Why Attorneys Must Embrace Social Media – Google Analytics Says It All

Lawyers that want to survive must embrace social media. It is critical to search engine results.  Page  one SERP on Google is king . Page 2

Anthony Castelli Attorney

may as well be page 200. You say social media is for kids . You say prove it. I say look at your google analytics. On the left side of your google analytics home page about half way down click on traffic sources. Wow do you see the word Social

Google Now Has Teeming Analytics All About Social Media

Just look at the subheadings under the word social in your Google anallytics:

Overview
Network Referrals
Landing Pages
Conversions
Plugins
Visitors Flow

A quote from Google say it all (almost):

“The social media revolution is here and rapidly maturing. Are you measuring it? Social reports help you measure the impact social media has on your business goals and conversions.”

Here’s what Google specifically says about how it breaks down social media:

“The Social Relationship

The social web connects people where they share, critique and interact with content and each other. Social analytics provides you with the tools to measure the impact of social. You can identify high value networks and content, track on-site and off-site user interaction with your content, and tie it all back to your bottom line revenue through goals and conversions.

Here’s how we see this story:

Sources & Pages: Identify networks & communities where people engage with your content.

Conversions: Measure the value of social by tracking your goals, conversions and ecommerce transactions.

Social Plugins: Measure your on-site user engagement.

Social Visitors Flow: Compare traffic volumes and visitor traffic patterns through your site.“

So is it all about fine tuning traffic to your site? Outwardly yes. But before social was added didn’t we already know where people came from. Of course, the new social metrics will allow much more of a targeted approach. You can follow the traffic from the source, say for instance blogger, learn how much traffic dropped of from the source and what traffic actually converted. (in the case of most attorney web sites, this means a legal consumer filled out a contact form or downloaded a free ebook or responded to chat).

Google now allows you to measure what social buttons on your site are being clicked . It also allows you to measure where your content is being shared off site. This is done through the activity stream. It identifies when your content has been shared or subject to another social action with google partner communities. Click here  to see who is included in the social data hub partner communities at present.

So What Does This Have To Do With SERP 

Why would Google track all this data if it was not going to lead to a better search experience. And that means the sites with the best engagement, the best content, and the social media buzz will rise to the top. So yes tracking what social media is driving the traffic that engages and converts the most with your site is important. But there will not be much to track if you are not page one in the search engines.

Besides this glaring clue of Google unloading these stats on social media,  there have been multiple studies showing the value of social media shares, one plusses , comments etc to increase search engine optimization. The infographic below attests to this.

Testing Social media for SERP

The infographic above is a bit small to read. That’s why I want to make  the subject of another article, “Who really moves you in the search results in terms of social media.”  The point of this article though was to wake up attorneys on what they need to do to build their practice. It’s no longer what color is your parachute.  It’s what you can do to position yourself as someone Google knows, likes and trusts so you can position yourself with legal consumers as a lawyer that they know like and trust and want to hire.

by Anthony Castelli Attorney practicing personal injury law in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Posts by Anthony

• Attorneys - Advertising With Adwords Targeting Your Competitors Ruled Illegal
• Why Attorney Is Better Than Lawyer For SERP
• Survey: What Do Negligence Lawyers Think Their Clients Want Most?
• Employers Craft Your Social Media Policy or Risk Disaster
• Best Lawyer Videos Part II - Negligence and SSDI Law
• How Videos Get To Page 1 On Google Organic Search