“How can I protect my reputation online?” is one of the biggest questions many businesses have today.  You've worked hard to build a good reputation in your community and on the internet.  But a single failure to protect the online reputation of your firm can hurt your total revenue by almost 10 percent—even if it was a negative review posted by your rivals in an attempt to drive you out of business.  It's important to protect the online reputation of your law firm, and to do that, you'll need a primer.  In this guide, you'll learn how to protect your online reputation with simple, easy to use tips.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Avoid Unnatural Links

Being a spammer is one of the worst online reputations that you can have.  To protect the online reputation of your law firm, you need to project an image of an authoritative, professional business with quality content.  If you've used any kind of unnatural link building in the past, you should check those links in order to protect your online reputation.

If you find links that look spammy, you need to ask to have them removed to protect the online reputation of your firm.  “How does that protect my reputation online?” you may ask.  The answer is simple: if people searching for your website find that site first—or at all—they may not feel like you're a trustworthy enough law firm to do business with.

Unnatural links are being cracked down upon by Google anyhow, so you'll not only protect your online reputation when you do this—you'll also protect your search engine rankings.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Use Social Networks

If you want to protect the online reputation of a law firm in 2012 or 2013, one of the first things you need to do is get social networking accounts on every major social network.  How does that protect my reputation online?  Because if you don't do this, it will be much harder to protect your online reputation on these sites, or even see if people are talking about you.

Social networks can also be a great way to protect your online reputation by getting out the call to people you know and trust.  If you're a small law firm and your competition has recently launched a black hat campaign to give you bad reviews, you can put a call out on Facebook and Twitter: “Help me protect my reputation online—give me a good review if you've had a good experience.”  This can net you big numbers of reviews from your best clients.

Because social networking links tend to be displayed relatively early in search results, you can also create content on social networks to protect the online reputation of your law firm.  This content can protect your online reputation by pushing the content you don't want people to see off the front page and into the rankings nobody reads.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Monitor What People Say

To protect your online reputation, you may want to enlist help.  There are many different online tools that help to protect the online reputation of businesses.  Some of these reputation management software packages are totally free—like the alert system offered by Google—but those with more advanced functions, like automation of changes to your search rankings, can cost thousands of dollars every year you use them to protect your online reputation.

Whether you choose to start with a more streamlined free tool or a more comprehensive paid tool to protect the online reputation of your law firm, you should monitor your online reputation at least once every week.  This helps you get a feel for the trends affecting your reputation, as well as manage a new negative review quickly before it's been able to get much traction with other users online.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Build Links Slowly

Your reputation online isn't just being measured by individual people.  Search engines like Google are also keeping track of your link presence, and in some cases you'll need to be careful to protect the online reputation of your law firm.  If Google decides that your website has been optimized too much for search engine performance, there's a chance that you'll see a major rankings penalty.

“But how can I protect my online reputation while building links?” may be your next question.  Protect your online reputation by knowing what natural links look like.  The biggest sign that a website is building its link popularity artificially is that links appear by the thousands on some days, while on other days no new links are made to your site.  That's not the pattern that websites building their link presence naturally have—they build links much more steadily, with smaller spikes when new content is created or shared.  You can protect the

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Avoid Security Breaches

This may sound like it goes without saying, but you can't protect the online reputation of your firm if you're not protecting your own website.  Using insecure passwords and outdated software on your website could leave you vulnerable to hacking attempts and denial of service attacks, and these can compromise your online reputation for months or years to come if you're not careful.  

What's more, if you keep private client information connected to your website in any way, hacking attempts could breach your security and steal that client information—any lawyer's worst nightmare.  If you're not sure how secure you really are, you may want to consult with an IT security professional to make sure that your website is safe and protect your online reputation.

How to Protect My Reputation Online: Don't Astroturf

To protect the online reputation of your law firm, you can't astroturf, making fake reviews or websites to defame a client or promote yourself.  You may think this is a way to protect your online reputation, but it's almost always too obvious and discovered very quickly.  Protect the online reputation you've built with natural methods, not by pretending to be someone you're not.  If you try to protect your online reputation with astroturfing, your state bar association may be very unhappy—and trying to excuse it by saying “I was just trying to protect my reputation online” won't cut it.

Every website inbound link that Google indexes contributes to where your website appears in search rankings.  If your law firm, like 2/3 of businesses in the United States, isn't already working to build website inbound links, you need to start thinking about the future.  Website inbound link numbers now account for more than half of your overall search ranking placement, and you don't want to lose out on the huge percentage of legal clients (pegged in some studies as over 80 percent!) who do research online before deciding on which attorney to hire.  Keep reading to find out some easy ways to build website inbound links that work without taking up all of your time.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: The Blogosphere

Many attorneys at small law firms are already using blogs.  Of those attorneys, over half report that they've gotten new client business as a direct result of their blog entries.  What they may not know is that they may have gotten even more new business as an indirect result of those same blog entries.

That's because blogs are great ways to get your website linked by other attorneys and professionals in your community and beyond.  Every website inbound link that you are able to build on another person's blog will help to make your search rankings better, and because most people who use searches don't search beyond the first page of results, those rankings are absolutely crucial to your firm's success.

Comments aren't the only way to get website inbound links in the blogosphere.  You can also get a very high quality website inbound link by talking to a blog owner and arranging a guest post.  To get a guest post, you'll usually have to be able to prove you know your stuff, either with your professional qualifications or a blog of your own.  Guest blogging may prove a more difficult strategy for website inbound link building for brand new attorneys who haven't yet been able to make a name for themselves.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Local Websites

Today, it seems like search engines haven't just gotten more complex—they've gotten smarter.  That means that Google can actually tell whether your website inbound links are coming from websites that are local to you or ones that are from around the world.  It might surprise you to learn that a local website inbound link is actually considered more valuable than those that are from far away.  This is because Google assumes that local links are less likely to be purchased and more likely to be built through traditional networks of contacts.

If you're working to build website inbound links locally, talk to your local bar association and your local chamber of commerce.  Both of these organizations are fairly likely to have some online resources for you to include a new website inbound link on.  You can also talk to your local contacts, especially those with existing blogs or websites, to include you in their link directories.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Directory Websites

If you're in need of a quick and easy way to build a website inbound link that won't require a lot of new content creation, consider posting your profile to a directory.  Not all directories are high quality, and you should generally only use directory pages that have a high PageRank.  If Google believes you are spamming directories, even low quality ones, with your website's address, they'll generally consider this a sign of over optimization and work to penalize your search rankings.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Q&A Sites

Just by answering basic legal questions online, even without giving direct legal advice, you can build a number of high quality website inbound links.  Question and answer websites can be standalone sites, or can be incorporated into another website, like Yahoo Answers or the Answers feature on LinkedIn.

You should use caution when answering questions on these websites, because you don't want your answer to be misinterpreted as specific legal advice.  You don't want to find yourself in any legal trouble over your attempt to get a new website inbound link to help your search rankings.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Media Coverage

As a law firm, any time you have a significant victory you should consider building a website inbound link through press coverage.  You don't need to settle for fake “press release” websites that don't really have any good media contacts.  Instead, build your own media contacts with daily newspapers, weekly community newspapers, community magazines, radio stations, and television stations.  Every time you do an interview or a profile piece for one of these media outlets, you're likely to be able to build a website inbound link.

Because website inbound links from media sources tend to have a fairly high value compared to those coming from low to mid traffic blogs, it's worth investing some real time in getting press coverage.  Besides, the benefits to your SEO aren't the only benefits you get from the press—you'll also be able to convert people directly from the website inbound link.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Viral Buzz

One of the best ways to generate a fantastic website inbound link presence is to just get noticed by enough people that the links essentially build themselves.  By creating really unique, interesting content on your own website or in the form of an infographic or app, you can get the buzz going.

Of course, it can be harder to create viral buzz than to use some of the other strategies for website inbound link building.  However, viral buzz looks organic because it is organic.  The links that you get from a viral marketing campaign will be natural and high value.  The reason that viral buzz can work so well for attorneys is that not many other law firms are really trying viral content yet.  If you're able to get in on the ground floor and really design content people want to see, you'll be streets ahead of the competition.
 

You can increase inbound link traffic on your website in a huge variety of ways, but Google now has some detection algorithms that can throw off your plans.  Google doesn't particularly like when websites increase inbound links inorganically, and has in the last year penalized over 15 percent of web pages for appearing to be over optimized.  If you want to increase inbound link traffic today, you'll have to be very careful to make the increase appear natural and organic.  If you don't know how to do that yet—keep reading, and you'll find out before this guide is over.

What Are Inbound Links—And Why Do I Need Them?

Any time a website links to your website, it does so in the form of an inbound link.  When someone clicks on the anchor text of the link, they'll arrive at your website and be able to look at your content.  In the early web, it was relatively common for most websites to have few links, except the ones that went to the websites of personal friends or websites that pertained to an interest or related industry.

Today, inbound linking has become big business.  That's because when you increase inbound link numbers, your search engine rankings get better across the board.  Search engines make an assumption that when you increase inbound links, it means that your website has more authoritative and trustworthy content.

If you're working hard to increase inbound link numbers for your website, though, you should know that Google has created some red flags.  If you increase inbound links in the wrong way, these red flags get tripped and your website's rankings go right back down to where they started from.  Knowledge is power—by knowing exactly what kind of inbound links will lead to trouble, you can avoid common pitfalls and keep your rankings rising.

Why You Should Increase Inbound Links Slowly

When a company starts trying to increase inbound link traffic using inorganic techniques, it shows.  One of the first ways that it shows is in a sudden increase in the sheer number of inbound links appearing for a particular website or specific web page.

When this sudden spike happens, search engines red flag your website.  Even if you're in a rush to increase inbound links, you can't do it too quickly or you'll be wasting your effort.  Increase inbound link numbers gradually, preferably in concert with any traffic that you've gained.  The more traffic that your website gets, the faster you can increase inbound links coming to you per day.

Where Your Links Come From Matters

A link coming from Joe Schmo's Discount Legal Blog isn't going to be worth as much as one that comes from Above the Law or The Volokh Conspiracy.  They're all blogs, so what's the difference?  The difference is in a number that Google calls PageRank.  

If you increase inbound link numbers at a good clip, but they're only coming from websites that are low visibility, Google may not take kindly to this.  While it's possible for an organic link building effort to yield these types of results, the more usual reason is that someone has tried “black hat” link building techniques—things that spam other websites and make the internet less usable for most users.

Because of this, Google weights rankings much more highly if you increase inbound link traffic from high PageRank websites.  By increasing inbound links in this way, you'll build better quality links—even if they're more difficult to obtain initially.

Increase Inbound Links With Your Blog

By using your blog in the right ways, you can increase inbound link numbers in a variety of ways.  One of the most obvious ways is in generating publicity for your firm organically.  As long as you're creating great content, even if you're not sharing it all that often, it's likely that your blog entries will be noticed and linked by at least a few other bloggers.

Of course, if you want to increase inbound link traffic even more, you can help the process along.  By talking to other blog owners, you can get put onto their blogrolls, which will give you new inbound links.  You could even get a guest posting gig, which is a great opportunity to increase inbound link traffic.

If you're not using blog comments for real discussions, you should start.  Some of the best ways to increase inbound links involve using blog comments.  As long as you're making relevant comments on other people's blogs, and as long as your link is at least somewhat relevant, a new inbound link usually won't be removed from a comment section.  Don't just spam post to blogs with no moderation.  Google can easily detect this method, and will know you are trying to increase inbound link traffic with black hat techniques.

Increase Inbound Links on Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking websites, including Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit are great ways to build new inbound links and get more attention to your website.  However, while these sites can increase inbound link numbers, it's actually somewhat uncommon for a lawyer to get much new business from them.  This is because you'll have tried to increase inbound links on a website that is being used by people worldwide, rather than just in your community.

This doesn't mean that it's worthless to increase inbound link numbers on social bookmarking websites.  On the contrary, these websites have high PageRank values and can make your rankings soar.  Just don't expect to get direct conversions—you'll see your results coming through in the changes to your SEO results.

Increase Inbound Links with Local Websites

The other strategy you can employ to increase inbound link numbers is to go local.  Instead of using only big, high PageRank, global websites, focusing on sites that matter to your community can be a great move.  First of all, there isn't as much competition for links at these websites.  Second, Google can identify when you're being linked by local sources, and will dramatically increase your rankings in geolocational searches for law firms.

The reputation of website owners often depends on the reputation of their website.  With tens of thousands of new attorneys graduating in 2012 and hundreds of thousands already working, you need to keep your website reputation great to stay competitive.  But how do you maintain a great reputation in website listings?  Keep reading this guide to find out 8 simple rules for protecting the website reputation you've worked so hard to build.

Rule #1: Think Like a Client

Your reputation for website quality depends largely on your ability to give clients what they need, when they need it, in an easy to understand format.  If you want a great website reputation, you can't spend a lot of time with jargon and posturing.  Instead, a reputation for website quality will come from having quality narrative and good information that helps potential clients come to a decision to talk to an attorney for the first time.

Thinking like a client also means that you should avoid risking your reputation of website quality just to get some extra links.  If clients find that your links are posted all over the web like spam, your website reputation will undoubtedly suffer and you may see your search rankings take a plunge.

Rule #2: Skip Out on Shortcuts

It's easy to automate the linking coming in to your website, but how will it impact your website reputation if you do?  The reputation of website quality you're trying to build isn't based on fooling people, it's based on being able to give real, quality information.  Forget trying to use automation to game the system.  Google will find out, and you'll end up wishing that you had tried to secure a reputation for website quality in some other way.

Rule #3: Accept Responsibility

At some time, every website and every business makes a mistake.  The thing that will determine whether your reputation of website quality remains the same or takes a nosedive is how you respond to that initial mistake once you learn about it.  The worst website reputation you can get is as a company that lies and fabricates new data.  Some people give up on any pretense of a reputation for website quality by using “astroturfed” comments and blogs to make it look like their position is stronger than it really is.

Instead of hiding from your mistakes, embrace them as learning opportunities.  If you show that you are sincerely sorry for the mistake, the reputation of website quality you've built will not just stay—it might even improve.  Website reputation tends to be quite high when companies take decisive responsibility for their actions and are honest about the factors that led them into making the initial error.

Rule #4: Know Your Marketing Contractors

Your reputation for website quality can be tanked faster by a bad web marketing contractor than just about anybody.  If even one of the companies you're outsourcing marketing services to decides to use a spammy marketing tactic, you could find that your website is suddenly being penalized and you're in a lot of trouble.

Make sure that any contractor you're using for marketing is reputable and comes with several firm recommendations from other professional organizations.  Law firms simply can't afford to risk their website reputation on an unproven contractor.  To maintain a reputation for website quality, you'll need to get people on your account who are understanding about your need for consistently high quality content and inbound links.

Rule #5: Go With the Flow

If you're trying to maintain your website reputation with a website that is basically doing things in the same way you did them ten years ago, you're barking up the wrong tree.  The web is changing from year to year, and a reputation for website quality is much easier to build when you change along with it.

For example, in 2012 and 2013, the mobile web is really coming into its own.  If you're not watching your website reputation for mobile customers as well as desktop ones, you may be missing out on a big target market that is ready for conversions.  If you're not going with the flow, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Rule #6: Have Good Hosting

One of the fastest ways to lose a reputation for website authority is to have your website start failing to load.  If your hosting provider is inconsistent or has been having too many technical difficulties, it may be time to migrate to a new hosting provider who can give you the service you need.

Google actually bases some of its rankings and quality ratings on the speed at which your website is served to viewers.  Because of this, it's absolutely critical for you to make your speed fast if you want to be on the first page of search results.

Rule #7: Update Your Links

Periodically, in order to make sure your website reputation stays good, you should check the outbound links that lead away from your website and the inbound links that bring people to it.  If any of these links aren't working, you can update them with redirect pages or by changing the URL your outbound link is directing to.

Having outdated or missing links looks very amateur hour to seasoned web users, so be aware that poor linking practices can be one of the easiest ways to give yourself a poor website reputation.

Rule #8: Keep Content Fresh

You won't maintain a great reputation for website quality if your site maintains the same content year after year with no meaningful changes.  A constant flow of fresh content that uses links and sources from across the web will make it much easier for you to build a website reputation with authority.

Consider adding new content to your website at least on a weekly basis—two or three times a week may be an even better target if you're wanting the very best for your website reputation.

Before social media and other types of Web 2.0 sites became the norm on the internet, it wasn't really necessary to check your website reputation.  Today, however, a website reputation check has become a critical tool in the web marketing arsenal of many law firms.  If you haven't tried to check your website reputation yet, this guide will teach you why you need to and what you might find out.  Keep reading to learn why a website reputation check can be very valuable for search engine optimization, and how to check your website reputation in several different ways.

How a Web Reputation Check Can Prevent Problems

It's important to know what people are saying about you before a few isolated comments become the dominant narrative.  Understanding your online reputation gives you an advantage in talking to critics and fans.  By performing a website reputation check, you ensure that you're able to anticipate when, for example, a negative review might be impacting your site negatively.

When you check your website reputation, you're likely to find out that some areas of your reputation are already doing quite well while others could use more help.  A website reputation check can make it much easier to prioritize your expenditures of both time and money.  What's more, you may be able to identify defamatory information and make sure that it is taken down before it has a significant negative impact on your web traffic and conversions.

If your website is currently being blocked by antivirus software because the software has detected a problem, you need to know right away.  Only by choosing to check your website reputation can you actually find out what is causing the problem.  A website reputation check can help you improve the safety and security of your website so that it can be trusted by your clients.

Can I Check Website Reputation For Free?

Yes!  One of the best parts about doing a web reputation check in 2012 is that many of the resources to help you are completely free of charge.  Some of the best tools to check your website reputation actually come from the same companies that produce anti-virus software.  These companies, like AVG and PC Tools, can help you run a web reputation check completely free of charge.

However, if you want to check your website reputation beyond just whether your site is trusted to be free from viruses or security threats, you'll need to dig deeper.  Some programs that help you understand exactly what your website's reputation is can cost money.  You'll need to decide for yourself whether the features they offer are worthwhile for your firm.  Many of these tools are more important for retailers and others dealing with high volume sales transactions.

Doing a Website Reputation Check For the First Time

The first time that you check your website reputation, you can find out several key pieces of information.  Let's say that you start with Trustedsource.org, a website created by McAfee virus protection to help people do a website reputation check.  When you check your website reputation with this website, you'll find out not only whether the site considers your website to be the possible victim of fraud or malware, but also what kind of patterns your links are showing.

If you are seeing a pattern of fraudulent links or links that appear artificially created, you may want to use new strategies.  Your web reputation check may also reveal many older links that no longer work to take people to a valid URL on your website.  Knowing this can help you revise your site in a way that will make it more user friendly to future users.

Why One Website Reputation Check Isn't Enough

Just because you check your website reputation and it comes up clear doesn't mean that you're out of the woods.  You should make sure that you run a website reputation check at least once a month.  This will alert you very quickly if any virus or malware should ever take over your website, or if some program began to use your website as a place to create automatic links.

Doing a consistent check of website reputation statistics can also make sure that you're tracking trends in your website.  If you're not keeping track of how your website's traffic and trust levels are changing, you're missing out on valuable data that could help you shape your website for months or even years in the future.

Help!  My Reputation Is in the Gutter!

It's all well and good if you check your website reputation and it comes up green.  But what if there are alerts all over the place?  How do you clean up the mess that has been left behind by viruses or malware?  It's true that in some cases you may need to contact a professional to do this cleanup after running a website reputation check, but you may also be able to do it yourself.

Some website reputation check programs, especially those that require some payment up front, will actually help you to remove any problematic pages from your website.  These programs to check your website reputation can work automatically so that you don't have to worry about the details of how to remove each piece of offending software.

Reputation Management and Services

Sometimes, running a website reputation check can be a good reminder of just how hard it can be to keep your reputation online looking as good as it can.  If you're having trouble, consider showing the results of your website reputation check to a reputation management service.  These services can check your website reputation so you don't have to, and can make sure that any problems are taken care of immediately.  Because these services specialize in reputation management, you can rest assured that your reputation is being monitored more frequently and more closely than it would have been if you had handled it personally.

Less than a third of marketing professionals are currently using a backlinks checker.  Using one of these tools can be the best way to make sure that your website will be safe from changes to Google.  With so many options for a free backlink checker, finding the right one can seem tough.  Keep reading this guide and you'll find out not only how a backlinks checker can make your life easier, but also how to choose a backlink checker that will solve the right problems for your firm—possibly even a free backlink checker.

Why Do I Need Backlinks?

In the very earliest days of search engines, the biggest factor in website rankings was keyword density.  While websites that used a keyword over and over would see their search engine rankings decrease, attaining a good keyword density made it much more possible to be seen by anyone searching the web.

As time passed, the biggest factor for ranking websites changed.  Now, backlinks account for more than half of the total ranking that your website will receive in searches.  If you don't have any backlinks coming to your website, or have very few, you will appear far too low in searches for anyone to find you with a reasonably sized search string.

What Is a Backlink Checker?

A backlinks checker works by looking all over the web for websites that are linking to your domain.  You can obtain a free backlink checker either as a standalone program, an add-on or extension for Firefox or Chrome, or even by just loading up a website.  There's no one right kind of backlink checker, and usually, any individual backlinks checker will miss some links.  You may want to use more than one free backlink checker just to make sure that you're seeing all of your backlinks instead of just a small selection of them.

A backlink checker can't help you with other SEO tasks, like telling you which keywords to insert more frequently in order to get better search rankings.  Usually, each free backlink checker is designed for only one task, and should generally be used only if you know at least a little bit about what you're doing and how to differentiate high value and low value links.

What Can a Backlink Checker Help With?

Depending on what kind of backlinks checker you're using, you can use these tools for a wide range of purposes.  The most common reason that people want to use a free backlink checker in 2012 is that new Google updates have caused their website to fall out of favor in the search rankings.  These users usually want a backlinks checker that will analyze the quality of the websites where their backlinks come from.  

If a website appears to be low quality based on the analysis of the backlink checker, internet marketing specialists can send an email to the webmasters of the websites where the bad links are hosted and ask for them to be taken down.

Another way to use a free backlink checker is to find one that allows website comparisons.  You may want to investigate, using a backlinks checker, where your competitor's backlinks are coming from.  If the free backlink checker reveals that you have a competitor who appears to be doing much better than your law firm at getting search rankings, this kind of backlink checker tool can be your ticket to working on an equal footing.  Often, you can use the same kinds of websites they're using to build your own backlink presence.

Another reason that you may want to use a backlinks checker is to make sure that all backlinks leading to your domain still work.  If you've recently changed the layout of your website, it's possible that a number of your backlinks now just give 404 errors to would-be visitors.  By running a free backlink checker that monitors whether these backlinks are functional, you can tell which webmasters to ask to update your links.  If a webmaster is unavailable or refuses to edit the link, you can always add a redirect page for any links flagged by your free backlink checker.

Is a Backlink Checker Still Important?

In some ways, a backlinks checker is a more important tool than it has ever been before.  Because free backlink checker tools abound, there's no reason not to get one.  Backlinks are now the single most important factor for your search engine rankings, and what's more, search engine rankings count more every day.

Why is that?  Because mobile traffic is driving more and more of the web today.  Mobile customers, even more than traditional desktop users, are likely to click on and convert with one of the very first results they see.  Because their screens are smaller and scrolling can take longer, it's very unlikely that mobile traffic will come to your website if you're on even the second page.  This means that even though Google is penalizing “over optimized” websites, you need to optimize your backlinks as much as possible without incurring this penalty—and a backlinks checker is the best way to do that.

Finding the Right Backlink Checker For the Job

You've read the writing on the wall and decided you need a free backlink checker.  But which backlink checker will do the best job for you?  First, you need to decide what it is you're trying to do with your backlinks checker.  If you want to find out which of your links work currently (and which now direct to invalid URLs), ScrapeBox (www.scrapebox.org) can help.

For those wanting a tool to just show them all of their current backlinks, try backlinkwatch.com.  This online tool can help you to understand exactly who's linking to you, what their Google PageRank is, and what the anchor text is that is bringing people to your website.  Just identifying these trends can make it much easier to avoid any unnecessary loss of search rankings on Google.

Your website reputation should be one of your most prized business possessions when you work in a law firm.  Having a great reputation can get you new clients on a consistent basis—but if you lose that reputation, the clients will dry up.  It's no longer enough to sit back and take a passive approach.  Website reputation management services work with you to make sure your website is working and looking great for everyone who uses it.  Here are seven reasons that website reputation management services can be great for lawyers and legal marketing professionals.

#1: Keep Bad Reviews From Killing Your Business

One of the ways that a website reputation management service can help you is by keeping an eye on review websites.  Client reviews are a big way for people to find attorneys today, and you'll do well to make sure that you're listed on several different review websites.  Studies have shown, however, that consumers tend to pay significantly more attention to negative reviews than positive reviews—perhaps due to the perception that a complaint is generally honest while a compliment could be from a biased source.

Website reputation management services know that bad reviews aren't always a sign that you're doing poorly.  In some cases, they may be planted by your competition to drive more clients toward their offices.  Depending on what state you live in, this may or may not violate ethical rules for attorneys.  If you do find that a review has been posted fraudulently, your website reputation management company can help by requesting that it be taken down.  Most websites with client reviews are sensitive to these issues and can make sure that negative reviews are removed promptly.

#2: Manage Your Social Media Presence

Another way that a website reputation management company can make your life easier is by taking the reins on your social media strategy.  Many reputation management companies specialize in making social content for businesses.  Your website reputation managers can help you design a strategy for your social media websites that takes into account your unique brand image and your performance goals.

Many attorneys don't want to spend a lot of their day posting to Facebook, making connections on LinkedIn, and putting up links on social bookmarking websites and Twitter.  Why not let a website reputation management firm take care of it for you?  You'll get most of the same benefits as if you had done it yourself—without all of the hassles.

#3: Correct Missing or Incorrect Directory Information

Speaking of hassles, is there any bigger one than looking through dozens of directory websites for potential errors?  This is one of those chores that is perhaps better when it's just done by someone else.  If you want your directory entries checked, updated, and corrected, you need to talk to a website reputation management agency.

By using reputation managers, you ensure that your directory information will be changed any time your web address, company name, phone number, or physical address changes.  Having these changes made by your website reputation management company is much less tedious than doing it yourself every time the phone extension list changes.

#4: Keeping Search Results You Want On Top

Maybe there are some reviews of your law firm that are so glowing, you want them to be the first thing that people searching for your firm see.  A website reputation management firm can help you get your favorite results into Google's top pages when people search for your brand name.

In addition, you can actually generate good content that can drive out bad content.  For example, if someone has started a website that says your law firm is terrible and unprofessional, you can create new websites and web pages to simply outperform the offending page.  Since most web searchers don't look past the first page, it's unlikely that many people will see the negative result after it has been driven to page two or three.

#5: Finding Out What People Are Saying

If you've recently had a public relations issue, hiring a website reputation management company is a great idea.  Your reputation manager can investigate what the “buzz” is about your company and whether you seem to be improving or declining.

In some situations, your website reputation management agency will also try to actually influence that buzz.  If negative things are currently being said about your firm, your agency can help you find a way to spin them positively.

#6: Submit Takedown Requests for Defamatory Content

Of course, if someone insists on defaming you online, you have legal recourse.  Your website reputation management company can help you to distribute cease and desist letters to anybody promoting content that is defamatory or libelous.  As a lawyer, it is much more likely for you than most other people marketing online that your takedown request letters will be followed, so you will usually see results with just a letter.

If you've tried unsuccessfully to have defamatory content removed, you may have to sue for defamation in civil court.  This can get even trickier—or impossible—if the website defaming you is in another country.  If this happens, the best thing that your website reputation management company can do for you is to help you post more positive content to drown out the defamatory accusations.

#7: Create a Better You

By giving you a better understanding what people already think of your reputation, your website reputation management agency can help you to better establish your brand.  Your reputation can give you a very good idea of what distinguishes you from your most similar competitors.

Once you have a very strong brand awareness and identity, you can create marketing campaigns that take advantage of that confidence.  Being the best you that you can be is much better than trying to do everything that your competition is doing.  What's more, by having continuous monitoring of your reputation, you ensure that you hear what's being said about your newest marketing moves as soon as they take effect.

If you're not ranking as high as you'd like to be in search engine results, you may have already started doing research on how to purchase backlinks.  Before you buy a backlink, though, there are a few things you'll need to consider.  For one thing, many old methods that made it profitable to buy backlinks no longer have any positive effect on search engine rankings.  Second, if you buy a backlink, you may end up actually seeing a negative impact on your website.  We'll explore why both of these things are true in this guide, so keep reading to get the real scoop on whether it's a good idea to purchase backlinks.

Why Law Firms Buy Backlinks

When you're just getting started on the internet, it can seem very difficult to bring in web traffic.  If you don't have a very well defined niche market, drawing in new site visitors is tough because 95 percent of web searches never even go to page two—and 99 percent don't go to page 3.

One of the biggest ways that Google uses to decide which websites are ranked on that high value first page is to look at backlinks, or links to the website from other websites.  Why are backlinks considered more important?  Think about it: any time people link to a website, they're usually designating that website as some sort of authority—or at the very least, as being interesting enough that people will want to visit it.

To increase their backlink numbers, many law firms buy backlinks.  There is a very large price range for people wishing to purchase backlinks, depending on the level of quality of the links and the methods used to obtain them.  To buy a backlink can be risky, though—search engines don't like it, and some have started to take action.

Why Search Engines Crack Down on People Who Purchase Backlinks

If you've kept up with search engine marketing news in 2012, you probably already know that Google has come down hard on websites that buy a backlink presence.  The reason that Google and other search engines don't like when people buy a backlink is simple: they're trying to give web searchers the results that they are most likely to want.  When you buy backlinks and game the system to artificially inflate your own rankings, you're making it harder for searchers to get the results they actually wanted and could have used.

How Search Engines Detect When You Buy Backlinks

Search engines are getting smarter every year at noticing when someone has decided to purchase backlinks instead of getting them organically.  Several ratios can indicate to Google that a website is overoptimized and that its marketers may have tried to buy a backlink presence instead of creating one through marketing buzz.

These ratios include how many backlinks you have to how long your site has been around (can anyone really get ten thousand backlinks in a few days on a brand new website without trying to buy backlinks?).  You can also see your search rankings decrease whenever Google detects that you have a high ratio of backlinks from unmoderated blog comments.

By monitoring many of these ratios (and updating their algorithm with new ones as they find them), they can tell if you buy backlinks and how many you've bought.  If you purchase too many, your webmaster will receive warnings from Google with tips on how to get the links removed.

Is it Ever Safe To Buy Backlinks?

There are so many issues when it comes to trying to buy a backlink that you may be starting to reconsider.  In general, you probably don't want to buy a backlink directly.  It's technically against Google Webmaster guidelines (although for the most part this remains unenforced) and it won't usually generate any additional traffic to your website.  However, there are limited circumstances where it may be reasonably smart to purchase backlinks.

In order to buy backlinks and have them work, you'll need to look for link building services that offer contextually based backlinking.  This means that they look for websites with similar content to your law firm's website so that they can build natural looking backlinks on these websites.  Usually, this will mean you don't buy a backlink directly, but rather hire a service to scope out free opportunities for backlinks.  This is a great way to get around Google's prohibitions and still essentially purchase backlinks.

Is it Ethical to Purchase Backlinks?

Attorneys in particular may be interested in the ethics of whether or not to buy a backlink.  When you purchase backlinks that artificially inflate your search results, you may be able to bring in more business, at least temporarily.  However, you could also be making it harder for people to find the information they want.  What's more, you could actually get in trouble if you try to buy a backlink that looks like it goes to a competitor's site while really directing people to your own.

In order to maintain high ethical standards when you purchase backlinks, you should only use reputable contractors.  Using a fly by night contractor that advertises a certain rate for a certain number of backlinks will almost never lead to the kind of results you really want.  You may also want to buy backlinks only from services located in the United States, as these services are more likely to understand the context of your website and how to make keyword text that appears fluid and natural to an American audience.

If You Don't Want to Buy Backlinks

If you're not comfortable enough to purchase backlinks based on what you've read, there are still other ways to build your link presence and get to the top of search results.  For example, instead of trying to buy a backlink, why not look around for guest posting opportunities on blogs run by your friends, colleagues, or even former law school classmates?

Additionally, better niche marketing can be a good alternative if you don't want to purchase backlinks.  This can make your website more visible on long tail searches with many keywords, and may help you build up your web presence even if your backlinks can't compete with the biggest and most web savvy firms in town.