The rules of search engine optimization (SEO) are constantly changing and evolving, but one strategy that remains effective is acquiring high-quality backlinks. Backlinks can improve the ranking and visibility of your law firm’s website on search engines. It’s important to remember that not all backlinks are equal, though. While a handful of high quality links can improve your law firm SEO, poor links can have a negative effect. So what makes a high quality backlink?
There Are Three Levels of Backlinks:
According to Google, the three tiers of backlinks are: low, medium, and high quality. In Google’s estimation, low-quality backlinks are webspam. They are viewed as fake links or ones that have been added to “game” the system.
Medium links offer actual value and are easier to attain than high quality links. High quality links provide the most value, but they tend to have high editorial standards that make them hard to achieve.
There Are Three Levels of High-quality Backlinks:
Nobody can say for sure how link quality is measured, and what makes a high-quality link is somewhat subjective. However, there are three core elements that most experts agree on. When you understand the elements, you’ll have a better idea of how you can use link building to improve your law firm SEO.
1. Natural
It’s essential that website owners choose to link to your site because it makes sense and adds value and not because you have paid them to or manipulated them in any way. If a link doesn’t seem natural, Google will view it as spammy and will either ignore it or punish the site by demoting them in search engine results.
2. Reputable
Today’s search engines look for social proof of how credible web pages are. Google has a PageRank algorithm that measures the importance and reputation of web pages, and here’s how they define that:
PageRank works by counting the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of how important the website is. The underlying assumption is that more important websites are likely to receive more links from other websites.
The higher the number and, even more importantly, the higher the quality of backlinks a website obtains, the higher its chance of ranking for competitive keywords. Think of PageRank as more of an algorithm than a metric.
3. Relevant
Search engines pay attention to the relevancy of both the page and domain of a backlink. Make sure sites that link to your law firm’s website are aligned with the subject matter. Backlink relevancy is extremely important for law firm SEO. For example, having a link from a fitness site will not do as much for you as having one from a legal journal or business site. It’s important to understand that the choice of words used in the anchor text is key because it tells the reader what the page being linked to is about, but also, search engines use it as a relevancy signal when ranking the page being linked to.
Other Tips for a Strong Backlink Strategy:
- The most valuable backlinks are those placed directly within the content (not in the footer or sidebar).
- The number of outgoing links a web page has also matters. A backlink from a website (domain) or from a web page that links to hundreds of other URLs will be less valuable than the one from a website with just a few outgoing links.
- You can use some tools to understand how well a specific page will rank on the search engine result pages. For example, Moz has a Page Authority (or PA) score that mimics Page Rank and can be helpful in understanding how links are helping or hindering your page performance.
- Use tools like Ahrefs, Majestic, SEMrush, or Spyfu to check your website’s backlink report. Make sure they are high-quality links and look to remove any links that look too spammy or are completely irrelevant.
- You may also want to check if your backlinks are marked as nofollow or dofollow. According to Google, nofollow links do not pass any Page Rank, so they will not help your search engine rankings. Try to get as many dofollow links as possible.
Related: SEO for Law Firm Websites eBook
Takeaway
The bottom line is that high quality links are natural, highly relevant, and very reputable. While your goal should be to obtain high-quality links, you can still derive value from medium quality links. Just make sure to avoid low quality links that can actually hurt your law firm SEO efforts. Furthermore, unethical ways of link building, such as purchasing links from a link farm, is deemed a black hat SEO tactic and can get your law firm website de-indexed or banned from a search engine.
If you need help developing an SEO strategy that improves your search visibility and effectively drives more qualified leads to your website, contact us today for a consultation.
