The most important ranking factor for websites is links. Unfortunately, link building is quite challenging. At the same time, it’s also the easiest way to get into trouble with the search engines. Fortunately, there are some techniques that won’t get you into trouble, but instead will help you with your law firm SEO.
Guest Posting
Although not fool-proof, when used correctly guest posting is a good lawyer SEO strategy. Make sure you avoid sites that aren’t reputable and do you due diligence by:
- Checking the site’s backlink profile (a.k.a. who’s linking to the site) to make sure it’s reputable, not spammy
- Reviewing the site’s domain rating – a proprietary metric that measures a domain’s authority from 0 – 100 – the higher, the more authoritative and reputable and hence the better
- Sticking to domains that are relevant to your practice area or to law in general
- Avoiding sites that use questionable curation tactics (e.g. allowing anyone to submit content without a thorough editorial process, a pay-to-play model)
Social Media
Actively share links to your website on Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Instagram, and LinkedIn. While this won’t give you any “link juice,” it will get you exposure and traffic. Your posts may also get shared and even become viral, which will get you natural inbound links and the “link juice” you need for good law firm SEO. This is why you should try to get your most shareable content out there on these channels for others to share. Always do your best to make sure this content is highly relevant, useful, and contains a link leading back to your website.
Infographics
This is a fun, interesting way to share information. People enjoy sharing them, especially if they’re well done. As such, a good lawyer SEO tactic is to always place an embed code at the bottom of it for people to use on their own websites. When they do so you’ll get a backlink to your site.
Blogging
You should have already started a blog and filled it with some great content. Doing so will help you with law firm SEO by giving you the ability to:
- Rank for additional keywords and phrases
- Generate content that people will want to link to
- Build other links to other pages on your site that may not otherwise get a lot of attention
- Share more of your content online
- Add fresh content regularly – something that lawyer SEO needs and search engines love
Directories
While these don’t offer a lot of great benefits, they’re easy to get listed on. There are many types, including:
- Paid directories with high page ranks that can really benefit your law firm SEO
- Local directories are an important source of local links which you’ll need since they provide signals relevant to the location of the searcher
- Local chambers of commerce also help with local lawyer SEO
- Lawyer-specific directories (both paid and free versions) offer you great, industry specific links
When submitting to any of these directories make sure they’re reputable and have a high page rank. It’s also good to see your colleagues and competition listed there.
Collaboration and Citations
Collaborating with colleagues, other businesses, and your clients can also offer you high-quality links. You can do this via guest posting, joint marketing efforts, or honorable mentions (a.k.a. citations). A lot of these probably won’t give you “link juice” but people may follow them to your site.
As a lawyer, your schedule is already fully booked without worrying about your lawyer SEO, but you know how important it is. We at the Local SEO Tampa Company understand that you only have 24 hours in your day and we’re here to help. Law firm SEO is one of our specialties that we’ve successfully helped many clients with in the past. We look forward to helping you as well, so make sure you reach out to us today so we can start bringing new clients your way soon.