Optimization 4 Websites

Don’t ignore your on-line reputation

I recently met with a firm in South Bend Indiana who had a reputation problem. Their reputation problem though was not with their word of mouth referrals. As a matter of fact over 80% of their new clients came from a referral from a past client. Their bad reputation was on-line and the implications of this were greater than they ever imagined.

This firm was split in their areas of practice. Half of the attorneys at the firm handled family law matters, which relied for years on direct referrals. The other half of the attorneys handled collection matters for some local companies. And this is where their problem began…

When a potential client went on-line and searched for the terms “south bend lawyer” or the name of the firm (referrals), the number one listing on the first page of search results was a local website and message board called “SouthBendSucks.com”. Apparently the firm pursued a collections matter with a local resident. Surprisingly this individual was not to happy with the firm for trying to collect this outstanding debt. So they decided to write a not so nice review of the firm on this website. As a result, when looking at those search results, the description summary under the website link was that review of the firm with the recommendation to “never hire the law firm of…”. Great for the collections attorneys, not so good for the family law attorneys.

Now, there is not much this firm could do to remove this post. This “not so happy” South Bend resident was stating their opinion and they had a right to do so. But the bad thing was the firm had no other source to tell their side of the story. Their website was built several years ago and they had not touched it since. Therefore the website was not showing up for many of the basic terms that it should be, like the firms name.

So the moral of the story is to make sure you often search the name of your firm, the name of your attorney(s), and some of the common keywords that you want to be found for. You have to be aware of where your website shows up on those searches and what other sources are saying about you. The best defense against a poor on-line reputation, is a good offense – a well built website!

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