Link Popularity Tools: Which One Does Your Law Firm Need?

4 out of 5 new legal clients use web searches to help them make a decision about which lawyer to hire. Because link popularity influences search results so much, many lawyers are now looking into using link popularity tools to increase their traffic and conversions. However, not every lawyer has the same problem, and not every lawyer needs the same link popularity tool. Here are some of the most common problems that attorneys have when trying to put together a successful, high ranking website, and the link popularity tools that can help you to overcome those problems.

Problem: We Don't Know How Popular Our Links Are

Solution: Link Popularity Tools for Link Checking

Sometimes, lawyers have had a website for a very long time—maybe your site dates from a time when search engine optimization mostly depended just on keyword percentages. If this is the case, you may not have checked your link popularity at all, especially not with modern link popularity tools.

Using a link popularity tool designed to check your level of link popularity can give you part of the picture about how well you're performing. In order to get a more detailed image of what you're doing right and what you can do better, you should check out your competition's website using the same link popularity tools. This helps you understand comparatively where you are, and using a link popularity tool like this may even give you some new ideas about where to try to build new links.

Problem: We Don't Have Enough Links

Solution: Link Popularity Tools For Link Building

Maybe you've already used a link popularity tool to check how popular you were—and you didn't like the results very much at all. You saw that your website was languishing behind many other sites like it, and you want to use some link popularity tools to help you create new ones.

Some all in one link popularity tools act as link managers that can help you post links to a wide variety of websites from a single interface. This also helps you to keep track of the links that you have already posted. If you're not using a link popularity tool like this to enhance your link popularity, you'll have to post at every website individually, using their interface, which may not seem like it takes very long—but once you add up all the time you're spending navigating different website layouts, it turns out that these link popularity tools can be one of the biggest time savers your law firm can invest in.

Problem: Not Enough Time To Post Our Links

Solution: Automated Submission Link Popularity Tools

This is one of the biggest problems that many law firms have when trying to figure out what link popularity tool to use. Posting links takes time, and for lawyers, time is money in a very direct and tangible sense. To avoid the feeling of those billable hours just slipping away, many attorneys use link popularity tools that automate their link submission fully.

However, this type of link popularity tool has a down side that you should be aware of before you ever choose to use one. Automated link building through link popularity tools is not looked upon favorably by search engines, and if you're caught, you can expect penalties to your search rankings. For some lawyers, this may be perceived as a risk worth taking. Others won't want to chance it. You'll have to make up your own mind about whether or not automating your links is enough of a time savings to be worth the possibility of losing your hard-won rankings.

Problem: Finding New Sites To Post Links On

Solution: Using Social Bookmarking as a Link Popularity Tool

Some of the best link popularity tools today aren't freestanding pieces of software. Instead, think of websites that allow free user posting to be their own unique form of link popularity tool. If you want to increase your link presence, social bookmarking sites are the best link popularity tools possible. Just start by creating an account and soon you'll be able to freely post links to whatever part of your website needs them most.

Problem: Don't Know Which Links Are Better

Solution: Use SEOQuake or Other Link Popularity Tools to Check PageRank

When you're building your links, you'll want to prioritize them by quality, and there's no better way to check than by using a link popularity tool. Google bases the amount of link juice you get with each link on how authoritative the link source is, and how many other links are on the website. Using a link popularity tool like SEOQuake, which works in your browser to tell you information about a website's PageRank and other data, can be extremely useful if you're hoping to find the most efficient route to Page One of search results.

If you're considering two different sources for your link, try using SEOQuake and seeing whether their PageRank is the same or not. If it's not, you probably want to prioritize putting links on the website with the higher PageRank value.

Keep in mind that not all of your links can or should be from high PageRank sites—this would be a very unnatural linking pattern. However, you can definitely use link popularity tools like SEOQuake to find out which links are likely to be most valuable and which ones you can probably ignore.

Problem: Google Says Our Website is Overoptimized

Solution: Use Link Popularity Tools to Identify Bad Links

One last use of a link popularity tool that you should know about is using tools to identify bad links. Whether they're inbound links leading to your website or outbound links that go to websites other than your own, you need your links to work. If you use link popularity tools and find out that one of your inbound links isn't working, you can talk to the webmaster or redirect the link URL to the page that now contains the relevant information. If an outbound link no longer works, you should find where the data you were linking to is now displayed, and change your link accordingly.