How not to disappear from search results by generating positive word of mouth in social media

North Carolina Divorce Attorney, Lee Rosen (@leerosen), points out that lawyers are going to disappear from search engines if they don’t get people to talk about them in social media.

Rosen knows too well the importance of search, especially for lawyers in personal plight areas of the law (divorce, bankruptcy, personal injury, et al).

Ranking well in the search engines has become important in many of our practices. Google is the Yellow Pages of the modern age, and some lawyers are very dependent on marketing via the Web. No Google ranking sometimes equals no clients.

Traditional search engine optimization via good content, proper title tags, and incoming links is no longer going to be enough to get good rankings.

Google and Bing, the dominant search players, are increasingly emphasizing social signals in determining the rankings of their search results. In fact, Google made a huge change last week. Some lawyers game the system by putting out gobs of spammy, fake, anonymous tweets and other social endorsements of their work. That might work in the short-term, but it’s got huge potential to bite you later. I’d avoid that approach.

Just like in the offline world where an attorney’s word of mouth reputation rules, you now need to get people to start saying good things about you in social media. Per Rosen:

The bottom line is that we need to increase positive word of mouth about our businesses if we’re going to show up in front of people in need of our services. Today, word of mouth is communicated via social media. You need people saying nice things about you—online.

It’s now more important than ever that people say positive things about you on the Internet. Ideally, they’ll “Like” your page on Facebook, share your information via Twitter, and hit the +1 button on Google. That’s all-important now and getting more important every single day.

That can be a problem per Rosen as folks don’t brag about a divorce online. You’re not going to see a tweet that says:

“My divorce lawyer @leerosen really kicked my spouse’s ass. He’s the best!”

Rosen is asking attorneys for their answers in how to generate positive word of mouth through social media. Share your thoughts in comments to his post. Here’s my thoughts.

Begin with the premise that no one in social media needs to say you’re a great guy/gal or fabulous lawyer (though it’d be nice) for you to receive social media signals impacting search. People sharing in social media what you said or commenting about it is enough, perhaps even a better social signal telling the search engines you should be trusted.

• Start to use social media yourself. Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+. You can’t expect people to share a positive word about you or share what you’ve had to say unless you’re out there using these things yourself. Having someone do it for you is foolhardy.
• Engage. Don’t just push your content at people. When blogging, reference what others are writing (blogging lawyers, reporters, etc). Referencing those folks will get you heard by them and allow you to build relationships of trust with them. They’ll share what you had to say in social media and write about what you’re saying so you’ll receive greater exposure with people who can in turn share your content.
• Be an intelligent agent on Twitter. Share not just your own content, but information and news from others that is relevant to your target audience. You’ll build a following and others on Twitter will retweet what you have to say.
• Engage friends and close business associates in Facebook. You’ll build trust just as you do with exchanges in the real world.
• Use LinkedIn to connect with people you know, meet through through blogging or other social media, or would like to meet. LinkedIn will serve as another relationship builder which will lead to people sharing what you have to say online.
• If using Google+, build out a network like you do on LinkedIn or Facebook. Share relevant content. Comment on relevant content being shared by others in your network. You’ll have people citing you.

I’m sure there’s 85 other ways to gain social signals to impact search results that I am missing. I expect Rosen will pick up some in comments to his post and for him to share his own ideas in a later post.