Understanding Analytics for Legal Firms SEO

understanding analytics

legal tech
san francisco, ca
october 15, 2013

your speaker today was a former…

a.  opera singer?
b.  taiji instructor?
c.  ballerina?

Burkey Belser, Greenfield/Belser

the audience today

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what’s your level of familiarity with SEO?
what challenges have you found in your firm?
do I distinguish SEO from social media?
what do you hope to learn?
what do you want to take back to your leadership?

understanding analytics
you will learn
  what search engine optimization is and why you
should care
  the basics of SEO on and off your site
  how to evaluate SEO providers
  understanding Google and navigating Analytics
  advanced analytics tactics
  the ideal report to management

what is search engine optimization
(and why should I care?)

search engine optimization (SEO) defined:
SEO is any activity an organization undertakes to
improve their website’s visibility and ranking for
organic search
what does this include, really?

why should I care?
the future of the law firm website

why should I care?
the future of the law firm website

  what do I want to achieve?
  what do my partners say they want?

the basics of SEO on and off your site

onsite SEO
deals with making sure Google can find your web pages in
order to show them in their search results appropriately.
This is accomplished through relevant, detailed and
helpful content.

offsite SEO
deals with trying to get other websites to tell Google
what your website is about and (2) that’s in an authority in
the industry, a website they can trust. This is done through
linkbuilding.

onsite challenges

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area of focus
keyword research
basic issues
website content
website design
internal links

area of focus
what is the main purpose of the
website?
divide and conquer
identify low hanging fruit

three steps to keyword research
1.  get a base list
a.  talk to “strangers”
b.  read your users minds

2.  expand your base list with tools
3.  choose high volume/low cost keywords
for optimizing!

talk to “strangers”
firm employees ideas of keywords:
legalese, legalese, legalese, legalese, legalese
potential clients (strangers) ideas of keywords:
layman terms, layman terms, layman terms, layman terms

you need to optimize for the terms
your potential clients are using!
if you can’t find any corporate counsel or CEOs to talk to, ask your mom
how she would look for a lawyer. She does not speak legalese

internal site search
reading your users minds!
searches used on
www.sitemiprove.c
om.
gives us clues
about what users
are looking for.

stranger data + user data
=
base list of keywords

expand your base list with tools
both of these tools are free!

choose your keywords
best keywords will have a high number of
monthly searches and a low estimated
cost per click
you are doing a cost/benefit analysis for
your keywords to get the most bang for
your buck (ok time not buck but you get
the idea)

onsite challenges

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keyword research
basic issues
website content
website design
internal links

basic issues
Use good document structure
and avoid errors
  page titles
  meta descriptions
  H1 tags
  avoid duplicates in your
titles, meta descriptions and
H1 tags
  avoid misspellings

basic issues

what is good for search robots….

is also good for website visitors!

basic issues
“Titles are critical to giving users a quick
insight into the content of a result and why it’s
relevant to their query. It's often the primary
piece of information used to decide which
result to click on, so it's important to use highquality titles on your web pages.”
– Google
Support
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?
hl=en&answer=35624

basic issues

siteimprove.com

1-855-SITEIMPROVE

info@siteimprove.com

basic issues

search for
“sequestration
government
construction
contract”

“The description attribute within the <meta> tag is a good way to provide a concise,
human-readable summary of each page’s content. Google will sometimes use the meta
description of a page in search results snippets, if we think it gives users a more
accurate description than would be possible purely from the on-page content. Accurate
meta descriptions can help improve your clickthrough.”

– Google Support,
http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35624

basic issues
benefits of good document structure
•  first place on google? not guaranteed,
but certainly helps
•  makes pages more readable to both
people and
search engines
•  highlights keywords in a way that search
engines understand

basic issues

am law 100
first 1,000 pages of AM Law 100 websites
average
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342 pages with duplicate page titles
625 pages missing meta descriptions
186 pages missing H1 tags
524 pages with duplicate H1 tags
11 misspellings (also not good for SEO)

website content

  make it relevant
  make it readable, little legalese
  make it timely
  give it a x-factor: funny,
provocative, thoughtful, etc.

website content
semantic markup – www.schema.org
Use micro data like
Authorship to help search
engines identify key areas of
your content
Why do this?
•  Attorney visibility
•  Easy links to other articles
of the same author
•  Does not impact SEO yet
but Moz recommends using
it in their 2013 ranking
factors report

website design: call to action

internal links
•  link in context
•  make links
relevant and
necessary (use
common sense)
•  have the link text
match the
destination

internal links
avoid broken links both to your own
pages, known as internal links and to
external resources, known as
external links. google (and more
importantly people) can’t follow
broken links!
am law 100 sites average 19
internal broken links and 39
external broken links on their
first 1,000 indexed pages

offsite challenges

  Link building

link building

link building is defined as creating content
that people will link to and then encouraging
people to do so

link building
when someone links to you (on their website,
through social media, etc.) they are indicating two
things:
1.  they trust you and are showing that they have
some sort of relationship with you
2.  they find your content valuable
search engines recognize this trust as credibility for
your site. if enough relevant and authoritative people
(and websites) link to you, your rank will go up!

link building
but my content is boring…..
–  be inspiring
–  be provoking
–  be fun
–  do the unexpected
–  bring zombies

link building
what not to do
•  do not pay for links
•  do not participate in too many link
directories
•  avoid having irrelevant websites linking to
you

A couple notes on algorithm changes

337 SEO changes by Google every year

panda could be great for law firms

quick panda rundown
  algorithm update between February and April
in 2011
  focused on getting rid of low quality content
  added human review as part of ranking
methodology
  added engagement metrics as part of ranking
methodology
—pogosticking is bad

what can you do?
•  start measuring engagement (time on site, number of
returning visitors vs. new visitors, bounce rate)
•  review and improve what is being indexed for your site
–  do a google search for site:www.myfirm.com
–  remove unnecessary pages from the index with robots.txt file or
by using canonical urls

•  increase social media shares
•  produce quality content

quick penguin rundown
announced on April 24, 2012 with a refresh on May 25
aimed at the cheaters
• 
• 
• 
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link spammers
keyword stuffing
cloaking
participants in link
schemes
•  deliberate creators
of duplicate content
•  over optimizers

what can you
do?
periodically read
the google
webmaster
guidelines (with
a grain of salt)

and if that wasn’t enough, hummingbird

a provider checklist
•  Is keyword research part of their strategy? How do
they determine the benefit of ranking for a particular
keyword vs. the cost of pursuing that ranking?
•  Will they share an overview of their tactics with you? If
not, move on.
•  How have they adjusted their strategies to
accommodate the Panda and Penguin algorithm
updates?
•  What is their approach to link building? How do they
feel about buying links?
•  What are their thoughts on using Content Marketing
as a SEO strategy?

a provider checklist
•  How does Social Media figure into their plans for your
firm’s SEO?
•  Will they ensure that everyone agrees on expectations
for the SEO project before signing a contract?
•  Does the company make an effort to understand your
firm? Do they provide a site audit?
•  What data will the company provide to you in order to
keep you updated on the progress of the project and
the ROI?
•  How will the company ensure each of your offices
performs well in local search?
•  Do they have references that you can call?

the balance you want

traditional SEO
keyword research
on-page SEO
link building

modern SEO
where social media
you content marketing
want todetailed ROI
be! local and mobile

a trustworthy company will…
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share their tactics
agree on expectations up front
be empathetic to your needs
provide references
new art on home page

details of the dashboard overview can be found in standard reports

on other
browsers, this is
still “traffic
sources”

Where to start? What’s the overall
view of my website’s traffic?

OK, I see how many visitors I have, but I want to know where
the traffic is coming from (“sources” is now “channels”)

A good percentage of my website’s traffic is from search engines – what
kinds of keywords are users searching for that bring them here?

I know search engines are a source, but how can I tell which visitors are coming
through paid search (AdWords) as opposed to organic SEO?

I’m curious if the locations of my website’s visitors are the same as where
our firm offers services?

Now that I know where the traffic is coming from, I want to know the pages
they’re going to once they get to my site.

Top 10 are color
coded and the rest
are lumped together

Ok, I see what the most popular landing pages are, but what are the behavioral
patterns of visitors once they’re in my website?

advanced web analytics tactics

1.  investigate your data
2.  identify your Key Performance Indicators and
Micro Conversions
3.  segment your audience

investigating your data

what information is missing in the standard
deployment of web analytics tools?

missing the following data:
●  Clicks to documents; PDF and all Microsoft Office documents - $
●  Clicks to Vcards - $

●  Visible clicks of visitors who arrived to your website via email
●  Clicks to items that do not load new pages (videos, sharing icons, mailto
links, many tab based pages) - $


Can be fixed

●  Clicks to cached pages (up to ⅓ of all page views!)

$ - Costs
money and/or
time
Can’t be fixed


what are events and how are they tracked?

tracking events
an event in web analytics is a user interaction on a
website that does not load a new page.
Clicks to play video/
audio

Clicks to tabs that do
no load new pages

Clicks to sharing icons

why is it important?
1.  organizations are adding more video and audio (like
podcasts) to their websites
2.  sharing functionality is now standard on most
websites
3.  utilizing tabs and expandable menus is becoming
commonplace because it enhances the user
experience
4.  other functionality will continue to be introduced that
will not load pages

how do you know what is working if you
cannot measure it!!!

Orrick can now understand
over time what videos are
being played on their
Careers page. This can help
determine the content for
future videos as well as
helping them understand
which videos to keep on the
page and which to remove.

can’t we just pick these things up with our standard
web analytics javascript?

no!

javascripts for web analytics tools require a page to
load in order for the javascript to execute and then
collect data.
events do not require a page to load
no page load = no data
additional coding is needed in all analytics tools to pick
up events. talk with your analytics provider to
determine setup.


why campaign tracking is critical to law firm
web analytics

tracking campaigns
clicks from email, paid advertisements and offline
cannot be tracked without campaign tracking

how do you get there?
•  determine what marketing channels you
use
–  email, social media, etc.

•  add tracking parameters to your urls that
you send out in those channels
•  analyze your new campaign data!

current url:
http://www.orrick.com/Events-and-Publications/Pages/Class-Action-SettlementsRule-68-Offers-of-Judgment.aspx

Event Tracking URL:
http://www.orrick.com/Events-and-Publications/Pages/Class-Action-SettlementsRule-68-Offers-of-Judgment.aspx?
utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=class+action
+event&utm_campaign=october2013

Orrick could now see what links within their enewsletters are driving
traffic. This can help them understand what to do in future mailings.
Email marketing tools provide great data on “open rate” and “click
through rate” but not enough information about what people do once
on your website.
Campaign tracking helps complete the picture.

guidelines for campaign tracking
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● 

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be consistent with how you name them
○ 
all newsletters have the source “newsletter”
be aware of case sensitivity
○ 
“Email” and “email” will show up differently in your
report
request a free white paper on tracking campaigns at the
siteimprove booth

when to use campaign tracking
• email blasts
• client alerts
• linkedin posting
• twitter campaigns
• online advertising (sponsoring events,
ads in publications, etc.)

2. Identify key performance indicators
and micro conversions

what is a key performance indicator
(kpi)?
wikipedia: key performance indicators are
financial and non-financial metrics used to
help an organization progress towards
organizational goals identify
siteimprove: numbers you can use to measure
whether or not your website is performing in
line with your objectives

identifying your kpis
1.  talk with leaders in the firm to determine
how the website contributes to overall
business objectives
2.  identify what you are currently doing and
plan on doing in the future on the
website to achieve those goals
3.  select metrics in your analytics tool that
help you measure that progress (these
metrics are now your kpis!)

what makes a great kpi?
● 
● 
● 
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simple
relevant
timely
instantly useful

good rule: have no more than 4 kpis per
business objective

micro conversions
definition: micro conversions are metrics
that indicate the website is performing to
its desired intent but are not strong
enough to be kpis on your website.
potential examples of micro conversions
●  signing up for a client alert
●  subscribing to a newsletter
●  vcard downloads

setting targets is key

targets - numerical values you have predetermined as
indicators of success or failure.
must have yearly targets, better to have quarterly or monthly.

there is too much data out there!!!

what is a segment in web analytics?
looking at sections of data rather than
all the data at once.

what makes a good segment?
● 
● 

it makes a metric or kpi more relevant
it gives you the clarity necessary to
recommend action
three buckets: acquisition, behavior, outcomes

why do this stuff?
•  events and campaign tracking
–  completes the data picture

•  kpis and micro conversions
–  ensures you are measuring what is important

•  segmentation
–  allows you to focus your efforts

why do this stuff?
all of this leads to the generation of a great
report with recommendations you can
present to management and then improve
the website!

or: get busy executives to listen today…
so they will fund your efforts tomorrow

define your goals, do your homework

define the purpose of your site

firm brand awareness
recognition
client information source
a way to validate Orrick’s expertise (via legal news,
articles/blogs/webinars, bios, legal experience,
service descriptions)
  find attorneys (who are understandably focused on
their own practice)
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as a client information source, tabulate
  visitors that visit at least four pages related to the IP
practice (news items, attorney biographies, practice
pages, etc.)
  total email subscriptions for IP news, etc.
  total subscriptions to Trade Secrets Watch blog
  visit duration over four minutes on Trade Secrets
Watch blog (knowing that the average person takes
one minute to read 300 words)

brand awareness/recognition
  review Orrick’s overall traffic against three competing
firms (Jones Day, Mofo, Covington) to understand its
relative market position
  tabulate total organic searches for IP attorneys by
name plus searches containing “Orrick” with some
form of “IP” in the keyword. Measure month over
month to evaluate Orrick’s growth as IP brand.
  tabulate number of visits to Orrick website from
award-granting organizations’ websites

share your takeaways; questions?

Understanding Analytics for Legal Firms SEO

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