The Whitespark Local Pulse

The Whitespark Local Pulse for 05/12/2021

May 12, 2021

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The Whitespark Local Pulse

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Marketing for Estate Planning Law Firmshttps://jurisdigital.com/estate-planning-law-firm-marketing/By Ray Higginbotham on May 11, 2021 09:50 am There has never been a better time to invest in marketing for your estate planning law firm. While it’s true that estate planning activity has dwindled over the past decade, concerns surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic have left many Americans wondering what would happen to their family if they pass suddenly. Dealing with one’s mortality has created tremendous interest in the already competitive space of estate planning law firms. According to a study conducted by LegalZoom in November of 2020, “33% of all American adults believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has made it more important to create a will or estate plan.” When you couple that with the fact that more than 10,000 people turn 65 every day in the USA (many of whom need estate planning services), it’s easy to understand why estate planning firms must be sure that clients can find them online. With such a crowded market, you have to ask yourself: “How can I optimize my estate planning marketing?” In this article, we will take a look at a few of the most effective paid and non-paid marketing strategies for estate planning law firms so that you can stay ahead of your competitors and dominate them in local search.  Free Organic SEO Strategies for Estate Planning Lawyers If your service area is specific to a geographical region, optimizing your firm across the local search ecosystem is one of the most effective ways to drive leads to your estate planning firm. Here’s how to get started:  Claim and Optimize Your Free Google My Business (GMB) Listing  One of the quickest ways to gain trust with prospective customers, boost your overall SEO, and have Google recognize your business is by creating a free Google My Business listing. Once you do, you can use GMB’s tools to show new clients that your firm is the epitome of awesome.  Here are a few tips to optimize your GMB listing:  Include accurate information regarding your firm’s phone number, address, hours, and website URL.  Write a description for your estate planning firm.  Add fun, engaging photos of your staff and your office. Don’t forget to smile. 😊  Develop a strategy to acquire positive reviews from your clients. Shoot for the (5) stars!  Try using a variety of posts to drive interest such as What’s New, Events, and Offers.  Use Call to Actions like Call Now, Learn More, Order Online, and Sign Up. Publish Informative Content That Demonstrates Your Expertise   If SEO were a photo puzzle, one of the most important pieces needed to complete the full picture would be content writing. There’s just no substitute for original, well-written content on your website. We’re talking content that answers client questions and convinces them that your estate planning firm is the best at what it does. When optimized with organic keyword implementation, a great piece of content can mean the difference between showing up on the 1st page Google and the 2nd… and no business owner wants to be on the 2nd page of Google.   If you’re not a great writer and don’t have experience writing for SEO, find someone that does. Trust us; it’ll be worth your time. Here are a couple of content ideas to ponder:  Blogging Yes, we’re serious. No, we don’t mean blogging about what you had for dinner last night. Blogging for your business is a whole other ballgame that can increase your exposure online and give your audience helpful, easy-to-read information about topics they care about, like common concerns a person might have by being the sole beneficiary of a will.  Press Releases Many SEO agencies consider press release writing a futile effort for estate planning marketing. However, press releases can still be effective for sharing company news. If you’re planning a community-based event, sending press releases to local news stations can be a great way to drum up interest in your brand. When you use social media to expand upon this premise, you can build positive brand awareness and trust within your community.  Service Pages Explaining your areas of expertise is a great way to add quality content to your website. Once these pages are crawled and indexed by Google, your SEO will benefit. Try to stay away from writing about mundane topics that are heavy on stats and numbers. Rather, focus on content that clients want to read, like the benefits of setting up a trust or how estate tax can affect a person’s inheritance.  Build Business Citations for SEO on Niche Directories  Remember back in the day when the mailman dropped off the Yellow Pages at your front door? We remember too. Don’t worry – we won’t tell anybody how old you are.  The days of print directories are gone, but they have been replaced with digital versions, many of which you can use to bolster your estate planning marketing.  If you have ever used an online directory like yellowpages.com to find a product for sale in your town, the listings you’re looking at are local citations. These listings include a businesses’ address, name, and website.  As an example, having a listing on yelp.com that matches your GMB contact info is considered a local citation. However, rather than spending time building citations on large directories, we recommend focusing on niche directories. For example, having a listing on an industry-specific site like the AAEPA can increase your overall visibility to new audiences and strengthen your local SEO.  Paid Marketing Strategies for Estate Planning Law Firms Developing an SEO strategy takes time to create and implement. If you’re looking for quick leads, paying for preferred placement is an easy way to keep your phones ringing. Since most web searches are performed on Google, we will focus on a couple of their paid services below.   Pay Per Click (PPC) When combined with an effective local SEO strategy, pay-per-click (or PPC) advertising can be a great way to bolster your organic SEO and “cut to the front of the line” to get new leads quickly. In some cases, leads... The post Marketing for Estate Planning Law Firms appeared first on Juris Digital.Read it! »How to Unfilter your Missing Google Reviewshttps://localu.org/unfilter-missing-google-reviews/By Jason Brown on May 11, 2021 08:44 am The Google My Business (GMB) Community Forum is seeing an increase in threads about missing or filtered reviews in the past few weeks. We see a lot of posts from reviewers or businesses about Google removing reviews for quality issues. Google will filter out reviews for using questionable words or...Read it! »Google call history report begins to show data in Google My Businesshttp://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/channel-local/~3/VbEGRAYc9h4/google-call-history-report-begins-to-show-data-in-google-my-business-348578By Barry Schwartz on May 11, 2021 06:13 am Several months after showing a "preview call history" feature, Google is now showing some data in this report.The post Google call history report begins to show data in Google My Business appeared first on Search Engine Land.Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.Read it! »How Does Google My Business Handle Solo Practitioner Listings?https://www.sterlingsky.ca/how-does-google-handle-solo-practitioner-google-my-business-listings/By Colan Nielsen on May 11, 2021 05:00 am In our April LocalU event, I covered Shades Of Grey: Controversial Local SEO Tactics that...Read it! »Yelp announces Custom Location Targeting, budget recommendations and more features to expand reach for local businesseshttp://feeds.searchengineland.com/~r/channel-local/~3/MS6oS_i3afk/yelp-announces-custom-location-targeting-budget-recommendations-and-more-features-to-expand-reach-for-local-businesses-348455By George Nguyen on May 11, 2021 05:00 am Local business owners are no longer limited to advertising around their physical location.The post Yelp announces Custom Location Targeting, budget recommendations and more features to expand reach for local businesses appeared first on Search Engine Land.Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.Read it! »Local News Broadcasters Losing Billions While Google & Facebook Gaininghttps://www.localseoguide.com/local-news-broadcasters-losing-billions-while-google-facebook-gaining/By Andrew Shotland on May 10, 2021 03:24 pm BIA Advisory Services reached out to me a few weeks ago for some feedback on a study about how the big online news platforms were affecting the businesses of local news broadcasters. In their recently published study commissioned by NAB, “The Economic Impact of Big Tech Platforms on the Viability of Local Broadcast News”, BIA estimates […]The post Local News Broadcasters Losing Billions While Google & Facebook Gaining appeared first on Local SEO Guide.Read it! »Video: Last Week in Local for Week Ending May 10, 2021https://localu.org/lwil-week-ending-may-10-2021/By Carrie Hill on May 10, 2021 01:38 pm Happy 151st Episode – Last Week in Local Viewers & Readers! Join Mike & Carrie as they discuss FTC’s findings on companies that limit who can work on their equipment, how keyword stuffing in GMB has real-world implications, and bugs from BrightLocal’s Rank Flux tool and Google’s LSA Bidding SFAFU....Read it! »  

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10 More Local Search Posts You May Have Missed