Law firms that count on strong SEO performance also rely on the technical back-end of their websites to protect against the efforts of malware, viruses, spyware and other threats. With multiple layers of digital protection in place, well-designed websites can withstand attacks that, in most cases, users are completely unaware of. How do you know your website is shielded? It performs well, Google has not penalized you for being spammy, and people are able to search and find your website.
Isn’t that something you expect? From IMS, yes, but not everyone understands why website protection is part of what we build into IMS sites. Here’s what can happen without the care and technical proficiency built into every IMS website:
Not all SEO practitioners have your best long-term interest in mind. Be wary of the SEO practitioner who promises the moon, delivers, then disappears, just around the same time that Google rankings sink or worse, your site is blocked and can’t be accessed. They have likely employed black hat techniques to give rankings a quick jump, and your site has been deemed spammy by Google.
Keyword stuffing, broken links, poor quality links and a bad user experience. Time is everyone’s most precious commodity. It’s annoying to open a website that you thought had useful information and find it’s nothing but a waste of digital space. Repetitive use of keywords, links that take you to useless pages, and tons of ads creates a bad UX (User Experience). Google agrees, and will rank the website accordingly.
Who is behind that website? Millennials aren’t the only ones who expect complete transparency—Google does also. We hate opening an “About Us” page and finding nothing but corporate speak. A good website includes info about people, even if it only tells us about top leadership. A spammy website has no people, and you won’t find anyone associated with the company on social media.
Sometimes your solution creates a problem. If you do a search and a URL listing contains a message saying “The contents of this website cannot be displayed,” it might not be a safe website. We all know what happens next. You try another browser and it opens fine. Sometimes that’s a good thing, but sometimes you have simply found a work-around to a system that was put into place to protect you.
At IMS, our focus is on estate planning and Elder Law firm sites, not ghost practices that exist to gather clicks. If you have any questions about the health and well-being of your website, call James at 877-352-2021 ext. 80 and we’ll be happy to give your website a check-up!