Law Firm Marketing:The relationship
between SEO and Social Media
October 29, 2015
Guy Alvarez, CEO
Good2bSocial
guy@good2bsocial.com
@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 PlusTwitter 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 toYouTube, 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

QUESTIONS?
Guy Alvarez
www.good2bsocial.com
guy@good2bsocial.com
@guylaw1313