RSSEverything You Ever Needed to Know About Online Reviews!
Whether you’re looking for a new restaurant to try, deciding which hotel to stay in, or even trying to find a new mechanic to work on your car, the odds are pretty good that you took a look at an online review site to help you make your decision. Even though online reviews can sometimes be questionable, they do represent crowdsourced opinions regarding specific businesses, and people often find reviews more reliable than how a company markets itself. In short, people often trust other people more than they do the business.
For lawyers, obtaining client reviews can be difficult, but the potential benefits are huge! Not only do online reviews help differentiate you from your competition, but they can also provide valuable insight that can have a big impact on conversion and signing new cases. Let’s take a look at some specific review sites and how law firms should strategize for each one.
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Join SLS in Giving to PCDA’s Holiday Toy Drive!
For the seventh year in a row, Professional Child Development Associates (PCDA) is holding its annual Holiday Toy Drive! Between November 26th and December 21st, 2018, unwrapped, non-battery-operated toys can be dropped off at multiple locations in the Los Angeles area, including outside of SLS Consulting’s office door in Old Town Pasadena!
Which Digital Marketing Tools Are SLSers Most Thankful For This Year?
As we head into Thanksgiving, we’re all preparing to spend time with our families, stuff our faces, and celebrate the good things we have to be thankful for. Sure, there’s the usual: friends, loved ones, having a roof over our heads, and having delicious turkey (or tofurkey) to eat, but we at SLS wanted to go one step further and talk about what we’re thankful for here in the office.
To that end, we asked each of our departments what hardware, software, or other work-related “tool” they were most thankful for!
MozCast Google Algorithm Review – October 2018
The end of September saw a flurry of Google search engine activity! Those updates spilled over into the beginning of October, and we’ve been tracking them for you in our monthly installment of the MozCast Google Algorithm Review.
Ever wonder why your website’s rankings dip or swell? The answer is that Google’s engineers are always tinkering with Hummingbird, Google’s core algorithm, and its individual components. Since no one besides Google truly knows what is being done or the goals of the updates, we bring you the search engine world’s best guesses!
Google+ Is on Its Way Out – What Now?
We all saw it coming: Google has decided to shut down their social media app, Google+, over the course of the next year, officially pulling the plug in August 2019. Their plans were announced along with a revelation that a security flaw had potentially revealed the personal information of users (including name, age, and gender) from 2015 until it was discovered in March 2018. According to the search engine, no malicious activity was detected during this time – but we will let you decide what to believe.
Word Count: How It All Adds Up
Key takeaways:
- Should you try to come up with a certain amount of words for your website content pages and blog articles? In general, no.
- SLS Consulting has found that there are three factors for effective web writing: being informative, being accessible, and being concise.
- The best advice for writing content is to write until you’ve said all you have to say about the subject, while not forgetting about your readers!
If you’re the kind of person who produces (or assigns) content for a website, there’s a tendency to write (or request) a minimum number of words for an assignment. But—is word count truly important in producing quality web content? Or is it, ultimately, counterproductive? Let’s take a look at this question.
Word Choice Matters
Key takeaways:
- When you write content on your website, the words you use matter not only to your intended meaning, but also to your clients’ understanding.
- There’s a good middle ground between words that are too arcane and words that are too simple. Try to find it, and your clients will thank you.
- In the end, you want to be as authentic as possible while reaching the widest audience possible!
Today, our writing team at SLS Consulting would like to play a little word game with you…
“The Internet is an exemplary conduit through which to entice potential clients.” There’s nothing wrong with that sentence. It makes a statement and it speaks a truth. But is there a more effective way to say the same thing—spread the same message? Read the rest »
MozCast Google Algorithm Review – September 2018
After the storm comes a rainbow! Well, not exactly. But since August saw so many search engine ranking fluctuations due to Google’s broad core algorithm update, it made sense that the Google engineers would back off a bit in September and let the new changes take effect.
To look at the hard data of what Google is up to, we rely on our friends over at Moz, who provide the daily MozCast: a “weather report showing turbulence in the Google algorithm over the previous day.” Moz develops its temperature reading with the help of 1,000 specific keywords, tracked every 24 hours. They grab the top 10 search engine results, and compare to the previous day. This lets them (and us) know if Google’s engineers are moving things behind the scenes. Read the rest »
Make It Easy (for Your Users)
Key takeaways:
- Research shows that web users spend 80% of their time at the top of a page, and focus on the left half of the page.
- When it comes to your website, you should make it easy for your clients to choose you. How? With good design, content, and your unique personality.
Have you ever been frustrated by a website? I want to order this product, but I can’t figure out how to add it to my shopping cart! Or, I’d like to read more about this subject…is there a link? Hmmm, that wasn’t what I was expecting…
Or one of our personal favorites: Wow, I can’t read this font—hot pink on a black background? What is this, the 1990s?
At SLS Consulting, we’re always trying to think of new ways to be obvious—a concept that could also be called “transparent,” “user-friendly,” or all of the above. When it comes to legal internet marketing, making things easy for your potential clients is vital. Literally billions of websites are competing for their attention. If you’re not careful, you could lose them, and quickly.
Call Tracking and Vanity Numbers Are Different (But Both Can Help You)
“Call 1-800-800-8000!”
That’s easy to remember. Someone traveling on a highway will see your billboard and, when the time comes and they need legal services, recall your number and call you, right?
It’s possible, but not always likely.
Today’s client is much more likely to grab your law firm’s phone number from the Internet at his convenience than scribble it down on a napkin as he’s passing by. Knowing where your calls are coming from is an extremely important part of your marketing efforts, and that’s why SLS Consulting always recommends call tracking for our clients’ websites. Read the rest »
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