Lawyer Website Marketing: August 2012

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

Google is Hungry For Videos – Feed Google Videos and Prosper

http://www.legalnichepros.com/google-is-hungry-for-videos-feed-google-videos-and-prosper/

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Saturday, 25 August 2012

Creating Offers on Google+ Local Pages

Your Google+ Local page is inherently a great way to get online users to search out your business and learn more about your products and/or services, but creating offers for them can offer even more incentive for them to become actual customers. Google offers a great feature that allows you to create special offers for those that visit your site.

The best thing about it is that you have control of what you offer to your customers, as long as you stay within Google’s guidelines. This means you can list factors such as the discount offered, the time you have left to buy at the discounted price, and the dates the purchase can be redeemed. This is a perfect way to translate online visits into in-store purchases.

Another great feature Google presents with these offers is that customers that purchase the product or service at the discounted price can “Recommend” the offer on their own Google+ page. That’s just like free advertising for you.

Here are a couple of tips we’d like to present when using these offers.

• This is touched on before, but be sure to comply with Google’s offer guidelines – you don’t want your offer to get you in hot water with Google before you’re able to use it to attract customers.
• Be generous with your offers.
• Be sure to clearly identify the value the customer is getting from this offer.

To learn even more about how local marketing can greatly benefit your business, visit our website http://www.legalnichepros.com/

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Thursday, 23 August 2012

Benefits of Using Google+ Local Part 2

Welcome to part two of our list of specific benefits Google+ Local pages offers your business. Though not a comprehensive list, it will give you a few concrete examples of the benefits of creating a page.

Help Your Business Stand Out

Here’s an interesting statistic for you: a recent Google report shows that only 20 percent of eligible small businesses have claimed their listing on Google+ Local. Of the 20 percent, a small fraction of small business owners have claimed AND optimized their Google+ listing

Creating and marketing a complete and active Local page inherently puts you at an advantage over the vast majority of local business owners.

Learn More about Your Customers

Google Analytics is commonly known as the one of the best tools to monitor visitor activity on websites. Fortunately, Google+ Local also includes excellent tools for you to monitor traffic to your page.

Use the excellent data mining and market intelligence gathering tools at your disposal to continually improve not only your page, but also your product and/or service. This will allow you to keep current visitors and customers happy, and also attract even more customers.

Improve Your Engagement with Images and Updates

Social media, which has taken over the web in recent years, is not just about personal status updates and uploading personal photos – businesses are expected to be interactive as well – and Google+ Local inherently allows this interaction with your customers as long as you constantly update your page. Here are some interesting statistics to illustrate this point:

93 percent of customers expect companies to have a presence on social media channels.
85 percent expect companies to interact with customers on those channels.

To learn even more about how local marketing can greatly benefit your business, visit our website at www.legalnichepros.com.

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Benefits of Using Google+ Local Part 1

There are numerous benefits that creating a Google+ Local page provides your business, but we wanted to focus on a few specific advantages here. Be sure to check back in to Part 2 of this blog where we’ll discuss even more reasons creating a Local page is great for you.

No Money to Spend

Google+ Local pages are absolutely free to start. Therefore, all advantages of the profile are provided with no overhead costs from you. With that being said, keep in mind that it will take some time to set up your page and make sure that it is 100 percent complete. However, in order to get your page ranked at the top of Google, you must properly promote your Google+ pages.

Get Found on Google – Increase Website AND Store Traffic

Google is the number one visited site in the world, so you obviously want to be able to have your business show up in its search results. Creating a Google+ Local page increases your visibility in search, and opens your business up to a large (and constantly growing) audience of potential customers.

Get Found on Mobile Devices

It’s no secret that mobile devices like smart phones and tablets are becoming more and more popular with each passing day. In fact, Morgan Stanley predicts that mobile web browsing will surpass traditional desktop browsing within just a few years.

What may seem like a secret, however, is how to make your business visible to mobile device users. Since Google offers several mobile apps to users that help them find local businesses, creating a Local page essentially outsources your mobile marketing efforts to Google!

To learn even more about how local marketing can greatly benefit your business, visit our website at http://www.legalnichepros.com/

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com/
Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Saturday, 11 August 2012

Why You Should Use Google+ Local For Your Business

Before answering the question of “How” you will use Google+ Local for your business, we should take a look at “Why” you should use the service. To start with, let’s look at some cold, hard statistics:

• A whopping 97 percent of consumers search for local businesses online.
• Google is the undisputed king of web search, with a 65.9 percent market share. As a comparison, Bing’s market share is 15.1 percent.
• A vast majority (72 percent) of consumers research companies through social channels prior to making purchases.
• 71 percent of consumers claim that reviews of family members or friends contribute either a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence over what they decide to purchase.

A simple Google search for nearly any product or service will quickly a list of local businesses that fit the parameters of your search, illustrating Google’s decision to place a great deal of value on local listings in search results. These local results also pop up on Google’s mobile app as the company pushes into the mobile market with its Android app and coming iOS app.

All of this makes Google+ Local great for businesses – particularly small and midsized businesses – that want to bring their products and services to the attention of web users. The service provides an incredible opportunity for you to get in front of your target market at the exact moment they are searching for what you sell.
To learn even more about how local marketing can greatly benefit your business, visit our website at www.url.com.

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Wednesday, 8 August 2012

Google Places Becomes Google+ Local

A recent Business 2 Community article by Steve Masters introduces Google’sdecision to convert Google Places pages into Google+ Local pages.

The Google+ Local interface providesscores, reviews, a map, directions and more.Utilizing the Zagat scoring system, users can give a quality score to a business, which is then adjusted to points. Google Maps plays a valuable part, along with the Google+ interface. In fact, Google+ Local’s functionality hinges on the social network aspect of Google+.

With Google+’s community-like setup, local recommendations from the people you know travel fast and far. If a user in your own circle recommends a law firm, for example, that firm will likely appear high up in your own local search results if you were also searching for a lawyer.

When Google first rolled out Google+ Local, the search engine giant integrated a Local tab in the Google+ interface. Now, the page also comes up in a standard Google search.

However, it’s worth noting that if you’re not logged into Google, you’ll find a bar inviting you to register for or log into Google+. Joining the Google+ social network is imperative if you hope to maximize the benefits of Google+ Local—whether you’re a business owner or a consumer.

Google’s new move has a subtle impact on local SEO, but there are implications that this transition is just the start of more significant changes for SEO in the future. So stay tuned.

Monday, 6 August 2012

Google+ Local pages vs. Google+ Business pages

Google’s conversion of Google Places listings into Google+ Local pages has sparked confusion for business owners who have already created a Google+ page for their company, says Steve Masters in his Business 2 Community article.

It’s important to be mindful that these two types of listings are not the same. Let’s say you’re searching for a law firm in Google, for example. You’ll find a link to what was once Google Places, but what now appears as Google+ Local. This includes s map, scoring system, descriptions and reviews to help consumers find and evaluate businesses. Google+ business pages, however, include all the social features of Google+, including hangouts, sharing, commenting, photos and more.

You can’t currently merge your Google+ Local and business pages, but Google is working on a resolution for this. Masters urges users to be patient, saying he believes there will be a solution in the near future. He points readers to a statement issued by Google:

“Google has said here: ‘We will we be combining these two pages, so that you will only have to manage one listing — basic information, social features and all — across Google. Please give us time to get there … If you’re ready to be on the cutting edge, you can sign up to be considered for an early upgrade. Please note that this is a test and isn’t for the faint of heart! Sign up using this form.’
Elsewhere in the same help file, Google says, ‘Go to this form — http://goo.gl/8apbo — give us your email address, and we’ll let you know when we merge your pages in to a single page — like the ones we feature on the Google and Your Business blog post (http://goo.gl/lhF6S).’”

Until Google merges these listings, go through the Google Places interface to manage your Google+ Local page. If your law firm has a Google+ Local page and you never created it, claim ownership of it and complete the verification process, recommends Masters.

You can manage your Google+ business page by logging into Google+ social network, going to your own G+ profile and then switching to the page profile to arrive at the page.

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com/

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Friday, 3 August 2012

The Key to Google+ Local: Becoming a Google+ Member

Google has announced a new face to its local-business search results: Google+ Local. This new page integrates restaurant-reviewer Zagat’s star-ranking system (with the previous paywall now eliminated)and the Google+ social network. With Google+ Local, you can get place recommendations based on your circles, past reviews and location. You can also publish reviews and photos, peruse local reviews from people you know, and more.

Local-business search results are available in a new Local tab in Google+, as well as a standard Google search, in Google Maps and in the Android apps for Google Maps and Google+. (iPad and iPhone apps for Google+ Local are not yet available.)

As Dennis Schaal of USA Today explains, users will benefit most from Google’s new feature by becoming Google+ members. On the most basic level, you need to be logged in as a Google+ member to view all of the relevant information.

“Non-members get bare-bones treatment,” Schaal says. When searching for a local law firm, for example, users who are not Google+ members will see the top ranked firms with brief, one-sentence descriptions. On the other hand, logged-in Google+ members will have access to all user reviews, a list of similar places and any comments left by people in their social network.

Google+ Local has created buzz, but not without its share of criticism from competitors, like Expedia and TripAdvisor. Some claim Google “is emphasizing its own products to the detriment of natural search results from competitors,” reportsSchaal.

This is yet another reason to get on the bandwagon to maximize local SEO for your law firm with Google+ Local. Otherwise, you may be missing out.

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichepros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ

Wednesday, 1 August 2012

Google Celebrates How Much Impact the Web Is Having on Local Commerce

A recent survey by market research firm BIA/Kelsey reveals that consumers are increasingly turning to the internet when it comes to navigating local commerce, and it’s having a positive impact, reports Shawn Hess in WebProNews.

What’s more, with 97 percent of consumers using the internet to shop locally for goods and services, the web is helping consumers cast a wider net to find deals in their communities. Fifty-eight percent of consumers use online coupons for local goods, and nearly 20 percent are securing reservations online. Consumers are also doing their homework and are comparison-shopping, with the average consumer viewing 8 different media sources during their search for local deals.

BIA/Kelsey’s director of research Steve Marshall goes as far as saying “the data suggest we’re at an inflection point where the balance of power in local shopping is shifting to online.”

On its official blog, Google explains: “The growth of our Internet use has naturally helped the ecommerce industry to expand rapidly over the past decade. But the web is also positively impacting brick-and-mortar businesses,” going on to say that last year alone, almost $500 billion went directly to main street retail.

The prominence of location-based deals and online coupons are surprisingly creating more opportunities in local markets. Reporter Hess urges all business owners to beef up their online presence to take full advantage of the benefits on the internetfor local commerce. He recommends Google’s program called Get Your Business Online to build a free website and begin a promising dialogue in your community.

Local SEO with Google+

Google recently pulled back the curtain to announce its plans to covert all existing Google Places pages into Google+ Local pages. Taking Google’s cue, Sujan Patel, in his Search Engine Journal article, shed light on how the shift will impact local SEO best practices.

In a nutshell, Google’s news means that any former Google Places page, which is a directory-style listing that featuresbasic business info, photos and reviewsand typically hasn’t been included in the traditional SERPs, will be revamped to a Google+ Local page that is tied to the Google+ social network.

In the past, Google provided two options for promoting your law firm—a Google Places page or a Google+ page. Since Google’s move impacts only Google Places, it will now be possible to have a Google+ Local page and a Google+ page.

There is currently no way to combine these two accounts. However, there’s a silver lining. Google has stated that there will be integration options in the future.

For a preview of how the merged pages will be formatted, Google unveiled “early release” pages. Check out Delfina Restaurant and Chicago Music Exchange as examples.

Now, when it comes to the ways that Google+ Local pages will affect SEO, Patel highlights some key factors:

“ Google Places pages have become Google+ Local pages.

· A “Local” tab has been added to Google+ to provide users with personalized and social recommendations for specific Google+ Local pages.

· Zagat review data has replaced Google’s old five-star system, and the site’s former pay wall has been eliminated.

· Google+ Local pages are being integrated to Google Search, Google Maps, and Google Mobile. “

Patel says these changes have “subtle impacts” on local SEO. For starters, the new Google+ Local pages will be indexed. The older Google Places pages are not. Therefore,law firms can increase presence in the natural blended SERPs by creating new Google+ pages.

Secondly, this transition will likely ride on the future functionality and success of the Google+ network. “In terms of SEO, social signals tracked on future Google+ Local pages could be relayed to traditional search users vial local annotations in the SERPs, as well as featured recommendation positions within Google+ Local internet searches,” Patel says.

Although many of the perks for local businesses are currently available only on Google+ pages, they will also be available on Google+ Local pages after the full integration rolls out.

Patel reveals that, surprisingly, the transition to Google+ Local pages does not appear to have a significant impact on the organization of the natural SERPs. “In nearly all cases documented so far, the order of the results listings displayed in the traditional SERPs appears to closely mimic the organization of pages within former ‘Places’ SERPs,” Patel explains.

So what does this mean to you and your law firm? Well, if you already have a Google Places page, you should keep up with the maintenance of this page in the “Google Places for Business” dashboard. If you have an existing Google+ account, you should also keep this page updated until Google allows you to merge this into the Google+ Local page.

Meanwhile, if you decide to create a new Google+ page, be sure to use the same email address as your Google Places page, so that future integration will be seamless.

If you haven’t yet set up a Google Places page, you still have time to do so. You can visit www.google.com/places and click “Get started now.” Enter your business phone number to begin the process.

Just remember to apply SEO best practices. For example, use a phone number in your Google+ Local listing that includes your city’s area code, since proximity has a big impact on the local ranking algorithms. Minimize keyword usage in your business title. Use your “Contact” or Location page in the “Website” field and incorporate target keywords for “Description” and “Category” fields. Finally, upload as many pictures as possible to make your account inviting and appealing to new and returning visitors.

After completing these steps, create a separate Google + Page under the “Local Business or Place” category. Build a strong presence by building out a personal Google+ profile, form connections through Google+ circles, post updates and encourage customer reviews. You can also email your newsletter subscribers with Gmail accounts and ask them to “+1” your Google+ properties.

With these actions in place, your law firm will be ready to take advantage of more SEO benefits once Google rolls out further integration options in the future.

Please comment below if you have any questions. For more information, please contact me or visit my website http://www.legalnichpros.com

Michael Waddington
President, Legal Niche Pros, LLC
Attorney at Law
Licensed in GA, SC, PA, & NJ