A long legal battle was waged and won by attorneys representing tenants of apartments in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in New York.

The Big Courtroom Victory

For it’s part, the said settlement followed a 2009 Court of Appeals ruling that decided that the rental properties had been wrongly deregulated and thousands of tenants had consequently been over-charged.
Real Estate Weekly article titled, “Judge in ‘love’ with Stuy Town,” tells the story about a legal settlement that “is by many magnitudes the largest tenant settlement in United States history.” The story was written by Sabina Mollot and posted April 10, 2013.
Mollot reports that a $68.75 million settlement in the Roberts v Tishman Speyer lawsuit had Justice Richard B. Lowe congratulating attorneys for the tenants and keyholder CWCapital for persevering in a landmark settlement.
Stuy Town tenants attorney Alex Schmidt of Wolf Haldenstein admitted was quoted in Mollot’s article as saying, “This is a genuinely historic and well-deserved outcome….(overall)”. To me, this has been one of the more interesting real estate legal news stories to come out for some time.

More Related News on this Topic

Real estate is on fire again. We waited so long for the real estate market to get better. Once we gave up and moved on with life, it finally did. Some of us lost our shirts—or even worse, our homes, our good credit—in the great real estate meltdown of 2006-2007. Some of us, as always, made money, such as my friend who owns a firm specializing in luxury homes, golf courses Scottsdale as well as luxury real estate homes and other upscale properties in Phoenix and Scottsdale, Arizona and other parts of the sun valley AZ.

Anyways, for those of us who lost money, it was a great life lesson. Do not trust institutions. Trust your own common sense and live within your means—or better yet—beneath them. For those of us who made money, we should just be grateful and admonish ourselves not to get too greedy or too arrogant in life.
What, you say? The market is still not so hot in some places? Consider what Beth Braverman has to tell us in her article for CNN Money, posted on Realestate AOL website under the headline, “Housing Is Back! Best Moves for Homebuyers,” just yesterday, April 9, 2013.
Braverman references data provider CoreLogic as reporting that in the past year, home prices improved in 92 of the country’s 100 largest urban areas, with prices increasing as much as 23 percent in Phoenix and 17 percent in San Francisco. Sales volume increased in 69 of the top 100 markets, and 35 of those showed double-digit gains, according to CoreLogic’s data.
Yep. It’s back.

I work in the law, and I also feel so thankful for the fact that I can call the law (the police in this case) if I need them and they will show up at my door. It’s the same way I feel about firemen or paramedics. So when you hear about one of those people the rest of us depend on being hurt, it really tugs at the heart. All in all I remember a similiar event happening in Portland Oregon a while back that occured during a high speed auto chase which resulted in a head on collision and a lot of damage to cars and bodies unfortunately.
Maxine Bernstein writing for the Oregonian writes of the “Portland police officer paralyzed in freak accident learns ‘new normal,’” posted March 23, 2013 on oregonlive.com.
Bernstein tells the story of Portland Officer Paul Meyer, who was hit by a tree during ATV training on Hayden Island, which lies in the Columbia River between Vancouver, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Meyer, who is a 43-year-old dad of two little boys, is now paralyzed from the waist down.
His wife is now a full-time nurse and they cannot live in their home due to Meyers issues of wheelchair accessibility. So they now live in a rented place until they can adapt their own home to his needs.
But Meyers is full of gratitude that he is still alive for his family and of sound mind.
He sure is.

Accident Leads Portland Officer To New Aspirations

Paul Meyer was on the police department’s tactical squad and was the head instructor on special weapons. He has new ambitions since a job-related ATV training accident left him paralyzed from—as he says—“from the waist down.” Wow, poor guy I cannot imagine.Usually you hear about this kind of thing in automobile crashes. By the way I can endorse this Portland auto Repair service for those in Oregon. They can fix up your damaged vehicle and do great automotive tech and body work.
Oregonian writer Maxine Bernstein posted “Portland police officer paralyzed in freak accident learns ‘new normal,’ posted March 23, 2013 on oregonlive.com. She says Meyer has gone from “tip-top shape” to needing help with most intimate routines.

Be Careful while Driving Any Motor Vehicle

However, Meyers is a dynamic kind of guy. Bernstein notes that he wants to ride a hand-bike in Portland’s 2014 Shamrock Run, and he networks with others who live with paralysis to find out what they do to compensate for their disabilities.
Bernstein quotes Meyer as saying, “You get in this kind of work so you’re there for others. To be in a position where you have to accept help, it’s hard. It’s humbling. You feel unworthy of it.”
Hardly.

The last big Panda?

It was reported earlier that Google’s Matt Cutts talked at SMX last week that Google would be releasing a refresh to the widely known and infamous Panda update. The update is scheduled to be released either on Friday or Monday, today, and with the arrival of Friday, the Panda update was there to greet the end of the week. Have you , or any Los Angeles attorneys noticed anything jarring or jolting?

There has been some forum chatter by Barry Schwartz, alluding to webmasters already experiencing the effects of the refresh. This indicates that the update is coming out. Schwartz said that there were signs of the update on Thursday afternoon and it has been commented on before, it isn’t unusual for Google to do this on a Friday.
This could be the last time we see Google push an update, since this Panda update is not one of the typical ones released by the search engine giant, who also had an announcement for it.

A Cutts quote from SMX included:

“Instead of having a huge change that occurs on a specific day, in the future it is more likely that future Panda updates will be deployed slowly as we rebuild the index. That will make it less likely to see the large changes of the past.” Sounds more like the dynamic updates of old.” (Source.)

It isn’t clear what the impact of this Panda update will have on websites, but from past experience webmasters know it is not likely to make things anymore simple.  The original Panda just turned two years old recently and opinions about the Google search results since its release differ. Let us know if anything happened to your legal website.

The one thing that all lawyers need, is to on their websites, isn’t great copy, isn’t terrific SEO, and it is not having the click to chat or video clips. It is more—simple than that!

The Lawyer Bio

The bio is the most important page on the legal website, and using your real name is crucial, potential clients want to know who you are.What makes you different than the next guy? Did you actually have a real job, or did you spend your life in school and go straight into law?  Can non lawyers relate to you, or are you just an ego tripper?

Potential Clients Want to Know

The idea is to tell a story with your bio, where you attended law school, when did you go and what area of the law do you concentrate on. The large cases you have handled, and do you only practice personal injury or do you have a focus on another area of the law too.

Generally the potential client will want to know something about the attorney they may hire. This is the beginning of building a relationship of trust, and they want to make the best decision in their choice of a lawyer.

This is a story that needs to be interesting, something that will tell them how good you are at what you do. One that says yes, I am a real lawyer and this is how and why.

Tell a Good Story and Not Just Case Results

One of the most common things that attorneys do on their website is to have an example of cases they provided successful representation. This will have a name and then a six-figure settlement. Yes, its great to have this on your website, but what the potential client is looking for is to identify with the story. This means having a human side to this $300,000 judgment. This is something that will stay with the injured individual looking to hire a lawyer, and could be the difference in making the decision to call you or not.

An Example:

Forget the name and figure, make the case human!

Jane W. came to me because she had been in a car collision, which took place at an intersection and the driver that struck her vehicle in the passenger side was traveling at approximately 70 mph. The result was Jane was unable to work for a month, and was in and out of the hospital. During this entire ordeal, she was afraid of losing her job, when employment is difficult to find, due to so much downsizing in companies like the one she worked. This combined with the injuries was a stressful situation for Jane and her family.

The other driver denied that it was their fault, and the defendant blamed weather conditions making the road slick. Yes, it was raining that day, which often does make the roads slick, but what I pointed out to the jury was whether the conditions were rainy or not, a driver should not be traveling through an intersection at around 70 mph. This puts everyone at the intersection in danger when a driver is that careless. The defendant went through a red light, and at that speed, he was not even considering stopping for the traffic signal. This argument and the evidence won Jane W. a jury award of $300,000

This puts a different light on a judgment amount and on the lawyer, whose website a potential client is looking at, since they have now become a person, not just all about a dollar figure. This can make all the difference to a prospective client; they can feel comfortable calling, since you have shared one of your cases with them. They can see that the case was argued like they would want their rights to be protected.

The other pages on a website are important, but none are as important as letting a potential client know you are a professional, how you got to be there, why and how you fight for your clients.

Sources:

http://lawyerist.com/one-must-have-lawyer-websites/

A lot of LA lawyers were severely hurt after Panda and Penguin in April of 2012. After all, it is the most competitive law market in the world, and Google looks at it like people should be paying them, not an SEO person. So many believe that these updates specifically targeted sites that always were on page one, in order to force them into a PPC campaign. Many of our friends tried just that, and found they got little, if any good calls for what amounted to 20-50 dollars a call/click, and stopped, laid off staff, ended the PPC campaigns, and are now looking for work.

Many Lawyers and a Small Front Page on Google

After all, there are at least 52,486 lawyers in LA County alone (source), according to the California State Bar. But there are only a few slots on page one of Google. So this begs the question, one of your website pages isn’t rising on Google; you wonder why it isn’t, for your specific keywords. One of the reasons could be your on-page Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not up-to-date, in these days of post-panda, with Google spiders crawling pages.

Panda Is Huge Factor

The Panda update affected many lawyer sites severely, with the way the search engine ranks pages on the Internet. The first release of Panda was in February 2011, and since then, it is being improved upon as often as every couple weeks. What Panda was created for is to reward web pages that have completely unique and high quality content. Google specifically intended to target and remove out-dated web pages, unattractive or copied content from the search engine results.

Proper keyword density and Meta data optimization is not enough any longer to obtain high rankings in the search engines. Website rankings in Google search engine now have more than 500 factors (used to be just 200) that contribute to the rankings. There are ten that are the most important out of the approximately 500, to give your website a chance to rise in the search results.

A Hungry Panda is a Good Panda

Focusing on making Panda hungry is a good thing, which starts with well optimized Meta data. These are the ten most helpful tips to get good rankings in Google search results:

• Title Tags: One of the most important is the title tag, <Title> for on-page optimization. There has been research done that shows when keywords are placed further to the left in a title, this will rank better, than titles with the keyword placed to the right. The page title has to make sense, and there should never be more than two keywords contained in it. Titles for web pages should not have more than 70 characters, which include spaces. This is the absolute limit that Google will display in the search results.
• Header Tags: Header tags, <H1>, <H2>, and <H3> should be used for the headlines in content, and should be different than your <Title> tag. They should accurately illustrate the text that follows. The most SEO value is with the <H1> tag since is the main title of the page, and it should have a variation of your keyword. This isn’t completely necessary, after the Panda update. The <H2> and <H3> tags have SEO value also and are the sub-headings of the page. For this reason it may be a smart idea to query your keywords in Google and create some <H2> and <H3> sub-headings, which are based on the search suggestions. Using Google search related suggestions at the bottom of the web page can be helpful. It is also a way to get new ideas for popular keyword and keyword phrase ideas.
• Text Based Keywords: Your chosen keywords that are placed in the text should be done strategically, throughout the page, but in a way that will make sense to visitors reading the page. One thing to know, is that it is always smarter to forget about keyword density, in the event that you are providing a better reading experience for visitors without the usual density. Generally keywords and variations are included once every 100 to 150 words. When you are dealing with long-tail keywords, which are 4 words or longer, you want to avoid placing them as often as a keyword.
• Meta Description Tag: In the search engine results, the Meta description will appear right below the <Title> tag. The Meta tag description should be at most 150 characters, which includes spaces and it is advertising of a kind displayed on the search engine results page, known as the SERP’s. The whole idea of this description is to get the people running searches to click through to your website. Even though the Meta description has lost almost all of its SEO power, but it is useful for the Click Through Ratio, (CTR) of the website. A keyword used in your Meta description will increase the attractiveness of the listing, since the keyword will be bold.
• Content Length and Grammar: Search engine rankings for pages with poor grammar are now being penalized, and rightfully so. Make your page content perfect, because now one page with poor grammar on it, can damage the entire website search engine rankings.
• File Names and Images: Page file names and images both should have the names of your specific keywords. It might sound silly, but it can help rankings and nothing should be left to chance. Alt attribute within the image tags can be useful with both the accessibility of the web page and the optimization. What this does is describe images to the viewer that cannot see them due to a visual impairment or because of a slow Internet connection. When describing images, you should use a 50 character sentence, which includes your keyword. The 50 characters should be enough to accurately describe the image.
• Image Optimization: Optimizing your file names and alt attributes is important, and you will want to reduce the file size and flatten your images. Google, since the release of Panda has started to penalize websites that take too long to load. Google recommends loading time of 1.5 seconds for websites, so if your web page is taking longer than that, you might consider reducing image file size or switching web hosts, depending on which is the problem. Making the images more compact can be done in Photoshop, by reducing them approximately 25 percent. At this reduction the difference in any quality loss will be almost unnoticeable. What will be noticeable is the loading time of the web page. One thing that should be avoided, is the use of copyrighted images, not only is it illegal to use these without express permission, it will hurt the SEO value of the web page.
• Video Optimization: This is done by creating a YouTube account and then including a link to your website home page, in the profile section. Then when uploading a video, make certain that the title is based on the keywords for the page you are going to embed it on. Enter keyword targeted tags, which will make it easier for spiders to classify the video’s category. Then in the description field of the video, put a link back to the page you are optimizing on your website. Embed the video on the upper part of the page, so visitors do not have to scroll down the page to find it. In order to have a good optimized page, website owners generally have a page containing at least one video they produced.
• Internal Links: One of the greatest factors in search engine ranking is having a perfect internal link structure on your website. This will need to be easy to navigate for the search engine spiders and for visitors viewing your pages. The anchor text or link text must contain descriptive keywords, which will explain what will be viewed on the next page.
• Outbound Links: Outbound links, are beneficial for SEO, when they are to authoritative web pages, since the Panda update. Citing each one of your sources is crucial for getting the largest benefit out of the new change. It is permitted by search engines that hate duplicate content to use a short blurb, from the authoritative website, and place it in <cite> tags on your website, and it might not be a bad idea to do. It is still important to have your web page at least 85 percent unique.

The next thing to understand is the authority of the website, and how it is determined. One way to interpret authority is by Google PageRank, and the domain extension of the website. When a domain ends with .gov or .edu, they are affiliated with government agencies and with universities, which many believe gives them instant authority. Of course says no. Traffic heavy websites may also be authoritative websites, no matter what the domain ending or page rank. The one way that you can easily find an authoritative website is by “Site:.gov your keyword” when you are searching for authoritative government agencies to link to for your website and the same, replacing .gov to .edu for searching authoritative education domains.

Panda’s High Maintenance and Getting the Most Out of it

There have been some big SEO changes since the Panda update, and one of these is the amount of content each page needs to have. Before the update, search engines would rank website pages that had between 300 and 600 pages of text, just fine. Those days are gone! Today if you want to have a chance of good rankings on the search engine, some experts say just about every page on your website must be at least 750 words in length to even get ranked. Even for product pages, instead of the shorter versions, they now should read like an encyclopedia. Of course, I have seen plenty of cases where that is not true.  But typically they are older sites.  Google seems to favor older domains a lot, even if the content isn’t that great, so whatever.

If the product page is for paint, then there should be information about where this type of paint came from, what it is used for, what are the properties it is made from and other information. The most important thing that needs to be questioned for Panda, when optimizing web pages, will be is this the best page on the Internet with this topic and using this keyword? The object of search engines is to provide relevant information that is useful to the searchers and do it as fast as possible.

This is one of the reasons that they often have results for Wikipedia at the top when you do a search for a “personal injury lawyer“, for example, since it has articles that are filled with information, citations, links and pictures. The articles have multiple internal links and outbound links to reputable authority websites. One of the best ways to ensure your web page does good and rises in the ranking algorithm, is by designing it like a Wikipedia article web page. Understand that?

Citations:

http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2161910/Bing-Not-Google-Favors-Wikipedia-More-Often-in-Search-Results-Study

http://blog.evolvecreativegroup.com/post/2011/07/13/10-Ways-to-Rise-in-Search-Rankings-after-Googles-Panda-Update.aspx

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaZtvm54r_M

By Eddy Montez – Los Angeles in particular has a huge number of personal injury attorneys. Naturally, every SEO company has strived hard to sell their “services” to these new and old injury lawyers alike. But many of these companies sell services based upon techniques that worked in 2007, but that don’t work now. As a result, many legal counsel in the “City of Angels” actually are harming their sites and brand.

Enter C.O.L.T.

COLT, short for Circle of Legal Trust (click here), was started by a Los Angeles negligence lawyer in response to all the garbage search practices, and is now an international brain trust of lawyers helping lawyers in local, social and organic search techniques and principles. In achieving the most beneficial rankings on search engines, to acquire the highest amount of clients, some dishonest Search Engine Optimization (SEO) individuals have formulated more and more complex methods, in order to beat the competition.

There are Two Kinds of Techniques Used in Performing SEO:

• White Hat: The use of these techniques fall within the ethical use of SEO. This is a method of using relevant keywords; clear metadata and Alt attribute text. These techniques comply with the intent of search engine quality guidelines.
• Black Hat: This is the use of techniques to trick search engines in a devious way to promote content that has no relevance to the user. This is deceptive and is usually breaking or stretching the search engine guidelines. This can lead to spam penalties, which can be painful in the loss or traffic or in a worst case scenario devastating to the site involved in these techniques.

Implementing aggressive anti-spam with search engines changes everything. If you want rankings, then you will need use techniques that are within the rules. This will mean not using any type of deception or tricks, but instead using honest relevancy. All of the other methods that have been used are fading away, since they are useless.
The search engines commonly have a code of conduct, while there are some small things that will vary from one search engine to another, but the main principles are the same.

Keywords Must be Relevant, and Associated With the Body Content of the Page

The placement of keywords needs to be natural in order to be accepted by the search engines,along with the color and other items on the documents. So stuffing keywords (a technique that used to rank your legal site well), now gets the site a Panda penalty (Click here.) In other words, repeating money keywords like “injury”, “attorney”, “lawyer”, over and over will actually hurt your site.

Keyword Density

Keyword density and frequency should not be overused on the page; instead the use should be natural for the topic. (click to learn more about keyword density.)

Spammy Methods

The utilization of redirect technology like doorway pages, etc., should improve and help the user experience. If redirect technology is used, it is generally considered a trick by the search and frequently results in removal from an index. Using redirect technology, it should display a page, where the content contains the suitable keywords, not bait and switch tactics.

How Do I get Re-Indexed?

After being caught by the search engine for spamming and being taken out of the index, getting the site re-indexed can be done. It will mean going through your page to remove any spam issues that caused the site to be taken out of the index, in the first place. Then the page must be resubmitted for placement in the index. This will not happen immediately, resubmission will mean waiting with everyone else for the search engine to re-index the page. If you have a law practice In LA in particular, you understand why you need to take hold of your legal website marketing.

Citations:

http://www.dummies.com/DummiesArticle/Get-Better-Search-Engine-Rankings-by-Using-Ethical-Search-Marketing.id-233155.html

http://www.jm-seo.org/wordpress/2012/08/24/how-to-get-a-website-reindexed-top-nyc-dj-for-weddings-bar-mitzvahs-more/

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-ppc-seo-discussion-forum/336695-any-tips-getting-reindexed.html

Just in time for Halloween.  Is it a trick or a treat? Google has just launched the disavowal links tool, some think that this is a disaster for SEO and a smart move for Google. Webmasters will notice that Google is attaching a warning when using this tool. Many a lawyer has asked us about this feature since Panda and Penguin. Especially in Los Angeles, where negative SEO has been of particular concern in this highly competitive search locale.

One of the main problems is, over the past ten to thirteen years SEO has been done by creating links to get high rankings on Google. Now, the problem with this is links placed on blogs, the person has no control over and automating has evolved with some good services.

It’s over!

One sure thing that is over is the WordPress Blogs that are operated by robots. The owner of the site who created these links will find it impossible to remove them. Google on the other hand is enjoying this. Another thing that has reared its ugly head is the SEO firms that are now charging for removal of links that they created, to begin with. People are paying these fees, unfortunately.

The Bad

Who will be using this new tool?

The first people that will be using this newly released tool will be the webmasters that suffered in the April update release. Thinking that they will bring the site back to life as it was long ago.
This isn’t going to happen in most cases, if any.

Next is the fact that site owners cannot do this directly in Webmaster Tools, to your sites, and if all the comments on those other sites get targeted, your site is going to go down too. The SEO run is over, the updates and this announcement changes everything that site owners and SEO people have been doing.

For some site owners, it is better to just close down now, than to wait and watch the site be downed.
Sites that have any links pointing to them that do not have a lot of value, is not just useless any longer, it is deadly.

This isn’t the best part yet!

Google has crowdsourced SEO enforcement, when the tool was launched at the search engine company. Search quality has been tremendously under resourced and the ability to detect and enforce backlinks has been affected over the past few years. Google results were starting to suffer last year have the resources raised.

Between website owners panicking and competitors spiting themselves, Google is the winner.

Google cross referencing domains of the submitted sites can finally for the first time target all of the automated blog networks.

Crowdsourcing this way makes Google the winner and all powerful.

Now the best way to do SEO is to forget to do SEO.

Your time is better spent using your resources to thrill your visitors, give them the quality they want and word will spread. Your Google rankings will take care of themselves. The days of reliably manipulating your Google ranking is not going to work any longer.

People that have spent years creating these links are now doing themselves in, in a wicked form of SEO destruction.
It is humorous to see the low quality sites going down, after working to provide quality on your website, but it is also in the end it will be good for site owners.

Other Resources:

http://www.eddale.co/google/beware-google-bearing-gifts

Many Los Angeles accident attorneys at Ehline Law Firm really suffered the last several months in their rankings. I decided to compile this checklist to expand upon attorney Michael Ehline’s post over at the Circle of Legal Trust. There are occasions when webmasters are confronted with a situation, where a website and high-performing keywords are not shown in the SERP of Google.

One of two things may have happened, it is a website that has been penalized by de-listing from the result pages or Google has made changes to its algorithm.
In order to recover from these problems, the webmaster has to ensure whether cause of the drop in rankings is due to changes in the algorithm or has the website been caught by Google’s filters for some type of unethical activity.

Drastic Dip Reasons—Analyzing Rankings

Techniques for checking Google penalties is not an exact science, there is no accurate technique. Webmasters might discover an unanticipated dip in their rankings, for several of the substantially range keywords. This could be due to changes in Google’s ranking algorithm. There have been studies into this phenomenon and whenever there has been an update in the algorithm, users have experienced fluctuations in the SERP’s keyword rankings. Consequently people cannot claim or specifically say a particular website has been penalized by the search engine.

There are a few things that can help users, whose websites have been penalized.

Google does veritable advances and enhancements in its algorithm in the filtering method for finding infractions and unscrupulous actions, exercised by websites that attempt to improve ranking in Google SERP’s. There are theories that some of the filters likely have discovered a site and is displaying a dip in the SERP for some keywords.

Link De-valuation Effects

As one of these webmasters who is debating and searching for the reasons of a diminish in ranking, it is essential to know that, Google has always applied link de-valuation. They have done this to backlinks from non-trusted and non-reputed sources. Initially the reason for this is spammers have been recognized for using dishonorable methods to have high ranking websites in search engine results pages. Consequently appropriate measure to deal with these webmasters and just manner and reward webmasters who used ethical means of optimizing their websites, Google updates and makes changes regularly.

Being affected by the devaluation, it is most likely due to the fact that your website is involved in reciprocal linking. This can occur during the building of back links for the website, you may have submitted the URL to link farms that are in low quality directories, or paid link advertisements. Any of these factors will adversely affect website rankings as techniques regarded and handled strictly by Google. Websites that use any unethical methods will experience punishment by the search engine.

There are many websites that webmasters in the past it had ranked high in the SERP, which are now de-valued and not seen in the SERP’s. When these websites are analyzed it is often found many of the backlinks were from do-follow blogs and directories. Low quality directories no longer have much value by Google and they have suffered reductions in their overall ranking. Another issue that has been seen is these websites have a large quantity of backlinks from unrelated niche websites.

Whether you know or doubt Google is penalizing your website, it is best not to assume or make any decision. Before coming to a conclusion it is best to visit a few of the better regarded as SEO forums. It will be immediately clear in the discussions at these forums; if there have been any changes in the algorithm, since your website would not be the only one with changes in the rankings.

If there have not been any algorithm updates, then it can be considered a possibility that your site has been penalized by Google. The webmaster guidelines outline violations, which can lead to permanent de-valuation of the websites, in some cases this is not just a de-valuation, but a permanent de-indexing has been seen.
Recovering can be extremely difficult and the only possibility of being been withdrawn would be convincing Google personnel that you are not involved in any illegal activities.

Cloud Examinations for Substantiating a Penalty

• Test 1. When you believe your website has been penalized by Google, comparing the total number of prior indexed URLs with the current figures can provide answers. In order to do this, it is possible to use the command “site:yourdomainname.com” in the search bar of Google. When doing this, if there were not any URLs seen, then use the command “link:yourdomain.com”. If there are no links shown, then there is a distinct possibility the websites have been penalized by Google.
• Test 2. A reduction in the rank for your unique company name, as a Google penalty should not be considered as an indication of de-valuation, if you have a new website it may not have been crawled yet. Google will not usually see new websites with few backlinks, which means you cannot assume the website has been penalized. Today Google Page Rank is not a constraint any longer, though you would see a reduced page rank.

To ascertain whether Google has de-indexed your website altogether, copying some content from the website and pasting it in the search bar of Google, it may be possible to determine. If the content from the page does not appear at the first place, then you will need to use the command “cache:www.websitename.com/page.html in the search bar. When your domain name or the webpage is not listed in the search results, then it is assured you have been penalized by being de-indexed. This type of ban is the most extreme kind, and will usually happen when you have used Black Hat SEO website techniques.

Google Penalization Confirmation

Once you have confirmed your website has been penalized by the search engine, and then you will need to use the following steps.

Google Penalization Checklist

If your site has been penalized by Google, you must go through the below checklist. Identify the likely cause, and then you must make the required changes. Move forward by requesting Google to reconsider your website for inclusion.

Banned Websites Backlinking

This requires you to check all of the outbound links from your site and check if you have linked to websites that have been banned by Google.

<.h2>Bad Sites and Sharing Links

You will need to analyze if you are sharing links with any bad sites. These are websites such as link farms or doorway pages. They are spam sites and doorway pages that have only one intention, which is sharing links, they have no useful or quality content. Google views the domains with lowest amount of trust, therefore should be completely avoided.

Automated Query Penalties

Websites can be penalized by Google that employ automated query tools that use Google’s API, especially if the queries are run from the same IP address hosting the website. This violates Google’s terms of service, without any doubt. Google does permit few automated queries in its database utilizing its analytic tools. The user must be registered and have a Google API account. Use of any different kinds of automated queries would certainly result in problems.

Over-optimization and Google Filters Penalties

Link building for selected keywords and key phrases persistently in the anchor text can draw the attention of Google. It is advised to apply varied anchor text/keywords, while doing work for your link building campaign. The use of a backlink anchor text analyzer tool can be wise to check the number of backlinks for a specific keyword/phrase. It is advantageous to be steady in building backlinks, while using long tailed keywords and their variations.

Link Schemes and Cross Linking

When you have multiple websites and you think all of the sites have been penalized, it is important to immediately start analyzing the interlinking between all of the domains. Google may view the sites as being involved in link schemes, if you have done extensive interlinking of the websites from the same C Class IP address. This would be violating the TOS and if you receive backlinks from sitewide pages of a website, then Google would address that as a Grey Hat technique or even a Black Hat method. The purchase of backlinks from external domains and adding it to the footer would be detected by Google. The search engine would not give priority to these backlinks compared to the backlinks received from quality content. Most recent updates and the suggestions from SEO Gurus, webmasters ought to rigorously attempt to abstain from site-wide links. Almost all site-wide links provide to the lowest degree of rewards. Google considers the number of backlinks from unique domains to your website.

Duplicate Content Consequences

Content duplication is not counted very stringently, Google will merely de-index the duplicate content or page from the search result pages. This can have a different affect, like losing traffic to a website, which is equal to being penalized.

Hidden Text Links

Numerous webmasters use a method hiding the text in the content. They use same text colour as background for the text links. This is literally invisible to the human eye, however it can be seen by Google bots and crawlers. Removing these links and keywords is more beneficial choice.

Keyword Stuffing is Not Dissimilar to Spamming

Recover rankings in Google SERP’s by removing excessive keywords from the web page content, the use of natural and informational content is the best method for rankings.

Search for Malware Issues

While it is usually not said, if Google has black listed your website, due to unsafe browsing, it is worth looking for malware. This can be done by using a link from Google, www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=yourdomain.com replace the your domain, with your website.

Automatic Page Redirects

Google does not suggest using any type of page re-directs, besides a permanent 301 redirect, however the Mod Rewrite technique can be used instead of the 301 redirect. A .htaccess file should be setup on your web server.

Buying and Selling Links

According to SEO experts, they have detected purchasing backlinks can hurt your website optimization and recently Google penalized link selling websites.

Campaigns for Reciprocal Link Building

Aggressive reciprocal link building can draw the attention of Google and once confirmed, it will result in being penalized or a SERP’s filter being used for if the same or extremely similar link anchor text is used frequently and if there are a large quantity of reciprocal links added in a short amount time. It can be even worse, if the backlinks are coming from websites that have low quality.

Affiliate Websites

It is commonly known that Google does not like affiliate websites with insignificant content and are purposely setup with the intention of adding Adsense to them. Users that want to use affiliate sites, should ensure they are of good quality and have original content, if they do not want to be filtered out of the search results.

Content Feeds

Experts say that content feeds, like RSS are widely used on the internet, though fetching large volumes of duplicate content by using these feeds could have an unfavorable effect on the sites rankings, if done often. This can even result in alerting Google and cause the site to be penalized.

Registrant Domains and Google

Google has the ability to access the WHOIS database for domains. They can use this information to penalize a website which has the same registrant.

Google Webmaster Tools

Efforts have been made by Google to improve its communication with webmasters whose domains have been banned. The most recent information is they now notify webmasters with the reason the site penalized and banned. They have developed a new Webmaster Console in order to do this and once the user has made the suggested changes, they can make a re-inclusion request using this console. The webmasters are required to sign-up for a Google Webmaster Tools account and upload an XML sitemap onto your site. Google has made it easy, by having a video tutorial that explains the process for reconsideration. There are tips about what Google expects when they make an assessment for re-inclusion for any website.

Recovering from the effects of Google changes and rank well in the SERP’s it will most likely take about two or three months once any website issues are corrected. The amount of time to recover cannot be guaranteed by anyone, with the exception of Google. So if your a lawyer, and you really are confused, this comprehensive checklist should help you.  Enjoy!

Jim Loxley of the UK

My Compensation’s Jim Loxley discusses the technology which drives claims for road accident cases in the UK

Concerns Voiced Over Road Traffic Accident Portal Upgrade

The widespread embrace of all things Internet meant a great deal of changes to the legal world. Everything from the necessity of a company website right up to the more recent web 2.0 and social media buzz have all been critical parts of the on-line legal marketing process which attorneys must now adopt. As lawyers are often prolific writers with strong opinions and lots and say on their chosen field, it wasn’t long before legal blogging also started playing a critical role in online presence for lawyers. What about the technological processes behind the Internet scenes that tick the legal world over?

One such a technology which is extremely important to the United Kingdom is the road traffic accident (RTA) portal. The RTA portal was first set up by the UK government as a way for legal practitioners and motor insurance companies to communicate more easily and send case-vital claims documentation to one another via a more streamlined system. For many years, this collection of servers and software has helped lawyers work for people claiming compensation for car collisions which happen in the UK roads. For companies such as My Compensation, it’s crucial for the everyday business of helping people with claims for negligence-caused traffic collisions. The technology was implemented in 2010 and was built by a tech company which had a strong company for finance companies. The software side involves an ?application to application? stand-alone program for XML file transfers and a slightly more limited browser-based version of the software. The hardware specifics of the servers are not available but are expected to be extensive.

Pending Changes to the RTA Portal

The pending legal adjustments to claims for car accidents and personal injury known as the ?Jackson reforms? are soon to be implemented into UK law. The government plans to make changes to the RTA portal to have it include other types of legal cases such as employment law claims. In addition to this, the limits for injury and other tort cases is looking to be increased from ?10,000 up to potential ?25,000 as a cap on the value. This means an increase in workload for the systems which are in place on the portal. Historically speaking, the government has not been always been the most organised party in terms of its implementations of such changes. The UK legal system being a potentially fragile thing, it’s only natural that personal injury lawyers want to get it right first time round.

Experts Voice Concerns

One of the government’s advisors, Paul Fenn who is a professor at Nottingham University Business School, spoke out against the government plans earlier this year saying that a serious review of the road traffic accident portal would be needed before any such systems were put in place. The Ministry of Justice commissioned Fenn?s report and welcomed the results stating that it was important groundwork for it to consider.

Many injury professionals are concerned that the government is going to get the legal changes wrong but, more recently, there were a number of concerns to have been heard that it would also get the changes to the RTA portal wrong, potentially causing a disaster for the future of many tort cases. Lawyers and motor insurers would no longer be able to effectively carry on their jobs and the damages to the income of personal injury firms could be tremendous.

Both technology specialists who maintain the RTA portal and lawyers who use it have stated surrounding the fact that the portal is already operating close to its maximum capacity. There’s only so much bandwidth and storage provided on the servers in order to handle so many cases and claim documentation each year. With the number of people in the UK claiming compensation for traffic accidents also on the increase, the only way for the RTA portal?s workload is up.

The Future of the Technology in the UK

The RTA Portal Co is involved in a great deal of discussion with the government to ensure that the changes are implemented properly so as not to damage the compensation claims industry both for negligence-caused car collisions and cases for other injuries. The My Compensation team certainly has their fingers crossed that it’s going to be a smooth transition so they can continue to help people with this type of case.

Sources:

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/expert-report-warns-government-hold-rta-portal-extension

http://www.lawgazette.co.uk/news/claims-portal-won-t-cope-expansion-say-solicitors

http://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/protocol/prot_rta

The latest Google algorithm will punish pages with DMCA take down requests. Google announced this algorithm update on the Inside Search Blog, stating that they would begin taking into account a new signal in rankings, including the number of copyright removal notices they receive for any one site. The sites that have large numbers of removal notices will have lower results. Google said the DMCA takedown requests will begin impacting a page’s search rank, with this update. Note that it does not say that sites who actually violated a copyright, it just penalizes you for total number of notices. That seems crazy, right?

Lawyers and Hollywood Have Wanted This for a Awhile

For a long time Google has been under pressure by copyright holders to act on its top dog position, as a gateway to obtain illegal content. During the spring, the Recording Industry Association of America let the search engine know they were not doing enough to stop illegal P2P file sharing. Last year Google Music felt the brunt of the music industry and the search engine has named the Manual Update in reference to Hollywood talent agent Ari Emanuel. Many personal injury attorneys have had this same complaint for years. The problem is complicated by ezines that exceed the scope of their license.

The Underpinnings of Googles Move Seems to Be Due to Its Push into Entertainment

Earlier in the year Emanuel let his disgust about Google be known at the D Conference, and said that if the search engine can filter out child pornography, then they should also be able to do this with stolen content. Google has defended their position that consumers can use it to find content and whatever they do with it, is their decision. In effect what the search engine company meant, was if an individual searching for illegal torrent sites and chose to download illegal content, and were caught it was all on them. It seems with this latest update that Google is softening its stance on this position somewhat. This is a compromise that is going to alter search results and will affect the user in a bad way, to please Hollywood entities.

Copyright Notice Violations Going Gangbusters

According to Google, they have received more copyright removal notices recently, than they did all during 2009, with over 4.3 million URLs being reported in just the past 30 days. They said they are not going to use the data in as a signal in search rankings. Why is Google doing this now? Google is no longer just a search company, they have other interests, they are piling investments in YouTube and its Music service, which is new media, and it still depends on its search feature to help it get going. This means they will have no part of the new media, until they punish the illegal download sites.

There is plenty to worry about with the Emanuel Update and the ones that should be the most concerned are the top violators, which one of them is The Pirate Bay. They are going to see their search rankings sink and it will only get worse for these sites. You can see who is going to lose search rankings, by looking at the takedown requests and see who is making the requests.

Fake Reports the New Negative SEO?

One of the major concerns is false reports of copyrighted material; Google does not have the authority to determine whether something is illegal content or not and instead is counting how many times it is reported as illegal. This is a way to down a site by issuing a lot of DMCA takedown requests from different domains.

This might seem ridiculous, but at some point someone will do it. Once it is clear the site is not in violation of this latest update, it will bounce back up in the search rankings, but as website owners know this is not an easy undertaking, after dealing with Panda. To get the site search rankings back up, it will mean getting out of Google’s Page Rank punishment.

The largest possible concern with Google is their priorities appear to be changing. Basing punishments on DMCA takedown requests does nothing for the users, which was always Google’s mission to give out information and then what the user does with it, is their option. The update has changed this, by taking some of the choice out of the user’s hands.

The only possible good side to this is pirated content, which will most likely always exist often comes with spam and malware. The fact still remains that, Google is beginning to side with an industry that is completely focused on stopping content distribution. Anyways, my take is that this is absurd. How can you even find out if a DMCA takedown notice was even done on your site?