There are many factors that influence your website’s position in search results, such as the quality of the content, how fast your homepage loads, and the quality of the user experience. The quality and number of backlinks your website gets may be more important than any other factor.
Despite what the experts at Google might say about writing quality content and letting everything else take care of itself, you also need to be proactive in building links to your website. Law firm marketing is highly competitive and unless you are proactive, there is a limit to how high your website will move up in search results.
Below, we discuss the importance of link building for law firms, including what makes a high-quality backlink and proven strategies for building the links your law firm website needs.
PMP has been building links for law firm websites for more than 15 years. We know how link building fits into a comprehensive strategy for increasing traffic to websites to help law firms sign more cases.
What Is Link Building?
Link building means taking steps to increase the number of backlinks to your website. When one authoritative website links to another, it shows Google the other site’s value. While there are many factors involved, websites that have more backlinks tend to rank higher in search results.
You can think of a backlink as a vote of confidence in a website. In other words, one website is saying that another is a good source of information. This is a signal to Google of a website’s value. Google wants to provide users with the information they are looking for, which is why they try to rank the more valuable content higher in search results.
Why Does Your Law Firm Need To Do Link Building?
Your website should earn backlinks by publishing engaging, useful content. The problem is your website is unlikely to naturally earn enough backlinks to rank high in search results. You are going to need to be proactive, especially if you are trying to move ahead of other websites.
Even if your website is close to the top of search results, others are likely to overtake yours if you do not have enough high-quality backlinks.
The good news is that when you invest the time and money in link building, you will eventually get the results you are looking for.
What Is the Difference Between Backlinks and Referring Domains?
It is important to note there is a difference between backlinks and referring domains. For example, say you have dozens of links from a legal directory. All the links together are backlinks. However, the referring domain is the homepage of the directory site.
While it can help to have multiple backlinks from one referring domain, it is generally better to have multiple referring domains linking back to your website. That is why your focus with link building should be to increase the number of referring domains pointing to your website.
What Is a High-Quality Backlink?
All links are not created equal. You want backlinks from authoritative, reputable websites. For example, websites that end in .org or .gov are considered high-authority websites. However, backlinks need to come from relevant websites. Links should be useful to the people who are reading the content.
How Do You Build Backlinks to Your Law Firm Website?
There are many ways to build links to your law firm website. The first is to make sure your website has quality content that other websites will want to link to. For examples, high-quality blogs will naturally accumulate backlinks over time.
The problem is it can take months or years for blogs to accumulate a lot of backlinks. It can be difficult to determine which blogs are likely to get a lot of traffic and attract high-quality backlinks. That is why it is necessary to be more proactive about getting links to your website.
Here are some proactive strategies for building links to your website.
Adding Links to Legal Directories
There are numerous legal directories that contain links to law firm websites, such as:
- Avvo
- org
- FindLaw
- Justia
- Nolo
- SuperLawyers
- National Trial Lawyers
- And more
You can also get links to your website on non-legal directories like Yelp and Yellowpages.
These are reputable, high-authority websites and all you need to do is contact them to get your law firm included in their directory.
Guest Posting
Guest posting involves writing a blog for another website. The post includes a link back to your website. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement for your website and the website that publishes the guest post. The other website gets content, and you get a backlink.
The question is: how do you find the right guest-posting opportunities for your website?
It is often best to find out what domains are linking to your competitors, especially the competitors who are ranked above your website. If your competitors are guest posting on a reputable website, you should strongly consider guest posting on that site as well. However, you need to review the domain authority and traffic to the site. There is not much benefit to guest posting on a site that does not have strong domain authority or one that does not get a lot of traffic.
Creating Replacement Content For Broken Links
There are a lot of broken links on the Internet. You can create new content to replace the content that existed at the broken link and get a link back to your website. You could also use existing content on your site if it is still relevant.
This is a common strategy marketing agencies use in link-building campaigns. Marketing agencies often use tools like Ahrefs, Google Analytics and Screaming Frog to find broken links that can be repurposed for a link-building campaign.
Link Reclamation
Sometimes your website was supposed to get a link, but it did not happen. You can contact the owner of the website to ask for the backlink you were supposed to get. This can be a quick way to get a high-quality backlink that does not require significant effort on your part.
If you need to increase traffic to your law firm website, PMP is here to help. We have been doing link-building for many years, helping to increase website traffic and move websites higher in Google rankings.
