Don’t Fall For This Legal Directory and Award Link Scam

Last week I received an email from a client requesting I add The National Trial Lawyers (NTL) Top 100 logo to the firm’s website.

Up until now I had thought NTL Top 100 was one of the better “invitation” only legal membership directories and awards in the market. Then I read the entire email he was sent from the representative.

I noticed that you do not have your award badge displayed on your website. If you would like to add it to your website (to increase Google search results), below is the link to your badge along with the password you will need to access it.

I literally gasped and was disgusted. The person is telling my client that by including The National Trial Lawyers Top 100 logo, it will “increase Google search results”. This is a flat out lie.

Links are one of the most important aspects when trying to, in their words, “increase Google search results”. When you log in to NTL’s website to receive the HTML-embed code that lawyers can copy and paste into their websites, the logos include a link back to the NTL website. They are in fact trying to increase their own SEO by getting law firms to link to them. Unbelievable.

Please don’t fall for this. I’m sure the NTL is still a great organization and provides a lot of value to attorneys. But this type of blatant lying to increase their own rankings is unacceptable.