Google Penguin 2.0 launched on May 22nd, which affected 2.3% of English-speaking websites. The algorithm update targeted websites which were obtaining links from non-relevant, spammy websites in an effort to pass Pagerank and influence search engine rankings.

The difference between Penguin 1.0 and Penguin 2.0 is that Penguin 1.0 only affected an entire website, whereas Penguin 2.0 can actually assess an algorithm penalty to individual website pages. A common SEO technique is to build links to internal web pages in order to a) build up the website’s overall authority, and b) improve that individual page’s search engine rankings for long-tail keywords.

At this point, with it being less than a month since the update has launched, a lot of Penguin 2.0 recovery tips are opinion-based. Not many websites will completely rebound from a Penguin 1.0 or Penguin 2.0 penalty in only a few weeks, and webmasters are now at the point where we have to trust what Google and Bing tell us that we need to do to stay in the search engines’ good graces and not lose search engine rankings that we’ve worked so hard for.

Of course, all of the usual and general”write better content”, “write more interesting, relevant content”, and “content is KING!” statements are going to be made, but writing content just to write content can also negatively affect your website because, the more content that you write, the higher chances of your website including the following:

• Broken links- the more blog posts and news items that you write which link to external resources like local television, newspaper, or other types of local news sites, the higher chances of those pages eventually being taken down. This causes a broken link on your website, so be sure to check your website for broken links on a regular basis.
• Misspellings/Grammatical Errors- Also be sure to check your website for spelling and grammar errors on a regular basis, as this can also negatively affect your website.
• Duplicate Content- If you start to run out of topics, you’re more than likely going to start writing shorter content. This can cause duplicate content issues depending on what’s on your sidebars, footers, etc.
• Decreased load times- The more pages that you index on your website, the more of a burden that you put on your servers. Be sure to cache your pages and monitor website load times.

When we found out that a client’s website was hit by Penguin 2.0, we immediately did the following:

1. Ran a Majestic SEO report which identifies all inbound links that a website has.

2. Identified which pages were negatively affected by Penguin 2.0 by checking individual page stats in Google Analytics. The pages that were seeing significantly less organic search traffic as landing pages (when compared to the couple of weeks prior to May 22nd) are the pages that we assumed were hit by the Penguin 2.0 update. Interesting enough, these are the same pages that had the most inbound links from other websites pointing to them.

3. We took these pages, copied the content, created new page URL’s, and 301 redirected the old page URL’s to the new pages, operating under the assumption that 301 redirects do not transfer penalties. There were many Penguin 1.0 recovery success stories over the past few months from others who used this method, so the next step is to monitor organic search traffic and search rankings to see how everything recovers.

We’re now in the process of identifying which links were potentially harmful. We’ll identify links from web pages which:

• Aren’t indexed by Google
• Are indexed on article websites which have noting to do with the legal field (general article directories which usually include a lot of spun content, links to shady websites, etc.)
• Have a low content to outbound link ration (lower-quality directory websites, etc.)
• Were affected by malware
• etc.

And we’ll then e-mail the webmasters of those websites in an effort to get those links taken down. We’ll also add them to Google’s disavow tool and we’ll continue to monitor impressions in Google Webmaster Tools, organic search traffic, and rankings.

All of that being said, this is what we identified as the best immediate solution to a problem that many do not know the definite solution to. The Penguin 2.0 penalty was also said to have an emphasis on improving user experience, so broken links, crawl errors, too many on-page links, and slow page load times are likely factors that will have more importance after May 22nd.

Google Penguin 2.0 Recovery Resources

Here are some Penguin 2.0 recovery resources that we’ve read and would like to share with our readers. If you would like to suggest another blog post or article, feel free to leave a comment but be forewarned that this website is heavily moderated, so comments that smell like “spam” will not be included.

Matt Cutts officially announces Penguin 2.0 launch- Some interesting comments and questions from concerned webmasters in the comments section of this page.

What’s the difference between Penguin and an unnatural link penalty? A great blog post by Marie Haynes which shares valuable information such as using the disavow tool versus manually requesting links to be removed, whether or not filing a reconsideration request is a good idea, etc. Again, this is all opinion-based, but this is from a trusted source.

What is Effective Search Engine Optimization According to Google?- According to this post on Google’s Webmaster Central blog last year, ““White hat” search engine optimizers often improve the usability of a site, help create great content, or make sites faster, which is good for both users and search engines.” This is a good refresher, and a good resource to look at in order to identify what Google still has been emphasizing- improving user experience.

How to Identify Unnatural Links- A good blog post touching on link trust, citation and trust flow, etc.

You’ve Ben Hit by Penguin 2.0- Take a Deep Breath- A great blog post which I wish I had seen around the time when my client was about to have a heart attack when he found out that his organic search traffic took a nose dive all of a sudden in late-May.

How to Recover from Penguin 2.0 Using Only Free Tools- An interesting post showing how it may be possible to recover from Penguin 2.0 using only free tools.

Google’s 200 Ranking Factors- Infographic- An awesome updated version of what Google looks for in a website when determining which websites will rank the highest for a particular search term. Commonly overlooked factors which this inforgraphic does a great job of identifying are domain registrant information (if you use domain privacy, Google may think that you’re hiding something, and if the domain is registered to a known spammer or to someone who owns multiple questionable domains, it can negatively affect search rankings), server location (tip- if you’re using a content delivery network such as Cloudflare, it’s possible that the IP address that the content is being delivered from is from another country, which we found out the hard way), Terms of Service and Privacy pages, and so on.

5 Tips to Improve WordPress SEO and User Experience- For all of those using WordPress, this is a good post on how to optimize your WordPress site and how to improve user experience.

Branding is a Ranking Factor Post-Penguin 2.0- A good blog post on how Penguin 2.0 affects branding, and how branding can affect your SEO efforts.

SMX Advanced 2013 Recap- A good resource which shows presentations and topics from SMX Advanced 2013 in Seattle.

What to Expect In SEO In Coming Months- Matt Cutts talks about what to expect in SEO in the near future.

Penguin 2.0 Recovery Tools

Google Webmaster Tools- If you don’t have access to your GWT, you need to do this ASAP.

Google Disavow Tool- Can’t get in contact with the webmasters of the sites which you’d like to request a link removal? Use this tool as a last resort.

Panguin- See how Google’s updates have affected your organic search traffic.

Majestic SEO- Get an in-depth look at your website’s backlink data. Also good to use for competitor data.

Open Site Explorer- A free tool which gives you limited information about your website’s inbound links.

AHREFs- Similar to MajesticSEO and OSE, this tool gives you information about your inbound links such as which pages are linking to you, anchor text being used, etc.

Fruition’s Penalty Checker- A good tool which shows the possibility of your website being affected by different Google penalties.

The post Google Penguin 2.0 Recovery appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

Whether you’re a managing partner at a law firm, an in-house marketing administrator, intern, SEO’er, designer or programmer, content writer, or anyone else who has done a Google search in the past year to find out how well your website ranks, if you’ve looked into ways to improve those rankings to get more local, relevant traffic to your website, you’ve made which of the following statements to either yourself or to someone else in the past year:

a) “Google and Matt Cutts hate SEO”.

b) “SEO is dead.”

c) “Why won’t me website’s rankings improve? Ugh, I need help”.

d) All of the above.

If I had more time to promote our own content, I would turn that into a poll, promote this post, collect and publicize the results (note to self: have summer intern implement poll plugin), and my prediction: Answer D would be the overwhelming favorite.

I want to weigh in on the first two statements, but before I go off on my tangent, here’s a timeline of recent (significant) Google updates which have everyone in an e-frenzy (via [newly-renamed] Moz’s post on Google Algorithm Change History):

February 23, 2011- Google’s first Panda/Farmer update, which affected 12% of websites and targeted websites with lower-quality content (spun content, article websites, content farms, etc.)

April 24, 2012- Google Penguin update, which affected 3.1% of English websites (although I think this number is on the low side) and targeted websites which over-used certain keywords/phrases in their page content, websites which had keyword-rich anchor text links coming from other websites, and websites with links from “spammy” websites such as forums and non-related websites.

April 25, 2012-May 21, 2013- SEO’ers, webmasters, writers, and everyone else scramble to figure out why their (clients’) organic search traffic (and search engine rankings) have plummeted. Countless hours are spent e-mailing other webmasters requesting for links to be removed, Google launches their disavow tool after after many webmasters complain about the lack of responses from link removal request e-mails, and  “Google Penguin Recovery” becomes a service provided to law firms and other small businesses by SEO companies trying to establish themselves as “actually knowing what they’re talking about”. Software companies like Majestic SEO, Raven Tools, Link Research Tools, and other inbound link analysis tools reap the benefits of Google’s sudden change of mind, and the era of “quantitative link building” is (rightfully) put on life support.

May 22, 2013- Google announces their Penguin 2.0 update, and the next few days are spent by many holding their breath, checking traffic and rankings data, and hoping that their websites weren’t affected.

TIP: You can use a Chrome plugin called Chartelligence to look at your Google Analytics data and correspond traffic drops/spikes with Google updates.

Google Hates SEO

This isn’t necessarily an inaccurate statement, but it’s more of a generalization than anything. If the majority of SEO’ers (not agencies who say that they do SEO, but the people who they outsource the work to) are overseas spammers or people who don’t speak English as their native language, and who are practicing link building techniques that are somewhere within that gray-to-black area, then that leaves others with the impression that SEO’ers are all spammers and that SEO is snake oil and ineffective. I hate SEO based on the majority of people who I talk to who consider themselves actual SEO consultants, and I’ve been doing this as a profession for the past 5 years now.

But that doesn’t mean that Google hates it.

I hate spam, you hate spam, your father who got upset whenever someone called your house during dinner to sell him a newspaper subscription hates spam, and Google hates spam.

There’s no reason for you, as an attorney or law firm, to have a link on a page that talks about furniture refinishing or something else completely unrelated to law, or for that link to be using a keyword in the anchor text of the link like “Los Angeles personal injury attorney”.

There’s not much of a reason for your website to have a link on a page with 362 other links, varying anywhere from sex pills to free UFC streams to payday loans (this blog post just decreased it’s chances of being seen by 37% based on me including those phrases, and yes I made that number up).

The reason why Google hates SEO (based on our generalization from earlier) is because of quantitative link building and the theory that “more is better”. In the good ol’ days of SEO, the more links that you had, the  higher your rankings would be. The more PR6, PR5, PR4 links that you had, or the more .edu links that you had, the better chance of ranking #1 and beating out your competition. So if an SEO or link building company approached you and promised to build you 10,000 links for $199/month, you didn’t ask yourself “well what kind of websites are they”, “how relevant are the websites or the other links on those websites”, or “are these sites that are trusted by the search engines?”, and you paid the $199 a month hoping to see your rankings increase increase. Maybe you saw an increase in rankings for a few search terms, but after Google Penguin, now you’re left wondering what happened, and that $199/month turned into countless hours of link removal requests and disavow file uploads.

Here’s what I know as the owner of an SEO agency: reporting when it comes to link building is almost impossible.

How can you explain that you built 35 links one month, and only 3 links the next month, even if those 3 links are more powerful?

Focusing on the quantity of inbound links versus the quality of inbound links (relevance, authority, traffic referral, etc.) is what got us into this mess, and it’s frustrating to see the monthly content side of the business go down the same path. Okay, so you paid for 100 blog posts per month and your site has 6,000 pages, 5,500 more than your top competitor, and you’re still not outranking anyone? Google doesn’t care how many pages are on your website, especially if the majority of the content is complete crap (only a few sentences, regurgitated news stories, multiple misspellings, broken links, irrelevant content, etc.).

Having more links, more content, more websites- this all means absolutely nothing, and hasn’t meant anything for a long time. Stop falling for the “extra value meal” packages that you’re being sold by your web company, because they don’t work and, as a result, Google hates you. Take that.

“SEO is Dead”

Right. So your competitors just got lucky and cracked the Google code by “writing awesome content, sitting back, and watching all of the links and traffic pour in”.

SEO is not dead.

There are hundreds of ways to optimize a website to improve user experience and SEO at the same time (improved load times, higher quality content, minimalistic design layouts, mobile and/or responsive websites, less on-page links, schema.org markup, etc.), and it’s a proven fact that (quality and relevant) inbound links are still vital to higher search rankings.

Google isn’t out to kill SEO because, at the end of the day, you’re optimizing your website for user experience and, as a result, improving your search engine rankings. Google’s algorithm may continue to evolve, but thinking that “all websites are created equal” and that more/higher quality content is the only key to success will have you finding out the hard way that it’s never that easy.

SEO’ers who continue to focus on old school SEO metrics like how many higher PR links a website has, how many times a keyword is mentioned on a page, how many pages of content a website has- aka spammers who thought more about the search engine bots and less about users and potential visitors- those guys are dead, and they might be taking you with them.

The post Debunking The “SEO is Dead and Google Killed It” Myth appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

It’s super important.

Whenever you do a geo-based keyword search on Google for something like “Maryland injury lawyer” or “Baltimore urinated upon attorney“, you’re likely going to see those little red pin results displaying addresses and phone numbers of some local law firms relevant to your search query. Those are Google+ Local results, and instead of sounding like a broken record every time I emphasize the importance of Google+ Local (previously and/or commonly referred to as Google Places, Google Maps, and Google Local), feel free to check out the resources at the end of this blog post to get caught up.

For those of you who may wonder from time to time why your law firm’s Google+ Local impressions have dropped off, here’s a tip: poke your profile.

What is a poke, you might ask? A poke is kind of similar to turning your cell phone off and back on again and all of a sudden it has a perfect signal, or rebooting your computer.By poking your Google+ Local profile, you’re telling Google that you’re constantly keeping your information fresh and relevant, versus keeping everything on auto-pilot. I know, I wish that all you needed to do was add a bunch of fresh content to your website also, but the truth is that there is a lot more to ranking well on Google+ Local (adding the location to Google Mapmaker, building citations, advanced on-page markups, etc.) and now you can add poking to the long, time-consuming list of tasks that you need to complete on a regular basis to stay ahead of competing law firms in your area.

So now you’re asking- how do I “poke” my profile?

And the answer is pretty simple.

1. Log into Google Places for Business
2. Click on “edit” next to the profile that you’d like to poke
3. Scroll directly to the bottom of the screen and click “submit”

And there you go, you’ve just poked your Google+ Local profile. You do, of course, want to update any information that has changed when you’re in the edit screen, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to add some photos or videos if you have a couple of minutes to do so.

One interesting note about poking your profile is that Linda from Catalyst Marketing has actually seen Google recommending to users that they poke their profiles on a regular basis, so don’t think that this is some crazy black magic trick that we came up with.

Google+ Local Resources That We Promised to Share:

Old (and yet still shockingly relevant) video of short-haired George talking about the importance of Google Places

Our Local SEO/Google+ Local Infographic

Our past Google+ Local/Google Places-related blog posts

Order a Free Local SEO/Google+ Local Check-Up

Image credit: Archer/FX

The post Poking Your Google+ Local Places Profile Page appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

When it comes to improving a legal website’s rankings for local search terms (specifically on Google+ Local), citation building is one of the most important factors. A citation source is a trusted website directory which Google+ Local pulls data from, and the more citation sources that your business is listed on, the better chance it will have of ranking well.

According to David Mihm’s 2012 Local Search Ranking Factors, the quality and quantity of structured citations is the eighth most important overall ranking factor. When it comes to identifying potential citation sites which will improve your law firm’s rankings on Google+ Local, there are a number of resources which will offer some value, such as:

The Whitespark Local Citation Finder- Find what citation sources you’re currently listed on, cherrypick citation sources from competitors, etc.

GetListed.org- Find out how accurate your information is on a number of trusted citation sites.

The Best Legal Citation Sources by Getlisted.org- The top 10 legal citation sources.

But there is more to citation building than just throwing up your business information on a few sites, sitting back, and watching the phone ring.

Here are the Top 5 Mistakes That Law Firms Make When Performing Citation Building:

5- Incorrect Phone Number

It’s common for most law firms have multiple phone numbers. Whether it’s a catchy 1-800 number that they can advertise on television, radio, Yellow Pages, and the top of their website and/or landing pages, trackable phone numbers that allow them to collect data on which advertising campaigns and web pages are generating the most/highest quality leads, or local numbers for a number of different locations, it’s not uncommon for there to be some mix-ups when it comes to which phone number is listed on which citation sources.

You want to make sure that you have a local number dedicated to each of your locations, and that those local phone numbers are listed on the appropriate office’s listing on all of your citation sources. This should go without saying, but the correct phone number should also be listed on that particular location’s Google+ Local/Google Places profile, as well as on your website (in schema.org format if possible).

Let’s say that you’re a Maryland law firm, and that you have locations in Annapolis, Baltimore, and Columbia, MD. If the yp.com profile for the Annapolis location lists the Columbia phone #, or if the Manta profile for the Baltimore location lists the 1-800 number instead of the correct local phone number, than you’ll want to make the necessary adjustments.

If you have satellite offices or “By Appointment Only” locations where you pay a couple hundred bucks a month to be able to use an address, you should still have a dedicated number for those locations, even if it simply forwards to your main law firm’s secretary or answering service. But be forewarned, there’s a chance that someone at Google will call the number and quiz the person who answers on things like “what’s outside of your front door right now” and other questions to see if that person is actually on-site, so make sure you plan accordingly.

Tip- You can also find duplicate Google+ Local profiles by searching for your phone number(s) under the “maps” tab of Google. It’s important to claim any profiles that you find, and to suspend any duplicate Google+ Local profiles.

Common Citation Building Mistake # 4- Wrong/Incomplete Address

If your law firm has multiple physical addresses, it’s common for there to be some mix-ups when it comes to some of your citation sources listing incorrect and/or incomplete addresses.

The most common mistake that we see when performing citation building, or when looking at competitors’ citation sources, is the missing or incorrect suite number.

Your business information needs to be the same across the board. That means that the address that is listed on your website and Google+ Local profile should also be listed on a number of quality citation sources, and if the suite number is missing or incorrect, it can cause you a lot of issues and cause your Google+ Local rankings to drop. Make sure your addresses are correct on all of your citation sources. That sounds easy enough, but you’d be surprised how many times we’ve seen address discrepancies while performing citation building for law firms and attorneys.

Tip- Gestlisted.org is a good resource to utilize. Simply put in your business name and zip code, and click on the “accuracy” tab on the left to see how your business information appears on some of the major citation sources.

Common Citation Building Mistake # 3- Duplicate Profiles

If you have multiple profiles on the same citation source, you’ll want to make sure you claim them all and delete/suspend the appropriate listing(s). It’s important for your business location’s information to be the same across the board, and if Google+ Local realizes that you have duplicate profiles on certain citation sources, it could negatively affect your Google+ Local rankings. Claiming every profile on all of the citation sources that are out there can be EXTREMELY time consuming and tedious, but the law firms that spend time claiming and suspending/deleting duplicate profiles are the ones whose Google+ Local impressions are probably continuing to increase, while other law firms sit around hoping and wishing. Also be sure to include as much information as you can (hours of operation, videos, photos, unique descriptions, etc.) on the citation profiles that you don’t suspend.

Tip- Search for your phone number and firm name/address on each citation source to see what’s out there, and claim any profiles that you find. Some might require verification, but taking the extra time is worth it. You can also utilize the site: Google search (ie site:citysearch.com “Jones and Murphy Maryland”) to see what’s on a particular site, all while putting your ninja skills to good use.

Common Citation Building Mistake # 2- Attorney Name Vs. Law Firm Name

It’s extremely common for there to be duplicate citation profiles out there, some of them having the attorneys’ names listed in place of the law firm name.

You may be thinking to yourself “hmm, if I create a listing for the law firm AND each attorney in my office, I could quadruple the number of citation sources and conquer the world!”. Easy there, killer.

Setting up attorney-specific Google+ Local and citation profiles isn’t something that is recommended, since your website is most likely being branded as the firm’s website. If I had a dollar for every time I have a law firm who asks us why their Google+ Local rankings aren’t where they’d like for them to be, only to find that hey tried some common “black-hat” citation building methods like creating a listing for the firm AND every attorney in their office.

If you find individual attorney profiles on citation sources, I would highly recommend claiming and suspending those listings. They can cause duplicate profile issues which can negatively affect Google+ Local rankings for the law firm, and with reviews being an important ranking factor, they can also add unnecessary additional resources where past clients can leave reviews.

Common Citation Building Mistake # 1- Law Firm Name Discrepancies

The most common and overlooked mistake that I see when looking at Law Firm’s Google+ Local citation sources is the number of variations of the law firm’s name that are out there on different citation sources.

Common law firm suffixes include PLLC, P.A, ESQ, etc.

If the name of your law firm is Johnson and Murphy, PLLC, here are some variations of the law firm name that could be listed on Google+ Local citation sources:

Johnson & Murphy, PLLC

Johnson & Murphy PLLC

Johnson And Murphy, PLLC

Johnson And Murphy PLLC

Johnson & Murphy, P.L.L.C.

Johnson And Murphy, P.L.L.C.

Johnson And Murphy P.L.L.C.

Johnson & Murphy P.L.L.C.

Making sure that your business name appears on all citation sites EXACTLY as it appears on your website and Google+ Profile can make a huge difference, and if you think that we’re exaggerating and that a simple “,”can cause your Google+ Local rankings to suffer, think again.

When it comes to Google+ Local, the main ranking factor is “consistency”. Your information should be consistent on all citation sources, profiles, and websites, and little discrepancies like a missing comma or “&” instead of “and” can actually make a huge difference.

Tip: Citation building for law firms and improving Google+ Local rankings/ impressions is something that we specialize in. It can be time-consuming, annoying, and down-right frustrating, so if you’d like to find out more about your current Google+ Local presence or overall local SEO efforts, click here for a free in-depth Local SEO analysis, click here to contact us, or feel free to call us at 410-929-5610.

The post Citation Building- 5 Common Mistakes appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

• Personal injury (auto accidents, truck accidents, medical malpractice, SSDI, workers compensation, maritime law, wrongful death, mesothelioma, etc.)
• Bankruptcy (chapter 7, chapter 11, chapter 13, etc.)
• Family Law (child support, child custody, divorce, etc.)
• and a variety of other practice areas.

About George:

I’ve been doing web marketing and search engine optimization specifically for law firms for over 5 years now. Before starting my company The Search Ninjas, I was the Director of Web Marketing for another leading website design and SEO firm for lawyers where I worked with hundreds of lawyers from all over the country.

While I cannot share all of the results that we’ve obtained for our current clients publicly, I am willing to share some of them privately and am extremely confident that we can help your law firm to maintain a more visible web presence.

If you’re a Chicago law firm who might be interested in setting up a meeting while I’m there, feel free to e-mail me at george@thesearchninjas.com and we’ll work out the details, or you can request a free personal SEO Audit by filling out the form below.

Best,

George

The post Chicago Legal Web Marketing appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

Engel Law Group is a Washington State bankruptcy law firm which handles chapter 7, chapter 11, chapter 13, and other types of Washington State bankruptcy cases. Their main office is in Seattle, and they also have two satellite offices in Everett, Washington and Tacoma, Washington.

We performed a custom website design (implementing WordPress as the content management system), which was geared towards conversion as well as search engine optimization. With a number of pages from their past websites, we implemented page-level 301 redirects to make sure that any “link juice” that the old website’s pages had would transfer over, and the new website was fully optimized for both organic search engines as well as local search engines.

We also currently perform monthly search engine optimization services which include link building, content development, Google Places/Google+ Local optimization and citation building, Adwords management, and additional conversion services such as trackable phone numbers and custom form integration.

The website currently ranks among the top 3 results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for a number of keywords such as Seattle bankruptcy lawyer, Seattle chapter 7 attorney, Seattle chapter 13 attorney, and a number of other competitive and high-converting keyword phrases (which we keep confidential).

The website has seen the following increases in traffic in the first year as a Search Ninjas client:

• a 197% increase in overall traffic
• a 165% increase in organic search engine traffic
• a 141% increase in Washington State website visits

And the client’s Google Places/Google+ Local profiles have seen the following increases:

• a 243% increase in impressions in Tacoma
• a 56% increase in impressions in Everett
• an 87% increase in impressions in Seattle

Lead generation efforts have also improved, but we choose not to share lead generation data to protect clients’ privacy.

Interested in obtaining the types of results that we’ve obtained for this and plenty other law firms throughout the county? Fill out the form below to have us contact you regarding your firm’s internet marketing efforts.

The post Engel Law Group- Seattle, WA Bankruptcy Firm appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

Engel Law Group is a Washington State family law firm which handles divorce, child custody, child support, and other types of family law cases. Their main office is in Seattle, and they also have two satellite offices in Tacoma, Washington and Everett, Washington.

We performed a custom website design (implementing WordPress as the content management system), which was geared towards conversion as well as search engine optimization. With a number of pages from their past websites, we implemented page-level 301 redirects to make sure that any “link juice” that the old website’s pages had would transfer over, and the new website was fully optimized for both organic search engines as well as local search engines.

We also currently perform monthly search engine optimization services which include link building, content development, Google Places/Google+ Local optimization and citation building, Adwords management, and additional conversion services such as trackable phone numbers and custom form integration.

The website currently ranks among the top 3 results on Google, Bing, and Yahoo! for a number of keywords such as Seattle divorce lawyer, Seattle family law attorney, Seattle child support attorney, and a number of other competitive and high-converting keyword phrases (which we keep confidential).

The website has seen the following increases in traffic in the first year as a Search Ninjas client:

• a 72% increase in overall traffic
• a 56% increase in organic search engine traffic
• a 65% increase in Washington State website visits
• a 70% increase in Seattle website visits

And the client’s Google Places/Google+ Local profiles have seen the following increases:

• a 243% increase in impressions in Tacoma
• a 56% increase in impressions in Everett
• an 87% increase in impressions in Seattle

Lead generation efforts have also improved, but we choose not to share lead generation data to protect clients’ privacy.

Interested in obtaining the types of results that we’ve obtained for this and plenty other law firms throughout the county? Fill out the form below to have us contact you regarding your firm’s internet marketing efforts.

The post Engel Law Group- Seattle, WA Family Law Firm appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

We’ve just designed our very first infographic- Local SEO 101 For Law Firms- which shows law firms and solo attorneys what is important when trying to improve rankings on Google+ Local for geo-based search terms.

Google+ Local (previously known as Google Places) is extremely important for law firms wishing to maintain a visible web presence, because the Google+ Local search results appear above the fold, and above the organic listings. Most Google+ Local search results are “blended results”, meaning that they are a combination of organic AND local listings.

A law firm which has a well-optimized website with a fair amount of authority, as well as certain Local ranking factors in place such as a number of positive reviews, a high number of quality citation sources, accurate data on their Google+ Local and citation source profiles, and a number of other Google+ Local ranking factors such as microformats and sitemaps will have a better chance of ranking well on Google and other search engines than a law firm without these pieces in place.

The infographic is below (note: after you click on the thumbnail, click on the “expand this image” icon on the top right for a full view of the infographic), and for law firms and attorneys who don’t have the time to perform monthly Google+ Local optimization on their own, or who simply want more data on their local SEO campaign, we also offer a free Local SEO audit.

The post New Infographic: Local SEO 101 For Law Firms appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

Google announced a new tool on Tuesday called the Link Disavow Tool which allows webmasters to request that the search engine ignores certain inbound links from other websites which may be causing issues with their search engine rankings.

The tool, which can be found in Google Webmaster Tools and was announced yesterday via blog post on Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, is essentially an answer to requests and complaints from website owners everywhere who were suddenly penalized by Google’s Penguin update back on April 24th of this year.

The Google Penguin update essentially penalizes websites which have anchor-text-heavy inbound links from multiple low-quality websites in an attempt to unnaturally influence search engine rankings for specific keywords.

Up until now, the only way that webmasters and SEO’ers could remove potentially harmful links from low-quality directory sites, scraper sites, and other damaging inbound links was to e-mail the website and request that the link be adjusted and/or deleted. This was not always successful, either because the the webmaster of the site was unreachable or because their contact information was nowhere to be found.

Here’s a video in which Google’s Matt Cutts explains more about the tool:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=393nmCYFRtA

A few FAQ’s regarding the disvow link tool:

Once I upload the file as shown in the Webmaster Tools blog post, how long will it take for Google to take action and ignore these links?

According to Matt Cutts, it can take a few weeks for Google to assess the links uploaded in the file and to make the necessary adjustments, so you’re not completely out of the penalty box right away.

What links should I be requesting Google to ignore?

According to Google’s linking guidelines, link schemes such as paid links, link exchanges, low-quality links such as links from social bookmarking sites and lower-quality directory sites, sitewide footer links, links from forum signatures, and any other links which are anchor-text-heavy such as links from article sites and unnatural guest blog posts should be analyzed.

So, what CAN you actually do anymore?

According to Google- not much.

Their stance that “everything will happen naturally” and that “you should just keep posting some great content on your site” sounds great and all, until you end up with thousands of pages on your site and you’re still stuck wondering why sites with multiple questionable inbound links are outranking you on Google.

Don’t take everything that Google says publicly to heart. There are still plenty of link building opportunities that will improve both organic and local search engine rankings, especially in the extremely competitive legal market. You just need to know what these opportunities are and how to find them. In other words, you need to become (or hire) a ninja.

The post Google Disavow Link Tool is Launched appeared first on The Search Ninjas.

Okay, so you have a website. You’ve identified the keywords that you want your website to rank for, and you or your SEO team have performed all of the SEO 101 basic tasks:

• You’ve implemented your keywords into the page titles of your website
• You’ve carefully worded the meta descriptions of your web pages so that they include some of your keywords, but you’re also able to convince the user to click on your web page in the search results because you didn’t write the meta description solely for search engines
• You’ve implemented your keywords into your website’s content and H1/H2 headings
• You’ve built interior links to your websites pages throughout the website
• You’ve implemented a sitemap, added the website to Google Webmaster Tools, etc. etc.

You’re now likely operating under the assumption that your website is dully optimized from an SEO/on-page standpoint, which means that you can shift your focus to building links and authority to the website so that you can start dominating your competition.

But are you fully aware of all of the pages that are indexed on your website?

If you have some advanced knowledge, you know that you can do a “site:http://www.yourwebsite.com” search in Google and it will display all of the pages that are (publicly) indexed in their search results.

If you manage and monitor your website in Google Webmaster Tools, you know that you can see how many pages are indexed, whether or not there are any crawl errors, etc.

But if you’re performing SEO on your own and you completely rely on what Google tells you about your website, then you’re more naive than…well I’ll spare you the corny jokes, let’s just say that you’re far from a ninja.

SEOMoz has a paid service where you can add your website as a campaign, and it will crawl your website on a regular basis to tell you what pages are missing page titles or meta descriptions, which pages have duplicate on-page aspects, and other errors or warnings such as load errors or too many on-page links. But unless you’re performing SEO for multiple websites, it’s kind of hard to justify spending $99/month for this type of data.

That’s where the screaming frog steps in. (**Note- we are in no way affiliated with the makers of this tool, nor do we receive any sort of compensation for promoting it. We just think it’s a really cool free piece of screaming software**)

Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a free software tool that allows you to see every page that’s on your website, including commonly overlooked pages such as blog category pages, archive pages, tag pages, etc.

Not only does it show you every page of your website, but it also shows you various aspects of each page, such as:

• Status (whether or not the page loads correctly, or if it’s been 301 redirected)
• Page title (and page title length)
• Meta description (and length)
• Meta keywords (which aren’t very relevant unless you’re reading this in 2004)
• H1 and H2 headings
• Page-level canonical settings
• Page size
• Word Count
• Level (from a folder standpoint)
• Inlinks (how many links from other pages on the site)
• Outlinks (how many links to other pages on the site)
• External Outlinks (how many links to pages on other websites)

This is all valuable information for a number of reasons:

1. If you have pages which do not have designated page titles or meta descriptions, then you should make sure you take the time to do so.
2. If you have page titles or meta descriptions which are duplicate, then you should be making some changes. You can sort by meta description and page title in the tool which makes identifying possible duplicates easier.
3. You want to make sure that your keywords are properly included in on-page aspects such as your page titles, meta descriptions, headings, and (if you are patient and can wait for the link juice to re-populate to a new page URL through a 301 redirect) URL.
4. You can also use this tool to take a look at competitors websites and gather valuable information such as what pages they have included on their websites, internal link structure, etc. Basically, if you have a few websites that constantly outrank you for your keywords, then I don’t know about you, but I would like to know what they’re doing.
5. Also, if you’re considering a website redesign, you’ll want to know every page on your website so that you can implement the necessary 301 redirects. This tool can help, and of course you can move everything over to an Excel spreadsheet (in the free version, simply select everything by dragging your mouse and copy it using command/control and c).

And if you use WordPress as your website’s content management system, there is a plugin called WordPress SEO by Yoast which can help you to identify how many times a designated keyword is implemented in that page’s title, meta description, heading, and URL.

The little green screaming frog may not necessarily catapult you to the top of Google, but it will help you to get a firmer grasp on what Google and other major search engines actually see when their spiders are crawling your website.

The post Google’s Spiders are no Match for a Screaming Frog appeared first on The Search Ninjas.