Note: This article hasn’t been reviewed since 3/2/13, and thus I cannot guarantee its accuracy since 3/2/13. Please let me know if it, or some of it, no longer applies and I will be happy to review it. This article is my opinion.
Attorneys that have listings with a link, in their profile, to their website in Lawyers.com directories may have reason to be concerned. Both sites may be violating Google’s guidelines by selling links that pass PageRank. I do not recommend that attorneys include a link to their site in either directory. Google states that:
“Not all paid links violate Google’s guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:
1) Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag
2) Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file”
It appears that the only way to get a link, on an attorney’s profile, to an attorney’s website in Lawyers.com is to pay for the link. Lawyers.com charges $49.95 for an “an Enhanced Profile” which includes up to 3 website links. A basic listing on either site does not appear to provide a lawyer with a link to their website.
The source code for lawyer profiles on these directories do not appear to me to designated a link (on an attorney’s profile) to an attorney’s site as advertising. According to Google:
“Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results. Google works hard to ensure that it fully discounts links intended to manipulate search engine results, such excessive link exchanges and purchased links that pass PageRank.”
Attorneys that have listings in these directories may want to remove a link on these sites to their website because Google could negatively impact their website in Google’s search results. I think that probably at least 95% of the attorneys in these directories are not familiar with the concept of buying links that pass page rank.
Although I would not have my website designed by Findlaw, at least Findlaw lets an attorney (on their profile) add a link(s) to the lawyer’s website(s) or blog(s) for no charge. That is a step up from Lawyers.com. So far it doesn’t appear that Google has penalized Lawyers.org or attorneys’ websites that have a paid link (in their profile on) to the attorney’s site on either directory. But this doesn’t mean that it will not happen in the future.
Before deciding not to market with Lawyers.com, please be sure to check the source code of Lawyers.com as perhaps that have changed this practice since I wrote this article. If they have, I would appreciate it if you would let me know so I can edit this article to reflect it. Thanks.
Do you think that Google will negatively impact (in the search results) attorneys’ sites that have a link, on their profile on Lawyers.com, to their site? Do you think Google will negatively impact Lawyers.com?