Tag Archives: SEO

While many of our sites are still struggling to recover from the original Panda update from early last year, a few have managed to buck the trend and not just return to their previous levels, but also start growing.  One of those success stories is All-About-Car-Accidents.com.

Just like with DisabilitySecrets.com, we had to completely overhaul the site.  We consolidated content down to the essentials, and made sure that those essentials were well written and useful for anyone visiting the site.  The interesting thing about All-About-Car-Accidents is that it was flat for so long, then improved in the blink of an eye.  Even DisabilitySecrets.com took months of constant growth before it got back to pre-Panda levels.

It’s also interesting to note that not only did Panda 3.5 seem to have a positive impact on AACA, but so did Penguin.  That surely would not have been the case if we hadn’t done so much work to make AACA better.

The lesson here is that there is no lesson here!  While we think we know the best way to go about getting back into Google’s good graces, the speed at which that happens seems to be a bit of a mystery.  It is good to see that our hard work will pay off, even if we aren’t entirely sure when that will be.

At the very least, it’s keeping us on our toes!

It’s been well over a year since Panda 2.0 rolled out and Google traffic to one of our sites, DisabilitySecrets.com, was halved. Admittedly, DisabilitySecrets was undeservedly getting a lot of love from The Google.

For a quick peak, take a look at the graph. Read on for more detail.

This is a site that we acquired in 2010 from a former Social Security Disability examiner. While it did have plenty of unique, useful content, it also had thousands of thin quality pages that contained a lot of boilerplate text, and many thousands of pages with very little unique content, all of which ranked fairly well.

After Panda rolled out, we realized we had a lot of work to do to get the site’s content up to Nolo standards.

The first thing we did was start cutting out the poor quality and duplicative content, in an effort to minimize the site footprint in Google’s index. This also reduced the number of pages that our editor and writers would need to tackle.

It took us about two months of organizing and redirecting before we could boil the content down to the meat and move it on to editorial.

After that, our own Beth Laurence went to work. She spent months researching, editing content, recruiting freelancers with the necessary experience, and organizing all the information into a new taxonomy. This process, which continues today, took about six months before nearly all of the content had been addressed. Most of it had to be rewritten completely, but some was salvaged with only minor edits.

The focus was twofold. Beth and her team were responsible for the content quality, as well as user engagement metrics. We wanted to reduce our bounce rate, improve visitor time on site, and make sure our visitors weren’t clicking back to other search results.

It took nearly a year of work from both the SEO team and editorial before we finally starting seeing the fruits of our labor. The first quarter of this year was the “bounce back”.  As you can see in the graph below, Panda is quick to take away your traffic, and slow to give it back. At this point though, we are at higher traffic levels than ever, and continuing to grow.

The real benefit, though, is for our users. Panda forced us to dig in and really build a better site.

SEO involves a lot of comparing of numbers.  I would say that well over half of my time is spent looking at differing sets of figures, trying to find the patterns.

Today, I was surprised to see that a few of our pages on divorcenet.com about California community property and alimony laws had gotten substantial bumps in traffic over the last few days.  This can happen from time to time if new laws have been passed or gone into effect.

I hadn’t heard anything, though, so I went poking around to see if I could find any news stories about divorce in California, with a focus on dividing property and alimony.  That’s when I saw it: Mark Zuckerberg got married this weekend.

Google and Facebook aren’t exactly friends, but apparently when the founder of Facebook gets married, he lights up Google searches.  Since his wedding came so soon after Facebook went public, many people wanted to know just how much of that $19.1 billion Zuckerberg’s new bride would be entitled to, should the marriage not work out.

That’s another aspect of SEO that goes hand in hand with comparing numbers: spotting trends.  Sure, it may look like we’re surfing the internet, but a lot of times that’s part of the job.  We have to stay informed on current events, particularly if those events happen to fall under one of the many subjects that Nolo covers.

Hopefully, there will be a little Zuckerberg on the way soon; I’m sure we’ll see a bump in traffic for our wills and trusts pages!

Last week, Google released the latest version of Panda, 3.4.  The update changed the algorithm Google uses to rank organic search results.  Given the chaos that generally results from a new Panda update, we prepared for a flurry of activity.

But unlike with the original Panda change, Nolo’s affiliated sites actually gained traffic this time around.  This makes sense, given that Google’s goal is to rank quality pages at the top, and we’ve spent a lot of time making sure our sites are of the highest quality.

One of the sites that benefited the most from the update was Drivinglaws.org, which was something of a relief for editor Rich Stim and analyst Kyle Vanderneut, as both have been working hard to make the site the best it can be.

Drivinglaws.org covers a lot of topics, from DUI/DWI and distracted driving, to speeding tickets and teen driving laws.  Since every state has its own set of laws regarding these subjects, you can probably see that we’ve got a lot of ground to cover.  And let’s not forget that driving laws are always changing!  There’s also the matter that certain laws generate more interest depending upon what’s going on in the world.

For example, traffic to our DUI/DWI pages tends to spike just after the holidays.

Lately, though, we’ve seen increases in people searching for what are generally referred to as “distracted driving” laws.  These focus on cell phone use while driving, or specifically about texting while driving.  This has been a hot button topic as more and more states move to making any cell phone usage while operating a vehicle illegal.  We’ve made expanding and improving this section of Drivinglaws.org a priority, and it appears the hard work has paid off.

“Distracted driving” laws are still relatively new, and we doubt that they will ever become a topic as huge as DUI/DWI laws.  But our goal is to cover every topic as accurately and thoroughly as possible, for every state in the nation (and the District of Columbia!).  And, as always, we present it in language that is easy to understand, even if you’re not a lawyer.

Quality is key, and it’s nice to see that, with this recent Panda release, that quality is paying off.

SEO is a tricky business; just when you think you know everything, the game changes, and you’re back where you started.  It’s important not only to be plugged in to current changes in the SEO landscape, but to be able to bounce ideas off of others.

The SEO Team at Nolo has taken this idea to the next level; 4/5′s of us currently share a 12×15 room.  That’s 80% of us crammed into one, tiny 180 sq. ft. space.  Oh, and the windows don’t open, either.

You would think this would drive us a bit insane and, well, you’d be right about that.  But there have been some advantages to our new location, the foremost being how easy it is for us to spitball ideas with each other.

Managing the thousands of pages on Nolo and Nolo affiliated sites is a balancing act between filling them with as much information as possible and keeping them user friendly.  There are times when the design of the page is nearly more important than the content (“nearly” being key there; content is king here at Nolo).  But not everyone has the same idea about what looks good and what doesn’t.

It’s helpful to have other eyes near by that can look at your screen and give you immediate feedback.  Granted, that feedback generally ends up being things like “why does that look so horrible?” or “did you break all the sites?” but it’s all taken in the good humor that it’s meant (usually).  Besides, that’s just the first round of commentary.  From there it breaks down into a constructive discussion of what works on a specific page and what doesn’t.  There are some days when we spend nearly as much time talking about the sites as we do actually changing them.

Being in the same room together is also particularly helpful if one of us happens to accidentally hit a button we shouldn’t hit, like, say, changing an entire section of every single one of our pages.  It’s nice to have back up who can come to your aid as soon as you realize that you’ve done something you regret.  It’s a position we’ve all been in (okay, fine, all of us but Tomek).

The collaborative process that goes on in this room is something of a microcosm for Nolo as a whole.  We are nothing if not the sum of our parts.  From the talented editors who guide our content, to our stable of writers who put cursor to screen, there are a lot of people involved in making Nolo as great as possible.

If we have to sit a foot and a half away from each other to make that happen, then so be it.

But, please, someone send fans — it’s broiling in here!