1. 12 Mohr Road
Burlington, NJ 08016
Phone: 609.447.1020
E-Mail: nalesi@legalerswelcome.com
Web: www.legalerswelcome.com
1 www.legalerswelcome.com w:609.447.1020
Google Authorship and Your Attorneys Secret OnlineCompetitive
Advantage
By Natalie Alesi
Google Authorship is a somewhat recently new feature launched by Google. While there are many new
social technologies and tactics, this is one that your law firm and marketing department may want to
pay attention to more fully.
Here’s the lowdown on how it works:
When your attorneys author and publish a blog post on the web and a client searches for that particular
topic where the attorney’s blog post shows up, the attorneys name and picture will appear in the
Google Search results. Hence, Google Authorship lets your attorneys claim ownership rights to that
content. The search results add the picture and By Line of the Author. This is important on many levels,
one being that it humanizes the content. See the below example:
Here’s the caveat, your attorneys need to have a Google+ Profile setup. Google+ verifies that you are a
real person via your Google+ Profile (and not some random spammer). If you have been wondering if
Google+ is really worth it? This would be the tipping point for me and a good time to get ahead of your
competitors.
In addition, it’s relatively easy to set up your attorneys Google Authorship. Any blog site or website
administrator can easily set up the necessary tags for your attorneys posts using the rel=author or
rel=publisher (please excuse geek speak here). Just ask your blog or site administrator, they will know
how to do this. If you are a smaller firm and have this responsibility yourself, you can easily Google,
Google Authorship, and find a multitude of good blog posts on how to set it up.
Still skeptical?

2. 12 Mohr Road
Burlington, NJ 08016
Phone: 609.447.1020
E-Mail: nalesi@legalerswelcome.com
Web: www.legalerswelcome.com
2 www.legalerswelcome.com w:609.447.1020
Here are three top considerations for your law firms marketing innovation initiative in 2013:
1. Authorship is easy to maintain, implement and has almost immediate results when potential
clients search for topics that your attorneys blog about.
2. Authorship gives credibility to your attorneys in Google’s eyes which can help increase their
thought leadership and online reputation when clients don’t always realize their internal firm
reputation.
3. Authorship is intimately tied with Google Search,a result which allowsyour firm to gain
competitive advantage by enhancing your attorney’s digital footprint way before your
competitors can even catch up.
So, will your firm take the plunge? Are your attorneys using Google+ yet as a social channel for business
development? I’m interested in hearing your thoughts and success stories.
About Author: Natalie Alesi
Natalie's experience and passion is sharing, technology, and continuous
learning. She has turned that passion and experience into a global consulting
practice with law firms and Fortune 500 companies. She is increasingly looking
for ways to help businesses improve their productivity and workflows using
21st century technologies. Natalie specializes specifically with Cloud and Social
Media technologies focusing on user adoption, change management, coaching
and communications and has helped hundreds of companies. Feel free to
connect with Natalie on any of your favorite social channels including her favorite channel Google+.