Case Study Solutions for Web Domain Reputation Damage

The following is a message from Trial Guides founder Aaron DeShaw regarding work performed on his web site by Trial Guides Digital Marketing after getting hacked in 2020.

Repairing Severe Domain Reputation Damage and Blacklisting

"I am writing to discuss my experience with Trial Guides Marketing Agency as a lawyer customer.  While I am the founder of Trial Guides and have expertise in digital marketing from that work, I had always left my law firm web site work to outside web site agencies. My experience with these outside web site companies and agencies had always left me very unimpressed.  It was not until a division of Nike moved into the Trial Guides building and I had met some of their senior digital marketing specialists that I felt I had met people with true talent in this field. Over the course of the past several years, that team has trained a dedicated group of digital marketers at Trial Guides, to the point that I felt we had something truly exceptional to offer to lawyers as a legal marketing agency.

My law firm was one of the first test cases for the agency, when it started making its expertise available to lawyers, based on the company’s 20 year history in digital marketing for Trial Guides’ eCommerce business.

I had a unique and very difficult situation with my law firm web site created by a web site agency and their chosen web site host.  Due to a problem with a Wordpress update that was not properly updated by my prior web site agency, my site was hacked.  During the first hack my web site was gone.  It took a few weeks before they could recover the content and get it working again.  Obviously this was not good for business.

At the time, I didn’t personally realize the susceptibility of Wordpress web sites, but then faced repeated hacks throughout much of 2020.  The first time I was hacked I asked my old agency if the issue was fixed to avoid another hack, and they would reassure me that the risk was eliminated.  But, then they would fail to correctly update the website again after another Wordpress update.  Over approximately one year, my web site was hacked multiple times, in some cases disabling the site completely and in one case the hackers posted explicit content on my law firm web site.    

Concurrently, the hackers started a phishing attack from my domain, resulting in my web site domain being blacklisted by email service providers.  

While I had been in the top spot for Google in my area of practice up to the hacking, the attack plummeted my Google ranking.

I searched for an agency to help me rebuild my web site and restore my domain reputation.  In terms of the web site, the major legal marketing agencies required me to commit to a $4,000 per month Pay Per Click budget for a minimum of two years plus consulting fees (a total financial commitment of around $75,000) before they would even discuss building a web site, which would be a significant additional cost of approximately $35,000.  I could not find an agency willing to invest time into repairing my domain reputation, which was a material part of the problem.

I hired an agency to build a new web site for me, who I felt did a great job.  But, despite moving off WordPress, creating a new web site, and minimizing my susceptibility to another hack, the damage to my domain reputation continued to destroy my Google ranking. Even with the new web site this continued to negatively impact my Google ranking and the number of cases I was getting from the internet.  

Even more seriously, the blacklisting of my domain meant that many of the emails my staff and I would send to potential clients, opposing counsel, judicial staff and judges would go to spam or junkmail and never be seen.  This created a very serious problem for a lawyer involved in litigation.

I know that domain age is an important part of Google ranking, and so I didn’t want to simply discard my old domain and buy a new one for a new website, or it would be difficult or impossible to ever get back my #1 ranking with Google.  The combination of new domain and new web site would take years to ever recover my prior ranking.

Using this highly complex situation, Trial Guides Digital Marketing took a deep dive into my web site, domain and email reputation.  In short, they were able to resolve the damage to my web site reputation, resulting in my law firm getting back to the great rankings we had achieved prior to the hacking within just a few months.  

Equally important, they cleared up our blacklisting with email service providers, allowing our email to be delivered to potential clients, insurers, opposing counsel, court staff and judges without it being flagged as spam or junk mail.  That change was very quick once the necessary work was done.

Since that time I have run a number of lower cost PPC and social media campaigns with Trial Guides Marketing Agency that have had a significant return on investment.  The best of these involved a factory explosion case where many people were injured and the factory burnt to the ground.  We had one client injured in that event, and early evidence that one or more third party companies could be responsible for the explosion that was so forceful it blew out the windows and doors of the factory.  Through a very targeted social media campaign, Trial Guides Marketing Agency obtained an additional four clients who had sustained brain injuries, inner ear injuries and PTSD.  The total cost of the ads was $100.  I am just now resolving these cases for several million dollars.

Beyond this, I've worked with the agency and despite this history of reputation damage, my web site is now ranking high both regionally and nationally.  I get calls from all over the country for catastrophic injury cases.  As the result of their work, I've obtained multiple cases worth $1,000,000 or more.  

I have worked with several digital marketing agencies and highly experienced digital marketers during my career.  None have come close to the effectiveness of the Trial Guides Marketing Agency.

Aaron DeShaw"

If your web site has been hacked, or a phishing campaign has been initiated from your domain name, your domain is black listed.  You need to make a decision whether to abandon the domain or hire an expert in restoring your domain and email deliverability.  DeShaw's web site went from hacked and on multiple blacklists to obtaining over 1,000,000 hits per month organically within five years using Trial Guides Digital Marketing.

Trial Guides Digital Marketing is a leading law firm marketing agency.  Using a detailed onboarding interview, web site audit, competitor analysis and an extensive evaluation of your web site, we can create customized solutions for your law firm. By implementing these strategies we've helped law firms obtain significant increases in monthly web site traffic. If you are interested in learning more, contact us to get started.