Blog spamming by lawyers giving profession a bad name
There’s lawyers who don’t care how they get the next client or case. Whether it comes via an ad above a urinal, a two page spread in the yellow pages, or a referral from someone who thought the lawyer was pretty good, they just don’t care.
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.