Phil

Overlooked Local SEO Posts of Early 2014

May 1, 2014 by Phil 8 Comments

The first 4 months of 2014 brought some big posts that got plenty of attention in the “local” space (and for good reason).

But then there were some great posts that didn’t get as much fanfare. Not that they were ignored; I just think they’re widely useful.

Here are some posts worth reading:

Why You Should Check Facebook and Foursquare Frequently for Duplicates – Nyagoslav Zhekov

3 Local SEO Secrets Learned Over Time – Mikel Zaremba

7 Deadly Sins of Responding to Negative Reviews – Gradiva Couzin

Checking Google Places Penalties – Ben Roland

New Way to Measure How you Stack up to Competitors on Google Plus: View Counts – Joy Hawkins

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Of the above, do you have a favorite?

Any other “overlooked” posts you’d recommend?

Leave a comment!

How to Use Google Places Descriptors: Some Early Best-Practices

April 28, 2014 by Phil 40 Comments

In February, Google started allowing you to add a “single descriptor” to your Google Places page – that is, a word or short phrase that isn’t part of your business name.

It’s a huge departure from Google’s old policy, which was that you must use your legal or “offline” business name. There couldn’t be any embellishment.

For example, under the old rules, if your business was called “Jones & Jones,” that’s what you had to put in the “business name” field of your Google Places page. Now, it could be “Jones & Jones Roofing” or “Jones & Jones Bankruptcy Law.”

This rule-change is 30% opportunity and 70% problem. To dig into the implications, read this post by Mike Blumenthal, this thread on Linda Buquet’s forum, and watch minutes 44-49 of this MaxImpact (then watch the whole thing).

I’d like to focus on how I’d suggest using a “descriptor,” if you’re considering it.

Do NOT take any of this for gospel. My pointers are based entirely on what I’ve observed with a handful of clients who’ve used descriptors over the past couple of months.

I’m also not saying you should or should not use a descriptor for your business. That’s for you to decide.

A few other things to keep in mind:

This is Google’s house. Google’s rules.
The rules can (and probably will) change.
The rules are unclear.

Anyway, here are my personal descriptor dos and don’ts (in no particular order):

1. Strongly consider adding a descriptor if there is a practical, non-SEO-related reason to do it. For example, it’s probably worth trying if you have multiple locations you’d like to differentiate, or if the name of your Google Places is “Dr. John Doe,” or it simply gives no indication of what you do. I guess don’t rule it out if rankings are your sole reason for adding a descriptor; just be more cautious (and paranoid).

2. The fewer words, the better. It’s true that Google is unclear about how many words constitute a “descriptor.” But don’t assume it’s a free-for-all – or that you’d even benefit from stuffing in multiple words.

3. Don’t change all your citations to match your tweaked Google Places name. Google should be able to recognize that they all refer to the same business. Also, if (when?) Google does another 180, you’ll want to avoid having to change all your citations again.

4. Don’t keep messing with the descriptor. No, it’s not set in stone. But any change in rankings will probably take a couple of weeks to happen. Also, for all we know, Google might penalize you for trying on 10 descriptors like they’re pairs of shoes.

5. Put the descriptor at the end of your name. Don’t perform surgery on your whole name by reshuffling the words. That’s more likely to mess up your citation-consistency.

6. Using your city name as the descriptor probably doesn’t make sense unless you’re multi-location. Also, if you’ve done the proper work on your citations and you have your NAP on every page, Google almost certainly knows where you’re located.

7. It should be a “keyword” or a city name, but not both. That’s more likely to look spammy to Google.

8. Do all the local SEO work you were going to do anyway – even if your rankings get a bump from the descriptor. Otherwise your rankings are like Bill Murray’s character in Stripes before he joins the Army.

9. First make sure your Google Places listing is live – findable when you search for it by name. That gives you a baseline of where you are without the descriptor. If your listing isn’t even publicly visible, you have no way of knowing what effect the descriptor might have. And if you suspect a penalty, you also wouldn’t know what’s causing your listing to be penalized.

10. If you have multiple locations, it’s probably not wise to use a “descriptor” for all of them at once. See what happens when you try it for one or a couple of locations. Dip your toes in the water.

11. If you’re an SEO and you want to try the descriptor, ask your clients first! Tell them the risks – even if they’re the ones who suggested it in the first place.

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What’s been your experience with the “descriptor” so far?

What are your questions? Concerns?

Leave a comment!

Mike Ramsey on Local SEO for Law Firms

April 22, 2014 by Phil 26 Comments

You don’t need to be a lawyer – or work for lawyers – to benefit from battle-tested advice on local SEO in particular and marketing in general. (If you do work in the legal field, this is your lucky day.)

I’ve always admired Mike Ramsey’s approach to both. He’s known far and wide as the big kahuna at NiftyMarketing. Last year he launched a sister company, NiftyLaw, specifically to help law firms.

Not only are his clients in cutthroat local markets, but the legal-marketing space is also competitive. That’s a two-headed monster. I asked Mike some tough questions about both areas, and he didn’t shy away from them.

If you’re in a tough local market and need strategy tips, read on.

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Phil: NiftyMarketing has been around for a while, and doing pretty well. What made you want to add NiftyLaw to the mix – and why did you do it when you did?

Mike: I started thinking about where local agencies were headed and I decided there were 3 categories

1. Low Cost Provider – These are the extremely scalable outsource operations that have heavy churn and more sales people than service people.

2. Specialized – These are experts in specific verticals or specific areas of practice (think Darren and Nyagoslav with Citations or Scorpion Web Design with Lawyers)

3. Platforms – These are scalable tools like SIMPartners, MozLocal, Yext and Placeable that are being adopted by big brands.

I realized that Nifty Marketing was trying to be a little too much of everything. We had so many processes for different types of situations that it became a little overwhelming and scale became a burden and not a blessing. We started to look at areas of our business where we were doing very well and areas that we liked and started cutting the things we didn’t. Nifty Marketing is still thriving but we have definitely focused and NiftyLaw.com is part of that focus.

Phil: Why do you specialize in the legal industry?

Mike: We had a massive influx of clients coming from the legal industry and I was asked to speak at a few legal conferences that basically started the momentum. By the time we actually launched NiftyLaw.com we were well on our way down the legal road.

Phil: Other agencies specialize in legal marketing. What makes you guys different?

Mike: I would say our content and local SEO knowledge. We are an extremely creative and fun agency and that is not the norm in legal. That’s what makes it fun. I mean, we roll into events with T shirts that say “I Make Law Sexy” and people either love us or hate us. But it definitely attracts the type of clients that we want to work with. Also, I just finished a book on Local Search for lawyers as there is just not than many people deep into Local that are sharing specific information for them.

[Phil: Here’s the book Mike referred to.]

Phil: Could you have started NiftyLaw before NiftyMarketing? In other words, how well could you have “specialized” right out of the gates, without first having worked with a wide range of clients and racking up lots of experience?

Mike: Nifty Marketing had to come first. It opened so many doors that would have never been there without the overall Nifty brand.

Phil: To what extent did you consider specializing in other industries?

Mike: Major consideration and it will happen. We have people on our team with massive amounts of knowledge into a lot of areas and industries that we could go into and over time I plan on doing just that.

Phil: When you were considering whether to “specialize,” what were the potential cons you were weighing against the pros? (I know the pros won.)

Mike: My biggest fear was that it would devalue Nifty Marketing as a whole. We have a great reputation in the local space and I didn’t want to see that change or to become less relevant by people thinking we only focus on lawyers now.

Phil: In what branches of law is local-online marketing extremely tough, versus only kind of tough?

Mike: Personal Injury can be crazy. Lots of competition and lots of spam. Easiest is actually small town lawyers that do everything. You can always find a way to do well given that situation.

Phil: It seems to take an extra-long time for attorneys to see results from a local SEO campaign, because of the high level of competition. What do you say to a potential client who wants the phone ringing yesterday?

Mike: Call OrangeSoda 😉

Phil: What’s a learning curve that you often have to help your attorney clients (in particular) through?

Mike: Keyword rankings do not equal business. No other industry I have ever seen has a group of people that care so much about where they rank compared to traffic, leads, and new business.

Phil: What parts of legal marketing / local SEO do you have down to a science, and what do you have to “play by ear” for each new client?

Mike: We are getting really good at legal website design and legal content. The area that is always hard and rightfully so is our link building for lawyers.

Phil: Roughly what percentage of your clients say they’ve worked with SEOs in the past?

Mike: 100% in the law space. I haven’t talked to a lawyer in a long time that has never had some form of SEO done already.

Phil: On the occasions it just doesn’t work out between you and a law firm client, what are the reasons?

Mike: Not Ranking Fast enough or not ranking on the keywords they care about the most. Even if all other signs are positive that can be a deal breaker.

Phil: What rules and regulations on legal-marketing drive you and your clients up a wall?

Mike: There are a lot of rules around testimonials and reviews in some markets that are insane. In some markets you can’t have reviews. It’s not realistic in today’s world to expect that of companies when 3^rd party sites can destroy a company’s reputation with reviews.

Phil: Competition between law practices is famously cutthroat. What kind of extra effort does it take for a law firm to get the upper hand in the local results?

Mike: Hours and Hours and Hours of Citation clean up and content creation. Unless you’re black-hat, and then you can just do anything with boat loads of links. 😉

We just did a study and found that the average personal injury lawyer in the US has around 9,000 links (more of this will come out in the future as we release info on our study). Can you think of another industry with that type of craziness?

Phil: You wrote a great post on how to approach “localized” organic rankings. You also stressed their importance during our webinar last year. How much of the work you do for law firms is geared toward Google+ Local visibility, versus visibility in the localized-organic results?

Mike: To me it’s actually the same work and it centers on the content strategy.

Phil: Is it absolutely necessary that your clients have a “content” strategy? If they don’t have one and aren’t willing to invest in having you help them develop one, do you take them on as clients?

Mike: Not any more. It is so hard to just work on maps when the organic opportunity is so big in local that you have to stop looking at local SEO as Google Places and MapMaker and start thinking of it as any way someone searches to find a local business. Maps display on very few law based words so there is a massive need for a solid content strategy and content marketing plan in place that expands the reach of a firm.

Phil: How do you encourage, urge, browbeat, or coerce your clients to do the “real-world marketing” (to borrow your phrase) that can win them links?

Mike: We pitch ideas once a month that we want to do, we get permission and we go. Things like real time traffic accident maps and law school scholarships can go a long ways in building authority.

Phil: Getting reviews always takes patience, and for law firms it takes even more patience. What’s the biggest mental barrier between many law firms and a good strategy for reviews? Is it that they aren’t sure whether online reviews are worth it, or that they wanted reviews yesterday?

Mike: It’s getting them to realize that they don’t need 1000 reviews. They need one a month. When we get that on the table most lawyers actually catch the vision and can accomplish that. 12 reviews a year is more than the average that we found across the industry, which is 5.4 total reviews across all websites we looked at.

[Phil: By the way, if privacy is an issue for your would-be reviewers, you’ll want to check out my post on anonymous/private reviews.)

Phil: OK, time for a lightning round. I’ll rattle off a word, and you rattle off your quick thoughts on it.

Paid listings on lawyer directories?

Mike: Everybody’s doing it 😉

Phil: Paying for LocalEze?

Mike: Do it through MozLocal because InfoGroup is there. 😉

Phil: Avvo reviews?

Mike: Important if Avvo ranks in your market and practice area.

Phil: Hummingbird update?

Mike: Brought back a crap ton of legal exact match domain spam.

Phil: Call-tracking numbers?

Mike: Common issue and still poorly understood. Lawyers want to use them on everything. They should only use them on their website in an image.

Phil: Virtual offices?

Mike: I think they are totally fine to use in the real world and I will fight Google on this forever. Virtual offices exist in the real world. They were used before Google, and Bars are OK with them so I hate that they are in a constantly changing gray area with Google. They still work very well for many firms while others lose their listing. That’s crazy.

Phil: What do some legal-marketers / SEOs do that drives you nuts?

Mike: Negative SEO in the form of links pointing at people.

Phil: What do some lawyers do that drives you bonkers?

Mike: Treat SEO’s like scum. I have very little tolerance for that.

Phil: What’s the most common SEO mistake you discover once you start working with a client?

Mike: Extremely spammy link profiles. I have been loving this tool for looking at that quickly.

Phil: What can business owners in other industries learn from attorneys who do local marketing very well? And how about from the ones who do it poorly?

Mike: They can learn from the competitive nature of lawyers. A lot of companies simply don’t care. That is not the case in law and even if it is intense and annoying if other industries put the focus that lawyers do into local search we would see crazy awesome innovation. As for the ones that do it poorly… Businesses need to learn that it’s about your customer and not yourself. The Band Legal marketers have big egos that lead to focusing on the wrong areas.

Phil: Let’s say you’ve worked for a client for a year, and have put in a ton of hours. What would a pie-chart of those hours look like?

Mike: Website 25%, Content 25%, Links 25%, Citations and Reviews 25%.

Phil: What do you / your team need to get better at?

Mike: I always want to achieve better local link acquisition. If we can continually innovate there we will always have work.

Phil: Has the work you’ve done to build NiftyLaw also helped NiftyMarketing at all? Any cross-pollination there?

Mike: We have had a few lawyers that have referred us non legal work. They definitely both complement each other.

Phil: What are some things about marketing in the legal industry that you wish you knew for Lawyer Client #1?

Mike: Bar rules. I can’t believe how many things we used to do that were big no no’s that even the clients didn’t catch. You have to be careful in the law space. It is heavily regulated and you can get your clients in serious trouble if you aren’t very careful.

Phil: Do you foresee more local SEOs specializing over time?

Mike: Yes. I think we will see every company squeeze into those options I listed above. This will go along with a lot of mergers and buyouts as our industry matures.

Phil: When you launched NiftyLaw, you said, “I believe that most businesses exist for more than simply making profits.” How would you apply that to NiftyLaw? What besides business makes your business tick?

Mike: The People. Many of us live in a place where there is not a ton of work opportunities, let alone creative and tech industry jobs. So, we do what we do and are grateful for the opportunity to be in a small farming community doing it. There are ways we could make more money, or scale faster, but I love my life. Why sacrifice that for more money I can’t spend in a town where the most expensive menu item is like $20.

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Thanks to Mike for a great interview. You’ll want to follow him on Twitter and check out both NiftyMarketing and NiftyLaw (especially if you’re an attorney).

What advice of Mike’s really rings true for you?

Anything you disagree with?

Any questions?

Leave a comment!

Easter Egg (Diehards Only)

April 20, 2014 by Phil 6 Comments

If you’re reading this on Easter Sunday, you’re a total diehard reader here. I’m flattered. Thanks.

I won’t tweet this post, or share it on Google+, or mention it in an email. I don’t expect this one will get much “social” buzz. (In fact, I’d be interested in knowing how you discovered it.)

Anyway, what’s the “Easter Egg” you dug up today? A simple offer:

I’ll do a free quick 3-point critique of your local visibility or site. Nothing in-depth. Just 3 quick suggestions you can put to work today.

What’s in it for me? For one thing, the more I know about who pays extremely close attention here, the better I can wrote posts that tackle your problems. It’s those posts that have got my blog this far.

I digress.

To take me up on my offer, just email me with “Easter Egg” in the subject line, and tell me how to find your business. Feel free to leave a comment on this post along the way.

By the way, my offer hops back to Easter Bunny Land as soon as my clock strikes midnight and it’s April 21. (Sorry if you’re late.)

100 More Doable Ideas for Small-Business Blog Posts

April 17, 2014 by Phil 7 Comments

That was not [BLEEP]-ing good enough, Private Phil! Hit the deck and give me another 100!

I felt the burn when writing 100 Practical Ideas for Small-Business Blog Posts a few months back. It took my pecs and triceps 3 months to shake off the soreness, but they cranked out another 100 for you.

My mission is the same as it was in the earlier post: to make it impossible for you to say, “I want to blog for my business, but I don’t know what to write about.”

It doesn’t need to be painful to write posts that (1) you enjoy, (2) showcase your expertise, and (3) customers find useful. You just need ideas.

Here are another 100 practical ideas for blog posts. Cherry-pick your favorites, and write ‘em.

101. What’s the biggest change you’ve made in your business? Why did you make it?

102. Where’s the Mecca of your industry?

103. What was a situation where you felt the profitable thing to do wasn’t the right thing to do?

104. What’s a part of your service that you insist on doing personally – even when most people in your position don’t?

105. How did your schooling / education influence what you do for a living?

106. Why is / isn’t your business a family business?

107. What’s the Golden Age of your industry? (Or do you think it’s yet to come?)

108. What are your “10 commandments”?

109. How much money does your company spend on books, training, or any types of ongoing learning?

110. Your year in photos.

111. Conduct a survey / poll (like with Google Consumer Surveys).

112. Commemorate an anniversary.

113. Describe a time you became complacent and got a wake-up call.

114. Describe an ethical dilemma.

115. Do people in your position love their work so much that they never retire – and do it until they die?

116. How was your business different before the Web?

117. Cannibalize a page on your site nobody seems to see or care about, spruce it up, and turn it into a post. Or vice versa.

118. What advice have you gotten from friends or family about running your business? Was it any good – did you do it? Why, or why not?

119. Discuss a mixed review you got from a customer, and what you got out of it.

120. If you didn’t do what you do for a living, what would you do instead?

121. What’s a piece of jargon in your industry that most people misuse or don’t understand? (In other words, a misnomer.)

122. Explain your “guarantee” policy (even if you don’t have one, that’s still a policy).

123. What’s your policy on estimates / quotes?

124. What’s an event that almost wiped out your business?

125. Have you served multiple generations of a family – a customer, then his son, then his son (for example)?

126. What questions do you ask possible hires in an interview?

127. Describe why you fired the last person you fired.

128. What do all your oldest, longest-term customers have in common?

129. How do you benefit from writing blog posts? What does it get you really thinking about?

130. What are your professional regrets?

131. What have your competitors taught you?

132. Why do you keep the business hours you keep?

133. Why do you have the number of locations you have? How likely is that to change, and why?

134. Describe the last situation where you were asked for a refund.

135. Has your industry ever been the subject of a TV show? How well did the show portray what you do?

136. How many people feel ashamed or embarrassed at needing what you offer – and why should they not feel that way?

137. What are some rules that tick off your employees, but you know are necessary for doing good work?

138. How cutthroat is your industry? Why?

139. What crimes are committed by some people in your industry?

140. Talk about the pros and cons of hiring or buying from the giant in your industry.

141. What’s the worst advice you’ve heard or read? Best?

142. Write the “Complete Guide to ___.”

143. Do you have a book in you?

144. What are some unspoken, unwritten rules in your industry?

145. What’s your opinion of the single most-famous person in your industry?

146. Describe in the first-person voice the situation your customer is in right before he / she calls you. Tell a little story. Show that you know your customers inside and out.

147. When did you have to take significant time off from work?

148. How has your reputation changed over the years?

149. What’s the lifespan of most businesses in your industry?

150. What do you think will be the next game-changer?

151. Do people who offer like yours tend to specialize – or do they usually offer many other services?

152. Let’s say your industry doesn’t get much press, but there was a celebrity who recently drew some attention to it. Talk about that.

153. What are the barriers to entry? What prevents many people from starting a business like yours?

154. Why are your profit margins as thin or fat as they are?

155. Open letter to ___. (Doesn’t need to be a real open letter.)

156. When have you needed the service you offer? Who did it for you?

157. What’s some technology that you started using (for your business) before others did?

158. What kind of spam plagues your industry? And how can you tell it’s spam?

159. What kind of pro bono work is done in your industry? Have you done any?

160. What’s the #1 cause of burnout?

161. What did you learn on the job today?

162. What’s the etymology of the word that describes your business? What does it mean in other languages? (Do other cultures even have it?)

163. What’s a question for which people just can’t find an answer by searching in Google – and can you answer it?

164. Post a question you’re researching. (Give a reason for your readers to try to answer it for you.)

165. What’s your overhead?

166. What kind of paperwork do you have to slog through for each job?

167. What’s a change you made based on what your “feet on the street” told you?

168. Why do you like your current role more than your “previous life,” in your old job?

169. Showcase or excerpt a (nice?) testimonial from a customer. Thank him or her, and then criticize yourself: describe how you could have done a better job.

170. Is there a public-sector version of your business? (And how badly does it suck?)

171. What’s the ideal size of a business like yours? What’s too small to be helpful, but too large to serve customers well?

172. What’s the bond between coworkers? Is it “work together, play together”? Does the bond mean that your team is a well-oiled machine that’s in a better position to help customers?

173. Rake some muck. What’s a company that gave you a raw deal? (Bonus points: what did you learn?)

174. Profile a city you serve. Talk all about the jobs you’ve done there, and what you like about doing jobs there.

175. Do you hold any patents?

176. Publish a sequel to one of your best posts.

177. Is your field of expertise an art or a science? How right-brain versus left-brain is it?

178. How old are most people in your position?

179. Recommend a competitor. Think of a way to do it genuinely. (I don’t recommend saying, “Want crappy service? Go with Jones & Sons.”) No need to be an altruist: Maybe there’s a service you don’t offer that your competitor does offer – and maybe you’re just sick of being asked about it.

180. What are all the products your customers tend to buy to remedy the problems you deal with? Which are good, and which are useless?

181. What’s an animal (or other organism) that destroys (or creates) your work?

182. How does the government make life hard for your business (and others like it)?

183. What’s a fable or piece of mythology (e.g. Greek) that your customers should keep in mind?

184. What do you keep on your desk?

185. What are 3 things you’d love to write more about – but know you’ll never get around to?

186. When were you the low man on the totem pole? (Bonus points: how you got from there to where you are now.)

187. What’s your fear?

188. What are the all the ways businesses in your industry market themselves?

189. Do you need your team? Or can you be a one-musician band?

190. What part of the job simply can’t be taught? Are there “naturals”?

191. Mirco-tip. (As in a few sentences.)

192. What questions do you have about your industry?

193. What do you need from your customers? To what extent do they need to help you help them?

194. Do a photo collage – like of some recent work you’ve done. Maybe describe what’s in the collage.

195. What if you had a chance to redo the worst job you’ve ever done?

196. What’s an untrue stigma associated with your industry?

197. Post a job opening – a position you’re looking to fill.

198. Do a Holiday-themed post.

199. Quick history lesson. (Make it relevant to your industry, and to your reader / customer.)

200. If you took a year-long hiatus from the day-to-day stuff in your business, what would you do?

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Still feel like you don’t know what to write about?

What’s the best post you’ve done so far? Or a post you want to do?

Leave a comment!

Phil

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