Online Reputation
Management

Online Reputation Management for Law Firms & Lawyers

In a matter of minutes, any individual can post injurious online content regarding your law firm. Unfortunately many people are interested in the “dirty” of any professional business, and therefore will usually take the time to click on these links and read what has been posted. By doing this, the page that hosts this information becomes “popular” in the eyes of search engines, and may begin to appear on the first page of search results consequently tainting your online reputation.

Libel, Opinion, Error or Unfortunate Truth

Regardless of what form the injurious content is, it is crucial to remove it from the eyes of potential clients. Typically there are four forms of such content:

1. Libel - If content is found that consists of lies intended to defame or injure the reputation of your law firm, this content constitutes libel, and is illegal.
   
2. Opinion - Freedom of speech allows individuals to post comments in the form of the their opinion. These comments, such as reviews, are often helpful to law firms but can cast a great darkness if they are negative.
   
3. Error - We occasionally find 1) false information that is due to simple error, 2) links to old web pages that contain outdated information, and 3) web pages that portray past associations that are currently invalid.
   
4. Unfortunate Truth - No one is perfect, and sometimes our mistakes can follow us on the web. The fortunate truth, however, is that these mistakes can be removed from the eyes of the public.

Repairing and Maintaining Your Reputation

Many times injurious content can be removed from the internet because the information violates the policies of particular websites. To determine if this is the case, our team contacts owners of websites and discusses their policies. In many instances, the content is removed immediately. In other instances, the website owner sends an email to the person who created the injurious content, explaining to them that their information is being contested. If the person fails to validate the information, or does not respond within a given time frame, the information is removed from the website.

Admittedly sometime it is not possible to remove certain harmful content if  the owner has a legal right to post the content, and is unwilling to remove it. However, this does not stop us from removing it from the eyes of the public. Using a practice similar to that which is used in search engine optimization, we can often methodically demote the web pages that contain the content.  This means that although we cannot physically remove it, we can prevent it from appearing on the first and second pages of search results.

Why Chose ProLaw Marketing

When we acquire a new client, he or she becomes a part of our family. Obviously our interest is related to making them money so that we can make money, but our commitment extends well beyond this. Our team is staffed with caring, and high-achieving workers who commit 110% to each client.