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I was recently asked by a client what i thought of lawyers.com for SEO purposes. Full disclosure: I used to work for LexisNexis, the owners of Lawyers.com. In my experience, attorneys got very few leads from lawyers.com – one client had less than 10 click-throughs in a year. But does lawyers.com have any SEO value? In my opinion, it does a little – but not worth it for the hundreds of dollars per month they charge. Instead, spend that money on a business.com or BOTW listing ($300/yr each), or hg.org (from $190//yr). Better yet, many attorneys can get a basic SEO package at Sequoia Legal Marketing for a similar investment.

Last week, Google announced a new feature for Google Plus – pages for businesses and brands. Google Plus “pages” is similar to Facebook’s pages for businesses; so what is the point in joining a new social network so similar to Facebook? I quickly created a page for each of my clients, in hopes of gaining an advantage in Google’s search results. Facebook is more established and already has millions of users; chances are your friends, family and clients are using Facebook and probably haven’t taken up on Google+ yet, so don’t worry about having yet another website to keep up with on a regular basis…

By creating a business page, you can add link to your website and create a profile about yourself and your firm. In the future, I expect Google to incorporate Google+ pages into their search results, much like that already do with local business listings and Google profiles. Getting in early with Google+ pages costs nothing and can only increase your exposure online, so why not create yours now?

In 2007 i invested a considerable amount of time and money and I got my Real Estate license. I scored 97out of 100 on my final exam, and I thought I’d be awesome at real estate. I quickly learned that technical ability had very little to do with success in the world of real estate.

In the world of real estate, the top producers are generally those who know the most people. They have a good reputation and people refer them, because lets face it; you’d rather have an agent someone you know has already ‘test driven’ for you. When you don’t know people in your community and don’t have these pre-existing relationships, you’re screwed.

Not only are referrals the best kind of leads in Real Estate, they are the best kind of leads as clients in general. How does this apply to SEO? Currently, Google looks at links back to your website as ‘votes’ for you. However, it’s easy to ‘game’ the system by buying links or hiring an SEO agency to find them for you. In the future, Google will rely more on a relationship-based sort of way of ranking in order to ‘better qualify’ links back to your site.

Social media is definitely a part of that. The friends you have on Twitter, on Facebook, and whatever social platforms we see in the future will help Google determine your ‘community’. The ‘Important People’ in your networks / ‘community’ who ‘recommend’ you (via Re-tweets, posting your links, etc.) will play a bigger role in determining how important you are – or will become – online.

Welcome to Hotel California Findlaw.

…you can check in any time you’d like, but you can never leave…

I don’t usually take on my competition so directly, due to the fact that they are a multi-million dollar company who could potentially sue me just to keep me busy for a few years…also because its not so nice.  However I want to address a concern that I find myself explaining to attorneys who call me, disillusioned with SEO. I find it somewhat un-ethical for Findlaw to call their product “SEO”.

Findlaw already knows they can take advantage of their wide network of high PR, high traffic websites. However, they appear to be relying on their network of Findlaw-owned websites for optimizing their clients websites. To a degree, this would not be a major issue IF these links were from practice relevant pages and they stayed there after the client stops paying for SEO.

However, Findlaw is not limiting their linking to content related pages, they are removing links once the client stops paying, and they are using paying client’s websites to promote other customers. They have simply set up a network of links on each paying clients websites to link to other paying clients.

Not only does this create a tiny neighborhood of links, where one infected or bad site could infect many, but this is FAKE SEO. It’s temporary promotion. Once a client stops paying for SEO, the links are removed and your rankings, PR and traffic will drop.

Here’s an example of a paying client providing links to other Findlaw clients;

On Findlaw’s New Jersey Lawyer Marketing Website, they promote a number of firms as ‘representative clients’. It’s easy to tell which are current client and which are past clients; current clients have many findlaw websites linking to them, and past clients do not. Using URL trends and Link Diagnosis, it is clearly evident that attorneys do not benefit from Findlaw’s SEO efforts after services have been rendered – Something the client likely does not expect.

As a side note, FindLaw’s website should be updated. Of the 23 representative clients, at least 10 have clearly taken their business elsewhere.

Is this ethical SEO? Essentially, paying for the privilege of having high PR Findlaw links to your website (which findlaw owns anyway) and losing that investment when you unsubscribe to their services?

Here’s an easy list of websites to submit your legal website or blog to – at no cost.
Divorce Lawyer Directory PR0
Profiles In Law PR2 – Attorneys Only
Womens Divorces PR3
Arbitration Attorney Directory PR0
WashLaw PR7 – Attorneys Only
MyHQ Legal Directory PR5
AVVO PR7 – Attorneys Only
Lawyers By Language PR2 – Bi or Multi Lingual Attorneys Only
e-lawyer PR3
LPIG.org PR6

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Jesus, enough already! Neilson data shows 60% of people try twitter for one month, then abandon it. In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of those people.

Kevin @ LexBlog lists three reasons why lawyers should twitter;

First, a way to socially network with people, some of which networking may lead to work, speaking engagements, and the like.

Two, a means to amplify your message, i.e., spreading what you what you may be blogging, writing, or speaking on.

Three, if you blog, you are going to get news from other bloggers whose content you may want to reference in your blog or work.

My counter to each;

Social Networking: Yes, Twitter is good for social networking. But I find it odd that, after a year of being registered on twitter, (with just one ‘tweet’), 20 people have followed me – and I don’t personally know any of them. Getting popular on Twitter is like claiming you have 800 friends on Facebook; who cares if you friend everyone in town? Does it really make them your friend? Do they really care?

If you want to social network, LinkedIn is far more useful in my opinion. First, someone who is in your network are far more likely to consider offering you work or speaking engagements. Secondly, people who are inviting you to their network aren’t just doing so to gain more ‘followers’. They know you, know of you, or want to genuinely get to know you for professional reasons.

Amplify Your Message: In the case of internet marketing professionals, it may be quite useful for random followers of mixed professional background to understand how SEO may benefit them or their company. If you are an attorney and want to announce your speaking engagements to local followers, then perhaps Twitter is a useful way to get the message out quickly (assuming you already have a following). If you are like most attorneys who value their time, the ROI of Twittering is likely not worth it. Need to get a message out quick? Ask (or pay) someone in your industry that already has a large following to do it for you.

Inspiration for Blogging : Ok, this item i have less of a problem with. But is this really useful to you? Even easier would be to get an RSS reader. Anyone with a Google account has one (free). Just hit the orange “RSS” button on your favorite blog, and then you can preview all your blogs, in depth (ie, more than 140 characters) in one place.

The only reason you should be twittering is if you have a lot of time to kill.  And if you have a lot of time to kill, shouldn’t you be doing something more useful?

Your an attorney with a website, but no SEO. I know your busy; but bill yourself for 60 minutes time and do some basic SEO. Don’t worry; I’ll walk you through it. Read more

Let me answer this question with another question;  Do you put your name in phone book? If you’ve answered yes, thats likely because you want to be found by people who are looking for your services. So… that’s the short version of why you need SEO. Read more

Social Media; it’s a word you’ve probably heard used, but you may be unsure what social media is all about. Some more common examples of social media include Facebook, Myspace and Twitter. Read more

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