Law Firm SEO: Things You Can Do to Start Seeing Traffic & Results (New Clients)

Is Your SEO Agency Wasting Your Budget?

Is your law firm website guilty of bad SEO?

I’ve witnessed it far too many times. Law firm got bad advice. The law firm didn’t do any link building. The law firm didn’t add any content – or, if they did create content, it ended up being incredibly similar to other content already on the website, low quality, and without purpose. Basically, their websites are just broken. Broken links, broken redirects, broken everything!

The result of all this bad SEO? Not enough traffic due to poor organic search visibility.  And a lot of wasted money!

Sound familiar?

But now isn’t the time to pass judgment. Now is the time to get it right.

Ready to find out how?

You’ll need to get links that drive traffic to your website. You’ll also need to get your technical SEO right.

A content strategy? Yep, you’ll need that. And you’ll also need to do some good old-fashioned marketing. Here are some ways you can bail out your website and start driving more traffic and results (conversions). Now.

1. Connect YouTube & Your Website Correctly

So many lawyers are creating and posting useful and helpful videos on YouTube. Yet many law firms are failing to link strategically from their YouTube to their website. This is a huge mistake. These are pretty much the easiest links you can get! YouTube is one of the most popular websites, with more than a billion users every month. Any link from YouTube is valuable. Although YouTube links may be nofollowed, remember our goal is driving traffic. We’re not worried about rankings right now. Oh, and you need videos-the most powerful type are FAQ videos. Have videos?  Are you marketing them?  Putting them on YouTube and on your website is NOT enough.  You need to have a robust video SEO program in order to get your videos seen by potential clients.  It is well worth the cost-videos convert more than any other type of marketing medium.

Four things to do here:

• Make sure you link to your website from your YouTube channel.
• Go through any videos you have posted. Within the description, be sure to link to the most relevant page(s) on your website, whether it’s a practice area page, a blog post, or your FAQ page.
• Create videos continually-keep them fresh.  The cost of video production has gone down dramatically.
• Implement a video SEO strategy.

A link in one of these places might just send you your next client.  The more places your video is found (via your video SEO strategy), the more likely your videos will send you clients.

1. Do an SEO Audit & Make the Fixes

An SEO audit can uncover issues that are hurting your organic search visibility and website performance. After completing an audit, and implementing all the necessary fixes, we’ve seen website traffic increase by anywhere from 250 percent to up to 2,000 percent!

These are the 10 most common errors we discover doing audits for law firms:

• Overall bad advice from previous marketing partners.

• They never set up Google Search Console, so they don’t know if Google is having problems crawling and indexing the site.

• Too many toxic links have been built over years and may not have been disavowed.

• Many unnecessary 301 redirects and broken links.

• Not paying attention to page speed and website performance.

• The website isn’t responsive or mobile-friendly.

• No one has set up AMP versions of webpages.

• Images aren’t compressed.

• Inconsistent NAP profiles throughout the web.

• Multiple pages competing for similar keywords, resulting in cannibalization. This problem is huge.

How can so much go so wrong? Increase Your Website Traffic by 47% Many law firms hire a web designer to make their website. But a web designer and SEO web developer are two different skills sets. So, if you’re going to hire a web design agency to build your website, you also need an SEO web developer who will ensure the website is coded correctly and correctly follows website navigation best practices. Bonus tip: While you’re making all your technical fixes, make sure to add Attorney schema to your website. Schema can indirectly help your rankings, because it helps Google better understand your pages, and it can help improve targeting.

1. Foundational Content

The best way to get traffic is to rank well in search engines for the right keywords, whether it’s for certain locations or practice areas. To accomplish this, you need a foundational content strategy. There are three types of content pages that will help you rank:

• Primary: These are your content pages that target high-value keywords relevant to your practice areas.
• Secondary: These are your content pages optimized to rank for keywords relevant to your services.
• Tertiary: These are your content pages that target long-tail keywords.

1. Email Strategy

Another foolproof way to drive traffic: email.

Here are three types of email campaigns that work well in the legal industry:

• New lead follow-up campaign: Show a client or a prospect what the next steps are. You could show them a journey through your law firm (e.g., with a video), explain what the next steps would be, or what it takes to hire a lawyer.
• Lead magnet: Give away an ebook or premium piece of content (e.g., 6 Steps to Winning a Personal Injury Case, How to Hire an Estate Planning Lawyer).
• Capture reviews from past clients: As soon as someone’s case is settled, they should fall into an email campaign asking for a review (or maybe taking a survey about their services). As mentioned in the last section, adding more positive reviews can only help drive more traffic to your site.

It’s worth investing in a good email management system, especially one that is also a CRM and has the ability to create email autoresponder campaigns.

1. Past Client Testimonials / Reviews

Do you ask your current and past clients for testimonials or reviews? You should be asking every single client for a review, whether good or bad.  Unlike weight loss testimonials which aren't believed for the most part, attorney testimonials still influence potential clients' decisions heavily. No, 2, 5 or 10 testimonials isn't enough. Any testimonials you have is a great start, but evidence shows that attorneys who have more than 10 testimonials convert far better than attorneys that have few or none. 20, 30, 50, or 100 testimonials does take time to gather, but at a certain point, the proof that you're a good attorney becomes overwhelming. Before you start asking for reviews from clients, find the reviews that are already out there on the internet, in your desk drawer (ones written on paper and sent by mail), your email account (some clients will email a thank you note or review), and in the forgotten minds of your staff. Nowadays, client reviews tend to occur mainly online - places to search are: Yelp, AVVO, Google My Business, Judy's Book, Superlawyers, Lawyers.com, Martindale-Hubbell, Yellowpages.com, Citysearch, Better Business Bureau, Yahoo local, LinkedIn, and more. Find all of your reviews online at these websites, as well as googling: "Yourname StateName Attorney reviews" or “Your name State Name Attorney client reviews” ex: "Joe Blow NY Attorney client reviews". Once you've gathered all the reviews you can from all sources, you'll want to both post them on your website and gather them format them uniformly, and print them out on as many sheets of paper as required, to give to potential clients, and email them as well (by creating a pdf of the testimonials).

How to Make Each Testimonial More IMPACTFUL (the more specific the name on the testimonial, the more powerful)

1. Written testimonial
2. Written testimonial with photo
3. Audio testimonial
4. Audio testimonial with photo
5. Video testimonials-these are our favorite and carry the most weight influencing others that you are the attorney of choice.

Specifically Worded Testimonials Are Far More Powerful

Weak example: "Attorney John Smith did a great job. Thanks." Powerful example: "I thought that a DUI arrest wasn't that big of a deal, and I ended up losing my driver's license because I waited too long to contest it being taken.  Attorney Smith was able to help me avoid pleading guilty to a 1st offense, and even got my breath test thrown out due to a lack of calibration logs and operator training. My case was dismissed, and I only lost my license for 90 days. If I had given up and pled guilty or tried to handle it on my own, I would've had a nightmare on my hands - whew!"

How to Use Testimonials Once You’ve Got Them

• On your website, everywhere
• On your website, associated with specific pages that add to the credibility of that specific page such as on a page discussing breath test results, have a testimonial of a client that you 'saved' by showing the weaknesses of the specific model of breathalizer used against them and how they were found not guilty as a result.
• In emails to potential clients (follow up emails)
• In newsletters to past clients to stimulate referrals
• In books you've authored
• In your videos on YouTube

 Reviews / Testimonials From Other Attorneys Clients who say you did a good job are vital - but including other attorneys' comments of how good you are makes your persona even more compelling and believable - don't ignore or forget these important reviews as well. Scour the web, your office, email, and ask your staff who they think would give you a positive review (or find existing ones online) - once found, create a separate pdf, printed document, and put them on your website as well. Same rules as with past client testimonials - the more you have, the more powerful your attraction to potential clients. If you don't have enough, or any, call up some attorney buddies and ask them to write you some - everyone has SOMEONE who will speak for them.

Past Case Stories / Studies / Results

Another powerful way to demonstrate your virility as an attorney is to recount as many successful past client case stories as possible. Case studies show how you think, in story format, instead of having to tell a potential client that "they should hire you". Done right, compelling case studies communicate how you prevailed or mitigated the circumstances of a case – they show how you think, various legal strategies to obtain good results for clients, and have a chance of making a potential client say, "wow - this person had very similar issues to MY CASE and this attorney helped them". Case studies can be VERY powerful - think of them as testimonials in expanded form, with a reason how that shows not only the end result, but HOW it happened and WHY the result was positive.

Answer Your Reviews

As I already mentioned, consumers rely on online reviews when choosing a lawyer. One simple thing that law firms can do themselves is respond to reviews in a timely manner. This means responding both to positive and negative reviews.

Google puts a lot of weight on reviews, so definitely respond to any on Google.

If you can increase your rating (ideally you want to shoot for a 4- or 5-star rating), that should also impact the number of potential clients who click on and visit your website. But also answer your reviews on sites like Avvo, Yelp, and anywhere else your firm might get reviewed.

Key Takeaways

All five of these things can help you immediately if you need more traffic and SEO visibility. Out of all of these options, I highly suggest you start with the SEO audit. You need to figure out the health of your website before you start adding any content or links. Think of it like going to the doctor before you start a new workout routine. Once the audit is done, fix everything you need to. Then build out your content strategy. Then it won’t be long until you start seeing much greater results from your SEO efforts.

4 Pillars of a Successful Legal Content Strategy

Want a legal website that attracts clients who are ready to convert and earns great organic search rankings? Then you need a content strategy. Too many legal websites I see are simply blogging or creating content for the sake of it. However, there’s a lot more to a content strategy than just creating content. Let me say it again: you need a content strategy to be successful. Every piece of content you publish should have a purpose. You should build content based on:

• Your practice area.
• Keyword research and analysis.
• Competitor analysis.
• Local analysis.
• Demographics.

Ready to up your legal content game?

Here are four pillars you need to have for a successful legal content strategy.

1. Foundational Content

Your legal content strategy starts with foundational content. For legal marketing, foundational content means increasing the visibility and organic search rankings of your practice area pages (and your homepage). Within foundational content there are actually three types of webpages you need to know and use:

Primary Content Pages

As you do your keyword research, you’re going to discover that certain keywords have more value than other keywords (typically because they have high search volume and they are incredibly relevant to your practice area). Simply, primary content pages are your main pages that target a high-value keyword. These are the main keywords you want to rank for. For instance, you might design and optimize your primary content pages to rank for keywords such as:

• Personal injury lawyer
• Divorce lawyer
• Family lawyer

However, the SEO competition for these high-value terms is typically incredibly high. So, you will need to create content that is better than your top competitors. As you build your foundational content around these keywords, always make sure the content you publish is relevant to the services you offer.

Secondary Content Pages

Secondary content pages are optimized to rank for keywords that are relevant to the services you offer. So, if you’re creating content for a personal injury lawyer website, for example, some keywords you’ll want to target might include:

• Back injury
• Car accident
• Boat accident
• Brain injury

Tertiary Content Pages

Tertiary content pages are for deeper, long-tail keywords you want to target. You can dig really deep at this level. For example, you can target multiple types of car accidents:

• Car accident while hit by drunk driver.
• Hit and run accident.
• Left turn accident.

Developing more foundational content means you’ll have more fishing poles in the water, which means more opportunities to attract clients who need the legal service you offer.

Every new piece of content you create is an asset that can add two types of value:

• To your website: Your content helps improve your search visibility, which makes it easier for people find your website.
• To your law firm: There is a tangible, measurable ROI on your content investment (as long as the page is converting).

One other type of foundational content, which may not apply to all legal websites, is localized content. This is for law firms that serve more than one location. If this is the case for your firm, you’ll want to create content specific to those locations, targeting local keywords (e.g., city, town, or county names).

1. Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ content has been around forever, but it has become even more important with the rising popularity of voice search. People are using their smartphones and smart home devices like Alexa to ask more questions – and their queries are longer and more conversational. Google’s search features (e.g., autocomplete, people also ask, searches related to…) make it super easy to find additional FAQ content to develop and write. Another way to uncover additional frequently asked questions is by speaking to your client. For instance, if you’re talking to a personal injury lawyer, find out what questions their intake department is getting. Are people asking about drugs? Back injuries? Other types of injuries? Google can then feature this FAQ content as featured snippets, as long as the content has been optimized and the site has built up enough authority.

A lot of FAQ content has become a featured snippet.

For instance, here’s a search for : Here’s another example, for : The best part?  You don’t have to rank in Position 1 to get a featured snippet. As long as you can get to Page 1 of Google (ideally in Position 1, 2, or 3), you have an opportunity to appear in the coveted “position zero” above the first organic search result. And if you’re doing any PPC marketing, that will help your law firm take up even more SERP real estate. For your FAQ content, you’ll see best results by making sure each new page you create is optimized and:

• Answers just one question.
• Has an SEO-friendly URL.
• Uses breadcrumbs.
• Is at least 500 to 1,000 words.

1. Authoritative Content

This is the blog content you, the attorney, creates. We encourage lawyers to really give a personalized approach to the law, either by sharing their opinions, writing about certain cases, or doing case studies. We also recommend lawyers get super technical here. Use state case numbers and violation codes – Google will find this information and show it to searchers who do a case number lookup. If you see an interesting and relevant legal case you want to write about, do it! Or, if you’re a divorce lawyer, it might be a good idea for you to share your opinion on the most famous divorces.  That said, don’t write for the sake of writing, especially if it’s outside the scope of your practice areas. While you want to grow your website and show Google that you’re investing in your website, you don’t want to saturate your website with subpar content. At best, low-quality pages or off-topic content won’t help you or add any value; at worst, it could hurt you (either how Google or potential clients view your site, based on the quality of your content). Ultimately, authoritative content isn’t meant to convert. Authoritative content is more of a branding play meant to increase authority and influence – to help lawyers become leading experts in their area of legal expertise.

1. User Experience

There’s more to content than just the words on a webpage. Always think about the user experience. For instance, adding images or visual content (such as banners or videos) is a simple way to break up the content: Another thing to think about is how you are going to internally link your pages. Don’t think about links just for ranking purposes (though smart website navigation will help with that). Instead, think of your internal links a way to lead your visitors one step closer toward a conversion action (links to your practice area pages) or to find more information (links to content pages on relevant, related topics, either within your site or on an external source). For instance, your tertiary pages should be used to lead visitors who have just discovered your law firm to your primary and secondary pages via a call to action. Ultimately, if you make your users happy with your content experience, and follow SEO best practices, you should be rewarded with better Google rankings. Experience has shown that the more credentialed you appear to potential clients, the higher a percentage of your website visitors will call you versus leave your site WITHOUT calling. If a visitor does not call or email you, you'll never convert them to a retained client. No, you can't even get close to turning every website visitor into a potential client call, but when the legal industry's standard is 1 in 200 visitors calling, there's a TON of room for improvement.

Summary

The combination of foundational content, FAQ content, authoritative content, user experience and testimonials is powerful.  These five of these elements must be part of your legal content strategy.

Ready to get started?

Start going deeper using Google’s search features, especially autocomplete, to find FAQ content. You can also discover what types of legal content are attracting the most shares and links with a tool like BuzzSumo. Once you’ve created your content, enhance it with visuals. This will improve the user experience – and boost your SEO performance. Finally, always measure your results. Not everything you publish will be successful, but when you figure out which types of content tend to bring in lots of leads or traffic, learn from it – and try to replicate your successes.

Need help implementing your new strategy?

Call ForLawFirmsOnly Marketing at 855-943-8736 for a FREE consultation and proposal.

And as always, your feedback, questions or potential project ideas are welcome. Edward Lott, Ph.D., M.B.A. President and Managing Partner ForLawFirmsOnly Marketing, Inc. Ed can be reached at (or visit his websites) edl@forlawfirmsonly.com 855-943-8736 ext. 101 www.ForLawFirmsOnly.com

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/law-firm-seo-things-you-can-do-to-start-seeing-traffic-results-new-clients/

Do You Need Dedicated Mobile Ads?

For many people out there, the Internet is just the Internet; whether or not you’re trying to access it via a desktop or laptop computer or on your smartphone or tablet is irrelevant. The problem in that line of thinking is that when evaluating online mediums, you’re not exactly comparing apples to apples. The unique constraints of how content is delivered and how it can be view in a standard desktop vs. a mobile environment make certain features of each delivery system ineffective or even inoperable in the other. The same holds true for advertising content. The need for you to incorporate online ads into your firm’s marketing strategy is undeniable; they simply work better at attracting new clients than traditional methods. They allow you to target your content to those who are actually looking for it as opposed to simply casting a wide net and hoping for a return. Plus, the cost of advertising via television, print, or radio has increased steadily in recent years, while at the same time, the effectiveness of those methods has been shown to be declining. Thus, online advertising offers you the potential for a much higher ROI.

Online vs. Mobile: Is There a Difference?

Yet your online ad content isn’t comprehensive. The difference in display and resolution contrasts between large desktop screens is very different than that of smaller smartphone displays. While ads are often able to scale to fit a smaller screen size, the process involved in doing so typically contributes to site latency. If recent trends in mobile technology user tendencies have showed us anything, it’s that their patience is often razor-thin. Despite all this, the fact that your advertising and marketing content can eventually fit to the scale of a mobile device may leave you wondering if investing in dedicated mobile display ads is worth it. Consider these statistics:

• Recent advertising studies have shown mobile ads to be five times more effective at generating customer traffic than traditional online banner ads
• 80 percent of mobile user attention is devoted to apps. Opt-in ads that offer incentives in conjunction with the use of a mobile app have shown to deliver up to a 300 percent improvement in ad click-through rates
• As many as 80 percent of the top 50 U.S. ad buyers have announced plans to drastically increase their mobile ad spending over the next 12-18 months

Responsive Web Design

If the reason for your not having developed exclusive mobile ad content is not wanting to have to manage both a full and mobile site, don’t worry; there’s a way to avoid that. Development strategies such as responsive web design allow you to create content that easily scales to all environments while lessening the need for constant resizing and panning. To fall into the trap of thinking that your online advertising content begins and ends on the desktop is to gamble with the chance of not reaching an entirely separate (and, according to statistics, more engaged) potential client base. Your online marketing partner should make the need for developing dedicated mobile display ads very clear. If they don’t, they’re doing you a disservice. We at BusinessCreator, on the other hand, have a unique perspective on how to optimize your firm’s advertising in the online (and mobile) realm. That perspective comes from years of collective experience in exclusively helping law firms improve their marketing efforts. Let us put that experience to work for you. Contact us at 855-943-8736 or marketing@forlawfirmsonly.com and start getting found where your next client is looking. BusinessCreator is a digital marketing agency that understands lawyers. We provide digital marketing expertise to help grow your legal practice. See more about our work with lawyers here. Edward Kundahl, Ph.D., M.B.A. Ed can be reached at 855-943-8736 (or visit his websites) ed@businesscreatorplus.com https://www.BusinessCreatorPlus.com https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/do-you-need-dedicated-mobile-ads/

Improving Mobile SEO

Adapting To Mobile SEO

Can you live without your mobile phones for a week? Maybe a day? Difficult isn’t it, even to think about it? People are so used to browsing, buying stuff online and checking the email and news, it’s impossible to imagine life without it. The advancement of technology has made a mobile device so accessible and powerful that it’s threatening to be a powerful competitor to the age-old desktop/laptop devices. It also means businesses need to rethink or adapt their SEO strategies and take into account mobile devices as the majority of people now access the internet from these.

Why is it necessary to adapt to mobile SEO?

The amount of traffic that’s being generated from mobile devices nowadays is almost equal to what’s being generated from desktop or laptops. It’s not going to be long before the balance shifts. This makes it all the more important for businesses to chalk out a strategy that caters to mobile traffic. Things like your website, content, and images should show up without being distorted on these devices. Pages should load fast, maybe faster than desktop, because people are getting more impatient and more so on mobile devices. According to research, the intention to buy is more in mobile device users than their desktop counterparts. Now if your site isn’t optimized for mobile devices users, you sure are leaving money on the table.

Is there any difference between Desktop and Mobile SEO?

Though many aspects of SEO are common for both Desktop and Mobile, there are three factors that should be given more importance for Mobile SEO. They are performance, user experience, and content. These are the factors that Google is going to rank your websites in the years to come. They need to be tailored to Mobile users as “mobile-first” index is what Google is aiming for. Now there’s no way of knowing how the algorithm will change unless it’s rolled out and tested. But a mobile-first index would mean your mobile site needs to be as informative as a desktop version and not a scaled down version. It needs to be crawlable and responsive.

Searches on Mobile Devices:

The intention of users searching on a mobile device is different from the search that originates on a desktop. For example, if you’re looking for the nearest seafood restaurant, it makes sense to offer directions for the mobile users than the desktop user. If you keep up with the trends you’ll also notice almost 20% of the searches nowadays are Voice searches. And this number is on the rise. With all the voice assistants fighting for market share, this is a trend that’s not going away soon. These searches are different from text-based searches as humans ask questions that are more than 4 words long on average. So you’ll have to research and focus your content around long tail keywords that people are searching for. You will have to keep this in mind while designing your SEO strategy for Mobile. In addition to superior UX, useful content and site performance search intentions and trends should be kept in mind while framing your SEO strategy for mobile devices.

How to Improve Mobile Performance:

First off you’ll need tools to audit your current site performance and get insights on what factors needs improvement. Google has various tools that are free and will help you get behind the scenes information. Google Search Console should be your starting point, add your property (website) to it. You’ll also need to verify that you are the owner of the website you registered. Google will give you a couple of options like dropping an HTML code inside the website, or through the domain name provider, or verify via the analytics code etc. Once you’re done, you’ll be able to analyze data that is collected via search console. You will have access to data like how many people are landing on your website via mobile devices, what pages they are looking for, how long are they staying on the page and much more. You should also run your web pages through Google Page Speed Insights to know what part of your mobile pages need improvement these could range from images to render blocking scripts. There are many paid tools like SEMRush, Screaming frog and such that’ll help you get more insights on your site’s mobile friendliness and performance. Performance will almost always boil down to site speed. Let’s take a look at the most important factors that can help.

Responsive Pages Are Indexed Faster:

There are three ways webpages are served. A separate domain for mobile users in the form of m.website is one of the ways to serve your web pages. You’ll have to let Google know via the rel=”alternate” and rel=”canonical” specification elements. Your webpages can be dynamically served. The technology resides on the servers where your webpages are served from. Depending on what browser and device the page is requested from a separate set of files are sent. It makes use of the vary header in this case. Responsive design is what Google is actively promoting businesses to use. The search engine will index your site with a higher preference if you have a single site, unlike the previous methods and it adapts to the screen size of the device it’s requested from.

Fix The PageSpeed Recommendations:

If you’ve used the pagespeed tool you’ll know about the recommendations. Pagespeed has separate recommendations for mobile pages. These include identifying render blocking scripts, minification of JS and CSS and other issues that can fix your page loading times. You don’t really need to score 100, but it’s better to be in the 70+ scores. Other tools that you could use to check issues with your page loading times and what improvements you could pursue are GTMetrix and Pingdom. After fixing the recommendations you should run it through the same tool to measure your site performance improvement. Read the PageSpeed Insights rules to get a more detailed overview on what Google Developers recommend for a quick loading web page.

AMPing Up Your Site:

 Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a joint project by Google and Twitter with the sole aim of getting web pages load faster or mobile devices.  Web pages are enveloped in special HTML code and optimized to be presented with lightning speeds. This is work in progress and several advances are being made regularly. For example, it was used for static pages before; with the release of amp-bind, you can have interactive web pages on the AMP framework. Though it’s relatively new, it’s sure catching up. And the quicker you can adapt your website to it the better for you in the long run. Find more information about this initiative on Google’s guidelines.

User Experience:

When your customer is on the mobile phone, user experience matters even more than a desktop user. A smaller screen brings in its own share of challenges. Consider the following keeping your visitors in mind:

• Are the menu’s & sub-menu’s clickable? Do they overlap? Is it difficult to click on a menu because it’s too small?
• Are all the action buttons like click to call, link to directions etc working?
• Does the content and images make the page look too cluttered?
• Is the font type and size too large or too small to read?
• Are the forms working fine?
• Shorter meta descriptions appear on Mobile Search results. Are your meta-description and titles optimized for web searches?

Think from the point of view of your viewers and you’ll be able to decide what experiences can be enhanced to make them stick around longer.

Making Your Mobile Site Locally Relevant:

 Did you know that 76% of near me searches resulted in a business visit within a day and 28% of them were conversions? There’s a huge opportunity for you to tap into if you’re a local business. Now searches with an intention to buy are a lot more frequent when people are on the move. Therefore improving your local SEO will help you gain rankings when people search for businesses near them. How do you improve your local SEO?

• Use consistent NAP (Name, Address and Phone Number) on Google My Business and other local directories.
• Get backlinks from locally relevant business websites.
• Create content that caters to the local population.
• Ask customers to review you on Google, Yelp or relevant review websites.

Things are changing rapidly in the world of SEO, and specially for mobile sites. So if you want to remain relevant and be found, here’s a summary of the things you should be focusing on.

1. Responsive Design: By far the most important factor to have your website indexed on google. It makes life easy for both the search engine as well as you, as there’s only one site. Test your website on a mobile testing website and fix any issues that are stopping your site from being rendered correctly.
2. Site Load Speed: Fix Google Site Speed Insight Scores. The critical ones being:

• Number of Requests: Various parts of your website are requested from various places. Some of them are on your server and some from external sites or urls. Minimizing the number of requests will reduce the round trip time, thereby decreasing page loading time.
• Images: Optimizing images are a key part of speeding up your site. There’s no point in your images being super detailed and very high resolution. As the screen size wouldn’t allow the image to be seen in that level of detail without having to scroll. So keep dimensions in mind when you optimize images. Use plugins like WPSmush or an offline editor like RIOT to make the best of your images.
• Caching: Utilizing “browser caching” will make browsers load certain things from memory without requesting for them again. This is useful when the user visits the page often.
• Render Blocking Scripts: When there are too many plugins or javascript/CSS on a page it might obstruct loading of contents above the fold. A Google Page Speed Insights test will confirm this. Make sure to correct these and help your page load faster.

1. UX: Design a user experience which will help visitors stay on your site when they are browsing on their mobile devices. Major things to look out for are tabs that are too small to tap, overlapping layouts, skewed images and non-functional CTA buttons.
2. Pop-ups: Google has announced that it will penalize people sites with pop-ups that hamper uninterrupted access to the website. Use pop-ups intelligently. If you have a form that needs to be filled in order to access your website, then you’re making it difficult for the search engines to index your website.
3. Is AMP for you: AMP is relatively new, but there are many plugins available that make it easy for you to test it out with your website. Give it a shot or if you’re not so confident, use a web designer. AMP is being promoted by Google so there’s a good chance that a mobile website using the framework will have a greater chance to rank better on searches.

 To be or not to be Mobile isn’t the question anymore, as mobile first is definitely the way forward. As more people use handheld devices to get their daily fill of the internet, mobile SEO will only increase in importance. So if you haven’t given much thought to your mobile SEO strategy, it’s high time you started. Edward Kundahl, Ph.D., M.B.A. CEO and Founding Partner BusinessCreator, Inc. Ed can be reached at ed@businesscreatorplus.com 855-943-8736 ext. 101 www.BusinessCreatorPlus.com

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/improving-mobile-seo/

Daily News: SMB Buying Habits, Data Exhaust for Digital Marketers, Amazon’s Sponsored Brand Ads

October 30, 2018 | Contributed by: Courtney Dobson

Here is today’s roundup of news related to local marketing and advertising, local media, technology, local commerce, consumer behavior and more. SMBs Don’t Want Calls & Probably Will Delete Your Emails. Now What? (October 30, 2018) LSA Insider: “The ease with which consumers can research a product, service or business has called into question long-standing sales tactics and philosophies. In many ways, modern consumers sell themselves and if a sales rep is part of the journey, he or she is merely to fulfill or close the sale.” How the Ad Industry Encourages Poor Data Quality (October 30, 2018) Street Fight: “Next time you’re selecting targeting data for a digital ad campaign, pick segments that have won awards for quality, received five-star user ratings, or have rave reviews by data aficionados. Makes sense: Data decisions guided by true quality indicators tend to yield better results.” How Data Exhaust Can Overload Digital Marketers (October 29, 2018) eMarketer: “Marketers are drowning in information. And they often scrap excess data rather than sift through and make sense of it. In an August 2018 survey of 100 digital marketers worldwide conducted by Digital Element, more than half of respondents said they were concerned about data exhaust, which refers to the massive data trail that users accumulate as they browse the internet.” How to navigate Amazon’s sponsored brand ads updates (October 29, 2018) Search Engine Land: “Amazon recently announced several updates to Sponsored Brand Ads (formerly Headline Search Ads) including additional placements on desktop and mobile, expanded bidding capabilities, and enhanced reporting insights. Customers love shopping in-store but still expect connected experiences (October 29, 2018) ClickZ: “What generations shop in-store and what kind of experiences are they looking for? New report details in-store shopping behaviors and what brands can do.”

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/daily-news-smb-buying-habits-data-exhaust-for-digital-marketers-amazons-sponsored-brand-ads/

Judge orders detention of public defender for ‘acting like I’m some kind of idiot’

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Judiciary

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Posted October 30, 2018, 4:11 pm CDT

Sakhom/Shutterstock.com.

A Wisconsin judge ordered a short detention for an assistant public defender last Friday, saying he was in contempt for “acting like I’m some kind of idiot.” Judge David Borowski of Milwaukee County ordered the detention of Puck Tsai after the defense lawyer argued against modifying the signature bond for his client, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which obtained a transcript of the hearing. Tsai’s client was accused of homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle in August. One of the conditions of his release is that he remain free of drugs and alcohol. Prosecutors asked for cash bail after a urine test showed a high level of water, which can be an indication of attempted tampering, according to the Journal Sentinel account. Borowski said during the hearing that, if anything, the prosecution should be seeking a higher amount. “This is a homicide,” Borowski said. “I’m not playing games in this case.” Tsai said the victim was at fault in the accident, and his client has defenses. Borowski countered that defenses don’t affect a bail decision. “Let’s all stop talking,” the judge said. The defendant returned to his seat, but Tsai remained standing. “Is there something you want to say,” Borowski asked. “Or do you want to go into custody?” Tsai then said his client is still innocent at this stage of the case. “No kidding. I get that. Sit down,” Borowski said and ordered Tsai into detention. “Rolling your eyes, throwing your hands in the air, acting like I’m some kind of idiot gets you locked up for contempt,” Borowski said. Tsai returned to the courtroom after his supervisors spoke with Borowski. Tsai apologized and Borowski said he could be released. According to the Journal Sentinel, it’s not the first time Borowski ordered contempt detentions. He previously did so for parties in probate cases and for a lawyer in a high-profile criminal case. The Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office released a statement to the newspaper. “The fact that our attorney was taken into custody, handcuffed and belly-chained for doing his job is unacceptable,” the statement said. “The message this action sends to our attorneys, whose jobs are to be zealous advocates for the rights of their clients, undercuts a basic tenet of our justice system.”

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https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/judge-orders-detention-of-public-defender-for-acting-like-im-some-kind-of-idiot/

How to Combine Facebook Ads and Email Marketing for Better Conversions

Do you want an effective way to get more leads? Wondering how to nurture leads into becoming customers? In this article, you’ll discover how to use Facebook ads with email marketing to improve your conversions.

How to Combine Facebook Ads and Email Marketing for Better Conversions by Rand Owens on Social Media Examiner.

Why Your Business Needs Both Facebook Ads and Email Marketing

For as long as I can remember, marketers have hailed email marketing as the best strategy in terms of ROI and difficulty. Done correctly, email marketing drives a constant stream of traffic to your content. It also lets you connect with your audience on a more personal level, maintain brand awareness, and schedule your marketing messages for more ideal times. A recent survey by Ascend2, however, reveals that email marketing has been overtaken by four things: SEO, marketing technology, content marketing, and social media marketing. To most people, these findings would end the “email marketing versus social media marketing” debate once and for all. Smarter marketers, however, would take the comparative success of both tactics as a signal to look for ways to combine them. Let’s look at the facts. The success of an email marketing campaign is tied to the number of leads who are subscribed to your list. To generate leads, the typical approach is to drive traffic to a landing page, which is something social media platforms excel at. Other than social ads that let you take advantage of a network’s massive and diverse user base, social media websites serve as reliable content distribution channels for your lead generation landing pages. In return, you can leverage a growing email list to boost your social media followers. You simply need email templates with links directing subscribers to your social accounts—that is, of course, if they don’t already follow you. So how do you design a campaign that seamlessly fuses these two components? Start with a solid Facebook ad campaign that promotes your landing page to as many people as possible.

#1: Set Up Facebook Ads to Drive Traffic to Your Landing Page

Effectively advertising on Facebook requires you to learn several audience-targeting options, different ad formats, and advertising practices that will maximize your results. The setup process is easier and more streamlined than ever, thanks to Facebook’s pre-configured options. To get started, head to your Facebook page and click the Promote button below the navigation tabs. To create a Facebook ad campaign that sends traffic to your lead generation pages, scroll down the list of goals and choose Get More Website Visitors. In the Promote Your Website window, specify the URL of the page you’re promoting. Note that you can see a preview of your ad on the right for multiple placements. You can also change the format of your Facebook ad if you want. In most cases, a single image ad should do the job of promoting a landing page. But if you have the right visual assets, you can opt for the video, carousel, or slideshow ad format. The other elements you can modify are your ad’s headline, copy, call to action (CTA), and target audience. Here are some tips for crafting these ad elements.

Headline

The role of your headline, along with the featured image in your Facebook ads, is to capture the attention of your target audience while giving them an idea of what your business can do for them. You can accomplish both goals by emphasizing your audience’s pain points, mentioning actual numbers, and instilling a sense of urgency. Facebook ad headlines have a 25-character limit, so choose your words wisely.

Text

Once you have your audience’s attention, the ad copy should fill in the details they need to know before they can take the next step. Some of the ground rules are to make sure the text matches what you show on the image and focus on a clear, concise value proposition. To boost the impact of the copy in your Facebook ads, adopt the preferred communication style and language of your target audience. For the most part, a friendly, conversational tone is helpful in getting your brand’s message across to Facebook users.

CTA

The CTA gives the audience one last push into clicking. Facebook has simplified this process by providing pre-defined CTAs for all campaign types. Sign Up and Learn More are two of the CTAs that work well for lead generation.

Target Audience

After you finalize the look of your Facebook ad, the next step is to define your target audience. As an ad platform, the targeting options on Facebook are impressive. In addition to creating target audience profiles based on user demographics and interests, you can also set up a lookalike audience based on data gathered from the Facebook pixel, your page followers, or your app users. Alternatively, you can build a custom audience to use information from additional data sources, like a linked Instagram account, a specific Facebook event, and offline event sets. Pay attention to the audience you create for your Facebook ads. The rest of the steps in this article (from building landing pages to creating nurturing experiences) should be tailored to their preferences and goals. The last thing you need to configure before you launch your Facebook ad is your budget. Check out this article to learn the ins and outs of efficient Facebook ad budgeting, such as specifying target revenue and creating custom conversion paths.

#2: Design a Landing Page to Convert Leads From Your Facebook Ads Into Subscribers

Creating Facebook ads that can turn the heads of potential subscribers is only a part of the equation. You also need to design landing pages that compel your audience to take action. Naturally, a well-funded business with an in-house web development team should have no trouble with this step. If you’re a startup, solopreneur, or freelancer, on the other hand, you might want to use a dedicated landing page builder like Instapage, which eliminates the need for an experienced web designer to create professional-looking landing pages. Instapage kickstarts the design process with ready-to-use landing page templates. The tool offers a 14-day free trial and paid plans start at $99/month (when billed annually). To quickly find a template that matches your goal, select the Lead Generation checkbox on the template selection page. Although the lead generation templates vary slightly in terms of design, they all feature the same on-page elements necessary for conversions. Apart from the prominent headline and short value proposition, they also prioritize the visibility of the essential form fields and CTA. To explore more of Instapage’s features, go with the Blank Page template. After you give your landing page a name and go through a short tutorial, you’ll see the main Instapage editor. Here, you can start piecing together your landing page. On the main toolbar, click the elements you want to include, which range from CTA buttons to form fields. Because most landing page builders are capable of producing similar results, there’s no need to be picky. What’s important is that you follow design principles that provide your audience with a frictionless experience and encourage them to follow through with a conversion.

Feature Visual Content

Although the web design industry has been trending toward minimalism in recent years, businesses never truly omit the use of a featured visual asset in landing pages. Visual content is simply much more effective than text in capturing the audience’s interest, be it an explainer video, a background image, an infographic, or a product photo.

Remember, the visual content itself doesn’t always have to stand out. As long as it draws attention to the other conversion elements on your landing page, it should work.

Eliminate Distractions

A distraction on a landing page can be anything that breaks the engagement or diverts the audience’s focus away from the conversion path. Excessive page elements such as sidebar ads, animations, large menus, and pop-ups are only a few examples of distractions you should eliminate. Also avoid unnecessary steps in your design such as entering an address or answering a survey so you end up with a hassle-free conversion process. Here’s an example of a landing page stripped of all distractions that can ruin the user experience:

Present a Solid Value Proposition

Upon arriving at your landing page, most (if not all) users have one question: what’s in it for me? Your job is to provide them with a clear, solid answer as fast as possible. That’s why your main headline should highlight a user-oriented value proposition that’s centered on your target audience’s needs. Here are a handful of tips that will help you write headlines that convert:

• Use negative superlatives. Negative superlatives, like “worst,” “never,” or “lowest” can significantly increase click-throughs in headlines.
• Cite real numbers. One way to pique your target audience’s interest is to mention exact numbers to back up your claims. For instance, rather than say “tips to generate traffic,” try expanding it to “tips to generate over 10,000 visitors in a month.”
• Use top phrases. A 2017 survey conducted by BuzzSumo revealed that headlines that contain certain phrases like “will make you,” “this is why,” and “are freaking out” garner significantly more engagement on Facebook.

Design for Mobile Users

Don’t forget that you’re designing landing pages for users who click your Facebook ads. According to Statista, 75% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices, so it’s vital to optimize your landing pages for mobile displays. The good news is that most landing page builders, website platforms, and content management systems support responsive design out of the box. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t put any effort into mobile optimization. A great place to start is the Google Mobile-Friendly Test. Just enter the URL of your landing page, wait for the evaluation to complete, and look for optimization suggestions.

A/B Test Your Landing Pages

Even with an experienced team by your side, it’s virtually impossible to get a landing page right the first time. If you use the proven landing page tactics above, there will still be some trial and error involved in determining the best design and structure for your website. An A/B or split testing tool can significantly reduce the time it takes to gather sufficient data regarding your landing page’s performance. It works by letting you test two or more variations of your landing page simultaneously. Landing page builders like Instapage have an A/B testing tool built in, but you can also use external platforms like the free Google Optimize tool to test two or more versions of a web page.

#3: Design the Perfect Lead Nurturing Campaign

You now have all of the pieces in place to start generating quality leads. Your social ads are hard at work bringing in traffic, and your landing pages should help convert these visitors into subscribers. But you’re not done just yet. You still have more to do to truly win the trust of your new leads and eventually convert them into paying customers.

Create a Welcome Email

First, make sure they’re fully aware of what they signed up for. In lead nurturing, creating a welcome email is perhaps the easiest step. If you use an email marketing tool like Mailchimp, you have the tools you need to build and schedule a welcome email. A welcome email not only lets you show your appreciation for new subscribers but also set their expectations and make them more receptive to your future emails. It may seem counterproductive, but include an unsubscribe link in your welcome email. It will help you filter out unqualified leads early so you can accurately measure the growth of your email list as far as high-quality leads go.

Track Where People Are in the Sales Funnel

One of the most common mistakes businesses make with email marketing is treating all of their subscribers the same way. In a sales funnel, there are different stages of familiarity that dictate how users respond to certain emails:

• Awareness: The awareness stage is where people are just discovering your brand. These are the leads who need a welcome email with links to useful resources to get them started, including blog posts, case studies, and other types of educational content.
• Consideration: Leads in the consideration stage of a conversion funnel aren’t necessarily ready to make a purchase yet. They still need more validation from product reviews, tutorials, free trials, and other product-centered content before they’ll have enough confidence to take the next step.
• Purchase and repurchase: In email marketing, you can segment all existing customers into one list regardless of whether it’s their first purchase. At this point, your objective is to build brand loyalty with cross-selling emails, review requests, and special event offers.

Email subscribers you’ve acquired from social ads are probably in the awareness or consideration stage of the sales funnel. To segment them accordingly, email marketing platforms like Mailchimp and Drip let you automatically sort your leads based on activities such as page visits, purchases, or signups from specific sources.

Get Inspiration From Others

Just like landing pages, you must constantly test and improve emails to reap their full benefits. Modern email marketing platforms have built-in analytics tools that help you with this goal. If you want a head start, take a peek at the email campaigns of the top brands in your niche. Really Good Emails is a straightforward free tool that lets you do this. All you need to do is enter a keyword that describes the kind of email you want to create and wait for suggestions to come in. If you prefer something more comprehensive, WhoSendsWhat might be the tool for you. It lets you bookmark emails for future reference, sort email samples by industry, and start your search with specific domains. It also provides a more diverse selection of emails, including those that clearly didn’t use a design-oriented template. That’s it—real examples of lead nurturing emails you can borrow inspiration from. Pay close attention to how they present the key takeaways of their email, the focus of their headlines, and the overall tone of their content.

Conclusion

The steps above for designing successful email campaigns that complement your social ads look easy on the surface, and they are with the right tools. But only you can uncover the pivotal steps to success for your own brand. Optimizing landing pages and developing email content are processes that don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution. You need to take the knowledge above, do your own experiments, and formulate a recipe that can accomplish your unique goals. What do you think? Can you think of any steps to add that affect the outcome of a successful email marketing campaign? What strategies and tools do you use in your Facebook ads and email marketing campaigns? Feel free to voice your thoughts in the comments below!

More articles about Facebook ads:

 

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/how-to-combine-facebook-ads-and-email-marketing-for-better-conversions/

Valpo law school closing; teach-out plan in the works

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Law Schools

By Stephanie Francis Ward

Posted October 30, 2018, 4:15 pm CDT

The law school at Indiana’s Valparaiso University is closing, its board of directors announced Tuesday, following a scuttled plan to gift it to Middle Tennessee State University. Approximately 100 students, all of whom are in their second or third years, remain at the law school, which now plans to continue with a teach-out, a press release states. “This has been an extremely difficult decision and is the result of several years of careful discernment,” Frederick G. Kraegel, chairman of the Valparaiso University board of directors, said in the release. “We have explored a number of strategic alternatives. Despite these efforts, we have not been able to achieve a more positive outcome.” Valparaiso’s board announced in November 2017 that it would suspend the admission of first-year students at the law school for the fall of 2018 in light of “severe financial challenges” and falling enrollment. That news came a few days after the council of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar removed a 2016 public censure stating the law school was not in compliance with admissions standards. By 2017, the law school got its median LSAT score up to 151 and the censure was lifted. But that year there were only 31 students in Valpo Law’s first-year class, according to its 509 Report. Valpo and MTSU governing boards in October 2018 reached a proposed agreement where the law school infrastructure would be a gift, and for the fall of 2019 operate on both the Indiana and Tennessee campuses, with MTSU offering reimbursement for interim expenses. But the Tennessee Higher Education Commission voted 8 to 5 against the proposal. Before the vote the agency obtained a feasibility study, Tennessee’s Murfreesporo Post reported, which found that adding a fourth ABA-accredited law school to Tennessee would raise the cost of recruiting law students for all schools there, and increase competition for employment opportunities. Sidney A. McPhee, president of MTSU, told the paper that he disagreed with the report’s findings.

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https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/valpo-law-school-closing-teach-out-plan-in-the-works/

Now you can segment Google Ads store visits by ‘new vs. returning’ visitors

Advertisers that have store visits data displaying in their Google Ads accounts, can now segment that data to look at new versus returning store visitors.

Why you should care

Advertisers who are measuring store visits from people who have engaged with their Google ads, will be able to analyze how many of those visitors are new or repeat customers. That segmentation can help advertisers better understand how campaigns are driving incremental store visits or loyalty from past customers. With that information, advertisers can focus budget and bids on the areas that are most important to them. Store visits reports can be segmented based on the time period you’ve selected for the “customer lapse window.”

More details

• To report on returning users, you can select a conversion window of: 180 days (this is the default), 90 days, 60 days, custom between 1 and 180 days)
• Creating a custom column for Store Visits conversions and then segmenting by “new vs. returning customers” under the Conversions drop down is a quick way to see that data.
• For more on how to see store visits data in Google Ads, see this help center page.
• Google announced additional updates for store visits at SMX East last week, including the ability to use Smart Bidding.

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media's Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/now-you-can-segment-google-ads-store-visits-by-new-vs-returning-visitors/

In arguing for leniency, lawyers point to Trump rhetoric for man convicted in plot to kill Muslims

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Sentencing/Post Conviction

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Posted October 30, 2018, 3:25 pm CDT

Lawyers for a Kansas man convicted in a plot to kill Muslim refugees argue in a federal court filing that President Donald Trump’s campaign rhetoric should be considered as a “backdrop” that mitigates in favor of a lower sentence. The sentencing memo filed Monday on behalf of Patrick Stein, a Trump supporter, argues that U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren should take the charged atmosphere into account. “The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking, violent, awful, hateful and contentious presidential elections in modern history, driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president,” the lawyers wrote. The Huffington Post was first with the story, followed by coverage in the Washington Post. The lawyers’ sentencing memo refers to the This Is Spinal Tap mockumentary in which a rock musician boasts that his amplifier is better because its top volume is 11, one louder than 10. “Trump’s brand of rough-and-tumble verbal pummeling heightened the rhetorical stakes for people of all political persuasions,” the lawyers argue. “A personal normally at a 3 on a scale of political talk might have found themselves at a 7 during the election. A person, like Patrick, who would often be at a 7 during a normal day, might ‘go to 11.’ … That climate should be taken into account when evaluating the rhetoric that formed the basis of the government’s case.” The lawyers argue that Trump’s win was a surprise, and it would have altered Stein’s plot that took place before the election. “The urgency for action would be gone,” the memo says. “The feeling of a losing battle would be gone.” The lawyers representing Stein are James Pratt and Michael Shultz. Stein was convicted in April of conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and conspiracy to violate civil rights. Two other men also were convicted in the plot to bomb an apartment complex in Garden City, Kansas, the New York Times reported at the time. The sentencing memo said Stein was treated multiple times for substance abuse, and he struggled throughout his life with dependence and mental-health issues. After a business failure in 2008, he “became consumed by fear and anger” and sought belonging by joining a militia. An undercover FBI agent reinforced Stein’s beliefs and his hate, the memo says, and the bombing conspiracy was “primarily in the realm of the rhetorical.” Stein was afraid of Muslims because of what he read on the internet and videos he watched on YouTube, the memo says. The government is seeking a life sentence. The lawyers for Stein argue a sentence of no more than 15 years is sufficient.

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https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/in-arguing-for-leniency-lawyers-point-to-trump-rhetoric-for-man-convicted-in-plot-to-kill-muslims/

Cartoon Caption: Good vs. evil—what choice will this lawyer make?

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Cartoon Caption Contest

By Jackson Thomas

Posted October 29, 2018, 1:30 pm CDT

With a lot riding on his shoulders—literally—can this lawyer make the right decision when it comes to his conscience vs. temptation? Send us your best caption for this month’s angel-devil-themed cartoon. The winner of our November challenge will see their caption and credit printed in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal. Congrats to October’s winning contest contributor, Marla H. Norton of Wilmington, Delaware. Her caption below will appear in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal.

“They say you are entitled to a trial by a jury of your peers. This defendant must be a real Bozo!”

How the contest works: Readers are asked to consider what’s happening in the cartoon in this post and submit clever, original captions. ABA Journal staff will review entries, pick their favorites, then ask readers to vote on the best of the bunch. How to enter: Submit the caption you think best fits the scene depicted in the cartoon above by emailing captionsabajournalcom with “November Caption Contest” in the subject line. Deadline for entry: Contest entries must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. CT on Sunday, Nov. 11. The prize: Bragging rights. Plus, the winning caption and credit to the caption writer will appear in an upcoming issue of the ABA Journal. For complete rules, click this link. To view winning cartoons from this year, check out this gallery or follow the Cartoon Caption Contest RSS feed. Comments have been disabled on this post.

2018 Cartoons of the Month

A look back at this year's cartoon caption contest winners

Check out this slideshow gallery of all of this year’s winners from our cartoon caption-writing contest.

Attribution: Cover slide by Sara Wadford

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https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/cartoon-caption-good-vs-evil-what-choice-will-this-lawyer-make/

How to navigate Amazon’s sponsored brand ads updates

Amazon recently announced several updates to Sponsored Brand Ads (formerly Headline Search Ads) including additional placements on desktop and mobile, expanded bidding capabilities, and enhanced reporting insights. Amazon’s intentions for these updates were simple — to increase reach, efficiency, and overall performance of an already lucrative, albeit highly competitive, ad type. In theory, that should be a huge win for advertisers looking to further scale their Amazon programs by increasing brand awareness and driving incremental sales. However, it may be premature to jump to that conclusion based on our analysis of multiple high-volume retailers leveraging Amazon’s Sponsored Brand Ads.

What has changed?

Let’s start by reviewing each update in greater detail before I dive into my analysis following the Sponsored Brand Ads Updates. → New Feature: More Placements for Desktop and Mobile In addition to the placement displayed prominently above-the-fold on Amazon’s search results page, Sponsored Brand Ads can now serve in each of the following locations on the search results page:

• Desktop: left-hand rail – one placement is available.
• Desktop: below-the-fold – four placements are available.
• Mobile: below-the-fold – three placements are available.
• Mobile: every 13th slot– one placement is available.

For reporting purposes, the above-the-fold placement is labeled “top of search” and all other placements are collectively referenced as “other placements.” Note that there is no way to opt out of these additional placements. The image below will give you a sense of where these placements reside on the page. Key Takeaways: Adjust budgets and bidding strategy to account for additional traffic. Per my analysis below, we’ve seen a 15% lift in spend following these updates. For advertisers with tight budgets, this may require reductions to daily budgets or a more refined bid strategy depending on your advertising objectives.

Key resources

→ New Feature: Expanded Bidding Capabilities To manage these additional placements more effectively and improve overall efficiency, Amazon has enabled advertisers to choose between one of two bidding settings at the campaign level:

• Automated Bidding: Amazon will automatically adjust bids for other placements based on the percent delta in their expected conversion rates relative to the top of search placement. Automated bidding cannot increase your bids for other placements. This is the default setting; all active Sponsored Brand Ads were opted into this setting automatically.
• Custom Bid Adjustments: Advertisers can increase or decrease bids for other placements by applying a percent modifier. If an advertiser turns off automated bidding and does not set a custom bid adjustment, then the default bid will be evenly applied across all placements.

Key Takeaway: Determine whether automated bidding delivers performance in line with your efficiency goals. Based on what I’ve seen to date, Amazon has effectively implemented automated bidding with average cost-per-click being reduced proportionally to the expected reduction in conversion rate for other placements. If conversion rate and average cost-per-click differences do not align for your account, then I’d strongly recommend testing manual bid adjustments. Remember that in the absence of an automated solution, this will require regular analyst oversight. → New Feature: Enhanced Reporting Insights In addition to the keyword report, advertisers can now request three new Sponsored Brand Ad reports: keyword placement, campaign, and campaign placement. Neither the keyword report, nor the campaign report, come with any special bells and whistles — they just provide your standard performance metrics across Sponsored Brand Ad campaigns. The keyword placement and campaign placement reports, however, provide advertisers a new level of insight by further breaking down performance for “top of search” vs. “other placements.” Note that Amazon does not currently differentiate performance beyond “other placements” so advertisers do not have visibility into how the left-hand rail is performing relative to below-the-fold placements. Likewise, there is no way to differentiate between mobile and desktop performance. Key Takeaway: Analyze performance by placement on a regular cadence. If Amazon is still optimizing these new placements and/or automated bidding on the backend, then there may be future implications for performance. Analyzing performance by placement regularly will ensure that you don’t miss any shifts in key metrics.

The impact of these changes

Determine when your account was migrated Amazon officially announced several updates to Sponsored Brand Ads on August 21st; however, impression data across several high-volume retailers indicates: (1) that testing occurred well before August 21st, and (2) that additional placements were dialed up slowly through the end of the month. Advertisers may not have seen noticeable changes until September. Advertisers were migrated over at various times following the announcement, so I would recommend pulling the Campaign Placement report for Sponsored Brand Ads (still referred to as Headline Search Ads in the Advertising Reports UI) by day to determine when your account transitioned and to validate any sudden changes in performance. New placements significantly increase reach, however, their initial impact on engagement and conversions may leave much to be desired. Below is a chart outlining relative performance after Amazon added new placements for Sponsored Brand Ads. Overall impressions increased 47% following the update; however, clicks did not increase in a meaningful way, which caused the click-through rate to plummet 41%. This isn’t surprising, given that each of the new placements occurs below the fold in much less prominent locations. We also know that, according to a Millward Brown/Compete study from 2014, 70% of Amazon customers never click past the first page of search results and 64% of total clicks occur on the first three items displayed in Amazon’s search results. Collectively, these statistics validate why click-through rate has decreased dramatically — most users never see these new ad placements, let alone click on them. Top of search clearly outperforms other placements across all metrics, which shows just how important it is for advertisers to dominate that space. Most notably, our analysis found that top of search drives 92% more sales and 87% more clicks. Advertisers must, therefore, be prepared to pay a relatively higher cost-per-click to capitalize on these high-converting clicks. On the flip-side, advertisers should still value other placements and carefully consider their bidding strategy to deliver on efficiency goals. Other placements comprised 8% of total sales within our data set, which confirms that the incremental sales and orders shown above are indeed attributable to the additional placements. It is also noteworthy that each retailer leveraged the automated bidding feature, which performed exactly as Amazon promised, based on a proportional difference in average cost-per-click and conversion rate.

1. Ultimately, the updates’ overall impact on performance will vary by advertiser, given variations in search tactics, keyword coverage, etc., so it’s critical to determine how these updates will impact your account’s performance by leveraging the new features at your disposal and leaning on these three key takeaways discussed in detail above. Adjust budgets and bidding strategies to account for additional traffic.
2. Determine whether automated bidding delivers performance in line with efficiency goals.
3. Analyze performance by placement on a regular cadence.

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Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.

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About The Author

David Hassler Jr. is a Senior Analyst on the Amazon & eRetail Team at Merkle, responsible for developing and implementing Amazon strategies across multiple client accounts. He is a key contributor to the strategic and technical innovation of Merkle’s Amazon & eRetail offering. David was previously a member of the SEM & Feeds Team at Merkle, responsible for both product trend analysis, and product feed optimizations. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 2015 and from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business in 2016.

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/how-to-navigate-amazons-sponsored-brand-ads-updates/

Sotomayor expresses ‘deep concern’ about failure to preserve tape in appeal hinging on one word

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U.S. Supreme Court

By Debra Cassens Weiss

Posted October 29, 2018, 12:58 pm CDT

Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Monday issued a statement expressing “deep concern” over an Alabama judge’s failure to preserve an original recording of his disputed jury instruction in a capital case. Sotomayor said she agreed with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to deny certiorari in the case of Tawuan Townes because he was not able to show constitutional error without the recording. The Supreme Court had requested the tape, but the trial judge said it no longer existed. Sotomayor’s statement is here. At issue is one word in the trial judge’s instructions to jurors: Did the judge tell jurors they “may” infer Townes intended to kill a man based on the circumstances of a 2008 burglary, or did the judge say jurors “must” infer intent? Intent was a needed element of proof for a capital murder conviction. Absent the intent, Townes was guilty only of felony murder. The original certified transcript prepared by a court reporter said the judge used the word must, which led the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals to overturn Townes’ conviction. The appeals court reasoned that using the word must relieved the state of the burden to prove intent to kill. Townes had argued he shot at the burglary victim to scare him and hadn’t intended to kill him. In his statement to police, Townes adamantly denied intending to kill the victim, according to the decision by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. Townes said he intended only to scare the victim and his rifle used only “little bullets.” Townes was represented by the Equal Justice Initiative, which said in a 2014 press release that he had just turned 18 at the time of the crime and had only completed the eighth grade. After the Alabama appeals court ruled, the trial judge filed a supplemental record asserting the transcript was wrong and he had used the word may. The judge said the audio recording would back him up. The Alabama appeals court instructed the judge to appoint a new court reporter to listen to the recording and submit a new transcript. The new 56-page transcript “differed from the original transcript by exactly one word,” Sotomayor wrote. The new transcript said the judge used the word may instead of “must.” The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals then affirmed the original conviction and death sentence. There is no indication the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals listened to the original tape, Sotomayor said. “The Constitution guarantees certain procedural protections when the government seeks to prove that a person should pay irreparably for a crime. A reliable, credible record is essential to ensure that a reviewing court—not to mention the defendant and the public at large—can say with confidence whether those fundamental rights have been respected,” Sotomayor wrote. “By fostering uncertainty about the result here, the trial court’s actions in this case erode that confidence. That gives me—and should give us all—great pause.” The case is Townes v. Alabama. Hat tip to SCOTUSblog, which covered Sotomayor’s statement here.

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https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/sotomayor-expresses-deep-concern-about-failure-to-preserve-tape-in-appeal-hinging-on-one-word/