As the legal industry becomes increasingly competitive, law firms and attorneys are constantly seeking innovative ways to establish themselves as authorities in their respective areas of practice.
In today’s digital age, having a robust online presence is essential to achieving this goal, and an effective link-building campaign is a critical component of any successful online marketing strategy.
Link building can help legal professionals drive traffic to their website, increase their online visibility, and ultimately generate more leads and clients.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover everything you need to know about link building for law firm websites from knowledge of essential metrics and types of backlinks to the best practices for building backlinks, along with the understanding of what makes a backlink high-quality in the context of legal services.
TL;DR
- It’s important to understand the various metrics of SEO and link building, such as domain rating, domain authority, link juice, anchor text, link velocity, and type of link attributes.
- Link-building campaigning helps law firms strategize their link-building and help focus on gaining more quality and meaningful backlinks from websites, helping boost your position over search engine rankings in return.
- The top 3 search results get almost 75% of the total clicks, so focusing on a robust and result-driven link-building approach is important.
- Your links should be from websites relevant to your niche, ensure appropriate value and information quality to its audiences, and come from an existing reputable website.
- Using a data-driven and content-quality approach for link building in the form of visual and linkable assets can help gain more mentions and make your outreach approach easier.
- Local SEO is the lifeline of any law and attorney firm website, so keeping your business profiles, directory listings, and mentions on local government groups and websites updated with the latest business information is recommended.
- PR and HARO link building can be game-changing for legal firms; it would all around for legal firm SEO – provides high-quality, authoritative backlinks, provides exposure to a relatively large audience, and contributes towards your online reputation management.
- Use thorough SEO strategies such as niche edits and broken link-building techniques to enhance your scope of building links on more reliable and niche-targeted sources.
- Use BacklinkManager to keep track of your link-building efforts with a purpose-built CRM and avoid any chances of backlink loss from link rot! BacklinkManager offers live link monitoring, link exchange partnerships, and link reporting tools – and it’s free up to 250 links. Sign up now to try it for free!
Understanding the Basics of Link Building for Legal Services
Whether you are new to link building or looking to refine your approach, there’s no denying the fact that it’s a vital component of any successful digital marketing campaign.
Understanding the basics of link-building campaigns can be a game-changer. So let’s dive into the topic and understand the basics of link building before taking things to the next level.
What is Link Building for Legal Services?
Link building and link scheme involves creating backlinks to your website from external sites and pages with the intention of gaining SEO benefits.
Link building for legal services is a way of acquiring links from other websites and domains that, in turn, help boost your website’s ranking over search engine results pages (SERPs).
Understanding the Metrics of Link Building & SEO for Legal Services
Link-building metrics are key indicators of the strength of your link-building efforts as they help quantify and align your firm’s expectations from SEO with your marketing goals.
It is important to track these metrics to get a better understanding of how your link-building efforts are going, so you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few important metrics that you should know about when working on link-building campaigning for your legal firm.
Domain Related Metrics
Domain-related metrics are a key area of focus in SEO and are critical in determining the authority and trustworthiness of a website. There are two prominent metrics that come into use in this case:
- Domain Rating (DR): It’s a metric score ranging between 0 and 100 and developed by Ahrefs to predict the performance of a website over SERPs. Domain Rating is calculated based on the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a website. So, the more high-quality links a website has, the higher its domain rating will be.
- Domain Authority (DA): It’s a metric score ranging between 0 and 100 and developed by Moz that measures the backlink profile of a website. Moz utilizes a proprietary algorithm to calculate Domain Authority taking into account factors such as the number and quality of backlinks, the age of the domain, and the content on the website.
- Referring Domains: This metric refers to the number of unique domains that are linking back to a website. The more referring domain a website has, the more diverse its backlink profile is likely to be.
Link Juice
Link juice refers to the power or equity that is passed from one website to another through links. In the context of legal services SEO, when a reputable legal website links to your own legal website, it’s like a vote of confidence from one expert to another.
Search engines take notice of these links and see them as a sign that your website is a trusted and authoritative source of information. The more high-quality links you have pointing to your website, the more link juice you’ll have flowing through your pages, and better performance over search engines in return.
Types of Links
When it comes to link building, it’s important to consider the type of attribute your backlink is being offered with. There are two main types of link attributes you need to consider – dofollow and nofollow.
Dofollow links are a signal to Google that your website is credible especially when taking into consideration the contextual reference to which the backlink is being presented in the content with. In contrast, nofollow links do not emphasize the “credible” part when being crawled by search engines, thus reducing the prominence of owning a backlink. However, they still carry some weight and cannot be completely ignored.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text within a hyperlink. It’s part of the link that users can see and click on, and it’s also a critical factor in determining the relevance and authority of the linked-to page.
When search engines crawl a website, they analyze the anchor text of the links pointing to that page to determine what the linked-to page is about. If the anchor text is relevant to the content on the linked-to page, it can help boost the page’s ranking in search results for relevant search queries.
Black Hat Link Building Practices
Black hat link-building practices are those techniques that are designed to manipulate search engine algorithms and artificially boost a website’s ranking, often through the use of either spammy links or low-quality links.
Search engines like Google are constantly updating their algorithms to penalize websites that engage in black hat link-building practices. This can result in a significant drop in traffic and rankings.
Link Velocity
Link velocity is the measure of how quickly backlinks are being created for a particular website, over a certain period of time.
The rate at which a website acquires backlinks can have a significant impact on its search engine rankings.
Why Does A Law Firm Need A Link Building Campaign – Importance of Link Building
It’s pretty clear that backlinks and organic traffic go hand in hand. Link building is essential for boosting your website’s rankings on Google, and it’s important to understand the major distinctions between link building for local (Google Business/Map Pack) and organic SEO.
Link-building campaigns are a great way to acquire links from high-quality websites, which can make a big difference in how search engines view your website.
Link-building campaigns can help law firms and attorneys build relationships with other websites and communities within their niche and help increase brand awareness, establishing the firm as a thought leader in their industry.
But link building for lawyers is not just about quantity; it’s also about quality, which means a few high-quality backlinks from authoritative websites can be more valuable than dozens of low-quality links from spammy websites. This is why law firms and attorneys need to be strategic in their approach to link-building.
Link Building & Search Traffic
Ranking in the top position on popular search engines like Google is the holy grail of SEO for law firms and attorney businesses. When potential clients are searching for legal services online, they are much more likely to click on one of the top results than to scroll through pages of search results.
According to statistical data, the top 3 positions on Google search result pages receive over 75% of all the clicks. That’s right – the majority of potential clients won’t even bother to look beyond the top 3 results. And if your law firm or attorney business isn’t in those top 3 positions, you are missing out on a huge amount of potential traffic and clients.
Link building is one of Google’s top 3 ranking factors, so it’s a great way to get your site to the top of the search results. Google looks at a range of link elements when ranking websites. Backlinks tell Google that a website is valuable and useful to people who visit it, and backlinks play a major role in determining a website’s ranking on Google.
The search engines look at the relationship between your website and the ones linking back to you to decide how to rank your website. Additionally, backlinks can also increase website traffic, referral traffic, and organic traffic, so it’s important to invest in link building to ensure your website is seen as a valuable asset in your industry and niche by search engines.
What Makes a Backlink High Quality?
A high-quality backlink is one that comes from a website that is trusted by users and highly ranked by Google, which has a good reputation for being authoritative.
To make your backlink really stand out, you should do follow links and aim to get backlinks from high-domain authority sites.
Standardizing Your Backlinking Profile To As Natural As Possible
The cream of the crop when it comes to backlinks is a natural link, usually coming from awesome content.
A good link-building strategy should include a combination of these high-quality backlinks, as well as nofollow, and paid links to build a natural link profile. This way, your website will benefit from the credibility of the high-authority sites and the natural links will give your website an organic boost.
What Type of Backlinks are the Best (for Legal Firms)?
To ensure that your link-building strategy is effective, there are several factors to consider.
First and foremost, it’s important to standardize your link profile to achieve a gradual and natural spread. Try and keep your backlink profile as a diversified amalgamation of dofollow, nofollow, UGC attributed (considering the quality of your website content and services, people would mention it, and on popular authoritative websites) and on domains including, edu, gov, and such authority-carrying websites.
When considering link building, the focus should be on high-quality and relevant websites, i.e., building links from reputable websites, with high domain authority that are relevant to the law firm’s site.
In addition, organic content is essential for law firm websites because it has a much higher conversion rate than paid advertisements. Plus, when you stop paying for ads, the conversion rate drops off, but organic content keeps bringing in leads for a long time since it’s grown naturally.
A good link-building strategy for law firms should include linking from trusted legal directories, contextual reference links from guest posts on blogs, broken link building and mention reclamations, by helping a reporter out and creating quality and resourceful content for the targeted user.
Law Firm SEO Best Practices for Building Backlinks
White hat strategies are the best way to go when it comes to link-building for legal services. It’s all about reaching the right people – the law firm’s target audience – rather than just trying to get the search engine’s approval. It’s important to focus on providing top-notch content and services as well, as that will have a positive impact on the website and overall business performance.
For instance, Stutman Stutman & Lichtenstein got a backlink from Business Insider after they wrote an opinion piece about the possibility of a rise in divorce rates due to the coronavirus.
There are various other strategies that you can use as a part of link building campaign for your law firm. Let’s discuss each of them in detail.
Contribute to Other Websites via Blogger Outreach
Blogger outreach, or a guest post or posting in simpler terms, is an essential link-building strategy that’s quite common in practice. It’s the process of creating content for other websites and getting a link back to your own in return. Guest posting is a great way to get legal-specific links to your site that are placed in content that’s highly relevant to your industry.
By contributing to other websites in your industry, you not only earn valuable backlinks but also establish yourself as an expert in your field and gain exposure to new audiences.
One real example of guest posting for legal and law firms is when law firm Gibson Dunn posted an article on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation. The article discussed the US Supreme Court’s decision in the Halliburton case, and it was authored by a partner at the law firm.
Focus on Creating Easy-To-Consume, Quality-Based Content & Linkable Assets
As a legal firm, creating visually appealing and high-quality content can be a powerful link-building strategy that can help improve your website’s search engine rankings and online presence.
By producing content that is both informative and visually appealing (such as infographics, and information videos) and other linkable assets (such as in-depth guides, case studies, skyscraper technique based content, and original research data-based content), you can attract valuable mentions from high-quality websites and establish your firm as an authority in your field.
Blogging regularly can give backlinks a major boost as it offers centralized access to your high-quality content and linkable assets.
**Use the example of LegalVision infographics in this case and how they gain mentions).
Considering the example above, LegalVision a popular law firm uses infographics to help its audience understand complex legal issues. Their infographics are well-designed and useful for their audience and help them gain mentions from authoritative blogs and social media platforms.
Set Up & Optimize Your Profiles on Authoritative Legal and Local Directories
Directories are basically websites that list businesses and their information, like name, address, and phone number (NAP). By getting your business listed on directories, you can not only expand your reach and create content that references your business, but you can also get your business mentioned on relevant pages.
In addition free directories, these directories also offer the opportunity to include links back (usually nofollow) to your law firm’s website. While a nofollow may not impact your backlink profile much, it does help get diversified in terms of presenting a mix of dofollow and nofollow links.
Understand this with an example – assume you own a personal injury law firm based out of New York City.
By setting up and optimizing profiles on authoritative legal and local directories such as FindLaw, Avvo, and Justia, you can create your online visibility to potential clients searching for personal injury lawyers in NYC.
Practice Broken Link Building
Broken link building is a legit SEO technique that uses tools like Ahrefs and Screaming Frog to find and replace broken and dead links with high-quality content.
Broken link building can be incredibly successful if you know how to effectively fix broken links. Crafting great replacement content is the key to success in broken link building as this will increase your chances of getting your link accepted.
Additionally, it’s a win-win for both parties involved: the site owner gets a fixed link, and you get a valuable backlink to your own site.
Use Niche Edits to Gain More Exposure
Search engines like Google prioritize websites that have quality backlinks from authoritative websites within their niche, and niche edits help you achieve just that.
Niche edits involve adding a link to your website within an existing blog post or article that is already published on a website in your niche.
The best way to do it is by identifying the websites that have high domain authority, engaged audience, and regularly publish quality content related to your practice area.
Once you have a list of potential websites, reach out to the website owners or editors with a pitch for your legal firm’s services or a relevant topic that you can write an article about.
Once you secure a niche edit, make sure to optimize the anchor text of your link and ensure that the link is placed within the context of the content, adding value to the reader’s experience. With each niche edit link you secure, you’ll be building your legal firm’s link profile with relevant, high-quality, and contextual backlinks from authoritative websites in your niche.
Work With Reporters and Journalists (HARO) to Score Quality Links
Working with reporters and journalists can be a game-changer for legal firms. HARO is a great way for legal firms to get exposure and gain high-quality backlinks.
When a journalist puts out a request for sources, legal firms can respond with their expertise and offer valuable insights into legal topics. By providing valuable inputs to reporters, legal firms can gain mentions and backlinks in the resulting articles.
The benefits of using HARO for link- building for law firms are numerous. Not only does it help build high-end backlinks and increase your website traffic, it also helps to establish the legal firm as a reputable source in the industry.
Invest in PR
A PR-based link-building strategy can be a valuable addition to your legal firm’s SEO efforts.
By crafting a compelling story about your legal firm and pitching it to relevant social media sites and outlets, you can earn valuable backlinks from authoritative websites. This can help establish your firm as a trusted and reputable source of information in your industry, while also driving traffic to your website.
One effective approach to PR-based link-building is to leverage your firm’s expertise and thought leadership by offering commentary on trending news stories or industry developments. By positioning yourself as a knowledgeable and credible source of information, you can increase your chances of earning media coverage, valuable backlinks, and chances to connect with potential clients in return as well.
Benefit from Community Mentions
Link-building strategy for legal firms doesn’t always have to involve creating content or reaching out to other websites for link placements.
Community mentions are an excellent way of establishing your law firm’s authority and credibility within your industry, as well as building relationships with other professionals in your field. This approach involves getting your law firm’s name and brand mentioned in online communities such as forums, groups, and social media platforms.
Another approach to community mentions is to partner with organizations that have a shared interest in your law firm’s area of expertise.
By engaging with relevant communities and organizations, you can build relationships, increase brand exposure, and earn valuable links back to your website.
Get Linked as Meaningful Resource on Relevant Quality Websites
Resource page link building involves reaching out to websites that have resource pages on their website and asking them to include your website as a resource. These resource pages are typically created to provide readers with a curated list of useful links related to a particular topic.
This strategy like many other link-building strategies, depends on quality, data-driven content, and the intent of providing value to the reader.
When creating this type of content, it’s important to keep in mind the needs of your target audience and to make sure that your content is relevant and informative.
Use Unlinked Mentions to Generate Links
Unlinked brand and firm mention refers to instances when your law firm is mentioned on other websites but is not linked back to your website. This is a missed opportunity because these mentions could potentially provide valuable backlinks that can improve your search engine rankings. By reaching out to these sites and requesting that they add a link back to your website, you can turn these unlinked mentions into valuable backlinks.
Tools like Google Alerts or Mention get in handy for monitoring mentions of your law firms across the web. You can also use Google operators to find out such mentions manually over Google. once you identify such mentions, you can reach out to the site owner and request that they add a link back to your site.
This strategy is highly effective because it allows you to leverage your existing brand and reputation to generate valuable backlinks. Plus, since these mentions are already on relevant websites, the links will be highly targeted and relevant to your practice area.
However, depending on your existing reputation, you would want to implement this strategy as this would be difficult for new individuals and businesses with low/minimum experience in the industry.
Use Your Network for Strategic Collaboration and Partnership Opportunities
By leveraging your existing network and exploring new partnership opportunities, you can create mutually beneficial relationships that can lead to high-quality backlinks and increased exposure for your firm.
The benefits of this strategy are clear: by building strategic partnerships and collaborations, law firms can create high-quality content, generate valuable backlinks, and increase their online visibility.
And there are several examples of such partnerships and collaborations. The partnership between Latham & Watkins LLP with other law firms in 2019 on a pro bono case representing immigrant families affected by the Trump administration’s Family Separation Policy is a popular example of partnerships and collaborations in legal services.
As a part of this collaboration, the two law firms created a joint website to provide updates on the case and highlight their efforts to seek justice for the affected families.
The joint website generated significant media attention and was featured in several high-profile news outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and NPR. The coverage not only helped raise awareness about the case and the efforts of the two law firms but also generated numerous backlinks and mentions for both firms’ websites.
Enhance Local SEO Performance
When it comes to link-building for legal firms, local SEO should definitely be a top priority. In fact, it’s one of the most effective strategies for improving search engine rankings.
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and online presence to increase visibility in local search results. This includes things like optimizing your Google My Business listing, building local citations, and getting listed in local directories.
Reaching out to local businesses, chambers of commerce, non-profit organizations, and even the local government to get listed on their website and directories is a great way of improving local search engine ranking scores.
Engage in Sponsorship Activities
Sponsorship can be a great way to build links and brand recognition. By collaborating with organizations such as non-profit, governmental, and educational institutes, law firms can get their name out there and build relationships with other organizations in their community.
Law firms can also provide resources or funding support for the education of law students. This not only helps to build relationships with future lawyers but also shows the community that the firm is committed to supporting legal education.
Other instances of sponsorship examples can include a law firm sponsoring a local charity event or a law school moot court competition.
This can lead to links from the school’s/university’s website, social media mentions, and other forms of online visibility. By doing so, they not only support a good cause but also gain exposure to potential clients and other businesses in the local community.
Don’t Let Your Backlinks Rot! – Use BackLinkManager to Preserve Your Backlink Potential
Link rot can be a nightmare for any website owner or business engaging in link building. These broken links can hurt your link-building campaign and diminish your SEO efforts.
However, there is a solution to protect your link-building campaign from link rot!
BackLinkManager.io is an effective tool that can help you prevent link rot by keeping track of your backlinks. BackLinkManager.io can help you save a lot of time and effort by automating the monitoring process.
It can automatically scan your backlinks and detect any broken links. Once the tool identifies a broken link, it will notify you, so that you can replace the broken link with a working one and avoid losing link equity.
Moreover, it allows you to connect with other local sites in your niche and manage your link exchange partnerships with them.
By managing your link building partnerships and monitoring your backlinks (up to 250 for free!), you can ensure that your law firm’s website remains relevant and valuable in the eyes of search engines, which can result in improved search engine rankings, increased organic traffic, and more leads for your business.
Conclusion
It is evident that link building is an essential part of any law firm’s SEO strategies to manage its web presence successfully. Although there is no universal right or wrong way of doing link building for law is, it is important to find the right balance between quantity and quality as this will be most beneficial in the long run.
Moreover, taking into account that the search engine optimization algorithms are ever-evolving, being proactive with one’s link-building campaigning is essential in order to make sure that the law firm is successful in dominating the SERPs and ultimately reaching its desired audience.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions related to link-building campaigns for law firms and attorney websites.
What is a Link Building Campaign?
A link-building campaign is a strategic technique designed to increase the number of quality links connected to your website. It can involve tactics of link building such as outreach link building, and leveraging content marketing tactics to build brand visibility and increase organic traffic to your website.
Should I Buy Links?
The question of whether to buy links for your law firm’s website can be a tricky one. While purchasing links might seem like an easy way to improve a website’s rankings, it’s important to consider the long-term consequences of such actions.
Search Engines like Google do not treat paid links as a good signal and may penalize websites that use shady link-building practices.
Purchasing links goes against the basic principles of natural link building, can be a costly affair, and may not even deliver the desired results. Instead, investing in natural link-building tactics can yield more sustainable and beneficial results for your law firm’s link-building campaign.
What Are Link Building Services?
Link-building services help websites achieve rankings in organic search by acquiring quality backlinks. These services include manual outreach to relevant websites and promotion of our content on such placements.
What are The Key Elements of a Successful Link Building Strategy?
A successful link-building campaign for a law firm website requires a well-thought-out strategy that focuses on the key elements that can make a difference in the website’s rankings. These elements include relevance, quality, and authority.
- Relevancy ensures that the links are from sources related to the law firm’s niche;
- quality ensures that the content is valuable and informative, and;
- authority ensures that the links come from reputable websites.
Other important elements of a successful link-building campaign include variety, consistency, and a long-term approach.
