How To Get Backlinks To Your Law Firm's Website

A backlink is a link created when one website links to another. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks votes of confidence for a specific page. As a result, pages with a high number of backlinks are more likely to have high organic search engine rankings. So, if you want your practice to receive more online attention, you’ll need to do everything you can to get backlinks to your firm’s website.

In a recent episode of our “Everything Except The Law" podcast, we welcomed Annette Choti, the president of the legal marketing agency Law Quill. During her appearance, Annette dished out some valuable info on the power of backlinks and shared a free and easy way for lawyers to secure appearances in media outlets.

Hear what Annette had to say in the clip below.

You can also check out a transcript of the conversation below:

Host Nick Werker:

You wrote this blog post, and obviously I read it. But it's about how law firms can get articles published by major media outlets. So I'm gonna link this post in the description so that people can read it (see it here). It's obviously on lawquill.com, but can you tell us a little bit about why law firms should be making that effort to appear in larger or major media outlets, and what they'll need in order to make that happen.

Annette Choti:

Yes. So I'm a rubber hits the road type of girl. So I'm gonna tell you exactly why it's important, but then a really easy hack as to how to do it.

So it is really important, when I say major media outlets of course you know you it would be great to be seen on TV and the local news, or even national news an expert. But, what is second best to that, and even more important for your SEO, is to be linked in other media websites as an expert or as an authority or as a quote.

Let's just use the example you just gave. You just said that you are going to link to my blog post at the bottom of this. That means now your website and my website are linked. So when Google looks at that they will say, wow Annette must be an authority if other sources are linking to her. So you want to be linked and get what's called backlinks to your website from other websites and media sources.

And when I say media it doesn't have to be just ABC, CNN, FOX News. It doesn't have to be that. It can be podcasts, and other places that have legal authority. I write for Above The Law every single week and they link back to my website every single week. So it can be a myriad of media sources.

What that does is it tells Google that you are legit. When you have links from other websites that have a better domain authority—that's just a DA score—they are seen by Google as more authoritative. They've been around longer, they have more content, whatever it is, that shows Google that you are legit. That someone even more popular than you on the interwebs is linking to you.

So you want it now. Here's the hack as to how. And by the way this is huge for your SEO score. It's difficult to get, but it's huge for your SEO score. It's a very big piece of the SEO puzzle. This is one free way to get into some of these sources. There is a website called Help A Reporter Out. It’s HARO, h-a-r-o. This you can pay for the upgrade to get the emails an hour earlier. I have never paid for that upgrade. I don't necessarily find it more useful or valuable. I think the journalists that are on there will wait an hour to get really great content. This isn't something that is breaking news usually.

So it's free and you will get two emails a day, so prepare yourself for that and in those emails it will have a listing of everything that journalists are looking for. Now a lot of this is not going to have anything to do with you. It's going to be about a sleep study or it's going to be about holistic ways to take care of allergies or something that has nothing to do with the law. But, usually at least once or twice a week, sometimes even more, they will ask about something that's going on with the Biden administration and taxes on small businesses or something about COVID protocols and employment law. Whatever it is, this is your time.

They have a list and you click that one area. It will go open up a new email and you send your quote. Whatever answer you have for that reporter. And then you send your qualifications and that you are an attorney, and then it goes off. I will tell you that doing this is free, it takes just a little bit of time. You could even have a VA, a paralegal, or an intern do this for you. And you know make sure that the quote that they give is something that you approve of.

This is a very quick and easy way to get into some of these more major media publications. Another way that is free is just to ask a lot of larger websites like Above The Law or other media organizations that connect with the legal industry in some way. (They) are desperate to have more content on their websites. So one way that you can do that is to offer to guest blog on their websites. And if you don't want to do the guest blogging by the way you can outsource that as well.

So there are a lot of ways to get into these major publications, either by getting a quote in there or getting a backlink. Just like what you did with me for my website or by just guest blogging and creating a blog for their website, creating value for their audience which then also gives you authority and also a backlink back to your website.

Full episodes of the Everything Except The Law podcast can be found on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Anchor.