Category: Content Marketing

Search engine optimization experts have used Google Trends since at least 2012, and now there’s even more buzz – and for good reason.

What is Google Trends?

Google Trends chases real-time updates across the entire Internet to offer viewers instant access to what’s trending. By using Google Trends, you can explore up-to-the-minute trends and comb through everything that’s been trending over the last week.

The search giant added Google News and YouTube to Google Trends on June 17, which means it gives you an in-depth look at what people are searching for across a variety of mediums – and that can put you at a distinct advantage if you’re able to dive in and strike while the iron is hot.

Newsjacking and Google Trends

Many SEOs use Google Trends to “newsjack,” which means that they find out what’s trending and create even more buzz while tying in their own positions, ideas and statements – and at the same time, generating large-scale interest by newsjacking at just the right time.

“You can make this happen, too. Your challenge is to newsjack when reporters are looking for more information… before that window of opportunity falls away,” said David Meerman Scott, marketing and sales strategist, at the 2014 SXSW conference.

“Do you remember when Sir Richard Branson’s house caught on fire and Kate Winslet carries Sir Richard Branson’s mother to safety? In comes the London Fire Brigade with a classic newsjack. On their website, they offered Kate Winslet firefighter training, and this generated a staggering 1,787 media hits,” said Scott.

So what does this mean for law firms?

If you can find a story that relates to your practice and inject your opinion or personal statements while the story is fresh and journalists are still looking for information, you can newsjack and get your website in front of all the right people.

How Does Google Trends Help Law Firms?

[Use “How to Use Google Trends to Newsjack picture here]

Let’s say you’re a personal injury attorney and you want to newsjack what’s trending in health, such as necrotizing fasciitis in Florida. Google Trends says the best time to have done so was between June 11 and about June 16, although the topic continues to trend on a large scale.

By sharing your opinion – perhaps officials haven’t done enough to warn people, or maybe it’s possible to contract it from a saltwater pool (it is) and you have prevention tips – you can jump on the news bandwagon while promoting your firm at the same time.

If people are going to be talking about something, it makes sense to write about it so your firm can get in on the action.In many cases, it’s better to stick with local stories. A city that’s installing controversial new traffic lights, for example, could benefit from a personal injury lawyer’s take on the possible ramifications; a town that sees dozens of snow- and ice-related accidents during the winter could pounce on a story that has significant local impact.

Here’s the catch, though: you have to stay on top of what’s trending in order to take advantage of this proven SEO tactic.

Do you have the time to keep up with what’s hot and then inject your firm’s brand into searches with the right keywords and search engine formulas?

Further, do you have time to watch how your audience interacts with your newsjacking efforts and measure the results? That’s essential so you can make improvements and increase your reach.For these reasons, most firms that successfully dominate their markets choose to work with experts who know how to exploit trending searches. You can do it yourself, but if you don’t have time to keep up, you’re leaving your efforts up to chance – and your mileage may vary.

Want to Learn More About How We Use Google Trends to Help Law Firms?

Call us at 212-202-3214 or claim your free website audit to find out how ApricotLaw can help you dominate the SERPs and put your website in front of all the right people.

The numbers are clear: most of the webpages Google delivers on the first page of the search engine results pages, or SERPs, have at least 2,400 words.

But if you look at some of the country’s most popular sites – Upworthy and Facebook are two of them – they have nowhere near that amount of copy on their pages.

How are they pulling that off?

Indexed Pages and Backlinks: The High-Rank Recipe

If you look at what those sites are doing, you’ll see that they have two big things in common: thousands upon thousands of indexed pages and plenty of backlinks.

Each of those things plays a huge role in ranking. Obviously, Google can’t rank your pages if they’re not part of the index (that’s a no-brainer). You’ll need plenty of pages – at least more than your competitors have – for Google to consider your firm a player.

The key is getting all of those pages included in Google’s index and then earning backlinks. That’s what the biggest, most popular sites do.

How Law Firms Can Earn Backlinks

Believe it or not, Google can distinguish between earned backlinks and purchased backlinks. They judge a site by the company it keeps, and if yours is providing valuable information that makes people want to link to it, the Googlebot can tell.

Your first step: create that valuable content. It doesn’t have to be a long-form copy, although that is a bonus. It needs to answer searchers’ questions in a clear, concise and easy-to-understand way. In other words, it needs to be quality.

From there, you need to be proactive in building links. Whether you answer questions on popular sites, get industry recognition and press exposure by using a tool like Help a Reporter Out or you use other methods, quality backlinks are a key metric that Google considers when they’re determining how “worthy” your firm’s website is.

It doesn’t happen overnight, but it does happen – and that means there’s hope for the smallest firms to overtake the biggest players.

In his recent article, The Content Marketing Road Map – How to Build Your Own Content Marketing Plan, Michael Brenner lists 7 factors to content marketing success.

They are:

1. Document your content strategy. 

2. Put someone in charge.

3. Publish quality content consistently. 

4. Map content to consumer journey. 

5. Balance paid, owned, and earned media.

6. Focus on subscriptions.

7. Track content marketing ROI.

The hardest part for most law firms is publishing content on a regular basis.

As is evident from this blog post, I think the easiest way to publish quality content consistently is through content curation.

With the vast amount of content available on any subject, the winners will be those who provide a one-stop-shop for readers. With content curation, you can become a hub for anyone looking for information on your topic.

And, all you have to do is play reporter. You don’t have to create all the content from scratch, which is what makes this part of marketing seem so daunting.

Although this post went longer than expected, you don’t have to write a long opinion piece about the content being curated. You can simply introduce the article you read and provide a link for your readers to have a look.

Taking this one step further, the most important step in content curation is staying up to date on what is being published in your space.

For this I use a Google Chrome extension called Pocket (not the app in the Chrome Store, the extension). Once installed, this extension puts a little button at the top of your browser.

When you see something of interest to your audience, click the Save to Pocket button and that page will be filed away for later. Then when you’re ready to curate and share, you can quickly sort through all the stories in your Pocket and share the ones you think are most valuable to your reader.

Another sleeper of a tool is the Web 2.0/RSS Aggregator called RebelMouse. With this I like to mash a bunch of relevant RSS feeds together so I can see them all in one place. When I’m ready to curate, I simply browse my RebelMouse homepage and share what I think my audience will like most.

Another valuable takeaway from Michael’s article

“There are many more people in the early stages of the buyer journey than there are people who are ready to buy. You have to understand how people move from asking “what is” and “why is this important” questions to “how do I do it,” “who does it,” and “how much does it cost?” Balance your content production accordingly. Most brands focus too much time, energy, and resources on the fewer late-stage consumers.”

When you see lawyers on social media saying things like, “If you’ve been injured in a car accident, call me now!” that’s what is meant by focusing on the late-stage consumers.

There are a bigger pool of people out there earlier on in the buying process.

Personal injury law does have a much shorter buying phase, almost by definition, but there are still more people out there researching the topic than there are interviewing attorneys.

Understand that you are speaking to people at different points in that process. Provide a nice mix for each type of person.

Useful tool used in the article

If you’re wondering how they create “click to tweet” sentences right in the article, they use a free service by the same name – Click to Tweet.

How this relates to SEO for law firms

Like I’ve said before, content marketing and SEO are two sides of the same coin.

Top ranking law firms are all content publishers [CLICK TO TWEET]

Simply creating a 10-page website and linking to it is no longer effective. Unless you are publishing content on a regular basis, and as a byproduct of that content, becoming a trusted authority in your field, Google will pay less and less attention to you moving into the future.

What do you think? How has content marketing helped your law firm gain new clients and be more visible in Google search? Leave a comment below.