In a nutshell, there are two types of SEO for lawyers you and your firm can do. Just to maybe get you up to speed, SEO stands for search engine optimization and it’s all about getting your website to rank as high as possible with search engines. Back to the two types of SEO:
On-page, also called on-site search engine optimization. Off-page, also called off-site.
This article focuses on off-page SEO. However, just so you know, on-page SEO is primarily about the key search terms placed on the pages of your site. For example, a lawyer’s home page key search terms may “Washington criminal lawyer” and “Bellingham DUI lawyers”. Most SEO results come from off-page SEO which boils down to acquiring many and high-quality links to your website. These links are called inbound links. The number one factor that improves your rankings with the search engines is the number and quality of links to your website.
How to get those inbound links to your lawyer website?
There are 3 main methods for getting inbound links:
1. attract them; 2. go and get them; and 3. create one-way inbound links yourself.
Attracting inbound links
You need to create a reason in your website for another website or blog to want to link to your website. The best way to do this is create content that people will like. Content can be written, audio, images, and video. Lawyers have a pretty good opportunity attracting links because they have specialized knowledge that people need to know about. Therefore, writing in-depth about your practice area will likely attract links. Be sure the titles of your content are compelling and avoid writing too much in legal language. It may be informative, but it’s not compelling.
Go and get inbound links through link exchanges
A popular method for acquiring inbound links is trading links with other lawyers. Type “lawyer link exchange” and you’ll get no shortage of law firm websites willing to exchange links. There’s a pretty good debate in the SEO community right now about how effective link exchanges are. In my experience inbound links as a result of link exchanges are still valuable and will improve your search engine rankings. Link exchanges are false votes of popularity for a website (the theory behind using links as a ranking criterion); however, it’s not always the case. Lawyers listing other lawyers can be a service for people needing a lawyer in another location. At the end of the day, in my experience with my websites, link exchanging works.
Create one-way inbound links yourself
One-way links are those where you don’t reciprocate a link. You can create one-way inbound links in 4 ways:
1. Write and publish articles online; 2. Comment on blogs that don’t have a no-follow tag; 3. Social bookmark your site; and 4. List your lawyer website with online directories.
Writing and publishing articles online
Well, writing and publishing on EzineArticles is a perfect example. If you look at the bottom of this article you’re reading, you’ll see a brief bio or resource box. In that box I placed two links. EzineArticles.com (and most of the hundreds of article directories online) permit two links to a site of your choice (that fit within the terms, lawyer websites are permitted). The trouble with writing and publishing articles is it takes a long time. If you don’t like writing, then it’s a chore. Part of great SEO for lawyers is doing it fast and efficient. That said, most lawyers can write so publishing online isn’t too onerous.
Comment on blogs that don’t have a no-follow tag
Without getting technical, do a search for blogs that don’t have no-follow tag in the comments and you’ll find many. No-follow tags are website coding which makes the link invisible to search engines and therefore useless for SEO purposes to you. Go these non no-follow commenting blogs and leave comments with links to your site. Only go to sites related to your website.
Social bookmarking your site
There are dozens, if not hundreds of social bookmarking websites. It’ s best if you have someone at another IP address bookmark your site. Don’t have the same person repeatedly bookmark your site and don’t you bookmark your site.
List your lawyer website with online directories
There are at least over a thousand online directories. When you list your site under a particular category, you get a link to your site.
Downside to creating your own one-way links
The downside to creating your own one-way links is that it’s very time-consuming work. Writing and publishing a good article takes time. Finding related blogs and commenting appropriately takes time. Bookmarking your site on dozens of social bookmarking sites takes time. Registering and listing your law firm’s site with 1,000 online directory takes a lot of time. Don’t get me wrong, this is how SEO for lawyers is done. It’s worth it in the long-run because those links give your site search engine ranking power indefinitely.
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