traffic to your website, and how to tell good links from bad.

What is Link Building?

In the most general terms, link building is simply taking action to increase the number of inbound links to your website. In the most explanation, inbound links can boost your search engine rankings because Google and other search engines interpret a link as a recommendation for your site. Links to your content suggest that others find your content valuable and relevant, which increases the likelihood that people searching for that type of content will also be interested in what you’ve posted.

But, as you’ll see in the more detailed discussion of link building strategies below, not all recommendations are good recommendations.

Inbound links are more likely to have a positive impact on your search rankings when they come from reputable sites, and carry more weight if those sites are relevant to yours. Links from “bad neighborhoods” can actually hurt your rankings, because search engines (and Google) judge you in part by the company you keep.

In short, link building is an effective means of increasing your search rankings, but must be handled with care.

The Other Benefits of Link Building

Since it became clear that inbound links from credible sites could improve search rankings, most marketing experts talk about link building almost exclusively in terms of SEO.

But, it’s worth remembering why websites started linking to one another in the first place. When a reputable site posts a link to your content, that doesn’t just tell Google someone thinks your content is worthwhile—it also tells visitors to that others view your content as valuable as well.

Well-placed links don’t just increase organic traffic by helping you get your pages ranked; they also help because people who are interested in the type of content you’re offering click those links and visit your website. And, depending on the referring site and the visitor’s impression of that site, you may get a boost in credibility based on that recommendation.

Good and Bad Links

What Color is Your Link Building Hat?

You’ve probably heard link building and other attorney SEO tactics described as “white hat” or “black hat.” It’s pretty clear that “white hat” is meant to suggest good strategies and “black hat” the shady ones.

But, you may not know exactly which techniques fall into each category or why.

In a nutshell, white hat strategies optimize (and stay true to the) variables Google and other search engines consider, while black hat techniques try to trick the system.

For example, earning links from reputable sites relevant to your own by creating top-notch content that others will be interested in sharing is a white hat tactic. Whether you’ve created great content to show your expertise, to share information with the public, or just to draw links, the end result is the same. If your content gets ranked and searchers click through, they’ll have the great experience the search engine algorithm predicted.

In contrast, purchasing links is a black hat strategy. If you’re able to buy enough links on reputable sites that Google thinks you’re drawing a lot of natural links, you may end up ranking high without solid content. In other words, you may have tricked the search engine into sending visitors to a page that doesn’t meet its standards.

That’s why, if you get caught using black hat strategies, your website may be penalized, or even removed from search listings. And, even if you’re not breaking the rules yourself, you may suffer for your association with the wrong sites.

Assessing Sites before Seeking Links

Of course, some websites will link to you naturally. You may not know they’re linking to you until you see referrals in your analytics or use an SEO tool to check your backlinks. Some more general link building strategies, such as sharing catchy content through social media, may also draw links from sites you haven’t specifically targeted.

But, many link building tactics involve choosing the sites where you’ll place or seek out links. Before you take that step, make sure the site is one you want linking to your content.

Sometimes, factors that make a site an undesirable place for a link are readily apparent. For example, if a site is poorly maintained, with broken links, missing images, display problems and other obvious issues, you’ll probably want to steer clear. Similarly, if you can see that the site features a large number of links, especially links to irrelevant sites, you can usually assume that search engines won’t weigh a recommendation from that site positively. Additionally, if you see a lot of irrelevant linking out, you can safely assume the site is selling links.

You can also easily tell when a site is focused in an arena that might be considered “seedy,” such as pornography, pharmaceutical, or gambling, and when a site is flooded with advertising.

But, the issues aren’t always so visible. To make sure you’re choosing sites that will benefit you—and, even more importantly—won’t hurt you, research the domain.

Depending on the type of analytics you’re using for your website, you may already have a tool for measuring the power of someone else’s domain. But, if you don’t, here are a couple of free options:

• Ahrefs Website Authority Checker
• Moz Domain Analysis

These two tools provide slightly different information, and there are some discrepancies between their results.

Ahrefs shows a domain rating between 1 and 100, along with the number of backlinks that site has and the number of unique domains those links come from. Moz shows the number of domains linking to the site (but not the total number of links), the number of keywords the site is ranked for, and adds a “spam score.” But, both are useful to gain a high-level sense of the authority and reputability of a domain.

Creating Effective Links

Strategic link building for your law firm involves more than just connecting with the right sites.

Some links are more valuable than others, depending on where they appear and how they’re structured. Generally, links coming from within the body of the post and using relevant anchor text are more valuable than those appearing in bylines and bios. These are also called ‘editorial’ links.

Once upon a time, the gold standard was to get anyone linking to you to use a particular keyword phrase to point to a page, so Google would notice that a lot of people were sending “car accident attorneys” traffic to your site. The truth, though, is that it’s very unlikely that dozens or hundreds of sites will naturally link to you using exactly the same language, and Google knows it. Thus, you’ll want to vary the language you use in text links.

Law Firm Link Building Tactics

The possibilities are nearly endless when it comes to attracting or securing links to your website. Here are some of the most common tried-and-true methods to help you get started:

Create or Update Directory Listings

The web is a sea of opportunities for directly listings, some legal specific and some general, some free and some paid. There’s another factor not everyone is aware of: some with “nofollow” links and some with “dofollow” links.

For attorney internet marketing purposes, that distinction matters–nofollow links don’t pass authority for search ranking purposes. But, don’t disregard those listings out of hand. A listing in a popular directory may still pass targeted traffic to your site, and adding your name, address and phone number to a directory in a format consistent with your website and other directories will help establish credibility in Google’s eyes.

There are far more legal directories on the internet than most attorneys are aware of (some good placements and some not so much), and finding them through search is a good starting point. Though you’ll want to do more research into each domain you’re considering, appearing near the top of Google’s listing of attorney directories is a solid hint that search engine sees the site as credible.

Here are a few of the better-known and ranked legal directories. Most offer both free and paid listings. Not all offer dofollow links, but those that don’t are still valuable citations.

• Justia
• Avvo
• FindLaw
• HG.org
• Lawyers.com
• NOLO
• Martindale

There are also many specialized or award-based directories, where you’ll have to qualify for listings. Perhaps the best known of these is SuperLawyers, but there are many others based on practice area, geography, and achievement. More niche sites will generally have lower traffic, but strong relevance, both for SEO purposes and for purposes of drawing targeted traffic to your site. Just remember to check out the “neighborhood” before you choose.

A great side benefit of these legal directories is some of them often show up in “…lawyer near me” type searches with a top X list. If you’re in that list it is a sort of secondary website for potential clients to find you.

You’ll also want to explore non-legal-specific directory listings that can carry significant weight. Some examples include Yelp and YP.com. The most important of these is Google My Business, which has a direct impact on a site’s ability to rank in that all-important local pack of search results.

Guest Posting on Relevant Websites

Like link building generally, guest posting gets mixed reviews. That’s because, like many SEO strategies, guest posting has been abused to the point where guest posts can be classified as spam links.

Still, law firms can use guest posting effectively by ensuring that any guest posts submitted:

• Are substantive and contain valuable information and insights, rather than being quickly knocked off or “spun” to create linking opportunities
• Are placed on sites that are relevant to your law firm, either through subject matter or based on geography/local to the community a firm serves
• Are created and placed judiciously, rather than as a blanket effort to get a large number of guest postings out in a short period of time
• Include only one or two links to your website, and incorporate them naturally–generally, that means from the body of the post and using keywords that are relevant but not contrived and not repeated from linking opportunity to linking opportunity

Be sure that the site you’re contributing to has a good reputation, and that your content adds value for the site’s regular audience. Content placed for the sole purpose of getting a backlink is usually easy to identify, meaning you won’t get an SEO boost or traffic from the site. And, if you do too much of it, your site may be penalized by Google.

Create and Promote Your Own Great Content

One of the most straightforward ways to gain links to your website is to create great content.

We’ve already talked about what makes valuable content in terms of guest posting. When you’re creating content for your own site, add one ingredient: make sure that you’re providing content people will want to share.

That means thinking about headlines, using eye-catching graphics in postings, and creating content in a format that’s inviting. It also means making it easy to share, with a social media plug-in that lets visitors share to their own social media accounts with a single click.

Don’t limit yourself to blog posting, either. Videos and infographics can also draw links and traffic to your site, and give you an opportunity to incorporate personality and perhaps humor into your content, making it easier for prospective clients to connect with you.

Of course, not every blog post will get a burst of social shares or inspire links on other blogs and websites. In fact, most will not. But, investing in the occasional piece of content with widespread appeal can pay off, especially if you give it a boost by sharing through your firm’s social media accounts and the personal accounts of attorneys and staff.

Sponsoring Local Events or Events in Your Niche

Sponsoring a local non-profit fundraiser, an educational event, a conference relevant to your practice area or even a youth sports team in your community has obvious benefits beyond the possibility of obtaining a relevant link. In addition to the value you add to the community, you’ll be getting your name out in a positive way and establishing yourself as someone who is there to help.

As an added bonus, though, this type of sponsorship often means an opportunity to obtain one or more quality links, as the organization may list sponsors on its website, and may even post thank yous or sponsor lists in social media or share in a local news outlet.

Of course, if your sponsorship is motivated in part by the linking opportunity, you’ll want to apply the same standards you would when considering a guest post or directory linking. Remember, though, that a smaller local organization is by nature very unlikely to have the type of domain authority you’ll see with a reputable national directory. That’s because the site will be relevant to a smaller sector, and so won’t draw thousands of backlinks. As long as the site is reputable, that link can still add value.

Contribute to Relevant Publications

Here, again, relevant may mean within your industry or may mean local.

In the legal industry, for example, contributing an article in your practice area to a respected legal directory site might yield a valuable backlink. Similarly, writing a legal column for your local newspaper that is posted publicly on the paper’s website could offer a relevant link.

Do your homework, though. While many legal directories accept contributions from attorneys, not all allow dofollow links in the body of the article or the attorney’s byline or bio. And, many newspapers keep content behind a paywall, meaning that search engines won’t crawl those links and you won’t see SEO benefits from the links.

When considering this strategy, consider other benefits as well. Getting quality links to your website is a valuable undertaking, but this particular strategy–like many others on this list–has advantages that go beyond the value of the link, such as building credibility in your industry, cultivating referrals from other attorneys who read the industry publication you’ve contributed to, and establishing yourself as a legal authority in your local community.

Get Recognized

When you get an award from your local bar association, your practice-area sector of the state bar, a non-profit you’ve gone above and beyond for, your local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club, or any number of other local and industry-centric organizations, you get publicity.

Of course, that’s valuable in its own right, but in 2020 it also often means links from the organization’s website, industry publications, local media and others.

You may be thinking that the benefits are obvious, but securing this type of honor isn’t really within your control. But, that’s not entirely true.

While you have to qualify for the award and you can’t control the final decision, a great many awards start with a nomination from someone you know. Examples include inclusion in the SuperLawyers directory, alumnae awards, community-based “person of the year” type awards, and round-ups like the 40 Under 40 lists assembled by many respected business publications.

Your law firm’s marketing team should always be on the alert for this type of opportunity.

The Bottom Line on Law Firm Link Building

Everything you’ve heard about link building is true: it’s an important part of SEO for lawyers, and it can be risky if not executed carefully. But the “rules” for quality white-hat link building are simple and mostly involve common sense and good judgment.

Choose sites to place or cultivate links from based on their reputation and authority, just as you would choose any other type of endorsement. When contributing content, make sure you’re adding the same type of value you must ensure you’re adding with the content you publish on your own site. And, don’t look for shortcuts. Any system or provider that promises you a large number of links in a short period of time is almost certainly advocating or employing black-hat strategies that will hurt your rankings, or even get you blacklisted from search.

Take a multi-pronged approach to link building, and be prepared to build up your backlinks incrementally, not overnight.

The post 6 Key Link Building Tactics for Law Firms appeared first on DAGMAR.

2019 SEO Predictions to Help You Spend Your Marketing Money Wisely

https://dagmarmarketing.com/blog/seo-predictions-2019/

We always try to be ready for whatever comes next in the online marketing industry. That’s why we analyze the industry landscape and make educated guesses on what trends we (and our clients) need to be prepared for. We kicked off 2019 with our SEO predictions and looking back, I think we were pretty much spot on.

We’re not trying to chase the next shiny object in the SEO world. Instead, we focus on marketing efforts that should stand the test of time. Two of those included longer content and a heavy focus on Google’s rater guidelines. In addition, we predicted content marketing would overtake direct link building and that technical SEO would be a big factor—and we saw this with many client sites—especially regarding PageSpeed.

How To Use Content Marketing for Your Local Business

https://dagmarmarketing.com/blog/how-to-use-content-marketing-promote-local-business/

We created this piece to give owners of small and medium-sized local businesses advice on how to use content as a promotional tool. This guide outlines the best ways to create content that will help improve your local visibility.

The “3 R’s of PPC” — AKA The Last PPC Audit Guide You’ll Ever Need

https://dagmarmarketing.com/blog/last-ppc-audit-guide-you-need/

This post got a lot of traffic, so we hope it offered some valuable insights. We broke down how we perform PPC audits and shared how to use this approach to get your paid search campaigns under control. We also provided specific to-dos for an audit process that will result in better performance from your PPC budget.

BERT Update from Google: What You Need to Know Now

https://dagmarmarketing.com/blog/google-bert-update/

One of the biggest updates Google released this past year was the BERT update. The big takeaway with the BERT update is that it seeks to improve the ways Google processes natural language, including the context associated with keywords. Many see this as a way for machines to learn the nuances of language and understand the underlying meaning when we type/speak queries into their search engine.

The Real Cost of Cheap SEO

https://dagmarmarketing.com/blog/the-real-cost-of-cheap-seo/

We revisited and updated this long-running and popular post. As there was when we first published this post, there’s a cottage industry of extremely cheap SEO services. The problem with cheap SEO is you get what you pay for. SEO is a time-consuming and intensive process—anyone offering extremely low-cost services is probably using outdated (and likely shady) tactics that will cost you much more in the long run than you would have paid using reputable services.

Some of our Favorite Posts from Other Marketers:

We are constantly reading, learning, and increasing our marketing knowledge. Digital marketing changes almost daily, so we look to our industry peers to help us keep up.

Here’s some of our favorite blog posts from other marketers this past year.

Using Strong Internal Links for SEO

https://www.iqseo.org/building-internal-links-for-seo-wins/

Internal linking for SEO purposes provides a wide range of benefits for both users and Google (as well as other search engines). In this post Andy at IQSEO explains, in-depth, how to best use internal linking for the best results.

At DAGMAR we’re focused on creating stellar content and making sure that content is structured in a relevant, hierarchical format. Internal links is a key part of that strategy, that’s why this post was so great to find.

Google Ranking Factors 2019: Opinions from 1,500+ Professional SEOs

https://sparktoro.com/blog/resources/google-ranking-factors-2019/

SparkToro is Rand Fishkin’s (of Moz fame) new startup. This was a great survey they ran in August of 2019. They had 1,584 professionals in the SEO field take a survey sharing their opinions on the relative use and merit of various inputs in Google’s algorithm and ranking systems. This report shared the aggregated knowledge and assumptions gleaned from that survey.

Best takeaway from this post:

For the first time, content > links & keywords: In the early days of the survey, keywords were the top-voted ranking factors, then, for nearly a decade, links did. Now, content relevance and quality dominate. I think this perception is generally correct (though links are still a powerful #2), and it reflects the great strides Google’s made in understanding content that satisfies searcher intent.

From Zero to Local Ranking Hero – MozCon 2019

https://whitespark.ca/blog/from-zero-to-local-ranking-hero-mozcon-2019/

I have to tell you, my favorite types of posts are ones that give a step-by-step overview of some process. Here Darren Shaw gives a great inside look into the process, strategies, and tactics that were implemented to take a business from zero web presence to ranking hyper-locally in 8 months. This was the culmination of a case study he did after offering to work pro-bono for a business with no internet presence whatsoever.

Takeaways from the case study:

1. Track from multiple zip codes/areas around the client’s city/location.
2. You won’t get the full value of citations unless they’re indexed—so work on getting them indexed
3. Setting a ‘service area’ in your GMB does not guarantee rankings in that service area
4. Create a Google review strategy—reviews have an impact on your rankings
5. The first few links the business got seemed to have the biggest impact
6. Any strategy will have a point of diminishing returns (this was most obvious in the building of more links where the additional links had little, or no, impact).
7. A fully functioning website is better than the GMB website builder.
8. No one specific activity leads to results, rather it’s the sum total of all your activities.

Five Things We Discovered Analyzing 45,000 Google My Business Listings

https://www.brightlocal.com/blog/five-things-we-discovered-analyzing-45000-google-my-business-listings/

For local SEO/marketers, Brightlocal’s blog runs some great studies and surveys throughout the year. This study was based on analysis of 45,000 GMB listings. The study a lot of insights about how businesses and consumers use Google My Business. The full study is definitely worth reading, but if you’re more of a visual person or just short on time, they created video to go with the post detailing the best findings:

Takeaways:

1. A business definitely needs a website. Of all the customer actions measured in GMB Insights, website clicks came out on top. This was backed up by a separate study in which 76% of customers surveyed say they click through to a website at least half the time when they are researching a business.
2. More images are correlated with more customer interaction. “Listings with over 100 images get 20 times more website clicks than the average listing…”
3. Make sure your optimizing your GMB for the right categories as this will help with being found in discovery searches (i.e., not Branded searches looking directly for your business).
4. Customer interaction with GMB is increasing.
5. The leading industry for GMB optimizations is…the car dealership industry — which I will admit was a bit shocking. This isn’t exactly an industry you’re likely to look for on a regular or constant basis, but they apparently do a great job in optimizing for GMB search.

The post Our Favorite Blog Posts of 2019 appeared first on DAGMAR.

Attorneys and law firm staff are busy people. In a small firm in particular, many lawyers and employees are doing double or even triple duty. That’s one of the main reasons a law firm’s marketing often suffers. So, it’s easy to understand how seductive a drag-and-drop website service can be. We understand the sense of relief you get when you see, “Get your site live in minutes!”

Efficiency and ease of use are important, but there’s more to the equation. Choosing what appears to be the easiest solution today could cost you time, money, and even clients later. And, of course, the only way to make good decisions is to understand the pros and cons of your options.

WordPress v. Wix v. Squarespace

An apples-to-apples comparison between WordPress and the build-your-own-website services is a bit difficult, because they aren’t equivalent offerings.

Both Wix and Squarespace are website services, which allow for relatively easy creation of a website that they will host for a monthly fee. WordPress, on the other hand, is an open-source platform that is free to use. You choose and pay your own host. This is why you’ve probably seen cute and inspirational advertisements and video about how easy it is to get your website online with Wix and you don’t see anything like that for WordPress. Wix has something to sell you and WordPress doesn’t.

Still, since these are some of the most common options law firms consider, we’ll look at some of the most important factors and how they stack up for each alternative.

Ease of Use

Both Wix and Squarespace are designed to make it quick and easy for someone with few technical skills to get a website online. For most people with no experience creating a website, this type of provider is the simplest. You choose a template, then drag and drop pre-designed sections onto the page to place your images and text. While it’s technically true that you can create a website in minutes using one of these services, adding and arranging your own content and images will likely take a few hours.

The learning curve for WordPress is somewhat steeper, but the platform is fairly easy to learn, especially if you’re just setting up a basic site with pages and posts. WordPress is designed to allow non-technical people to maintain and update their own websites.

If you’ve never used WordPress before, you’ll likely need to spend a little time navigating through the backend, watching a few tutorial videos, or employing trial and error to get comfortable with the system. But, the basics are pretty simple. You can create new pages by clicking “New Page” and adding text and images to the fields provided, and you can easily arrange content by dragging and dropping items in the site menus. A wide range of templates (called “themes”) and easy-to-install plug-ins are available to customize your WordPress website, many of them free or very inexpensive.

Responsive Design

A “responsive” website is one that changes to accommodate the device its being viewed on. You’ve probably noticed that when you visit some sites on your computer, you see a three column-layout, but when you view the same site on your phone the content scrolls from top to bottom. That’s because your phone screen isn’t wide enough to display three columns in a way that’s visually appealing and easy to read. So, the site is coded to show you something different when you’re looking at a screen that is smaller and shaped differently than the standard computer monitor.

Responsive design isn’t just a good idea anymore—design that adapts to the screen displaying it is essential for any business that hopes to attract customers or clients through its website. Over the past six years, the percentage of organic search hits to websites coming from mobile devices has skyrocketed, from 27% in 2013 to more than 60% in 2019. And speed matters, too: Google says more than half of mobile visitors will abandon a site that takes more than three seconds to load.

Among the options discussed here, only Squarespace is responsive across the board. Many WordPress templates are responsive, but it’s up to you to verify that when choosing a template and plug-ins. Of the three, Wix requires the most effort on your part to ensure responsiveness. Some of the elements you can incorporate into a Wix site are responsive and others are not, so you’ll have to determine whether each module you add to a page is responsive. This also limits your design options.

Flexibility

Across the board, WordPress offers the greatest flexibility of the three. Currently, Wix is advertising 500+ templates and Squarespace is a little less transparent, saying they offer 10 template “families” with multiple templates in each. WordPress dwarfs those numbers with about 4,000 free themes and tens of thousands of additional themes you can buy. If you can’t find what you’re looking for among all of those options, or just don’t want to spend time combing through them, you can hire a developer to create a custom WordPress theme for you, something the proprietary platforms don’t allow.

If you want to change the look and layout of your site after creation, Squarespace makes that easiest, but with the small number of templates available, your options remain limited. Wix doesn’t have the functionality to change at all: Once you choose a template, that’s the template attached to your site. You can change your WordPress theme at any time, and the process is simple. You’ll just back up your site content, then follow a few simple steps to install and activate the new theme. You should know, though, that not all WordPress plug-ins and integrations work with all themes. If you’ve built out your site with this type of functionality, you may want to consult a WordPress developer before switching themes.

Portability of Content

Portability is a key issue that many law firms looking for a quick and easy website solution don’t consider until it’s too late. Services like Squarespace and Wix make their money on monthly hosting fees. That means they don’t want you to leave, and they don’t make it easy to do so. There’s no way to export your content if you outgrow the drag-and-drop platform and want to switch over to a more robust option. So, you may have to start from scratch or painstakingly move content into your new platform one piece at a time.

With WordPress, your files are stored in a folder (called the “FTP file”) on your host’s server. If you want to switch hosts, you can download that folder to your computer or to a cloud-based storage account, install WordPress (for free) in your new hosting account, and then upload your files. While it takes special software and a little bit of knowledge to make sure you do this correctly, the software is available for free and there are many online tutorials. And, of course, you can always hire a professional to make the transfer for you.

SEO Friendliness

Search engine optimization for lawyers (SEO) is key for any law firm that hopes to use its website to draw in clients and generate revenue. And, no law firm can afford to neglect those looking online for legal services. One recent survey showed that online search was the second-most-popular means of looking for an attorney, after referrals from friends or family.

While there are other ways to draw traffic to your site, most have one significant thing in common: a price tag. Google Ads, paid ads on Facebook and other social media platforms, and advertising on related sites are all popular ways to generate web traffic, but in most cases you’re paying for every click. On the other hand, click-throughs from natural search results are free. Sure, it takes some investment to implement the best SEO for lawyers strategy, but a single solid ranking can generate a flood of traffic—traffic you’re not paying for at $2 or $5 or even $25 per click.

Wix has a bad reputation for SEO-friendliness, but it’s a bit outdated. Wix had some serious SEO problems in the early days, but most have been corrected. Today, both Wix and Squarespace offer most SEO basics, and do so in a way that’s easy for novices to use. For instance, both platforms now allow you to change page URLs and to create search-friendly alt text for images. But, if SEO is important to you—and it should be—WordPress offers the most, including a choice of SEO-plug-ins, more sophisticated customization of blog post URLs and other structures that impact search rankings, the ability to schedule regular content publishing, plug-ins to push content to social media platforms, and more.

Sites created in a website builder can also be much slower to load, which can have a significant impact on search ranking. Google has long factored site speed into its ranking determinations, and in 2018 announced that loading time would also be factored into mobile search rankings.

Blogging & Content Creation

WordPress was designed as a blogging platform, and later expanded into the most popular platform for website creation. Blogging is a key content marketing strategy for attorneys for many reasons. The most obvious, which applies across industries, is that blogging allows for a steady stream of fresh content. Blogging also provides a way to drill down to “long-tail” search terms—more specific phrases that draw a smaller number of visitors, but are narrowly focused to attract your prospective clients. And, of course, people seeking legal help want to be able to rely on your knowledge and experience. Regular blogging creates an opportunity to show your knowledge across a wide range of specific issues, so prospective clients are likely to find information relating to their needs.

Though all three options allow for blogging, WordPress offers by far the greatest range of options in terms of templates, ability to modify formatting, plug-ins to help with cross-promotion of post, SEO, categorization and more. WordPress also makes it easy to allow, disallow, or monitor comments, which can help build community and return visits.

Customer Service

In terms of direct customer service, proprietary platforms like Wix and Squarespace beat WordPress hands down. A quick Google search for “Wix customer service” yields a toll-free number for support. While Squarespace makes it a bit more difficult to drill down to actual contact, you can message support through its website and get help.

WordPress, being an entirely different animal (software rather than a service, free rather than paid by the month) doesn’t offer customer support. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s harder to get the information you need. WordPress offers free video tutorials for its most used features, and a rich customer support library. You’ll also find many other video tutorials and step-by-step guides online.

It’s also worth noting that your host may offer WordPress support by phone or chat. Check into this when choosing a host, and make sure that the hosting company offers one-click installation for WordPress.

Other Options for Law Firm Websites

We’ve compared some of the most popular options law firms consider for creating a web presence. But, of course, there are many more options. Here’s a quick look at two other options you may encounter.

Other Content Management Systems

One of the reasons we generally consider WordPress to be a superior solution for law firm websites is that it is a reasonably sophisticated content management system and not just a website builder. But, of course, WordPress isn’t the only content management system available. In fact, there are many, many options—most of which you’ve probably never heard of and never will. Still, WordPress is the undisputed market leader. One recent study put WordPress’s market share at just over 60%. Joomla, the next-most-popular content management system, came in at around 5%.

One key distinction between the two platforms is that WordPress employs a more user-friendly visual editor, which makes use of the site much more intuitive for less technically inclined users. WordPress also has a well-developed hierarchy of users, which allows a law firm to give staff and even outside contractors limited permissions and then approve content before it goes live. This functionality is much more limited in Joomla.

Joomla does have a great out-of-the-box functionality for building a community, with built-in user registration. This aspect makes it a good solution for certain types of organizations, but has little or no application for most law firms.

WordPress’s larger market share creates some other advantages, as well. The popularity of the content management system means that it gets a lot of attention from developers, designers, and others in the website creation and maintenance industry. That means more available integrations, more plug-ins to add functionality to WordPress sites, and more online resources to help you make the most of the platform.

Legal-Specific Proprietary Options

Some big players in the legal industry—most notably FindLaw—offer website services for law firms. Hiring a company like FindLaw, with an established name and clear legal industry expertise, may seem like a safe and reliable way to get a high-quality law firm website. But, there are two reasons we do not recommend that clients choose FindLaw for their websites. First, FindLaw is an expensive option. Pricing isn’t exactly transparent, but some practice management experts have estimated the cost at several times what a firm would pay for good design and hosting elsewhere—perhaps as much as 10 times as high. Those high fees often come with long-term commitments, and extricating yourself from FindLaw can be so difficult that the Internet is awash with articles about how to “break free.” At least one former FindLaw employee has established a new business rescuing content for law firms leaving FindLaw.

While there are ways to retain the value of a FindLaw site after moving away from the company, the better option is generally to maintain control from the start: to purchase your own domain, have web hosting in your name, and own your website design and the content you put on your site.

Why WordPress is Best for Your Law Firm Website

Clearly, there are many factors to consider when choosing the platform you’ll use to build your law firm website. In a nutshell, here’s why we think WordPress is the best option for attorneys:

• WordPress offers much more flexibility than a website builder like Wix or Squarespace when it comes to site layout, integration of functionality like taking payments through your website, and the ability to make changes after your website is created.
• WordPress was built for blogging, which can be an important element in both your search engine optimization and content marketing strategies.
• While WordPress has a slightly steeper learning curve, it’s designed to be user-friendly for basic functionality, so you and your staff will easily be able to add blog posts, change text, swap out an image and make other content changes once you learn your way around.
• For more sophisticated alterations, you’ll find tens of thousands of WordPress plug-ins to help add functionality to a WordPress site; if you get stuck or want to do something that can’t be automated, you’ll have no trouble finding the help you need—WordPress is the most popular platform for web designers and developers, too.
• With WordPress, you’re in full control: you can purchase your domain, have a wide range of options for hosting in an account you control or hire someone to manage, and you own the content you create or purchase.
• Moving WordPress content to another host or even another URL is a relatively painless process, so you’ll never be held hostage as you can with some proprietary platforms charging monthly fees.

Key Components of Your Law Firm Website

Of course, every law firm is a bit different. For example, your law firm may focus in one narrow area of law, such as consumer bankruptcy, or may handle a wide range of consumer cases, such as personal injury, workers’ compensation, bankruptcy, divorce, criminal defense and estate planning. The structure and depth of a general practice firm may differ somewhat from that of a narrowly focused firm.

Still, certain elements are important—or even legally required—for every law firm site. You’ll want to make sure that your law firm website includes:

• A home page that shows who you are: Not all visitors to your website will start with the home page, but it should be the online introduction to your firm. Be sure to showcase what sets you apart and why a prospect should contact you rather than another firm.
• Good attorney bio/profile pages: These pages are among the most visited on law firm websites, and it’s no surprise. In a recent survey, people seeking legal services listed an attorney’s background and credentials as the most important piece of information they wanted to see in their search.
• Information about each of your practice areas: Include a clear listing of your practice areas on your home page and in your site navigation, and then expanded information about each. The most common way to set this up is a dropdown or sidebar navigation listing with a separate page for each practice area.
• Clear, easy-to-find contact information: Make it as easy as possible for your prospects to contact you, preferably through different channels. Create a separate contact page, but also include your phone number and short contact forms on every page.
• A compliant privacy policy: If you’re collecting information through your website, be sure to familiarize yourself with the relevant state and federal laws regarding data collection privacy and security, and to ensure that the privacy policy you post is both compliant and accurate. Don’t forget to update if anything changes!
• Reviews and testimonials: If your state’s Rules of Professional Responsibility allow for the posting of testimonials or reviews, it’s a great way to let prospects know that you live up to the promises your website makes and your clients are happy with your services.
• Disclaimers: Required disclaimers vary by state, so you’ll have to do your homework on this one. Some common disclaimers and notices include information about the attorney responsible for the site’s content, a notice that no attorney-client relationship is formed by filling out a contact form and that the information on the site is not intended as legal advice, and a statement that results reported are not intended as a representation of expected future results.
• An active blog: As discussed above, blogging provides an excellent opportunity to build out your site, boost SEO for law firm websites, and establish your expertise.

It’s also important that you provide clear, detailed navigation on your site. There’s more than one way to achieve this, but a horizontal menu near the top of the page with top-level navigation and dropdowns is a popular and effective format for law firm websites. With the vast number of WordPress themes available, you’ll have many options for making this content accessible and visually appealing to your market.

Learn more about why we recommend WordPress to clients and how our WordPress web design services can help make this critical marketing tool work for you.

The post Should You Use WordPress for Your Law Firm Website? appeared first on DAGMAR.

Let’s say, for example, that you’re a personal injury attorney located in Jacksonville, Florida. You’d use local SEO strategy and techniques so that when potential clients search in Google for a term like “automobile accident attorney near me,” Google would compare your location to that of the searchers. After verifying your geographic proximity, and that you provide the desired services, your law firm could appear in the Google Map local pack for that keyword.

Ideally, you’d be listed as one of the top three listings in the local pack. That’s because those are the ones that searchers can see without needing to click on the “More places” link.

The local pack is a specific type of Google search result, one that shows local results that are connected to a searcher’s query. Here’s an example of what local pack results would look like for the keyword of “Jacksonville personal injury attorney”:

How to get into and stay visible in the local pack for desired keywords continues to evolve as Google makes changes to its local ranking algorithm. Local search is a mix of art and science, and it’s important for your law firm to adjust its strategy when changes are made without doing what’s called “algorithm chasing.” That’s when someone hears of an algorithm update or notices an unwanted change in a metric, and then hurries to make tactical adjustments without being strategic about them.

Although Google doesn’t always share the details of its ranking algorithms, it does provide a high-level look at how it ranks sites for local search: “Local results are based primarily on relevance, distance, and prominence. These factors are combined to help find the best match for your search.

“For example, Google algorithms might decide that a business that’s farther away from your location is more likely to have what you’re looking for than a business that’s closer, and therefore rank it higher in local results.”

Let’s break this down:

• Relevance: Google is looking to see how closely a local listing matches what a particular searcher is seeking. For example, if someone is looking for a Jacksonville automobile accident attorney, and that’s a service you provide, there is relevancy.
• Distance: Google checks to see how geographically close a business is to the searcher.
• Prominence: This can mean online visibility or how well a brand is established.

As noted in Google’s explanation, their algorithm uses a blend of these three factors to make ranking decisions.

So, what does that mean for the local search campaign for your law firm?

You’lll need to determine your overall strategy, one that dovetails with Google’s algorithm, as well as deciding upon more granular tactics. After you implement your strategy and employ your tactics, monitor results and adjust as needed.

Here’s information that will help you to create the elements of your campaign:

Factors That Can Affect Local SEO Rankings

A quality local SEO campaign should contain the following components:

• Google My Business (GMB) optimization
• on-site optimization, especially in connection with NAP consistency (name, address and phone number)
• inbound link and citation strategies
• Google reviews
• location pages
• keyword research for your targeted area
• strategies that will help your local SEO campaign dovetail with your other online marketing efforts; you can find information about digital marketing for law firms in our SEO for lawyers guide.

Understanding Google My Business

Google My Business is a free tool provided by Google to help businesses like your law firm provide and manage their information in Google. When you have the correct information listed in GMB, this helps people in need of your services to know where you’re located, the hours you’re open, how to find and browse through your law firm’s website, and more.

Companies that verify their GMB account are two times as likely to have people see them as reputable firms, according to a study that Google commissioned a few years ago.

If, on the other hand, you don’t have a GMB account, then it isn’t possible for your law firm to appear in the Google Map local packs, which puts you at a significant disadvantage when large numbers of people use Google searches to find the services they need.

Although GMB is free to use, the setup and optimization process can take some time. It includes claiming and verifying your listing, and otherwise optimizing it strategically for best results. This involves writing an engaging business description that uses keywords appropriately, without crossing over into spam. You get 750 characters to write this, so do so thoughtfully. You’ll also need to select the appropriate categories/sub-categories, add eye-catching pictures, and more.

If you find it valuable, Google includes a Q&A section where you can answer questions people have about your firm. You can also create posts for your GMB page, allow potential clients to send private messages to you through the platform, and more.

Finally, a key step of optimizing your GMB is ensuring that your business name, address, and phone number (your NAP) is correct and consistent with what’s listed on your law firm’s website. If they don’t match, fix any incorrect information, ASAP.

Important Online Listing Sites for Law Firms

The idea of NAP consistency goes beyond making sure that what’s listed on your website matches your GMB. You’ll also want to ensure that there is NAP consistency on business listings for your law firm throughout the internet. If you’ve moved your office or changed your phone number, then it’s especially important to do a thorough NAP audit.

Google is getting increasingly better at identifying business information and checking it for consistency—and, when conflicting information is found, Google may consider your law firm to be less than trustworthy. If this happens, then this will likely cause your business to be less visible on Google than it otherwise would be. Plus, clients seeking your services may not be able to find you, and might go to a competitor.

If you find incorrect NAP information about your firm online, contact the webmaster and ask for a correction. Although obtaining NAP consistency can be tedious, it’s a fairly simple way to improve your law firm’s credibility in Google, which typically helps to improve local search rankings.

On an ongoing basis, get new citations for your firm by getting listed in new directories, particularly those with high domain authority scores, which range from 1 to 100. Directories for law firms with high scores include:

• Justia.com: 88
• FindLaw.com: 84
• Nolo.com: 74
• Avvo.com: 70
• Lawyers.com: 69
• LegalZoom.com: 69
• Martindale.com: 64
• LegalMatch.com: 62
• SuperLawyers.com: 60
• BestLawyers.com: 54

You can often get listed on the websites of professional associations you belong to. Also think about which local websites in your area are the go-to places for communities around you. See if there are opportunities for you to get listed on them.

Each time that you get listed in a directory, it adds another inbound link to your law firm’s website, which helps with local SEO and your site’s organic SEO.

When creating your plan for citations, think about your social media platforms and individual websites, too. What’s most important is to choose quality sites for citations and work on steadily increasing their number while continuing to monitor the accuracy of the information listed.

Because of automated aggregation tools, your law firm’s NAP information can appear on sites without your knowledge. So, checking NAP is an ongoing process, with errors needing to be corrected as quickly as possible to help prevent any negative impact on your local SEO rankings.

Getting Online Reviews

Another key factor in succeeding in local SEO is steadily getting online reviews. Getting Google Reviews is important, and you’ll also want to get reviews from other relevant sites, such as Yelp and the Better Business Bureau.

To help, we’ll describe the process of getting Google Reviews, which can help to guide you with other review sites, as well.

The first and most obvious step is to provide the quality of legal services that will cause people to say positive things about your law firm. But, that’s often not enough because busy people may not think about leaving online reviews or, if they do think about it, they may get distracted by the next thing on their list and not actually follow through. Or, they may not know the process.

Google is fine with you asking people to post reviews, and they’ve provided instructions. (Contrast that, for example, with Yelp that has a no-solicitation policy that imposes ranking penalties for offenders). Before you ask people to post a Google Review, create a link that will take your clients directly to where they can leave that review. Here’s how.

Then, send your clients your customized link, along with easy-to-follow instructions about how to post a review. Note that although it isn’t legit to specifically ask them to write a positive review or to offer them an incentive, you can select whom you ask. Send the request from an email address the clients will easily recognize, and write it in a personal way with a clear call to action. Also come up with a follow-up request for those who don’t respond to your first request.

Pace yourself. A steady supply of online reviews can help your law firm in local search results. But, if Google gets flooded with them, it can look suspicious and this strategy might backfire on you.

As one more “goes without saying” kind of thing, don’t buy fake reviews. It must have seemed like a good idea for some business owners in New York—at least until they got slammed with $350,000 in fines.

Here’s information about Google Reviews and customer engagement.

On-Page SEO for Local SEO

Besides providing your NAP in prominent and logical places on your website, optimize your website in ways that enhance your local SEO campaign. If your law firm has one location, include geo-targeted keywords in your pages and blog posts so that Google and site visitors are clear about where you’re located.

If you have multiple offices in multiple cities, create a location landing page that shares the city and state for each one, along with relevant contact information for each. Then, in the information listed for your first location—say, Jacksonville, Florida—link out to an optimized location page that focuses just on services provided at that office. Do the same for location number two, perhaps Orange Park, and so on. Create quality content for each location page, using relevant geo-targeted keywords.

Using Local Schema

Schema is markup data that helps Google and other search engines better understand the content of your website. Included in this is LocalBusiness schema that helps search engines to have a clearer understanding of addresses, phone numbers, and other location-specific pieces of information.

You can look at the local information found on each page of your site and then find the corresponding schema data. Code the content; test it by using Google’s Structured Data Testing tool; test your markup in Google’s Search Console; and then monitor to see if this improves your local search results. Tweak as needed. Because this process isn’t intuitive, Google has created a Structured Data Markup Helper.

Professional Local SEO Services

If you’re busy helping clients and are looking for a partner to assist with your law firm SEO and local SEO services are our specialty.

Local SEO strategy and tactics can be a mystery, but we believe in transparency, showing you what we do and how well we’re doing it for you. As you can see in this lawyer case study, our customized SEO strategy for the featured law firm resulted in a 103% increase in the law firm’s local traffic, along with a 406% boost in their conversion rate.

If you’re ready to talk about how we can help your law firm achieve its local search goals, contact us online or by phone at 904-270-9778.

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