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Law firm internet marketing often blind leading the blind

Ran across a post entitled Law Firm Internet Marketing An Executive Summary Using the Q&A Format in my RSS feeds this am.

Goes on to answer a question about Google PageRank with information that could not be more wrong. And this from someone who holds themselves out as giving sound information about attorney marketing.

Google Page Rank is the standard on the Internet for success since 47% of the people on the Internet go to Google to do their searching and the other major search engines (Yahoo and MSN) use similar models as Google. If you rank high at Google you will rank high anywhere. The Google Page Rank system is from 0 to 10 with 10 being high and 0 being low. Probably more than 98% of sites on the Internet are ranked 0, 1, or 2. I do recommend you go to Google and get a Google Tool Bar since then you can see the Google Page Rank they have given you and every other web page you ever visit. This is a very useful tool in law firm Internet marketing. First it tells you how you are doing with your website. Next it tells you how well your competitors are doing with their websites, which tells you what you need to do to get a higher Google Page Rank so you are above them in the search engine results. Finally, it tells you how well your vendor has done for you in law firm Internet marketing and if you are searching for a new vendor it can tell you if they know what they are doing since they should show you sites they have built that have good Google Page Ranks.

Fact is Google PageRank has little with how a website or blog appears in search engine results. A site or blog with a PageRank of 0 could be number one at Google. PageRank tends to be more of vanity contest than anything.

Do a search for – California business bankruptcy lawyer. There’s a Cooley Godward blog #1 with a PageRank of 0.

The search engine performance of a site or blog is in large part dictated by incoming links from other blogs or websites. Each link is akin to a vote. Some votes or links are given greater weight – those from sites with a higher PageRank. That’s the role of PageRank, a vote weighting tool. Not a search engine ranking determinator.

Perhaps your blog or website will pick up more incoming links by virtue of a higher PageRank because other sites will want a reciprocal link. But that’s a backdoor argument as to why PageRank may help you in search engine rankings. It’s not the rank itself.

Do yourself a favor in looking at Internet marketing vendors. Make sure that’s their speciality, that it’s all they do. And to get better educated on things like search engine performance pick up a copy of Search Engine Optimization for Dummies or spend some time in Google’s Webmaster Central.

  • http://vancouverlawlib.blogspot.com/ Steve Matthews

    Hey Kevin, calling you out on this one. :-) That blog has a PR0 because it is less that 3 months old.
    http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/archives.html
    Yahoo shows it as having close to 10K backlinks, which means that when Google updates it’s Toolbar PR (not the same as the ‘Actual or True PR’ used in search calculations), it will have a PR5 or PR6.
    Also, ranking for a four word keyword phrase doesn’t invoke Google’s Trust Rank portions of the algorithm. Try ‘california bankruptcy’ or ‘california bankruptcy lawyer’.
    See, the thing is, in a year’s time, once those 10k links have aged, that blog is going to be pulling some serious traffic. You’re right in saying that PR alone doesn’t equal rank. Google’s search algorithm is said to have 100+ aspects – some on page factors, some off page. Blogs have many of these optimizations built in, and often rank very well, BUT, you shouldn’t overstate the power of a PR0 website.

  • http://kevin.lexblog.com Kevin OKeefe

    Thanks for the comment Steve but I’ll stand by PageRank not being the key determinative on search engine performance. Though important on some things, unfortunately it’s used by some search engine marketing experts in preying on uninformed buyers.
    On the keyword search I understand the point but we intentionally optimized not to pick up general California bankruptcy lawyer searches. It was not the work Cooley was looking for.
    Traffic can still be generated now even without a high PageRank.

  • http://vancouverlawlib.blogspot.com/ Steve Matthews

    Your critique of quasi-SEO experts and their use PR as a scare tactic is valid, but in my experience, PR is still one of the thresholds for ranking new sites in the search engines – specifically for searches that get bid on with Adsense or are searched for frequently.
    Case in point, there were no searches for that four term phrase last month on Overture, or Wordtracker. Whether you are optimizing for more targeted terms isn’t the point. My argument was that a website ‘that new’ simply cannot rank for a highly competitive search phrase.
    Thanks for bantering SEO with me Kevin. :-)
    Steve

  • Nick Carroll

    This is a classic example of the effectiveness of using subdomains of highly trusted sites (PR7, 12 years old).