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Influence extends beyond a legal staffing agency to the legal recruiters ability to reach candidates. The most influential legal recruiters are the legal placement services that candidates are most likely to encounter. Additionally, when an employer wants to hire an attorney, generally, an employer seeks out the best legal recruiters with the influence to reach the candidates. The influence ranking is determined by a number of factors, which are discussed in detail in a separate article.
After analyzing 250 legal recruitment agencies across the United States, LawCrossing put together the 2017 Most Influential Legal Recruiter List in America based on a series of criteria. We ranked each legal placement firm's level of influence by utilizing more than 20 weighted factors. After months of research, we finalized the factors. The factors vary from the number of years the legal recruitment agency has operated to the use of social media.
Legal Recruiter
As a legal recruiter, it is the individual's job to look for legal recruits and place them at some of the best law firms in the country. The legal recruiter as a person believes that the stronger they know the recruit; the better it is for both. This is because they are more effective in helping them with their needs as they love the profession and enjoy working with and even helping people.
Many a legal recruiter have even left practicing law and have joined legal recruitment full time, because they prefer talking to their fellow attorneys regarding their careers. They even help take care of personal issues they are facing. Legal recruiters are passionate about talking to people. This is why they want to know your professional story.
We recommend that you meet your legal recruiter in person. Make it a point to meet the recruiter in case you are in the same town or city as they are. A face-to-face meeting can highly increase the chances of your success in case things move smoothly from there. This makes it more conducive to develop a stronger as well as overall successful client-recruiter relationship that further yields excellent results. LawCrossing's recruiter ranking list will help you move your legal career forward.
2016 Most Influential Legal Recruiters Factor List
To determine a legal recruitment agency's level of influence, we utilized more than 20 factors. Below are some of the factors we considered.
Technology Factor Descriptions
Domain Authority
Domain authority assesses how search engines evaluate domains. Generally, a legal staffing agency's domain authority is determined by three influence factors.
First, the domain authority is determined by the age of a domain, which is viewed as an analysis of a legal employment agency's legitimacy. The age of a domain is also an indicator of a site's trustworthiness. Further, domain authority will take into consideration the level of traffic a legal employment agency receives.
Second, is a domain's popularity. Typically, a search engine will determine a domain's authority by the number of sites that link to the legal employment agency's site because links are used to convey similar information. When links are seen as valuable links between sites because the websites are sharing valuable and similar information with other sites, this site will rise in domain authority.
Finally, the size of a domain will modify a legal recruitment firm's domain authority. If a legal staffing agency's website has more pages then the domain's "footprint" it will expand because the site will offer more useful content and have a higher probability of being linkable. Additionally, domain authority will judge the quality of the authority and a site that is viewed as having more authority will be indexed faster and thus raise a legal recruitment agency's influence rating.
Page Authority
Page Authority is a factor that predicts the potential of a page to rank high without taking into consideration the content of the page. Unlike domain authority, which ranks the authority of a domain as a whole, Page Authority ranks the influence of a single page. Page authority is a scaling factor based on a 100 point scale. Unfortunately, page authority is difficult to modify, and the best way to improve this component is to improve a legal recruitment agency's overall SEO.
Twitter Factors
Twitter is an online social media networking service. Tweets are micro blogs that enable users to send and read text-based statements up to 140 characters known as "tweets." Twitter is an important social media tool with over 500 million active users. Additionally, Twitter produces more than 340 million tweets daily. On average Twitter is one of the most visited websites on the Internet. In fact, Twitter ranks in the top ten most frequently visited sites in America. To be an influential legal recruitment agency, a legal staffing agency should effectively utilize Twitter in its overall marketing portfolio and strategy.
A Tweet Grade is a quantitative evaluation of a website's influence through the effective use of Twitter. The Twitter Grader keeps track of followers, followings, and other facts and then ranks the Twitter pages against other Twitter pages. Additionally, the Tweet Grader keeps track of a number of factors including a twitter account's interactions with others and frequency of use. A legal recruitment agency's Tweet Grade is determined based on a series of criteria, and we utilize this grade as one of the many constituents in our analysis.
Re-tweeting is another major Twitter factor in analyzing a legal placement agency's influence because when a Twitter user re-tweets information the user wants to share the information and the act of re-tweeting directly increases influence. For our Tweet Grade, we analyzed the legal recruitment agency's followers, following, re-tweet grade, and overall tweet grade. In this day and age, it is imperative for legal staffing agencies to utilize Twitter if the legal employment agencies want to reach the candidates.
Facebook Likes
One of the influence items used to determine a legal employment agency's ranking is the Facebook Like. According to the Facebook Developers, the Like button "lets a user share your content with friends on Facebook." When a Facebook user "Likes" a legal staffing agency, a "connection is made" between the user and the page.
In this era of social media, a legal employment agency needs to be able to reach candidates through the avenues utilized by candidates. When a legal staffing company has a strong social media presence, a legal recruitment firm has an extended reach and presence and thus more influence.
Facebook Shares
A Facebook Share is another social media influence factor. According to the Facebook Developers, a Facebook share is "one of the most powerful and simple ways for users to share articles, pages, video, or flash content from . . . [a legal recruitment agency's] site with their friends on Facebook." With over 1 billion pieces shared weekly on Facebook, this is a great area for legal recruitment agencies to increase influence ranking. In the past, a legal staffing agency was only expected to network outside the office. Nowadays, a legal employment agency needs to utilize these social media tools to increase a legal placement agency's influence in the minds of candidates and employers.
A Facebook Share is when a Facebook user reposts the information posted by the legal recruitment agency. Since Facebook users find the information posted valuable enough to repost these Facebook Shares increase a legal staffing agency's influence. How many Facebook shares do the legal recruiters that work with your agency share every month, week, or day?
Google +1
Google +1 is when someone recommends something the legal recruitment agency has shared on Google+. According to the Google profile, a plus one is similar to a Google Profile user providing a "stamp of approval." With Google circles, a legal employment agency may control which circles of users receive which content.
Google advises that users should "share when it matters." This +1 allows you to share recommendations with your circles as well as others when the advice is most helpful. When a user decides to click +1, the user is adding themselves to the legal placement agency's batch thus increasing an agency's influence and contact with candidates.
Google Page Rank
One of the elements used to determine a legal recruiter's level of influence is the Google Page Rank. There is a great deal of intellectual discussion regarding what constitutes the foundation of the Google Page Rank system. However, Page Rank is one of the factors Google utilizes to show relevance and importance. The Google Page Rank is a scaling system that results from a mathematical algorithm. According to Google, a hyperlink to a page constitutes a "vote."
According to some, a web page is given a ranking on a scale of 0 to 10 (0 is the lowest possible score for a website and conversely a 10 is the highest score possible). Additionally, this complex system takes a number of items into consideration including dampening factors generally listed at .85. Google Page Rank maybe calculated either iteratively or algebraically. The linking factor of the Page Rank is conferred by an outbound link, which is equal to the document's own Page Rank score divided by the number of outbound links.
However, the ultimate Google Page Rank factor is controlled by Google, and the algorithm is a changing science of calculating online popularity through a complex system designed to accurately calculate votes.
Alexa Page Rank
An additional ingredient is how a legal employment agency ranks on Alexa. The Alexa Page ranks a site by the traffic the site is generating. This factor is a scaling system in a descending order. Thus a website with more traffic is ranked closer to 0 and a website with no traffic may be ranked up to a billion. For instance, search engines such as Google and Yahoo are ranked lower (closer to zero) and a small website with few visitors could be ranked closer to a billion. Similar to the Google Page Rank, the Alexa Page Rank is continuously changing based on the factors Alexa decides to implement.
Quantcast Rank
Another factor used to determine a legal recruitment agency's most influential rank is the legal employment agency's Quantcast Rank. Quantcast Rank is a trusted measurement tool; however, the company remains secretive about its methods and ingredients utilized. Our research produced evidence that Quantcast Rank utilizes a series of items, including but not limited to, traffic, global traffic frequency, affinity information, and additional factors.
Google Page Index
A much simpler influential ranking criterion is the legal staffing agency's Google Page Index. Generally, this factor is determined by how many pages on the site Google has viewed and decided to keep in the Google database.
Bing Page Index
Bing is a search engine which was formerly known as MSN Search, Live Search, or Windows Live Search. Bing received a great deal of press in 2011 for releasing the "new back-end search infrastructure" so that Bing could provide faster and more relevant searches.
The Bing Page Index is another factor used to determine a legal recruitment agency's influence. Bing is a selective page indexer. This selection process has made the company notorious for being so selective. In addition, the Bing Page Index has a limited number of URLs.
Yahoo Page Index
The Yahoo Page Index is used to determine a legal placement agency's level of influence. Similar to Bing and Google, the Yahoo Page Index is determined by how many pages Yahoo has viewed and chosen to keep in Yahoo's database. Unlike other index services, Yahoo provides the main index, the internal index, and the regional index by city. Although some legal recruitment firms may be listed in a Yahoo City Page Index, other legal employment agencies are listed in the main Yahoo Page Index, which affects an attorney recruiter firm's national influence.
Backlinks According to Google
A backlink (incoming links) are the links coming from a site or page. Generally, a backlink is one of the many indicators of a site's popularity.
Historically, some might say Google had limited capacity to trace backlinks, but over time Google has doubled in size. Google ranks backlinks based on a series of factors including whether Google finds the link credible or less credible.
Ahrefs.com
Ahreefs.com is another company that analyzes a series of factors and provides Backlink information. The company focuses on three main directions including the "quality of data," the "update frequency," and the "index size." The company tracks and rates the various backlinks of each website. The company tracks vital information about the backlinks including the image, text, type, and redirects. Additionally, Ahref.com provides information regarding the distinct referring IPs, domains, and many other options.
For example, one has the option to investigate the following options:
Ahrefs provided a full analysis and for the purposes of this year's Most Influential Legal Recruiter List, we utilized the following influence items:
In sum, the three main items were analyzed using Ahrefs.com. Which factors will be utilized next year?
Delicious
Delicious is a bookmarking site as well as an online social connection site. Delicious is one way a recruitment firm is able to bookmark pages on its website. The bookmarks are saved online so you can visit the bookmarks on your computer, telephone, or other internet access devices. After a webpage is added, a legal staffing agency is able to tag the page. The tags are saved by Delicious and then the tags are indexed to the specific webpage. The more tags on a page, the more authority a page is given, which increases traffic. By utilizing the Delicious Link Checker Tool, a legal recruiting agency is able to view the legal placement agency's links as well as competitor link counts.
Unique Visitors Per Month
A legal recruitment agency's number of unique visitors is one of the influence factors. The IFABC Global Web Standards do not differentiate between a unique visitor and a unique user. For our influence ranking, a unique visitor is a statistic describing a legal employment agency's traffic. To calculate the statistic, a publisher and advertiser measures a site's audience. The number of unique visitors represents the number of users who visit the website once, thus excluding visitors that visit the site more than once in 30 days.
SEM Rush Rank
SEM Rush Rank is another critical item. SEM Rush Rank shows you the keywords a legal recruiter agency is ranked for and the searches, which are performed each month. In today's world, most candidates find legal placing agencies through the use of search engines. The keywords that are attached to each legal placing agency will affect the influence rankings for that particular legal recruitment agency.
Popularity Index
The popularity index is an assessment tool that ranks the sessions a domain receives. A legal employment agency is able to view the popularity of competitors to evaluate online traffic patterns. The popularity index is a long term tool designed to monitor the effectiveness of a legal recruitment agency's online marketing efforts. This important analysis aid determines the long-term influence of a legal placement agency through the website's popularity.
Conclusion
To be ranked on the 2016 Most Influential Legal Recruiters List, a legal employment agency must cater to legal candidates and employers. Although some listed legal employment agencies may provide recruitment services to other industries, the listed legal placement agencies have separate domains for these services. A separate page is not enough. Since the law is a specialized profession, it makes sense that legal recruitment is a specialized service. As such, we only rate legal employment agencies that provide brand clarity. Although we include legal staffing agencies that place attorneys, paralegals, and legal assistants, we only list the best legal recruiters in terms of influence that focus solely on the law. However, we have a separate list for recruitment firms across multiple industries listed on EmploymentCrossing.com.
Which factors will be utilized in the 2016 most influential legal recruiter's list? Check back with us next year to find out!