SEO Snake Oil Law Firm – Help Us – Help Your Competition!
Let’s say you are a Chicago personal injury lawyer. His company hires Big Time Web Consultant to help him “get found” online. Maybe they will build you a website/blog. They optimize your site/blog for the keywords they tell you are relevant to your practice. For example, “Chicago personal injury attorney.”
They use “Chicago personal injury lawyer” in their title tag (one of the factors Google uses to rank their site).
Then another Chicago personal injury law firm calls Big Time Web Consultant. Big Time Web Consultant sells them a website/blog. They optimize the site/blog for the same keywords.
They use “Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer” in their competitor’s title tag!
Now look, I’m not suggesting that mere keyword overlap is a huge conflict of interest. What I am saying is that by targeting the same title tag keywords, creating anchor text links for that keyword, and focusing most of your SEO efforts on competing keywords, you are creating a problem for yourself. .
I mean, you wouldn’t represent the same party on two sides of a lawsuit, would you?
I imagine if you are the highest bidder, they will “help” you more. This doesn’t seem so fair. The problem is that most law firms have no idea what’s going on.
Unfortunately, this situation is more the rule than the exception. I can think of at least 3 major law firm web providers that use this “bidding war” approach. Also, and I’m just guessing here, I’d say these three players represent over 80% of online law firms (and that’s conservative).
Find an attorney for an internet marketing company that has some form of “exclusive partnership” or “non-compete” agreement.
