| | Law Firms look on Internet Scams
Are people making huge profits from the Internet? Sure!
Are search engines the prime tool for driving traffic? Sure!
If used correctly, are search engines one of the most cost effective advertising mediums to generate new clients? Sure!
Will your law firm be enticed to participate in Internet based adverstising propositions that will be a waste of effort or even a scam? Sure!
Hopefully after reading this you will be able to avoid a few of these ever-evolving 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: Major search engines such as AOL, Ask, Google, MSN & Yahoo generate the majority of Web traffic. Other search engines include About, Open Directory, Alta Vista, Lycos, Looksmart, Mamma & Netscape. The offer you received is guaranteed NOT to come from one of these search engines. The name of the search engine and their site looks and sounds very professional, but these are not factors that are crucial in making a cost effective investment.
First, you should check the PageRank of their home page, they should have at least a PR of 5 otherwise dismiss it. If the 'search engine' does not show up within the first two pages of returned results, again you should dismiss it.
Do not be overly impressed by standings within the sponsored/selected/featured listing section of your search engine. These are all terms for paid-per-click advertisers. They could be paying for top positions here during their solicitation phase to show/impress the unsuspecting. They can terminate them at any time. It is far more productive and much harder to achieve a page one placement in the ‘organic’ listings of the major search engines.
Lastly, watch out for use of an example of a high placement for a keyword phrase that has little or no competition. It could be: “Type in Red Rider Legal Profession Search Engine into MSN and you see we are on page one, position one!” Though a truthful statement, think about who would ever use that legal phrase in a search engine in the first place!
#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.
We may not have worked with individual site optimization for over three years, but you can see through our site, www.websitetrafficbuilders.com we have very high standings. As of this writing this site had the following rankings: Google: URL position – PAGE ONE., AOL – URL placement, URL position –PAGE ONE., MSN: URL placement – PAGE ONE, URL position – PAGE TWO.
If you choose to use a quick fix technique that will rocket your site to page one, do not be surprised when your site disappears from the major search engines. It is not a matter of "if" your site will be banned it is "when" it will be banned for spamming the engines.
Think, verify and question; researching will definitely save you some time, money and effort.
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