When marketing your law firm online it’s important to remember that originality is key. And I’m not just talking about the design of your law firm’s website or your point of view – it should be obvious that you need to be different so as not to blend in.
What I’m talking about is the originality of your online content. The words you use, the way you put your thoughts together, and the way it all reads. It’s all got to be original or your online legal marketing efforts will fail. And not because they won’t resonate, but because they won’t be seen.
Case in point, with names changed to protect the innocent. A colleague of mine is a bankruptcy lawyer who relies almost solely on his online legal marketing efforts to keep his doors open. He’s a good lawyer, a good guy, and smart. But he got a little careless when he built his current website.
His law firm’s website is gorgeous, filled with video and lots of pages of content. He’s got his picture up on the site, his contact information, and all the bells and whistles that we want to have in place when marketing online. Reads well, designed well … but all was not well.
His site was placed at the top of every single relevant search term for quite some time. Until one day he noticed it wasn’t there anymore. Like, at all. Gone from Local Search, gone from the index … poof. Even his Google Profile was deactivated and blocked.
So he did what I would have done. He freaked out. Sent emails, called his web host, tried in vain to contact Google’s search team. He got back cryptic emails, all essentially telling him that his law firm’s website was somehow a bad apple.
Finally, his SEO people started digging around and were told of the problem. His website was filled with content found elsewhere online, on sites for his law firm as well as on sites for other lawyers.
In other words, his site was unoriginal. And that was a problem for two reasons:
First, Google has been clear that duplicate content isn’t the best way to go. Duplicate content is defined as:
substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.
In fact, the Google Webmaster Blog says:
Duplicate content on a site is not grounds for action on that site unless it appears that the intent of the duplicate content is to be deceptive and manipulate search engine results. If your site suffers from duplicate content issues, and you don’t follow the advice listed above, we do a good job of choosing a version of the content to show in our search results.
What does it mean to be deceptive and manipulative? Well, that’s tough to say. But if your site is so clearly filled with content that’s found elsewhere, the chances are good that Google’s going to find that your intentions are less than honorable.
Why does Google hate duplicate content? Because Google’s primary business is to delivery the best possible search results; in doing so, it ensures that people will come back to Google again and again when they want to find something. If the search engine lists a ton of different sites with the exact same information, where’s the value add for the searcher? It isn’t there at all, which is why the search engine will cull out the duplicates and show only a single instance of the content – and that single instance will be on the domain that has the highest PageRank, relevance and trust scores overall.
Second, duplicate content isn’t worth your reader’s efforts and time. Let’s say I can pick up the exact same book in a bunch of different libraries. Why would I look to one as a better library than the others? I wouldn’t – unless one particular library has a bunch of different books on the same subject. In that case, one is better than the others.
So, too, with your web content. Your law firm website needs to have something relevant and unique to say, something that sets it apart in the eyes of the visitor in order to spur that person to take action.
How do you avoid the duplicate content problem in your online legal marketing efforts? Speak in your own words, as if you were talking with a client or prospect. Be genuine, be honest, and be yourself. If you’ve got any passion for what you do, this will come through easily. That’s it. No magic potion.
And if you’ve hired someone to develop your website copy, take the time and a few bucks to run it through Copyscape. That’s a service that will go through a web page’s content and ensure that it’s not a duplicate of another site. Well worth the money.
Photo courtesy of SpiritMama.
I think people forget the single most important fact about having an online presence. It is all about the content – good content means not using Ctrl C+V. You don't have to be the best author in the world, people excuse the occasional slip – so write what you know about and if you really think people will benefit from a story already out there – do an introduction with a link to the original article.The time of using technology to fool people has passed, do as you would in the physical world.BTW, every person in the world has something they could write about – which others would find interesting.Great post.
Wow, that is some scary stuff Jay! Do not duplicate, got it. But my fear is this when you account for the fact that there have already been 1,234 articles (I made up that number) on garnishment, repossession, etc. and you come along and write one as well, how fearful should you be? Obviously, I won't be copying and pasting, and the story will be spun differently because I am writing it in my own style, but certain key phrases will be virtually identical…."the moment that you file for bankruptcy the garnishment should stop within a matter of days" and so on and so forth. So how does one protect himself?
Sure, there's only so much "new" you can do in a particular area of law. But what you can do is present it through your unique filter and way of "talking." Start a post with a story that relates to a client issue, make a statement on why YOU think (for example) the limitations of the automatic stay in subsequent bankruptcy proceedings are hogwash – and how you deal with the problem in your court. There's lots of ways to skin a blog post, and the benefit in the legal field is that there are so few blogs in each practice area that it's still a pretty wide open field.
Thanks for sending this today. It made me take a step back, ask myself why am I doing what I'm doing, reconnect with my passion and find my voice. I think this post saved me from having a lame, copycat website! Thanks, again!