Show Notes
In today's episode we talk about:
- Updating content. Revisiting old blog posts and updating them.
- Checking links. This is particularly important if you have external links to other blogs or websites.
- We use 'Check My Links' Chrome web browser extension.
- Testing your website on new browsers and devices.
- For browser testing one of the big players is BrowserStack
- Bonus: Google Analytics. This is a must.
Transcript
Aaron: [00:00:14] Hey,guys. Welcome to another episode of The Marketing Natives. This one is going tobe a lot of fun especially since we know some lawyers who could definitely usethis, not only locally here in the Texas area, but we know those who arelistening outside of here and our friends over in Tokyo. Shout out to the Tokyolisteners.
Christian: [00:00:35] It'snot just Tokyo. It's Japan.
Aaron: [00:00:36] Okay.So outside- There's other places in Japan outside of Tokyo.
Christian: [00:00:41] Yeah,definitely.
Aaron: [00:00:43] Well,just saying. Tokyo is the only one that I really know. Do you know other- Nameone other place in Japan.
Christian: [00:00:49] Justgive me a second. I'll remember. I just have to-
Aaron: [00:00:51] Googleit.
Christian: [00:00:52] No.Okay. What about Okinawa?
Aaron: [00:00:56] Allright. So anyway today's episode is three things lawyers need to check out ontheir website every month. This is bold right here, the every month part. Whatwe're going to cover are updating content, why you should check your links, newbrowsers, and devices, and we may or may not have a bonus. Maybe. Maybe not. Idon't know.
Christian: [00:01:20] We'llsee.
Aaron: [00:01:22] Allright. So number one. First thing here is to update the content. This goes forpeople, not just lawyers. This goes for everyone. You have to update yourcontent. Google loves that, but also your users are going to want that too. Soif tax laws changes- Or tax laws. If criminal law changes or there's new lawsthat are happening, say in the state of Texas like in September you can't textand drive, you can look at your Google Maps, and you can change music, right?So that's-
Christian: [00:01:51] Right.
Aaron: [00:01:51] That'sa law, but if you had a blog last year that said something like hey, it's notillegal to text and drive. Here's the laws that you need to know about. Itwould have been really good for you to go back and update your content inSeptember and say that hey, these are new things. You don't need to create awhole new blog post. You can actually edit the one you had currently and thenadd more to it, and Google really likes that.
Christian: [00:02:13] Yeah.So yeah. I mean, that's usually the go to when we're talking about updatingcontent is the blog and blog pieces that you publish in the past that may havegotten a lot of traffic but maybe some things have changed. So it's definitelygood to go back and change some of those but not just on your blog. Definitely,you know, your address, phone numbers, people working there. One of my biggestpet peeves is the bottom copyright. If you have copyright and says the currentyear but it hasn't been updated in six years, and that to me makes it seem likethis website is really old. Nobody's taking care of it, and it's just sittingthere stagnant.
Aaron: [00:02:55] Right.It makes you wonder if they're still in business like.
Christian: [00:02:59] Right.
Aaron: [00:02:59] Okay.You must be paying the hosting. Somebody's card's getting charged ten dollars ayear, but are you really still practicing or are you still, you know, are youstill around?
Christian: [00:03:08] Yeah,exactly. The number two thing that you need to check are links and linksinternally and external links. Internal you obviously can control a little bitbetter, but when you're blogging and you're linking to other websites, it'svery important to every month check on those links and make sure that they'restill good. I mean, one way to check your internal links is to click on some thingsaround the website and make sure that everything is going to the rightlocation, but also you can definitely Google like check broken links. And therewill be some tools that you can use where you just plug in your website, andthat tool automatically looks for any broken links on your website. It's veryeasy to pinpoint which ones are not working properly.
Aaron: [00:03:55] Right.There's a tool that's kind of escaping me right now that's done by anothercompany. It's probably like 150 dollars a year, and it checks all of yourcurrent links and tells you what the problem is or if there is a problem. Andthen you can manually do that. I think that- Actually I think it's free to findout what they are, and you'd have to pay them to fix that. It will hopefullycome to me later, but another one is called Screaming Frog. Yes, like yellingfrog. If you do Screaming Frog, it will tell you all the links that you have onyour website, and then you can copy and paste those and also check them fromScreaming Frog to see if the links are still working. But the worst thing thatcould happen to you is for somebody to go there and they're like yes, this isthe answer to my problem, and they click a link to go and find out how tofigure out this answer. And they click it, and it says a 404 page, and it takesthem nowhere. So that's just really refreshing to your users, and it's not goodfor Google either because Google knows if people go there and they don't getwhat they want and they leave right away, you could be ranking for somethingbut then you now drop out of the rankings because you have a bad link.
Christian: [00:05:06] Yeah.I just did a quick google search, and I mean, one of them - and I feel likeI've used it already because the link is checked - is brokenlinkcheck.com. It'sfree, and also if you use Chrome, the browser, you can- There's definitely someplugins that you can put on your browser where with the click of a button youcan check all the links, and you don't have to go to any website or anythinglike that. You just click a button, and it'll check your website automaticallywhich is pretty cool.
Aaron: [00:05:34] Allright. What- You said it to Chrome extension?
Christian: [00:05:37] Yeah.
Aaron: [00:05:37] Okay,cool. We will put that in the show notes. So we'll link that up so you can goand add that. We prefer Chrome anyway. Even though it does use a lot of memoryon your computer, it is a really reliable browser. So definitely check thatout, and it's free. So it is worth it to go and check out those links.
Christian: [00:05:56] Yep.Absolutely.
Aaron: [00:05:58] Allright. So this is a special section.
Christian: [00:06:01] Isit special or spesal?
Aaron: [00:06:03] Spesal.
Christian: [00:06:04] Spesal.Okay.
Aaron: [00:06:04] Spesalis Spanish for special, right?
Christian: [00:06:08] Idon't know. I don't know about that on. I don't think so.
Aaron: [00:06:10] Specialstand for?
Christian: [00:06:11] Spesal?
Aaron: [00:06:12] What'sspecial in Spanish?
Christian: [00:06:14] Specialor spesal?
Aaron: [00:06:16] Both.
Christian: [00:06:17] Well,special as especial.
Aaron: [00:06:19] Okay.So really all he did was go eh-special. So what's special though?
Christian: [00:06:26] Okay,you need do that. You should have never prefaced anything. You just do it. Allright. That was a rough intro to a little commercial though we're going to dofrom now on probably halfway through our podcast, and we just want to let youknow that the Marketing Natives is basically the podcast of BitBranding. And weare a digital marketing agency located here in Allen, Texas. It's me myself,Christian, and this sir over here, Aaron. We're running this company. We'vebeen doing this for about three years now, and we just want to let you knowthat if you need any website design. Or another main tier of business oranother main service that we offer is social media marketing. We're talkingabout Facebook campaigns, Google pay-per-click. We would love to work with youif you're a small business. I mean, this episode, specifically lawyers. Ifyou're a lawyer and you need a brand new website or if you need help navigatingthrough social media, we are your guys.
Aaron: [00:07:33] What'sa good way for them to get ahold of us?
Christian: [00:07:36] Literallyyou can search for BitBranding anywhere on Facebook. You can go to our websiteactually, bitbranding.co, but another good way is to e-mail us,hello@bitbranding.co.
Aaron: [00:07:53] Right.Send us a message. Christian and I will- Christian or I will respond. It's kindof hard for both of us, but one of us will respond.
Christian: [00:07:59] Notat the same time, but yeah.
Aaron: [00:08:01] Allright. So that's the end of that spot there. Hopefully, you guys love the blow hornbecause I really like pushing the button. So really fun. If you enjoyed thatpart, please leave us a comment and let us know that you love the blow horn,but back to our regularly scheduled information for lawyers. The next one hereis something that you absolutely should do every month at the bare minimum, andthat is to test your browsers and devices. There's constantly new devicescoming out, some tablets. There's- What is that one? The Fire- Oh, I can'tremember, but Amazon put it out. So it's like a Kindle Fire. So that's adifferent size than an iPad. There's just a lot of different browsers, andthere's a lot of different devices that they can put them on.
Christian: [00:08:57] Yeah,and I mean, technically browsers are the ones who are updating constantly, moreso than mobile phones. I would say mobile phones, you know, they come out everytwo or three months. You probably have a new one, but browsers are more of aconstant update. And you don't realize it because the browsers, they just addedon the backend, and they don't tell you anything. So it's very important totest these new browsers. A really good way to test this is not free, but it'ssomething called browserstack.com. It would automatically test your website ona number of devices and browsers and browser versions because there's peoplewho may have chromes same as us, but maybe they have the update automaticallyturned off. So they have an older version of Chrome which may not supportcertain things on your website. So that's like one of the biggest things that-I mean, it kind of hinders, you know, website design because a lot of peoplehave different devices and different browsers, and if they have somethingthat's really outdated and old, for example, Internet Explorer. If you have InternetExplorer, get rid of that thing right away. Get some Chrome or Firefox.
Aaron: [00:10:12] Anything.
Christian: [00:10:13] Anythingthan Internet Explorer because Internet Explorer does not support a lot of thenew things that are coming out with website design, and it's a lot harder todesign websites and make them cross compatible with all these browsersespecially Internet Explorer that they don't like to date anything. So.
Aaron: [00:10:30] Right.And that's- Yeah. Man, it is bad, and not only that, but it lags down a lot ofcomputers with the edge. But anyway, this is not an episode to bash on InternetExplorer.
Christian: [00:10:39] Oh,I will bash on Internet Explorer any day.
Aaron: [00:10:42] Yes.If you're still using it, we feel bad for you. Please send us a message. Wewill gladly-
Christian: [00:10:48] We'llsend you a link to Google Chrome or Firefox.
Aaron: [00:10:51] Absolutely,but just please do that. It's- For a lawyer, it's a professional field, notthat most businesses aren't. You know, you need to be professional, but likedoctors, lawyers, that's very important for your website to show up correctly.If they have to pinch and zoom or it doesn't work correctly, they're probablynot going to trust you to take care of a legal matter that they have. So it'sjust a level of professionalism.
Christian: [00:11:19] Yep.Exactly.
Aaron: [00:11:19] Allright. So I know you're wondering and thinking that this may or may not happenbecause we alluded to it in the beginning, but there actually is a bonus thatwe have right here. And that is Google Analytics. You must check your GoogleAnalytics every month. If you have a marketing person in-house, they shouldknow about this. If they don't, you need to figure out what that is and havethem kind of tasked with that job. If you have an outside agency helping you,they should be sending you a report every month with your analytics. So this isgoing to tell you everything from the amount of visitors to your website, theamount of pages that each person looks at, your bounce rate, which is veryimportant. I'll explain what that is real quickly because a lot of people ask.A bounce rate is when somebody lands on your website and they don't go to asecond page. So they get there. They didn't find what they wanted or they didfind what they want, and they leave. A good balance rate is anything below 50percent. You want more of your users to stay there and go to a second or thirdpage. So you need to be checking those numbers to make sure every month thatyou're providing content and you have a site that loads fast enough for yourusers. The biggest reason people have problems with bounce rate is becausetheir site loads in like 10 seconds which is way too slow. It needs to loadbetween 3 to 5. 5 is still kind of pushing it, but you need to have it loadfast. Quick stat. For every second after 3, or- I think it's- Yeah, I thinkit's three. Maybe four. For every second after that, you lose 10 percent of thepotential profit you could gain from that. So like that's for e-commerce ifyou- Let's just say 3 percent. If it takes 4 seconds for your site to load,that's 10 percent of revenue that you could potentially be losing. Soabsolutely check your Google Analytics that you can figure out what is going towork on your website, and that also helps with the other tips that we had givenpreviously.
Christian: [00:13:14] Yep.Again thank you for listening to our podcast, and yeah, if you enjoyed thisepisode so far, make sure you share it on social media.
Aaron: [00:13:26] Iaccidentally did the blow horn, but I kind of liked it.
Christian: [00:13:29] Makesure that you share this episode on social media if you enjoyed it or if youhave a lawyer friends that would benefit from this episode, and also if you'reenjoying this episode or you're enjoying the rest of our other episodes, makesure to leave a review either on the podcast app on your iPhone will beprobably the best, the easiest way to do that. We will greatly appreciate it,and it will let us know how we're doing and how we can improve this podcast.
Aaron: [00:13:56] Allright. We will talk to you guys next week.
Christian: [00:13:58] Seeya.
