Can Bad SEO Advice Support a Negligence Lawsuit?

Check out this post by Eric Goldman on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog about how bad SEO advice could support a negligence claim as seen in D’Agostino v. Appliances Buy Phone, Inc..  (As an aside, I found this article at Associates Mind – another blog that appears to be way better than this one and which makes me jealous).

According to the complaint, a small home appliances business and Google were sued by the business’s web developer.  As Mr. Goldman points out, the more interesting aspect of the complaint is the counter claim.  In the counter claim, the small business seeks damages for the web developer building a second business website that appears to have had duplicate content with the original website.  If you didn’t know, Google doesn’t like duplicate content.

Mr. Goldman does a great job explaining the nature of the counter claim:

On the negligence claim, Sigman argued that D’Agostino claimed to be an SEO expert but negligently triggered a duplicate content penalty. Finally, Sigman claimed that D’Agostino breached their contract by “jeopardizing defendant’s website, violating Google policies, and causing the interruption of defendant’s enterprise.”

I’ve been putting a lot of time and effort into my law firm website and to blogging.  There is a lot of information out there about “white hat” versues “black hat” search-engine-optimization.  As I concluded in a prior post, SEO is mostly bull shit in the respect that you don’t need a guru.  What you should do is focus on a niche and write authoritatively with good content.  Simple.

Anyway, as Mr. Goldman points out, there may actually be negative ramifications for asserting that you are some sort of SEO guru and trying to sell your wares to the next gullible buyer.  I can’t tell you how many SEO gurus have either tried to comment on this blog or sent me random, un-asked-for emails:  trying to sell me their SEO secrets to big, big money.

As I posted earlier, there is no trick to garnering tons of hits on a blog and free money.  It takes work, good writing, interesting topics, and time.  Furthermore, it would help to be like Lawyerist, Above the Law, or many other legal related blogs out there that have what appears to be an army of writers.  I’m not saying this is a bad thing – a lot of good content gets posted that way.  However, it is certainly hard for a small-fish like me to make headway when they are writing so much and so well.

In any case, this case shows why SEO gurus should be denied access to your wallet as you try to get your law firm marketing together and think about how to start a law firm.  There is simply no substitute for good work and good content.