Findlaw Busted by Google for Selling Paid Links
It was only a matter of time. Findlaw, one of the nations leading lawyer marketing firms, has been penalized by Google for selling paid links. Over the past year, Google has made it clear that purchasing links that have the sole intent of trying to improve your website rankings goes against their search engine guidelines. If you’re a Findlaw client and you’ve purchased these link packages, you may be at risk of losing your rankings on Google (that’s if you are ranking well…we know plenty of Findlaw clients who are not ranking very high on Google). What typically happens in cases like these is the links that used to provide your site with a boost in rankings will lose its power to give any more “link juice” to your site. Todd Friesen, one of the best SEO’s in the industry, noted these emails that Findlaw was sending out:
Greetings,
I’d like to help you increase your company’s visibility, rank and penetration within natural search results on major search engines such as Google, Yahoo! and more with our new FindLaw Search Engine Marketing Product (SEM-C).
Search engine marketing, or SEM, is the art and science of increasing qualified leads to a Web site from search engines and other Internet sources. When people search, they’re looking for answers. If they receive search results that will get them those answers, they’re more likely to convert into a customer.
Studies by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a respected nonprofit research organization, show that more than 73% of American adults use the Internet. More than 60 million Americans use search engines on any given day according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
The results of implementing this product are to gain more clients by generating more traffic to your company’s Web site and converting those prospects to clients at a high rate.
If you’d like to learn more about our new SEM-C Marketing Product, please call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Best Regards,
xxxxx
xxxxx xxxxxxx
Account Executive, Corporate Sales Department
Another email that Findlaw was sending out said this:
Hi xxxx,
I’m delighted to announce the launch of Findlaw’s new Search Engine
Marketing (SEM) program specifically geared for for legal software and
service providers. Whether you are a software company, a legal
recruiter or an expert witness service, Findlaw’s new SEM product will
help you generate more business from all of the major search engines by
leveraging Findlaw’s authoritative position as the top online
destination serving the Legal Professionals market. The goal of the
SEM program is to help position your natural search results more
prominently on Google, Yahoo and MSN, which account for 90% of all
searches conducted online. SEM is something we have been providing law
firms exclusively for the last 4-5 years, so I am very excited to be
able to offer this impactful program to you.
Here are the details of the program: up to 3 hard coded links will be
placed on editorially relevant pages of content. Links will be placed
at the recommendation of our SEO specialists, who have been assisting
law firms with these programs. They will conduct a brief audit of your
site and submit their link recommendations. You will also be allowed
to submit up to 5 articles to be placed in the area mentioned above.
Each article will have a hard coded link. So essentially the program
consists of 8 hard coded links on relevant, high value pages of Findlaw.
We will provide a White Paper that explains how to write web and SEO
friendly content and a White Paper detailing standard SEO practices.
We will also provide a piece that explains how you can monitor
performance, as value is determined by increased traffic to your site.
The program is set up for 12 months with the option to cancel by
providing a 30 day notice at any point after the first 30 days (minimum
60 day run required). The cost is $1k per month for the package. We
have 5 different SEM modules to choose from: Legal Forms/DIY (4
remaining) , Legal Experts/Consultants, Legal Technology, Legal Careers
(3 remaining) and Corporate Counsel / In-House Legal.
Please let me know if you would like to secure one of these. We have a
limited number of programs available.
Regards,
xxxx xxxxxx
Findlaw.com
xxx-xxx-xxxx
xxxx xxxxxx
Account Executive
Pretty blatant about what the point is. Buy our links and they will help your rankings. Now this is different than the what they are selling to law firms but the practice and the promises are the same: Buy our links package and your rankings in Google will go up. The prices to law firms are higher than $1,000/month. The price of the link packages they sell to law firms range anywhere from $1,600 to $2,500 a month. The attorneys that have come to me asking if they should purchase this product in the past had mentioned the cost was over $20,000 a year. Here’s the deal Findlaw. If you’re providing SEO services to lawyers and are responsible for helping them generate business online, then you can’t go against Google’s guidelines just to generate revenue. Well…sure..you actually can. But since Google provides the best traffic and is the best engine for providing referall traffic and potential clients, it has to matter. When you care more about the bottom line then your clients…it’s only a matter of time before it bites you in the ass. Now I wonder if Findlaw is going to let those people that committed to spending $20,000 to $30,000 a year on the links packages out of their contract? For those law firms that did spend that money, I hope so. I worked at Findlaw for a almost two years and getting out of Findlaw contracts is really tough but I really hope they do the right thing here.
Keven over at LexBlog has a great post on the topic if you want to read more.