The Purpose of Law Firm Link Building
The purpose of link-building strategies is to enhance law firm SEO performance, expand audience reach, foster industry relationships, and potentially open up avenues for future collaborations.
At its core, it's all about establishing connections and relationships.
When a website has multiple high-quality backlinks, search engines like Google interpret this as an indication of the site's credibility and relevance to its topic or industry. This can result in higher rankings on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Still, a good link-building strategy is not just about increasing search rankings.
It's also about expanding your audience and getting more traffic to your website from diverse sources.
When a website with a large following links back to your site, its audience can potentially become yours, which contributes to audience growth and brand exposure.
Link building also fosters relationships within the industry.
When you link to another site, or they link to you, it often begins a professional relationship, which can lead to further collaboration and partnership opportunities.
Not all links are equal, though.
Search engines prioritize quality over quantity. Links from reputable and relevant websites are more beneficial than a ton of links from random websites. A backlink comes from a site in the same or similar industry and is typically more valuable than a link from a completely unrelated site.
What Makes a Good Backlink?
Most SEOs start this conversation by talking about “authority” and then mention terms like domain authority or domain rating
Let me be clear here.
Domain Authority and Domain Rating are both made-up metrics software companies that market themselves to SEO professionals.
Google has repeatedly gone on record stating that they do not use any form of ‘authority' metric.
We've looked through Google's filed patents, and nothing in the literature supports that domain authority exists.
I repeat. Nothing at all.
Both domain authority and domain rating are primarily calculated based on how they gauge the relative strength of a website's backlink profile.
Please note that Ahrefs’ DR metric is purely link-based. We don’t take into account things such as the search traffic of a given website, the age of its domain, or the popularity of a parent brand. It is also important to note that DR doesn’t account for backlink SPAM. In fact, large amounts of low-quality backlinks may actually increase your DR, not decrease it.
Ahrefs
Moz updated the way it calculates domain authority in 2019 to use a machine learning model that attempts to predict how likely your website could rank on the SERPs, saying:
Moz’s new link index and new authority scoring model will now more closely resemble the search engines’ view of the web, so updated DA scores will be a more accurate representation of your site’s ability to rank in search. In other words, the new DA scores correlate better with the SERPs.
But goes on to clarify:
Domain Authority is not a Google ranking factor and has no effect on the SERPs.
Moz
There are six factors we use to evaluate the quality of a backlink. They are:
- Organic Traffic
- Relevance
- Anchor Text
- Placement
- Relation Attributes
- Destination
1. Organic Traffic
A better metric to use in lieu of domain authority is organic traffic.
If a website or webpage is getting a significant amount of organic traffic from Google, then we can reasonably conclude that Google already perceives it to be trustworthy and relevant.
Why?
Because Google wants to deliver the most relevant and reliable information available to people when they search for it. If they fail in that regard, people won't use Google Search. If people didn't use Google Search, advertisers wouldn't spend money on Google Ads. And if advertisers didn't spend money on Google Ads, Google would lose $162.45 billion (58%) of its $279.81 billion in revenue.
If Google didn't see a website or a particular web page as being relevant and reliable, it wouldn't get very much of the total search traffic it has the potential to get from Google because Google wouldn't rank it high in the search results.
Google supports this in its “How Search Works: Ranking Results” guide.
For example, one of several factors we use to help determine this is understanding if other prominent¹ websites link or refer to the content. This has often proven to be a good sign that the information is well trusted.
Google: How Search Works
¹ My emphasis.
Therefore, instead of worrying about made-up signals by software companies to gauge how authoritative a website is in the eyes of Google, we can instead use how much organic traffic a website receives from Google as a better indicator.
2. Relevance
Links from web pages relevant to your page are better than links from irrelevant web pages.
There are two reasons for this:
- Links from relevant web pages mean the traffic you are likely to receive from them will be more relevant to your firm.
- Patents filed by Google indicate they take the relevance of the page into account when assessing how much weight to assign to it in their ranking algorithm.
However, it's worth noting that this is just one of several ranking factors Google considers.
Google's patent titled Phrase-based indexing in an information retrieval system talks about a method where a document has a pair of scores they call outlink score and inlink score.
We'll use an analogy of a library to understand what these terms mean.
Imagine you're in a library looking for books about “gardening.” You ask the librarian (the search engine) for help. The librarian has two ways to find the best books for you:
- Method 1: The librarian first checks if the word “gardening” appears in both the book's title (similar to the anchor text in a hyperlink) and the content of the book itself (similar to the content of a webpage). If it does, the librarian thinks, “This book is probably very relevant to what the person is looking for!” So, the librarian gives this book a high score and recommends it to you.
- Method 2: But what if the word “gardening” doesn't appear in the content of the book? The librarian then checks if the book contains related words or phrases like “plants,” “flowers,” or “landscaping” (similar to related phrases in our system). If it does, the librarian thinks, “Even though this book doesn't mention ‘gardening' specifically, it talks about a lot of related topics, so it might still be useful!” So, the librarian gives this book a score based on how many related words it contains and recommends it to you.
In both methods, the librarian (the search engine) is trying to find the most relevant books (webpages) based on your query (“gardening”) to help you find the information you're looking for more easily and accurately.
3. Anchor Text
Anchor text is good when it is helpful, relevant, and accurately describes what your page is about or what a person may expect to find by visiting your page.
In addition to the patent discussed in the section on Relevance, Google has talked about the relevance of anchor text in its ranking systems in several patents as well, including their original PageRank patent:
The text of links is treated in a special way in our search engine…we associate it with the page the link points to. This has several advantages. We use anchor propagation mostly because anchor text can help provide better quality results.
The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page.
You're better off not trying to control what anchor text you get, though. Google's algorithm is sophisticated and actively seeks to identify and penalize manipulative behavior.
4. Placement & Characteristics
Google's original PageRank algorithm used what's called a random surfer model.
The “random surfer model” is a concept used in search engines to determine the importance of web pages based on how often a hypothetical random user clicks on links.
However, Google filed a patent in 2004 that updated the original model to what we now call the “reasonable surfer model.”
This model operates under the assumption that:
…when a surfer accesses a document with a set of links, the surfer will follow some of the links with higher probability than others.
Ranking documents based on user behavior and/or feature data
This patent indicates that the placement and characteristics of a link to our website affect how much “weight” that link has with respect to how Google factors it into its ranking algorithm.
Specifically, the patent proposes how features associated with three distinct areas might impact the weighting:
- Featured associated with the link itself.
- Features associated with the source page.
- Features associated with the target page.
Featured Associated with the Link
Examples of features associated with a link might include:
- The font size of the anchor text associated with the link;
- The position of the link (measured, for example, in an HTML list, in running text, above or below the first screenful viewed on an 800×600 browser display, side (top, bottom, left, right) of the document, in a footer, in a sidebar, etc.);
- If the link is in a list, the position of the link in the list;
- Font color and/or attributes of the link (e.g., italics, gray, same color as the background, etc.);
- Number of words in anchor text associated with the link;
- Actual words in the anchor text associated with the link;
- Commerciality of the anchor text associated with the link;
- Type of the link (e.g., image link);
- If the link is associated with an image (i.e., image link), the aspect ratio of the image;
- The context of a few words before and/or after the link;
- A topical cluster with which the anchor text of the link is associated;
- Whether the link leads somewhere on the same host or domain;
- If the link leads somewhere on the same domain, is the link URL shorter than the referring URL, and/or does the link URL embed another URL (e.g., for server-side redirection)?
Featured Associated with the Source Page
Examples of features associated with a source document (page) might include:
- The URL of the source document (or a portion of the URL of the source document);
- A website associated with the source document;
- Many links in the source document;
- The presence of other words in the source document;
- The presence of other words in a heading of the source document;
- A topical cluster with an association with the source document and/or a degree to which a topical cluster associated with the source document matches a topical cluster associated with the anchor text of a link.
Featured Associated with the Target Page
Examples of features associated with a target document (page) might include:
- The URL of the target document (or a portion of the URL of the target document);
- A website associated with the target document;
- Whether the URL of the target document is on the same host as the URL of the source document;
- Whether the URL of the target document has anything to do with the same domain as the URL of the source document;
- Words in the URL of the target document;
- The length of the URL of the target document.
Non-Exhaustive: The patent notes that this list is not exhaustive and may include more, less, or different features associated with a link.
So what's the takeaway?
Factors like link visibility and user interaction influence the importance assigned to hyperlinks by Google's search ranking algorithm.
5. Follow vs. Nofollow Relation Attributes
Hyperlinks can have attributes applied to them that specify the relationship between the current page and the page they're linking to.
The value of the rel attribute can vary depending on the purpose of the link.
One common value is nofollow. In the HTML code of a page, it looks like this:
The nofollow link attribute is used to instruct search engines not to follow or crawl a specific link on a webpage.
When a search engine crawler encounters a link with the nofollow attribute, it understands that it should not pass any authority or ranking value from the linking page to the linked page.
The nofollow attribute was introduced by major search engines, including Google, in 2005 as a way to combat spam and manipulate search engine rankings.
It was designed to provide website owners with a means to indicate which links they do not endorse or vouch for, such as user-generated content, paid links, or advertisements.
Google made a significant change to how it interprets the nofollow attribute in September 2019.
First, Google introduced two new link attributes: ugc and sponsored mean to provide us with more ways to tell Google how to evaluate links on our pages.
- rel="sponsored": This attribute is used to identify links that are part of advertising, sponsorships, or paid placements. It is intended for links where there is an exchange of value, either monetary or in-kind. By using this attribute, website owners can provide transparency about commercial relationships to search engines.
- rel="ugc" (user-generated content): This attribute is used for links that are created by users in forums, comments, or other types of user-generated content. It helps search engines understand that these links are not necessarily editorially endorsed by the website owner.
- rel="nofollow": This attribute is used when you want to link to a page but don’t want to imply any type of endorsement, including passing along ranking credit to another page.
Second, Google updated its longstanding guidance on how its search algorithm would interpret the nofollow attribute saying:
When nofollow was introduced, Google would not count any link marked this way as a signal to use within our search algorithms. This has now changed. All the link attributes—sponsored, ugc, and nofollow—are treated as hints about which links to consider or exclude within Search. We’ll use these hints—along with other signals—as a way to better understand how to appropriately analyze and use links within our systems.
Evolving “nofollow” — new ways to identify the nature of links (Google 2019)
Hyperlinks don’t have these rel attributes by default, though.
They must be intentionally added.
When a hyperlink doesn’t have nofollow, sponsored, or ugc attributes it’s called a dofollow link in the SEO community (even though dofollow isn’t a term in the official HTML canon).
These are the types of links you want most. They act as clear signals from another website that they endorse your website.
That doesn’t mean the other types of links are bad, though. They can still send relevant web traffic to your site (which is why you want to rank higher on Google in the first place) and are still used as hints by Google’s search algorithms.
6. Destination
There are three places you can get links built to on your website:
- Your home page.
- Your sales pages (e.g., your practice pages)
- Everything else.
It is harder to get people to link to pages designed to make you money.
So get used to that.
Most people hate being marketed to—especially when it's blatant marketing. Getting other website owners to link to your informational content, tools, or other helpful resources will be easier.
If an opportunity comes up to get a link to one of your sales pages—take it. Otherwise, focus on getting links built to your content-rich pages and use internal links from them to your sales pages to increase their visibility.
How to Build Links
There are four ways to build links:
- You can manually add links from other websites to your website.
- You can contact other website owners and ask them for a link.
- You can create content that is so useful that people link to it naturally.
- You can buy links with money.
1. Adding Links
There are several websites where you can manually add links that direct people to your website. The two most common are online business directories and social media profiles.
These are perfectly acceptable and natural links. However, the barrier to creating them is very low—everyone can do it. Which dilutes the impact they'll have on your rankings.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't create them, though. They can still send very relevant traffic to your website if people discover you there.
Directories specifically catered to lawyers, like FindLaw, SuperLawyers, Justia, etc, are definitely places you want to create profiles on that link back to your website.
The most important directory for your firm is Google's Business Profile program. Stop reading this article right now, and go set that up immediately if you haven't already.
2. Asking for Links
Asking for links is the most common way firms get websites to link to them.
However, that doesn't mean it's the most successful way. It's a brute force method that you can spin your wheels over for minimal return. Webmasters are constantly bombarded by random people asking if they can guest post on their website or why they believe you should link to some new star-spangled awesome page they've created.
And they get deleted (or marked as spam) 98% of the time.
Plenty of people have learned the hard way what happens when blindly taking this approach and getting their domain flagged as spam by services like Gmail, and they wonder why all of their emails end up automatically flagged as spam.
Common tactics used to get these sorts of links include:
- Guest Posting
- Skyscraper Technique
- Ego Bait
- Testimonials
- Link Exchanges
- Resource Pages
- Broken Link Building
- Image Link Building
- Unlinked Mentions
- HARO
3. Buying Links
Google has a word for buying links.
They call it link spam, and here's what they have to say about it:
Examples of Link Spam
The following are examples of link spam:
- Buying or selling links for ranking purposes. This includes:
- Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links
- Exchanging goods or services for links
- Sending someone a product in exchange for them writing about it and including a link
If Google detects you’re violating their policies, they may demote your website in the search results or even flat-out remove it.
We detect policy-violating content and behaviors both through automated systems and, as needed, human review that can result in a manual action. Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.
Google Search Documentation
So, officially, our recommendation is that you do not buy links.
Plenty of people do. Including SEO agencies you may hire. They're wasting your money for the most part and will end up catastrophically damaging your firm's reputation when Google catches them.
There's a far better way, which also has the benefits of:
- Costing less
- Getting better links
- Not risking anything
The most effective way to get links is to earn them.
4. Earning Links
You can earn links by creating content that people would naturally want to link to.
Here are some common tactics that work well:
- Appearing on podcasts
- Creating newsworthy content
- Creating useful tools
- Creating statistics pages
People can't link to things they don't know about, though. So, promote useful content, like tools and statistics pages you create, to make sure people know they exist.
Once you get these kinds of pages ranking well on Google, they'll start picking up links passively over time as people are looking for them, find them, and reference them.
