Getting new clients through your law firm website is a goal for any practice. But, as a lawyer, you’re not competing with other law firms only in courtrooms — you’re doing so in search engines too.
If we know that 74% of people search for legal advice online, your law firm’s website ranking in search results can significantly impact the number of clients you get.
Keep reading to learn why link building for lawyers is important and how you can improve your website’s SEO with high-quality backlinks. We will also share 9 proven link building tactics, some of which our agency used to build more than 200+ links for law firms.
Why link building matters for lawyers
In SEO (search engine optimization), backlinks are a major ranking factor. A backlink is when another website links to a certain page on your website. You can also think of backlinks as the internet’s version of citations. Just like citations, they add credibility to your work and make it easier for people to hear about you.
After analyzing 11.8 million search results, Backlinko found that the 1st result in Google search has 3.8x more backlinks than those in positions from 2 to 10.
This means that the stronger your backlink profile, the better your law firm’s website will rank in search results, and the more organic traffic you will get — and in a competitive market such as the legal industry, this can help you stand out and get more clients.
If we know that 91.7% of people use Google to research which law firm to hire, showing up on top of search engine rankings for relevant keywords should be the main goal of your legal marketing efforts.
Moreover, building backlinks from relevant local business directories and organizations can boost your ranking in local search results. A simple check in an SEO tool like Ahrefs shows that around 13,000 people in the US search for the keyword “lawyer near me” every month.
Ideally, you want your website to be among the first results whenever someone in your practice area searches for keywords related to your services.
This is how a Charleston-based personal injury law firm got first-page rankings for motorcycle accident and nursing home abuse keywords through content improvements and targeted link-building to increase local search visibility.
All of this shows the importance of having a good SEO strategy, which is supported by the fact that 75% of lawyers consider their website as the most effective marketing tool.
However, building high-quality links requires the right expertise. You need to avoid spammy tactics, low-quality and no-follow links, and black hat SEO techniques that can harm your website rankings or even get you penalized by Google’s algorithm.
Keep reading to learn how to build do-follow links from reputable websites.
What makes a good link?
Typically, a quality backlink needs to come from a relevant website that meets the following criteria:
- High-authority domain. The higher the domain authority, the more trustworthy the referral website will be in the eyes of Google.
- Topical authority. The referring domains should focus on topics related to law, resonating with your firm’s area of expertise and intended audience.
- Consistent organic traffic. A website that consistently receives traffic from Google searches is doing something right. Getting a backlink from such a website means that you’re doing link building right.
- Well-balanced backlink profile. The referring website should have a healthy backlink profile, with naturally built links from quality websites with a good domain rating.
9 effective link building strategies for law firms
1. Find guest posting opportunities
Guest blogging is one of the most proven content marketing techniques for building links.
First, you need to find a target website that you want a backlink from. To find guest blogging opportunities, you only need to Google a term relevant to your expertise, e.g. “injury law” + one of the search operators below:
[search term] + “write for us”
[search term] + ”guest post” / ”guest article”
[search term] + “submit a guest post” / ”submit an article”
[search term] + “contributor guidelines”
[search term] + “guest author”
[search term] + “guest post by”
Next, you want to do outreach and pitch them an idea for a guest post. For example, if you’re a personal injury lawyer, you could pitch local websites and offer them stories on personal injury lawsuits.
Once the idea is accepted, you just need to write the guest post and include a link to one of your pages. Once the post is published, you will get a backlink.
One of the websites that are constantly open to guest post submissions is Attorney at Work.
2. Niche edits
Niche edits (also known as link insertions) can be a fast way to scale link building for lawyers. Unlike guest posting, where you need to write a whole article, niche edits are a link building tactic based on adding a link to an existing piece of content. Usually, this is done by just adding a couple of sentences or a paragraph of new content alongside a link back to your law firm’s website.
For example, you could reach out to a publication that lists quotes by lawyers on a certain topic to offer your expert view in exchange for a backlink that would go alongside your quote.
3. Get registered on free legal directories
Directories for businesses can improve your online presence and the best part is that they’re free. All it takes is looking up your practice and finding out if you’re listed. These are some great starting points for your search:
- FindLaw
- Justia
- Avvo
- Nolo
- Lawyers.com
- Justicia
- HG.org
- LegalZoom
These free directories will add your practice for free, netting you a high-quality backlink to your website. These are just the directories with the highest domain authority, but you should also take a look at your local ones in your state, area, or city.
While you’re getting your practice added to these listings and citations, make sure all the information there is up to date: your address, phone number, email and other contact data. This can bring a massive boost to your local SEO success.
4. Claim unlinked mentions
An unlinked mention means that your law firm is being referenced somewhere online without a hyperlink back to your law firm’s website. Getting backlinks from those mentions is one of the quickest wins in link building.
To identify already existing unlinked mentions, just Google your practice’s name. There is a good chance someone out there is writing about you but not linking to your website. A simple way to approach this is to just reach out to the website owner or author and politely ask them to link back to your website.
Since they already mentioned you, the barrier to entry is lower – they won’t object to giving you a link with your brand name as the anchor text.
To get alerted about potential new unlinked mentions, you can use a tool like Google Alerts. This will help you launch a link-building campaign early on.
5. Create linkable assets or downloadable resources
Linkable assets are high-quality content pieces designed specifically to be more likely to lead to natural link buliding. Think about infographics, checklists, original research or statistics, case studies, comprehensive guides, or even downloadable templates for legal documents.
The Goldman Law Firm, for example, has a library of downloadable resources that include various checklists, handouts, and publications.
6. Broken link building
Just like you, other law firms are also out there building links. For one reason or another, those links often stop working and become broken. This is your chance to land some easy backlinks.
- Find a website that has links to law firm websites
- Load it up in a tool such as Ahrefs, MOZ or Semrush to see how many of those backlinks are broken and what pages they lead to
- Find out the reasons why they are broken (e.g. the target page could be deleted, or there is a broken redirect chain, etc.)
- Reach out to the webmaster and offer a replacement
When you explain to the website owner that a broken link is bad for their website and their target audience, there is a high likelihood they’ll add your link. After all, no one wants broken links on their web pages.
7. Start a scholarship
Traditionally, scholarships have had a wider impact on your marketing than simply boosting your ranking in search engine results pages — they can be excellent PR or even put you in front of potential clients (the students’ parents).
When it comes to link building, scholarships work for one simple reason — when you launch a new scholarship, the websites that give you backlinks by default are news outlets and educational institution websites. In addition, you might get tons of social media shares or even get picked up by popular bloggers and influencers in your local area.
In 2024, The Eberst Law Firm offered a $2,000 scholarship to individuals attending or planning to attend an accredited US college. This brought them 9 backlinks from websites with reputable domain ratings, half of which were the .edu domains.
8. Participate in podcasts
Whether you’re joining a podcast as a guest or hosting your own, those are a great way to improve your law firm’s SEO.
Podcast guest appearances will, in most cases, include your bio with a link to the website. Many podcasts also transcribe their episodes and republish them as blog posts, which is another great opportunity to secure a link.
If, on the other hand, you decide to start your own podcast, the guests will wish to promote their appearances by linking back to the episode.
Note: A lot of online guides suggest HARO (Help a Reporter Out) — a platform where journalists seek quotes for their pieces — as one of the most effective techniques for link building.
However, shortly after it was sold and renamed to Connectively, HARO discontinued its service on December 9, 2024.
9. Outsource link building for law firms
Let’s face it, most law firms have limited internal marketing resources and little to no SEO expertise. While the tips we shared above can be applied by anyone, most law firms choose to outsource this to a proven link building service provider.
At ReportCard, we’ve helped our clients increase conversions and add $27,600,000+ in annual revenue, including 3 law firms for which we built a total of 200+ links.
One of them is an Indiana-based personal injury law firm that had previously invested in SEO, but now they wanted to gain more visibility and clients from organic traffic. After we optimized their content and built authority through targeted link-building efforts, they got ranked #1 for keywords like “truck accident lawyer” and “car accident attorney Indianapolis”.
Book a free call today to learn more!
