Dos and Don’ts of Link Building for Lawyers

Link building for lawyers is an essential SEO strategy law firms like yours must implement for better search rankings and brand awareness. Besides the fact that quality links are a crucial Google ranking factor and they drive referral traffic to your site, they also allow you to establish yourself as an industry authority. When more websites link to yours, this sends a signal to Google and other major search engines that you are a reliable and trustworthy source of valuable information.

However, as with all SEO strategies, you must pay close attention to your current link building tactics because not all of them have Google’s seal of approval. If you implement a “black hat” strategy, whether knowingly or unknowingly, there’s a chance that you’ll receive a penalty from the search giant.

To help you out, we at Kinetic Traffic have put together a quick guide on the strategies you should and shouldn’t do when building links to your law firm’s website. 

Link Building Strategies You Must Do

1. Create linkable assets

The best and most fool-proof way to build quality backlinks is to create quality content. As they say, “Like attracts like”. Therefore, provide your audience with web content to which others would want to link .

Remember, people won’t link to you if they don’t find your content valuable or interesting. To encourage your audience to peruse and link to your content, ensure it is detailed and well-researched. The more research you conduct, the more original your content will be and the more likely other sites will link to it. 

2. Conduct an outreach campaign

Consider reaching out to other industry bloggers and journalists. This is particularly useful if it’s your first time producing content and other law bloggers are still unable to find your blogs and articles organically.

Convincing others to link to your content can get your foot in the door, leading to more link building opportunities in the future. However, you must ensure you have high-quality content before asking others to collaborate with you. 

3. Disavow bad links

You’ll get more backlinks as your law firm’s website gains more online visibility and authority. Unfortunately, not all backlinks you’ll attract are of excellent quality. At times you’ll also attract harmful or toxic backlinks.

Bad backlinks are often from spammy websites. In some instances, they may also come from your competitors who want to hurt your search rankings by directing poor quality backlinks to your site.

No matter where these bad links came from, you should “disavow” them to ensure the integrity of your link building strategies. You can use Google’s disavow tool for this task. Simply upload a list of sites you don’t want linking to yours, and the search giant will ignore them. 

4. Ask your former clients to link to yours

Not only do they give your reputation and credibility a significant boost, but client reviews and testimonials are also great for SEO. They can also do wonders to link building for lawyers. Consider reaching out to your former clients and asking them to link to your law firm’s website on their blog. 

Link Building Tactics You Mustn’t Do 

1. Build links from irrelevant websites

Having links from non-law-related websites won’t help your site rank higher. Google examines backlinks to determine your web content’s relevance and authority. Therefore, you should avoid building links from irrelevant websites. If non-law-related sites link to yours, you can use Google’s disavow tool. 

2. Inject links

While injecting links into other websites might seem attractive since it allows you to generate more links quickly, this practice is illegal and dangerous. For starters, you’re essentially hacking into other people’s website and exploiting their security. Furthermore, its effects aren’t substantial and long-lasting.

When injecting links, you’re putting your site’s safety and reputation at considerable risk for a minuscule and temporary gain. As such, you must avoid this link building strategy at all costs. Unfortunately, injecting links is a common practice amongst unscrupulous SEO agencies. It would be wise to do your research before hiring someone to build links for you. 

3. Only build links to your homepage

Most people link to other websites because of an article or page they found interesting or relevant. This means a significant number of natural backlinks do not point to one’s homepage.

To get the best results from link building for lawyers, you’d want your backlinks to look natural. But if most of your links are pointing to your homepage, it might result in an unnatural link profile. It would be best to consider contacting the sites linking to yours and asking them to point the links to the appropriate content/page instead of your home page to remedy this situation. 

Build Links Wisely

Obtaining quality backlinks can go a long way towards increasing your website’s online visibility and authority. It can also help drive more referral links to your site, which increases your chance of attracting new clients. However, similar to all SEO strategies, you must implement the best practices and avoid the questionable ones to enjoy the best possible results and thwart a potential Google penalty.

If you need highly experienced and trustworthy law firm SEO specialists to build quality backlinks to your site, we at Kinetic Traffic are only happy to help. Please get in touch with us, and our team will create an SEO strategy tailored to your legal practice.