Social Media Affects Your Website's Search Ranking

Social media is a great tool for communicating with clients, but it can also have a secondary benefit for your practice by boosting your website's search ranking.

The way most clients will find you is by searching on the Internet for a lawyer. Hopefully they'll narrow their search by area of law and location, but even then there are lots of competitors out there. Having a professional and informational website can be a great way to get clients, but it doesn't work if no one sees it.

Getting a professional consultant to manage your website's search engine optimization can be a valuable way to improve your rankings. But you can also help yourself by stepping up your social media presence.

To prove that claim, we have some insight into how Google and other search engines rank web pages.

The way websites are ranked is based on how useful and relevant the search engine thinks the page will be. To determine that, they look for how many other sites link to you, how often you're mentioned in other places, and how much activity you have on your webpage.

That last one can be measured in several ways. It can be done via the number of page views; or by the level of engagement on your site in the form of posts, tweets, and other social interactions. When it comes to search rankings, both methods are used.

Bottom line: The more active your website is, the higher your rank will be.

Making your website more active could mean writing lots of informational blog posts and drumming up online goodwill so that people will link to and reference your site. But you're a full-time lawyer, so that's probably not going to happen.

Social media posts offer an easier way to get more traffic and boost your search rankings. A quick post asking your followers a question or linking to an article can still increase traffic.

In fact, the more active you are on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter, the higher your website will appear in Google's search-engine results, according to a recent study by the SEO firm TastyPlacement Inc. Perhaps unsurprisingly, more Google+ activity led to a higher ranking in Google's search results. (Not sure what Google+ can do for you? Click here to find out.)

Once you get that higher search ranking and more traffic, you'll hopefully also get some extra business. But even if your new audience doesn't hire you right away, at least they're getting you closer to the top of Google's search results.

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