Normally I’m not a fan of Mondays but today was not so bad in large part because we were able to launch a new website for Murray Rankin, Q.C. – oh and it was sunny for a whole thirty minutes (you Vancouverites will understand). We are very happy to have helped Murray establish his new brand and a web presence as he starts a new chapter of his practice.
I did not have the good fortune to have Murray as a professor while completing my LL.B at UVic but I know plenty of folks who did and he has garnered a reputation as an accomplished, caring and thoughtful teacher. His professional reputation is equally favourable as he has graced the halls of Arvay Finlay, Barristers and most recently Heenan Blaikie LLP. But rather than gush about Murray’s professional abilities, his contributions to the legal profession and policy development, his trips to the Supreme Court of Canada and extensive tribunal work, or his perpetual good humour, I think I will simply direct you to his new website so you can see for yourselves and close by saying it was both an honour and a pleasure.
Visit the site: www.murrayrankin.ca
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When we think of members of the legal community we often imagine suave professionals wearing the latest and sharpest bespoke suits or old and wise practitioners of the law wearing flowing formal robes. We tend not to think of a group of men and women dressed in Kiss make-up and leather pants rocking out in a manner befitting Jimmy Page and Robert Plante. However, stereotypes were meant to be broken and likely will tonight as lawyers from across Victoria take part in the Seventh Annual Battle of the Bar Bands.
The event will be taking place at The Victoria Edelweiss Club located at 108 Niagara Street: an excellent venue with delicious food and cheap drinks. The cost of entry is $30 with sponsorship tables (8 tickets) costing $500. The audience is guaranteed to enjoy a fierce competition as Victorian legal practitioners and a few lawyers from other cities in BC attempt to shred, finger-tap, and wah-wah their way to victory. There will also be ample room for dancing and prizes at the door (generously donated by local businesses).
The Battle of the Bar Bands is a once a year event that supports the Canadian Bar Association (BC) Benevolent society, whose mandate is to provide assistance to lawyers and articled students that have suffered an illness or injury. The event is modeled after the original Vancouver Battle of the Bar Bands that has been held for the last 10 years at the Commodore Ballroom. Similar Battles are now held in Kelowna and Nanaimo. Together, the events have raised tens of thousands of dollars for the Society, which have gone to those in need.
Skunkworks wishes the best of luck to all participants while kindly reminding them of the multifarious liability issues that can result from attempted body surfing. We encourage all those interested in attending to email Krystle Gill as kgill@hart-legal.com for more information.
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Skunkworks regularly hears from lawyers and law firms looking for search engine optimization (SEO) services. Typically, the request is articulated as some form of “I want to be first on Google.” Our clients clearly understand that a solid SEO plan can yield large dividends by placing their website higher in the organic search rankings. They are aware that better visibility means more traffic and more traffic means bigger profits
Search engine optimization tactics usually fall into two camps: white hat SEO strategies (endorsed by the major search engines) and black hat SEO strategies (actively opposed by the major search engines). This post describes why the legal community should only consider white hat methods.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.
The issue that many corporations interested in SEO face is that white hat strategies, though effective over the long term, take time to implement and require the development of high quality content, the nurturing of meaningful social media contacts, and good website design. Conversely, black hat SEO tactics offer a quick pay-off and require little more than your credit card number.
At Skunkworks we pursue white hat tactics on behalf of our clients. This is motivated not only by our belief that these methods create a better search experience for users, but also by the numerous corporate horror stories that have resulted from engaging in black hat SEO. For instance, just last year Google caught JC Penney using black hat tactics that included link farming (the placing of links to JC Penney on less than reliable websites) and punished them by manually dropping their page rank. There’s also the story of Vitaly Borker who harassed his customers with the hope that they would post negative reviews to various websites. While his strategy of “All News is Good News” was undeniably effective, he was subsequently arrested for fraud.
We believe that it is not in the best interest of legal professionals to be caught engaging in practices that could jeopardize their brand and their professional reputation. Furthermore, as Google’s search algorithm becomes increasingly sophisticated, the efficacy of pursuing black hat tactics will inevitably wax and wane. More and more companies will be at risk of facing the negative consequences of black hat SEO without ever reaping the benefits. In many ways, a bet on black hat SEO is a bet against the intelligence of the engineers at Google.
Unfortunately, many Canadian law firms appearing prominently on organic search results owe their visibility to black hat methods. Although it is likely that these law firms are not completely aware of the strategies being used by the companies they hire, there is a definite lack of due diligence.
I discovered the less than honorable SEO tactics of a few select law firms the other day when I decided to do some research on the inbound links of the most popular personal injury websites in Toronto. My goal was to better understand the factors that were affecting their page ranking. I use opensiteexplorer when performing tasks of this type and highly recommend this software for any company interested in reviewing the quality of their inbound links or the links of their competitors.
The sad fact is that some of the highest-ranking personal injury websites were engaging in the exact same link scheme that landed JC Penney in hot water. I found links placed on hundreds of websites that were only marginally connected to the practice of law and some instances of links being placed on websites that were completely irrelevant and featured shockingly poor content. One law firm had an inbound link coming from the comments section of a celebrity gossip blog and another had the majority of their links coming from websites that look like this.
It’s important to remember that effective SEO - like so many things in life – requires time, effort, and money. Black hat SEO is not unlike injecting your firm’s marketing strategy with steroids. It may work today, but the long term consequences will not be pretty.
Posted in Digital Marketing, Google, Law firm websites, Marketing Strategy, Microsoft, SEM/SEO, Sustainability | Add a Comment »
I’m a strong believer in alternative licensing mechanisms for digital works. In particular, I try to use material licensed under Creative Commons wherever possible. Full Disclosure: I volunteered and worked for Creative Commons organizations in the UK and Canada during my formative legal years. Without wading into the legal details of Creative Commons licenses, I’ve come to appreciate a much more pragmatic use: Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
CC Attribution Licence
All Creative Commons licenses require Attribution as a minimal requirement. This means that if you use someone’s work (whether audio, video, text, or images), you’ll need to credit them. Typically, this means something to the effect of “Photo credit to JeremyHL, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharealike Canada 2.5.” If you’re using the work online, you’ll then add a link to the license terms. As part of attributing the work, you should also include a link back to the author wherever possible.
Through these link-backs, you’re being compensated for your work. Depending on your sources of income, high organic search rankings may prove much more lucrative than trying to license your work commercially. We often consult on SEO strategies. One such strategy is to create something of value (pretty/useful/clever/functional) and license it under Creative Commons.
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