Let’s start with the good news:

Now here comes the bad news…

If there was ever any doubt that Page Rank doesn’t effect search results directly this site proves it.   I took each one of the practice areas exactly as it is listed in the menu and in the bold heading of the target page, added the words “tampa” and “attorney”, to help focus the search and checked the Google  search results through the first 100 listings.  The results are below.

Not in list : Alternative Dispute Resolution
Not in list : Antitrust and Trade Regulation
Not in list : Appellate
Position 99 : Business Reorganization and Bankruptcy
Not in list : Business Transactions
Not in list : Commercial Litigation
Position 32 : Construction Law & Government Contracting
Not in list : Eminent Domain and Condemnation
Not in list : Employment
Not in list : Environmental
Position 54 : ERISA, Employee Benefits and Compensation
Not in list : Expert Witness
Not in list : Health Care
Not in list : Marital and Family
Not in list : Personal Injury
Not in list : Real Estate and Lending Transactions
Not in list : Securities
Not in list : Technology, E-Commerce & Intellectual Property
Position 16 : Wealth Planning & Preservation

It doesn’t take a lot of research to figure out why Google doesn’t like Trenam’s site… 90% of this problem is due to extremely poor on page techniques:

1. Every page on the entire site has the exact same meta title tag “Trenam Kemker”. The solution: The title tag on each page must be unique and relevant to the content of the page.
2. There are NO META DESCRIPTIONS on any of the pages. The Solution: Think of a meta description as a two sentence summary of the page contents, and put descriptions on the pages.
3. There are NO META KEYWORDS on any of the pages. OK.. it’s generally accepted as fact that meta keywords have almost zero value these days, but… they still make a great place to put misspellings (ie: trenem, trennam, kemper) because it’s the only place on a page where you can legitimately type something that the user can’t see without getting busted for “hiding” stuff. Use your webmaster tools account to identify search terms that are actually mispellings of you name and put them in the keyword list.
4. There are NO H1 TAGS ON ANY OF THE PAGES. Solution: put h1 tags around the header lines of the pages, it’s that simple.

This is basic, by the book, everybody knows it, SEO stuff.  Fix 1 through 4 and you’ll at least get on the list.  While you’re fixing it, see if you can find out who broke it.  This site USED TO HAVE page titles and description tags, you can still see the old pages in the Google Site: index.  It also USED TO HAVEseo friendly URLs.  ie: it used to say: www.Trenem.com/profile/Allan-B-Davis  now it says: www.trenam.com/profiles_listall.asp?profileID=22 Friendly URLs aren’t a super big deal, but they help.

5. IMPORTANT FIX…
   You own at least one other domain name (TrenamKemker.com) which is pointing to the same content but which is not being forwarded in the correct manner. The multi-domain name game is tricky and can benefit you if done correctly (take a look at the Bush, Ross site to see how it’s done) but it can bite you in the back side if done incorrectly. All of your “spare” domain names need to be 301 forwarded to your primary domain without masks or frames. Get #1 through #5 done and you’ll be in the top 50 for every one of those practice areas and front page for some of them.
6. Code Bloat: All of the java script on the site is directly included into each page. Java script is cool and you can do lots of fun stuff with it, but when it’s included directly into the page it causes a phenomenon called code bloat. Basically, the search engine has to read through 50 or 100 lines of Java script (which it can’t understand) to get to the one or two lines of actual content on the page. Sometimes the robot get’s confused, or bored and just gives up and moves on to index a different page. The Solution is pretty easyjust move the java script into it’s own file and reference it with an “src=” tag instead of an include tag. Take a look at the source on the Fowler, White site to see how to get tons of java toys running without confusing the search engine.
7. Internal linking strategy. Unfortunately, your cool drop down menus are invisible to the search engines. Yes, that’s what I said… INVISIBLE.. you’re making it unnecessarily hard for the robot to find your pages. Notice that when you mouse over one of your upper menu items, you can see the destination page URL in the lower browser window? Now scroll down that menu and notice that you no don’t see any URLs associated with those menu choices. Your menus are written in Java Script and the robots don’t understand Java Script. You can accomplish the exact same effect using a combination of Java Script and HTML and have the destination links visible in the HTML so that the robot can read them. SOLUTION: up to this point everything that has been suggested can be fixed without having to change any programming on your site, however fixing this correctly requires changing the java script so… your next best option is simply to go around the problem and help the robot find your pages, you do this two ways: 1.) internal links within the text of your pages that point to other pages on your site: example… John Smith’s bio page could contain a links to the areas of law that John practices, that way if the robot finds John’s page, it also finds the area pages. 2.) submit a site map to Google via webmaster tools. see below.
8. Data, data, who’s got the data? There are no analytics installed on this site, nor does there appear to be even the basic webmaster tools (but I can’t be sure about that). So any reports that you may be receiving about what’s happening on your web site are probably coming from the server logs. The entire world uses Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics, both are free products and they install without having to change anything on the site except add about 5 lines of Java Script to the very end of the page. Without them you’re flying blind, with them you know what pages are getting indexed, what pages are being seen, what people are searching for when they find you, what pages are causing the robots problems, and tons more. Server logs are great for finding out who hacked into your site, but not for much else. You can’t get to the top of the index if your pages aren’t in the index.
9. Alt tags on the pictures. Once again, basic SEO stuff, but important. Robots are blind. They read text (not Java Script) and they have no idea what so ever what a picture is about unless you tell them. John Smith’s picture should have an alt tag on it that says… you guessed it… “John Smith” or better yet.. “Attorney John Smith Civil Litigator”

There you go… I found your hack and gave you the top 10 hit list.. total cost to you $0.00.   Do all to ten fixes  all and you’ll own “Tampa Attorney __fill_in_the_blank__” without having to write a single line of code.  Of course all of this is based on the assumption that you’d like to be found by something other than just your name… believe it or not some attorneys don’t care at all about being found in the search engines.

One more note:  kind of off topic but while I was deep diving I found a really odd refrence on the privacy page of another firm’s site (MDBfirm.com) here’s the quote:

 ”…The foregoing authorization does not extend to any logo, graphic, sound or image, to the design or layout of the trenam.com website, or to any information or content owned by any third party….”

What does that mean? Well… looks to me like someone copied your privacy page to make their privacy page but didn’t remove all the original references… Not a very good practice when talking about copyrights

Speaking of love… somebody must really love typeing… 43 failed logins to the admin account on this site in the last 24 hours… come on! It’s just a standard WordPress 2.8.5 blog with a couple of cute plugins and the password is nothing special.. I’ll give you a hit… “RumpleStiltsken”. BTW: What do you think you’ll accomplish if you get in? Do you really think I won’t know I’ve been hacked?

In the name of equal harrasment for all…  here’s the list of all the sites and providers (not just Bayshore) who were compromised by the www.811229.com hack.  At least as far as I’m aware at this time.  I love chaseing down hackers.. it’s kind’a like killing vampires but without all the blood.

http://aaxchange.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://gatorcases.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://hca.coop/index.html IMCONLINE.NET
http://macdonaldcenter.org/ Bayshore Solutions
http://nighttimehawaii.com/ ISLE-CC.COM
http://theandybumataishow.com/ ISLE-CC.COM
http://twp.freehold.nj.us/ Net Access Corporation
http://vastu-consultant.com zabco.net
http://wheelworks.net/ RACKSPACE.COM
http://www.ad2tampabay.org/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.artgonepostal.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.azcardinal.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.beaverhill.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.comp4us.com/ register.com
http://www.educatedchoices.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.ekitron.com/ register.com
http://www.gslsavingsbank.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.humboldtcreamery.com IMCONLINE.NET
http://www.jmfe-solutions.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.jobs4police.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.mekreview.com/ yahoo.com
http://www.njcee.org/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.novanews.org/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.ohanaroad.net/ ISLE-CC.COM
http://www.olisystems.com Net Access Corporation
http://www.orionbank.com Bayshore Solutions
http://www.pandj.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.paradigmlearning.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.protoexpress.com/ SPRINTLINK.NET
http://www.rowclearing.com/ NAMERESOLVE.COM
http://www.scedp.com/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.sussexcountychamber.org/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.sussexredcross.org/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.trenam.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.trenamkemker.com/ Bayshore Solutions
http://www.vansonleathers.com/ imconline.net
http://www.villagealliance.org/ Net Access Corporation
http://www.webagent.nl dds.nl

1.) The CMS that Bayshore uses to maintain it’s customers’ sites is exploited and someone is using it to sell links and transfer page rank at will.

OR

2.) Bayshore or perhaps an ex-employee of Bayshore is hand inserting links into sites that they know have no tracking code installed and therefore no one will get any reports of the outboud activity.

Judging from the comments at JobVent.com I’m betting on the second option

I’ve backtraced the hack and put together a list of 10 of Bayshore’s clients who I know are hacked… called two of them and had them call Bayshore to get the hacks removed… now we’ll see if there is any proactive work done… I’ll watch the other 8 that I know of and see if Bayshore cleans them up.

Stay tuned.

very wierd outbound link in the footer:
811229.com a import company from china it’s the only outbound on the site and it’s on every page. Sure hope that the partners own that company, otherwise, somebody’s going to fired.

Domain Name : 811229.com
PunnyCode : 811229.com
Creation Date : 2008-10-30 08:22:32
Updated Date : 2009-10-07 07:54:05
Expiration Date : 2010-10-30 08:22:24

Registrant:
Organization : baolaimi
Name : lin jie
Address : Ji Mei
City : Xia Men
Province/State : Fu Jian
Country : CN
Postal Code : 361021

bunches of garbage start and stop tags in the content the actual content is nested 13 spans deep.
shouldn’t hurt anything but can’t help at all.

1.) Trenam Kemker with only 68 attorneys, 244 links and 601 pages is outranking some pretty big firms and even ranking above the Hillsborough County Bar Association website. This is where we’ll start the investigation.

2.) Carey O’Malley Whitaker and Mueller as well as McAddison are relatively small firms out ranking much larger firms and sites. I’ll have a closer look at them next.

3.) BSBfirm with 31 attorneys is holding up the bottom of the list with a page rank of ZERO. Something is WAY out of wack over at BBS’s site, no way they should be pulling a zero. I’ll check them out as soon as time permits.

In my next post I’ll investigate possible causes of these annamolies.

ForrdiaBar.org = 6 ( Florida Bar Association)

FLSenate.gov = 6 ( Florida Senate)

FowlerWhite.com = 5

CarltonFields.com = 5

Trenam.com = 5 (Trenam, Kemker, et al )

HillsBar.com = 4 (Hillsborough County Bar Association)

BushRoss.com = 4

HWHlaw.com = 4 (Hill Ward Henderson)

Ruden.com = 4 (Ruden McClosky)

Shutts.com = 4 (Shutts & Bowen LLP)

Gray-Robinson.com = 4

COWMPA.com = 3 (Carey, O’Malley, Whitaker and Mueller)

GlennRasmussen.com = 3

McAddison.com = 3

SaxonGilmore.com = 2

BarnettBolt.com = 2

AllenDell.com = 2

MPDlegal.com = 2 (Mills Paskert Divers )

McraeMetcalf.com = 2

JohnRains.com = 2 (John H. Rains III, P.A)

BankerLopez.com = 2 (Banker Lopez Gassler P.A)

FloridaH2oLaw.com = 0 (Manson Law Group)

BSBfirm = 0 (Bricklemyer Smolker & Bolves)