SEO Tips for Attorneys - Paid Link Development
Lawyer marketing services that include paid link development can do damage to your credibility with search engines.

SEO Tip: Do not let any SEO company use the following "black-hat" techniques on your website:

Cloaking; doorway pages; hidden links or keywords; negative div tags; mirrored domains; link farming; keyword stuffing; over submitting to dozens (and god forbid, hundreds) of search engines. All these things can get your site delisted!

FindLaw Hit by Long Arm of Google Law

"...Back in October 2007, we reported that Google officially said that selling or buying links can hurt your PageRank and/or rankings in Google. We then saw the sledge hammer hit and sites noticed that their Toolbar PageRank scores dropped drastically. But even with all this publicity and all the official Google documentation, FindLaw.com managed to send out an email marketing blast to sell text links that are marketed to increase a site’s rankings.

"...Steve Matthews was shocked by how “blatantly overt” FindLaw.com was about selling the text links, going as far as sending out, "spammy marketing materials, unsolicited emails, selling links based on PageRank, training lawyers how to show 'link love' and apply link text, and just generally having the feel of a total Machiavellian manipulation of the system. Frankly, it was arrogant."

Barry Schwartz. SearchEngineLand.com
08/27/2008

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SEO Tips & Strategies for Attorneys - Paid Link Development

Best Attorney / Lawyer Website Marketing Tips

We can repair, fix, restore websites that were stripped or damaged by other SEO companies.

Attorney Website Marketing Tip #1:

Paid Link Development is Generally a Bad Idea

Read the fine print on any contract you sign with an attorney marketing company - especially if you are purchasing attorney website marketing services that include link development.

If you are not careful, you could be signing away your rights to control how and where your site is marketed and your rights to restitution if your reputation is damaged by a lawyer marketing firm.

Link Outsourcing - A Great Way to Give Your Law Firm a Bad Reputation

If you allow your SEM company to "market" your law firm by outsourcing link development your good name can be ruined. Some companies hire cheap labor pools that create fake email names and simply spam forums and social sites with cheap one-line ads about your law firm to try and get you inbound links. Others do the majority of their "marketing" by publishing (and republishing) poorly written articles [FindLaw Content Writing Complaints] on websites they control and free vanity self-publishing websites.

Again, read the fine print: your contract allows them to do this!

Does your contract state:

FindLaw will submit Subscriber's website listing to third-party sites including web directories and social bookmarks which may allow bloggers and others to comment positively or negatively about Subscriber's firm or attorneys. Subscriber consents to such submissions and understands that FindLaw does not control these sites and will not be able to remove comments or listings once they have been published.

Are you promised these attorney marketing services?

Directory Submissions
Content Development and Syndication
Other exposure, at West's discretion, intended to increase traffic performance.

Before you get excited about all the above marketing possibilities, read the disclaimer:

Disclaimer: Note that if you are participating on one or more of the following activities, you may not receive optimal results from your FirmSite Visibility Premium package: multiple websites (hosted at FindLaw or outside of FindLaw), Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns, black listed website with Google or other Search Engines.

Most attorneys have more than one domain name (posting on your own blog would count as "participating,") a linked-in account, or engage in some sort of online networking (and sometimes even social networks.) "Participating" in any of these things could technically be used as an excuse why the lawyer marketing services you paid for did not produce results.

And, unfortunately, at least one client we helped had their site blacklisted by all four major search engines as a direct result of black hat strategies used to try and promote their website (under the terms listed above.) Even worse, Google was blamed for "sandboxing" the site - for more than a year before our client had had enough and cancelled their contract.

Check Your Inbound Links

Check the inbound links you are getting from FindLaw (or from anyone doing your link development for you.) They are likely coming from company controlled / owned websites, vanity submission sites, or the link developers getting links for you are from a far away land with ISP addresses in Thailand, Indian, and other places Google knows these posters are not really interested in your U.S. law practice.

Google is smart enough to spot paid link development schemes and specifically cautions you not to do it or risk penalties:

Your site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to you. The quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating. The sites that link to you can provide context about the subject matter of your site, and can indicate its quality and popularity. However, some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact your site's ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

Links intended to manipulate PageRank

Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web

Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging ("Link to me and I'll link to you.")

Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

Source: Google Webmaster Central

SEO Tips for Attorneys - Paid Link Development Lawyer marketing services that include paid link development can do damage to your credibility with search engines.