Google Offers 2 Tips for Improving Web Content via @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller was asked in a Webmaster Hangout about improving web page content focus. Mueller shared two tips on how to do that.

How to Improve Content Focus?

The question was asked about poorly indexed Product Description Pages (PDP). The publisher asked if making the content more prominent would help.

“Do you think moving the images down and the relevant text up would help Google better interpret the focus of each of these pages?”

Somewhat surprisingly, John Mueller answered no, that’s not how to improve content focus. Then he explained why:

“So just shifting the location of content within an HTML page I don’t think that plays a big role at all.”

Content Tip #1: Proper Use of Headings:

Headings are Not Keyword Wish Lists

A common misconception about headings (H1, H2, etc.) is that they are important as ranking factors. Because of that, a common error made by SEOs and publishers is to use headings as place to add important keywords for which they want the page to rank for. Essentially, SEOs in 2001 and even today use the heading elements as a wish list for all the keywords they’d like to rank. That used to be the way to rank a page back in 2001 and thereabouts.

Modern Search Engines Have Evolved Headings Use

How Google uses heading tags has evolved several times over the years. Today, heading tags are important but not as a way to tell Google which keywords you want to rank for.

What Headings are Useful For

Heading tags are useful for indicating what a section of content is about. A web page is about a topic. In a well constructed web page, each section of a web page is about a sub-topic of that web page. So when a user queries Google about a product the information needs they bring to your page might include images of the product, pricing, size, color, review and a comparison. If your page is informational then the informational need for a page of content might be the usefulness of tools for accomplishing a goal (like the right pan for a recipe) or other supplementary information that together satisfies the users needs. Heading tags are what defines and describes what that section of a web page is about.  This has always been what headings were for. The SEO community has simply been using them poorly.

John Mueller on Proper Use of Headings:

“Headings are useful in that we can take a heading and see what images and which text kind of apply to that heading.”

It’s clear from Mueller’s answer that in well planned page of content, the heading, the images and text form a unit that each relate to each other. Headings that do not directly relate to the content is a common mistake. This is what sometimes leads to web pages being ranked lower. John Mueller then reiterated how moving text around to make it more prominent over images won’t help in getting content properly indexed:

“But just shifting around things with HTML or with CSS I don’t see that playing a big role there at all. So in that regard, I wouldn’t really worry about about this.”

Tip #2 Interstitials Can Block Indexing

This next part is interesting. According to Mueller, an improperly deployed interstitial may interfere with content indexing. Mueller had visited the site and noticed an interstitial for picking a country that might block Google from properly indexing the content.

“One thing I did notice when looking at that example page that you link to is that when I loaded up, after a certain period of time it switches to… a country picker interstitial. I don’t know how you’re …triggering this and if you trigger this in all locations but for example if you were to trigger this when Googlebot crawls and renders your pages that might also result in Googlebot not being able to index your pages properly. So that’s one thing you might want to double check.”

John Mueller went on to recommend using a banner or other user interface object for encouraging site visitors to pick their country. According to Mueller:

“Because if you’re using a banner then even if that does end up being rendered in Google’s systems then it wouldn’t block the indexing of the rest of your content. Whereas if you have an interstitial that in the worst case… takes out all of the old content and replaces it with this… country or language picker, then we might not have that much content left on the that page for indexing.”

Many sites use an unobtrusive icon in the top right corner or use IP sniffing to redirect users to the correct version of a web page. Watch the Google Webmaster Hangout Here:

More Resources

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/google-offers-2-tips-for-improving-web-content-via-martinibuster/

DuckDuckGo Receives Endorsement From Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey via @MattGSouthern

DuckDuckGo has received a high profile endorsement, as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently stated it’s his search engine of choice. DuckDuckGo being co-signed by someone with the audience of Dorsey may introduce the niche search engine to people who may otherwise not have heard about it.

I love @DuckDuckGo. My default search engine for a while now. The app is even better!

— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) November 27, 2019

Currently, DuckDuckGo handles an average of 48 million searches per day, and recently hit a daily record of over 51 million searches. Of course, that’s considerably less than what Google handles, which makes it notable that it’s the preferred search engine of the Twitter CEO. According to a study published last month more people would use a Google alternative, like DuckDuckGo, if prompted to select their own default search provider. DuckDuckGo differentiates itself from Google by focusing on protecting user privacy, which includes not selling data to advertisers. While that’s appealing to its small but dedicated user base, others may argue it leads to a lesser search experience. As a result of tracking user activity, Google is able to tailor its search results to the individual in ways DuckDuckGo can’t. One of the more common criticisms of DuckDuckGo is that it’s search results are not as relevant as Google’s. Apparently DuckDuckGo’s search results are satisfactory enough for Jack Dorsey though. Makes you wonder who else in the tech world might prefer the anonymity of a private search engine.

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/duckduckgo-receives-endorsement-from-twitter-ceo-jack-dorsey-via-mattgsouthern/

The case for the International Criminal Court: Why it deserves our support

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By Kristin J. Smith

November 27, 2019, 2:55 pm CST

The International Criminal Court building. Photos from Shutterstock

Like many post-World War II global institutions in today’s political climate, the International Criminal Court can feel disconnected from the ideals and optimism that created it as the world’s only permanent international tribunal with jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. But my work supporting international criminal justice at the ABA, including leading the International Criminal Court Project, has made me a deeper believer in not only in the ICC’s potential, but its necessity. Over the past year, a critical mass of both critics and supporters have called for a formal review of the ICC’s procedures, effectiveness, and role in an increasingly decentralized system of international justice. This review process has sparked a healthy and much-needed conversation amongst states, civil society organizations, scholars, and the court itself on ways in which the court is succeeding, ways in which it is currently falling short of its goals, and even what those goals should realistically be and who defines them. And the opportunity for instituting meaningful change is deepened by the upcoming election of new court leadership in 2020.

There is no shortage of criticism. Cases are long and complex, yet have historically left out certain types of crimes (such as gender-based violence). Some would argue the court’s lack of universality (it currently has 122 states parties) and the U.N. Security Council’s role in referrals create a double standard and exempt powerful nations from obligations that should apply equally around the globe. Others, including some officials in the United States and the Philippines (which are not currently signatories), argue that the court’s structure makes it susceptible to potentially political prosecutions. The court’s reach and impact remains limited, by jurisdiction (to crimes that are committed on the territory of states parties, by nationals of states parties, or in any state if referred by the U.N. Security Council), resources, and sometimes noncooperation from states. And many of the court’s quirks and complications are products of inherent institutional design, compromise, and intentional ambiguity left by a treaty process that incorporated elements of both civil and common law legal traditions while leaving the details of their conflicts as a future ICC’s problem. But the ICC’s existence is an achievement we should protect and work to perfect. For many situations in the world, the ICC remains the only realistic venue for accountability. It remains essential that diverse actors—including states, legal professionals, advocates, and victims—work together to address the court’s challenges and position it to better close in on its deliberately lofty goal of ending impunity for international crimes. The ABA has a long history of support for international justice and the ICC specifically. The ABA sent an observer to the post-WWII Nuremberg Trials, where a legal team led by Justice Robert H. Jackson worked with allies to prosecute Nazi leadership for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since 1978, the ABA has supported the creation of a permanent international tribunal with jurisdiction over serious crimes. When the ICC itself moved from vague notion to actual possibility, the ABA participated in negotiations (as an observer) on what became the Rome Statute. Representatives of the U.S. government also attended and made significant contributions to the structure of the ICC, such as its complementarity regime and legal protections imbued in the court’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence. After the court was officially established in 1998 (and began work in 2002), the ABA encouraged U.S. ratification or accession to the Rome Statute, and has since consistently urged the U.S. government to support and engage with the ICC. The ICC Project began in 2011 as a project of the ABA’s Center for Human Rights when staff and members identified a unique role for the American legal profession to play both in assisting the court and educating policymakers and the public about its importance. The ICC Project convenes briefings on the ICC before U.S. legislative and executive branches (often in collaboration with organizations in the Washington Working Group on the ICC); provides educational information and events with for the legal profession and general public; and advocates for greater U.S. support for the ICC’s cases and role in the international legal system. Now one of several projects on atrocity prevention and accountability jointly supported by the Center for Human Rights and Criminal Justice Section, the ICC Project has worked with other ABA entities and members to pass policies that strengthen criminal justice efforts on a global scale, both on the ICC but also related topics, such as the need for a global convention on crimes against humanity. And like many ABA entities, the ICC Project serves as a place for critical thinking and dialogue between the United States, ICC, and other key stakeholders to further progress on our shared interest in the prevention of and accountability for atrocity crimes The project’s success continues to be driven by its volunteer board of advisors, whose breadth and depth of expertise in international justice, human rights and national security (as former prosecutors, judges, diplomats, advocates and academics) is integral to its impact. Within the past year, for example, members have made the case both in private and public settings for a less combative relationship between the United States and the ICC. They reminded policymakers that similar tactics were detrimental to U.S. bilateral and multilateral relationships in the past, and that the United States can better assert concerns and legal arguments by engaging strategically with the court. The expertise, passion and dedication of the project’s board has helped to cement the ABA as one of the consistent voices of support and advancement for the ICC. Although its focus is unique, the ICC Project reflects principles that are deeply ingrained in other entities and their work across the ABA: the fairness and effectiveness of criminal justice, ensuring respect for the rule of law, protecting human rights and holding those who violate them accountable, education of international legal practitioners, and protecting the independence of legal professionals in their work. These interconnections demonstrate how important international justice and accountability is to so many other policy priorities. In atrocity prevention—an area of growing interagency focus in U.S. foreign policy (as well as many other countries)—accountability can break cycles of impunity and retributive conflict, and the pursuit of justice can also help to lay the foundation for stronger institutions grounded in respect for the rule of law and the use of law to resolve conflicts peacefully and fairly. It remains a challenge to demonstrate the necessity of ICC support closer to home, however, despite the United States’ long history of support for international justice efforts and despite consistent public support for U.S. participation in international institutions like the ICC. While previous U.S. administrations have acknowledged cases of mutual interest and pursued more cooperative relationships with the court, legal restrictions on U.S. cooperation with the ICC remain. The current administration has adopted a combative stance because of the court’s potential investigation of crimes committed in Afghanistan (a state party), threatening the court and its legal professionals with various sanctions for any part they play in moving an investigation forward (the ABA spoke out against these actions). By removing itself from accountability conversations on the global level, the United States not only hurts its own credibility, but also prevents opportunities to engage in important conversations about positive reform and to make the ICC stronger in a way that would benefit all in the long term. The International Criminal Court is important for many reasons, not only to seek formal accountability in a distant courtroom in The Hague. It is a central and structural pillar in a global system of justice that, if strengthened and supported, will in turn support future efforts in national and regional legal systems. It will continue to challenge the practice of law in a globalizing professional landscape. And it remains an important expression of our collective value of and commitment to the rule of law and the intolerance of impunity for atrocity crimes that remain all too prevalent. The ICC Project will continue to fight to make the court an institution that the American legal profession can be proud to support.

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Kristin J. Smith is the director of the Atrocity Crimes Initiative, a group of projects (including the International Criminal Court Project) focused on atrocity prevention, response and accountability jointly supported by the ABA’s Center for Human Rights and Criminal Justice Section. Prior to the ABA, she worked on issues of gender equality, reproductive rights and justice for sexual and gender-based crimes at the Global Justice Center and on international research and educational initiatives (including the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative) for the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University School of Law. She worked previously as a legislative analyst and criminal prosecutor in Oregon. She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and Washington University School of Law.

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• ABA Abroad is a column highlighting the work of the ABA’s Center for Global Programs, which comprises the Rule of Law Initiative, Center for Human Rights and the ABA’s presence at the United Nations.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/the-case-for-the-international-criminal-court-why-it-deserves-our-support/

Random investigative questions by cops during traffic stops are unconstitutional, state supreme court rules

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Criminal Justice

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 26, 2019, 3:12 pm CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

Police officers who pull over drivers in Oregon can’t ask investigative questions that are unrelated to the purpose of the stop unless they have independent justification for doing so, the Oregon Supreme Court has ruled. The court based its Nov. 15 decision on the Oregon constitutional provision that bars unreasonable search and seizure. Oregon Public Broadcasting has coverage. The court ruled on behalf of Mario Arreola-Botello, who had argued that his traffic stop became an unreasonable seizure when a Beaverton police officer asked unrelated questions. Arreola-Botello was pulled over for failing to signal a lane change. While Arreola-Botello was searching for registration and proof of insurance, the officer asked Arreola-Botello whether he had any drugs and guns in the vehicle and asked permission to search. Arreola-Botello consented, and the officer found methamphetamine on the floor between the driver’s seat and the door. The officer had testified that his questioning about guns and drugs had been “a routine inquiry, ‘all the same spiel every time.’” He then asks for permission to search the car. The state had argued that the questions were permissible during an “unavoidable lull” that doesn’t extend the time of the stop. Such a lull occurs, for example, when a person is searching for requested documents. The Oregon Supreme Court disagreed and suppressed the methamphetamine evidence. “An officer is limited to investigatory inquiries that are reasonably related to the purpose of the traffic stop or that have an independent constitutional justification,” the state supreme court said. “Put simply, an ‘unavoidable lull’ does not create an opportunity for an officer to ask unrelated questions, unless the officer can justify the inquiry on other grounds.” Leland Baxter-Neal, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, told Oregon Public Broadcasting that the decision closes a loophole that had allowed police to conduct warrantless searches that disproportionately target minorities. An amicus brief filed by the Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association and the Oregon Justice Resource Center cited a study of 55 million traffic stops. It found that drivers overall were searched during a traffic stop 3.4% of the time. Black drivers, however, were searched 7.6% of the time, and Latino drivers were searched 8.7% of the time Law enforcement agencies in Oregon are reviewing the ruling and creating instructions for officers, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. One police department told Oregon Public Broadcasting that it was not interpreting the decision to ban small talk. “Our officers will continue to be friendly, put it that way. We’re not going to be robots,” said Eric Bunday, a spokesperson for the Hillsboro Police Department. “We’re going to ask how their day is going and how’s the weather.”

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/random-investigative-questions-by-cops-during-traffic-stops-are-unconstitutional-state-supreme-court-rules/

Twitter to Purge Accounts That Have Been Inactive for 6 Months via @MattGSouthern

Twitter is reportedly planning to delete inactive accounts in an effort to free up usernames for other people. According to the BBC’s David Lee, the Twitter account purge will take place on December 11th and include accounts that have been inactive for 6+ months. “Inactive” refers to accounts that haven’t logged in for the past 6 months – so an account that doesn’t engage with anything is still considered active as long as it has logged in.

More on Twitter's action on inactive accounts: The company is clawing back accounts that have been inactive for more than *six months*, which is likely a very large number. Inactive = user hasn't *logged in*. Seeking clarification on what happens to useful/fun bot accounts.

— Dave Lee (@DaveLeeBBC) November 26, 2019

Twitter is sending out emails to owners of inactive accounts to notify them of the pending deletion, which will give them an opportunity to log in and save their account if they wish to keep it. It’s unclear at this time what will happen to bot accounts that are never actually logged into by a human user. Presumably, they will avoid the chopping block as long as they’ve been publishing tweets. For what it’s worth, an owner of several bot accounts mentioned that he hasn’t received email notifications about the accounts being deleted. So if there’s an inactive Twitter account out there that has a username you’re after, you may be able to claim in on December 11th. But make sure to act fast.

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/twitter-to-purge-accounts-that-have-been-inactive-for-6-months-via-mattgsouthern/

39 prosecutors sign pledge to visit prisons to help understand impact of their decisions

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By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 26, 2019, 1:43 pm CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

Thirty-nine prosecutors have signed a pledge to visit jails, prisons and juvenile facilities in their jurisdictions. The idea is to help prosecutors understand the true impact of their decisions, according to a Nov. 25 press release by Fair and Just Prosecution, the group that coordinated the effort. The Washington Post has coverage that was noted by the Crime Report. Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a sentencing reform group, has been advocating prison visits as part of its #VisitAPrison challenge. By mid-October, at least 100 lawmakers had taken the pledge. The prosecutors are building on that effort. “Prisons and jails are often violent and unhealthy places that can leave people, including staff, worse off than when they entered,” the prosecutors say in their pledge. “Recognizing that 95% of people in prisons will return to their communities, we cannot ignore the fact that the conditions we subject people to necessarily impact them, their families, and the health and safety of our communities.” The prosecutors have pledged to visit local facilities and to require line prosecutors in their offices to also visit. Among the prosecutors signing the pledge are Vermont Attorney General Thomas Donovan Jr.; Washington, D.C., Attorney General Karl Racine; District Attorney Larry Krasner of Philadelphia; District Attorney Rachael Rollins of Boston; District Attorney Mark Gonzalez of Corpus Christi, Texas; District Attorney Eric Gonzalez of Brooklyn; Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Morales of Portsmouth, Virginia; State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby of Baltimore; Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell of St. Louis; and State Attorney Aramis Ayala of Orlando. Morales told the Washington Post that she and other prosecutors from her office visited a correctional center in Chesapeake, Virginia, in 2016 to to teach inmates about restoration of rights and finding jobs after they leave prison. But the visit was also a learning experience for the prosecutors. “We had no idea how much of the impact was going to be on us,” Morales said. “We got to see people as family members and community members first. We usually encounter people at their lowest point coming into the criminal justice system.” See also: ABA Journal: “Change Agents: A new wave of reform prosecutors upends the status quo”

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/39-prosecutors-sign-pledge-to-visit-prisons-to-help-understand-impact-of-their-decisions/

Local SEO Strategy Guide: How to Rank Where It Counts via @webceonews

Who exactly needs optimization for local search? At first glance, it’s obviously those who want customers to walk through their doors physically. But those, who conduct business without meeting people face to face, are still going to need local SEO as long as there’s a benefit and opportunity to attract customers from a specific area (whether it’s a single town or an entire country). Many businesses fool themselves into thinking that, because their products or services are available to a worldwide market, there’s no benefit in specifically doing well in the region where they are located. This is often a mistake. At its core, local SEO is about two things:

• Placing your site in the most visible spots in local search.
• Gaining your target audience’s trust.

And both are perfectly within your reach. So, is your mind ready for some work? Have you armed yourself with high-quality SEO tools? Let’s do it, then.

1. Use Local Keywords

Normal search can be described as “find me this thing”. Local search adds an extra component: location. Users tell the search engines “find me this thing in this place”, and all other places are recognized as irrelevant and filtered from the results. What remains? Results that are relevant since they are about that thing in that place. And because websites rely on keywords to be found via search queries, you can imagine that not just any keywords will do. They will need that extra component. Examples of local search-friendly keywords:

• Buy bicycle in London
• Bicycle store near me
• Bicycle store near The Ritz
• Closest bicycle store

You can also try to include local jargon in your keywords. It’s a way to localize them without explicitly naming the place. That’s how local keywords are different from normal keywords. What else do you need? A way to pick the best from the lot. There are two major factors.

• Search volume: The number of monthly searches by users. The higher this number, the more users you can potentially attract through search engines, so aim as high as you can.
• Search intent: A good keyword clearly represents what the users are trying to find. Local keywords are already more specific about that thanks to including a location, but you can increase your chances to attract the users you need by doubling down on details. Compare these two keywords: “buy bicycle in London” and “buy mountain bike in London”. Adding an extra detail signals to potential customers that you have exactly what they want.

Now, with all of the above in mind, all that’s left to do is find the best local keywords for your site. There is a keyword finding tool that can do just that: Keyword Suggestions. Type your keyword ideas into the bar and press Search. The tool will display information on the keyword you entered and suggest many other potential keywords you could use. It will be up to you to decide which are the best for you.

2. Create Optimized, High-Quality Content

Search engines rank websites based on their overall authority – their reputation, if you will. It’s the sum of all factors that indicate a website’s value to users. However, users rarely think about most of those factors and only focus on a site’s content. That’s what they see most of the time, after all. So the question is: what kind of content is valuable and the most likely to make money?

• Useful: It must offer users solutions to their problems.
• Informative: It must provide as much information as users might need.
• Convincing: It must be able to convince users to become your customers.
• User-friendly: It must be simple to view and use.
• SEO-friendly: It must be optimized to rank in search engines.
• Unique: Every page on your site must be one of a kind and not copied from anywhere – not from another site, and not from your own.

You can find all these traits in content that ranks on Google’s first page. The closer it is to the coveted position #1, the more apparent these traits become. There is no standard to create high-quality content – making a really successful piece often requires inspiration and ingenuity. But there are general tips for SEOing your content that everyone can use. Help search engines and users understand what your content is about. Put your keywords in these places on your site’s pages:

• URLs. Make your URLs short and readable.
• Page title. It must be unique for every page.
• Meta description. It, too, must be unique for every page.
• H1-H4 headings. Don’t just use a slogan without keywords as an H1 tag.
• Image titles, captions, and ALT attributes.
• Other text.

If there are poorly optimized pages on your site, find them with the On-Site Issues Overview tool.

3. Use Eye-Catching Visuals

Visual information is really good at getting the point across. In fact, no other type of information comes close. That’s why, if you are trying to sell something, graphics and videos are essential for you. They will make your website look alive and your business more presentable. What is especially good for local SEO?

• Pull out all the stops and show your customers everything you’ve got: The building where your workplace is located, the surrounding area, what your workplace looks like inside, your products and/or services, your employees, even your customers (with their consent). Make your users want to visit the place they see on the screen.
• 360° photos: A tripod may cost you a bit, but a beautiful panoramic shot is priceless. It’s also fun to interact with, so that’s a bonus point for the user experience (UX) on your site.
• Remember the part about making your site look alive? That’s literally what the word “animation” means.
• Videos. Sound, imagery, and text make the most powerful combination existing on the web, and nothing has topped it so far.
• Got a bit of interesting knowledge that’s related to your line of work and would be better digested when spliced with some pictures? That’s the recipe for an infographic. It will have an even greater effect on users if it’s unique and no other infographic talks about the same topic.
• Charts and diagrams: Confidence is born from success. Don’t be afraid to show that you know what you are doing! If you can tell a story about your success, it might be possible to show it in a visual form – for example, how much your sales have increased or how many customers you have served over the years. Just be careful not to brag too much.

And if you enable an option to share your visuals in social media, users will be all too happy. Lastly, there’s a way to make your images even more useful in terms of local SEO: geotagging. It means adding GPS information to images, making it easier for search engines to associate them with specific locations. Usually, modern cameras (including phone cameras) do it automatically, but if your photos somehow weren’t geotagged, you can do it manually with a free online service.

4. Optimize for Multilingual SEO

If you plan to be really successful, I doubt you will sit on the same spot your entire life. You will want to expand, claim new ground, gain even more customers from new places. Eventually, you may even cross borders. And once you build a new HQ in another country, your local SEO will crash right into the language barrier. That’s where international SEO takes the stage! It isn’t as simple as translating all your content into a foreign language. There are many more steps to take, but here’s a full list of them – hopefully before you need them.

Choose the Most Optimal URL Structure

Where should you put your international content? You have these options:

• Keep it on the same domain.
• Purchase a new domain.
• Create a subdomain.

For the purposes of international SEO, the best option is to create a subfolder on your existing domain. Like so: https://example.com/de. Why this over the other two? It’s because a new domain and a subdomain will end up competing with your current domain for rankings – definitely not a good thing in SEO. If you use a subfolder instead, it will receive all the domain authority you have already built up until now. Another way to keep translated content on your domain is to use language parameters (e.g., https://example.com/?lang=de), but this isn’t a very SEO-friendly approach. Search engines sometimes have trouble indexing pages with parameters in their URLs.

Use the Hreflang Attribute

Search engines will recognize the language of your content with no problem, but it’s still a good idea to spell it out for them. To do that, use the hreflang attribute in your pages’ HTML code. Like this: <link rel=”alternate” href=”http://example.com/de” hreflang=”de”/> Keep in mind that this attribute tells search engines both the language of your content and the region you are targeting with that page. This is where it gets tricky: you must pick the correct value for the hreflang attribute. For example, the value in our example is “de”, which means German content independent of region, but if you want to target a German-speaking audience in Spain, the value must be “de-ES”. Fortunately, Wikipedia’s got you covered: it has the list of language codes and the list of region codes. Simply pick what suits your situation from one or both of these lists.

Set up a Layout That Doesn’t Conflict with Different Languages

As you know, not all languages write from left to right. If you translate your content into a language that writes in a different way, make sure it still looks good and can be easily read on your site. Otherwise, you will have to change your site’s layout.

Don’t Use Automatic Redirects

You might be tempted to check your users’ IP and automatically redirect them to a translated version of your content. There are two reasons why it’s a bad idea:

• Redirects add to page load time, lowering page rankings and hurting UX.
• Users might not actually know the language you are giving them, which is even worse for UX.

Just don’t set up such redirects.

Use Only High-Quality Translations Done by a Human

A native-speaking translator beats a machine all day, every day. Don’t be stingy; there’s many a tale about people who embarrassed themselves with a poor choice of words in a foreign language. Invest in high-quality translations done by a person who knows what they are writing about.

Don’t Use Country Flags or Names in Your Language Choice Menus

Here’s another rookie mistake: confusing country flags with the languages they supposedly represent. People migrate all over the planet, often to stay. It’s hard to name a country where they speak only one language. That’s why, when you make a language choice menu on your site, you shouldn’t rely on countries’ names and flags to signify the options. Now if you use the languages’ names instead, there’s no risk of making a mistake. One look at such a list and the person will immediately know what they need to choose.

Allow the Use of Local Currency

This is a good tip for ecommerce site owners: you will acquire more customers this way. The dollar is used worldwide, but people are often more comfortable with their own country’s official currency. Give them an option to pay with it if your payment processor allows this.

Optimize for Local Search Engines

While Google is used everywhere, many countries have their own popular search engines. It’s, therefore, a good idea to research those search engines and figure out how to rank in them. Before you start worrying, know that many of them are powered by bigger and more famous search engines like Google, so this task is a lot easier than it sounds.

Make Sure Your Content Is Culturally Sensitive

Who wants to risk an international incident? No business owner worth their salt, that’s for sure. What is acceptable in one country might not be so in another. When you expand into a new place, you must be aware of its cultural situation and what is considered offensive there. Wherever you are trying to make money, be careful not to step on too many toes.

5. Make Rich Snippets with Structured Data

What’s the best way to make your search results more clickable? Titles, meta descriptions, URLs – these are all good places to start and improve. But the absolute killer way is to turn your results into rich snippets. You know, these guys: Don’t they look enticing? You can make these for literally any site. All you need to do is schema markup (also known as structured data) and the knowledge about how to use it. There is an in-depth tutorial for that on Schema.org’s official site. What do you normally mark up on a website for a local business?

• Address
• Telephone number
• Opening hours
• Review score
• Prices
• Menu (for the food service industry)
• Number of rooms (for hotels)
• Number of screens (for movie theaters)

And more. Anything you want to show in your search result, you name it. There are two important things to keep in mind with structured data:

• Mark up the information on your web pages correctly. If you don’t, your rich snippets will show your information in the wrong places – for example, your product prices where your telephone number should be.
• Validate your pages with Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool. It’s the easiest way to spot any errors you may have made.

6. Gather Positive Reviews

Customer feedback is more powerful than even the prettiest, most clickable ad. Utilize that to come out on top. In fact, if you want to come out on top, that is your only option. But no pressure! Fortunately, as long as you keep your business in top form and provide great service, it will be easy to gather positive customer reviews. If you want to make full use of them, you will want to show what people say about you on your site. Be sure to create a page where your customers can leave their reviews for other users to read. But don’t stop there: take it one step further and display your review score in your rich snippets, too. And how to make your customers leave a review? Just ask them and provide a link to the review form.

7. Create a Google My Business Listing

Another huge help in local SEO is Google My Business – Google’s free tool for managing your appearance in local search. Let’s make this clear: these days, there is no local SEO without Google My Business. If you don’t create a listing there, customers will have so much trouble finding your business that they will probably not bother with you at all. The benefits of using GMB are so enormous that everyone wants to successfully register with them, and disregarding them means to doom your business to obscurity. If you still need more motivation, here’s what you will get for creating a listing on GMB.

• Ranking boost in local search.
• Google Maps: a spot on the map for every address you occupy.
• Local 3-pack: a place in that list with three results under Google Maps.
• Knowledge Panel: the large panel with information at the top right side of Google’s first page.

The only potential downside to GMB is the sheer amount of information it displays for you – it can be easy to get lost. But this sort of problem is easily solved with SEO tools, particularly WebCEO’s Google My Business tool. You can use it for these tasks:

• Get information on how users interact with your business in search: impressions, site visits, photo views, phone calls. If you have multiple listings, the tool can display this information for all of them at once (whereas Google My Business shows it for only one at a time). Switching between listings is also easier.
• Find your local competitors (including the ones without their own websites). The tool sorts your competitors in the list based on their distance from you on Google Maps – something even the actual Google My Business can’t do.
• Manage customer reviews. You can even reply to them without leaving WebCEO’s platform.

8. Use Data from Google Analytics and Search Console

Everyone who does SEO has at least heard about Google Analytics and Google Search Console; many are even skilled at using them. And they have a lot of data that will prove useful to a local business. It’s no secret that Google’s services can be hard to navigate, so you should also use SEO tools that can draw Google’s data and present it in a more user-friendly way.

Local Keyword Analysis

Are you aware of every keyword your site is ranking for? Sure, you are optimizing it for a few or a lot, but there may also be other queries that trigger your site to appear in search. If you start using them more actively, it could be your chance to get more traffic than before. Where to Find This Data: The Google Search Queries report is integrated with WebCEO. It’s a good place to find new local keyword ideas since it also shows the queries’ impressions, average positions found by Google searchers globally in the past 30 days and click-through rates.

User Interaction with Your Site

Do users click on your site in search results or do they ignore it? What about how they act once they arrive on your site? Obviously, the more users find you and give you clicks, the more you can earn – that’s the whole point of having a website. You don’t want any problems with this part. Where to Find This Data: Google Search Console -> Performance. Here you can find a chart with your impressions, clicks and click-through rates. You can get even more detailed information in the table under it – for example, checking the CTRs of your individual search results. You will also need information on your bounce rates, which you can check in Google Analytics -> Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages.

Local Audience Analysis

As a local business, you will want to bring in people from specific places. You will also want them to have certain interests so they will at least consider becoming your customers. Therefore, it would help to know how good your site is at attracting such people. Where to Find This Data: Geo reports in WebCEO.

• Traffic by Country: Check how much traffic you get from all over the world, along with bounce and conversion rates.
• Traffic by City: Narrow down your traffic to an individual city.
• Language of Visitors: See the languages used by your most prolific users.

Another useful report can be found in Google Analytics: Audience -> Interests -> Overview. Divide your site visitors into categories of interests and see how many of them come from your target audience.

Audience’s Journey

How do users come to your site? What pages do they visit? Where do they start, where do they go next and where do they drop off? If you can understand how users browse your site, you’ll be able to influence the course of their journey and direct them to pages where you need more visitors. Where to Find This Data: Google Analytics -> Behavior -> Behavior Flow. Sort user traffic by Acquisition -> Traffic type as shown on the picture below. With this, you can view the users’ journey through your site while highlighting the different sources of traffic.

Use of Your Site’s Search Bar

If you have a search bar, you should know what your users do with it. Their search queries will tell you a lot about what exactly they want to find on your site. You can optimize your pages for these queries or even create new pages if the users are looking for something you don’t have yet. Where to Find This Data: Google Analytics -> Behavior -> Site search.

9. Build Local Links

When one site places a link to another, it tells Google: “These guys have relevant content! It’s valuable to our users!” At least that’s how it is when everyone is playing by the rules. What do you think happens when local resources recognize your business’ site as relevant? Your site receives a ranking boost. Research the sites that share a niche with you – backlinks from there will be the most valuable. You can look up many examples of such sites in the Content Submission tool. What kind of sites should you look for?

• Local forums
• News portals
• Blogs about local events
• Other businesses’ sites
• Business directories

It’s also a great idea to check your local competitors’ backlinks – their linking domains could be useful to you too. Find those domains with Competitor Backlink Spy.

10. Use Unique NAP(U) Citations

Contact information for a business serves two purposes. It:

• Allows potential customers to contact the business.
• Can be treated as its unique identifier.

Why is this important? Some businesses have either the same name or the same address as another business. In rare cases, they can have the same phone number. However, it’s next to impossible for any two businesses to share all of the above. You won’t confuse them as long as you have this information. And if you don’t have it? Problems arise. Here’s an example. Let’s say there are two movie theaters with the same name, but in different cities. You have their phone numbers, but you forgot which theater is from where. You are left with one theater name and two numbers. How do you know which one you should call to book a seat? It’s not a very difficult problem, but it’s still a major inconvenience. That’s why NAP(U) or UNAP citations are so important. They include your business’ name, address, phone number and website’s URL address.

• Fill out this information on your site.
• Fill it out on Google My Business and other business listing sites.
• If it happens to change, be sure to change it everywhere!

And while you are at it, here’s an easy way to give your citations an extra oomph: embedding Google Maps with your location on your site.

11. Fix Technical Issues

Can you expect to have a good user experience on your site if it’s barely working? I can’t imagine anyone saying “yes”. Unless it’s suffering from special, funny errors that you couldn’t cause on your site deliberately if you tried. More likely than not, your site errors will be annoying and unsightly. (Although nothing is stopping you from creating a funny 404 page. In fact, it’s encouraged.) Scan your site for errors with the Technical Audit tool and fix everything it finds for you. You can adjust the scanning speed if you have a slow site that might return false-positive errors if the scanning tool goes too fast.

12. Optimize Your Site for Mobile

How big is the mobile web? The way things are going, it’s fairer to say that PCs are competing with mobile devices for online traffic, not the other way around. Still, the two often work in tandem like this: users look up a product on a mobile device and switch to a PC to make a purchase. From this fact alone, I can offer two pieces of advice:

• Don’t be too alarmed if bounce rates are high and CTRs are low when examining mobile traffic.
• Make your site mobile-friendly so it might convince users to seal the deal right there – without switching to a PC.

Now for achieving mobile-friendliness. There’s quite a lot of work to do, but it all boils down to making your site easy to use on mobile devices. Since you don’t normally make two separate sites for mobile devices and PCs (at least you shouldn’t), your site needs to be optimized for both at the same time. Already a conundrum, don’t you agree? But here are all the necessary steps.

• Large, easy-to-read text.
• High-quality images with minimum file size.
• Mobile responsive design.
• Low page load time.
• Space between paragraphs of text, links and interactive elements.

You will need to check your progress at some point. That’s when you should test your site with the Mobile Optimization tool. Also, try using your site yourself to make the final judgment. Bonus points if you check your site from several devices with different-sized screens.

Want to Read Steps 13-25?

There’s still a lot more to local SEO. Download the full guide below and get twice the number of SEO tips, methods, and tactics to help your business grow. This guide was made exclusively for WebCEO users. Sign up now and begin 2020 with a winning hand!

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/local-seo-strategy-guide-how-to-rank-where-it-counts-via-webceonews/

Afternoon Briefs: Subpoenas reportedly seek Giuliani-related information; 3 exonerated after 36 years in prison

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News Roundup

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 26, 2019, 4:45 pm CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

Subpoenas reportedly seek information related to Giuliani and his consulting firm Federal prosecutors who are investigating two associates of lawyer Rudy Giuliani have issued subpoenas seeking documents relating to the lawyer and his consulting firm, Giuliani Partners, according to anonymous sources who spoke with multiple publications. The investigation also reportedly includes scrutiny of a pro-Trump super PAC called America First Action. The two associates, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, have already been charged with campaign finance violations. The indictment says the two men concealed the true source of a donation to the PAC; a PAC spokesperson says it has received no subpoenas and it is ready to cooperate. Giuliani, a lawyer for President Donald Trump, told the Wall Street Journal that he hasn’t been contacted by prosecutors, and he has done nothing wrong. (The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Reuters) Three Maryland men are exonerated after 36 years in prison Three Maryland men have been freed after being exonerated in the murder of a high school student who put them behind bars for 36 years. Judge Charles Peters of Baltimore said Monday the men were innocent following a review of their case by the conviction integrity unit for the state’s attorney’s office in Baltimore City. Many witnesses had identified a different shooter as the person who killed a 14-year-old youth for his Georgetown University jacket. State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby says teen witnesses in the case felt pressured to falsely identity the perpetrators as Alfred Chestnut, Ransom Watkins and Andrew Stewart, the three men who were exonerated Monday. (The Washington Post, the New York Times) House committee sues attorney general and commerce secretary for census documents The House Oversight and Reform Committee sued U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on Tuesday to obtain subpoenaed documents in its investigation of the administration’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Ross has said he added the citizenship question in response to a request from the U.S. Department of Justice for better citizenship data to assist in its enforcement of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a district court’s decision to ask for a better explanation. “Contrived reasons” should not be accepted by the courts, the Supreme Court said. Critics have said the real reason the administration wanted to add a citizenship question was to depress the count of immigrants and help Republicans when census data is used in redistricting. The administration dropped the question after the Supreme Court decision. (The New York Times, Politico, the Nov. 26 lawsuit) LeClairRyan settles bias suit The disbanded LeClairRyan law firm and its joint venture partner ULX Partners have settled a bias lawsuit filed by former marketing professional Marci Keatts, who was transferred to ULX Partners and leased back to the law firm. Keatts had alleged that she was paid less than a male colleague, even after she supervised him as part of a promotion. (Law360, Bloomberg Law)

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/afternoon-briefs-subpoenas-reportedly-seek-giuliani-related-information-3-exonerated-after-36-years-in-prison/

November Update About Links? Google Says Don’t Jump to Conclusions via @martinibuster

Google’s John Mueller was asked about low quality links and the November 2019 update. During his answer, Mueller twice advised the publisher to not jump to conclusions about a connection between links and the November Update.

A search marketer related to John Mueller that after the November update, when reviewing recipe bloggers hit by the updates they noticed that the sites had links from low quality link building practices. The search marketer said:

“You could clearly see many unnatural links via recommendation widgets and other link building tactics.”

The person asked if it’s worth it to disavow those links since it appeared as if Google had simply devalued the links and that’s why the sites were no longer ranking. John Mueller prefaced his response by noting that he didn’t look at a specific site and that his comments were spoken in a general sense. This is Mueller’s response:

“In general if you look at your site and… it seems like there’s really a clear pattern of unnatural links associated with your site, that could be because you’ve been doing link building in some kind of… weird way, if you’ve been using widgets to build links, all of the usual kinds of things then that’s generally something I’d recommend trying to clean up regardless of any updates that happen.”

What John Mueller was saying with regard to links and the recent update, is that links from sketchy link building practices like widgets should be dealt with “regardless of any updates that happen.” Mueller declined to associate poor link building practices with the update. He then discussed ways to deal with links from poor link building schemes. At the end of his response he circled back to the topic of links and the November 2019 Google update. Here is John Mueller’s second comment on the speculation about links and Google’s November update:

“With regard to this general situation where you assume that an update has been affecting your site based on the links to your site, that’s something where I would tend to be a little bit cautious before jumping to conclusions.”

Previous to this statement, Mueller had spent a couple minutes detailing three ways to deal with links from sketchy link building practices.

Don’t Jump to Conclusion Regarding Links and November 2019 Google Update

Then he returns to the topic of the update and warns against “jumping to conclusions” about a connection between links and the November update. It’s important to note that many sites have low quality links. So jumping to the conclusion that it’s the links could be the wrong approach because it may cover up the real reason why a site lost rankings. I have been working with clients affected by past updates who have jumped on the disavow train. They were disappointed that their site never left the station. After disavowing spammy links that they had nothing to do with, there was no improvement in rankings. And that lines up with what John Mueller advises. If the links are something you know about like widget links or “weird link building” then deal with it. In his closing remarks Mueller goes on to say that just because links are weird it doesn’t mean they’re negatively affecting your site. Mueller notes that spammy links happen all the time:

“And really take a look at the links for your site to make sure that there’s really kind of a pattern of unnatural links there that is really problematic. It’s very easy to look at any website that’s been on the web for a longer period of time and to find a handful of… weird and unusual links. So that’s something where just because you find something weird doesn’t necessarily mean that those links are negatively affecting your site. It might just be that… usual kind of crusty links that get collected over the years. “

“Weird and unusual links” are common. They happen all the time. So don’t jump to conclusions that this is associated with the update and explains why a site lost rankings.

Watch Out for SEO Red Herrings

There’s a concept in literature (and life) that’s called a red herring. A red herring is generally a suspect that seems like the obvious one that is guilty. In SEO, sites that lose rankings also tend to have technical problems like slow page speed or low quality links that are not from link building. But that’s true for high ranking sites. Because these issues are common across nearly all sites, it’s like there is no correlation, they’ are red herrings, the obvious suspects. John Mueller advises to not jump to conclusions. I agree. It’s good advice because it forces the publisher to keep looking beyond the obvious but incorrect suspect. Watch the Webmaster Hangout here:

More Resources

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/november-update-about-links-google-says-dont-jump-to-conclusions-via-martinibuster/

SCOTUS stays order requiring Trump’s accounting firm to give his financial records to House

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U.S. Supreme Court

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 26, 2019, 11:49 am CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued Monday a stay of a federal appeals court mandate requiring President Donald Trump’s accounting firm to give Congress financial records relating to Trump and his businesses. The stay halts an order last month by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, report the Washington Post, the New York Times and Just Security. The Supreme Court order says the mandate is stayed until a cert petition is filed and, if the case is accepted, until a decision is issued. The court set a Dec. 5 deadline for a cert petition, which is a “speedy briefing schedule,” according to the New York Times. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform had subpoenaed the records for the years 2011 through 2018 from Mazars USA in an investigation into amending the Ethics in Government Act, the law that governs financial disclosures. The committee had sought the information after Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, said in congressional testimony that he thought that Trump inflated his assets when it served his purposes and deflated his assets in other situations. The case is Trump v. Mazars USA. A cert petition in a second case involving Mazars is pending before the Supreme Court. In that case, Trump v. Vance, a New York grand jury subpoenaed Trump’s tax records from Mazars. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York ruled against Trump in that case. The records sought in the New York case would remain secret because they are for a grand jury, making the case less important than the congressional subpoena case, according to Just Security. A third pending case, Trump v. House Committee on Financial Services, hasn’t yet reached the Supreme Court. The 2nd Circuit is currently considering Trump’s challenge to subpoenas issued to Trump’s banks by two House committees. The subpoena seeks financial records for Trump and two of his children.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/scotus-stays-order-requiring-trumps-accounting-firm-to-give-his-financial-records-to-house/

Supreme Court to consider whether FBI agents can be sued for money damages for religious freedom violation

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U.S. Supreme Court

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 25, 2019, 11:41 am CST

Image from Shutterstock.com.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted a no-fly list case to decide whether federal officials can be sued for money damages in their individual capacities for violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The plaintiffs in the case are three Muslim men who claim that they were placed on the no-fly list because they rejected requests by FBI agents to spy on their religious communities. Their refusal was based partly on their religious beliefs, say the men, who are either U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents. Reuters, Bloomberg Law, SCOTUSblog and Law360 have coverage. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act says a person whose religious belief is substantially burdened by government may obtain “appropriate relief” in a judicial proceeding against “a government.” The law says the term government includes “a branch, department, agency, instrumentality and official (or other person acting under color of law) of the United States.” The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at New York had ruled for the plaintiffs, Muhammad Tanvir, Jameel Algibhah and Naveed Shinwar. The government is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the May 2018 decision, which allowed the money damages claim against individual FBI agents. The government’s cert petition says the 2nd Circuit decision “clears the way for a slew of future suits against national security officials, criminal investigators, correctional officers and countless other federal employees, seeking to hold them personally liable for alleged burdens on any of the myriad religious practices engaged in by the people of our nation.” When Congress has enacted statutes creating an express cause of action against individual officials for money damages, it has done so in unambiguous terms, the government says. The RFRA law, on the other hand, is ambiguous and should not be construed to allow such claims, the government argues. The case is FNU Tanzin v. Tanvir. The SCOTUSblog case page is here.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/supreme-court-to-consider-whether-fbi-agents-can-be-sued-for-money-damages-for-religious-freedom-violation/

Lawyers who investigated Clinton and Nixon see important differences with Trump’s impeachment inquiry

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Constitutional Law

By Victor Li

November 25, 2019, 11:59 am CST

Presidents Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Photos from Wikimedia Commons and the Library of Congress.

Michael Conway remembers when he got the call. A member of Yale Law School’s class of 1973, alongside Bill and Hillary Clinton, Conway had just started practicing law in Chicago when one of his former professors, Burke Marshall, called him the following year. Marshall, a former assistant attorney general for the civil rights division under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, asked Conway if he’d be interested in working for the U.S. House of Representatives’ impeachment inquiry staff investigating President Richard M. Nixon. Despite having just started a job at a law firm and being dissuaded by several partners, Conway didn’t think twice. “I’ll see you on Sunday,” he told John Doar, lead special counsel for the impeachment inquiry. It was Thursday when they spoke. As hearings got underway in mid-November for only the third impeachment inquiry of a U.S. president in the last 50 years, Conway and other attorneys involved in prior investigations of presidents facing impeachment cautioned against drawing too many parallels between President Donald Trump and Clinton and Nixon. According to Conway, when it came to the Nixon inquiry, Democrats and Republicans worked together—even if they had different objectives. The committee had an integrated staff and interviewed witnesses jointly. In fact, Conway says that the committee took pains not to appear partisan, pointing out that the Democratic majority hired Doar, a Republican, as lead special counsel. “Doar had a rule,” Conway recalls. “If anyone had expressed any problems with Nixon, they wouldn’t get hired.” The lawyers ABA Journal spoke with also emphasized that the prevalence of social media and the 24-hour news cycle takes this current impeachment inquiry deep into waters that the previous ones only waded into. “For all of the Woodward/Bernstein stuff, there was almost no secret reporting on the stuff we did. Almost no exclusives. We never leaked anything,” Conway says. Paul Rosenzweig, resident senior fellow, national security and cybersecurity with R Street who served as senior counsel to independent counsel Ken Starr during the Whitewater investigation, notes that his office actually made an effort not to win the news cycle—preferring to focus on the facts and the law. “This was right at the beginning of the internet era, and none of us really understood it,” Rosenzweig says. “My wife often said we were playing baseball while the Clinton people were playing football. The necessary consequence was that we got our asses kicked in court of public opinion, even though we won a lot on the law.”

Robert Bennett. Photo courtesy of Schertler & Onorato

In fact, Robert Bennett, senior counsel with Schertler & Onorato who defended Clinton in the sexual harassment lawsuit filed in 1994 by Paula Jones, says that handling the press was one of his main duties while working for Clinton. In fact, Bennett recalls that Clinton was very organized and disciplined when it came to coordinating his messaging, and the two spoke often about how Bennett would handle the media—even if their questions went beyond the Jones matter. To Bennett, that’s the main difference between Clinton and Trump. Even though Trump is media savvy and understands television and social media, Bennett notes that there is a distinct lack of structure and uniformity coming out Trump’s White House, which ends up undermining him “The whole Clinton organization worked really smoothly,” Bennett recalls. “That’s why you have so many inconsistencies with this White House. You have the president saying, ‘I never spoke to so and so,’ and then someone else saying he did.” Meanwhile, Conway argues that Trump is a wild card in a way that Nixon was not. “Nixon was a lawyer and understood the rule of law,” Conway says. “He broke the law but understood the Constitution. I’m not sure the current president does.” He adds that Nixon never claimed a blanket executive privilege the way Trump is, and he points out that when Nixon was ordered to turn over his tapes by the U.S. Supreme Court, he complied. “Would Trump? I don’t know,” he says. Another key difference is the makeup of Trump’s ultimate jury. Both Clinton and Nixon faced a Senate controlled by the opposing party. Assuming Trump is impeached by the Democratic-controlled House, the key to his survival could be in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Robert Ray at a press conference in 2001, announcing that he and U.S. President Bill Clinton agreed on a plea bargain deal. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

“While it’s constitutionally mandated that the Senate will have to take this up, there’s no road map,” says Robert Ray, independent counsel from 1999 to 2002 who issued the final report on the Whitewater matter and finalized a deal with Clinton on the latter’s last full day in office in which the president admitted giving false testimony under oath in exchange for a fine and five-year suspension of his law license. “The Senate sits as the court of impeachment—but that only requires that they be under oath and the chief justice presides.”

Robert Ray. Photo courtesy of Thompson & Knight

According to Ray, who is currently a partner at Thompson & Knight, all sorts of procedural options are open to the Senate, including adjourning the matter indefinitely or entertaining a motion to dismiss. “I would assume that there’s a motion to dismiss like there was with Clinton,” says Ray, referring to a motion filed in late January by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) that was rejected, largely, along party lines. “I’m not sure we can assume it will come out the same way as with Clinton.” Bennett agrees with Ray that the Senate will probably entertain a motion to dismiss. Beyond that, he says he doesn’t know what the Republican majority might do. “I think it would be a tremendous political risk to just dismiss the case or say: ‘We won’t put it on the calendar,’” Bennett says. “I think that would be very foolish move.” To Bennett, the real foolish move was from the Democrats. “There’s no way, in my judgment, that the Senate will convict,” Bennett says. “At the end of the day, that’s what people will remember—that he was acquitted.” Bennett argues that Democrats would have been better off just having investigatory hearings in the House where they control the process. “But to actually file charges and hand them to Senate knowing they won’t convict. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.” Ray goes further, arguing that Democrats have done this country a disservice by pursuing a “partisan exercise.” “If the lesson is that whenever the opposition party has a majority in the House, then they can impeach the President without a reasonable expectation of bipartisan support, then I’m concerned about the precedent that sets,” he says. “I don’t think that’s what the Republicans wanted in 1998, and it’s not what the Constitution intended.” Rosenzweig, however, believes that the impeachment of Trump is worth pursuing and that conditioning it on the likelihood of success would be the equivalent of “giving up on America.” “First off, I don’t accept premise that the Senate will acquit,” he states. “Six months ago, I didn’t even think he’d be impeached. The world moves quickly. The right answer is to the do what’s right—irrespective of whether it will divide the country. If that’s the case, then shame on the country.”

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/lawyers-who-investigated-clinton-and-nixon-see-important-differences-with-trumps-impeachment-inquiry/

Suit says Ben & Jerry’s claims of ‘happy cows’ from ‘caring dairy’ program are deceiving consumers

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Consumer Law

By Debra Cassens Weiss

November 25, 2019, 1:16 pm CST

A would-be class action lawsuit says the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream company is misleading consumers when it touts its milk and cream come from “happy cows” on "caring dairy" farms. The Oct. 29 suit says that, in reality, only some of the milk comes from the “caring dairy” program, and the rest comes from “factory-style, mass-production dairy operations.” The Boston Globe and the Burlington Free Press have coverage. Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever is capitalizing on the good reputation of the ice cream company’s founders as “socially and environmentally conscious,” according to the suit. The suit was filed in Vermont federal court by James Ehlers, an environmentalist and former Vermont gubernatorial candidate. Ben & Jerry’s packaging says its milk and cream come from “happy cows” and directs consumers to learn more at its website. Visitors there are told that happy cows are part of a caring dairy program that helps “farmers move toward more sustainable practices,” the suit says. Until recently, the website said the caring dairy standards are required for all farmers, the suit says. It points to this subhead to a section describing the program: “Basic standards for being a Caring Dairy farmer (required for all farmers).” The suit alleges violation of Vermont’s Consumer Protection Act, breach of express warranty and unjust enrichment. A separate lawsuit filed in July 2018 also disputes the “happy cows” and “caring dairies” claims, according to the Boston Globe. That suit, filed by the Organic Consumers Association, alleges deceptive labeling and marketing. Unilever said in a statement that it thinks its caring dairy program is the “most progressive in the industry.” “In general, we are proud of the work we’ve done with Vermont’s family farmers over the past 35 years,” a company spokesman told the Boston Globe in a statement. A superior court judge in Washington, D.C., refused to dismiss the suit earlier this year. In court documents, Ben & Jerry’s says its caring dairy statements are “firmly held beliefs and aspirations” rather than fact-based promises. Alexandra Roberts, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire, notes that suits brought under Vermont consumer law have to show that a representation or omission is likely to mislead reasonable consumers, and that the representation or omission is material. “It’s not enough to show Ben & Jerry’s lied about what kind of farms their milk and cream come from and how those farms treat their cows,” Roberts told the Boston Globe. “A court would also have to find that class members who bought Ben & Jerry’s ice cream would likely have chosen a different brand had they known the truth.” Hat tip to How Appealing.

https://www.forlawfirmsonly.com/suit-says-ben-jerrys-claims-of-happy-cows-from-caring-dairy-program-are-deceiving-consumers/

Snapchat Lets Advertisers Run Video Ads Up to 3 Minutes in Length via @MattGSouthern

Snapchat is rolling out new options for advertisers, allowing them to run ads as long as three minutes.

The new ad units, called extended play commercials, can still be skipped after six seconds like other Snapchat ads. Extended play commercials will be displayed as mid-roll ads, similar to shorter Snapchat commercials. The extended play format is designed to give advertisers an opportunity to tell longer stories to engaged viewers. Snapchat tells AdWeek that it’s poised to capture a greater share of the video ad market with this new format:

“The company believes the flexibility that extended play commercials provides to video advertisers will help it gain more share of the overall online video advertising market.“

Snapchat’s new extended play commercials are currently available in a closed beta. Whitelisted advertisers can access them in Snapchat’s Ads Manager. Those who wish to have early access to extended play commercials can request access from their Snapchat advertising representative. Brands can also request access by reaching out to the company through Ads Manager. Snapchat’s VP of Global Agency Partnerships, David Router, highlights the benefits of the new ad format:

“We’re committed to building high-impact, long-form video ad formats, and extended play commercials are a great option for online video and TV buyers. Heading into the holidays, this format is a powerful new way to reach our Generation Z and millennial audience in Snapchat’s premium, brand safe Discover content.”

https://www.businesscreatorplus.com/snapchat-lets-advertisers-run-video-ads-up-to-3-minutes-in-length-via-mattgsouthern/