July 12th, 2010 by Avvo Admin

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In last week’s “Smart SEO for Lawyers” webinar, I emphasized the importance of link building for SEO.  Naturally, someone then asked for practical ways to build links, with an emphasis on “practical.”  I can certainly understand the sentiment, because common advice like “have great content that people want to link to” isn’t very practical at all.  So here are five practical ways that a lawyer could build links to his or her law firm website.

1) Create a blog on your domain

Let’s be honest, the average Joe doesn’t care about law until he’s sued or arrested, which is why link building for lawyers is so hard.  One way around this is to have a blog where your main audience is other lawyers.  However, with enough dedication and writing talent, you could expand your audience to anyone (just be aware that the 5,325th article on “what to do in a car accident” isn’t going to get anyone excited).  The more you participate in the blogosphere the higher the odds of your blog posts attracting links.

That said, a blog is no magic pill.  It’s just a platform, and unless you write stuff people actually want to read, a blog won’t help you.  Whether blogging is practical really depends on how much writing talent and free time you have.  If blogging isn’t a good fit, then move on to the other options below.

2) Do guest blog posts in other people’s blogs

Want to benefit from blogging without fully committing to blogging? You can.  Offer to write guest posts for other people’s blogs (where you’ll get links back to your website embedded in the guest blog posts).  You could do guest blog posts for legal blogs or even non legal blogs.  For example, if you’re a wills, trusts & estates lawyer, there are hundreds of gay and lesbian blogs that would be interested in having an expert lawyer write free guest posts talking about GLBT legal issues.

Here’s how it works, and you don’t even have to waste time writing before you secure a guest blog post:

• Think up a catchy title for a blog post like “7 Laws GLBT Families Need to Know About.”
• Grab a list of GLBT blogs.  Alltop.com is great for this, as it compiles lists of blogs by topic.
• Have an assistant email a form letter to every single blog on the list asking if they’re interested in your guest post. In the letter, give a very short summary of your experience and offer them exclusive rights to the content.
• If you get any takers, then write the blog post and send it to them.  At the bottom of your blog post include a short “About the Author” section with links back to your website.
• Rinse and repeat.

3) Sponsor local nonprofits

Buying links is a big “no no” in Google’s book, but luckily there are ways to buy links without “buying links.”  As far as I know, no one has ever gotten in trouble for sponsoring a nonprofit and getting a link as a thank you.  So do a little research into worthy non profits in your community, and then contact them about sponsorship.  In addition to any SEO benefit you get, you’ll also build good will in the community and help worthy causes.  This is a nice example of traditional marketing blending with SEO.  You might also get a tax break for whatever you donate.

4) Submit to quality directories

There are thousands of junk web directories that are best avoided, but there are still some good ones that are worth submitting to.  Some of these good directories charge a fee, while others are completely free.  Here is a nice list of quality directories.  And, of course, you should look into niche directories that won’t appear on generic directory lists.  For example, Avvo (for claimed lawyers) and Justia will give links to lawyers in their directories.  If you’re a part of any association or school that maintains directories, be sure to submit your site to them as well.

5) Check out the competition

Find competitors who outrank you in Google and enter them into backlinkwatch.com to see where they’re getting their links.  Often times if they can get a link from a particular website, so can you.  The downside to this is that it puts you one step behind the competition, whereas with the other options you can lead, often in a way that’s hard for competitors to copy.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 12th, 2010 at 1:36 pm by Avvo Admin and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.