2018 Legal Marketing Association Tech West - New Trends in Search: An SEO Workshop with Guy Alvarez Good2BSocial, Jennifer Schaller The National Law Review and Mary Trice Winston & Strawn January 31 - February 1, 2018 The legal market is increasingly becoming more fragmented and competitive. Law firms are finding it difficult to drive traffic to their websites, convert that traffic into leads and then convert those leads into clients. As a result, law firms must invest time and effort to ensure that their websites appear amongst the top search engine result pages when clients or prospects are looking for specific keywords or phrases. Unfortunately, Google and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, making it harder to understand the most important factors when trying to achieve optimal search results. This workshop will provide legal marketers with actionable insights to improve their search results and generate more organic traffic from search engines. Topics to be covered will include: How to perform keyword research to find the most important client-centric keywords for content How to determine if your site has technical issues that is making it harder for search engines to properly crawl and index your website How fix local citation errors to enhance your site’s ability to rank highly in local searches How to optimize attorney bio pages to rank well in search engine result pages How social media impacts search engine rankings How to spy on competitors and find out why they are outranking your firm

1. New Trends in Search: An SEO
Workshop
• Guy Alvarez – Good2BSocial
• Mary Trice – Winston & Strawn LLP
• Jennifer Schaller– National Law Review

2. AGENDA
 Introduction: The 4 components of an effective SEO strategy
 Technical SEO
 On-Page SEO
 Off-Page SEO
 Local SEO
 Semantic SEO
 Developing an SEO strategy for your firm
 How do I create SEO friendly content?
 10 common technical SEO issues & how to solve them
 What are best SEO best practices for attorney bios and practice areas?
 What keywords should you target and optimize for and what tools can you use?
 What is domain authority and how can I improve it?
 What is a citation, schema tags and google map pack?
 How does social media impact SEO?
 Other off-page factors which impact SEO
 Audience participation exercise: Good or Bad for SEO

3. Introduction: The 4 Components of an
Effective SEO Strategy
Technical SEO On Page SEO
Off Page SEO Local SEO

4. Semantic Search:
The Future of SEO Relevance
“Google evaluates content
according to its relevance
– and not by the inclusion of
individual keywords.”
-
Searchmetrics

5. Semantic Search: The Future of SEO
 On Page (in text & meta) and
Relevant Off Page SEO Factors Working Together
Semantic SEO is about the placement of
keywords within your content (including meta)
and how well they relate to one another.
Well Designed Mobile Friendly Website
User Experience Focused
High Quality
Relevant Backlinks

6. Semantic Search: The Future of SEO
Relevance = Mobile Emphasis + Quality

7. Developing an SEO Strategy for Your
Firm
 Discovery process
 Define objectives
 Positioning
 Market demographics
 Pain points
 Targeted optimization
 Analytics

8. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
Click Through-able Titles Most Important Words at the Front
Most Important Words at Front: Over 65 Characters Gets Cut

9. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
The Whos, Whys and Hows of the Click Through

10. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Title Formatting Fixes & Consistencies
 Use Brackets in Headline [VIDEO] [INFOGRAPHIC] [WEBINAR]
Implementing a Counterfeit Enforcement Program [VIDEO]
 Who – Specify: Company Involved in Law Suit, Type of Tax
Court Refuses To Reconsider Bifurcation Order [sad]
Include State, City Company Name, Celebrity Name
Include Terms Folks Will Use In Search: Short Versions of Case Names
(No Cites), Legislation Names & Abbreviations, Circuit name
 UltraSpecific – Use Numbers, Use Dates (also can create
urgency)
Ten Ways 2016 Election May Affect Privacy and Data Security Law
June 1: OSHA’s Revised Hazard Communication Standard
Deadline for Compliance

11. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Titles: Text + Meta = Relevance
Most Important
Words at Front:
Key Words First
then Hook
Ask Questions

12. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Titles + Text Body + Formatting + Internal Linking
Keywords go here:
Title Tag
Meta Description
Headings (H1 and use H2)
Tag subheadings
Tag section heading H3 H4
Body Text
Alt Tags (photos, infographics, video)
URL

13. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Images = User Experience + New Search Relevancy
Articles with images get
94% more total views
Images paired with
information, 65% better recall
60% of consumers are more
likely to consider or contact a
business when an image shows
up in local search results
Alternate text:
search engines
can’t read a photo
1 (Source :b2bmarketing.net) 2(Source: www.brainrules.net) 3 (Source:
searchengineland.com/survey-60-of-consumers-more-likely-to-consider-or-contac

14. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
• On Page User Experience Videos and Podcasts.
• Last year, video content represents 74% of internet traffic
• 64% of consumers more likely to purchase a product or service
after watching a video
• Builds trust, credibility,
relationships
• Need lead in text or a transcript -
Search Engines need words
1 (www.forbes.com/.../lights-camera-engagement-2017-is-the-year-of-video-marketinge)
2(www.socialmediatoday.com/.../consumers-64-more-likely-purchase-product-after-)

15. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
• Top Ranking
posts 1,000+
words
• Target 300- 700
minimum word
article length
• Really can show
depth of
knowledge
• Keep folks on
site
https://searchengineland.com
/searchmetrics-google-
ranking-factors-study-says-
content-gaining-links-losing-
importance-265431

16. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
What You Are Known For = Size Matters
 Click-Through Rate,
Time on Site, and
Bounce Rate are top
ranking factors.
 The pages in positions
1–3 have an average
CTR of 36%.
 The average Bounce
Rate for URLs on the
first page of search
results is 46%.
 The Time on Site for
the top 10 URLs is 3
minutes and 10 seconds
https://www.snapagency.com/blog/blog-posts-2017-whats-best-length-seo

17. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Internal & External Linking = Relevancy
 Connect one article to
another (write a series, link
to author bio, practice group)
 Use descriptive anchor text
in linking
 Do not create an exact
match between anchor
text and link target
 Do not use phrases like
“click here” or “read more”

18. How Do I Create SEO Friendly Content?
 Internal & External Linking = Relevancy

19. Ten Common Technical SEO Issues & How to
Solve Them
 No HTTPS Security
 Site Isn’t Index Correctly
 No XML Sitemap
 Missing or Incorrect Robots.TXT
 Meta Robots NoIndex Set
 Slow Page Speed
 Multiple Versions of Home Page
 Incorrect Rel=Cononical
 Navigational Searches
 Java script Blocks

20. SEO Best Practices for Attorney Bios
and Practice Areas
 Lawyer bios
account for
80% of legal
website traffic
 65% of all
traffic to law
firm websites
begins with a
Google search
 Nearly 60% of
law firm traffic
begins at bios
 Over half of
visitors come
to law firm
websites to
view bios

21. Keywords
 Search volume &
frequency
 Related terms
 Search trends
 Competition

22. Headings

23. Meta Data

24. Local Listings

25. Local Listings

26. What Keywords Should You Target and Optimize
for and What Tools Can You Use?
Source: http://neilpatel.com/blog/7-brilliant-examples-of-brands-driving-long-tail-organic-traffic/

27. What Keywords Should You Target and Optimize
for and What Tools Can You Use?
 Tools to Find Keywords
1. Google Keyword Planner + Google Trends (free)
2. Keyword Tool.io (free) (but paid version has more info)
3. Moz's Keyword Difficulty Tool (limit per day on free or monthly for
bundle of tools)
4. SEMRush
5. Term Explorer
6. Ahrefs
7. Accuranker
8. HubSpot's Keywords Tool

28. What Keywords Should You Target and Optimize
for and What Tools Can You Use?

29. What Keywords Should You Target and Optimize
for and What Tools Can You Use?

30. What is Domain Authority and How
Can I Improve It?
 Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that
predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). A
Domain Authority score ranges from one to 100, with higher scores
corresponding to a greater ability to rank.
 Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating linking root domains, number of
total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc. — into a single DA score. This score can
then be used when comparing websites or tracking the "ranking strength" of a
website over time.
 You can view a website's DA by using MozBar (a free Chrome-extension), Open
Site Explorer (a backlink analysis tool), the SERP Analysis section of Keyword
Explorer, and dozens of other SEO tools across the web.

31. What Is a Citation, Schema Tags and
Google Maps Pack?
 A citation is an online reference to your business's name,
address and phone number (NAP). Like links to your
website, Google uses them when evaluating the online
authority of your business. Unlike links
though, citations don't need to be linked to your business's
website in order for you to be credited for them
 Schema markup is code that you put on your website to
help the search engines return more informative results for
users. You can add schema tags to your HTML to improve
the way your page is represented in search engine results
pages.
 For most local searches, there are two parts or sections to
the search engine results page (SERP.) There is the regular
(organic) search results, and there is the map results,
known in the SEO industry as the Maps Pack, or the 3 Pack.
The Maps Pack is the group of 3 businesses that appear in a
box at the top of the page just after the advertisements.
Sometimes the Maps pack will have less than 3 results,
depending on the situation.

32. How Does Social Media Impact SEO?

33. SMO of SEO

34. LinkedIn

35. Dynamic Content

36. Other Off Page Factors Which Impact SEO
 Do links, shares come from high authority sites
 Do visitors spend time reading or bounce off site and page
quickly
 Are the links coming in have relevant text or text that you want
your page ‘known’ for
 Are links from site ‘known’ for the same thing as your page
 Have people regularly visited your site (return visitors)
 Is the topic on the webpage relevant to the search location
(local search)

37. Good or Bad for SEO??