This opportunity is huge for people who want to connect with customers regarding their brands, products and/or local businesses. As Google+ continues to grow in popularity, your law firm has the potential to benefit greatly.

According to Google, if you create a business page on Google+, you will be able to “connect with the customers and fans who love you.” But that’s not all, if you ask Google. They have gone even further to say that “not only can [your clients] recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face.”

What do you need to do to get started? First, visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create. Then, develop your page and start sharing with clients and prospects. It’s that simple.

A Few More Tips for Your Google+ Business Page
Just like a Facebook business page or Twitter account, to truly be successful on Google+, you need to be actively involved. That means you should be sharing helpful and interesting information on a regular basis. You should also be engaging with your clients and fans. View what they are posting and make meaningful comments too.

If you are not convinced that you need yet another social network, you should know that Google is planning to include Google+ pages in search results. You need to make sure that your page is ready and can be found by your prospects!

For information on our attorney Web marketing services, including SEO and social media marketing, give us a call at 888.886.0939.

Test #1 – Signed In

Search query: [fairfax car accident attorney]

Google Result: Ben Glass gets the first organic spot AND he has a social endorsement from someone whom I am connected with on Google Plus.

Click the images to see the full size version.

Bing Result: Ben gets the first organic result without any social endorsements, then consumes the middle of the page with pages that have been endorsed by many of my Facebook friends.

Test #2 – Signed Out

Search query: [fairfax car accident attorney]

Google Result:  Ben takes the first spot again, without any indicators of social endorsements, although we know they have occurred.  I did this search while signed out and with private browsing turned on.

Bing Result: Ben nabs the first two spots, but the page is very plain without the social endorsements.  I did this search while signed out and in with private browsing turned on.

Technically, There was no change in the rankings for this search term, because of the social endorsements that Ben’s site has received.  However, we must consider the psychological impact that social endorsement would have on searchers if they are displayed on a search result page.  Are searchers more inclined to click links they know have been endorsed by their friends?  The answer is a unanimous “yes”.

This test represents a very small sample of how social media is affecting search results.  For extremely competitive keywords with strong, authoritative sites ranking at the top, the effect could be minimal.  But for niche sites and pages deep within your site, a social endorsement could be the difference between a page 1 ranking and being completely invisible.

We can expect this to become an even bigger factor as Google Plus grows in the social network that Google hopes it will.  For now, we can see that Bing is relying heavily on Facebook data to provide search results, as they should.  (No doubt this irks Google!)  We recommend making sure that every page on your website has a Facebook ”Like” button, a Twitter “Tweet” button and a Google “+1″ button.  In general, attorneys are not always considered to be trustworthy and the right social endorsement could change that for searchers.  More to come on this topic, but remember that social media is not going away and we all need to embrace it.

For more information on marketing your attorney website, contact Foster Web Marketing at 888-886-0939.

]]> http://lawfirmandattorney-internet-marketing.com/how-much-is-social-media-affecting-search-results-for-your-lawyer-website/feed/ 0 http://lawfirmandattorney-internet-marketing.com/google-launches-plus-1/ http://lawfirmandattorney-internet-marketing.com/google-launches-plus-1/#comments Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:46:55 +0000 Cole Ingram http://lawfirmandattorney-internet-marketing.com/?p=519

For me, the month of June is right in the heart of wedding season.  So when I initially read about Google +1, my first thought was, oh that’s nice, Google gets to bring a date.  But some of the special ladies (re: products) Google has recently decided to introduce to their family (re: users) at social gathering (re: social media) haven’t been much to write home about.

Before I overextend this metaphor any further, think about their latest Social Media role outs. Buzz is a failed afterthought, Wave never caught on,  & the only people I know using Profiles work in SEO.

SOMETHING TELLS ME +1 WILL BE DIFFERENT

Google knows how much of a driving force social media has become, and how badly they have failed at it.   Their CEO Larry Page even outright said it, “I clearly knew that I had to do something and I failed to do it.”   Mr. Page claims that all future Google products will add social functionality.  +1 is the first of these new products to launch.

While talk is cheap, Google employees’ annual bonuses typically are not. That is unless Google‘s 2011 social strategy (of which +1 seems to be a big part of) is a failure.  Business Insider back in April uncovered a company-wide memo alerting Google employees that “25% of their annual bonuses will be tied to the success or failure” of Google’s 2011 social strategy, whether they are directly involved with Google’s social efforts or not.

Now I know Google’s CEO said that all new Google products will have a social component, but even still, that seems like a pretty large chunk of change to be tied to the success of something they aren’t even working on. Not so says Page, who adds in the memo, “When we release products, try them and encourage your family and friends to do the same.”

Remember, by and large (and I mean LARGE), Google’s revenue comes from display ads and pay-per-click advertising.  That’s it.  Some experts think up to 96% of Google’s revenue comes from advertising. So it strikes me as a little bit strange that they are tying 25% of ALL employee bonuses to the performance of social media products, a division that generates such little revenue for them currently.

While I do not know how a law office payscale works, I cannot imagine firm partners tying employee bonuses to the success of the firm’s softball team, especially if not everyone is on the team.

So this bonus conundrum tells me a few things about how Google views +1, and ultimately leads me to asking myself a series of questions.

1. Is Google +1 just another way to gather user data as a means to drive up keyword prices in Adword?

While my current answer to that is ‘its too soon to tell’, my gut tells me yes.  Advertising is how Google makes their money. +1 is a great way to gather user data. You do the math.

2. How much (if any) impact on rankings will +1 have?

I have to think +1 will be an SEO ranking factor in some capacity.  How much of a factor it will be is something I am not sure even Google knows right now.  It probably depends on how people use it, and how Google views +1’s impact on search quality.

While I’m sure the code is sophisticated enough to thwart companies from hiring folks to simply mash their +1 button all day and night, there are probably still ways for companies to juke the system.  Early reports are speculating that adding the +1 button causes Google to get that page crawled or re-crawled as Google’s own +1 FAQ practically confirms it.

There have also been rumors floating around that +1 could could increase your page load time by as much as two seconds, which is unacceptable as page load time is a major ranking factor.

The short answer is +1 will probably stay a minor ranking factor in the near future; quality and quantity of backlinks will stay the #1 ranking factor.

3. Is Google trying to be like Facebook?

I’d argue that Google has BEEN trying to be like Facebook, just doing a poor job of it. Anyone who doesn’t see Facebook as the next 300 LB Gorilla simply doesn’t get it.  A start-up bigwig I chatted up a few months back told me all his angel investor friends see Facebook’s unseating of Google as not a matter of if, but simply a matter of when.

Will +1 be the thing to keep Facebook at bay? Maybe. But probably not. Certainly this sheds some light onto why Google places such value on the 2011 success of their social products.  Enough importance to tie 25% of all employees’ bonuses to it.

4. How does it affect my legal clients?

That’s what you really want to know, right?

If you do decide to add +1 to your site, I wouldn’t tell everyone you know to keep clicking the button in your practice areas, hoping to increase your rankings.  To me that would be a colossal waste of time.

But if adding a +1 button causes you to write better, more interesting content in the hope of getting +1 clicks (we call those intrinsic rewards), that would be a success.  Or if it causes you to interact with your clients more, asking them to click the +1 button on areas of your site they find the most useful, that would be a success.

To me, +1 is never going to be a magic bullet for increasing keyword rankings. It is simply going to a be a tool that rewards sites for creating good content and increases social interaction.

And isn’t that what a great social media tool is really suppose to be?

Google sure hopes so.

UPDATE: According to Google, they are working on fixing some of the load time issues brought up in point #2.  For more information about what you should know before adding a +1 button, consult this guide.

Twitter launched a new version of their web page today, and the new design is eerily similar to that of a search engine. They announced the new design on their blog this morning, and the reason that they gave for the redesign:

Helping people access Twitter in more relevant and useful ways upon first introduction lowers the barrier to accessing the value Twitter has to offer and presents the service more consistently with how it has evolved.

We’ve envisioned Twitter as a major player in the search engine world for a while now, and it looks like this may be the first step.

Twitter has one thing that Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and other search engines don’t: Real-time search capabilities.

How long does it take traditional search engines to index a page of a website? Days, weeks, and sometimes months. Sure, you could use Google Blog Search, Google Trends, or Google News search for certain up-to-date information, but how about a Twitter search for what everyone thinks about the newest Harry Potter movie as opposed to going through 20 different review sites and blogs?

Just today I was looking for the score to a pre-season soccer game that was overseas, but no major news site had the score until an hour after it ended. How did I find the score before them? A Twitter search.

Ticketmaster codes for special concerts?

Low-carb Recipes?

WordPress plugins?

Tweeting is easier than blogging (logging in to your Twitter account and typing 140 words or less vs. logging into WordPress or blogger, typing content, adding pictures, links, and tags, spellchecking, etc…. ), and the fact that you can Tweet on most smart phones means that Twitter will continue to grow in contributors and content that a Twitter search can “crawl”.

Yes, Twitter is also good for promoting blog and website content if you have enough followers, but for those who don’t have the time or resources to manage a blog full-time, Twitter is a great alternative (hence why it’s called a “Microblogging” service).

When you’re Tweeting, be sure to include keywords that people may be searching for from time to time, similar to how you optimize your website and content for SEO purposes. Include generic keywords relative to your practice areas, as well as location-based keywords, and utilize the “hashtags” (#) for any keywords that are commonly used in the Twitterverse.

Twitter is at an all-time high in popularity, with every celebrity and news outlet signing up as each day passes. Whether or not it will stick around and continue to rise in popularity will remain to be seen, but seeing as creating a Twitter profile is free and it doesn’t take much time to manage, what do you have to lose?

Twitter currently serves as a social networking tool, a content marketing tool, and an rss reader to some extent. Twitter as a major search engine? It might be sooner than we think.

Special thanks to my good friend Rem Jackson for bringing this awesome new tool to our attention.

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t spend as much time on social bookmarking sites as I should. Building your reputation on sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, and others can usually provide a great ROI later in the future, but who has the time anymore?

Well, Stumbleupon has a great new site, SU.PR, that I’m very excited about. It wraps a number of awesome features into one nice, easy package, and allows you to:

1. Post the same status massage to Facebook and Twitter at once, which eliminates some of the need for Ping.fm
2. It automatically shortens URLs for Tweets, eliminating the use for TinyUrl and other URL shortening services
3. Your submissions are automatically added to StumbleUpon for people to Stumble
4. It tracks clickbacks and views
5. It allows you to schedule future Tweets/postings.

An awesome tool for anyone looking to save time and better promote their blog posts and website pages.

To start using it (if you don’t already have a StumbleUpon account), follow StumbleUpon on Twitter to obtain Invite codes.

In the most recent Tweet incentive, Squarespace is giving away 30 iPhones in 30 days for anyone that tweets something about #squarespace, a free DIY web design platform.

People are willing to Tweet about promotions like these because 1) it’s easy, thanks to the user friendliness of Twitter, and 2) most people using Twitter on a regular basis have so many followers (including a large majority of people they’ve never met) that the message probably only reaches 1/3 of their audience, meaning they’re more willing to take a risk of seeming a little bit promotional.

The question is, what kind of incentive could you offer as an attorney?

A free case review? No, that’s pretty standard these days

A free Blackberry? Not very original, plus that can be a bit costly.

Well, we’re going to celebrate our new blog renovation (how do you like the new design?) by offering our own incentive.

Anyone in the legal community (lawyer, paralegal, law student, legal marketer, etc.) who Retweets this blog post will receive a free link back to their blog or website with the anchor text of their choice (this blog has a PR of 4/10 so it can really help out with you SEO efforts). Just click on the “retweet” button on the top left, it’s that simple.

In addition, we’re also collecting ideas for a “Retweet incentive for attorneys”. The most creative idea will be announced in a separate blog post on Friday morning, June 12th, and will include another link to your website, blog, Twitter profile, and a short bio of the winning submitter.

If you have an idea you’d like to submit please follow us on Twitter and direct message us with your idea. The deadline for submissions is 5pm EST on Thursday, June 11th.

UPDATE here are the Tweeers in the legal community who Retweeted this post. It’s not too late to be listed here, just Retweet this blog post and we’ll get you listed later in the week. And be sure to RT @tomfosterweb otherwise we won’t be able to track the responses. You’ll also have to have your website listed on your Twitter profile.

@GerryOginski is a Video for attorneys guru, New York Medical Malpractice and New York Accident Lawyer

@mkastrab is a Cleveland attorney concentrating in criminal defense, child custody, bankruptcy/budget planning & litigation.

@pbfriedman is a law professor with his own art and law blog

@BillTilley is a Pioneer of Legal Finance Industry – Improving the Business of Law, President Amicus Capital Services, an attorney loans solution

@WayneOBryan is a Richmond Car and Truck Accident injury lawyer

@paulpartridge is a Direct response copywriter, conversion specialist, online course developer and certified college funding advisor

@jeffcanhelp is a Consumer Advocate/Attorney trying to put a stop to debt collection harassment

@sean1372 is a Virtual marketing director for law firms and medical offices

@SanDiegoInjury is a San Diego personal injury and litigation attorney. Accident lawyer for the Jurewitz Law Group.

@JohnGWatts is an Alabama consumer protection attorney

@robmckinney is a Nashville, Tennessee trial lawyer who loves to represent the underdogs.

@jonpayne is the webmaster for law firm directory website

@Michael_Sherman is Christian, Husband and Father of 4, Alabama family lawyer, Homeschooler, Triathlete

You’re probably hearing more and more about Twitter as the days go by, either on television when they announce the newest celebrity who is “tweeting”, or from your friends and colleagues who already seem to be up on the Twitter lingo.

Well, just because you’re left scratching your head whenever they bring up words like “tweet” and start talking about their “followers” (I thought it was some sort of e-cult or something at first) doesn’t mean that it’s too late for you to join the Twitter revolution.

Tom Foster and George Murphy of Foster Web Marketing just wrote a new free report, “Twitter for Attorneys”, which you can download here.

The report covers a number of topics ranging from how to sign up for an account, what your profile should and shouldn’t include, basic Twitter etiquette, and how you can use this social media powerhouse to improve both your online networking efforts which can lead to referrals, and your lead generation efforts through creative Twitter marketing.

Just because you are new to Twitter or don’t know anything about it yet doesn’t mean that you have to be scared or hesitant to sign up. This report will help you understand what you need to do to catch up with all of the other attorneys already Tweeting and gaining more and more followers as the days go by, so take a few seconds to download it and let us know what you think!

After I realized that the answer is yes, I finally had a breakthrough: my life would not be complete without Twitter (or Facebook). This is pretty weird because this time last year I said what 95% (my guesstimate) of the country says right now: “Twitter? What the….?”

Here are my top five warning signs that you’re addicted to Twitter:

5) You respond to emails using “@” instead of “re:”, and not just in the subject.

4) Any time you type something that is approaching 140 characters you get the “uh oh here come the red numbers… I know they’re coming…. here they come” jitters.

3) You texted your best friend yesterday asking if he was coming to #happy hour.

2) Who needs Google? search.twitter.com is where it’s at!

1) The thought of your life minus Twitterberry or Twitterfon just doesn’t seem right.

By the way, is it just me or is Facebook trying to look like Twitter all of a sudden?

-George

This is a perfect case of viral marketing meets social media marketing meets, well, probably a stupid decision.

George Murphy, Foster Web Marketing’s SEO and social media marketing manager, was interviewed last week in an article by the Baltimore Sun on the power of social media marketing.

The article also featured a young Baltimore native who was brave enough to get a Twitter whale tattooed on his body (which is making pretty big headlines). I wonder what his return on investment will be.

Some great quotes from the article:

• “With Twitter and Facebook, the power of it is just amazing. I’m constantly blown away by this world,”…. “How quickly you can get people to respond, to react, to become aware of something. … It underscores how no business can ignore this.”
• “Be personal, share personal stuff on there so that people can relate to you, and they’ll actually pay attention to what you’re saying,” he says. “Nobody pays attention to you if you’re self-promoting most of the time.”
• “Why not? It doesn’t cost us anything.”
• “And as unpredictable as Twitter is as a Web traffic generator, its route to the bank is even less direct. But based on what Malis has seen so far, he thinks tweets just might pack profit potential.”

Proving a return on investment when it comes to social media marketing is always an obstacle, but considering that the only investment that you’re making is the time that it takes to setup and manage a Twitter or Facebook profile (spend maybe an hour a day), I’d certainly say it’s worth it.

So here is a quick example of how an attorney that is active on Twitter was able to find a potential client pretty easily.

Jennifer Cohen, who does some social media marketing for some of our clients from time to time, was recently loading groceries into her car near where she lives on a busy street.

Somebody came by and his her car door while it was open. The insurance company ruled it to be her fault (let’s not turn this into a debate please ), and she had to pay the deductible to get her car fixed.

She was upset and started looking more into it. Here is one message that she tweeted:

This resulted in a direct message from a local attorney who is obviously familiar with Twitter:

I’ll share that attorney’s profile after I publish this post and contact him/her to see if it’s okay.

Anyways, how did this attorney know that Jennifer tweeted that, and how was he able to find her?

Pretty simple. This attorney might not have even had to be on Twitter, Tweetdeck, or anything else, they just had to have e-mail access.

There are Twitter alert services out there like TweetBeep (which just came back up after about a month on hiatus) and Twilert that allow you to setup email alerts based on specified keywords that are relevant to your practice. So this attorney could have had “car accident”, “insurance”, etc. set up as his or her alerts which is how he found Jennifer (who is likely going to hire them by the way, she was impressed that the attorney took the initiative and is tech-savvy enough to find her).

He/she also used the advanced settings feature on either TweetBeep or Twilert to only alert him if these keywords are tweeted by a Twitter user within a certain number of miles from the zip code where he/she practices law.

Then, it’s as easy as sending her an @ message, or going the extra mile to follow her and send her a Direct Message.

It’s obviously worth the time to sit down and create a number of these alerts. Think of anything that someone might tweet about that relates to your practice, set up how often you would like to be alerted, hit save, and wait for the leads to come “flying” in.

Okay maybe not, but even if you only get one lead a year by doing this, it took you a half an hour to set it all up, if that’s not proving Twitter’s potential ROI I don’t know what is.

Oh, and remember to PLEASE build value on your Twitter profile. The idea is to share, not continuously self-promote and only tweet when you have a new blog post.