law firm marketing: the relationship between seo and social media
TRANSCRIPT
Law Firm Marketing: The relationship between SEO and Social Media
October 29, 2015
Guy Alvarez, CEO Good2bSocial [email protected] @guylaw1313
Agenda o Introduction � The basics of SEO- Technical SEO, On Page SEO
and Local SEO � The relationship between social media and SEO
backlinks � How gaining more followers on social media can
improve your search engine ranking � The importance of engagement: sharing, liking,
commenting and its impact on SEO � Social networks are the new search engines � The key role Google+ plays in search engine
ranking � Search engine marketing and pay per click- are
they worth it? � How Google uses Twitter to discover new
content o Q&A
My Story � Recovering Lawyer � Spent early part of my career as head
of Law Journal Extra which today is Law.com
� Moved on to become Global Director of Digital Marketing for KPMG
� Founded Business Development Institute
� Became Director of Social Media at PLI
� Have consulted for a wide array of companies and firms in and outside the legal market over the last 15 years on digital marketing and social media.
Our Mission � To help firms in the legal vertical to understand
and leverage the power of digital marketing to enhance their thought leadership position in the market and to better engage with their clients and prospects.
� Using the latest technologies and methodologies, we help firms sell their services, build their brands and develop digital platforms that power and transform their marketing and business development efforts.
The Basics of SEO
• Technical SEO • On Page SEO • Local SEO
@guylaw1313
The purpose of Social Media
� Stay “top of mind” and listen to your target audience (clients, prospects, alumni, colleagues, influencers, press)
� Develop Strategic relationships � Thought Leadership:
Demonstrate your skills, knowledge & experience
� Gain Competitive and Business Intelligence
� Drive traffic back to your website/blog
It all Starts and Ends with Content
� You cannot have a successful social media strategy without the right content
� What is the right content? ◦ Client centric ◦ Provides guidance or value ◦ Non – promotional ◦ Free of jargon ◦ Easily consumable ◦ Shareable ◦ Personable
The relationship between social media and SEO backlinks
◦ Website link ◦ Bio ◦ Posts
◦ About tab (Personal and
Page) ◦ Posts ◦ Profile & Cover Picture
◦ Contact Info ◦ Projects & Publications ◦ Company Page info tab ◦ Company groups
◦ Introduction links ◦ Other profile and page
links ◦ Communities
How gaining more followers on social media can improve your search engine ranking
• The total number of followers and connections your social media profiles contain has a significant influence on your rankings.
• A company with 100 Twitter followers won’t receive nearly the ranking bonus of a mega-corporation with a million Facebook likes and a million Twitter followers.
• However, Google can detect the quality of your followers, meaning buying 100,000 proxy Twitter followers isn’t going to do much for your overall rankings. Instead, you’ll need to build your following organically.
• Growing your number of followers is a slow process, but effective so long as you’re consistent.
• Present your brand uniquely and consistently, using the same voice to update your users on a daily basis.
• Post useful articles, helpful tips, open inquiries, and general discussion items, then follow up with your users by engaging with them in conversation directly.
The importance of engagement: sharing, liking, commenting and its impact on SEO
Infographic by Quicksprout
The key role Google+ plays in search engine ranking � "Google has been using Google+ to
discover new content, and many web professionals have discovered that URLs shared on Google+ are crawled and indexed very quickly
� "Pages and posts on Google+ not only accumulate PageRank, but because links to posts are followed, they pass link equity on as well."
� It is not the +1's themselves that are
causing the high rankings of posts but the fact that most +1's on a site result in a shared post on Google+, which creates a followed link back to the post. It's instant organic link building.
Search engine marketing and pay per click- are they worth it?
• Done correctly, both SEO and PPC can get you on the front page of the search engines for targeted terms and in front of your desired audience. However, each has its respective benefits and costs.
• Organic results are 8.5x more likely to be clicked on than paid search results! That's a large disparity and is likely attributed to searchers gradually learning the difference between organic and sponsored results, and recognizing that organic results are typically the more respected resource.
• However, PPC holds a slight edge in conversion rates, as paid search results are 1.5x more likely to convert click thrus from the search engine. According to SEOmoz this is due to the fact that the paid search result's "text and landing page is custom optimized by the advertiser."
How Google uses Twitter to discover new content In February 2015, Google and Twitter penned a deal giving Google access to the “fire hose” of Twitter’s public data, generated by its 300 million users. As a result, all of Twitter’s profile information, tweets, and other public data are available to Google in real time.
Google now has instant access to every tweet as it is posted, and every user profile as it’s created or updated. This data sends some very strong signals for organic search.
� Topics. Google will be able to algorithmically compute trending topics and suddenly spiking events in real time without relying on Twitter’s public lists and calculations. It could be used to support news algorithms as well as to surface breaking events and other popular topics in web search.
� Engagement. Google will be able to see what is being shared, who is being shared and who is sharing it, across 300 million users. How often tweets are retweeted, quoted, favorited, or just clicked
� Authority. Engagement multiplied by reach also signifies authority. Twitter users with consistently engaging content who also have either many followers themselves, or followers that are themselves authorities, are authorities
� Personalization. Google can use this data not just in aggregate, but also on the individual level to personalize search results. When Twitter users associate the same email address with both Twitter and their Google account, Google will be able to hash public Twitter data with Google search results.
� Real time. Google can factor all of that information gleaned from Twitter data into its search results in real time. Trending topics, engagement, and authority rise and fall over time. Today’s Internet sensation is tomorrow’s forgotten distraction. Hopefully, engagement and authority last longer than topical popularity. But if a user’s only engagement and authority metrics are tied to that topic then as it wanes so will that user’s algorithmic importance. Google will now have more real time signals than ever before to determine the rise, and fall, of each user’s value to its search results.
SEO: Google Plus Twitter Equals Stronger Search? JILL KOCHER
6 Tips for Using Social Media to Enhance your SEO
1. Make your content super shareable. Work on producing valuable content that people will want to share on their social networks. Start by sharing it on a regular schedule via your social profiles, and make sure to be a good community member by sharing other influencer content in return.
2. Take advantage of the new partnership between Google and Twitter. Google’s search results are more likely to include tweets for better real-time news, especially those with hashtags that are trending or newsworthy, or those that are already highly popular on Twitter.
3. Use hashtags to make your content discoverable. Keywords are to SEO what Hashtags are to social media. Make sure you are using hashtags consistently to categorize your content. The easier it is for your content to be found, the higher the search engine results.
4. Grow your followers but focus on quality versus quantity. You want followers that are engaged, find your content to be valuable and share your content consistently with their networks. It takes time to grow your followers organically but it is worth it from an SEO perspective.
5. Social networks re the new search engines. More and more people go to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to search end discover content. Remember this and make sure that your social media properties are search optimized for each individual social network.
6. Don’t forget about local. Geo-target your social media posts to grow your local SEO. Become a guest blogger on community or local sites and directories. Engage with local newspapers and reporters through social media
