Legal Writing

SEO — Money to Burn

Let’s say you’re a law firm. You have a web site and it has lots of links — hundreds of them — to things your firm has published: client alerts, newsletters, bylined articles, etc.

A key reason you publish these things (and provide links to them) is so people (esp. prospective clients) can learn about your attorneys: they can read their bios and what they’ve written.

Now, it’s time for a change. Either you’re redesigning the site, or revising it, or the IT department is changing things in such a way that the links to all these publications is going to change.

There’s a problem: a sizeable one at that. You see, other web sites contain some of those links too, which is good for you: it raises your visibility.

Suppose the National Law Journal (or the Wall Street Journal) mentions (and links to) something you published. Good.

Until the change comes along, that is. Then all the links to everything you’ve published stop working. When a reader clicks a link to your article (mentioned in either Journal, or any link to any of  your articles mentioned anywhere), a page-not-found error is displayed.

So far as readers can tell, the article no longer exists. And that does you no good at all.

This happens at large law firms all the time. All the links to all the firm’s publications get changed for a web site redesign or some IT project, and no one at the firm does a thing about it. The authors of those articles don’t even notice it.

What a waste.

Full post as published by Set in Style on December 29, 2009 (boomark / email).