I get quite a few calls from potential students, clients, and even attorneys throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and across the country as to the SEO, AdWords, and Social Media Marketing services I offer. One of the more unusual is why I am an SEO expert witness at all, and what I enjoy in what most people perceive as the down-and-dirty area of adversarial lawsuits among parties.
I thought a quick blog post on why I enjoy being an SEO expert witness would be of merit.
Three Reasons Why I Enjoy Being an SEO Expert Witness (and One Negative Factor)
First and foremost, I enjoy the very detailed and factual nature of being an expert witness. You know that when you get to a deposition or to a trial, you are going to be examined by a “hostile” attorney, and that you really need to know your facts. Staying close to the facts and being a true expert in those facts are ways to “defeat” the frivolous attacks that opposing counsel will inevitably throw at you. I have been fortunate enough to be in several depositions, and even one trial, and to be honest, I enjoyed helping the truth see the light of day. I am a very factual, and evidence-based person in my SEO practice, and I bring this to being an expert witness.
That said, I also enjoy the “combat” nature of legal proceedings. Each side gets an attorney that fervently represents his or her case, and it is up to the judge and/or jury to listen to all the facts and all the arguments and make a determination. By having the facts on one’s side, and having the expertise to present those facts effectively, I have found that the process can be rather enjoyable. Life (and the legal system) are not perfect, but I have found that generally speaking, the truth and the right generally prevail in a lawsuit, as all sides get their chance at presentation and the adversarial nature of our legal system shakes out all the facts: good, bad, and ugly. “The truth shall set you free,” so to speak.
Finally, because I am a teacher by nature, I enjoy taking the complexities of search engine optimization and explaining those to the average lay person as a juror or a judge. Both judges and jurors are hardly experts in how Google or Bing work, or the differences between on page and off page SEO, so the ability to take those technical complexities and explain them in a ways that make sense is a source of enjoyment. Being an expert witness isn’t much different from being a teacher: one takes one’s technical knowledge, and breaks it into understandable parts so that beginners can understand things.
Teaching and Consulting in Search Engine Optimization are Win / Win
All of that said, however, I enjoy being a teacher and being a consultant in the field more in one critical aspect. When I am teaching, or when I am consulting with a client (whether in the San Francisco Bay Area or elsewhere), we are in a win/win situation. If I do a good job, their marketing (and profits) increase. In a lawsuit, however, we are in a win/lose situation – so there is a substantial amount of negativity and ill will. It’s unavoidable.
