6 Proven Link Building Strategies for Law Firm Websites
Tanner Jones of Consultwebs discusses 6 ways for law firms to expand their Off-page SEO and authority
Topics include:
- Legitimacy of link building
- Building valuable resources for clients and prospects
- Sponsoring and participating in events in your local market
- Analyzing your competition’s backlinks
- Providing content for authoritative publications
- Creating an annual scholarship for students in your area
- Additional topics
Proven methods for building links to law firm websites
We’re going to discuss six of the proven ways that we’ve found drive good, quality, relevant backlinks to a law firm site. Law firms are finding, more and more today, that having powerful links come into their site allows them to build their Law firm SEO rankings up, drive more qualified traffic to their site, and get the cases that they’re looking for.
Is link building a legitimate practice?
First we want to address the term link building. Now, I know that a lot of people have looked down on the term link building considering it a manipulative practice. I want to assure you that none of the strategies that we’re going to discuss today are manipulative. They’re legitimate programs in order to build trust in Google’s eyes, build trust in your prospective client’s eyes, and help you get the traffic, get the cases that you’re after.
It ultimately starts with how easy is it to get the link. If it’s easy to get the link, you have to be able to consider that other competitors, other law firms, out there are likely taking advantage of that link as well. It’s probably not going to do you any good as compared to what it’s going to do if you implement some of these six strategies that we’re going to discuss today.
Building valuable resources for clients and prospects
Of these six strategies to build links, the number one way to get quality links to your site is to build something of value for your website visitors, for your prospective clients. That starts with building resources on your site. Now, this could be a number of things. It could start with an information center on your site, depending on the practice areas that you’re targeting. Think through the more commonly asked questions that your prospective clients ask when they come into your office. Build out a resource center within your site. Things like that naturally bring visits, they naturally attract links.
If you have an outreach team, or can utilize an outreach team from a Search Marketing Provider, then they can go out and prospect other websites where that resource center is going to be of value. There’s a number of other things that you can develop. You can create apps on your site. Now, there’s a number of apps that you can do.
If you are a family law attorney, creating an app for domestic violence shelters. Creating an app for bicycle accidents in your specific market area. How often they occur? Where they occur? So, thinking through the mobile side of it, what can you create on your site that’s going to get attention, that’s going to helpful to the community? That’s something that will drive natural backlinks to the site that are going to help you get better traffic.
Sponsor and participate in events in your local market
The next thing that we want to discuss is sponsoring events. Now, I’m sure that a lot of the law firms watching this video already sponsor events in their local markets. If you’re giving money, even giving time to these events, to these non-profit organizations, that’s low-hanging fruit when it comes to acquiring good quality backlinks to your site.
So, I would encourage you to just sit here and jot down the number of events that you’re taking advantage of, that you’re participating in, or that staff members or people within your firm are participating in on a yearly basis. Those are great prospects for you to get links. You can go to their website, and you can find opportunities where maybe they have sponsorship page. You can get a link from that, where they list your law firm and link back to your main website.
Another opportunity is to actually build a page on your website related to that sponsor or related to that particular entity. If you create a page on the site promoting them, then that’s a great opportunity to be able to contact that non-profit or that charity and ask them to link back to your page, where you’re promoting their non-profit or their entity. So it’s a win-win and you can get a link from that effort. So definitely make sure that you’re doing that whenever you’re looking at prospecting good quality backlinks.
Know what your competitors backlinks look like
A great third way that we’ve found to get links is to look at your competition. Now, you know your competitors. You see them on television. You see them on your billboard ads in your market. And you see them in the search results when you’re looking for relevant practice areas in your market area. Look at those competitor sites and there are a number of tools.
There’s A-H-Refs, is a great way to go through and look at these competitor’s links. Now, these competitors, if they’re ranking in the search results, they’ve probably done a good job of acquiring good, solid, quality backlinks. So, it makes sense to go after and determine what they’ve taken advantage of and see how you can take advantage of it for yourself.
If you are a family lawyer or a personal injury attorney and these firms, these competitors, have gotten links from relevant websites, there’s a good chance that those relevant websites would be willing to link to your site as well. So start with your competitors. Find out what they’re taking advantage of and take advantage of it for yourself.
The fourth thing that we’ve found that drives good, quality backlinks to a site is simply looking at directories. Now, there are thousands if not tens of thousands of business and legal directories out there. And I’m not suggesting going through and listing your site in as many directories as possible. That’s not going to help you at all.
You want to find the directories that are already getting good quality traffic, that are likely ranking in your market already, and that are considered authoritative in Google’s eyes. We’ve listed a few here. Avvo.com is a powerful directory. This is a group that we trust. We see them ranking consistently and they’re doing great things with their website.
Lawyers.com, HG.org, those are also two other directories that are really powerful when it comes to a single listing, but also giving you good link juice back to your website. Simply type in the practice area and your market area, and find which directories are showing up in the search results. If they’re showing up and you’re not listed in that directory, go ahead and take advantage of that.
Provide content for authoritative publications
One of the big areas that you can really go out and prospect good opportunities for backlinks is through guest publication, writing on behalf of another website. This is important to note that the term guest blogging has somewhat of a negative connotation. I’m not suggesting going out and blogging for any website out there that will take your content.
Rather, I’m suggesting the very opposite of that, finding publications that are difficult to get your content published on their site. Typically, the harder it is to get content published on a website, the better, more authoritative that site’s going to be. If you can write content around your practice areas, around your focus, or your passion, then it’s personal.
It’s going to be a good content, and you can get that published on a quality, relevant website that’s likely going to send good traffic back to your site. It’s going to create great brand recognition and it’s going to drive the good quality link back to your site, ultimately helping your rankings, helping your traffic, and helping you get the cases you’re looking for.
Create an annual scholarship for students in your area
Now, the last way that I’m going to recommend getting good quality links to your site is through annual scholarships. Now, note that we say annual here and there’s a reason for annual. When you go out and you prospect colleges and universities in your market and the surrounding states letting them know about your scholarship, you want to let them know or let them be sure that this is something that’s going to be recurring year over year.
And the reason that’s important is because they’re going to leave that link to your scholarship page on there month, over month, over month. They’re not going to strip it away at the end of the school year. So that’s really important. It’s a great way to be able to drive good quality backlinks to your site.
Authority and credibility – Link Building Strategies for Law Firm Websites
We’re talking about legitimate programs to allow you to build trust, build credibility in your marketplace, and get the links. If it’s easy to get a link, you have to second guess it. You have to reconsider because if it’s easy, then it’s probably too good to be true.
If you’re implementing strategies like what we’re discussing today, that’s how you’re going to able to get the high-value links that actually make an impact, a positive impact to your overall web presence. We’ve discussed a wealth of ideas that’s going to allow you to get the quality backlinks your site needs to rank and rank in competitive markets.
To turn these concepts into cases, you have to ACT!
