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George Murphy, Owner at The Search Ninjas provided a guest post about Google Authorship.

Google, which is still the preferred search engine for 67% of the United States according to Comscore’s latest report, launched their Authorship program in early 2012 in an attempt to help users differentiate between trusted, reputable authors, and web spammers. Many Internet marketers (myself included) believe that the Authorship program will play a big role in the search engine giant’s ranking factors in the near future, and to plan for this, you’ll need to know more about Google Authorship and how to implement it on your website(s) and/or blog(s).

What is Google Authorship?

You know how, when you do a Google search for something like “Maryland DUI attorney” or “Los Angeles divorce lawyer”, you see a number of other lawyers’ pictures come up in the search results page?  Their pictures are being displayed because they’ve implemented Google Authorship into their website(s) or blog(s), and studies have confirmed that click through rates for webmasters who have implemented Google Authorship are much higher than those who haven’t.

How Do I Setup Google Authorship?

The best part about the Google Auhtorship program is that it doesn’t take a web “ninja” to figure out how to set it up. Here are a few resources that you can utilize to implement Google Authorship:

How to sign up for Google Authorship and link your Google+ profile to the content you create by Google

Rich Snippet Testing Tool to see if your website’s Authorship markup is working correctly by Google

Check Authoship impressions and clicks in Webmaster Tools by Google

A Few Quick Tips

While you may be tempted to post more personal/laid back images of yourself on other social media profiles, you probably want to keep the suit on for Google+. Surveys have shown that law firms with more distinguished attorney pictures are preferred to the picture of you and the family on vacation.

In the “contributor to” section of your Google+ profile, add a link to as many profiles as you can- your LinkedIn profile, Twitter profile, Facebook page, Superlawyers/Lawyers.com/Findlaw profile, etc- as it adds reputation to your Authorship efforts.

If you use Wordpress for your website or blog, Yoast’s SEO Plugin will help you to easily implement Google+ Author markup.

Improved Search Engine and Overall Web Visibility

As you continue to:

Add more content to your website, blog, and other websites through guest posting and contributions.

Increase your reach on Google+ by following and interacting with others, posting regularly, joining and interacting with communities, and +1’ing other posts on a regular basis.

Market your Google+ page in your newsletter, e-mail campaigns, and other social media profiles.

Get added to more people’s circles on Google+ as a result of the above

The more trusted you will be in Google’s eyes and, as a result, the more visible you and your firm will be to search engine users and your target audience.

About the Author

George Murphy is the owner of The Search Ninjas, a Maryland-based web marketing company specializing in website design and SEO (search engine optimization) specifically for law firms and attorneys. George has been in legal web marketing for over 5 years and has worked with a number of law firms throughout the country and in a variety of practice areas. Find out more about their law firm SEO services or follow George on Google+.

Your law firm’s website can make prospective clients feel more comfortable about choosing your firm by providing them with testimonials from happy clients. With the prominence of review sites like Yelp, consumers expect to see comments from current "customers."

Whether in written or video form, a positive testimonial from a satisfied client may carry as much weight as that $1 million verdict you won last year. And in the dawning age of social media sites, a testimonial can deliver real marketing clout on your law firm’s professional Facebook page.

“Your prospective client can relate to the person giving the testimonial, and they think, ‘Hey, that’s me!’” says Kenneth L. Hardison, a Raleigh, N.C., personal injury lawyer whose law firm, Hardison & Cochran, uses testimonials on its website. “What you say about yourself is good,” Hardison says. “What others say about you is gold.”

One law firm that does a good job with testimonials is Croftons Injury Claims. Quotes like "Excellent service – thank you!" and “I am very grateful for the service provided” are powerful marketing. Croftons acts for victims of work accidents, personal injury, industrial disease, hearing loss and auto accidents.

How do you gather client testimonials? Ideally, you can simply accept a testimonial offered by one of your firm’s satisfied clients. What could be more convincing than a testimonial from a client who felt so good about their experience that they volunteered to endorse your firm?

However, bear in mind that many people do not feel they are good writers. Additionally, they may be very busy. This could lead to delays in preparing the testimonial. Take the initiative by writing their comments and asking them to edit what you have written. Most will tell you that your comments are accurate and will give you permission to use the testimonial.

According to David Wodnicki, a LexisNexis Law Firm Marketing Specialist, when potential clients view videos of attorneys, it can create a powerful connection like nothing else on a law firm website. But even an Oscar-worthy video won't help, if viewers don't bother to actually launch it. So, how can you get them to watch? Here are a few ideas.

1. Make them worth watching
You don't need to hire Martin Scorsese to direct your attorney-profile video, but you don't want a video that looks and sounds cheap. Fortunately, digital equipment has become so inexpensive that you don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars to hire someone to create simple, effective videos.

The videos also don't need to be long. Potential clients aren't looking for a law-school lecture or a bragging session. They just want to get a sense of who you are as an attorney and why they may want to talk to you about their case.

2. Make the videos easy to find
Feedback from the LexisNexis® Martindale-Hubbell® 2013 Law Firm Website Conversion Study points to the success of putting videos on the home page. You want to be careful about how you use this valuable real estate, but creating links here can pay off in a big way by encouraging people to watch them.

3. Optimize videos for desktop and smartphone viewing
Consumers who go online to look at law firm websites are most likely to use laptops and desktops, according to theAttorney Selection Research Study by The Research Intelligence Group (TRiG). However, more than one-fifth of potential clients accessed online resources with their smartphones. You want to make sure computer and smartphone users alike can easily view your videos.

4. Be sure to comply with all your jurisdiction's ethics laws
But you knew that, of course.

When you open a file, it's the end of a successful customer journey for the client — a trip that was influenced on the way by email, online searches, social media and referrals. Search engine giant Google recently unveiled data about which law firm marketing tactics are most influential in guiding that journey to a "customer purchase decision."

Which technique is the most effective? Savvy marketers understand that you don't always seal the deal with a single tactic. A client may see a display ad, click on a link from a friend, or do a search before deciding to select you for their legal matter.Google's online tool reveals online buying behavior and shows how different marketing interactions affect business success.

Every lawyer wants to "close" a new client, but that won't happen without marketing to consumers at the start of their journey, when they (a) become aware of a lawyer, (b) begin to consider the attorney, and (c) form an intent to call you.

Email and social media are effective early in the client journey, according to Google. These initiatives assist a consumer in becoming aware of a lawyer's services. (Note: I filtered the Google tool to display results for the finance industry, the closest analogue to the legal profession.)

This means that publishing an email newsletter, and having an active presence on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are important elements of a law firm marketing plan. These techniques will influence the journey a consumer takes, but it will require multiple interactions or "marketing touches" to direct them to hiring you. Lawyers.com has expertise in helping lawyers with social media marketing.

Pay-per-click advertising and paid search results are effective in tipping consumers from considering hiring a lawyer — to deciding to hire a lawyer. In fact, paid search turns out to be just as effective as being found in the results of "organic" or consumer-initiated searches.

A referral is marketing gold: according to Google, it leads directly to a purchase decision. Consumers who have received a referral to you are no longer shopping — they are ready to retain you. Among the ways to get more referrals is to ask clients to recommend you, and to establish referral arrangements with other lawyers.

To impress clients and lawyers, it is key to have an up-to-date lawyer profile. Lawyers.com receives 34 million unique visitors each year who are seeking legal assistance.1 Seventy percent of those visitors come to Lawyers.com to find an attorney.2

The Google tool proves the necessity of having a multi-faceted marketing campaign to generate new business. Email, social media, paid search and referrals are guideposts on the customer journey to retaining your firm.

1Self-reported LexisNexis Web Statistics, 2012
2Data derived from a custom analysis of sub-domain URL information from comScore Mar. 2012. This data is not reflected in the basic comScore interface.

Brian Farrell, a Law Firm marketing Specialist for LexisNexis, posted an interesting article about how using color on your firm's website can influence your clients for good or bad.  Here is what he had to say:

When it comes to your website, you probably spent significant amounts of time thinking about the text, layout and other details. But how much time did you spend thinking about the color scheme?

When viewers visit your firm's website, their first impression is a visual one. Colors create moods and impressions, and our brains process their meaning before we've read the first word of text.

"Everybody is fluent in the language of colors but they usually do not realize it because they do not have to think about it in order to understand it," says Robert Bossinger, project management team lead for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. "Designers use colors to communicate a singular message or a complex, multifaceted message without ever writing a word. The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words is true."

So what does your color selection "say"? Here are some common website colors and the emotions they exude to clients and potential clients:

Red
Power and aggression, used most often by criminal law and personal injury firms. Be careful though — red also means love, especially if you have a pink accent. What's more, red, as a primary color, has for generations represented blood and is often used as a sign of danger (ever wonder why stop signs were red?).

Pink
A very feminine color, not often seen on law firm websites. However, as an accent, it's a very quiet and calming hue, and could be useful for both family law and women's rights firms.

Orange
The color of summer. Orange is very warm, and mixes well with browns. In business, it represents ambition, success and goals. It can also represent justice, happiness or new beginnings.

Brown
Earthy and rich, browns are often mixed with oranges and yellows to symbolize fall. It also stands for strength, productivity and hard work (as used in the UPS slogan "What can brown do for you?").

Gold
Wealth and riches. A masculine power color. When mixed with other bright colors, it represents playful humor.

Blue
Cool and calming, blue often represents both sky and water. A very strong color, used often by B2B firms, corporate attorneys and others who want to convey trust and devotion.

Green
Lighter shades represent nature, spring, growth. Be careful with greens though, since darker shades have a completely different meaning — that of power, money and success.

Your website designer should know the appropriate color combinations that complement each other and will most effectively convey the message you are trying to send. That is why you should schedule a consultation before designing or updating your website.

At our LegalTech New York 2013 panel — "Taming the Wild West of Social Media: The Secrets of Social Media Success in the Legal Profession" — moderator Steve Mann, chief marketing officer of the Research & Litigation Solutions business at LexisNexis, pointed out that roughly one-half of all law firms are now using blogs as a way to reach potential clients. He asked our expert panelists to weigh in on how firms can assess whether blogging is a good marketing strategy for them.

"I think we've passed the point where law firms should be thinking about whether or not blogging is right for them," said Stephen Fairley, chief executive officer of The Rainmaker Institute. "If you want to grow your number of contacts and expand your business, you've got to have a blog. There are no 'ifs, ands or buts' about it. This is a no-brainer."

"If you're going to get started in social media, a blog should be one of the cornerstones of your marketing efforts," said Larry Bodine, Esq., editor in chief of Lawyers.comSM and martindale.com®.

You can view a five-minute video segment of this piece of the panel discussion. Stay tuned next week for more details from the session.

NEW PROVIDENCE, N.J. (May 30, 2013) – Doctor. Lawyer. Astronaut. As graduation season kicks off, parents are anticipating where their children’s education will take them. A new survey from Lawyers.com – a top-cited online legal resource – reveals that nearly two-thirds of parents are hoping their children will choose legal careers.

According to the survey:

Parents are receptive to the idea of their children becoming a lawyer, but are slightly more mixed on their child marrying one:

• 64% of survey respondents with children in the household want their child to become a lawyer.

• Moms (55%) are more likely to be interested in having a lawyer as a son- or daughter-in-law than dads (38%).

Survey results conveyed the aspirations of lower income parents:

• 80% of parents with household incomes of less than $25,000 per year said they’d like their child to become a lawyer, vs. 54% of those with household incomes over $75,000.

“Being a lawyer means being a respected professional, and that’s something that parents want for their children. Despite the tough economy facing the next generation, it’s exciting to note that nearly two-thirds of parents would be happy with a law degree in their child’s future,” said Larry Bodine, Esq., Editor in Chief of Lawyers.com.

For more information, please visit www.Lawyers.com.

Methodology

A total of 1,001 interviews were conducted from April 4-8, 2013, collected from the Ipsos telephone Omnibus survey, TeleNation. TeleNation is a nationally representative study, including both landline and cell phone interviews; interviews were conducted in both English and Spanish. Qualified respondents were U.S. adults age 18 and over. Data were weighted to reflect Current Population Study statistics on age within gender, Census Region, market size, education, and race/ethnicity.

About Lawyers.com

The Rainmaker Institute recently commissioned a survey by The Research Intelligence Group to find out how consumers use social media in their search for an attorney. Read about the details of the survey at Survey Says Majority of Consumers Use Social Media When Looking for Lawyers.