Law Firms watch for Internet Scams

Are people making huge profits from the Internet? Sure!

Are search engines the prime tool for driving traffic? Sure!

If properly utilized, are search engines one of the most efficient advertising to generate new legal 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, 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.

They may advertise that the phrase "Red Rider Legal Profession Search Engine" will show up on MSN's page one search results. Realize though, that although this is true the chance of someone searching that specific phrase is slim to none. Look for keyword phrases that have a lot of competition and high placement.

#2. “Pay us $XXX and we guarantee to get your legal website on page one of Google, MSN, etc!” Again, there are many things to watch out for here. Get your legal site on page one of exactly what search engines and exactly which of your legal keywords? You’re just going to buy pay-for-click terms so ask whether you are in the sponsored ads or will you be in the organic listings? What other law firms in my area/state have they done this for? Get names to verify. Get a detailed list of at least three other law firms. Look at their home page. Do they have a PageRank of at least 5? They are selling an optimization service, and therefore one would think, if legitimate, their own website would have top organic positions for search engine optimization keyword phrases. Verify this for yourself. Here are the most popular keyword phrases they should rank for on page one or two of AOL, Google, MSN or Yahoo: URL placement, URL position, SEO, search engine optimization.

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; doing the research, you can save big bucks and big trouble.