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If you’ve already checked out our recent pieces and performed on-page and technical search engine optimization, it’s time for you to start working on your law firm’s off-page SEO.

Now, to help you with off-page SEO, we have created this simple 3-step guide on how to build backlinks for your law firm. Of course, off-page optimization is a complex and difficult matter, and no single article will ever be able to fully cover the subject.

With that in mind, we’ve decided to focus on actionable advice that marketers and attorneys can do on their own, without any help from SEO professionals. This means that you can follow our guide and do everything on your own; no need to spend hundreds and thousands of dollars on marketing experts.

Let’s cut to the chase and start our guide on building backlinks:

Step 1 – Find popular legal content

As we’ve already explained in our earlier posts, SEO always begins with research competition. Off-page optimization is no different.

This means that you need to research other law firms and find web pages that rank well within the law niche. To be more specific, you need to find pages with a high number of inbound links.

If you don’t know how to find pages rich with links, you can use tools like SEMRush, Linkody, or Ahrefs. All of these tools are paid, premium solutions, but you can always use the free trial versions if you are reluctant to spend money on SEO.

In case you do not fancy using paid tools, you can try Ubersuggest or Keyword Planner. However, these free tools will only allow you to find keywords that you can target in search engines. You will still have to find the most popular legal content on your own.

Digital marketers typically collect these linkable assets in an excel sheet. We advise that you do the same. After you compile a document with all the links, it’s time to move on to step 2.

Step 2 – Create your own linkable assets

The second step is to create your own linkable assets. However, before you do that, you will need to carefully inspect each piece of content that you collected in the previous step.

As you go through the popular pages, try to think of all the ways that the content could be improved. Maybe the page doesn’t explain everything in a clear and concise manner. The content might not be completely up to date or it might just be too hard to navigate the website.

Take detailed notes because you don’t want to miss out on anything. Then, after you’re done with this, you can start working on your own legal content.

This is arguably the hardest step, because you need to create content that is an authority on the legal subject. So, take your time. Don’t hesitate to spend days or even weeks polishing your article and creating graphics to complement your page.

Graphics are especially useful here, because the most commonly linked content comes in the form of images and videos. In fact, you can have thousands of words and a single image on your website, and the image can still bring you the overwhelming majority of links.

Another easy way to improve existing content is by simply expanding it. You can do this by covering subjects that are somehow related or similar to the topic of your page.

For example, if your page deals with questions regarding specific legal issues like inheritance, you can include a part that explains how you can quickly sell or rent the inherited properties. Similarly, you can include links to external sources to create a one-stop guide for a specific legal issues.

In the case of inheritance, you can link to online inheritance tax forms or tenant agreements, for example. This might not be particularly useful in the short term, but in the long run, you’re creating a bond with your visitors. They will know that they can find everything that they need on your site.

However, bear in mind that you will have to provide high-quality content consistently to keep your visitors coming back. More often than not, attorneys become lazy over time and give up on their content writing too early in the process.

You simply cannot allow that to happen. Behave like your law firm’s future depends on each piece of content that you publish. This is the most foolproof way to continuously provide value to your readers and increase your linkability.  Set a schedule, and stick to it.

Step 3 – Start promoting your legal content

Most people think that it’s enough for them to write great content. After all, the text speaks for itself, right?

Wrong.

You cannot rely on your content alone. It will bring in a fair few visitors to your site on its own, but it will never fulfill its potential unless you start reaching out to people.

The best way to market your content is through emails. Simply create a template email that you will send out. However, before you start sending anything, you will need to find your target audience.

You can do that by analyzing the inbound links of the most popular pages that deal with the same subject on the Internet. This means you will need to use one of the backlink analyzers mentioned earlier, like Ahrefs and SEMRush.

Of course, you can market your content without any tools, but that will rarely be as effective. It’s essential that you target people and websites who have already linked out to similar content. This shows that they’re a niche website that is interested in your subject.

To increase the chance of a positive response to your link request, follow this advice:

• Keep your email brief and to the point
• Mention that you stumbled upon their website and maybe throw in a few compliments
• Hint that you noticed that they linked to the original article
• Explain what you wrote and why it’s better than existing content
• Inquire about writing a guest post

Before you get started with your link building efforts, we advise that you go through our guide on how to build backlinks for your law firm carefully. Be aware that this is not a quick, one-time fix to boost your rankings. You will need to invest a lot of your time to see a noticeable difference.