Law Firms watch for Internet Scams
Are people making huge profits from the Internet? Sure!
Are search engines the tool for driving traffic? Sure!
If used correctly, are search engines one of the most cost effective advertising mediums to generate new clients? Sure!
Is your law firm going to encounter Internet based advertising that waste your time and money or even an outright scam? Sure!
Read this article and hopefully you will be able to prevent these Internet scams.
#1. “I’m from the XYZ legal professional Intergalactic search engine. We’re getting thousands of visitors every day and can guarantee your firm a top position for your location/practice area/keywords at a special discounted rate just for your industry.”
THINK/VERIFY/QUESTION: Established major search engines generate the majority of Web traffic. These include AOL, Ask, Google, MSN & Yahoo. Search engines such as, About, Open Directory, Alta Vista, Lycos, Looksmart, Mamma & Netscape are among the second tier of top search engines. The name and site looks professional, and the offer what sounds like a bargain. However, these are not the key factors to make a cost efficient investment!
First, if you have the Google Toolbar, check the PageRank of their home page. If the PR is not at least 5, pass. Then do a search on your favorite search engine for your keywords, if this ‘search engine’ does not show up within the first two pages of returned results, pass.
Do not be fooled, the standings in the featured/sponsored/selected listing section of your search engine are all paid-per-click advertisers. They are paying for top positions during their solicitation phase to show the unsuspecting. It is much more rewarding to obtain a page one placement in the 'organic' listings.
Finally, they may advertise high placement for a specific keyword phrase, but watch out for phrases with little or no competition. For example, they say that "Red Rider Legal Profession Search Engine" will come up on page one results when entered in MSN search, but who would ever use that specific phrase in a search engine?
#2. “Pay us $XXX and we guarantee to get your legal website on page one of Google, MSN, etc!” Just as before, be careful and do some research on what exactly they are offering. Which search engines and what keywords are they referring to when they guarantee top listings? Will your site be in the sponsored ads or the organic listings? Take a look at their other customers and verify they their service is worth the money. Look at other law sites who have this service, do they have a PageRank of 5 or more? If they are in fact optimization specialists, it would make sense that their own website have top organic positions as well. Verify for yourself using these keyword phrases, URL placement, URL position, SEO, search engine optimization. They should be on page one or two of AOL, Google, MSN or yahoo.
For over three years we have not dealt with individual site optimization but you can easily see that for our site www.websitetrafficbuilders.com our rankings are exceptional. As of this writing our standings were as follows, Google: URL position – PAGE ONE., MSN: URL placement – PAGE ONE, URL position – PAGE TWO., AOL – URL placement, URL position –PAGE ONE.
There are indeed some techniques out there that will have your site on page one instantly, but it is surely to be banned from the major search engines. Search engines will eventually banned your site for spamming the engines.
Think, verify and question; researching will definitely save you some time, money and effort.
Click the link below to return to: