This document discusses dangerous web practices that can harm a firm's search engine optimization. It begins by explaining how search engines work by crawling, indexing, and retrieving webpages. It then discusses what Google looks for in high-quality websites, such as useful content and good technical implementation, while recommending practices to avoid like automatically generated content, thin content, link schemes, cloaking, and hidden text. The document concludes by emphasizing the importance of writing high-quality content over relying on pay-per-click advertising.

1. Dangerous Web Practices
That Can Sink Your Firm

2. Presented by:
Community Manager
Victoria Blute

3. About This Webinar
● How Search Engines Work
● What’s Google Looking For?
● Practices Worth Avoiding
● The Easiest Way To Stay Out
Of Trouble...
What we’ll cover:

4. How Search Engines Work
Three steps:
● Crawling
● Indexing
● Retrieval

5. Search Engine History
•Early search engines
•Problems with this method
•Blackhat SEO

6. Search Engine History
● Introduction of Google’s Panda &
Penguin
● Search engines today

7. What Is Google Looking For?
The basics
○ Design & Content
○ Technical
○ Quality

8. What Is Google Looking For?
Design and Content:
● Useful, information rich sites
● What are people asking?
● Avoid user frustrations.

9. What Is Google Looking For?
Technical:
● Think about how others view your site.
● Good content ≠ a good website.
● Make sure your site is crawlable.

10. What Is Google Looking For?
Quality:
● “Make pages for users, not for search
engines.”
● Could you tell a Google employee about
what you’re doing?
● Make your content unique.

11. Practices Worth Avoiding
● Content issues
● Link schemes
● Cloaking
● Sneaky redirects
● Hidden text or links
● Doorway pages
● Keyword stuffing

12. Practices Worth Avoiding
Content problems:
● Automatically Generated Content
● Thin Content
● Scraped/Duplicate Content

13. Practices Worth Avoiding
Automatically Generated Content

14. Practices Worth Avoiding
Thin Content

15. Practices Worth Avoiding
Scraped & Duplicate Content

16. Practices Worth Avoiding
Link Schemes
● Avoid buying and selling links
● Excessive link exchanges
● Automatically created links

17. Practices Worth Avoiding
Cloaking: “The practice of presenting
different content or URLs to human
users and search engines.”
Sneaky Redirects: “The act of
sending a visitor to a different URL
than the one they initially
requested.”

18. Practices Worth Avoiding
Keyword Stuffing
Here’s a paragraph about keyword
stuffing. Keyword stuffing is something
lawyers will want to avoid. There are
still people who do keyword stuffing, but
keyword stuffing is unlikely to trick
search engines because keyword
stuffing is usually detected by them.

19. Practices Worth Avoiding
Hidden Text and Links
● Using white text on a white background
● Locating text behind an image
● Using CSS to position text off-screen
● “Font size: 0”
● Hiding a link in one character

20. Practices Worth Avoiding
Doorway Pages:
“...sites or pages created to rank highly
for specific search queries.”

21. The Easiest Way To Stay Out Of Trouble...
Write high-quality content.

22. Don’t get hooked on PCP PPC

23. PPC can be an acceptable bridge but...
● Can give you a false sense of value and security in your practice
● Distract you from the imperative to become an online thought-
leader, or yield to one

24. PPC is not sustainable
● Perpetual “arms race”
● Vulnerable to bigger spenders
● Prices tend to rise = high CAC
● A dollar spent is a dollar lost
● Lots of wasted “clicks”
● Does not build anything of value
● Money can be invested better elsewhere

25. Q & A
Please submit your questions via the
GoToWebinar control panel.

26. Thank You!
800-713-0161
info@lawlytics.com
www.LawLytics.com