The American Bar Association estimates that there are over 1.3 million licensed attorneys in the United States. That’s a lot of competition. Even if you’re a local law firm that serves a specific geographic area, it’s still likely that you have competitors working to snatch up clients both online and offline.
So, how do you stay competitive without blowing through your marketing budget? You harness the power of legal SEO.
Legal SEO (search engine optimization) involves optimizing your website and online listings to attract organic traffic from search engines — namely, Google. And while a successful legal SEO strategy involves many different components, one of the most important ones is having a strong backlink profile.
Link-Building Strategies For Law Firms
One of the best ways to attract backlinks to improve your law firm’s SEO is to create content that other websites want to link to. That typically involves publishing content that’s thorough, engaging and beneficial to readers.
Legal content doesn’t have to be boring. There are many ways to create content potential clients want to read and that other websites want to share.
At my agency, our first step in creating a link-building strategy for law firms is reverse-engineering our client’s competition, assessing the top law firms in the country or our client’s market. By using a tool like Ahrefs, we can take a backdoor look at what link-building strategies our competitors are using. Then, we can reach out to these sites to attract backlinks to our clients’ sites.
Here are six link-building strategies to help you boost your search engine rankings and get more clients online:
1. Publish Linkable Assets
A linkable asset is a piece of content that serves the primary purpose of attracting links to your website. The goal is to make the content so valuable that other website owners link to it of their own accord.
Linkable assets also serve to attract organic traffic, generate referral traffic and increase the exposure of your law firm.
Examples of linkable assets include:
• Infographics: Visually-appealing graphics that provide a ton of value and can be easily downloaded or saved by users.
• Tools or calculators: Provide nifty online tools, like legal deadline or filing date calculators that provide value to your site.
• E-books: Downloadable documents that help readers solve a problem (e.g., “10 Steps To Take Before Hiring A Family Lawyer.”).
• Guides or tutorials: Publish step-by-step guides readers can’t find anywhere else.
• Studies and research: Have some interesting findings to share? Publish studies or research on your blog.
When you publish unique linkable assets, you’re sharing content users are unlikely to find anywhere else online. And if your content is jam-packed with value, other websites are likely to link to it.
2. Submit Guest Posts
Reach out to other legal blogs and ask if you can submit a guest post on their site. Sometimes it’s as simple as sending them an email, pitching your blog post idea and asking for a link in return. Sometimes, though, there may be more restrictions.
Before you begin reaching out to every blog you can find, consider whether it’s relevant to your industry, looks like a reputable website and is likely to send traffic to your site. If you’re going to take the time to write a blog article, you want to be sure you’ll generate some traffic and receive a high-authority (not spammy) backlink.
3. Create A Resource Page
Like linkable assets, resource pages provide a ton of value to readers and, therefore, attract links from websites looking to direct their readers to helpful resources.
Law firms can publish resource pages that contain tutorials, downloadable documents, forms or anything else that might help people deal with their legal issues. The more exhaustive you are, the better, as sites are likely to link out to resource pages that include as many resources as possible.
A few options to feature on your resources page include:
• Downloadable PDFs
• Legal forms
• How-to guides
• Applications
• Research studies
• Videos
• Contact information for government offices
• Financial assistance resources
4. Offer Scholarships
Paying it forward could result in some high-authority links back to your website. If your law firm offers scholarships, you can attract backlinks from universities, financial assistance institutions, legal blogs and more.
Publish a page that describes the scholarship and how people can apply. Then, share the page with high schools, colleges or other institutions that can encourage people to apply for the scholarship. This is a great way to attract a few backlinks from those sites.
Then, you can post about the recipient of the scholarship once it’s been awarded. You can also try to land a feature in some industry-related blogs that will link back to your site.
5. Blog About Current Events
Blogging about current events is a good strategy for generating traffic to your website due to the fact that so many people are actively searching about the topic, and being the first to post can get you some links.
You can use tools like Google Trends or the Trending section on Twitter to find the latest trending topics. Then, publish a blog post covering your take on the topic, apply some on-page SEO, share the post on social media and wait for the traffic and links to roll in.
6. Participate In Interviews
Most publications and podcasts include a link to your website when they choose to feature you in an interview — and getting featured is often easier than you might think. Reach out to your favorite publications or podcasts to see if they have any slots available and pitch them on any insight you’d like to share.
Improve Your SEO With Link-Building
Backlinks are an essential part of any successful SEO strategy, especially when you work in a competitive industry like legal. By actively working to attract links to your site, you can improve your Google rankings, increase traffic and even get more clients online.