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Legal Marketing: Good Social Media Content Can Affect Your Google Ranking

Guest post by: Tom Matte

Article Overview: Originally Google ranked sites by using information such as, how many traditional links you have, the authority of the pages that link to you, the kind of anchor text you used and your keywords and related copy. And each of these are still very important. But according to a December 2010 announcement, Google has decided that social media activity will play a part in their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and page rankings too.

Legal Marketing: Good Social Media Content Can Affect Your Google Ranking

@font-face { font-family: "Wingdings"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: Times; font-weight: bold; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; } Here's one more reason to be active on social media. Your social media activity is now taken into consideration by Google when determining what pages get ranked the highest.

Originally Google ranked sites by using information such as, how many traditional links you have, the authority of the pages that link to you, the kind of anchor text you used and your keywords and related copy. And each of these are still very important. But according to a December 2010 announcement, Google has decided that social media activity will play a part in their search engine optimization (SEO) strategy and page rankings too.

What this means is that Google is incorporating social media into their algorithm for ranking sites. This helps them determine whether a person is real or just a bot (a software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet). Google uses a person’s LinkedIn and Twitter information to determine the validity of their material and posted links. So simply adding tons of friends and followers won't help you as much as creating and dispersing good content through your links.

The following are some ways you can benefit from Google’s new ranking guidelines:

• Valuable Content: Content is king. Create and link to content that is informative and valuable so others forward or retweet it. Google looks at the information being retweeted as well as who is doing the retweeting. If a bot is retweeting your information it doesn’t carry as much weight as if a powerful social media expert were to retweet it. So the more pertinent and interesting your tweets are, the more likely they will be retweeted by those that count.
• Signals: Google uses “signals” when determining if a site is valuable or simply junk. It is these "signals" that help them determine what is real and what is generated by bots. Even though social media is now one of the signals Google uses, it is still a weaker signal than more powerful things like the number of traditional links on your site, the strength of the pages that link to you and the keywords you use in your page copy. So while social media does help, it's still important to pay attention to these traditional methods of increasing SEO as well.

Good SEO is a science, but there are things you can do to rank higher on your own too. By following the steps above, you'll see a difference in your rankings and be on your way to creating a great reputation for your law firm and attorneys.

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Article Tags: Atlanta, law firm marketing, law firms, legal marketing, SEO, social media



Related Forum Posts
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff
Re: Kevin needs "social glue" ideas - [quote="WebBizIdeas.com":gvtxsu7g]Hi, I like the idea of "10 items that could act as "social glue" because I am an internet marketer. But I agree with the rest that the 10 recent post is nice. Maybe we should open up a new section in the forums on Social Media...or Social Media Marketing. I will tell you that the world is about 1 1/2 behind when it comes to understanding social media. Building a section now will put EvanCarmichael.com is a great position a year down the road when people realize Social Media can produce more traffic than SEO. Jeff[/quote:gvtxsu7g] Hi Jeff, Thanks for the suggestion. Why don't you start a new post (with a poll) to see if there's enough interest in your idea for a social media section?
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Hi, Online Marketing would be a great title, and having sub categories would make it even better, there would plenty of categories to choose from, Social Media, SEO, Article Marketing and yes even Affiliate Marketing to name just a few, great looking site btw Jeff, take care, Carol
Re: Should Evan add a "Social Media Marketing" category to the f - Just as an update, Evan has extended the poll's expiration date and says he'd like to see at least 25 "yes" votes before implementing the new category. Moreover, it would probably be called "Online Marketing" instead of Social Media Marketing".
Kevin's Case Study #11 - A New Forum Category? - Hi Everyone, 2009 is a new year and I'd like to create a new forum category to jazz things up! In the past, there's been some interest voiced about adding a "Social Media Marketing", "Online Marketing", "Internet Marketing" or "Online Promotion" category. I'll implement [u:1g2tv6tf]ONE[/u:1g2tv6tf] of those new categories, but can someone first tell me what the difference would be between the existing "Marketing" section and one of those new options mentioned above? Thanks


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