What you are about to read may appear to be rather harsh. And quite frankly it is. I have a major concern with what I have seen so far with the Lawyer.com product I discuss below. Marketing is too important to stand by and not say what I do below.
Kevin O’Keefe of lexBlog had a post just the other day about Lawyers.com blogs are here. After reading Kevin’s post I decided to check it out more.
I am not impressed. While I was checking it out, I came to this site, General Practice Law Blogs on Lawyers.com. I am not sure what this is. I am assuming it is an index page of some kind that allows you to go to post done by lawyers using the service. But, when you click on one of the links, you get this, Mohave County Arizona Courts and Judges. I am again assuming, but this appears to be a blog post on what appears to be a blog.
And than there is this page called, Law Blogs on Lawyer.com. If you click on some of the links in the sidebar, they are dead. In other words, they don’t work.
I don’t get it. Why would any company that claims to be in the business of helping law firms market, put out something like what you see at the links above.
And I also have to echo what Kevin stated in his post about this, what kind of support will the lawyers get that are going to use this product.
• Who teaches the lawyers how to blog, to produce the type of content likely to get cited and not embarrass the lawyer?
• Who teaches them how to use RSS?
• Who teaches them how to write blog content for effective search engine optimization?
• Who teaches the lawyers how to market their blog?
• Who works with the lawyers on tech support issues, such as improper html formatting, comment & trackback spam, and the like?
• Who teaches the lawyers how to do effective PR with their blog?
You just can’t throw something up on the internet, call it a blog and hope that you will get anything for SEO or ROI. And, if you are going to use a “professional” firm to do the design and hosting for you, you should expect those items listed above, at a minimum.
And what about an RSS feed on the blog? I have searched all the links above and I could not find a RSS button. Not good!!!!
O’Keefe goes on to state,
“It’ll be interesting to see if the Lawyers.com blog project was driven by IT and business development folks or by experienced bloggers at Lawyers.com. I have not seen anyone from LexisNexis or it’s Martindale-Hubbell Lawyers.com publishing a blog.“
And after viewing what they have thrown up so far, I would have to say the project was driven by IT and business development folks. I can’t imagine anyone experienced in blogging would think this is a viable product.
And are they really FREE? One comment on Kevin’s blog indicated that “Law Blogs on Lawyers.com is a free service for all Martindal-hubbell subscribers.” Does not sound like free to me either.
Another comment from a fellow blogger at China Law Blog makes a very important observation about Lawyer.com blogs:
Lawyers.com will get lawyers who will think it is easy because everything will be set up for them, but those people are not likely to know enough about blogging, work hard enough at it, or distinguish their sites from others enough to succeed. SEO pales next to a vibrant and loyal following. SEO gets people dropping by one time. Comments usually come from the regulars.
While blogging is not impossible nor difficult. To have a successful blog, you have to put some work into it. I hope those that use Lawyer.com blogs will not expect it to be like a static website and not do anything as far as posting. But, if Lawyer.com does not provide the support mentioned above, that is exactly what will happen.
And finally, Steve Matthews had this comment to Kevin’s Post:
Don’t throw the seo-baby out with the bath water there China Law Blog.
The bigger problem here, is that it’s very likely Lawyers.com can’t deliver the google juice they think they can.
Despite having good PageRank flow through their network of blogs, SE placement today relies on a diversified network of links coming from all over the web – not just the MH website. If new Bloggers think they will be getting a free ride from Google by piggy backing off of Lexis/MH link popularity, they should think again. It will still take significant work, promotion, AND quality content to drive the search engines.
Honestly, the way it’s been set up, I’d expect bloggers will be doing more for MH’s link popularity, than MH will be doing for them.
I could not have said it better. In looking at what the product looks like so far and considering some of the concerns expressed above, I hope those that go with Lawyer.com blogs don’t equate how successful a blog can be based on what they may be getting.
My practice blog, the Kansas Family & Divorce Lawyer has been very successful. I am getting outstanding SEO and ROI for two main reasons. I know how to blog and lexBlog provided a blog that does not look or act like a typical website. And my blog looks like my blog. Not a boiler plat that is more of a advertisement for Lawyer.com than a marketing tool for the lawyer.
Interesting post. We agree becuase we are out there actually doing it.
BTW, I come to your blog regularly; it is excellent!