How Law Firms Can Earn Trust and High-Quality Links for SEO

The landscape of search engine optimization (SEO) and link building is always changing, and today, the importance of building high-quality links has never been higher. As a law firm marketer, you should be familiar with multiple SEO strategies, including earning trust and high-quality links. The trust element of this will typically lead to high-quality links, and those links boost your search engine ranking, helping your law firm bring in new leads. But how do you go about earning that trust and those links?

Attract Links with Authoritative Content

Well-written content will bring you a lot of natural backlinks. So, when it comes time to craft the content for your website, try to create blogs and other content that is link-worthy. Ideally, you want to become a known resource, as this will lead to people turning to you in the future and referencing your content. Unfortunately, creating link-worthy content is easier said than done. With planning, however, you can overcome that. Make sure that your law firm’s content is well-written, well-researched, relevant, organized, entertaining, educational, and original with headers and references. Not to mention, free of legal jargon. Law firm marketers can also use various analytics tools, including Google Analytics, to inform their law firm’s content marketing strategy.

Write a Guest Post

Writing guests posts on other relevant websites will deliver natural backlinks. Guest blogging will also help you form relationships with industry influencers, increasing your firm’s own thought leadership prowess. Keep in mind that a poorly written guest post can bring a bad reputation to your practice. Before you write a guest post somewhere, make sure that:

• The website or publication is relevant to your practice
• The article is NOT about how great you or your law firm is
• You are writing quality content that is relevant and trustworthy

It’s important that you build links that help your law firm’s website and not links that can negatively impact your website’s ranking in search results.

Turn Your Mentions into Links

Are there publications, journals or company websites that have mentioned your law firm but have not linked back to it? This is a simple way to gain links and improve your law firm’s SEO because in situations like these, it is enough to contact the webmaster or marketing director and ask them to convert that mention into a backlink.

How do you find mentions? We suggest using SEMRush’s Brand Monitoring tool to track your brand mentions online to help you easily identify link building prospects. Only reach out for backlinks if the website that mentions your law firm is reputable and trust-worthy.

Interact and Engage

To make the most of your blogs and retrieve more links, you also need to get the word out and promote your content on social media; just publishing informative content is not enough. It is just as important to engage with your audience and reply to questions and comments that they post. Supplement this with at least one or two social media platforms for other interactions. You should also comment on other blogs and content to create authentic conversations.

Show That You Are Human

By engaging and interacting with your clients online, you show that you are an actual person. Being human is crucial for gaining trust among Google crawlers, so do not rely solely on interactions to prove it. Additionally, include an ‘About Us’ page on your law firm’s website and clear photos of you and any other crucial members of your team.

Include Trust Markers

Once it is clear to search engines that you are a human, include elements on your website that show that you are a trustworthy human. Think about what you would look for if you wanted to confirm an online source of information was reputable, and then include those factors. These trust markers include a high-quality website design, upfront disclosures when relevant, current and comprehensive content that is accurate, and connections with the rest of the web. You should also include your memberships and credentials related to law that make you an authority.

Create Links as Well

The world of creating links online is reciprocal. It is not fair to others if you expect them to give you high-quality links but you do not return the favor. You do not need to link back to the same websites that link to you, but make an effort to regularly link out to reputable sources in your content. This shows that your law firm is fully established, stable, and has other connections.

When you link to other websites, it builds up your authority since you show that you are familiar with high-quality sources. It also creates an association with those websites, improving the value of your contributions.

Reclaim Lost Links

Building high-quality links is difficult, so it’s frustrating when a hard-earned link disappears without warning. Links are commonly lost after a site is re-launched or migrated to another domain. You should then redirect these backlinks to some other page. Understand that you can take steps to reclaim lost links, but the process of reclamation will depend on the reason behind the lost link in the first place. Here are four common reasons for link losses:

1. The author removes your link from the linking page
2. The linking page no longer exists (404 error)
3. The linking page gets (301) redirected
4. The linking page is no longer indexed in Google

Takeaway

The important thing to keep in mind when earning trust and high-quality links is that patience is crucial. The process of building a strong reputation and getting those well-earned links does not happen overnight. You will have to put in effort, but the results in terms of your SEO strategy will make your efforts well worth it.

Contact us today if you need help executing an effective SEO strategy. Without one, prospects will not be able to find your firm on Google and may choose your competitors instead.

Updated and Republished from May 30, 2019.