10/26/2011
San Francisco, CA–As I have said before, “content is king” when it comes to your lawyer website and securing page one rankings on search engines. But, not all content is king, instead some content is more like the jester—who is there to entertain, but doesn’t really do anything to help your presence on the Web.
This content also known as duplicate content, can be articles, web pages and other pieces of information that have been recycled or leased from other sources, and were incorporated into your lawyer website as your own. This content can be extremely detrimental to your lawyer marketing efforts and can create a lot of grief. Many of the major law firm marketing groups do not dedicate the personnel or resources to developing fresh, relevant and current content specifically for your law firm website, which is why they recycle or lease content. These tactics are typically put into motion when clients have been persuaded by unscrupulous law firm SEO professionals to leave and to try a new approach.
Lawyers need to beware. The best way to do this is to read your agreement with the law firm marketing company you hired to create content for your lawyer website. If it is not stated in black and white, ask them how they generate the content and make sure that the content on your website and blog posts belong to your law firm alone. If they don’t have a team of writers to craft optimized and quality content specifically for your attorney website, my advice is to look elsewhere for an attorney Internet marketing firm who can provide those services.
Having duplicate content not only diminishes your credibility if someone else finds the same content on another website, it will hinder search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. Fresh, new and relevant content is the key to creating visibility, establishing authority and boosting your lawyer website to page one of Google. In addition, search engine features like Google Caffeine, give more weight to fresh user-generated content. Each time that your content is changed, added to, or updated on your law firm website, Google Caffeine will consider the updates as new content, potentially allowing for better placement and relevancy in search engine results pages (SERP).
If you are the victim of an unscrupulous lawyer marketing company, that populated your attorney website with duplicate content and are considering leaving for greener pastures, seek the expertise of a Google SEO consultant, before you suffer more irreversible harm.
About the writer:
Rene Perras is a law firm SEO consultant, who has worked alongside law firms of all types to help build effective attorney Internet marketing campaigns for over 20 years. For a free consultation about law firm SEO, please contact Rene Perras at 720-ONE-RENE or visit Cepac.com
