Building High Quality Backlinks: 7 Tips for Law Firms

In 2011, Google released an update called Panda that sent reverberations throughout the internet community. Affecting 15 percent of websites, Panda started looking at where backlinks were coming from, rather than just basing search rankings on the total number of backlinks. All of a sudden, companies didn't just want any backlinks, they wanted high quality backlinks—and fast! Read this guide to find out how your law firm can build quality backlinks that pass muster on today's Google, and why you don't need to buy quality backlinks to be successful.

#1: Use Your Real Life Connections

Because quality backlinks are a part of the online world, many people forget that they can build high quality backlinks just by using their in person social circles. Before you decide to buy quality backlinks, think about your connections. People working for your law firm have social connections both locally and nationally, and can leverage those connections to get the kind of backlinking you want.

For example, you may find out that one of your real life friends or acquaintances has recently begun to keep a blog. After they tell you what their blog is about, if you can think of a topic for a guest post, you'll be able to get high quality backlinks by piggybacking on their blog. This is a great way to avoid having to buy quality backlinks even if you don't have very much web presence yet.

#2: Complete Your Profiles

One of the best and fastest ways to get high quality backlinks is to complete all of your law firm's profiles on social networking websites. If you don't have a fully filled out profile, you're missing several different opportunities to create a quality backlink with great anchor text. If you buy quality backlinks, creating these profiles will be one of the first things that a service does. You can save yourself time and money by making these high quality backlinks on your own instead of purchasing them.

Usually, these profiles take about an hour or so to set up completely, so there's no reason to buy quality backlinks of this type unless you really want to. For the relatively small amount of time investment required, you'll get quality backlinks that didn't require you to create any new content at all.

#3: Keep Quality Levels Up

Whatever content you're producing to generate your high quality backlinks needs to be at a high level of quality on its own. If you're not producing good content, no matter how good your quality backlinks are, and no matter how well positioned your backlinking has gotten, you'll never get the conversions you need out of your backlinking. Keep in mind that the end goal isn't just increasing your page rank, it's growing your business.

Some services claim to allow businesses to buy quality backlinks, but not all of them deliver on that promise. High quality backlinks are often difficult to purchase, and you may end up with lower quality backlinks that help you much less. Ask to see samples of the work any company is doing before you buy quality backlinks from them.

#4: Use Social Networking

Don't just abandon your social networking pages once your profile has provided you with some high quality backlinks. You can create additional quality backlinks by participating and posting on these websites. While you shouldn't overload your social networking feeds with backlinks to your website, an occasional link is a great idea—especially if it's to some content that's interesting enough for your viewers to share, creating even more high quality backlinks.

When you buy quality backlinks, this kind of posting is often included as part of the package. However, if you choose this route for building quality backlinks, be careful. It can be obvious to your readership that you chose to buy quality backlinks instead of making your own content and participating yourself. Often, it's easier to make your own high quality backlinks, which your readers will be able to see come from a real person in your firm.

#5: Participate in Comments and Questions

No one likes the person who just talks and never listens. Consider having some of your high quality backlinks come from asking your readers questions, and making comments on people's social networking feeds and blogs. Note that this does not mean to make low quality backlinks by spamming blog comments with irrelevant links—you need to be really responding to what's being said, and participating in a two-way conversation.

#6: Talk to the Press

Why buy quality backlinks when a great public relations campaign can get them for free? One of the best ways to get high quality backlinks on websites your competitors can't even touch is to get media attention. If you've recently won a case that you think a local television station or newspaper might be interested in, get the publicity. When they post quality backlinks to your website, you'll see your rankings skyrocketing. Media sources are among the best places to position your high quality backlinks.

Now, unlike the kinds of links you get when you buy quality backlinks, you won't be able to set your own anchor text. However, because these are such difficult high quality backlinks to get, they'll count for a lot in your search rankings even without great anchor text.

#7: Audit Your Backlinks

Every once in a while, you'll want to check to make sure that your backlinking is still effective and that the backlinks you've received still direct people to functional URLs. This is even more important if you buy quality backlinks—without checking up on the backlinking, how do you know if you're really getting what you paid for instead of spammy backlinking attempts?

Many free web tools can help you examine your backlinks. You can easily sort your backlinks by PageRank so you can find which are high quality backlinks and which are lower quality backlinks. Quality backlinks will have a higher PageRank number (the maximum is 10), while lower quality ones will have lower numbers, all the way down to zero.