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6 Negative Lawyers SEO Tactics You Should Not Do For Philadelphia Law Firms

Updated: Jul 14, 2022

Negative SEO Tactics That Does More Harm Than Good. Here's A Digital Marketing Guide For Lawyers On Negative SEO "Strategies".


If search engines decide which pages are the best, they can decide which is the worst. If you follow the desired criteria, it boosts your chances of ranking high. If you don't, you either get buried in the search results or penalized for doing bad SEO. A Legal Marketing Agency might do a lot of optimizations, but over-optimizing, spam, and carelessly linking pages are avoided at all costs.


So, let's talk about what you shouldn't be doing when implementing SEO for law firms.

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There are ways to maximize Lawyer SEO and digital marketing for lawyers strategies, but there's a chance you'll overdo them. Below are 6 SEO for law firms no-no's that you should be avoided at all costs.

1. Keyword Stuffing

Keywords help search engines find you. You're advised to do keyword research to decide which popular search terms you want your pages to be found for. You want users to see your page on law-related searches and not other industries.


Incorporating them into your posts tells search engines what your page is all about, so you show up when someone types in your chosen keywords. It's the first thing you do when you start implementing SEO for law firms strategies for the lawyers in Philadelphia.

However, you shouldn't get carried away. Overusing similar or unrelated keywords can be considered keyword stuffing. Search engines like Google will consider your page too spammy to be reliable, no matter how good your content is.

2. Duplicate Content


As a general rule of content marketing for Philadelphia law firms, you should consistently come out with something new. However, it's understandable for anyone to run out of ideas. This might sometimes lead people to regurgitate old content just to get something out.


law firm seo

However, duplicates tend to compete with each other in the rankings. Worse, Google can detect duplicates, and the algorithm might choose one over the other instead of ranking them both. This means that you've essentially wasted time and effort on a post that didn't even get to rank in the first place.

3. Unhelpful Content

People go on search engines because they have a need—whether it's to know about something, to buy, or to find services. They do searches to find solutions.

If your content does not satisfy this need, they'll most likely click off and negatively affect your stats. This can also happen when you stuff your pages with unrelated keywords that don't offer solutions to the users' problems.

Search engines can also consider your content unhelpful, irrelevant, or low quality.

For Example:


Search engines might rank you down or penalize you if:

  • Your posts are too short.

  • You're spamming links to spammy websites.

  • There are too many grammatical errors.

  • Users are leaving right after they click to your page.

4. Bad Backlinks

You may have heard that backlinks can boost traffic. However, not every backlink can be good for your Philadelphia Lawyer SEO. If there are too many links from spammy websites pointing back to you, it immediately diminishes your domain authority.


You don't want search engines to associate you with bad SEO, and that includes getting links from bad websites.

5. Too Many External Links

Putting too many external links can also get you in trouble. Search engines have long had problems with spammy sites and content farms that sell backlinks and intentionally cause malicious negative SEO.

Link only as needed. Choose and screen domains every time. You can also use "no-follow" links if you really have to.

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6. Bad User Experience


Bad user experience (UX) can be enough to turn site visitors off. For example, no matter how good your blog posts are, users are still likely to abandon them if they're hard to read. Likewise, if your website is slow to load or bugs out, you might lose potential clients.

Poor site design can discourage users from staying on your domain, and that can reflect badly on your search engine stats.

Not optimizing for mobile searches can also affect your site design. Some layouts and themes look good on desktops but translate terribly into mobile web pages.

Why Should You Let LawyerLeadMachine Help You With SEO?

Attorney SEO can improve website traffic by implementing good SEO tactics like keyword research, social shares, GMB management, and content marketing for law firms. In addition, remembering essential do's and don'ts can help you in the long run.

LLM is a legal marketing agency that provides holistic law firm SEO services that helps you rank and generate leads. Consult with our experts and avail of top-notch law firm marketing services.


You can check out our Free Lawyer SEO Guides for more tips and tricks. If you need more advanced assistance, you can review your options here.

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