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Blog SEO Tips

Why Having a Well-Optimized, SEO Powerful Website is Valuable if You Ever Sell Your Business

Maybe it’s not in the near future, but as a business owner, positioning your business to sell it for the most value is always in the back of your mind. It’s similar to owning a house. You might love your home and want to cozy up in it as long as possible…but resale is always lurking when you make major homeowner decisions.

If you’ve been in the business game long enough, you know the deal: having a strong online presence is absolutely essential. Part of that is a visually appealing website all those brilliant social media posts link back to. 

More important than that, though, is that attention-grabbing, super accessible website needs to be optimized for search engines. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves the visibility and ranking of your website in a search engine results page. Having an SEO strategy increases the likelihood that your company will appear towards the top of the results, leading to more traffic. 

Bonus points: resale value of the business itself goes up and the eventual selling process is that much easier.

Check out these four reasons why having a well-optimized, SEO powerful website is a must-have when you are preparing to sell your business.

1. Attracts Potential Buyers

When you do decide to sell your business, the goal is to attract buyers who are legitimately interested in acquiring your business. 

With a strong SEO strategy, your website will be more visible to those buyers searching online for businesses like yours. The result: you reach a much larger pool of potential buyers, increasing your chances of landing on the perfect fit candidate.

2. Builds Your Business’ Credibility

A website with solid SEO immediately builds trust with those potential buyers. When your website ranks higher in search engine results pages, it gives the impression that your business is both reputable and trustworthy. Sending this type of message can go a long way in attracting more serious buyers willing to invest in your business.

You might have tried PPC (pay-per-click) marketing in the past, with your site appearing towards the top of the rankings as an ad. However, an organic SEO strategy will work to improve the ranking so the site is seen without the word “ad” written next to it. The result: a more reliable reputation. 

3. Showcases Your Business’ Unique Strengths

When you optimize your website for specific keywords, you can highlight the strengths and key features of your business that make it stand out from the competition. 

Showcasing the business’ unique selling points can help potential buyers gain a better understanding of exactly what your business has to offer, which can motivate them to make the next move.

4. Increases the Value of the Business Overall

By already having implemented an SEO strategy, your business has established:

All of this serves as proof to your potential buyer that your business and your brand are strong. Those buyers are more likely to pay a premium, and you will be able to maximize your return on investment.

If you are considering selling your business, or even if you can see the opportunity years from now, it is important to invest in a website with good SEO to ensure you are able to reach the right buyers and get the best possible price for your business.

GoBeyond SEO is a full-service marketing agency specializing in SEO strategy. We are here to answer any questions and guide you in the right direction to build a distinct digital presence. Contact us to book a free strategy session.

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Blog Local SEO Small Business Marketing

Why It’s Important to Have A Google My Business Profile

“Google it!” We’ve heard it. We’ve said it. A staple in the cultural zeitgeist, we are all very familiar with Google as consumers. From a business standpoint, the importance of a Google My Business Profile cannot be understated. It is integral for every business; large and small, brick-and-mortar or exclusively online. 

You may be curious why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile. Google controls about 92% of the search engine market share across the world. That means if people are searching the web, they’re almost certainly googling. Google connects people to businesses they may normally not have found and connects businesses to decision-makers that can elevate their status from good to great. When considering why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, consider the impact of starting with trust, being seen, and increasing lead generation. 

What is a Google My Business profile?

A Google My Business profile provides you with the ability to list your business and appear in local search results. You can display pertinent information on your business: location, hours of operation, and contact details. A link to your website can be listed and attract web traffic. There are even features available to link upcoming events or articles. With a Google My Business profile, you choose how you are seen in Google search and maps and can even accept online orders.

Plus… it’s free! 

Start with Trust

When people are searching your business, knowingly or otherwise, they are beginning their relationship with your business. One of the reasons why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, is to be in control of your first impression

It can be frustrating to receive mixed messages from a business, especially after a simple introduction. When information is difficult to find, incoherent, or inconsistent, it turns away potential leads from engaging further or turns away potential customers seeking your goods or services. 

There is also the possibility that your business does not get fair or accurate information posted online. Without claiming your Google My Business profile, you will not be notified of reviews of your business or any information that is listed that is inaccurate or outdated. 

By having a Google My Business profile, you get to speak for yourself. You can visit your profile anytime to edit or see how many people have seen or clicked on your listing. There is even a question and answer feature that can connect you with your community. What better way to start a relationship of trust and competence than with being available and transparent with people from the second they’ve found you in a search. 

Start with trust. Build a reputation for being clear, informative, and up-to-date as a business. 

Be Seen

With the Google algorithm being directly linked to your company’s SEO, a Google My Business Profile puts you in a position to improve your likelihood of being seen just by optimizing your profile. With a Google My Business profile, your reviews and location improve your likelihood of being seen. 

When questioning why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile, an immediate asset is the ability to be seen in Google Maps. More and more search queries are based on geography. This makes sense. With the immediacy of information available in search engines like Google, searching “restaurant near me” or “law office near me” is an efficient and concise way of searching to get relevant results. Whether or not you know it, you’re being shown businesses first that have a Google My Business profile. In fact, it’s got a cyclical benefit. A Google Business Profile improves your local SEO. A local business listing is more likely to appear when people search using Google maps. 

Engaging with feedback from your community is another reason why it’s important to have a Google My Business profile. With a profile, you are able to see, respond, and contact people who leave you reviews. Reviews add to your credibility as a business. While branding yourself with legitimacy is integral to successfully running a business, reviews also benefit your SEO. The Google algorithm favors this and it highers your ranking in search results. Simply put, reviews on your Google My Profile listing improve your likelihood of being seen. 

Improve your SEO

Google uses vivid phrases and keywords to help users find businesses in search results. Like traditional website SEO, implementing these keywords and relevant phrases in your content improves your visibility. Therefore it is increasingly important to add keywords that match your business and services to help potential clients find your business in all places possible – your business description, your comments, and your posts. The algorithm favors the specific. Take advantage of the profile tools like Question & Answer, Messaging, and GMB posts to consistently put yourself in the best position to be seen.

The importance of your search engine result page rank increases daily. More and more people are becoming less and less likely to keep scrolling and instead choose to click and engage with top results. 

That is the difference between making a connection, completing a sale, or doing business. 

To conclude

As our world becomes more insular and our online activity becomes increasingly targeted toward our habits, it’s integral for businesses to stay current on all of the opportunities available to them to gain and maintain people’s attention. With Google’s ever present impact on our daily lives, it is essential to think seriously about the benefits your company can garner from starting with trust, being seen, and improving your SEO with a Google My Business profile. All of this is at your fingertips when you make a profile with a few simple clicks, totally for free.

When considering why it’s important to have a Google My Business Profile, remember you have everything to gain and nothing to lose. Make an account today.

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Blog SEO Tips

5 Tips for Creating Irresistible (Yet SEO Friendly) Blog Titles

Do you know the difference between website developers and website designers?

Bear with us for a sec.

From a distance, they look like one in the same. They are not.

While there are some uber-talented folks who can effectively do both, it’s far less common. Designers focus more on appearance and appeal while a developer’s job is making a website functional.

SEO is like that. You can create content that is tech-speak heavy and make search engines happy, but lose the humans. You can also make the content delightful for humans, but useless to search engines. It’s important to strike the balance between form and function when writing blogs and crafting blog titles. 

Here are five simple steps to writing irresistible yet SEO friendly blogs and blog titles to grab the attention of both search engines and your audience.

Step One: Keyword Research

First things first, head to Google to do some quick and dirty research. Type in keywords for the topic you want to write about. Keep in mind this is not a comprehensive build-your-entire-SEO-strategy-level search. This is to help you find topics people are searching for most often so you can craft your blog title around what your audience wants.

Step Two: Pick Strong Keywords

Strong is a relative adjective, so let us clarify. Specific keywords are great if you want someone who is ready to move forward now. For example: “Best SEO Services Near Me”. 

However, if your service or product requires some education, strong keywords could be more solution-focused: “How Can My Business Get Found on Google More Quickly?” Be discerning when choosing keywords for your blog titles.

Step Three: Write Multiple Headlines

Writer and entreprenuer Marie Forleo suggested this trick. Write multiple (like, 20) headlines. It seems like overkill and it isn’t. Sometimes you need to work through your thoughts on the page before they’re ready for the world. Avoid industry-speak when possible. 

Examples:

  1. Your Guide to Great Blog Writing
  2. Five Steps to SEO-Friendly Blog Writing
  3. SEO-Friendly Blog Titles 
  4. Four Tips for Great Blog Titles 

Phrases like “Your Guide”, “Five Steps”, “Three Tips”, are key for a couple of reasons. It’s an easy way to slip in a keyword without it feeling forced and it gives the reader an idea of how much mental energy they need to commit: Five tips? I can handle five tips. Let me read this blog real quick.

Step Four: Write the Post

Be natural and educational. Don’t focus on squeezing in those keywords in your first draft if it feels forced. Say what you want to say and then add keywords during editing. It’s important to offer helpful information without selling. People change their thinking when they feel they’re being pitched. Be breezy, not salesy.

Step Five: Change Your Permalink

Most of the SEO nerds we know love WordPress, and with good reason. If your blog is on WP, we’re gonna nerd out for a moment, but stick with us and it will help!

WordPress allows you to change your permalink/slug URL. This is simply the actual URL for your blog post.

 www.yourwebsite.com/your-blog-post

You will want to edit this permalink (you’ll find it at the top of your post, right underneath your blog title in WordPress).

Your permalink :

  • Should contain your keyword
  • Be short–no more than seven words if possible
  • Be descriptive and relevant to your post
  • Can be different from your actual blog title

Click “ok” to save and you’re ready to hit Publish on your blog post.

Are You Ready to Create Excellent Blog Titles?

When writing blog content, keep keywords in mind, but don’t sacrifice your audience. Whatever your headline, make sure it’s interesting and relevant enough to be clickworthy.

Insider secret: The amount of actual humans who read your blog impacts your SEO results. Google tracks search behavior and pays attention to how many clicks your post gets and if people stick around to read it. Big Brother is absolutely watching, so give ‘em a good show.

Need more assistance with jump starting your content strategy? Book a strategy session with GoBeyond SEO today.

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Blog Business Blogging Search Engine Optimization Tips SEO Tips

Top 3 SEO Tips for Click-Worthy Headlines

Are you a reader or a skimmer? We’re going to guess you’re a skimmer. After all, in a world overrun with information, who has time to dissect every detail?

But what if you need your clients or potential clients to read? You’ve written a blog or published an article and the information you’ve included would actually help them, but alas, they don’t think it’s worth their time. 

There’s one way you can increase the chances that people would actually read your content: your blog titles and article headlines should be both obvious and promise a pay off.

Vague or off-beat titles may be fun to write–and you may even call yourself clever for writing them–but those titles do not get clicked on. Headlines are read six times more than the article itself is. You have a split second to get your reader’s attention and about two seconds to keep that attention. You’ve got to give it your best shot. 

With that being said, here are three tips to help you draw readers in with your headlines.

Tip #1: Keep Character Length to 70 or Fewer

Unless you’re trying to be funny and you know your audience will get the joke, don’t name your blog post like the new Kristen Bell show on Netflix. If you’re unfamiliar with it, here it is: 

The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window

If you want a click-worthy headline, make it clear and easy to read in under two seconds, preferably 70 characters or less–unlike the above example.

Tip #2: Bait the Hook Early

Tell your readers the most important thing they need to know first. Not only does this help with SEO because the “bait”, or most important thing to your reader, is most likely a keyword, but it makes them want to read more.

Example: Which of these two titles would you click on?

Bad: Digital marketing practices are helpful to most businesses.

Good: 67% of businesses experience business growth using SEO.

While both statements are helpful, the second cuts to the proverbial chase more quickly and is therefore more effective.

Tip #3: Use Numbers, “W” Questions, or Reveal a Secret

Nobody wants to feel ignorant. Pull in your readers by using information that they want or would feel foolish not having.

This includes information that you can use to answer “W” questions, such as who, when, where, what, and why. It also includes numbers, as people tend to focus on what stands out in an article or title–aka numbers in a sea of text.

Examples:

  • 5 Tax Write-Offs You Could Be Missing
  • What Does Q2 of 2022 Have in Store for Family Law Practices?
  • Why SEO Is No Longer ‘Nice to Have’ for Small Businesses in 2022

Bonus Tip: Act Like You’re Writing to a Real Person

When writing content for clients or potential clients, write like you’re writing to a person.

Not to people. Not to search engines.

To one singular person.

It may feel weird at first, but the writing connects better with your audience when you act like you’re writing it to one person. 

It takes a minute to get the hang of headline writing, but when you’re a small business owner, learning on the fly is what you do–you got this!
Find out more about how you can enhance your content marketing for the better by booking a free discovery call with GoBeyond SEO today.

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Local SEO Marketing Small Business Marketing Small Business SEO

Word of Mouth Has Gone Digital

Word of mouth (WoM) has gone digital. It’s no longer good enough to hear from one or two people that a movie is good or entertaining. We won’t consider a hotel that doesn’t meet our own health and safety standards. We now rely upon a consensus of reviews before we make our decisions, even if it is something as simple as choosing a movie from our couch.

In 2022, this kind of feedback crowd-sourcing is ubiquitous. From restaurants to law firms, or  from pet groomers to industrial cleaning companies, reviews are (or should be) a big part of the marketing strategy for businesses, large or small.

Many business owners feel that their best clients come from word of mouth. And they’re probably right.

If only there was a way to have those sweet, positive, and wildly influential words used to describe their business immortalized in some way so that future prospects and potential clients could hear them–oh wait, there is! It’s called Google reviews. And if you’re not prioritizing Google reviews, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

3 Ways Google Reviews Affect Your Business

Online reviews are the closest thing we have to WoM in the digital realm, and they absolutely matter for your business. Here are three ways Google reviews can impact your online visibility and reputation.

  1. Reviews impact SEO. You read that right. Getting more of them, especially positive ones, improves your digital visibility and conversion rate. That means more clients for you. (Psst: Dealing with a fake or negative review? We’ve got you.) 
  2. Google trusts the power of WoM marketing. It factors in the quantity and quality of reviews to evaluate where and when your business should show up in search engine results. Just as customers use online reviews to validate their purchase decisions, Google and other search engines take a similar stance when showing results.
  3. Users and search engines have a similar objective. Google wants to weed through the vast web to deliver the right information, service, or product to you in the fastest way possible, and this aligns with our goals as searchers. In fact, reviews pretty much work as crowd-sourced WoM recommendations.

If you’re already prioritizing Google reviews and reviews from other sites, good for you. If you have a system or process in place already, even better. 

However, if you haven’t been able to net enough positive Google review to impact your business, it may be time to consider setting up an automated process to make getting reviews simple, painless, and effective.

GoBeyond SEO works with business owners to implement an automated process to make it easy for customers to write and submit reviews and to give businesses a cringe-free way to ask for them. Find out more by booking a free discovery call with us.

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Search Engine Optimization Tips Small Business Marketing

Are you Missing this Important Opportunity to Get More Clients?

Word of Mouth (WoM) will always be the best form of advertising, but it’s gone digital. If you’re not prioritizing your Google reviews and actively managing your digital reputation, you are missing an important opportunity to be visible and vetted by more clients or customers. Keep reading to learn more about online reviews and how they affect your rankings in Google.

How Google Reviews Can Bring You Clients

When you enter a local search term into Google, three main factors will affect the ranking of each site displayed:

  • Relevance
  • Distance
  • Prominence

The first two ranking factors are explanatory–Google will attempt to present the most relevant options within your immediate vicinity. Makes sense, right?

Reviews, however, fall into the category of prominence. If you searched for “dog groomer” and found one with hundreds of highly rated reviews, that groomer may outrank a closer local competitor if they have fewer, less positive ratings and reviews.

3 Simple Steps to Get More Reviews and Boost Your Rankings

Let’s say you’re one of the many businesses that doesn’t have a ton of reviews. Here are three steps you can take to bump those review numbers and, consequently, your SEO results.

 1. Fix Your Listings 

“Near me” searches are growing exponentially year after year. With the rise of voice search, they’ll be even more important. It’s estimated that 22% of voice searches are location-based. That’s a big number and growing by the minute.

If you haven’t done so already, claim your Google My Business (GMB) profile. This is your most visible listing, since it will show up every time someone does a search for your business.

It’s incredible how many businesses don’t take this simple step to boost their rankings and online visibility. Some of these businesses still have their old business address and phone number listed and then wonder why they don’t get more phone calls!

If you want to make sure your Google listing (or Yelp, Bing, or any other listing service) is correct, Google your company and see what pops up. If you think you need help fixing it, give us a shout. We update and optimize Google My Business (and other) listings every day.

2. Send Review Requests 

Customers trust reviews. The more reviews you have, the better. That’s why it’s important to ask your customers to leave reviews. This is the kind of social proof that future customers will trust and can ultimately encourage them to convert. 

To get the best results, make sure you’re sending review requests via text and email. This makes the process easy for the customer. They don’t have to spend time looking for your business or where to post the review. All they have to do is click the link and write about their experience.

Also, there’s no need to feel weird about asking. Happy customers love to help out. Asking can feel awkward, but more for you than for them. Make it easy for them and you’ll get more reviews. If asking directly is still too much for you, GoBeyond has a cringe-proof process in place to get you those reviews without making you blush.

3. Respond to Customer Reviews 

Lots of business owners don’t respond to online reviews. That’s a big mistake. A study by Harvard Business School showed that responding to reviews leads to a higher overall star rating. 

But the benefits don’t end there. Genuine responses help build loyalty with your customers. A simple “Thanks a ton, we hope to see you soon!” can leave a positive impression in the mind of your customers and encourage them to come back for more. 

Google has confirmed that responding to reviews can help your business rank higher on search engines. What’s not to love about that?

Don’t Stress About Getting Reviews

Word of Mouth will always be a factor when it comes to decision making. We’re social creatures and the opinions of others dictate everything from how we behave at the dinner table to how we make our laws. Word of Mouth has not and will never go away, but how we access those opinions has changed permanently.

Don’t stress about the review process. These days, having the occasional bad review is not a business death sentence. The far worse outcome sounds more like this: “Acme Products and Services? Never heard of ‘em”.

Want to automate your review process to make it easier and less painful to get more reviews of your business? Contact GoBeyond SEO to learn more about our process for getting reviews without the hassle.

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GoBeyond Graphic Design How We Can Help Inbound Marketing Lead Generation Local SEO PPC Small Business Marketing Small Business SEO Social Media

How to Hire the Best Digital Marketing Company

An appealing website is a great start for establishing an online presence, and the website may even be worth the investment, but the right digital marketing plan can help potential clients find you online.

If you’re going to outsource Digital Marketing (SEO, PPC, Social Media) follow these steps and hire the best company.

1. Know Your Needs Before Choosing an SEO Company

Understanding your needs is the first crucial step. Do you just need SEO or graphic design, social media, and/or paid advertising. Take an audit of your existing online presence, see what’s missing and what you need moving forward. You can’t hire the right company if you don’t know what you need.  The right company can make recommendations of course, but in the end it’s up to you. No one knows your business better than you do.

Draft a budget, and be realistic about the services you’ll get.  SEO costs can vary so your budget may need to be flexible, but have a good idea on what you want to spend.

2. Use the ‘Two-way Interview’ Approach

In a one-way interview, the potential SEO company will submit a proposal for you to review. It’s hard to learn about a company with this type of approach, and SEO is not a one-size-fits-all approach.  The company you’re hiring needs to know specifics about your business as well.

Two-way interviews make the recruitment process more engaging, and help you explore multiple aspects of your marketing operations.  Maybe you’ll discover that Google Ads or social media is a better strategy for your type of business.  Either way, an in-depth conversations should happen so your money is well spent.

The potential SEO agency should always inquire about your company’s unique selling point (USP).   Expect to share the goals of your website, your current means for attracting customers, your CPC, current budget, what’s working, and what’s not.  Keeping this information private only makes the agencies job harder.  If needed, have them sign an NDA but in my experience I’ve found that the more thorough and open the process is, the faster you can hit the ground running, and start generation positive ROI.

3. Do Your Own Research

As a client you need to be researching SEO companies before hiring them.

At the very least visit the potential agencies website to see if there are clients listed, biographies or addresses listed. The firm shouldn’t be hiding anything from you if it wants to have you as a customer.   At the very least you’ll be able to tell what type of business they are i.e a small agency with a few people or a huge organization with a huge sales team.  Working with either can have its pros and cons but know what you’re getting into.

4. Verify References

References help determine if a company has an impressive track record, and gives you insights on the types of clients they’ve worked with.  Even if you don’t call the references there’s value in asking.  Do they push back or are they glad to provide them?

Ask each digital marketing agency for at least three customers you can reach, and ask about the results generated from the SEO and digital marketing efforts.

Use the references to identify the pros & cons of each SEO firm.  You’ll learn about quality of work, customer support and many other things you won’t get directly from the agency.

5. Credibility

Review sites are a great way to determine an agency’s credibility. Check Google My Business, Yelp and other industry listings for positive & negative reviews.  Negative reviews may not be a deal breaker but check and see how the company responded to those reviews. Did they do it in a professional manner?

Check whether the company is listed on BBB. See if the agency’s employees are members of any groups or associations.

The agency should also have a nice website and a solid online presence. Visit the agency’s social media pages to see whether they feature quality content.

6. Request an Audit for Your Site

Any reputable online marketing agency will audit your website and be able to tell you where your short comings are, but it also takes a little homework on your end as well.

If they ask give the agency access to your analytics data and let them know what online resources you’ve used already. Having several candidates perform the audits helps you compare the results and choose the best company for you.

The SEO company should evaluate your website’s rankings in the search engines, and identify what issues may be preventing your website from ranking higher.

Website audits will help determine your businesses relevance on the web. The reports should suggest ways to make your content easier to find, and they should list SEO strategies that suit your budget and needs.

7. Involve Your Team When Making the Final Decision

SEO can help your site draw larger audiences, increase conversion rates and have positive ROI. An SEO company should offer you and your team strategies to make these goals achievable.  Depending on what your goals are that will determine who in your company they’ll be working with.

If they’ll be working heavily with the sales team then you’ll want their opinion.  Respect their suggestions and use them to guide your final decision.

The Right Digital Marketing

Our company targets businesses like yours looking to use digital marketing services to optimize their online presence. Our digital marketing portfolio includes web design, SEO, PPC and social media marketing.

Talk to us about how we can help you outsmart your competition with our Predictable Leads System.

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Charlotte Law Firm Marketing Lead Generation Local SEO PPC Search Engine Optimization Tips SEO Tips Small Business Marketing Social Media Marketing

Law Firm Marketing 101: An Essential Guide for Family Lawyers

These days, it’s not enough that you have an office to meet clients. You have to have a strong online presence. Check out this guide on law firm marketing.

Every lawyer who ventures out on their own has a vision of a bustling practice and nailing one case after another. In reality, most find themselves with less action and more thumb-twiddling, than they’d like to admit.

The field of law, including family law, is a saturated and competitive industry. Why are your competitors getting more business than you are? What are they doing that you aren’t?

One of the most effective ways to build your practice is to have the right digital marketing strategy. After all, 85% of people hit the internet when they’re looking for local businesses, so a strong online presence goes a long way.

For a more effective and revenue-boosting strategy, check out these law firm marketing tips.

Family Law Firm Marketing Tips for Your Digital Strategy

Using the online world to gain business requires a few elements. You need people to know who you are. You need them to find you. And you need to be able to convert them to clients. Start with these steps.

1. Make It Easy

Before you jump headfirst into trying to get more visitors to your site, make sure your site has what it takes to convert those visitors into clients. Your key goal should be to make it easy for clients to make that conversion.

First, you need to guide clients toward taking the next step. Every page of your site should have a call-to-action. For instance, maybe you have a page about custody arrangements in divorce. At the end of the page’s content, invite users to contact you about their own custody case. Display a button they can click to do this.

Next, make it as convenient as possible for them to get in touch with you. The days of instructing clients to call you during hours of your convenience are over. Offer a way for them to contact you online with their questions. With that information, you or your staff can call them when you’re in the office.

2. Know How to Use Social Media

Every marketer talks about the importance of social media marketing today. They’re right, it is important, but it’s not just about whether you have it: it’s about how you use it.

On your social media pages, you should focus on spreading information. Your posts shouldn’t sound like sales pitches, because readers will tune out in a heartbeat.

Instead, your goal on social media should be to establish yourself as a trusted expert in your field. If you do this, you’ll be the one people will turn to when they need a lawyer.

3. Get Your Speed Up

It’s not just the content of your website that matters but the technical performance as well. After all, do you stay on a site that isn’t loading or one that doesn’t work well? Neither will your clients.

One of the key statistics you need to check is your website speed. If your site doesn’t load within two or three seconds, about half of users will head elsewhere.

When users leave your site so quickly, it raises your bounce rate which hurts your search engine optimization, or SEO. Even those users who stay are already starting to get frustrated, so they won’t have the best impression of your site.

4. Blog and Blog Well

Blogging is an important way to improve your digital marketing. The frequent updates and valuable content will improve your search engine optimization, and each blog post is providing content for your social media pages.

Those are just the benefits you get from posting each blog. When people actually read them, your articles will display your knowledge as an expert and will establish a connection with the reader and a growing trust.

Of course, not all blogging practices will give you the same benefits. Make sure you post blogs on a consistent basis and that the content is valuable and well-written. Focus on topics your clients really want, like tips for negotiating a custody agreement.

6. Get On Camera

If you don’t already use videos in your digital marketing strategy, now is the time to start. Videos are an engaging medium that users love, and there are so many ways to use them to market your firm.

You can start with simple “talking head videos,” in which you’re sharing your knowledge about a particular subject. You could also use videos to share a tour of your office or to discuss your recent interesting cases (with confidentiality of course).

After you have a video ready, post it everywhere. We’re talking about YouTube, your own website, and your social media pages as well.

7. Get Help from the Past

There’s a lot of trust involved when a client chooses a lawyer, and especially a family lawyer. One of the best ways for new clients to see that you’re trustworthy is to hear it from your past clients.

Encourage your happy clients to post reviews for you on Google, Yelp, and other sites. You can even ask them for a brief testimonial that you can post online. In many cases, reviews and testimonials are a client’s deciding factor when they choose their lawyer.

8. Prioritize Local Search Engine Optimization

One of the most common mistakes local businesses make is forgetting about local SEO. For instance, they optimize their site for keywords like “family lawyer” and “family law firm” rather than “Charlotte family lawyer” or “family law in Charlotte.”

As a law firm, attracting site visitors in California might help your statistics but it won’t bring you clients. Be sure to incorporate local SEO into your digital marketing strategy.

Building Your Client Base

Many lawyers think that if they do good work, the clients will follow. That’s not often the case. As you build your reputation as a great lawyer, you still need to spread the word about your business. The law firm marketing tips above are a great start.

If you’re ready to really jumpstart your growth, contact our digital marketing experts for a more comprehensive plan.

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Charlotte Law Firm Marketing Lead Generation Local SEO Search Engine Optimization Tips SEO Services SEO Tips Small Business SEO

Why SEO for Lawyers Can Make or Break Your Case

As an attorney, you’re well aware that the legal market in the digital age is more competitive than ever before.

You’ve created what you thought was a strong website for your Charlotte-based law firm, but your traffic hasn’t increased — and neither has your client volume.

In this post, we’ll tell you why SEO for lawyers is something that your firm can no longer afford to do without.

We’ll also let you know where you can connect with attorney SEO services that will increase your conversions and give you the kind of results your firm deserves.

Poor SEO Will Cost You in the Rankings

One of the biggest reasons why you need to take legal SEO as seriously as your next client’s case, is because it directly affects where your website will land when it comes to the search engine result pages, or SERPs for short. About 75% of online consumers say they never bother to go past the first page of search engine results.

Even if you’ve worked hard to create a website that’s easy to navigate and informative, if it’s not designed with SEO in mind, all of your hard work will be for nothing. Additionally, SEO for law firms is all about outranking your competitors. You want to be certain that your law firm’s website shows up in the SERPs before your biggest competitor’s site does.

But it’s not just about choosing the right keywords and hacking your way to the top of the first page of Google. Remember that a strong SEO strategy is also influenced by your website’s loading speed and design.

It’s obvious that a user won’t bother to spend much time — less than three seconds, to be exact — on a website that’s slow to load. A potential client also won’t think much of a law firm website that’s full of spammy pop-ups, broken links, and aggressive, unprofessional graphics.

You won’t just lose a client — a poorly-designed website also impacts your site’s dwell time. This is the average length of time that a user stays on your site.

Sites with higher dwell times are recognized by Google and other search engines as providing useful, relevant information. So, they rank higher than those that have lower dwell times.

Remember, it’s not just your law firm’s reputation that’s on the line. It’s also about how SEO affects your site’s overall visibility.

The Right SEO Strategy Puts You in Front of Your Target Market

Another reason why SEO for lawyers directly affects your firm’s success?

Because the right keywords and link strategies can shorten the time it takes for your target market to find you online, and without a proper legal SEO strategy that target market might not be able to find you online.

There are currently more than 1.5 billion websites on the Internet — and that number is increasing every minute. And while all 1.5 billion of them might not be related to the legal industry, a good portion of them will be.

Keywords, or what people type into search engines to help them find what they’re looking for online, are an essential part of SEO for law firms.

First of all, your keywords should include references to the specific type of legal work that you do. For example, if you specialize in divorce law, you might choose a high-ranking keyword like “divorce attorney” or “hiring a divorce lawyer.”

But something is missing from those keywords — your location. Location-based keywords are the bread and butter of legal SEO. They don’t just help you find people who need your services. They ensure that the people who need your legal services and live within your practice area end up on your website.

Including location-based keywords like “Charlotte NC divorce attorney” or “Divorce attorney Myers Park” will get you exactly the kind of traffic you’re looking for.

SEO Establishes You as an Authority in the Legal Industry

As a legal professional, you’ve spent years earning your degrees, creating your network, and establishing a reputation in the courtroom.

Now, you need to make sure that your SEO strategy is working to effectively translate that reputation and work to the digital world. Superior legal SEO helps you to establish yourself as the go-to legal authority within your niche and service area.

It does this by allowing you to join the digital conversion, whether that conversation is taking place on your blog, your YouTube channel, or even on a third-party site.

Remember that an effective SEO strategy isn’t just about what’s on your website.

It also includes your social media profiles, any guest posts that you write for legal websites and online journals, and even third-party review sites where past clients can discuss their experience with you.

In other words, to get attorney SEO done right, you need seamless integration between all of your different online accounts and presences.

Looking for Professional Guidance on SEO for Lawyers?

We hope that this post has helped you to understand why SEO for lawyers is such an important part of your overall marketing strategy.

Remember that SEO doesn’t just help you to outrank your competitors and show up in front of the right people. It also creates a sense of authority and trust between your firm and your target market.

To get an even better understanding of how not just SEO, but our services can help your law firm to grow, check out our case study.

When you’re ready to put the right kind of legal SEO strategy into place for your firm, reach out to us to chat.

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Blog Charlotte Law Firm Marketing Lead Generation PPC Small Business Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Part 2 – Before You Begin: Measurement, Tracking and Setting Up Your Account

Although PPC has been a very successful and profitable means of online marketing for a wide range of industries and business sizes, it can also be very costly and have zero results. Prior to beginning your first PPC campaign, here are a few things to help with your preparation:

PPC Campaign Goals

All marketing efforts begin with some type of goal in mind and PPC is no different. Actually, goals are directly related to the structure of your PPC campaigns, making them especially important. For example, you can structure your campaigns to target your ideal audience based on where they are in the buying cycle. What is it you want to achieve?  Are you a new business wanting to build awareness or drive traffic to your website? Are you trying to generate leads or increase revenue? Perhaps you want to increase in-store visits or get the phone ringing. Whatever your goals are, be sure to define them first before beginning your PPC Campaign.

Sufficient PPC Budget

Without a sufficient budget, your ads won’t show often. There are many ways to control spend in AdWords, but doing it by limiting budget is just about the worst way to do so. It also means you won’t get enough clicks or conversion data to learn from and to optimize your campaigns, let alone meet your business goals.

Landing Pages

No matter how good your ads are, how you structure your Adwords campaigns or how many optimization tools you utilize through the Adwords platform, if your landing page isn’t great, your campaign can’t be. With mobile devices accounting for the majority of searches and clicks, the mobile version of your landing page has to load fast, provide the user with results relevant to their query and give a clear call to action.

In the new Google Adwords interface, there is now a Landing Pages report providing a “mobile-friendly click rate” and “valid AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) click rate” to give advertisers more insight on how their landing pages perform on mobile devices. Google’s test tool also lets you check how mobile-friendly your landing pages are.

If your advertising goal is to generate leads, but your landing page doesn’t have a clear call to action or even a lead form, you’re probably not going to achieve good campaign results, not to mention, you’ll be sending unfavorable signals to the search engines based on user behavior and experience.

Let’s say you sell shoes and your ad for a search query “men’s shoes” directs that user to your home page versus the men’s shoes page.  Most people aren’t going to navigate around your site to find what they wanted in the first place, but instead, hit the back button and click elsewhere.  This is one of those factors from the first part of this series about Ad Quality Score, which will certainly suffer if your landing page doesn’t provide a good user experience.

An Experimental Mentality

Your AdWords campaigns may not immediately deliver optimal results. The most successful search campaigns require constant testing, analyzing and optimizing.  Performance relies on many strategic factors from bidding to targeting to ad copies to landing pages. Additionally, search engines are always testing and making changes so the learning curve is constant and there will always be an opportunity to try something new.

Resources

Since it’s easy to waste money on an Adwords campaign, making sure you have dedicated people and resources in place is essential.  Your budget size and how complex your campaigns are will help determine how much time and talent you should expect to devote to managing, testing, analyzing and optimizing your paid search efforts.

Measuring and Tracking

All you need is a primary contact and a credit card to create a new AdWords account, but prior to starting a campaign, it’s imperative you take some essential steps first, making sure you get all the reporting and tracking needed in order to measure and optimize your campaigns.

There are several metrics you’ll need to understand when running and analyzing PPC campaigns.

Impressions: The number of times your ads were served in the search results.

Clicks: The number of times users clicked on or engaged with your ads.

Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who clicked on your ad. It is calculated by dividing clicks by impressions. CTR is a very important indicator of how well your ads are performing.

Average CPC: The average cost per click paid for the clicks received.

Average position: Where your ads appeared on the search engine results page (SERP.) The higher the position, the greater the visibility you’ll have. Average position also indicates how your Ad Rank compares with other ads.

Conversions: The number of conversion actions your ads have generated. The actions to be tracked are set up at the account level.

Conversion rate: The percentage of people who clicked on your ads and ended up converting.

Quality Score: Reported at the keyword level on a scale of 1 to 10, Quality Score is an indicator of how relevant your ads, keywords and landing pages are to the user. A higher Quality Score can mean lower CPCs and better ad positions.

There are literally dozens of additional reporting metrics available in AdWords and you can even create your reports with custom columns.

Conversion tracking: What can you measure?

Conversion tracking allows you to understand how effective your ads are in resulting in valuable customer activity.  The setup process is different, depending on what type of conversion you want to track, so first, you must choose a conversion source.  A conversion source is where your conversions come from like phone calls, app downloads, newsletter sign-ups, website purchases, etc. There are four main types of conversions you can track in AdWords:

  1. Website Actions: This is the most common type of conversion tracking, so it will be covered in more detail below. Google provides these five categories for types of website actions you can track: Purchase/Sale, Sign-up, Lead, View of a key page, and Other.
  2. App installs and in-app actions: If you are promoting an app, you can track app conversions through your app analytics platform.  Additionally, AdWords integrates intrinsically with its own Firebase app analytics platform, the Google Play app store or from third-party analytics platform.
  3. Phone calls: If you’re a business whose goal is to generate phone calls, there are multiple ways search engines have developed to drive phone calls from search ads. On mobile devices, there is even an option to create a “Call-only” ad where the number pops up when the ad is clicked, versus redirecting the user to a website or landing page.  AdWords gives three options for setting up phone call conversion tracking:a) Calls from ads using call extensions or call-only ads.  This tracks when someone calls you directly from an ad. This option requires you to use Google forwarding numbers.b) Calls to a phone number on your website.  This tracks when someone clicks on one of your ads, then calls your business from a phone number on your landing page or website.  This option also requires you to use Google forwarding numbers as well as adding a tag to your landing page or website.c)  Clicks on your phone number on your mobile website.  This tracks when someone clicks a phone number link on your mobile website.  This option does not require the use of a Google forwarding number, but does require you to add a tag to your mobile website.

What’s a Google forwarding number?   A unique phone number provided by Google displayed in your ads.  If a potential customer calls or messages this phone number, AdWords will route the call or message to your business phone number. With this information, you’ll have detailed reports about calls or messages generated from your ads.

  1. Import: This option allows you import conversion data from another source.  AdWords integrations options are Google Analytics, Firebase, Third-party app analytics and Salesforce. Aside from these four options you can also upload conversions in a file or with the API by choosing the fifth option: Other data sources or CRMs.  Under this option you choose whether to track conversions from clicks or calls.

Step-by-step: Setting up website conversion action tracking:

Here is what the setup screen looks like for tracking website conversion actions. To access within the AdWords platform, click on ‘Tools’, indicated by a wrench in the upper right hand corner.  Under ‘Measurement’, click ‘Conversions’ and choose ‘Website’.

Follow these steps:

  1. Name the action.  Choose something as relevant as possible so anyone using reporting will easily be able to recognize it.  For example, website clicks lead forms.
  2. Choose a category.  As mentioned above, your choices are Purchase/Sale, Sign-up, Lead, View of a key page, and Other.
  3. Choose a value. The value depends on the kind of conversion you’re tracking. If your business or client has designated a specific value for an ebook download, for example, you can choose “Use the same value for each conversion” and enter that value. An e-commerce site, however, will usually want to use the value of the total sale value, which typically will vary by customer. In this situation, choose “Use different values for each conversion.” Keep in mind you’ll need to edit the conversion tag to track transaction-specific values. Third, you can choose not to assign a monetary value to a conversion at all, in which case you would choose “Don’t use a value”.
  4. Choose a count.  “Every” is recommended for purchases, where every conversion adds value.  If your business wants to count three ebook downloads by the same user only once, choose “One”.
  5. Choose a conversion window. This is how long you want to track the conversion after your ad receives a click.  For example, an insurance salesman may want to track a conversion for 5 days for a quote request, but 60 days for a policy sale.  If you’re not sure how long it takes for your customers to convert, you can segment your reports by “Days to conversion” to find out.
  6. View-through conversion window.  This is only for video and display ads, not search.  It counts a conversion when it occurs after a video or display ad impression, but is clicked on later.  The default is one day for this and in search you won’t need to change it.
  7. Include in “Conversions”. This lets you decide if these conversions should be included in your “Conversions” and “Conversion value” columns. If you uncheck it, data will still appear in the “All conv.” column.  AdWords uses the Conversions column for its Smart Bidding or automated bidding (which will be covered in part 3). If you want to measure an action, but not have your bids optimized against that action you can uncheck this box.  For example, visits to a specific page on your website.
  8. Attribution model. This setting determines how much credit each click receives for your conversions.  In the Adwords platform, you can set an attribution model for each conversion event you create. Currently the default is set to “Last Click”.  There is an attribution modeling report you can use to compare the different models to one another. Attribution models are covered in more detail next.

AdWords Attribution Models

Attribution models were created to help advertisers understand how their search marketing efforts directly relate to a user converting. How do you know exactly what keywords and ads contributed to a conversion?  Knowing this data is especially important as users perform research and make purchases across multiple devices and channels.

AdWords Attribution models only reference ad clicks and engagements for Search and Shopping Ads on google.com and are not available for app and in-store conversions.

Attribution models provide you with more control over how much credit each ad and keyword receives for your conversions, providing these benefits:

  1. a) Reach potential customers earlier in the buying cycle by discovering opportunities to influence them earlier on the path to converting.
  2. b) Match to your business by using a model that is best suited for how your target audience searches for your product or service.
  3. c) Improve your bidding by optimizing bids according to a better understanding of ad performance.

Example:

You own Simply Elegant Restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ.  A customer is directed to your website after clicking on your AdWords ads after the search queries “restaurant phoenix”, “restaurant scottsdale”, “5 star restaurant scottsdale” and lastly, “5 star simply elegant restaurant scottsdale”.

  • In the “Last click” attribution model, the last keyword, “5 star simply elegant restaurant scottsdale” would receive 100% of the credit for the conversion.
  • In the “First click” attribution model, the first keyword, “restaurant phoenix”, would receive 100% of the credit for the conversion.
  • In the “Linear” attribution model, each keyword would share equal credit of 25% each for the conversion.
  • In the “Time decay” attribution model, the keyword “5 star simply elegant restaurant scottsdale” would receive the most credit since it was searched closest to the conversion.  The “restaurant phoenix” keyword would receive the least amount of credit because it was the earliest search.
  • In the “Position-based” attribution model, “restaurant phoenix” and “5 star simply elegant restaurant scottsdale” would each receive 40% credit and  “restaurant scottsdale” and “5 star restaurant scottsdale” would each receive 10%.
  • In the “Data-driven” attribution model, each keyword would receive partial credit, depending on how much it contributed to driving the conversion.  You would only see this option if you had sufficient data in your account. Find out more about data-driven attribution here.

Setting Up Your Adwords Account

Each individual business or client will need to have its own account when you’re setting up AdWords. Within each is where important contact details, payment information and account access permissions are kept.

Google only allows one ad per website to appear in search results for text ads; this is to provide a better user experience.  Shopping ads are the exception because several related products from the same seller may appear in the results.

To set up your account, click on the “Tools”/wrench icon in the upper right-hand corner:

In Billing and payments, you’ll set up your contact and payment information.  Invoicing is available, but you have to contact Google directly to initiate this.

Under Business data is ad customizer data, ad extension, dynamic ad and page feeds.  Don’t worry about this in the beginning; you’ll return here after your setup is complete.

Account access is simply that; add users to your account and choose their levels of access.

Linked Accounts

Before you launch your first campaigns, you’ll want to link your accounts from other Google services in order to transfer data back and forth between them.

Currently, you can link to these Google services:

  • Google Analytics
  • Google Firebase
  • Google Play
  • Salesforce
  • Third-party app analytics
  • Google Hotel Ads Center
  • Google Merchant Center
  • YouTube
  • Search Console
  • Ads Data Hub

Utilizing Google Analytics is extremely valuable as it allows for importing conversion goals and audiences from Analytics into AdWords. Through Google Analytics, you can analyze your AdWords campaign performance, compare it to other channels and most importantly, understand how users behave on your website after clicking your ads.

Google Firebase is great if you have Android and iOS apps.  Firebase shows you how your campaigns relate to app installs and in-app actions. You can create mobile app remarketing lists with Firebase audiences and view AdWords cost data in Firebase.

Also app related, with Google Play, you can learn what ads are driving action by tracking in-app purchases and can also create remarketing lists based on current users.

If you use Salesforce, link so you can import sales leads and funnel that data into AdWords.  After a lead comes from a click on your ad, you can use this data to optimize your campaigns.

Google shares signed-in user data across its services. Linking your YouTube channel to AdWords will not only allow you to run video campaigns on YouTube, but you’ll also be able to build retargeting lists of people who’ve watched your videos and measure engagement on your video ads.

Linking Google Search Console will enable you to import organic search results, compare your organic and paid coverage and see how your ads and organic listings perform together and alone.

Ads Data Hub is not available to all advertisers.  Linking to this makes campaign data available in a secure, cloud-based environment, to third party vendors and agencies for verification and/or analysis

Account Settings

After the account setup process is completed, it’s important you navigate to another Account settings tab.  Click “Settings” on the bottom left hand side and then click “Account Settings.”

Tracking:  If you’re using a third-party platform for analytics, this is where you can add tracking parameters that will apply to the account level, campaign level, ad group level, ad level or the most specific, the keyword level. You can also add Parallel Tracking which helps in loading your landing page quicker.  It sends users directly from your ad to the final URL while the click measurement occurs in the background. This can help improve ad performance and increase conversions.

Auto-tagging: Enabling this feature is necessary to import conversion data into Analytics or a third-party analytics platform, for example, your CRM.

Message Reporting: This must be on if you are using a messaging extension or the data collected from it cannot be captured in the reporting insights.  Extensions will be covered in more detail in the third and final part of this series.

Inventory Type: For video campaigns only.

Content Exclusions: This allows you to opt out of showing your ads on content that is not suited for your brand.  Digital content labels pertain to audience maturity; Sensitive content lets you choose specific websites, videos or apps, for example, that may not fit your brand; and Content type refers to excluding your ads from certain categories of content.

Ad Suggestions: New as of March 2018, Google automatically creates and applies ad suggestions in your ad groups, especially in ad groups that may only have one ad.  This setting is on by default and Google will automatically apply the changes after 14 days if you don’t dismiss them or apply them yourself sooner from the Recommendations page.

Conclusion

Hopefully at this point you’re more than convinced of the value of PPC as a means of online marketing.  It truly is transparent as you can see with all of the measuring and tracking options available through the AdWords platform.  Remember the importance of the steps before getting started as they are vital to a successful start of your campaigns. Next, in part 3, we’ll wrap up this series by covering campaign structure, ad groups, ad extensions, setting up your search campaign, ads automation and additional targeting capabilities.

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Kristy is an Assistant & Coordinator of Awesome. She has worked extensively in academic administration and brings a varied wealth of knowledge. As a self-starter, she is ready to take on news projects and see them through to completion. Always curious, Kristy is an avid researcher and delights in the challenge of learning new skills.

When Kristy isn’t organizing or researching something, you can find her listening to a true crime podcast, re-watching How I Met Your Mother or The Big Bang Theory and coming up with some crazy shenanigan for her family’s next adventure.

5 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT KRISTY

  1. Kristy prefers the Harry Potter books over the movies. Her favorite book is The Prisoner of Azkaban and her favorite character is Luna Lovegood. Ravenclaw house. She just started her 8-year-old son on listening to the books.
  2. Kristy has a nail technician license, esthetician license, medical assisting certification, associate degree, and bachelor’s degree. She didn’t get her full cosmetology license because she can barely do her own hair, she shouldn’t be trusted with someone else’s.
  3. She doesn’t know how to gamble but is originally from Las Vegas, Nevada. She moved to Colorado three months before her 21st birthday.
  4. Her high school graduating class consisted of only 20 people.
  5. Kristy loves gift giving. One of her great joys in life is finding the “perfect” gift.
Kristy Elias