Link Building: Links-how do you get links to your site?
By the time you read this you may have read the books, blogs, or listened to someone you trust explain how to get your site content “optimized”. You researched your search terms (“long tail”, “short tail”, “no tail”)You update your site more than your competition (you hope). You know about all of the acronyms; “URL”, “SEO”, “SEM”, “PPC”, “SERP”, “CPC”, “CTR”, “ROI”, “CPA”, etc.
Now what?
Just wait?
No.
If you haven’t done so already, you need to get the highest quantity and quality of links to your site. How many? How high of quality?
How long is a string?(It’s all relative)
If you have a better website than your competitors, and better and/or higher quality links to a website that is more consistently updated than your competitors, you may beat them to the top of Google.
Could I BE more ambiguous? Short of stealing the “secret sauce” from Google, this is about as specific as it gets.
Back to links:
How do you get links?
- Internal links
- Link content within your site to other pages within your site-in ways that make sense.
- Example: Link the words “divorce lawyer” to the page on your site that is about “divorce lawyer”, link the word “links” too your page about links.
- Level of difficulty-low
- Time consuming? Yes, but still easy
- Beneficial? Yes
- Link your site to other sites. This is very easy-and easy usually means you will not get much SEO value from it. However, more Internet users may appreciate useful and relevant links and come back to your site after realizing you give them valuable information.
- Level of difficulty-very easy.
- Beneficial-possibly a little.
- Reciprocal links:
Linking to someone else’s site in exchange for their site linking to yours.- For a while this was the “game” everyone played.
- This is still a good way to get links to and from relevant sites.
- Get links from the highest ranked most relevant sites you can:
- The bar, other attorneys you would like to recommend, and who would like to recommend you.
- Level of difficulty-medium to hard
- Beneficial? A little bit.
- Biggest problem with this type of linking-lots of time to get lots of them with minimal value.
- “Narcissistic” links, or one-way links: links that are all to, for and “about” you.
- Links from legal sites-but you don’t link to them
- Links from blogs
- May be easy to get from your own blogs or friends
- Very time consuming
- High time to link ratio
- Can be a very high quality link.
- Links from press releases about you or your area of law
- Not too hard to get
- Take time
- Take money
- Need to be done right to achieve value
- If they are not done right they could be a waste of time and/or money
- Links from non-news articles about you and/or your area of law
- Links from forums
Examples: Lawyers.com blogs and forums - Links from directories
- Social Networking
Setting up profiles about you and/or your firm can be a great way to improve your web presence and get links.- Linked In
- MySpace
Links can be a lot of work. Finding someone who has successfully optimized other law firm websites could save you a lot of time, but make sure they have a track record of SEO work they can show you.
Tags: lawyer marketing, lawyers, link building, search engine optimization, seo
March 24th, 2009 at 1:14 am
Hey great post, very helpful. I am trying to build my links get more exposure on some online directories, I was wondering if you think advertising in a place like lawyers.com is worth it? They are very expensive.
I have submitted my site to some free lawyer directories like lawyerzip.net but I am having a hard time finding more free niche directories like that one. Do you know of any other ones?
Thanks again for the post, keep it up!
March 24th, 2009 at 1:38 am
Paul et al,
A link from Lawyers.com to your site is valuable-but as you probably know, there is no magic bullet to getting your site to the top for your keywords. There are many factors involved. This should only be part of your strategy.
How competitive your market is a significant factor. If you are in Pueblo, CO just having a listing on Lawyers.com may help you get new clients. If you are in New York, well that takes a lot more work-and Lawyers.com should be a part of that work.
I believe you can spend in the hundreds of dollars a month for what may perceived as just a “listing”, but here is all that it can do for you:
1-Links
Multiple links from Lawyers.com, Martindale.com and possibly many others in their “network”-all included as part of your “listing”.
2-More Links
If you utilize the free blogs they will set up for you you can get more links and more traffic to your site. Most attorneys do not take advantage of this free service.
3-Google Local Advantage:
Lawyers.com has a direct feed into Google Local. This can help you gain an edge over others who are not on the Lawyers.com site. Just as importantly, if you are not in Lawyers.com others have this edge over you.
4-Contribute to their sites
Any way you can contribute to content on Lawyers.com or Martindale.com in a “blog like fashion” will help you get more relevant traffic to your information and your site.
5-Add more content:
Pretty much all of Lawyers.com and Martindale.com is crawled by Google and other search engines. Unlike the past when you paid for how much space you were taking up in their books-you can now enter in as much content as you want to on their site, increasing the amount of information about your firm online. Take advantage of this. It’s like having another site online with information about you and your firm.
Last-if your market is competitive you should consider outsourcing your SEO. Your local LexisNexis rep can talk to you about a comprehensive, transparent and affective search engine optimization program.