The Bing blog says that the intent behind the new SERP is to a create a “fresh, de-cluttered experience designed to help you find the results you want faster” and to make the page “easier to scan.”

Bing is getting a new look. Starting today you will notice a fresh, de-cluttered experience designed to help you find the results you want faster. Over the past few months, we’ve run dozens of experiments to determine how you read our pages to deliver the link you’re looking for. Based on that feedback, we’ve tuned the site to make the entire page easier to scan, removing unnecessary distractions, and making the overall experience more predictable and useful. This refreshed design helps you do more with search—and gives us a canvas for bringing future innovation to you.

The results themselves are cleaner. Removing the “left rail” and minimizing the header raises the level of consistency and predictability while making it easier to scan the page and quickly find the information you want.   Increasing the space between lines improves readability and optimizes the page for touch devices.  Putting all our result annotations and social data in one consistent spot makes the page easier to use and understand.

The new experience is more than skin-deep. You will also notice faster page-load times and improved relevance under the hood. After all, our goal is to help people spend less time searching and more time doing. And changing how we look is the next big step in doing just that.

It looks good so far and in general Im starting to think that Bing is just as good, if not better then Google as a search engine.   It seems to be a sentiment shared by a lot more people these days.  If you havent tried Bing lately, give it a whirl. BING FOR LAWYERS

According to SEO legend Danny Sullivan, webspam or search spam is defined as “Pages that try to gain better rankings through things like: keyword stuffing, link schemes, cloaking, and purposeful duplicate content.” You can read Danny Sullivan’s entire blog post on the Penguin update here.

It’s not news that Google doesn’t condone these types of SEO strategies. In fact, they have warned about using them for years despite constant frustrations from white hat SEOs that have seen their clients rank beneath others that use the unapproved methods. The Penguin update has improved Google spam filters, though true to form, Google will not release details. What they are clear on is the messaging that they are “targeting spam, not over optimization.”

This comment by Matt Cutts of Google has many in the industry confused and scrambling for a clearer understanding, as it tends to blur the line between white hat and webspam, and even gray hat and black hat.

The good news is that SEO best practices are still being encouraged by Google, and it is estimated that only 3.1% of English queries will be impacted by this update.

SEO Continues To Be Encouraged

Indeed, today’s post makes a point of contrasting “white hat SEO” against “black hat webspam” and encourages people to continue with SEO best practices:

Our advice for webmasters is to focus on creating high quality sites that create a good user experience and employ white hat SEO methods instead of engaging in aggressive webspam tactics….Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings….

We want people doing white hat search engine optimization (or even no search engine optimization at all) to be free to focus on creating amazing, compelling web sites.

As with most big Google updates, there are going ot be some sites that lost a lot of rankings, some sites that gained some and some sites that had no effect at all.  It seems like a lot of people are upset with this update and feel they have been targeted by Google.  Yet this is an automatic update and not a human review, so if your site isnt ranking well now, then you must have it analyzed to see what hte problem is and get it fixed.   Moving forward its going ot be even more about CONTENT and good quality content, as well as social media.  Links will still be important but not as much, odds are social media likes and shares will be the new links.

If you have any questions about this recent update or need assistance with your SEO strategy, please call us at 630-393-0460 or fill out the online contact form for a free site analysis.

What’s In the Top Search Queries Report

First, a refresher on what this data is all about. The top search queries report (available in Google webmaster tools for sites you’ve verified ownership of by selecting Your site on the web > Search queries) lists the top queries that brought traffic to your site from Google organic search (from all countries and properties).

Summary Data

For the selected data range, the report shows the total number of queries that brought traffic to the site, the total impressions and clicks the site received, and the number of impressions and clicks for the reported top queries.

Query-Specific Data

For each query, the report notes:

• Number of impressions – how many searchers saw the site in search results for that query
• Number of clicks – how many searchers clicked on the search result for that query
• Click through rate – The percentage of the time searchers who saw the site in search results for that query clicked on it
• Average position – the average position the highest ranked URL for that site appeared in search results for the query across all searchers
• In addition, you can find out the change for each of these data points from the previous period. However, the change percentages aren’t available for time periods longer than 30 days. The change details used to be visible by default, but they’re now off by default. You’ll need to click the With Change button to see them in the report (although they’ll be included automatically with the CSV download). If you have the change percentage displayed, you’ll need to turn that off in order to expand the date range beyond 30 days.

You can click into any query to get more specific data, including the pages that ranked for the query, and the impressions, clicks, and click-through rate at each position the site ranked.

Country and Property-Specific Data

Use the filters to drill into what queries brought traffic from Google properties (web, video, images, mobile web, and smartphones) and from specific countries.

Read more here

Just like the timeline for regular Facebook users, the new business timeline encourages businesses to create and share visual content to create stronger connections with customers, fans, prospects and ‘likers’.

It features plenty of cool new ways to engage with customers, prospects and fans.

HOW ARE PERSONAL FACEBOOK PAGES DIFFERENT THEN BUSINESS PAGES?

Profiles (timelines) represent individuals and must be held under an individual name, while Pages allow an organization, business, celebrity, or band to maintain a professional presence on Facebook. You may only create Facebook Pages to represent real organizations of which you are an authorized representative.

In addition, Pages are managed by admins who have personal Facebook profiles (timelines). Pages are not separate Facebook accounts and do not have separate login information from your profile (timeline). They are merely different entities on our site, similar to how Groups and Events function.

Once you have set up a Page within your profile (timeline), you may add other admins to help you manage this Page. People who choose to connect to your Page won’t be able to see that you are the Page admin or have any access to your personal account.

THINGS TO DO TO SETUP YOUR PAGE

#1-  Add a Cover Photo

This the first thing fans will see when they land on your page; use it to tell a compelling story about your law firm. Your goal is to create a first impression without hard-selling. The cover image is 850 x 315 pixels and there are specific rules about what you can and cannot put on it.

#2-  Setup a Profile Picture

The new profile picture is 180 X 180 pixels. This means you can no longer include call to actions, as some organizations did previously. Choose a simple profile picture that represents your unique brand. For example, Coca-Cola uses a simple silhouette of their vintage glass bottle.

#3- Customize Landing Tabs

You can now customize tabs, or landing tabs, to entice visitors with a clear call to action when they arrive at your page. For example, Starbucks highlights their gift card in a custom tab, and Starbucks “international” in another tab. Customized tabs are a good way to convert Facebook fans, or encourage users to join and or share a fundraising campaign.

#4- Fill in your Profile & Settings

You need to setup your basic profile about your law firm, when it was established, contact info and other basic info.  Then there are a number of settings to consider as far as how your posts are viewed.

There are many other things you need to do to get your facebook page going and I will post additional tips and info on setting up a Facebook for your law firm.

Your goal is to create a first impression without hard-selling. The cover image is 850 x 315 pixels and there are specific rules about what you can and cannot put on it.

Facebook won’t allow you to use calls to action like “Sign up today” or “Join our email list” in your cover photo. You also can’t include contact information such as a web address, or reference any interface elements such as ‘Share’ or ‘Like’.

HOW TO ADD A COVER PHOTO TO YOUR FACEBOOK PAGE

A cover is the larger photo at the top of your timeline, right above your profile picture. Note: Like your profile picture, cover images are public, which means anyone visiting your timeline will be able to see them.

We’ve found that people have a better experience viewing your timeline when they see a cover that is as unique and individualized as you are. This helps people learn more about you. It also helps us prevent spam, fake profiles, and other content that can detract from your experience on Facebook. An easy way to ensure your cover image is unique is to choose an image from your life, like a photo from a wedding, day at the beach, or birthday party. If you want to use a photo to show solidarity or express support for a cause or organization, you can still post a status or a photo and star it on your timeline.

To add a cover image to your timeline:

1. Go to your timeline
2. Click Add a Cover
3. Choose whether you want to upload a new photo or pick a photo from one of your existing photo albums
4. Once you choose a photo, you can reposition it by clicking on the image and dragging it up or down
5. Click Save

Note: Your cover image has to be at least 720 pixels wide.

If your legal practice needs assistance with your facebook page, contact Lawyers Court today for a free estimate by calling us at 630-393-0460 or filling out the contact form below.

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Widgets are small modules that offer users drag-and-drop sidebar content placement and implementation of many plugins’ extended abilities. Widgets offer WordPress developers to add functionality to their site. These small widgets can be used to add functionality such as a slideshow, facebook like box, small news slider etc.

Below is a video that describes what a widget is and how it works with wordpress.

Created new web site for a Chicago Criminal lawyer who wanted to focus his Internet Marketing efforts on specific areas of criminal law. He wanted to have a blog setup and the site optimized for the search engines.

New Site Creation and setup of Content Management System for Chicago Criminal Drug Lawyers.  Creation of logos, setup of content and images, setup of multiple widgets to display content on home page and creation of new blog.  Setup of videos from YouTube on home page of site. Setup of Google maps and multiple contact forms.

Visit Chicago Drug Attorneys to view attorney web site.

Making sure your wordpress site is secure is very important. If you dont protect your site, you can easily get hacked and have your site infected with malware. This can lead to Google blacklisting your site, your site could be down for a long period of time and its just all bad!   Web site Defender helps you secure your WordPress installation and provides detailed reporting on discovered vulnerabilities and how to fix them.

The WebsiteDefender WordPress Security plugin is a free and comprehensive security tool that helps you secure your WordPress installation and suggests corrective measures for: strengthening passwords, securing file permissions, security of the database, version hiding, WordPress admin protection and lots more.

Key security features:

• Easy backup of WordPress database for disaster recovery
• Removal of error-information on login-page
• Addition of index.php to the wp-content, wp-content/plugins, wp-content/themes and wp-content/uploads directories to prevent directory listings
• Removal of wp-version, except in admin-area
• Removal of Really Simple Discovery meta tag
• Removal of Windows Live Writer meta tag
• Removal of core update information for non-admins
• Removal of plugin-update information for non-admins
• Removal of theme-update information for non-admins (only WP 2.8 and higher)
• Hiding of wp-version in backend-dashboard for non-admins
• Removal of version in URLs from scripts and stylesheets only on frontend
• Reporting of security overview after WordPress blog is scanned
• Reporting of file permissions following security checks
• Strong password generator tool to protect from brute force attacks
• Integrated tool to change the database prefix
• Disabling of database error reporting (if enabled)
• Disabling of PHP error reporting

DOWNLOAD WEBSITE DEFENDER FREE PLUGIN

Created new web site for an Indiana firm that has multiple offices and locations.  Created new website using WordPress CMS.

Setup new design, added new legal images, creation of firm logo, setup of videos, setup of Blog, Setup of Google Maps and contact form.

Visit South Bend Personal Injury Lawyers to view attorney web site.

Visit Bellevue Personal Injury Lawyers to view attorney web site.