New York Lawyers Success Blog

Once you have decided to outsource your SEO to a professional, you need to consider the many schemes, pitfalls, and traps that you will undoubtedly encounter.

A great place to start is Google’s Webmaster Central. Here’s their advice:

-Do you offer any online marketing services or advice to complement your organic search business?
-What kind of results do you expect to see, and in what timeframe? How do you measure your success?
-What are your most important SEO techniques?
-How can I expect to communicate with you?
-Will you share with me all the changes you make to my site, and provide detailed information about your recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

“Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a “special relationship” with Google, or advertise a “priority submit” to Google. There is no priority submit for Google. In fact, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through our Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself at no cost whatsoever.”

-Google Webmaster Central

We all know that having good positions in the organic search results is an important component to marketing your law firm. The trouble is that focusing on “rankings” alone is a fool’s game. You can be #1 in Google for a wide variety of terms without the help of any SEO professional. The question becomes, are people using these terms to search for you? In the end no law firm SEO should even be selling on a #1 ranking on Google alone.

The best advice is simply to avoid companies that are secretive or won’t clearly explain what they intend to do.

Many of the larger law firm web consulting services have a “come one come all” policy for taking on new clients. Ask your prospective web marketer how many other clients they have in your practice area in your geographic location. If they have more than 2 or 3, how do they decide who gets the best service? Most of the time it’s whoever is paying the most.

Also, watch out for consultants that are “one size fits all”. For instance, they might promise first page results by submitting “1 article a month” or building “5 one-way links a month”. Although these may be good strategies to employ, your website, competitors, the keywords you are going after, and your geographic area all effect the amount and type of work it will take to get your site found.

Our free Law Firm SEO Guide will help you avoid some of the most common traps.