885: Market Effectively and Surpass Your Business Competitors with Jonathan Rosenfeld

Unknown Speaker 0:00 Love it. Let's do it.

Robert Plank 0:01 All right, welcome back. This is the marketer of the day podcast. We're here with Jonathan Rosenfeld. He is from Rosenfeld Injury lawyers.com. He's the owning and managing attorney there. They are a full service, personal injury law firm handling cases in Chicago and across the US. And we're going to be talking about how Jonathan separates himself from his competitors, how he markets, his law, practice online, and so many more things, Jonathan, glad to be talking to you.

Unknown Speaker 0:31 Pleasure, look, thank you for having me.

Robert Plank 0:34 I'm super glad to have you. And as you know, this is the marketer of the day podcasts where it's kind of fun to jump into different industries and see how other people do it. But at the same time, by you being on here, you get that good ol search engine juice, static Google ranking that all the other things that come with it. And so So yeah, it'll be fun to find out your perspective. And I've looked at your website. And so what is on your mind these days, as far as you and your company and your marketing and just the the problems that you're currently solving?

Speaker 2 1:04 Yeah, I mean, well, I think today in today's market, you know, businesses have to realize how sophisticated the consumer is. I think that a lot of times, you know, there's been a tremendous shift, really, in the past 235 years plus, where marketers and businesses used to be able to get away with, you know, some sneaky, quasi sneaky, quasi sleazy content that may have ranked, it may have drawn customers in the past, but today, things have really changed, today's customer is really much more sophisticated, they tend to have done a lot more homework before they, you know, pick up the phone, contact you or whatever. And so as a business owner, and as a marketer, I think you have to acknowledge that and start creating content that really resonates with your consumer. Really, you know, going back to sort of what Google's been preaching for the past, you know, umpteen years, you really have to create content that satisfies, you know, the customer and the search engines, you know, and the days of manipulating search engines with, you know, keyword stuffing, things like that have really have really gone to the wayside, you have to really adapt. And so one of the things that we're doing right now, is we're really, you know, we're first off, we're redoing a lot of the content that we've had in place for five plus years, basically, you know, anything that's, you know, remotely stale is getting re revised, rewritten entirely. For the most part, that means really expanding content, you know, pages that may have been 500 words, that may have been written to three years ago, those pages are typically now 2000 words. And that longer form content seems to perform quite a bit better. You know, and people, you know, you there's a lot of different schema markup and things like that, that you can apply to those pages to get those to pop up. But ultimately, you know, we're doing that. And we're also, you know, really going back and looking at the questions that people are really searching for, you know, I think there's a huge disconnect for a while myself included, I'm highly guilty of this, creating content that I wanted to get across to people or I thought would resonate with people. And today, I look at data, a lot more data doesn't lie. And, you know, we're creating frequently asked questions that are really geared towards that we're creating content that's geared towards that. And at the end of the day, that's, that's really what you have to do, you got to put the work in.

Robert Plank 3:55 And so you're reminding me of just some of these internal struggles that I had had, or some of these arguments, but I've had in probably the past decade or so from some of these things you're mentioning of like redoing websites redoing content, putting yourself in that mindset of that more sophisticated consumer who has shorter attention span or has less patience, and they just want, they know what they're looking for. And they're looking for it now. And then you're also reminded me of maybe how it might be sometimes painful to go back and redo that website that you spent a year on right? Or to go back and fix up those blog posts that oh, man, I spent weeks are writing that one blog post and I really wanted to get that across but so did you. Did you and your team have struggles like that of saying, well, logically, I know I need to throw out the old and kind of spruce it up and keep it fresh, but then emotionally, it's sometimes hard to like let go of some of that content that maybe gets traffic or maybe is ranked and saying, Well, it's kind of good enough, but I emotionally like I don't want to see better because I'm happy where I am. Have you stopped reload that,

Speaker 2 5:00 absolutely, I mean, who wants to throw out, you know, time money, you know, effort that they've put into anything. But the truth is, is that sometimes, you know, you have to do that to get to the next level. And it's really painful, you know, I've done pages where we've revised a page, not just once, but we've revised it four or five times, you know, within, you know, within 612 months, and, and that partnership part of that is, is because really, our competitors, it depends on your vertical, you know, in the legal in the legal sphere. It's a hyper, hyper competitive industry. And it's amazing how quickly things are adapting today. And, you know, the content that you have written today may be great today, but the guy across the street from you, he may be working on something better, and you gotta keep revising it, particularly for your core business pages, your core business pages, I'd like I mean, I'm really neurotic about it, I tend to look at that stuff, you know, certainly on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis. And if things start, you know, if I see a downward trend, we're gonna start revising that content and start looking at, you know, all different things internal linking, we're gonna start looking at our, you know, link profile for that page, we're going to start really digging in because, you know, it's easier to identify those issues early on than to, you know, sit back and look at things, you know, maybe a few months down the road. So, you know, does it hurt to throw out content? Absolutely. When I looked at how much, you know, we just, we scraped about 500, blog posts that were just old, outdated, you know, some of them were getting some traffic, some, you know, but they just really weren't doing a whole lot. And at the end of the day, I think streamlining websites, you know, having a sort of a lean mean, machine can really help.

Robert Plank 7:05 And, you know, when you're mentioning all that, it's what's coming to mind, is the metaphor of well, do you want to wait until you need a root canal? And then it's too late? Or do you want to like brush your teeth and get it cleaned over time, which may be a little unpleasant short term? And you might think, Oh, where do I have time to like, brush my teeth and go to the dentist, but you'll end up spending more time later, or you'll be way behind never get caught up later on, if you let this sit and ends up being too long. So how do you find the time in the day to do this? Do you have like a set schedule? Do you say like I do this every Monday morning or every day? Or just how do you carve out the time to pay attention and to do that this kind of deep thinking you're describing because I imagine that it's not just diving into the code and the schema, you're also like, kind of thinking, big picture, like all these pages need to be scrubbed things like that,

Speaker 2 7:55 I tend to be, you know, when I get an idea in my head, I tend to just go with it and just dig in and go. I know, it's not really it doesn't work for everyone, but that's just how what happened, how I operate. So if I start digging into something, I will pretty much work until it's done. You know, is are is there a better way to do it, maybe that's just not how I do it, I tend to really dig in go deep hyperfocus and try to get you know, things you know, knocked out, it's a lot easier for me to go in and look at whole sections of a website as a whole, you know, whether that's 50 pages, or 500 pages, or five or 1000 pages, and deal with those as a section than it is to sort of piecemeal it, I tend to lose track of things. Also, when you look at things sort of holistically for me, I have a better idea of what how things sort of fit together. For example, you know, as you know, as you have an older website, you may have, you know, multiple pages on a very similar topic. And unless you're looking at things sort of holistically, it's really hard to identify those pages that may be actually competing amongst themselves and sort of cannibalizing your content. So I tend to go, you know, sort of whole hog initially, and then I'll start breaking things down by sections or, or, you know, something that may be a little bit more manageable. But unfortunately, you know, you can look at all the different software out there. And at the end of the day, you know, it has to be a human sort of putting the thought into dissecting a website.

Robert Plank 9:45 And so and you mentioned software here, and, you know, it comes down to this question of what when you're looking at this big picture, right, you're looking at the whole website, and then you're going kind of further down in other sections. Do you use a special software to look at the as pieces of your website, or is it a matter of having like, 500 tabs open? Or like, how do you even begin to look at all that of that monster all at once?

Speaker 2 10:08 Yeah, I mean, we use everything we use, you know, H refs, we use Screaming Frog, we use Moz. You know, we, you know, we look at just the data from Google Search Console, and, you know, analytics, we look at everything. And, you know, there's, there's bits and pieces that we sort of, you know, really rely on the software for, but ultimately, you know, unfortunately, I wish there was a better system, but you know, you got to sort of put all those pieces together and sort of come up with, you know, data, again, keep going or harping on data, to sort of figure out what, what fits and what needs to be removed or what needs to be consolidated. We've also been doing a lot of consolidation over the past, you know, year, two years, or whatever, whatever it's been, and that seems to be really beneficial. You know, it may be really clear, pages, separate pages may be really clear in my head, and they may be really clearly delineated, you know, in my head, but unfortunately, it doesn't always resonate with the search engines. And if it's not resonating with the search engines, ultimately, your customer or potential customer is not going to even see though that material.

Robert Plank 11:25 And I like to answer a lot of the where the question is like, What tool do I use for blank all of them, right? And I'm adding them that kind of in a weird way that takes the pressure off. Because when you when you talk to when I talked to like an SEO guy about this or that tool, sometimes when they say, well don't use any other tool, but this one really obscure specific thing. And I'm thinking, Well, I have to stop what I'm already using. And I'm not sure how well developed this tool is in you might like it, but then in two years, I might be at a date. And when you when you think we talk to these dudes that, you know, they they do paid advertising, they're like, I'm on all the platforms, when you talk to people that do like video editing will have at least trying out every video editing tool there is so that way, you just kind of grab and use whatever gets you there in the moment. And it seems kind of it almost sounds like kind of like sloppy and haphazard. But I mean, I think that's kind of the way to do it, right is to not marry yourself to one single tool or say nothing else works. Like you try a little bit of everything. And then when you look at that data, you look at the metrics and the clicks and the traffic, you say, Okay, well, this kind of gives me the answer that I need. And so that way, you're not too, too constrained or too technical. And so,

Speaker 2 12:42 you know, I'm sorry, but it also really helps sort of double dip and sort of reinforces, you know, one, one software sort of layers on the other. And, you know, it just reinforces your decision. You know, it's you're making a much more educated decision when you're looking at three, four or five different data sources, then just looking at a program, which a lot of them are very good, and they're very sophisticated. But yeah, you're 1,000%, right, that, you know, if you're relying on one thing, there's some things can slip through the cracks. And certain software's certainly does things a lot better than others. So yeah, I look at them all, and I take whatever I can.

Robert Plank 13:21 And you always hear how I mean, none of the these tools are pretty accurate, but they're never 100% accurate. Like you hear someone say, Well, my Google Analytics shows these clicks on my Facebook ads show these clicks. And I'm thinking, well, it's It is sad that those numbers don't accept the matchup. But is that a reason to like completely bring your business to a screeching halt? No, you just do you do the best you can with these tools that you have in front of you. And so there are all these tools we could be using and all these things we could be doing. But it clearly have some of this cool stuff dialed in, right? You have this law firm, but you're also really hands on with the website. So what is it that you think that you are doing differently and doing better than, than all these other competitors you have out there?

Speaker 2 14:06 You know, there's no secret to really any of this anymore. You know, you know, frankly, we're just really trying to create better content. I mean, it sounds real cliche, but we're trying to do better content, we're trying to do more of it. We're trying to really, you know, be careful about to make create pages that are really on point with the user intent. You know, we look at, you know, if you look at what people also asked, for example, if you do a search for anything, and you see what people also asked, we're creating, you know, individual FAQ pages that sort of mimic what people also ask, okay, now is that that not really rocket science or anything, it's not the most sophisticated way of looking at things but it's can be very effective, especially when you scale that you know, on different areas and things like that. So, you know, I don't know if there's really any there's no really secret sauce other than we're just doing it on a trying to really scale it, you know, I have a team of writers who I've been working with now for several years, and we're sort of, you know, obviously times change, you know, certain certain things have sort of fallen out of favor that we may have been doing, you know, several years ago. But for the most part, we're sort of just getting back to the basics. And just trying to really dive in, you know, we're not taking you we're not taking any shortcuts, we're, we're just really doing the old fashioned hard work. Not very sexy, but that's, you know, that's what we're doing.

Robert Plank 15:43 appeasing the Google gods and actually providing the answers to the problems that people are searching. I mean, what a concept. And, and so yeah, it seems like this, you're having a lot of fun. And it seems like you're really passionate about what you're doing. So what is the point of you being here? Do you want to draw more attention to you and your law firm? Or is there some other offer? Or if someone says, Man, this this guy, Jonathan, like all the things he talked about, about, you know, websites, and you know, metrics and web design, I want to know more about everything he has going on? What's the call to action? What's the next step?

Speaker 2 16:17 Well, the truth is, is that I am really, you know, I do love this, I eat, breathe, you know, defecate this stuff, you know, and it's just something that I really am passionate about, I want to hopefully, you know, if nothing else, hopefully, some business owners look at this and say, Oh, my gosh, like, I gotta get off my butt and start, you know, taking action or whatever. But ultimately, I don't do any of this stuff, you know, web stuff, other than for my own, you know, business. But if someone's interested in the law, you know, check out the website, Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers hit me up, you know, look on YouTube, we've got a lot of videos, we've got a personal injury podcast. You know, if you've got a question about, you know, SEO stuff, or, you know, God forbid, you know, involved in an accident, you know, give me a call. I'm happy to talk with you about any of it.

Robert Plank 17:10 Oh, fantastic. So that is Rosenfeld Injury. lawyers.com. And Rosenfeld, injury lawyers on YouTube and on the podcast, and this is a super inspiring meeting we're having because it's always cool to see like a, you know, a landscaper or a garage door repair person or even like an attorney, someone to kind of have their their website dialed in, and you can you go there and you have fun going to the website, and it seems intuitive, and it seems like they really know what they're doing as far as their business. So go there right now. Rosenfeld Injury lawyers.com. Any final parting words of advice before we sign off, Jonathan?

Speaker 2 17:48 I would just say you know what, keep keep going. Keep doing keep creating, keep revising. Keep, you know, you got to just outwork the next guy down the street. And ultimately, I'm telling you, if you keep doing it, it'll it'll work out for you.