Link Building for Lawyers
Link building for lawyers
Links are one of the most important factors for search engine optimization (SEO). They are at the foundation of Google’s search engine algorithm and are the primary way to navigate from site to site all over the world. Since links dictates how Google ranks your business in search engine results pages, you should have a good link building strategy for your firm or practice.
So how does link building work for lawyers?
There are many ways to acquire links for SEO. Some require minimal effort but some require a lot of time and effort. This article will go through the link building strategies you can implement as a lawyer.
First things first, what is link building?
Link building is the art of obtaining links from external sites to direct to your site. The links vary from text links to image links and so on.
Lawyers usually place links manually on social media, other sites they own, forums, and most popularly, directories.
The more time consuming strategies that require quite a bit of effort involve creating content and convincing other site owners to link to you.
Let’s take a look at effective link building strategies for lawyers, both simple and complex.
Link Building Strategies for Lawyers
Which link building tools are available for lawyers?
Law Directories
Law directories are basically listings of law firms and practices that offer legal services. And they carry a lot of link authority.
The directories usually enable firms and lawyers to create profiles that include names, phone numbers, social profiles, practice or specialty areas, education, experience, and websites. The main reason why lawyer directories are one of the most cost-effective inbound link building strategies for lawyers is because they are highly relevant links for the legal field.
However, not all lawyer directories are created equal.
Here is what you need to do to pick out the best directories to execute good link building strategies for lawyers:
● Go for directories that have a high domain authority (You can get this information from Moz)
● Only list in reputable lawyer directories. You should check if the law directory is high quality of low quality. If it looks spammy, avoid it.
● Check if your competition is on there. If they are, you should be there too.
The lawyer directories vary by subscription and service models. A lot of the quality ones are subscription based while some are free or charge a one-time fee.
Other Easy Link Building Strategies for Lawyers
Content marketing. This is arguably the best inbound links strategy for lawyers. Content marketing involves creating quality, unique and useful content that other sites would want to link to. Aim to cover topics that answer your potential clients’ questions and also position you as a thought-leader in the field. Once Google sees other sites linking to you, they will view you as an authority in whatever legal specialty you are in and rank you high in search results for that field.
Create a blog. You should start a blog that provides valuable information as mentioned above. Update it regularly and be consistent in providing quality content. You should use social media to further engage and market your blog.
Stay active in your community. You should give legal talks and hold events in your practice area within your community. Event promoters could link to your website and people who attend those events and talks could also visit your website when you distribute your business card.
Link building for lawyers is not so simple. You have to put in time, work and effort. The inbound link building strategies we covered in this article (lawyer directories, content marketing, blogging and community engagement) should help you get started on creating an effective link building strategy for your practice or firm.
Link Building Strategies for Lawyers
Link building for lawyers is an important task to maintain online presence. Due to varied nature of online nature present today, many effective link building strategies for lawyers are available. Publishing academic content, critique on any legal issue or explaining any important legal concept through your blog is an effective way of bringing traffic to your website. Various advertising methods can be put to use to distribute content link. Sponsoring an event is also an effective way to advertise a law firm. You can use the online advertisements to link back to your website. Collaborating with another website with high footfall one of the effective link building strategies for lawyers. Guest blog posts for websites posting legal news or research is a great way to connect with people researching some legal issue. Inbound links for lawyers are necessary whenever they post any material on a third part website, for the purpose of advertising.
Online Directories
Collaborating with or listing oneself on online directory is an easy and usually free method of link building for lawyers. The profile posted on the online directory can have an inbound link for lawyer’s website. Although a listing on directory is an advertisement in itself. It can be enhanced to boost online presence by adding certain links for lawyers own content. Lawyers can pay an online directory to post links for lawyers. Any visitor of the online directory can be possibly directed to the lawyer’s website.
Academic Content
One of the most effective link building strategies for lawyers is to write academic content for popular website. The popular websites already have a large amount of traffic. By posting quality content on such websites you reach to a large volume of customers. The content you write also provides the readers an idea of your capabilities. You can add a link to your website at the end of the content. If your content helps someone solve his/her problems, they may want to know more about you. These websites may also publish links for lawyers on payment of certain advertising fee. Legal services require a lot of research, both online and offline. Therefore collaborations and presence in the online research community can help any lawyer expand his reach.
Other Methods
You can sponsor academic competitions or conferences. That way you will benefit from any advertising done for such competition or conference. Apart from that you will build goodwill.
Getting your interview published on any website will create an elaborate advertisement on your behalf. But it is easier said than done. Posting your links with relevant content is more likely get traffic to your website. Pure advertisement style spamming is less likely to be effective with sophisticated customers. Intelligent clients require intelligent approaches. Therefore its recommended that you always attach your links to something relevant or meaning.
Always associate yourself with reputed brands. Collaborating with just anyone and everyone would not get you desired attention from the cream clientele. One can be as innovative as he wants while thinking of link building strategies. The goal is to get any reader or viewer interested enough to visit your website. It may be done by arousing curiosity for information, solution or prospect of benefit in mind of the reader.
Lawyers have been known for extensive advertising campaigns to get clients. But not every lawyer can afford to advertise. With increasing competition and market saturation, lawyer fees has also been on decline. In such a scenario where cost cutting is the norm, cheaper online advertising is flourishing. Many of the methods stated above are free of cost and result in good branding building exercises.