If, like many attorneys utilizing social media for business development, you relied on Google’s Authorship feature to link your own content or articles, then you may have been disappointed when this feature was laid to rest a few months back. Just three years after the search engine giant allowed authors to publicly identify themselves via Authorship, Google indicates that the experiment was not as helpful to users as originally intended. Remember, Google states that its mission is to provide the ultimate user-experience (i.e. most targeted searches, relevant results, etc…).
If you’ve read 75% of the legal blogs out there, you probably agreed that Google Authorship seemed to be a great way to hold law firms accountable for the content they published; thereby encouraging the distribution of quality content.
What’s Next After Google Authorship?
What marketing tool has replaced Google Authorship? Mobile. Google has stressed over and over again the importance of having a mobile website (yes, that includes law firm websites). In fact, one of the reasons Authorship was dismantled was due to the fact that it did not work well with mobile. Recently, the go-to search engine let everyone know that sites that were not mobile-friendly would be penalized in search engine results (i.e. not displayed).
Image via Google
All is not lost with the exit of Authorship. If your law firm has shared content online, it can still show up in search results if shared on your Google+ profile. In other words, potential clients will continue see your G+ posts when using the search engine and searching for the key words you have written about and hashtagged. For more on Google+, including how to maximize its perks, click here or give us a call.
For more information on how to use smart social networking and content marketing to grow your law practice, contact the experienced legal marketing team at WebPresence, Esq. today.
