I own and operate a small criminal defense law firm in Seattle. There are many other Seattle criminal defense attorneys trying to get the same clients that I am. One of the easiest ways to differentiate myself from those other lawyers is to have a very strong online presence. The higher your law firm website ranks on Google, the more eyes will see your information and the more likely they are to call and talk to you.
But building a strong online presence for your law firm website and ranking high on Google for criminal law keywords isn’t easy. It takes a lot of time, a lot of hard work, and a lot of articles written (like this one) to get to the top of the Google search engines.
However, there are ways around this hard work and time, or at least people will tell you there are. Online law firm marketing companies will call you and say they can help you get your law firm website number one on Google for your keywords if you pay them big bucks. But be careful what you wish for when you sign up with these guys. If they do the wrong thing, it can have some dire consequences.
For example, there is a DUI attorney I know in Seattle named Bradley Johnson. He outsourced some of his online marketing work to a few people who weren’t practicing the kind of law firm online marketing tactics that really work. They ended up leaving a lot of useless comments on many criminal defense blogs on the Internet. And he didn’t like what he had to say at all. So they blogged about what he had done. And the bad thing is, these guys know what they’re doing, so they’ve decided to make it so that when people search for Bradley Johnson’s criminal lawyer, they’ll show up on their bad-mouthing websites.
Trust me when I say that this is not the kind of PR you want for your law firm or the kind of reputation you want on the internet.
And it got even worse for Bradley Johnson, DUI attorney, because after he told those people he was not going to do anything anymore, he continued to post spam, which made bloggers even more angry and motivated to let the world know. about his minus. than honorable marketing methods.