Links are one of the most essential criteria when ranking a webpage, as Google’s search algorithm determines the authority of a website based on the backlinks the website earns.
For this reason, law firms must consider adopting a solid link-building strategy that can place them at the top of the search engine results pages. Through link-building, attorneys can improve their search engine presence and gain referral traffic.
This article will look at link-building for personal injury lawyers, why it’s important, and how to start a strategy that can help their practice grow.
We also have a great guide on link building for law firms, if you are looking for ideas and are not a PI law firm.
What Is Link Building for Personal Injury Lawyers?
Link-building is the technique of collecting links from other websites that lead to a target website. A link (or hyperlink) is usually text enclosed in an HTML anchor element with the “href” property. Links can also be images or whole HTML block components.
Personal injury lawyers can manually add links on other sites they control, directories, social profiles, forums, and other sites that enable direct link placement. More advanced (and more impactful) link-building entails creating content that convinces other website owners to link to it.
Building links primarily focuses on improving a website’s trustworthiness, which impacts how well it can rank for various terms.
Why Is Link Building for Personal Injury Lawyers Important?
If done correctly, link-building can propel your practice to the top of the Google search results. Here’s what you can achieve by having a solid link-building strategy:
- Increased Trust: Link building improves your website’s trustworthiness. Google mentioned that one of the biggest E.A.T. signals is your link profile. As an attorney, you need to be a trusted source to rank and attract good cases.
- Generate more traffic: Because your website is getting greater traction online, it will be easier for potential clients to find your practice. This gives you the first shot at good cases and the confidence to turn away less than desirable ones.
- Enhance brand awareness: With increased visibility, your practice also gets to enjoy better brand recall among clients who need personal injury attorneys. This also improves your brand authority and positions your practice as an industry leader.
- Generate more revenue: The end result of having a link-building strategy is that you get to close more clients for your personal injury services. Improving your practice’s online presence through link-building translates to better profitability.
With these benefits in mind, link-building shouldn’t be treated as a minor part of your digital marketing campaign. By investing more time and resources in earning backlinks, you will be able to accomplish your law practice’s goals much sooner.
How Do Personal Injury Law Firms Get Backlinks?
There are numerous approaches to building backlinks for your legal practice. Here’s a list of the best ones to use for your law practice:
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content never goes out of style and can generate backlinks for years to come. Consider this to be your core content as it answers the most frequent queries your potential clients have. If you can get this content to rank organically, other sites may find it helpful and link back to it.
Blogger Outreach
Blogger outreach link building is one of the best strategies to get backlinks since you provide value to a website in exchange for a link. Typically, pitch a topic, craft a stellar piece of content, and get a link in return. As a bonus, you can also optimize your blogger outreach posts so that they can rank and be a source of referral traffic in the future.
Interviews with Experts
Source: Pixabay
Interviews can generate links from the individuals you feature because you provide them the incentive to share their expertise.
You can come up with some fascinating issues that are relevant to your audience and ask an expert for their opinion. The interview can then be promoted across other media, resulting in social shares. Bloggers may also find the interview helpful and use it as a resource for the articles they are writing.
Brand Mentions
According to 52% of marketers, brand mentions have a significant influence on organic search rankings.
Websites will sometimes mention your law firm without linking to it. If you notice these “brand mentions”, you can typically ask for a link back. To locate them, utilize tools like BuzzSumo to search the web for your brand name, and then personally contact the website owner to see if you can convert that reference into a link.
How-To Guides
People are continuously seeking instructions on how to do jobs and achieve their goals. Guides such as “How to Avoid Foreclosure”, “How to Hire the Right Family Lawyers, and “How to File for Divorce,” not only give value to your potential clients but they can also get picked up (and linked to) by other sites seeking for this information. According to studies, long-form content receives 77.2% more links than short pieces. As a result, long-form content appears to be great for acquiring backlinks.
Local Listings
You’ve probably heard of Whitepages, YellowPages, and Yelp, but there are literally hundreds of local directories where your legal business can be included. Look for directories that are specific to your area or state, since they will be more relevant to your business and are frequently easier to enter.
Social Media
Most social media networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook allow you to post a link to your website. While not all of these connections are followed, they can all direct visitors to your website. There is additional evidence that social media mentions can be beneficial to SEO, although it is indirect.
Lists of Alumni and Directories
Most college and university websites have an alumni area, and some of them are eager to link out. If your old institution has an alumni page and you can be listed, see if you can include a link to your legal firm’s website. You can also do some public relations to see if you can get mentioned on the alumni blog. The University of Washington, for example, frequently publishes profiles of famous graduates, with links to their companies or websites.
Niche Directories
Niche directories, like local directories, are directories that specialize in a certain industry. In your instance, you’ll want to look for legal sector directories like Findlaw, Avvo, Justia, and Nolo. Many of these directories include followed links or, at the absolute least, nofollow links that can provide traffic to your site. Another advantage of these directories is that many of them allow you to gather client feedback, which can serve as social proof to help you attract even more customers.
HARO
Help a Reporter Out Link Building (HARO) offers journalists a comprehensive collection of sources to which they can refer in their articles and publications. Signing up for free HARO updates allows you to react to journalist inquiries and can be featured in credible media. If you are featured, you will most likely receive a link back to your website as well as some useful media publicity.
Chamber of Commerce
Most area chamber’s of commerce will include a business directory that you can be listed in. If you service multiple cities, you can repeat this tactic for each to secure some easy, but trusted links. Aside from local SEO value, these links can also generate referral traffic.
Ebooks/Downloadables
Naturally, law firms can gain backlinks by producing what are known as “linkable assets,” which are typically in the form of ebooks and other digital content.
The idea is to develop content that is so amazing that other sites can’t help but link to it. Consider some themes that are important to your audience, create a downloadable version, and publish it on your website to begin gathering links.
From all this, you will find that building backlinks to your legal practice site requires significant time and effort. If you are unsure how to structure your link-building strategy, you can always reach out to an agency that can handle all aspects of backlinking.
Can Personal Injury Law Firms Outsource Link-Building Services?
Link building is a labor-intensive and specialized field. Since it is so technical, direct clients and even other SEO firms will outsource this aspect of their projects to professionals like us.
According to Ascend, for 41% of SEO specialists, the most challenging aspect of search optimization is link development. Link building requires a great deal of time and creativity to pull off, especially when you are writing blogs and guest posts that provide value to your audience.
In addition, you will also need to track your website metrics to see if your link-building activities are producing the results you want. There is also blogger outreach. You’re unlikely to get a ‘yes’ right away from many publications and sites, so you’ll need to keep track of the answers you get and follow up regularly.
It’s for these reasons that link-building can sometimes be tedious, especially if you lack a network of website owners and content creators. You and your in-house team may not have the time for building backlinks, so delegating these tasks to a capable SEO agency would be the best option.
According to Aira, 44% of companies outsource their link-building efforts. If you would like to get started, consider seeking out link-building services from reputable firms like us.
Learn more about our custom link-building services
How Can You Benefit From Our Link-Building Services?
At Stellar SEO, we can craft a link-building plan that is specific to your organization and in line with your objectives and budget. Our process involves the following steps:
Research and Analysis
Every new customer connection begins with an in-depth investigation. We take the time to learn about your company, your target audience, and what makes you stand out. The Stellar SEO research team assists our link prospectors in locating the ideal sites for you.
Templates will not get you where you want to go. High-quality, relevant links necessitate the human aspect and the tailored approach we provide, which is based on our analysis and research from the beginning.
Prospecting
Prospecting is one of the most labor-intensive areas. At Stellar, we locate high-quality sites related to your niche and then go about vetting them and eventually obtaining link placements.
We employ our search engine expertise, link prospecting tools, and a database of previous connections. Most importantly, we emphasize authority and relevance since every connection and target site must make sense for your company.
Creation of content
We have an experienced content development team that takes over. Our content writers create guest pieces that adhere to the site’s editorial and publication standards while also being captivating and engaging to the site’s audience.
Reporting
Finally, we’ll provide you a report with all of the links we’ve acquired and an update on how your campaign is progressing. Transparency in reporting and communication is critical to ensuring that we meet both your law firm’s short-term and long-term SEO objectives.
Time to Outsource Your Link Building Services?
As a personal injury lawyer, link building is a time-consuming process that is one of the most essential investments you will make in your SEO strategy. We at Stellar SEO have a great deal of expertise in dealing with customers in the legal profession. As a professional services provider in a competitive market, we understand your SEO objectives and how to help you reach them. Feel free to contact us for a consultation.
