Effective Link Building for Law Firms: A Quick Guide

Optimising the on-page elements of your legal practice’s website is crucial to your success. However, this is just one half of the equation. Link building for law firms is also equally vital to the success of your overall SEO strategy. 

But what is link building exactly? And are all links good for your website? 

Link Building for Lawyers Explained

To put it simply, link building is the process of convincing other websites to link to yours. Essentially similar to a “vote of confidence”, incoming links from other sites tell Google that you are a reliable source of information. They also indicate that your law firm and the services you’re providing are legitimate. 

Through link building, well-established and high-ranking websites can also direct their domain authority to you. This, in turn, increases your site’s authority, which encourages Google and major search engines to give you a better search ranking. 

Quality Not Quantity

Many lawyers think that all links are suitable for their website. As a result, they would hire link vendors to find them as many links as they can. However, this tactic is not as effective as you think it is. More often than not, links obtained using this strategy come from spammy sites and “link farms” whose primary purpose is to simply build links instead of directing web users to valuable and relevant information. 

Having spammy sites linking to yours is terrible for your SEO strategy. Instead of giving you a better search ranking, it might lead you to a Google penalty. 

When building links for your website, always remember that quality trumps quantity. Consider the following factors when choosing which sites to build links from: 

• Site authority – a more prominent website, such as BBC.co.uk, will have more domain authority than a small blog.
• Site relevance – build links from websites relevant to your niche, such as law news publishers.
• Content quality – you’d want your backlinks to come from relevant sites that publish unique and well-written content.
• Your link profile – an effective link building strategy uses several methods to obtain a natural link profile. These methods include digital PR, guest posting, and online business directories.

How to Build Links to Your Website

As mentioned above, you’d want your link profile to look as natural as possible to get better results. Here are a few link building strategies that you can use to attract quality backlinks to your law firm’s website. 

1. Online directory listing

Link building for law firms won’t be complete without this strategy. Simple yet effective, submitting your business information to reputable online directories can help you build quality backlinks as quickly as possible. Also, while there are paid online directories, some offer listings for free. 

Below are some reputable online directories lawyers can use: 

• Google My Business
• LawyersDirectory.co.uk
• The UK Justice Directory
• LawFirms.co.uk
• Solicitors.com

When listing your business information, ensure that your name, address, and phone number or NAP details are consistent across online directories. Also, double-check them before hitting the submit button to ensure 100% accuracy. This will prevent Google and your target audience from being confused about the nature and legitimacy of your law firm. 

2. Creating linkable assets

Developing quality content is another excellent way to convince other websites to link to yours. If you have something valuable and informative that other people can’t find elsewhere, you can bet that they will come flocking and linking to your site. 

So, what type of content should you develop to convince other sites to link to yours? You can create something that will help answer law-related questions or serve as a valuable industry resource. Examples include: 

• Blog posts
• Case studies
• Videos
• Interviews
• Podcasts
• How-to guides
• Infographics

3. Guest posting

Did you know that your website is not the only place where you can publish your content? Guest posting, or publishing content on other relevant sites, is an excellent way to build links to your site. Also, it can drive referral traffic to your website and strengthen your industry authority. 

To do a guest post, you should find reputable and law-related online publications. Contact them and confirm if they accept guest posts. In most cases, these online publications will let you choose your own topics. However, others will select the topics for you. 

4. Community mentions

Link building for law firms doesn’t have to be complicated all the time. Sometimes, it can be as simple as asking people in your network to link to your website. You can also ask those you have worked with in the past to give you a backlink. 

For instance, if a former client wrote a blog post that mentioned your practice, you can ask them to link to your site. You can also try sponsoring a community event or a local group or team and request them to add a link to your law firm on their website. 

5. Online forums

Many people go to online forums, such as Quora and Reddit, to ask questions. And amongst the most popular queries in these online spaces are law-related. This means these sites can give you plenty of opportunities to help people while building brand awareness and backlinks. 

When participating in online forums, don’t start by promoting your website. Instead, answer their questions thoroughly. This way, they are more likely to trust you. Then, once you build rapport with the forum’s participants, you can provide them with links to additional information and resources found on your site. 

A quick reminder, though. Don’t get bogged down by trying to obtain as many backlinks as you can from online forums. While they do help with SEO, these links are not as high-quality as those from authority sites and other reliable online spaces. 

Start Building Quality Links Today

Link building is an integral law firm SEO strategy that can help boost your website’s authority and search ranking. However, when building links, you should always prioritise quality over quantity. To avoid a Google penalty, you’d want to make sure that the links pointing to your site come from reputable, relevant and high-authority websites. 

At Kinetic Traffic, we provide on-page and off-page SEO solutions tailored for legal practices like yours. If you’re having difficulty attracting quality links to your website, our team will be more than happy to lend you our expertise. Please get in touch with us today.