Link Building for Lawyers & Law Firms in 2024

Law firm marketing has never been more challenging than it is now. In a world of fast-paced media, where you only have a fraction of a moment to catch the user's attention, you have to stand out to advertise your lawyer services successfully. Of course, paid advertising and marketing agencies can always help you out, but if you want to dive deeper and grow your law firm website organically, this article is for you.

In this article, we will discuss link building for law firms and attorneys, the best tactics and strategies, basics and principles of SEO for lawyers, and much more. So, let's dive in!

As with any other business, law firms have to be promoted. Word of mouth and good reviews play a massive role, but you need to boost your online presence to stand out. And by that, we don't mean buying ads or being active on social media. We're talking organic growth.

One of the best ways to organically grow your website is to build a strong backlink profile. According to BrightEdge, organic web listings get 73% of clicks — this also doubles by HubSpot's data on the top traffic source for all websites being organic search. Moreover, Backlinko states, less than 1% of users click on the second page of search engine results, and pages with the highest number of backlinks rank best. So what does all this mean?

This means that a strong backlink profile is crucial to any law firm's promotion. Link building for lawyers is just as important as for any other business. The data suggests that the stronger the backlink profile, the higher your chances of ranking in top SERPs, resulting in higher traffic. Effective link building for law firms benefits both law firms and private attorneys, bringing in more potential clients. 

Now, let's dive into our ultimate guide on lawyer link building.

1. Use Legal Directories

One of the most popular, albeit helpful, SEO tactics for law firms is getting them out there in legal directories. These directories are one of the best link building sites for attorneys, but be aware: these links have the lowest value, as anyone can get them. To have a strong backlink profile, you must cover this base.

The good news is that getting into most of them is free and easy. However, there are also some paid ones that deserve attention. Below is the table with the top 7 legal directories that are must-haves for effective lawyer link building.

Pro tip: Engage and interact. Don't just create a listing and forget about it! The best practice is to optimize your listing and update it with relevant information from time to time, as well as engage with potential clients through the platform. The ones that offer Q&As are an excellent way to do that!

2. Make Use of Guest Posting

Guest posting remains one of the best SEO tactics in 2024. Also known as guest blogging, it is the practice of writing and publishing an article on someone else's website. It's crucial for link building, as you're getting quality and diverse backlinks, improving your rankings and website visibility. It also helps establish your firm's authority: the more mentions you have from credible websites, the better. 

However, it's essential to focus on quality rather than quality. And Collaborator can help you with that. Collaborator has over 200 law and jurisprudence websites from all over the world, and the best thing is that you can look at their traffic data and other important information before you choose where to publish your article. 

For just 10% of the deal for each guest post-publication, you can also get extended insurance that covers you in case of article deletion and no indexation for one year. You can filter websites by over thirty parameters, including subject, country, price, traffic. Thanks to the official Ahrefs integration, you're able to check all the needed data and pick the website for guest posting that suits your needs the most.

Collaboraror’s catalog has over 30 thousand websites for you to choose from

Pro tip: for most websites, you can see an option to write a press release along with a  guest post — read our guide on writing a successful press release to get the full guide ;)

3. Participate in Q&As

A great way of lawyer link building that we've touched in the legal directories section is participating in Q&As. There are a lot of general and lawyer-related websites where you can do so, such as Quora, JustAnswer, Avvo, and Lawyers.com. Most links that you will get from this method are nofollow. However, they are still good to have in your backlink profile. Additionally, answering legal questions will boost your credibility as an attorney and directly drive conversions.

A Q&A section for personal injury topic on Avvo

Pro tip: be genuine, authentic, and transparent when participating in Q&As. Avoid overly promotional or salesy language and focus on genuinely helping and educating others. 

4. Participate in Podcasts

Participating in interviews and podcasts is a great link-building strategy for lawyers. As a lawyer, you are an expert in a field that most people know next to nothing about, so sharing your expertise is a perfect strategy to stand out from the competition. 

According to Backlinko, there are over 464 million podcast listeners worldwide, which is predicted to reach 504.9 million this year. The average listener spends seven hours per week listening to podcasts.

You do not necessarily have to start your podcast, as it can and will take a tremendous amount of effort, but you can participate in other podcasts in your niche. Look for shows that align with your target audience, reach out to hosts, and you'll be able to secure an interview. Provide insightful information, be charismatic, and you'll be golden.

The Lawyer Podcast is one of the top-ranking podcasts in the field 

Pro tip: optimize and promote your appearance on the podcast to maximize exposure. Share the podcast episode on your website, blog, and social media channels, include it in your email newsletters, and encourage your network to listen, share, and engage with the podcast.

5. Establish a Social Media Presence

A good and easy law firm link building tactic would be to establish your social media presence. It takes a little bit of time to set up your profiles (we recommend Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube), and you do not necessarily need to be active on all of them.

Having links from social media networks is suitable for your backlink profile diversity, and it's excellent if you want to dedicate effort to improving your presence. Still, don't pressure yourself to be active if that is something you don't find use in. 

An example of a good social media presence for a lawyer 

Pro tip: Optimize your social media profiles by providing accurate, complete, and consistent information about your law firm, including your logo, website link, contact details, and an engaging bio or description. Customize your profiles with high-quality images and branding elements that reflect your firm's identity and personality.

6. Create Quality Content

A good link building strategy for lawyers is creating quality content. Starting a blog would be an excellent way to go. If your articles are beneficial and insightful, you will acquire backlinks naturally, as other websites would want to share your posts and refer to you as a credible source.

Being a lawyer, you sure have some expertise and knowledge to share — and the more niche-specific, the better — but we know you might not always have time to write articles, or it can simply not be your thing. One way to go would be to utilize AI, like ChatGPT, to help you with that, but be aware that AI-generated content is easy to detect and might not be the best quality. 

Upwork is one of the most popular freelance-based copywriting services

Pro tip: you wouldn't trust your copywriter to be an amazing personal injury lawyer all of a sudden, right? So instead of doing it yourself, outsource it to one of the best copywriting services, so that everybody is doing what they're best at, and you can focus on your work. 

7. Use Quality Visuals

Another effective link building strategy is creating viral graphics. By using SEO-optimized images on your website, you improve your backlink profile by having others share your pictures and rank higher in Google Image SERPs. If you need to figure out what kind of graphics you can create for law firms, some easy ways to start would be infographics with statistical data, checklists, tables, or even memes.

The research by Persuasion Nation states that memes have around ten times more reach and 60% organic interaction than usual graphics; moreover, businesses creating viral memes are 60% more likely to attract clients. Taking a serious topic in a fun way is a great lawyer link building strategy!

An example of a great law related infographic by Garling & Co

Pro tip: To ensure your images are optimized for search engines, check out our guide on image optimization.

8. Provide Scholarships

Another great link building strategy for lawyers is providing educational scholarships for a mention and a backlink. You may be wondering if investing a significant portion of the budget to acquire one backlink from an academic website is a good idea, and the answer is yes. Not only is the amount and diversity of your backlinks crucial, but it's also beneficial to have your backlinks from different domains, and .gov and .edu domains are among the best ones to have in your portfolio. Search engines consider Edu links credible and valuable, so having such websites refer to you will significantly improve your search engine rankings.

“Scholarships” section of The Dominiguez Firm website

Pro tip: Research and select institutions with a solid online presence, high domain authority, and a significant and engaged audience.

9. Fix Unlinked Mentions & Broken Backlinks

This is one of the easiest yet crucial link building strategies for attorneys. Sometimes, other websites will quote or refer to you but not directly link to your website, such as when publishing an article and adding you as a source. You can ask them to add a link to the mention.

The same goes for broken backlinks: you must routinely check all the broken links and reach out to the website owners to update them. You can check your site for broken links with most of the free SEO tools.

One of the easiest ways to check your website for broken links is to use Ahrefs Free Broken Link Checker

Pro tip: don't worry — you do not have to search for every mention on the web manually! Just set up Google Alerts to receive an email whenever someone mentions your law firm. This way, all you'll have to do is check the mention, and if it doesn't include a link, reach out to the website owners, thank them for the mention, and ask if they could provide you with a backlink. 

10. Additional Link Building Tactics For Lawyers

Below is a short table with other easy and proven-to-work methods (including pro tips!) for lawyer link building strategy.

Now that you know the best link building tactics for lawyers, you might be overwhelmed with all the options and need help figuring out where to start or what to implement. That's why we've prepared an easy-to-follow checklist for creating a lawyer link building strategy. 

Step 1. Analyze Your Website

First of all, you have to analyze what's already out there. Find and fix all errors, optimize your web pages, improve existing articles, etc. To fully grasp what you have to do to improve your backlink profile, you have to figure out which pages you want the other websites to refer to — it won't always be your home page. Feel free to use our interactive checklist for SEO to track your progress.

Step 2. Identify Your Target Audience

As with any other marketing strategy, you must know your target audience to create an effective lawyer link building strategy. Analyze your existing clientele and create a buyer persona based on that. Analyze your competitors' audience — what do they all have in common? To help you with this process, you can also utilize surveys, your social media insights, and so on. 

Step 3. Analyze Your Competitors

Conduct thorough market research to determine which strategies work best in your niche. Find a few top-ranking law firms websites and try to understand what works best for them. Look for opportunities to implement for your website — maybe you can even reach out to the same websites that provide them with backlinks to have yours listed there as well. 

Step 4. Audit Your Resources

Assess your available resources, including the budget and team members. This way, you'll have a clear understanding of which tasks you can divide within the team and what you will need to outsource. Allocate a specific part of the budget for each task, but don't try to be too specific—a rough estimate will be a good starting point. 

Step 5. Create a Plan

Create a detailed link building plan based on your research and available resources. Determine who will be responsible for what, which link building strategies you will use, and the deadlines for completing each part of the plan. A clear and structured plan will ease the process of link building.

Step 6. Prepare All Materials

Gather all materials needed for your plan. This includes materials for new content, existing articles that need to be updated, any ideas that you would like to add, a list of websites to which you will be reaching out, and so on. Getting all your materials ready will streamline the link building process and save you tons of headache later on. 

Step 7. Create & Optimize Content

Using the materials you've prepared, create high-quality content based on your plan. This includes blog posts, videos, webinars, infographics, podcasts, and everything else you want to utilize. Optimize it with relevant keywords, work on internal link building, and move on to the next step.

Step 8. Publish & Outreach

After you've published and polished all content to your website and made sure it's search engine optimized, you’re ready to move on to the final step. Contact websites, engage in social media marketing, participate in community discussions and Q&As, and implement guest posting. A friendly reminder: Collaborator has over 3000 law and jurisprudence-related websites on which you can publish articles to ease law firm link building process.

Like any other niche, link building for lawyers has its own do's and don'ts. Now that you know the basics, it's time to explore the pitfalls. While having many backlinks might seem like a good idea, it's better to stick to Google's Guidelines. Going against them can result in penalties, lowering your website's rankings and traffic. Below is the do-not list of the things you must avoid while building a law firm backlink profile.

1. Low-quality Backlinks 

As previously mentioned, quantity does not equal quality. A bad backlink is one that is located on a website unrelated to your niche or on a spammy website. 

2. Link exchange

According to Semrush, Google considers link exchange a bad practice as it is inorganic. It may even penalize the websites that exchange backlinks in bulk. It's also easier to stumble onto a spammy website if you participate in link exchange — assuming they are not niche-related, you cannot guarantee what other websites are exchanging their links with them.

3. Link Farms

Obtaining backlinks in bulk from so-called link farms is what Google calls a "link scheme." Search engine crawlers are good at determining link-buying patterns, so even if you try to do it carefully, the odds are you'll still be caught red-handed. 

4. Off-topic Link Placements

While guest posting is a great SEO practice for lawyer link building, it can have its cons. You must be careful when choosing a link donor for your guest posts. Otherwise, Google could consider it unnatural, which would result in penalties. Check out our catalog to find trusted websites and filter them by topic — this way, you will ensure your content is suitable for the website.

5. Backlink Just for the Sake of Backlink

This rule is simple yet important: do not comment, post, or publish an article just to get a backlink. Focus on quality and user experience—this way; you will be much more likely to receive more organic traffic and rank higher in SERPs.

6. Over-Optimization & Black-Hat SEO

Over-optimizing your articles and anchor texts to the point where they only consist of keywords will result in being penalized by Google. This practice, known as keyword stuffing, is considered a black-hat SEO, and you should avoid it when link building for law firm websites. 

Some other black-hat SEO techniques to avoid are:

7. Non-original Content

As mentioned before, posting non-original content is a black-hat SEO practice and can, therefore, be penalized by Google. Moreover, it will simply make your website look like all the others—having unique, high-quality content will make it work.

8. Incorrect Geolocation

This is mostly for local businesses: make sure you're doing your outreach or guest posting to websites that are local to you. Of course, getting traffic from other countries will help you boost your rankings, but since the main end goal is to generate more leads and receive new clients, you should focus on receiving your local traffic. 

This is a friendly reminder that if you're unsure where to start, Collaborator has your back. Of course, you can always outsource your link building to SEO agencies, but you can also quickly do it yourself. With Collaborator, you're able to choose from 30 thousand trusted websites and check their traffic data.

Collaborator has over 3000 law & jurisprudence websites in its catalog

Filter the catalog by topic, location, and other settings, and pick the needed filters. Guest posting and link building for law firms has never been more accessible!

In conclusion, navigating the complex landscape of law firms marketing requires a strategic approach, especially in the era of rapid digital evolution. Building a strong backlink profile remains a key element for organic growth and improved search engine rankings. From legal directories to guest posting and engaging in podcasts, the strategies we've covered will let you elevate your online presence and connect with potential clients.

Remember, the key is not just to accumulate backlinks but to cultivate quality connections that reflect your firm's credibility and expertise. While it may seem daunting, with the right tools, like Collaborator, and a clear understanding of your target audience, you can effectively harness the power of link building to set your law firm apart.

We hope this guide has provided you with valuable insights and actionable strategies to kickstart your law firm's link building process. We wish you the best of luck in securing high-quality backlinks and driving organic traffic to your website. Happy link building!