Link Building For Law Firms: Tips To Get Your Target Results

Link building for law firms is a topic lawyers (regardless of legal practice area) should be interested in. If you own a law firm, you must have realized that getting clients online these days has become more challenging. 

Legal marketing has become highly competitive, as many law firms now invest heavily in SEO. But you can give your law firm a competitive edge by combining SEO with a robust link-building strategy. 

Law Firm SEO expert renders SEO and link-building service, and has helped hundreds of law firms acquire tons of clients online. Get in touch if you need SEO help. 

Here, we will discuss the benefits of backlinks for law firms, how to build high-quality backlinks step by step, and more. Keep reading for more information on this topic. 

What Is Link Building For Law Firms?

Link building for attorneys is the deliberate effort of acquiring backlinks from external websites to your firm’s website. Your links should be from external websites in the same niche as yours. Niche relevance is a factor search engines consider when rating the quality of backlinks. 

Backlinks serve as digital signals or endorsements to search engines. In other words, your backlinks tell search engines that your content is high-quality and valuable and desire to rank high in the search engine result pages. 

Link building for lawyers is a vital off-page search engine optimization strategy to boost a law firm’s website. It can boost your website’s ranking in SERPs and establish you as an authority in the legal domain. 

You can reach a wider audience via link building. When you publish your content on other websites and embed a link to your official website, people may want to visit your website if they find your content interesting. Link building can grant you a massive opportunity to reach an audience you probably wouldn’t have been able to reach. 

A Handy Tip: Endeavor to publish high-quality content when building backlinks. Avoid publishing poor-quality content because you want to build backlinks hurriedly. If you do, the content won’t rank and won’t have the expected impact on your law firm’s website.

The Benefits of Backlinks For Law Firms

Why should a lawyer invest in link building? That is what this section of this post will address. How can link building benefit your law firm and help you get clients who are seeking legal help?  

Check out the benefits below

1: SEO boost: 

Link-building is an off-page SEO strategy to help a website rank high and get qualified traffic. Search engine optimization involves optimizing a website to rank high in search engines and get organic. So, both strategies work hand-in-hand. SEO involves on-page and off-page strategies. 

Backlinks are digital endorsements. Google search engine considers backlinks from other high-authority websites as an endorsement of your content. These sought-after endorsements carry much weight. It gives Google search engines a valid reason to rank your content high on the search engine result page. 

2: Improve your website ranking:

Do you want your law firm to rank high on the search engine result pages? If yes, then link-building is one of the strategies to consider. 

Backlinko analyzed 11.8 million Google search engine results and discovered that pages with more backlinks ranked higher than the ones with fewer backlinks. 

The above research shows the importance of backlinks and how they can give your law firm a competitive edge. With more backlinks, your law firm website will rank higher than your competitors.

Ranking high in SERPs (search engine result pages) will make it easier for people seeking lawyers in your practice area and geographical location to find you. And they will not only find but contact and visit you in person for legal advice.

According to research by Pew Center, 91% of adults claimed they use search engines to find information. They include young and college-educated people. Another surprising thing about this research is that 54% of the respondents claim they use search engines more than twice daily. 

That shows many people are depending on search engines to find information. They prefer searching online to driving around and looking for a law firm or lawyer to hire. 

3: Referral traffic: 

Link building offers other benefits besides helping you rank high in search engine result pages. You can also get referral traffic via backlinks. 

It explains why any content used for link building should be top-notch. Prospects will read your content and judge you by its quality and value. If they like what they see, they may visit your law firm’s website and contact you. 

You can get referral traffic from external websites where you publish your content and links. That is another benefit you can get from link building. 

4: Build solid reputation and trust:

The reputation of your law firm is essential. Prospects want to hire the best lawyers for their cases and will likely use reputation as a factor when deciding on the law firm to hire. 

Guest posts on high-authority legal websites and reputable legal directories can improve your law firm’s online image. Additionally, potential clients will start seeing you as an authority in the legal field. 

5: Backlinks are a major Google ranking factor:

Google uses over 200+ factors to decide where to rank a website, and backlinks are one of them. Backlinks are a major ranking factor.

In one of our projects for a client, we conducted a website audit and discovered that 96% of the web pages had no backlinks, while 4% had less than 4 backlinks. In contrast, 80% of the client’s competitors had hundreds of quality backlinks, and the links were on all the web pages.

The solution was to build quality backlinks for the web pages to enable them.  

8 Factors To Consider When Targeting Websites To Build Backlinks For Your Law Firm

Link building is a highly rewarding but complex strategy. And you need to consider several factors when building links for your law firm. 

The essence is to build links that will impact your website most. So, consider the following factors to get high-quality links to improve your law firm website’s ranking, organic traffic, and online reputation. 

1: Backlinks quality vs. quantity:

Should you consider quantity over quality when building backlinks for your legal website? Never do such a thing! The quality of your backlinks matters a great deal. Quantity will only matter to the Google search engine when all your backlinks are high-quality. 

Some people make the mistake of focusing on the quantity of backlinks, neglecting the quality of the links they acquire. Because their competitors have hundreds of backlinks, they believe obtaining more backlinks will swing the pendulum in their favor. But that isn’t the case. Google considers the quality of backlinks. 

Get your backlinks from websites that follow SEO best practices. Avoid any website that has a Google penalty or spammy. You don’t want to transfer link juice from such websites to yours. It will be a terrible mistake that can hurt your website’s search ranking performance.   

2: Dofollow Vs No-follow:

Do-follow links are ideal when getting links from external websites. They are links that allow Google and other search engines to point back to your blog or website. In other words, Google and other search engines can see that you’re getting links from other websites. 

Dofollow links can have a positive impact on your page authority. They allow link juices from external websites to pass to your website. So, they are important links to hunt for. 

No-follow links are the direct opposite of do-follow links. They don’t allow link juice to pass from the external website to yours. With no-follow links, Google and other search engines won’t point back to your website.

Do-follow links are ideal for a law firm looking to improve website ranking. But that doesn’t mean no-follow links are worthless. You can still get referral traffic from no-follow links. 

Another thing you must understand is that Google will consider your link profile. It includes checking the quality of your backlinks and the percentage of do-follow and no-follow. Google is smarter than many people think. They know how difficult do-follow is to acquire and that most websites don’t naturally give do-follow links. 

So, if all your backlinks are do-follow, Google will assume there is something fishy with your link profile. The best thing is to have a mixture of the do-follow and no-follow links. You can make it 60:40 (The ratio of do-follow to no-follow links). 

3: Building backlinks quickly:

Build your backlinks slowly. Don’t rush. If you’re working with a reputable link-building or SEO agency, they should know the importance of building backlinks slowly. 

When you build your backlinks slowly, Google will see that you’re gradually gaining popularity, digital endorsement, and authority. Google won’t be suspicious of your link-building strategy and profile. 

4: Website authority:

The authority of the website you’re getting your link from matters considerably. A link from a high authority website like the New York Times will impact your website’s search engine ranking more than one from a newly established or small blog. 

Get high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites. Such backlinks have higher values. That’s how Google and other search engines rate them. 

5: Niche-relevant backlinks:

Niche-relevant backlinks comprise links from websites in your industry or niche. Backlinks from niche-specific websites can positively impact your ranking, organic traffic, and website visibility.

Search engines will understand the context of your content much better when you acquire backlinks from websites in the same industry as yours. Another benefit from niche-relevant backlinks is that you may likely target potential clients on other websites. 

A Handy Tip: Niche-relevant backlinks hold the advantage of contextual significance and relevance. Search engines consider such backlinks as strong signals for the topical authority of your website. 

When reputable and high authority websites link back to your content, it helps to reinforce your website’s relevance to a specific topic, improving your ranking in the search engine result pages. 

Backlinks from general websites can impact your domain ranking but carry different topical relevance than niche-specific backlinks. 

6: The quality of the content on the target website:

There are two things to consider in the aspect of content. The first is the quality of content you want to build the backlink with, while the second option is the quality of the content on the websites you’re getting the backlinks from.

Produce high-quality content for your backlinks. Don’t publish poorly written content because the target website’s owner is your friend or relative and would accept any content you present. Instead, write high-quality and valuable content. Let the content be something you can comfortably publish on your official website. 

Your content should be better than others that already exist online. Include relevant details, and make it a breeze to read. Google will only rank the content high in SERP when it’s high-quality and valuable. 

 When your content ranks high on the search engine results page, more people will see your content and visit your official website. From there, they can get your contact details from your website and contact you to handle their cases. 

7: Your backlink profile: 

You must consider your backlink profile before advancing your link-building project. In other words, consider the type of backlinks you already have, including the sources. Are your entire backlinks only from niche edits? If that’s the case, you have to do something about it. 

Backlinks obtained via niche edits are great links. But you are making a grave mistake if you acquire all your links via the niche-edit link-building technique.

You can build backlinks in different ways. You can use guest posting, online directories, and others. Diversify your sources of backlinks. That way, you won’t create any suspicion that will attract Google and give them a reason to monitor your website. 

8: Organic traffic:

Before requesting backlinks from external websites, determine if the website is getting organic traffic. Check the number of organic traffic the website is getting from Google. 

If the website is getting a reasonable amount of organic traffic from the Google search engine, we can conclude that Google considers it to be trustworthy and relevant. 

How To Perform Link Building For Law Firms

How can you get high-quality backlinks for your law firm? That is what we’re going to explain in this post. Backlink is a major ranking factor. It is one of the factors that Google search engine considers when deciding where to rank websites in the search result page. 

Follow the steps below to build backlinks for your law firm’s website. 

1: Guest post on other niche-relevant websites:

A guest post involves writing an article for another website and embedding a link to your website in the article. You can get high-quality backlinks from this method. 

In addition to building backlinks, publishing high-quality articles on other reputable websites can earn you referral traffic. It will expose you to a new audience, boosting your industry authority. 

Guest posting is a tedious and complex link-building strategy. That’s why many link-building agencies avoid it. But when you build quality backlinks, your website ranking will increase. 

For example, this thoughtful opinion on the increased divorce rate post-COVID-19 earned Stutman Stutman and Lichtenstein a high-quality backlink from Business Insider. 

Here are the step-by-step processes you need to follow to do guest posting successfully:

• Identify your goals
• Seek guest posting opportunities. In other words, find relevant and reputable websites that accept guest posts. Most websites don’t, so you check different websites for varied options. 
• Make a long list of all the websites accepting guest posts. 
• Start your guest post outreach. Contact the website owner or admin and request for an opportunity to publish a guest post on their website. 
• Choose a winning and highly captivating topic idea. Ensure the topic is original and hasn’t been published on the website. 
• Submit your pitch and wait for feedback. If the website owner likes your pitch, you’ll be asked to write and submit the article. 
• Write powerful and irresistible content. Your content should be high-quality and captivating. Excite the website owner and give them good reasons to publish your content. 
• Write killer bio
• Be responsive. The website owner may contact you to make one or two changes to your content. Other websites you pitched to might also contact you to send your guest posts. But don’t feel bad if some websites don’t respond to your request. It can happen that way. 

2: Produce linkable content to generate link-building opportunities:

Quality content is like a delicious meal. People can smell the aroma from afar and may develop an interest in the meal. When you write high-quality content, many website owners would want to link to it. 

Another way to get backlinks for high-quality and linkable assets is to perform outreach. Approach website owners and ask them for backlinks. Website owners who believe your content will be relevant and valuable to their audience will not hesitate to link to it. 

Linkable assets can create links naturally. How? It is possible when Google ranks the content high in SERP and people come across the content when seeking authority resources. 

How can you build linkable assets? You can do so in different ways.

Create in-depth and information-packed guides on various law-related topics. Make your guides simple to read and high-quality. With that, you won’t have to ask any website for backlinks. Writers and journalists who find your content interesting will reference your work to support their arguments. That’s how you end up getting backlinks. 

Creating FAQ pages is another way to create linkable content. You can create an FAQ on topics that people are seeking information on. For example, this content about the ban’s effect on TikTok in the US has over 250 referring domains. Most of them are from highly-rated and reputable sites like Yahoo and Gizmodo. 

3: Find lawyer-based online directories:      

Online directories are essential in any link-building effort. Listing your law firm on online directories helps to improve your online visibility and can serve as a valuable link-building opportunity. 

Law-specific online directories are those that focus on lawyers and law firms. You will only find law firms listed on such directories. 

Note also that some lawyer-specific online directories are free, but some require a subscription. It could be monthly or yearly, depending on the platform. Some directories only request a one-time free from their users. 

Most Lawyer-base directories are highly authoritative and organized. In addition to offering users the option to list websites and social media profiles, they also allow users to include phone numbers, physical addresses, emails, and more. 

Many people seeking lawyers for legal advice usually visit some of these legal directories regularly. So, you’ll not only secure valuable backlinks when you add your business to online directories, but you’ll also be showcasing it to potential clients. 

Here are some essential tips to follow when adding your law firm to online directories:

• Consider the domain authority of the lawyer-based directory before adding your business. Go for directories with high DR or DA. 
• Consider the reputation of the directory before listing your law firm. Does the directory appear reputable? If it doesn’t, then don’t list your law firm. Avoid low-quality and suspicious online directories.  
• Choose directories that have everything intact. If there are missing images or broken links, stay far away from such directories. 
• Ensure the information about your law firm in each directory is accurate. 

A Handy Tip:  Google Business Profile (GBP) is a free and vital directory for any business. Your law firm will do well with a Google My Business Profile. It will increase your chances of ranking in local search result pages of potential clients in your location. In other words, it will improve your law firm’s chance of being found online by potential clients. 

You can see the Google Business Profile of the law firm above. The firm is among those that will appear in the search engine result page when you enter the keyword “Divorce Lawyer in San Francisco” in the Google search engine, the above Google Business Profile would appear. 

Google My Business is free and owned by Google. It should be the first directory on your list. 

4: Create high-quality infographics:

Infographics are another way to create linkable material. They offer a unique way to present large amounts of information or data in an easy-to-read and digest manner. 

Most people prefer infographics to reading a block of text. The reason is that infographics contain more than just texts but images that provide in-depth descriptions of the subject or the various sections.  

You can earn valuable backlinks by creating high-quality infographics. Check out the tips below. 

• Cover topics your audience is searching for. You may have to conduct keyword research to find the right keywords that may land you organic traffic. For example, this personal injury law firm created an article detailing how people can find personal injury lawyers. Anyone looking for a personal injury lawyer to hire may be interested in such an article. Blogs and journalists working on a similar topic may reference your content.
• Hire a graphic designer to help you create stunning infographics or use other tools to generate your infographics. 
• Use more visual elements than texts. 
• Promote your infographics. Please don’t wait for people to find your infographics or link to them. Promote it on social media and other websites aggressively. That way, you’ll see results faster. 
•  Use accurate data and avoid errors or spelling mistakes
• Your headline should be catchy to capture readers’ attention

5: Start building links with HARO:

Firstly, what does “HARO” imply? It means “Help A Reporter Out.” You can use it to your advantage to build quality backlinks. 

HARO is popular in North America. Reporters or journalists use it to acquire leads for their stories or help people get the publicity they seek.

News stories submitted via HARO get distributed across the entire web. Law firms can also add links to their content to make it easier for potential clients to visit and contact. 

In addition to helping your law firm build valuable backlinks, HARO gives your law firm a chance to be seen by a wider audience. 

Conclusion

Link building for law firms is an important exercise for every law firm. High-quality backlinks will improve your website ranking, organic traffic, and authority. 

Backlinks can bring referral traffic to your website and improve your online visibility. It can also help your law firm to build trust and appear reputable to potential clients. 

There are several ways to build backlinks. And I have described some of them. Law Firm SEO expert has helped hundreds of law firms build high-quality backlinks that positively impact their website ranking and traffic. Get in touch to see how you can benefit from my link-building experience.