Las Vegas Convention 2015 Comments and Observations

Circle of Legal Trust

The Group ShotWell, it’s over, and 2015 Circle of Legal Trust LV is back to blog posts and Hangouts on Air till our next Hang Out In Real Life (“HIRL”) It did not go off without a hitch, however, due to the technical difficulties involved with Google Hangouts hanging up, not letting people in, notifying, recording, etc. Timing each speaker is also difficult if a speaker goes over, for example, when the next HOA and individual speaker is in cue.

One of the newer attendees who has not followed our international group till recently asked why we even bother with the HOA. Well, let me answer that first. This organization is based to a large degree on the Google HOA. Always has been. Many of the attorneys, speakers. And viewers are often in other locations around the world and they are needed in order to make this work. However, having learned from this, I am going to speak with Ronnie Bincer about the issues we had, and come up with a solution for next years convention.

Tilley comes through

The good news is, Bill Tilley was on hand with an HDMI cable, and we were able to tap into the suite big screen TV and use it as a monitor with our computers. More than likely, next time we will video record the sessions, and simulcast as an HOA, assuming Google does not work out the flaws in the HOA system.

The Group

The “Originals” In Person

This year we had a tight group. Original voting members, David Slepkow, Michael Ehline, and Tony Castelli showed, which was super awesome. Slepkow in particular, has benefited greatly from the “Personal Injury Warriors” section of the Circle Of Legal Trust, and we think this next 2016 year, he is really going to hit some more great web traffic in Rhode Island and Mass. And all this from his efforts implementing our ever evolving quality guidelines.

Tony was looking fantastic, and we had an opportunity to discuss his main website schema markup and local presence, including “City Center,” and what it really means.

 Gold Member Attendees

Matt Dolman, Jason Kupperman and Seth Price all made it. honorary attorney, and web developer Andre van Wyk, had connectivity problems and was unable to attend. Steve Sweat was able to show via HIRL, but the HOA feed failed, and he too got knocked off the live feed.

Dolman came through, however, with the help of his former Army Airborne administrator, Mr. Kupperman. How you ask, did they come through?

These two illuminated members made sure we had our convention in the Penthouse Suite of the Cosmo Hotel, LV. Most of the pics on this post, are of us in action, in that fine penthouse suite. So as you write your press releases, and news about the event, I would appreciate it if you would shoot the Dolman Law Group personal injury attorneys a link or two, and give them credit where credit is due. The event may have been free to you, but it cost the rest of us busy attorneys who contributed, and their staffs a pretty penny to make this work.

Matt is one of our very first legit members, and he is presently under consideration for induction as a voting “Original.” If you wish to provide some input as to why, or why not he should be moved into a position, like Sgt at Arms, S1, S2, etc., please provide your comments below.

Either way, his collaborative efforts have earned us a great friend/member, and his law firm, some unusual traffic, and rankings. And that is what we are all about: “Lawyers helping Lawyers.” Thanks again, Matt and Jason.

Seth Price, working socialite and legal genius

And of course, it goes without saying that Seth encouraged me in a big way years ago to get these conventions going, and now they seem to have a life of their own. And that is just fine with me. This organization is a team of enlightened lawyers. It is our mutual energy and determination that has gotten us so far, so fast when compared to the larger organizations that seem to put profits over members.

Seth has been a great coach and mentor to me in particular, and I, for one, am thrilled that such a caring, selfless fellow is part of our venerable membership pool. Hats off to the Gold Members!

Hang Arounds and Pledges in Attendance

We had two special guests and prospective members show for this experience. One of them, Bill Tilley, discussed above, is a non-attorney. But remain heavily involved in online legal case funding. So we believe he is a good fit for our group. Last, we look forward to his further association.

LEVINSON

Next, the man who invited Bill, we had Christopher Levinson of Vititoe Law Group (prior firm was Masry & Vititoe) in attendance.  Many of you may know Vititoe as one of the attorneys in  Erin Brokovich matter. I mean, you can’t get much cooler than that. And the cool thing is, Chris is a social media powerhouse, with over 130,000 followers on Twitter alone! Holy cow. Even Slepkow could learn a thing or two about social media from this amazing person.
Attorney Jeff Nadrich also showed, and as always, it is great to see an old friend. Amazing how fluctuations in the SERPS can bring people together.
The Nitty Gritty, Our Expert Speakers in Attendance

Saam and company

This year, we had some real winners speak. Unfortunately, the video Youtube feed had trouble, and I fear we lost some real gems. But in order, we had Conrad Saam discuss ways of tracking the cost of each client about the benefits of getting them. He spoke about methods of lead tracking on your website to help you get a handle on your budget as well.

Conrad is a fantastic guy, who like me, is willing to take some time off now and then to head to a Las Vegas machine gun range, and take out some paper targets. He is also part of the original AVVO group, and is now a freelancer at Mockingbird Marketing, helping lawyers get more presence online, of course!

Next, we had Chris Dreyer, my good friend over at AttorneyRankings.org. Dreyer works closely with me, Tony Castelli, as well as Matt Dolman, and I can personally attest to the fact that he is an honest, motivated, and skilled individual. He helped me with banners for the HOA, and he was number two in our line up.

He discussed the evolution of mobile search, its future and the necessity of testing, and improving site speed in anticipation of Mobilegeddon (Read More.) If you are in a pickle and like it when the guy you hired responds in a timely fashion, I suggest you follow him on Twitter and perhaps request a quote.

I feel that his strong-suit is a brand building and PR marketing, and that is of supreme importance in this day and age, as most of our seasoned guests know.

Orlander

And no, it’s not Zoolander. Next in our lineup was Andrew Orlander. Andrew spoke about methods of tweaking your site, and its signals to generate more leads. This was a great session, with lots of Q and A. Unfortunately, the feed did not work. So we lost the Youtube feed. But the good news is that Andrew will be writing a follow-up article. And that will be available on this site soon.

Andrew is a mover and shaker in both the medical and legal web field. He and his services are perfect for the discriminating personal injury attorney. Also, he can help you get an expert mention on a true medical site. Plus, he helps doctors and personal injury lawyers meet and break bread. And of course, he does not just help in the injury field. So I recommend you learn more about him here.

Big Joe

The next speaker we had is Joe Mas from searchdex of Texas. Now, first, I have to say, Joe is a gentle, caring, and genuine guy. He traveled to Vegas. All this, to meet us. And this was because he saw how well we got on from viewing and attending our Google HOA’s.

The areas he spoke on were among other things , gaining insight on how technical SEO impacts every area of online presence and ROI. In particular, he discussed ways to reduce PPC costs drastically, organic growth through search, and quality of leads. Joe also highlighted the technical points of evaluating the health of a site and how it affects ROI. He also took a lot of questions. And he even went over a site markup to show us how it all works.

Above all, Joe understands back end, and he has helped me with my htaccess redirects. So I have first-hand knowledge that he knows his stuff. You can also check him out here on Google Plus.

The last speaker was me, Michael Ehline. I went into the details of Negative SEO. I discussed how NSEO is the new way for some SEO companies to rank your competitors, and how it drove up PPC bid prices, causing a lot of former heavy PPC users to rethink Google PPC. And possibly they will switch to Bing or Yahoo! PPC. But perhaps it has exhausted marketing budgets and shut down a lot of businesses.

NSEO ATTACK?

I also went into methods of spotting an NSEO attack; our new Web-O-Trust disavow file blacklist. (now in beta testing). And I also teach how to deal with SEO hosts overseas, such as OVH, who don’t honor US copyright laws, or DMCA takedown requests.

I also went into a theoretical discussion on the disavow tool and its limited usefulness until such time that Penguin is run real-time, or dynamically. I guess my take away from this is going back to advertising on the side of a bus. But if you do, you are probably going to go BK sooner than you think.

This post still has legs. So if I missed something, contact me, and I will add, edit, etc., as needed. I want to thank all of our sponsors and attendees personally. Thank you all for helping make this a success. Also, I am accepting donations and speaker applications for next year’s Circle of Legal Trust Convention.

This next convention will be the culmination of learning from the mistakes of past sessions. And funding will be better. But I will need help getting this off the ground. After all, I still have to run my cases. Lawyers who can donate staff time are wanted.

We need help with banners, meeting places, catering, etc. Also, donors get a prominent place on the event sponsor page. Last, they get a juicy mention and link back to their profiles.

So feel free to use the contact form to get hold of me. The event will also be sponsored by “Personal Injury Warriors International.” So anyone who wants to join up now, and who does PI law, will be given a free listing. Next, they get posting privileges here. www.personalinjurywarriors.com.

Semper Fi. And many thanks for your support. See at the Hangout on Air soon!

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