Don't Spam Google Local Business

By Tom Fitzgerald on February 9, 2010 2:29 PM | No Comments
I recently had a potential client ask me to help with their optimization. We all want to show up when someone does a Google search for our business area. More and more (and more) Google is showing Google Local Business results mixed in with web results. Along with the local results are a nice Google map showing their location. 

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Continue reading Don't Spam Google Local Business.

Why you should be on Twitter

By Tom Fitzgerald on December 14, 2009 11:58 PM | No Comments
Recently I wrote a really great post about how to link your blog to Twitter. Today I wanted to talk a little on why you should use Twitter. Right now Twitter is a very young site, I think its powerful now but its future will be much stronger. A few months ago it was hard to say why people should use it. Take a look at my company's Twitter page - OptiLaw. 

Take a look at a few firms that I'm following. Most of them have a really awesome icon that I made. When you click on a firm you will see a cool background and their contact info, etc, etc. Right now I'm using it as an extension to their blogs. I encourage my clients to blog about their areas of practice. Twitter then takes that information and passes it on to another network. That is the most powerful thing right now, taking your hard work and getting more out of it. Now that was a few months ago. Recently Google announced Twitter in search results, see the video here or read the announcement.

So now your Tweets could actually be in Google's web results. Isn't that our main goal? Pretty exciting. 

YouTube's automatic captions

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 19, 2009 12:59 PM | No Comments
Wow Google is really on a roll with Android, Go, SPDY, Wave and others announced recently now we have automatic captions! This means YouTube videos will use Google's speech recognition software to add captions for hearing impaired viewers. This is something is really great for those of us that may have hearing problems. The best part about this is you don't have to do anything now. 

I have a few clients that are really taking advantage of videos and YouTube. Miller & Zois posts videos describing the effects of Yas / Yasmin, Greenberg & Bederman are doing the same. The questions for other law firms is this - why are you not on YouTube? It's free, its a huge network of people and YouTube videos are being returned with Google web search results. 

Do a search for a Maryland malpractice lawyer and there is a chance a video from Miller & Zois may show up. 

No more tables!

By Tom Fitzgerald on November 9, 2009 11:57 AM | No Comments
I had a client contact me the other day asking to help optimize his site. The word optimize is something I think about a lot. What does it mean really? I would say it means a lot of different things to many different people. Probably easier to start with what is not optimized. I would say its important to have your code as lean as possible. This means externally mapped CSS and for the love of all that is holy - no tables! 
Continue reading No more tables!.

Tweets to be included in Google search results

By Tom Fitzgerald on October 22, 2009 8:01 AM | No Comments
Finally! I'm so happy to share with everyone that it has been announced; Tweets will now be included in Google search results. Let me explain how I believe this will work. You are in New York City and you want to go to 55 Bar (my favorite bar in NY), you do what you always do - Google it. So you Google '55 Bar' I image along the top we'll see Tweets from people mentioning the bar. You'll probably see something like OptiLaw says 'Having a good time @55Bar, great band tonight!'. 

See the power in that? Real time updates on stuff that actually matters. This is where the power of Twitter actually really hits the real world. This is where Twitter dominates and nothing else comes close. 

Another story on how Twitter helped me. I was in New York at my apartment in Battery Park. I heard loud cracking noises in the sky and bright lights. I was thinking 'What the hell is that?'. So I went on Google and stalled ... What should I search for? Battery park? New York? That would only return web sites or News feeds that are often times hours old. So I went on Twitter and found many people 'Enjoying the fireworks in New Jersey' (which is across the river from my apartment). 

Twitter is awesome. Twitter with Google is super awesome. Oh yeah evidently Tweets will also be in Bing's search results, not that anyone uses Bing. 

Move that domain ... the right way!

By Tom Fitzgerald on September 21, 2009 10:33 PM | No Comments
Check out a post on our web design tutorial blog on the best way to move your domain name. This will be a multi part post, covering each step. In this step we show how to forward all your old links so they will still work. This is mega-super important for SEO!

Blogs that link together...

By Tom Fitzgerald on August 10, 2009 11:28 PM | No Comments
Check out a post I made on our Law Firm SEO Blog about some linking ideas and why you should do it. 

Choosing and placing keywords

By Tom Fitzgerald on August 5, 2009 9:35 PM | No Comments

First things first with SEO, you really have to know what you are going after. OptiLaw handles law firm web site development and SEO for law practices. Lets say you are helping a law firm that practices personal injury cases and their office is located in Maryland. The first question is what phrases are you going to go after?

Continue reading Choosing and placing keywords.

Bing + Live VS Google

By Tom Fitzgerald on July 29, 2009 5:03 AM | No Comments
We all know by now that Microsoft and Yahoo teaming up is now a reality. How will this affect your SEO practices? I know myself, primary I spend my time on and optimize based on Google. If another search engine does start to gain in popularity how will this affect you?

If anything, right off the bat pay per click campaigns would be to be adjusted. Right now I have a few clients that use Yahoo, however all of them use Google's pay per click system. With more competition we would have to increase our efforts to be sure practices made to optimize on one system doesn't adversely affect the other. The good news is we'll probably not going to have to worry about a 'Google killer' now or anytime soon. Microsoft has been trying for sometime now to take down Google. Purchasing Yahoo will certainly help but in my eyes, its not enough.

Read my original post about the Microsoft & Yahoo Deal

Google ranking tool - Source code

By Tom Fitzgerald on June 27, 2009 6:42 AM | No Comments

If you are a SEO professional one of the many parts of your job is actually measuring your success. Ok so your client is ranked on the first page of 'Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer' now, but what were they ranked when you started? What I do whenever I begin working with a new client is to take all their keyword phrases and see what their current position is. Then on a weekly basis I will run that report again and see our progress. How do we do this? Well we don't manually search Google fo reach keyword instead we use a great little program to do the work for us. Lets take a look

Continue reading Google ranking tool - Source code.
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