How To Find An SEO Expert Witness

By  //  September 25, 2020

SEO experts are more and more popular in courts today.

Their expertise becomes important in business cases that have really important implications. Due to this, there is a drastic increase in the number of SEO expert witnesses that offer their services to courts from around the world.

In a court of law, it is the attorney that usually recommends an expert witness. The other party can start a process that removes the witness from the list approved by the courts. That is why, who you choose is very important. Courts will not dismiss the testimony of SEO expert witnesses that have high credibility and that are well-known in the industry.

Choosing an SEO expert witness is all about personal choices. However, everything starts with understanding the basics. Let’s go through these basics and then move on to how to actually find a reliable SEO expert witness.

What Is An SEO Expert Witness?

The SEO expert witness is a specialist that offers technical analysis. The purpose is to offer opinions concerning SEO (search engine optimization), which practically means getting organic traffic to websites from search engines like Google.

Usually, SEO revolves around having a site that is ranked well in the results for some specific keywords people would use when they look for something. The SEO expert witness knows everything about search engine optimization and his experience can be used in court cases to shed light on some specific subjects.

Keep in mind that in SEO there are numerous methods, strategies, and tactics that are used. All of these have marketing and technical elements. The SEO expert witness oftentimes examines aspects related to SEO campaigns.

This includes a determination of whether or not standard practices in the industry were followed, whether or not the practices used actually reduced traffic to a site of the competition, and the effects of the SEO work done.

The analysis that is done by the SEO expert witness oftentimes includes numerous SEO metrics that are analyzed. The most common ones are:

■ Bounce rate – why visitors leave

■ Average time-on-page – analyzes user intent

■ Backlinks – related to domain authority

■ Keyword rankings – related to search traffic

■ Device traffic – analyzing percentages of traffic based on the device used to access websites

■ Crawl errors – related to indexing problems

■ Page load speed optimization – this does affect many things, including bounce rate

Returning users

Pages visited by users

To put it as simple as possible, the SEO expert witness knows everything about SEO and can answer related questions in court. He/she can be hired by one of the attorneys in the case or by the court when there is a need to know more about some subjects that are discussed. Obviously, most of the cases that require the experience of such an expert witness are related to business in one way or another.

How To Find An SEO Expert Witness

When you look for an SEO expert witness, the first thing that you notice is that there are many specialists that you can choose from. It is up to you to find one that can actually give you access to the knowledge needed to assist the case. Due to this, in order to hire a very experienced SEO expert like the one here; visit site, here are the most important things to consider.

The Google Ranking Of The SEO Expert Witness

One of the most important things, when you look for an expert, is knowledge. This is true in every single industry. Fortunately, in SEO, it is one thing that is very easy to understand and analyze. That is because we all have access to Google and other major search engines.

To keep things as simple as possible, you should only consider the SEO expert witnesses that have a really high ranking in search engines. This is practical proof that the professional really knows what he/she is talking about. Why would you hire a consultant that is not good at his job? This is exactly the type of question you have to ask yourself when you want to hire someone for anything.

It has to be mentioned that not holding the number one position in search engine rankings for related terms, like “SEO expert witness” or “SEO specialist” does not necessarily say that the person does not have knowledge. However, being present at least on the first page of search engine results for vital keywords in the industry should be taken into account.

The Court Experience Of The SEO Expert Witness

Hiring an SEO expert as an expert witness for a court case without taking this factor into account is a very bad thing to do. We say this because courts can become very hostile very fast. Dealing with attorneys is not something that is easy to do and you need some experience to be able to deal with the court environment.

Generally speaking, the more court experience an expert has, the higher the possibility that your case will not have a problem when he is asked questions by the judge, the jury, or the opposing counsel. You do hire the expert to help your case so court experience is very important.

Prices

It is obvious that the SEO expert witness you hire for a case needs to be paid. Some of the best specialists do have very high fees. If you cannot afford to pay for the services of the SEO expert witness, you need to look for someone that you can afford. Try to get someone with as much experience as possible based on how much you can pay.

Trust

Just as with any consultant you would hire in life, if you do not trust the individual, the entire process is flawed. This is because of the fact that you might hide important information that the SEO expert needs in order to offer good counseling. Hiding data is one of the worst things that you can do when you have someone analyze something that you did or something that impacted any part of your business.

Generally speaking, when you work with any consultant, you have to be fully honest. Remember that the SEO expert is hired in order to give you an opinion and to tell you what you do not know. With this in mind, there is no reason to hide anything. Transparency is very important.

When You Deal In Court With An SEO Expert Witness

If the opponent counsel hires an SEO expert witness in court, there is a really good possibility this is done in order to gain some sort of advantage. This is when it is very important that you hire your very own SEO expert witness to take a look at the evidence provided by the other party and even ask questions that the other counsel might not ask when dealing with the hired SEO expert witness.

Basically, when you deal with an expert witness hired specifically by the other party, you have to be careful and you need to also hire your own expert witness to offer counsel.

When The Court Hires An SEO Expert Witness

It is not just the attorneys that hire SEO expert witnesses. Sometimes, the court decides to bring in an expert in order to shed light on some important questions that appeared or that will appear regarding the technical work presented in the case.

If this is your situation, the first thing that your attorney needs to do is to check the expert status of the witness brought in. There are legal procedures that can be started to dismiss the testimony of people that you think are not appropriate. However, this needs to be proven.

When dealing with court-appointed SEO expert witnesses, do not try to discredit the professional. What is important in this case is to have evidence that can be presented and analyzed. Just as before, there is a good possibility that you will have to hire your own SEO expert witness so that you can present more evidence.

Conclusions

Hiring an experienced SEO expert witness is not at all difficult to do if you allow yourself the time needed to make a very good choice. There is definitely not a shortage of such specialists. Work with those that you can trust and that you can get a good working relationship with.

As the last tip we have to highlight, do not base your decision on how much money you need to pay. When it comes to any expert witness, you need to get the best that you can find. If you do not do this, you open the doors to inaccuracies.

To sum up, always find the best expert witness you can find, the individual that has proven SEO knowledge and expertise. Also, do make sure the attorney is involved in the process. If possible, try to find an attorney that understands SEO and/or marketing whenever the case involves something like this. When you do this, you have a much higher possibility of winning than when you hire a random attorney that does not have such experience.