Not only may FindLaw be liable to law firms for the millions of dollars paid by law firms to FindLaw for these spam links, but FindLaw and its parent company, Thomson Reuters, has damaged its reputation and brand in the eyes of lawyers and the search community, including Google, for years to come.

Dad always said there's a right way and a wrong way to handle everything. FindLaw needs to do the right thing and to do it now.

Here's the right thing to do:

1. Acknowledge immediately to your lawyer customers who bought the spam links and the legal community as a whole that 'FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business,' acted wrongly and in violation of Google's webmaster rules.
2. Apologize immediately to the law firms and the legal community for FindLaw's course of conduct.
3. Announce immediately that FindLaw will refund within 30 days all the money paid by the law firms for these links.
4. Perform an immediate accounting of all monies paid for the links by the respective law firms. (Appears to be in the hundreds, possibly thousands of law firms and for all I know could be $3 to $5 million).
5. Report the results of the accounting publicly.
6. Hold the FindLaw people who authorized the sale of links, who had to know it was improper, personally responsible. That includes senior management who very likely knew.
7. Establish an in-house ethics review committee and ethical standards protocol to prevent future improper conduct.

Tuesday will be the 7th day since the news of FindLaw's selling links was reported on the net as well as 7 days from when Google's Matt Cutts became aware of the violation. And at least the 4th day since FindLaw was penalized by having its website PageRank dropped from a 7 to a 5.

FindLaw has chosen not to respond - to the public, to its customers, or to bloggers. This is rather surprising in these days of corporate damage control and where word spreads like wildfire on the net.

I worked as a VP of Business Development for LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell - lawyers.com, FindLaw's largest competitor, following the acquisition of my prior company. I may never have agreed with everything Martindale did, and God knows I am a vocal critic of Martindale here, but Martindale always looked at itself as having a reputation to uphold because of its history and its role in the legal community as a whole.

I can't believe Martindale senior management would have ever allowed this sort of thing, no matter the pressure for incremental revenue. But if Martindale did get itself in trouble, I have to believe it would have held itself accountable to its lawyer customers and the legal profession.

FindLaw needs to act accordingly if it wants to seriously compete with Martindale and lawyers.com, reduce the damage to the Thomson Reuters FindLaw name, and to attempt to reestablish itself as a respected member of our legal community.

The legal community looks forward to FindLaw's response in the next day or two.

Update: Based on an inquiry from a sales rep I want to make myself clear. In no way did I mean to imply that Martindale ever sold spam links - Martindale, to my knowledge, has not ever sold links like FindLaw did. My point was that the Martindale senior management I knew while serving as a VP of Martindale would never have even thought of doing something like FindLaw did.

Related post:

• FindLaw gaming Google, and possibly scamming lawyer customers?

The percentage of internet users who use search engines on a typical day has been steadily rising from about one-third of all users in 2002, to a new high of just under one-half (49%). With this increase, the number of those using a search engine on a typical day is pulling ever closer to the 60% of internet users who use email, arguably the internet's all-time killer app, on a typical day.

One reason for the increase in search use is the quality of information available on topic specific sites. People can find a site-specific search engine on "just about every content-rich website that is worth its salt."

With a growing mass of web content from blogs, news sites, image and video archives, personal websites, and more, internet users have an option to turn not only to the major search engines, but also to search engines on individual sites, as vehicles to reach the information they are looking for.

Can you say niche law blog with a clearly displayed search feature retrieving highly relevant searches in a hundredth of a second?

Perhaps of interest to law firms is the demographic makeup of those using Internet search.

• More likely to be socially upscale
• At least some college education
• Incomes over $50,000 per year
• More likely to be internet users with at least six years of online experience
• Younger internet users are more likely than older users to search

Also of interest is how search use compares to other Internet daily activities.

Note the increasing use of the net for news (39%) and social networking (13%). Both represent opportunities for savvy lawyer PR/marketing and networking through news syndication (blogs, Twitter) and social networking (LinkedIn, Martindale's Legal Connection, Legal OnRamp etc).

Click here for a copy of the study. (pdf)

Per Google, here's how it works.

Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you've entered, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0 to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms......On the results page, you'll also see a list of the top searches, top rising searches, and a world heat map graphically displaying the search volume index with regions, subregions, and cities.

Google goes on to explain how Insights will be helpful.

Whether you're an advertising agency, a small business owner, a multinational corporation, or an academic researcher, Insights for Search can help you gauge interest in pertinent search terms......Insights can help you determine which messages resonate best. For example, an automobile manufacturer may be unsure of whether it should highlight fuel efficiency, safety, or engine performance to market a new car model.

I ran a search on blogs to measure the increased interest over the last 4 years and here's what I got.

as well as search terms and rising searches related to 'law blogs.'

It's not going to work for every keyword or phrase term as some search terms may not receive enough traffic for Insights to generate a report. But on my first look, and based on the comments from bloggers at Google Blog Search, Insights looks to be pretty cool.

Though there's not much coverage yet on the legal blogosphere, FindLaw's conduct has sure generated emails and phone calls to me. I suspect we'll see blog discussion in the coming days, along with FindLaw's response.

SEO basics to understand the severity of FindLaw conduct

One of the ways Google determines where a given site will rank for a specific search is the number and quality of inbound links to a website. The theory is that very interesting pages will be linked to by many other websites and blogs. A page or website with a lot of links therefore has a lot of authority (Google measures authority on a 1-10 logarithmic scale called PageRank).

Taking it one step further, a link from a high PageRank site (like CNN or FindLaw) is more valuable than a link from a low PageRank site. The more links to your website from sites with a high PageRank, especially from relevant subject sites (links from FindLaw to lawyer websites), the higher your website may appear in Google search results.

Now from Google's webmaster guidelines as to websites and SEO consultants selling links to website owners trying to achieve search rankings.

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site's ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site's value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google's webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site's ranking in search results. (emphasis added)

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

• Adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to the < a > tag
• Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank. If you see a site that is buying or selling links that pass PageRank, let us know. We'll use your information to improve our algorithmic detection of such links.

It's text links, as opposed to advertising or directory listings, in website copy being sold to game higher search engine rankings that's the clearly outlawed conduct. Throughout the SEO community the practice is called link spam or search engine spam.

Google takes link spam serious enough to have a designated group to prevent such conduct and penalize those who participate in the proscribed conduct. Headed by Matt Cutts, the Search Quality group at Google and Cutts are widely known across the Internet and the SEO community for enforcing the Google Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam.

What did FindLaw do?

The best summary is provided by Todd Friesen in a post entitled 'Shame Shame Shame Findlaw.' Friesen's been doing SEO since 1998 and is currently the Director of SEO for Range Online Media which performs work for such clients as Sharper Image, Nike, Neiman Marcus and Accor Hotels North America.

As Friesen outlines:

• FindLaw sent unsolicited emails to lawyers and SEO experts selling a search engine marketing (SEM) program service.
• FindLaw's service sells a law firm up to 3 hard coded links to be placed on editorially relevant pages of content for $12,000 ($1,000 per month for a 12 month contract).
• FindLaw's service educates lawyers how to write the best text for their links (anchor text) so as to achieve higher search results for the lawyer's website.
• A law firm is 'allowed to submit up to 5 articles to be placed' in relevant areas of the FindLaw, with 5 additional links.

FindLaw may contend that the links in any articles submitted are not link spam, but the article submission is optional and the selling of links otherwise appears to be a clear violation of Google's guidelines.

Friesen and the SEO experts who commented to his post sure think FindLaw is guilty of link spam. Friesen goes so far to say, 'It’s been nice knowing you Findlaw.'

Matt Cutts acknowledged in a comment on Friesen's blog last Wednesday that he had been forwarded copies of FindLaw's emails selling links. Cutts also posted at Twitter the same day that he enjoyed that post of Friesen's.

Though I don't monitor the PageRank of websites, I'm told FindLaw had a PageRank of 7 as little as a week ago. By Friday night, FindLaw's PageRank was a 5, and remains so today.

A PageRank move is more than just a proportionate thing, it's geometric in nature ala the Richter scale for an earthquake. A drop of 2 on PageRank is a very significant move, something that significantly diminishes the value of links from FindLaw to lawyer websites.

One email I received highlights FindLaw's dilemma:

The most juicy insight that no one seems to have picked up on, however, comes from FindLaw’s own letter: “As you may or may not know, FindLaw has been providing SEM programs to law firms for the last four years. The product has been very successful at elevating the natural search results of law firms in all of the major search engines and has helped them generate more business from search engines.” (Emphasis in bold). So it seems FindLaw has been doing this for a while and only got caught when it moved outside of the law firm market. This admission means there are already firms paying FindLaw for this program – and now that Cutts has presumably removed the value of the links – a bunch of firms are essentially paying for nothing. By now, FindLaw knows this result – and the ethical thing to do would be to publicize their mistake and refund money. So far, FindLaw hasn't done so.

Another problem for FindLaw is whether Google would penalize the websites which bought links. Imagine being a law firm paying FindLaw $12,000 per year for search engine optimization and having your website adversely effected in search results as a result doing so.

This is an unfortunate situation all around and one that law firm marketing companies, including LexBlog, as well as law firms should take notice of. Search Engine Optimization is something we all want to achieve, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything.

It's now up to FindLaw to do the right thing for its customers and the legal profession as a whole. FindLaw calls itself the leading online law destination. FindLaw now needs to act like it.

Related post:

• FindLaw SEO misconduct : Suggested course of conduct

In fact some lawyers would rather see their name at the top of search results or on the back of a phone book than have a reputation as a trusted and reliable authority in a niche area of the law. Wonderful that these cads are in the same profession as you and I who went to law school to right a few wrongs and to take pride in what we do.

The latest comes from lawyers throwing money down a rat hole by paying unscrupulous SEO-Search Engine Optimization clowns to get spam links via comments on good law blogs.

Scott Greenfield explains how the spam comments on law blogs scheme works.

One of the latest [trends] that has hit Simple Justice fairly hard is the latest effort in advertising by desperate lawyers, who apparently pay someone else to post comments to a blawg (such as this) with a link to their website.

The name of the commenter is listed as 'Miami Lawyer' and the link is to some Miami lawyer's website.  One might think that the concept would be followed through with some further degree of thought, such as searching for posts that relate in some way to stories about Miami, so that people who read the comments to the story might have a better chance of being interested in Miami lawyers.  Not so.

In the course of a day, I get one individual posting a dozen comments to miscellaneous old posts without any apparent nexus to each other or the geographical or subject matter area of the lawyer.  Each will link back to this 'Miami Lawyer's' website.  But here's the rub:  The comment is written in broken English and fails to demonstrate any knowledge of the content of the post.

Example: Greet to the webmaster for this wonderful site.Keep up good work.

This is the actual comment left yesterday.  To the Miami Lawyer who paid someone to leave this comment and link to his website, this word of advice.  It makes you look like a blithering idiot.  Is that what you are trying to accomplish?

As Scott explains the comments usually say 'nice job on the blog' or something else complimentary. So lawyers new to blogging are apt to keep the comments up. Don't. You'll just be supporting the sleaze and lazy of our legal profession.

And for lawyers buying SEO from guys that sound and behave like crack cocaine dealers, follow Scott's advise.

...[A]s a public service to anyone foolish enough to pay good money to some advertising 'solutions' company that outsources its work to people who will make you look far more pathetic than you are, let me say this.  Don't do it.

You are wasting your money.  You are not going to get any cases from comments that make you look stupid.  You are going to have your comments deleted, and then I'm going to ban you from here.

If you're really trying to market yourself by establishing yourself as an authority in the legal blogsophere, do it the old fashioned way. By working at it.

Subscribe to blogs in your niche as well as keywords and key phrases via Google Blog Search and Google News. Comment on other blogs - both on your own blog and in the comment field on other law blogs.

And at all times, add value to the discussion. You went to law school. You have 7 years of college and graduate education. It is actually possible to offer insight and commentary, as opposed to looking for the next get rich/cut corners advertising scheme.

Working at blogging the old fashioned way will get you plenty of links - and others citing you and your content throughout the net. I know you may not care, but it will save you money and get you more legal work.

Not a study solely about lawyers, but one that finds nearly one-in-five adult internet users (19%) say they have searched for information about co-workers, professional colleagues or business competitors with an online search engine. Searches are also being done on people users are meeting for the first time as well as those who we're considering hiring.

You've got to believe the number of people doing such background checks increases when you have two additional factors in play, as is the case with lawyers. The need to place great trust in the person being searched. The higher the amount being charged by the person being searched.

Ask yourself what people are finding when they search you. If it's only your website and directory listing or two, you're in trouble.

You've seen these blogs - or maybe you haven't as word of such tasteless marketing doesn't spread across the net or generate links as is the case with well done law blogs.

They're the blogs with post titles with keyword spam repeating the lawyer's area of practice and location. They'll have categories repeating the same keywords over and over. And the posts, rather than serving up something worthwhile look like the lawyer is trying to one up the next worse lawyer.

No one's told those lawyers what Lorelle VanFossen at Blog Herald is preaching, that being that viewers come to your blog for 3 reasons.

• Search Engines
• Links
• Word of Mouth

Lorelle explains:

Google ain’t the only game in town. We know that, though many are still staking their business and reputations on the old Google Game thinking. You have to mix things up in order to cover the more important part of building traffic and encouraging readers to return - and bring their friends with them.

You have to write for your audience. You have to write to, for, and with your readers. It is the power they hold over you to link to you and spread the word about your site that makes or breaks your blog.
Visitors come from three sources:

If you wrote for search engines only, then you would only be paying attention to one out of three.

And I agree with Lorelle as to which of the three is most important.

Word of Mouth is the most powerful form of marketing, even more powerful now than ever in history. We have the capacity to reach thousands of people within seconds. If our message is clear and viral, worth spreading around, those thousands tell their friends and their friends tell their friends, and they all descend upon your blog.

Blogs written for search engines stick out like a sore thumb. Power users of content, thought leaders in the field who are blogging and reporters, are totally turned off by such blogs.

Law blogs engaging in an ongoing conversation among such thought leaders and reporters get plenty of subscribers. Word of mouth and links are generated thereby.

Lawyers who think blogs are all about the search engines and blog for the search engines are misguided. Anyone coaching lawyers to write blog posts for the search engines is giving bum advice.

Good bloggers write for their audience.

I find it pretty interesting, like Darren, that social media sites are the number 1 source of traffic for 15% of bloggers. I also agree with Darren that if he asked the same question 18 months ago social media sites would have barely registered on the results.

We're always a little lagging in the legal industry. I am finding some blog traffic coming from social media sites such as Twitter and Stumbleupon, but I'd guess it's only 5 or 10% of my traffic. Most of my traffic comes from people coming directly and by others mentioning a post of mine in their blog or online publication.

Where does most of your blog traffic come from?

Here's a chart from Danny Sullivan based on last week's numbers from Hitwise.

That's nuts. I'm not sure Ben honestly believes that.

If there's lawyers and legal marketing professionals who honestly believe blogs are only for search engine rankings, I expect they're the ones who previously believed the only way a lawyer could get new clients was through large yellow page ads and other advertising. You know, the biggest and gaudiest ad with call the 1 800 lawyer thing.

They believe Google is replacing the yellow pages for people selecting a lawyer. God forbid you're not at the top of search engine results page of Google when someone searches your town and the type of lawyer you are. 'If I'm not at the top of Google, I'll never get any work. I'll go broke.'

The same thing that has allowed good lawyers, no matter their area of practice, to get good work over the years is why law blogs work so well. The ability to network with thought leaders in your field, influencers within your community, and prospective clients.

When I practiced in a small rural town in the Midwest a leading law firm ran only a very small in column ad in the yellow pages listing their 12 lawyers by name. That's it. Only advertising they did. And they got as much work as anyone in the area in everything - personal injury, divorce, real estate, corporate, estate planning, bankruptcy, probate and what have you.

How they'd do it?

• By striving to be good lawyers - staying up to speed on legal developments and news that effected their practice.
• By writing articles for legal publications and regional newspapers.
• By presenting at seminars and conferences for lawyers and relevant industries.
• By being well known by the press and being available when reporters need resources or a quote.
• By becoming leaders regionally and state-wide in bar and legal associations.
• By networking with good lawyers around the state.
• By networking with community leaders and influencers in various civic organizations.
• By being social and cordial with people who influence others in their selection of a lawyer - bailiffs, court clerks, judges, bankers, doctors, insurance agents, realtors, title company personnel, court reporters etc.

They further enhanced their reputation as good lawyers you could trust by networking. Word of mouth spread.

Blogging is a new way of networking with thought leaders, community leaders, the media, current clients, and prospective clients. It's how you further enhance your reputation as a lawyer who can do a heck of a job for people and companies needing legal services in your niche. It's how you generate a word of mouth reputation that's far wider reaching than offline.

Ask any lawyer who knows how to blog effectively. They'll tell you their blog is much more than search engine rankings. Don't get me wrong. Search engine rankings are important, but they'll come anyway through effective blogging.

Let's act like lawyers folks. We didn't go to law school so we could run the largest yellow page ad, billboard, or to rank at the top of something called Google - which in our wildest dreams we could not have dreamed of in law school 30 years ago. What's after Google? You'll be chasing that too with the latest gimmicks.

Rise above the pack. Be the lawyer you want to be in the area of law for which you have a passion. Become a lawyer's lawyer. Establish a reputation that's not fleeting. It can be done via online networking through effective blogging - not by just being at the top of Google.

Julie Batten at The ClickZ Network sheds some light on why blogs achieve higher rankings.

• A high number of inbound links (with keyword-rich anchor text).
• A lot of keyword-rich textual content, with typically a distinct lack of Flash and other non-textual content.
• An inherent structure that enables the spider to both find and understand site content (e.g., posts are descriptively titled, organized by topical areas, and linked to in a logical manner).
• A high propensity for being found through popular blog directories or search engines, such as Technorati.

Of course, as Batten notes, Internet users will still need to determine the credibility of websites or blogs at the top of Google's search results. But as a lawyer blogging on a niche topic for which you have first hand expertise, you're a pretty credible source. For Google looking to get get credible informative sites to the top of its search results, mission accomplished.

Citing first comScore's report at the Search Engine Strategies conference in New York.

Of some 1.2 billion search queries on Google during a one-week period in January 2008, universal results were presented about 17 percent of the time, according to research released by James Lamberti, comScore's SVP, search and media. 'The search result page is beginning to operate as a destination,' observed Lamberti. 'The consumers are a priority. Not the marketers.' Plus, Google sent nearly 400 million search referrals to their own multi-media properties, such as YouTube, over six months. That includes 148 million referrals to YouTube and 173 million to Google Images, the comScore data show.

And then search expert and author, John Battelle:

To pretend otherwise is to ignore the reality of YouTube, Google News, Google Maps, Google Local, the onebox interface, Knol, and everything else Google owns that represent the chance for them to make money the way every other media company in the world makes money - by competing for your attention and monetizing it with advertising.

Consumers, business exec's, in-house counsel, and reporters, all targets of your law firm's attention are spending time at Google. Every sort of digital marketing your firm conducts must take into account Google.

Points to keep in mind:

• Any legal directory, Martindale-Hubbell, Avvo, Martindale's lawyers.com, Super Lawyers or whomever, will need to do an effective job indexing at Google all lawyer bio's, firm profiles, and in the case of larger law firms, their practice groups.
• Question the value of a directory that's preaching we're a portal drawing large traffic, as opposed to showing how well your bio appears at Google on a search.
• Any law firm website or blog needs to be search engine optimized from the get go. Begins with the development of the site or blog, it's not an after the fact thing.
• Make sure your firm is registered in Google local search for ease of all clients who may be looking for you.
• Use YouTube for all of your video. Descriptions of videos and their tags are already indexed at Google. Expect consumer use of YouTube to grow to the point where people will begin to search it for subject matter video, as opposed to just for entertainment.
• Use Google Site Map technology and Google's Feedburner for effective indexing of content and RSS feeds.
• Any content, whether articles stored on a website or distributed in email newsletters or alerts needs to be published on software generating an RSS feed (blogs are the easiest way to generate RSS) in order to have the content indexed at Google Blog Search, where thought leaders and reporters subscribe to keyword feed searches.

Fortunately Google and its tools are free. Some expense will be incurred by law firms in hiring people who understand how Google works. But the greatest cost to a firm would be to continue down the present course not understanding the true impact of Google.

Though law blogs often rank higher on Google than websites, law blogs don't exist for SEO shenanigans. Law firm website developers and law firm 'SEO experts' who don't have a clue about blogs don't understand this.

Unfortnately, I'm seeing the same disturbing trend as Edelman Senior Vice President Steve Rubel.

Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

This represents a clear and present danger to the fabric of the community. If you care about the social web, then you should be alarmed.

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more.

Steve goes on to explain that if you're using blogs appropriately, high rankings will follow anyway.

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. SEO, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective. Any brand that plays in this space should be aiming to create value. Do that and the other stuff will follow.

The vast majority of LexBlog's 300 plus blogs rank near the top of Google for their area of law. That's happening as a result of good blogging and proper blog site architecture, not because of SEO shenanigans.

1. Rob La Gatta: In layman's terms, what is the purpose of search engine optimization?

Steve Matthews: Keeping this as jargon free as possible, I would say 'SEO' or search engine optimization is about using search engines like Google to expose 'something' to the right audience. When it comes to marketing professional services, that 'something' can refer to the firm brand, a service line, a lawyer's individual profile, articles & content, or some combination thereof.

Firms that employ an SEO strategy build a portfolio of search terms targeted around their subject or service expertise. Those firms know exactly which phrases are being searched for because they utilize keyword research tools. Pages are selected as 'landing pages' for particular keyword combinations, and then optimized to rank well. And to rank well, pages must be properly coded to reflect the subject of choice, and more importantly, be cited - via links - from other web pages on that same topic.

2. Rob La Gatta: As the Internet expands and the value of high search rankings becomes more apparent, it seems like there are a lot of so-called "SEO specialists" coming out of the woodwork. How can someone tell whether an SEO consultant is legitimate?

Steve Matthews: I would start with a cursory review of their work. Ask to see a comparable client in a different market, and see how their site ranks. While requests for client confidentiality do occur, most professionals should be able to give samples of their work.

I would also listen to their proposed strategies, and specifically how they intend to acquire links to your website. Remember, your site will be evaluated by the company you keep. I would also make sure they understand marketing professional services, and have experience beyond product-based search marketing.

The difficult part of the evaluation will be telling if the practitioner has the skill to rank for highly competitive search phrases. I would ask to see some of their top results for two word search phrases. Rankings gets increasingly difficult as the number of words in the search decreases. If he or she can hit a top-10 rankings for two word searches (and preferably two words that combine for a recognizable phrase), that would be a good sign they are capable to building your firm a 'portfolio' of three word searches.

One last hint: if you're not sure which searches are competitive, have a look at the number of accompanying advertisements or 'sponsored links' on the right hand side of the page. Paid results almost always correspond with desirable, and usually competitive, search terms.

3. Rob La Gatta: What would you say is the biggest misconception people have about SEO and its purpose?

Steve Matthews: One of the biggest misconceptions I come across is the belief that SEO is somehow based upon programming tricks. I routinely run into people who believe that SEO is no more than stuffing keywords into the meta tags or title tags, or that if you *gasp* stuff keywords into your marketing copy you'll get to the top of search results.

My take is that a successful search strategy can be broken down into: 30% on-page factors, and 70% off-page factors. It's much more important to have a quality network of links coming into your website than to let someone alter your message. And when you do hit those top rankings, it's the pages with quality copy that will convert to leads.

Here are the facts: Marketing copy should be drafted for its intended audience, and always be natural. A good SEO should be able to work with clean copy and make it rank. That doesn't mean that on-page factors aren't important - as an example, well designed title tags are very important - but a good rule of thumb in my books is that SEO should never trump exposing your firm brand or alter your marketing copy.

4. Rob La Gatta: I've read that blogs naturally perform better in search engines than static websites. Do you believe this is true? If so, why?

Steve Matthews: Not to be picky, but we must compare apples to apples here.

Blog software is classed as a Content Management System, or "CMS", and most modern CMS products already have the on-page SEO factors baked into their product. If we're talking about hand-coding static web pages, then yes, a developer could overlook some of the basics - which would make it seem like blogging software has an advantage. But otherwise, most web designers will employ a CMS, and these products can compete with blog software.

The practice of blogging, however, does bring a number of attributes to the table that are unique.

First of all, blogs are content based marketing, and the breadth of content that a blog can deliver is very powerful. What many people are calling the long tail, blogs allow an author to cast a very wide net around their subject of expertise. And it's this ever-growing body of work that gets indexed within the search engines.

Situated properly, a professional blog can build individual lawyer's profile, and work as a more casual lead-in tool for the firm's website, which is geared more toward services, expertise and experience. In other words, get to know the lawyer in question, and then decide if that person is qualified. Even with SEO, you must consider the entire online decision making process.

The second SEO factor I'll note is the number of trusted citations that blogs produce. Lawyers need to understand that links are the currency of the web, and that blogs are not just a publication opportunity. If they were, why wouldn't you just convert all your newsletters into blog software? It doesn't work. It's only when blog authors engage the social side of blogging, and begin to link out to other bloggers (who eventually reciprocate) that blogs begin to have a dominant effect on the search results.

Interested in hearing more? Recent LexBlog Q & A posts:

• Tom Goldstein, partner at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and founder of SCOTUSblog [1.30.08]
• Rick Klau, former VP of publisher services at FeedBurner and current member of Google's content acquisition team [1.29.08]
• Dan Harris, Seattle international law lawyer & publisher of the China Law Blog [1.28.08]
• Daniel Schuman of the American Constitution Society's ACS Blog [1.25.08]
• Tim Titolo, Las Vegas personal injury lawyer & publisher of the Brain & Spine Injury Law Blog [1.24.08]

Links are best garnered as part of being in a conversation among thought leaders in your field. Todd Smith is a Texas Appellate lawyer and holds himself out as being a pretty good one via his blog. If another Texas appellate lawyer comes along with a blog why not engage that lawyer in a conversation.

That's done by referencing what the lawyer says on their blog and providing your take. Obviously you'll be linking to that lawyers blog post when referencing what they have to say.

By engaging in an ongoing conversation with other thought leaders and the media you will be seen by people doing research in the area as an authority. When someone Google's your name they will see other thought leaders referencing what you have had to say - a tacit endorsement of your expertise. If you're not engaging in the conversation among leaders in your field, you are conspicuous by your absence.

Think of it like a conference or series of conferences. The thought leaders are on the panels. They comment on what each other says. They comment on other panelists answers to questions from the audience.

If you are sitting in the audience because being on a panel would require you to recognize other lawyers as thought leaders by engaging in a conversation with them, that's fine. You'll just never be seen. You'll never convince the person sitting next to you that you are as good a lawyer as those on the panel.

Of course link out, but not in some list of links. Link out by being part of the discussion.

Related posts

• Linking to and blogging about competitors' blogs is smart
• Linking to your competition rules

I'll give a you little secret about why good bloggers are ranking high in the search engines. It's not keyword magic in meta tags and that garbage.

It's about entering into a conversation that's already going on in your niche. By referencing other blogs and news sites in your posts and commenting on other blogs, publishers of blogs and news sites get to know you. They'll subscribe to your blog. They'll see you in their keyword RSS feeds.

You'll gain their trust. They'll start to reference your content. Not only will you have an effective Internet presence with people seeing your name as they do research on your niche area of the law, your search engine rankings will improve through the links you will naturally, as opposed to cross linking, pick up.

There's nothing magic about. It should be as natural as attending a Rotary meeting (painful as that may be) where all the Rotarians have an interest in your area of law. They'll be both prospective clients and those who influence them. Who you are and the expertise you have will be amplified by those you network with at this Rotary meeting.

Sure it takes a little time to get known through online networking. But it's like dog years compared to the offline world of networking. You can do in a year online what would take you 7 years through online networking.

Blogs are not about beating out web sites in the search engine rankings. They are a new way of networking and marketing.

Blogs get back to the way lawyers got work prior to the 1977 Supreme Court decision in the case of Bates v. Arizona State Bar. Until Bates, lawyers weren't permitted to advertise. Not even a tombstone ad in a newspaper or yellow pages saying 'Wills - Call This Number.'

Back then lawyers got their work by being viewed as a trusted and reliable authority within the network of people the lawyer got to know. This network of people retained the lawyer when they had a need for legal services and referred friends, co-employees, business associates, and relatives to the lawyer.

Blogs are the same thing - getting known by people as an authority and having those people talk about you, or at least referencing your writings.

Until you exit the womb and get out there and network by joining the online conversation, you'll never achieve your potential through blogging. You may even be conspicuous by your absence from the conservation among authorities in your niche.

My typical response is don't worry about. I just emailed a client tonight:

I would not worry about Technorati. I don't watch my Technorati ranking at all and advise clients to do the same. It would be a vanity contest - assuming that Technorat's servers and systems were even up to indexing all blog content and the incoming links to blogs. With the failures of their systems their rankings mean little, if anything.

What is a "Technorati Ranking?" (per Technorati site)

A Technorati Ranking relates to the number of sources that point to a particular weblog relative to other weblogs. The more sources referencing a weblog, the higher the Technorati ranking. The Technorati Ranking for a blog is displaying in URL Search results, Blog search results, and is displayed in the account profile.

To me that says nothing more than we've created a vanity contest that will cause vain people (many bloggers) to return to Technorati as they try in vain to increase their blog ranking. Maybe we can even get people to post their ranking with our Technorati logo as a badge on their blog. Sounds like Web 2.0. ;)

Having an obligation to clients to find out if I'm right, I looked at what others were saying about Technorati rankings.

From Darren Rowse at Pro Blogger, one of the highest ranked blogs by Technorati, discussing his top 100 ranking:

Does it Increase Profile?

...I'm afraid to say that I'm not aware of any circumstance where any reporter or advertiser approached me as a result of seeing me as #3 on the Most Favorited list.

Does it give Egos a Boost?

It's always nice to be included in a list and to be in the company of blogs like others featured in the list.

However it's a somewhat empty achievement to be honest. While I appreciate my readers going to the trouble of marking me a favorite - it's a list that I suspect will always be skewed in favor of blogs about blogging, web 2.0 and the web because it's on a site whose users are largely bloggers who are more inclined to read such blogs.

Does the Technorati Top 100 Most Favorited Blog List Drive Traffic?

So does being #3 on this list drive thousands of visitors to ProBlogger?

A quick visit to my stats packages shows that in the scheme of things it's hardly caused a blip on my traffic radar. Technorati does drive a few hundred readers per month to this blog - but not a single visitor came directly from that the Top 100 Favorites page.

From Wordpress' Matt Mullenweg in a blog comment:

Personally I think it's silly to get worked up over a made-up ranking on a site full of spam that drives very little traffic, especially if you're not in the top 100.

And finally from Steve Rubel in an audio interview where interviewer Andy Plesser mentioned being depressed by his low Technorati ranking:

You get depressed about your Technorati - (Laughs)

Well, you know, I really don't try to think a lot about Technorati rankings because I think it's just, you know, if you - again, if you're providing, you know, high value content that people want, it doesn't matter how many links you're getting. It doesn't matter. As long as you're fulfilling the wishes of your audience. And I think that's what you have to look at above and beyond everything and if you're doing that and doing that consistently, you know, you will get links and accolades. But if you're - if you're doing it just for that, it's the wrong reason. So I, you know, try not to pay attention to that and just really do - just put out there a good product that people want.

After this research, my opinions are stronger than ever. Any of you guys see value in a Technorati ranking?

Update from Steve Rubel's tweet of this post: 'General consensus from replies is that people don't use T'Rati anymore. It's not their fault. The web world simply changed.'

Lawyers are repeatedly seduced and marketers are constantly aggravated to take space in law firm directories.' Which one to choose? How much to pay? Should you pay?' I can make the decision easy for you. There is only one directory you need to worry about: Google......Clients use Google to look up phone numbers and addresses, so law firms can cancel their yellow pages ads. When clients want to check out your firm, they are not going to call up to get your printed brochure, they will look you up online.

I have heard Larry speak and he's speaking of the importance of Google for all sized law firms, from solos to the very largest.

Other search engines aren't all that important for lawyers either. New research from Compete.com, indicates Google's share of Web searches in September 2007 was 67%, up from 54% in 2006. Yahoo is at 19%, down from 29% in 2006, with MSN at 9%.

I agree with Larry. Though it may still be worth my while, I never look at Yahoo or MSN when examining the search engine performance of my sites or LexBlog client blog sites.

As for directories such as FindLaw, Martindale-Hubbell, Super Lawyers, Avvo, and the like, the most important function they can play is getting the biographical information of your firm and its lawyers indexed at Google. The days of a lawyer directory portal site where Internet users go to look up lawyers are coming to an end.

'From a copywriting standpoint,' Brian says 'it's a no brainer�it's been proven time and time again that if you want someone to do something, you'll get better results if you tell them exactly what to do.'

But because of people like me advising people to use a link such as 'law firm SEO tips,' as opposed to 'click here' for law firm SEO tips, Brian thought sharing the results of a Marketing Sherpa experiment would be helpful.

The study found the right two or three link words can improve click-through rates by more than 8%.

• 'Click to continue': 8.53%
• 'Continue to article': 3.3%
• 'Read more': (-)1.8%

Per Brian, click here to read the original Marketing Sherpa article in its entirety.