Down On The Farm

Gyi Tsakalakis
March 15, 2011

Green Acres we are here! Have you been content farming? Your website (and professional reputation) may be suffering.

If you follow what's going on in the world of search engine marketing, you likely have heard something about Google's Recent Panda-Farmers-Content Update:

Many of the changes we make are so subtle that very few people notice them. But in the last day or so we launched a pretty big algorithmic improvement to our ranking—a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on.

This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on. We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

In the wake of this most recent update, we've received a lot questions from law firms wondering how this might impact their website traffic. And the answer, like most other online answers, is that it really depends.

If you write your own unique website content and blog posts. If you research your posts and provided your opinion, analysis, or even remotely articulate something resembling a point, you will likely not be greatly impacted by this most recent update.

On the other hand. If you copy (or scrape) content from other websites. If you buy content that has been copied or spun via software. If you pull news headlines off of news sites and follow them with the first 100 words of the news articles. If you're using a blog feed of disaster (as Kevin O'Keefe warns against), your website or blog's traffic and rankings may be at risk.

While some of these "strategies" may have worked to increase traffic to your site in the past, they are likely to do more harm than good. Both to your search engine visibility and to your professional reputation.

So here's my advice:

Naturally, I can hear the question from many of you ‘What do we do now?’ So here are a couple of statements that we can make without question.

  • If you are scraping sites and mashing content together – Just stop what you're doing right now.
  • Make sure that any content that is published to your website or blog is unique. Also, if you are publishing articles on your blog and then syndicating them on other sites without altering them – You should stop doing that too.
  • If you're going to syndicate content that you have published to your own site or blog, only put unique content on your site; and wait before syndicating a modified version of your content elsewhere.
  • If you publish external content (i.e. guest blog posts, etc) make sure that it is unique.
  • If you comments turned off on your blog, turn them on. Moderate them. Respond to them. This tells Google, and more importantly, your visitors that you are listening and actually care that they visit your site. 

I recognize that online publishing may not be a high priority on your list of daily tasks. I also realize that not all lawyers are great writers. While I don't think that outsourcing content for websites and blogs is bad per se, you must have an editorial review process in place for any content published to your website or blog. You should also establish specific guidelines for anyone that contributes content to your site or blog. The truth is, more often than not, you will be the best at writing for your own law firm website and/or legal blog.

Gyi Tsakalakis
Co-Founder of AttorneySync
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

April 25, 2025
Do Confidentiality Rules of Professional Conduct Prohibit Use of Google's Local Services Ads?

On April 22, 2025, Google sent an email updating Local Services Ads Additional Terms for Providers: Subject: Action required: important updates to Local Service Ads Additional Terms Many people are arguing that lawyers cannot participate in Local Services Ads, as this would constitute a per se violation of the Rules of Professional Conduct related to […]

Read More
March 13, 2025
Lawyerist + Lunch Hour Legal Marketing Collaboration

Conrad and I recently joined Zack at Lawyerist to record a conversation about AI and marketing. You might think that we spend the whole time on how lawyers can use AI to publish content. You'd be wrong. While AI can certainly support publishing, there are many more interesting ways to use it in legal marketing. […]

Read More
March 11, 2025
ChatGPT Legal Services Consumer Journeys and Marketing Attribution

As more legal services consumers turn to ChatGPT for local law firm recommendations, a fascinating intersection between AI, search, and maps unfolds. While Google remains the undisputed leader in local business data, ChatGPT is increasingly becoming an entry point for searchers seeking legal representation. But here’s the kicker: instead of keeping users within its ecosystem, […]

Read More
March 10, 2025
Law Firm Brand Amplifies All Marketing

When law firms contact us, they usually want to talk: • PPC Ads • SEO Rankings • Lead Generation Very few want to talk: • Brand • Trust & Recognition • Emotional Connection Admittedly, much of this concerns that AttorneySync is known for lead generation across those common digital channels. But even when we start […]

Read More
March 6, 2025
Artificial Intelligence Overviews (AIO) in Legal SEO

According to an October 2024 study by SE Ranking: "The legal niche triggers the highest percentage of AIOs (77.67%). The average number of links matched between the AI Overview resources and the top 20 search results was 6.49 for legal topics. AI Overviews for legal topics most frequently link to NYCourts.gov (114 links), YouTube.com (48 […]

Read More
February 27, 2025
You Can’t Hire for Law Firm SEO If You Don’t Understand It

I'm grateful for my friend, Charley Mann of Law firm Alchemy. If you're a lawyer, subscribe to his Free Email List. In a recent email, Charley calls out bad guru advice on hiring: "Trying to execute a major SEO improvement? You need to find people who will help you, instead of trying to DIY it […]

Read More
February 26, 2025
Law Firm SEO Success Isn't What You Think It Is

If you’ve spent any time on LinkedIn, you’ve likely seen posts from law firm SEO experts showing off charts with an “up and to the right” trajectory. These screenshots, often pulled from tools like Semrush or Ahrefs, are meant to signal SEO success. And it’s not just the agencies celebrating—𝗹𝗮𝘄 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝗺𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗵𝗶𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺 […]

Read More
February 15, 2025
What "Meh, Links" Means

Meh, links! All things being equal, links still tend to move the dial more than any other factor in legal SERPs. Maybe links are having a diminishing impact internet-wide. But in my experience, quality links, especially relevant links (both topically and geographically), tend to improve law firm visibility in search more than most everything else. […]

Read More
February 11, 2025
Law Firm Community Leadership: Do Well by Doing Good

When you think of "marketing," what's the first thing that comes to mind? Ads? SEO? Social Media? What about: Helping others?Taking the lead? Rallying around your community? Need an example? Learn from Bart Siniard at Siniard Law Injury Attorneys efforts to help rebuild Mary's Pit BBQ. These efforts aren't about marketing. They're about supporting a […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
Testimonials on this site are from examples of real client results. The results you see are not typical. They do not guarantee similar results. Individual results may vary based on a variety of factors. Your results may vary.
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram