Law Firm SEO Scam: How "Off-Site SEO" Vendors Hijack Your Brand

You hired a lead-gen vendor. SEO leads on a per-case basis. No upfront, no risk, you only pay when a case closes. The math sounded clean. A year in, your own brand name returns somebody else's domain in Google. Your Google Business Profile gets flagged for inconsistent NAP. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Overviews cite the vendor's templated microsite as you. Every billboard, sponsorship, and referral you ever paid for now funnels leads through a site you do not own, and you pay the vendor per case for the privilege. When you finally walk away, the vendor keeps the domain and resells the authority you built to a competing firm in your market. This article walks through how the scheme works, in eleven steps.