{"id":15970,"date":"2012-06-01T13:48:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T20:48:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=15970"},"modified":"2012-06-01T13:48:52","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T20:48:52","slug":"google-updates-penalize-cheap-seo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/15970\/google-updates-penalize-cheap-seo\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Updates Penalize Cheap SEO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three years into my private law practice, the web continues to be the primary way I market my law firm. Having represented more than 500 people over the past three years, I’m starting to see both repeat business and referrals. But not everyone needs a criminal lawyer<\/a>, the way they’ll eventually need a realtor, so it takes time to build out a referral base.<\/p>\n

In order to not put all my eggs in one basket, I’ve launched a bankruptcy practice as well with separate websites and separate identities to help channel potential clients to the right information, and so that if my web presence suffers on one dimension, it won’t suffer on all dimensions.<\/p>\n

We’ve also tried other marketing efforts, including direct mail, radio advertising, and networking. The networking can be effective, but that’s really not my strength, so I’ve not invested the kind of time and effort that I should on reaching out to other lawyers in order to develop referral channels.<\/p>\n

All of this is to say: I spend an inordinate amount of time focused on Google (and to a lesser extent Bing and Yahoo) in watching updates.<\/p>\n

For the past nearly 30 months, my website has been number 1 in my city for my primary keywords. But the ride has been bumpy, especially in the last year and a half. Google has made more than a half dozen important<\/a> changes to its algorithms and search behavior since January, including one that is rolling out as we speak. This after a number of years in which Google implemented fewer updates than that for entire 12 month periods.<\/p>\n

Some of the updates have been improvements. For instance, in April, Google released a penalty for over-optimization – basically spammy and keyword laden websites. Fortunately, I had moved away from keywords about a year prior, so I was not penalized, but I did see some competitors take a huge hit.<\/p>\n

What does this mean? It means that, first of all, there is never one SEO strategy. Building a quality website takes time, and Google is trying to reward quality Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three years into my private law practice, the web continues to be the primary way I market my law firm. Having represented more than 500 people over the past three years, I’m starting to see both repeat business and referrals. But not everyone needs a criminal lawyer, the way they’ll eventually need a realtor, so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15970","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-real-estate","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13162,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13162\/i-can-do-better-than-this\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":0},"title":"I can do better than this","author":"Damon Chetson","date":"September 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A year ago last week I had just passed the bar. Today: some 90 clients later with some excellent results for those clients, and some excellent results for me not only in building a law practice, but in learning what I need to represent my clients effectively. I started last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9985,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/9985\/stopping-horse-fraud\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":1},"title":"Stopping Horse Fraud","author":"Damon Chetson","date":"October 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"In addition to a criminal law practice, I'm building an equine law practice. \u00a0This is where the real money might be made, and real good might be accomplished. Each year, tens of millions of dollars are swindled from horse owners. \u00a0Unlike the real estate industry - which has its share\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13269,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13269\/id-rather-be-left-alone-than-linkedin\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":2},"title":"I’d Rather Be Left Alone Than LinkedIn","author":"Mark Madsen","date":"September 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been looking for an excuse to cancel my LinkedIn acct for months now. The extra web exposure on a platform that I don't control is concerning to me.","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vegashomegroup.com\/files\/2010\/09\/Bill-Gates-Quote-1984-e1285107412522.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5313,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/5313\/linkedin-as-a-prospecting-tool\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":3},"title":"LinkedIn As a Prospecting Tool","author":"Brian Brady","date":"October 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"An old friend of mine recently asked me this about LinkedIn: I see your active with LinkedIn... have you upgraded to the pay version of the site, and if so, which version and would you be willing to share your feedback with me? Since I'll be talking about this at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10552,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/10552\/into-the-belly-of-the-beast\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":4},"title":"Into the belly of the beast…","author":"Damon Chetson","date":"December 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"So I've been building a criminal practice... I've now reached the point that I'm bringing in enough clients to make that self-sustaining in terms of paying the bills and generating some income. Criminal practice is fun, but limited in terms of compensation. My intention has always been to add at\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "General"","block_context":{"text":"General","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13922,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/13922\/do-you-know-how-to-network\/","url_meta":{"origin":15970,"position":5},"title":"Do You Know How To Network?","author":"Brian Brady","date":"January 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I used to hate networking meetings because they seemed like business card collecting contests.\u00a0 I always feel cheapened by the \"Wham.\u00a0 Bam!\u00a0 Thank you, Ma'am\" Chamber of Commerce meetings, where the person of the moment looks over your shoulder, for someone more interesting, while you compliment her on the color\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15970"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15972,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15970\/revisions\/15972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}