With over 1 billion users, Facebook is clearly a social media site that's here to stay for the foreseeable future.  However, if you've got a limited law firm marketing budget (and who doesn't?), you need to know which other new online marketing methods are going to be around in the future and which ones have a short shelf life.  In this guide, we'll take a look at the bandwagons that your law firm should consider jumping on.  These methods all have tremendous applicability for most or all law firms, and can be expected to still be relevant for the foreseeable future.

Bandwagon #1: Quantitative Testing

For a long time, most law firm marketing and advertising depended not on quantitative A/B testing of different possibilities, but of what amounted to guessing with a good helping of talent and intuition.  While the old way of doing marketing could work passably well, today, you can augment any talent with quantitative testing that will help you identify exactly when your marketing is bringing in clients.

Internet technology has made it easier than ever for businesses to learn what clients are responding to.  Only a few decades ago, when advertisers wanted to see if consumers were reading, they'd have to include cut-out coupons to mail in.  These were somewhat inconvenient and couldn't be used effectively by many types of businesses.  Today, you can see exactly what ad made someone click on your website, and whether anyone clicking from that ad is actually calling pr emailing your firm to set up an appointment.

Bandwagon #2: Mobile Marketing

For the first time, in 2013 smartphone connections to the internet in the United States will actually exceed internet connections from desktop and laptop computers.  This means that even if your firm hasn't been great about interacting with mobile clients in the past, today is the day to start changing that.  As more and more people access the internet from their smartphones, it will become more difficult to stay competitive as a firm that is steadfastly against mobile marketing.

Begin your mobile marketing ventures by starting to make your content mobile friendly.  Having smartphones redirect to a mobile website is a good idea.  You should also make sure that any emails you plan to send are viewable not only on dekstop and laptop computers, but also smartphones with Android or iOS.

Bandwagon #3: Client-Responsive Websites

If your firm has several practice areas but someone came to your firm's website because of an advertisement for DUI defense services, you will be wasting your time telling them about all of your firm's other services.  Having websites that actually are based on how your clients got there, and that change based on how your clients interact with them, are the wave of the future when it comes to legal marketing on the web.

This kind of website specialization might not yet be feasible for some smaller firms, but keep an eye out.  As technology for creating client responsive sites improves, prices will drop, and you may be able to get the kind of site that will start converting 100-200% more viewers than the site you have today.

Bandwagon #4: The Rise of Agencies

Because online advertising and marketing is becoming increasingly important and, in some critical ways, increasingly complicated, more and more firms are considering having some or all of their marketing services outsourced to agencies.  In fact, the number of online marketing and branding agencies has doubled in the last year alone.

If you're having a difficult time understanding how to position your brand in your local market, or you're just not seeing a way to find enough time to maintain your website and create new content marketing materials on a regular basis, you should consult with one of these agencies.  They can help you to find a plan that will suit your firm's needs and budget, and that will provide the marketing assistance you need.  Whether you need someone to update your Facebook wall from time to time or just want someone to manage your PPC advertising budget, agencies can help you with whatever you're having the most difficulty with.

Bandwagon #5: Locally Based Marketing

Because it's very likely that the vast majority of your law firm's clients come from a 20 mile radius, what good does it do your firm to advertise to many, many people who will never be able to come to your office for a consultation?  Locally based marketing is a great way to save money over national marketing, all while making sure that you're targeting the potential clients who are most likely to convert.

Not all locally based marketing is actually online.  For example, sponsoring local events or teams can seriously improve your reputation in your community.  However, you should make sure that when you do locally based marketing in your community, you're also discussing it in your online marketing materials.  You can also make sure that you're being listed in local directories, including any online listings offered by your local chamber of commerce or bar association.

While locally based marketing with tagging services like Foursquare and Gowalla seemed promising in 2011 and 2012, today it appears that these services have actually become significantly less popular in recent months.  You should consider discontinuing your use of these services unless you're still seeing results from them.  It's possible that in your city or neighborhood, Foursquare could be going strong.  If so, keep up your use of it as long as it's still benefiting your firm.

Bandwagon #6: Relationship Building

Keep in mind that the real purpose of social media platforms isn't for you to use them as a bullhorn.  It's to build longer-term relationships with clients in a way that isn't inconvenient in the same way that continuous phone or email contact can be.  A brief post on Facebook linking to something and giving enough information about whether it will be interesting to click on won't offend anyone, as long as you're not making that kind of post more than once or twice a day and the content will genuinely interest a significant number of your friends or subscribers.

If you're already using Twitter as a tool for your law firm—as a little over a third of firms report they're already doing or plan to do in 2013—you may think that Twitter's primarily a way to get your marketing content out there.  But if you're looking at Twitter exclusively from a content marketing perspective, you're missing out on some of the best features of the service.  In this guide we'll look at seven different ways to use your Twitter account more effectively that are about much more than content marketing.

#1: Use Twitter As a Recruitment Tool

One aspect of Twitter that many law firms ignore is its potential to bring in new recruits.  Many bright law students and young attorneys are using Twitter in their daily lives, and you can use your account to start finding the right people and making your firm's strengths known.

Consider talking about some of your firm's best aspects from a recruitment standpoint—whether your office offers a superb work life balance, the kinds of cases associates can expect to work on—and discuss them in tweets.  You may also want to include links to firm recruiting videos or text on your website or on Youtube.

#2: Scope Out Potential Clients

So you know that someone's coming in for an initial consultation, and you have enough information about them to find their Twitter account.  What's great about Twitter is that you can actually use the service to learn some things about the person you're about to meet with.  From what sports team they're rooting for to what they think of political issues, clients will talk about many things very freely on Twitter that they might not discuss openly with an attorney.

The reason that you should do a little of this kind of friendly reconnaissance is easy—you really don't want to put your foot in your mouth at your first client meeting.  Understanding what your client thinks like can help you anticipate the best strategies to address their legal problems while providing a high degree of client satisfaction.

#3: Get Competitor Intelligence

Another way that you can use Twitter is to get a feel for how your competitors behave.  This can help you identify opportunities.  If there's something that your competition is falling short on, you can pounce and offer the services in the places they're missing. You can also figure out what kinds of hashtags your competitors are using and how they're marketing their services.  If they're doing anything particularly well, you can figure out whether their strategies could be incorporated into your own marketing.

If you're not getting competitor intelligence, you're ignoring half the battle when it comes to marketing.  Understanding your firm's own unique selling proposition will help you to get across your message, and the first step to knowing what makes you unique is seeing the public face of the people you're competing most directly with.

#4: Show Off Your Good Press

You should be doing more than just online marketing if you're in charge of publicity for your firm.  It's important to send out not just generic press releases, but press releases that give a good narrative “hook” to journalists.  Doing a little of a reporter's job for them—finding an angle for a story—is important in a world where print journalists are working on increasingly tight deadlines for lower pay.

When your press releases start resulting in stories in local publications, make sure that your Twitter readers know it.  It's not considered undue bragging to talk about your good press.  Many people on Twitter will post their own media mentions, and ignoring these on your firm's Twitter profile is a mistake.

#5: Watch For People Talking About You

You should also consider making sure that you're monitoring any hashtags that could pertain to your firm, as well as several search terms for your firm's name and the names of the attorneys at your firm.  If someone is making a complaint about your law firm, it's much better to find out quickly so you can react before any concerns go viral, which can deeply hurt your firm's reputation.

Sometimes, handling a complaint gracefully can lead to virality all its own—responsiveness to clients can get people using your firm's name in positive discussions online.  Even if it doesn't, swift and authentic client-focused responses will usually stop any negative publicity in its tracks.

#6: Consider Vine Videos

One of the newest features people are using on Twitter is the Vine service.  Vine allows people to upload videos to the internet, with one small catch.  Much like Twitter restricts the characters in a tweet, Vine videos restrict how long the video clip can be—to just six seconds.

What can you say in six seconds?  That depends entirely on you and your firm.  Consider having a firmwide contest to see who can make the best Vine video with their smartphone.  Since the videos are just six seconds long, they're not beyond anybody's ability to create.  This can be a funny and inclusive way to get people at your firm interested in the firm's marketing online.

#7: Understand Twitter Jargon and Notation

If you want to get the most out of your Twitter account, you'll need to communicate well with other users of the website.  Part of that will mean that you need to study up on your Twitter jargon.  Whether you don't know the difference between a trending hashtag and a trendy handbag or you've just used the service personally before, it's a good idea to read up on some Twitter 101 for businesses before you start trying to make a lot of tweets of your own.

If you don't know how to use hashtags, hat-tips, re-tweets, and other similar jargon, you won't be able to interact with Twitter users as someone who really cares about their community norms.  It's important to really try to be a part of any online social community you belong to, and Twitter is no exception.

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.

Search engine link popularity is now the #1 factor that matters when it comes to where your link appears in the rankings.  If you're not actively working to boost your SEO link popularity, you're going to fall further and further behind your more prepared competitors in 2013 and beyond.  In this guide, we're going to look at some of the hottest search engine link popularity topics of 2012 and examine how they can affect law firms.  Sit back and take some notes, because these tips will help you to get your website onto the top page, where the traffic flows freely.

Is Your Law Firm Prepared for 2013?

It's not exactly a secret that most lawyers hate marketing.  Search engine link popularity just isn't a very exciting topic to most legal professionals, which probably explains why so many lawyers are ignoring it.

Today, though, it's like everybody's living in the future—over 80 percent of people look for lawyers online before deciding on who will represent them, and over 90 percent of those people aren't looking past the first page of their search results.  That means that in order to get clients, you're going to need to put yourself on the first page for at least some search strings that people actually use.  

Google makes most of its rankings decisions based on your inbound links—both how many of them there are, and how authoritative each link is based on the linking website's PageRank.  If you're going to boost your SEO link popularity today, you'll need to not only focus on building large numbers of links but also on checking the quality of every link you get.

Use Caution When Boosting SEO Link Popularity

There is such a thing as trying too hard to boost your search engine link popularity.  If you spam the entire internet with link after link to your website, you might think that the boost to your SEO link popularity would automatically lead to a dramatic increase in your search ranks.  Not so—in fact, Google has several ways to detect when someone is gaming the system.

One of the easiest mistakes to make is building your link presence too fast.  No real website builds its search engine link popularity overnight.  Gradual, slow changes to your SEO link popularity will look more natural and will lead to a slow but steady positive change to where your website appears in search results.

The Difference Between Indexed and Non-Indexed Links

Not all links are created equal.  Not only are some links poorer quality than others for search engine link popularity purposes, but some links actually don't make any difference at all.  Why?  Because Google's “spiders” (the programs used to find new web pages and index their content) aren't able to find them.  If your inbound links can't be found by Google, there's no way for their link juice to add to your website's level of authority.

The best way to ensure that your links will be indexed and affect your SEO link popularity is to put them on websites with easy to navigate interfaces and site maps.  You may also want to actually build links to your links in order to increase your search engine link popularity—this is called nested or tiered link building.

Worry About Clients First, Search Engines Second

With all the focus in the search engine marketing world today, some marketers make the mistake of putting the machines first.  It's worth keeping in mind that the best way to build your SEO link popularity is still to get natural links from people interested in your content.  If you build for people first, and think of search engine link popularity as a nice bonus, you'll do much better than if you make barely readable pages full of content that an audience wouldn't care about but a search engine would.

Methods of Boosting Your SEO Link Popularity Naturally

Search engine link popularity isn't necessarily hard to build naturally, as long as you're good at creating content and can do so consistently.  Start joining and participating in social networking websites, and you'll see your SEO link popularity start to build up overnight.  It's not because you've done anything “black hat,” but because you've actually provided a way for people to find information they're looking for.

You can also improve search results and your search engine link popularity by listing yourself in a large number of directories, both for websites generally and for lawyers specifically.  Attorneys who aren't listed in these directories will have substantially lower SEO link popularity, and most directories are either free to participate in or cost only a nominal fee.

What Changes Will Happen in 2013?

Google tends not to talk about search engine algorithm changes until they come out, so it's difficult to speculate on exactly how SEO link popularity will change.  However, we can make some educated guesses based on how Google has dealt with search engine link popularity issues up until now.

So far in 2012, Google has been making big changes to their search algorithm to prevent people from gaining SEO link popularity through automated or “black hat” techniques that involve spam.  However, spam results are still very noticeable, especially when making searches for very competitive terms.  We can expect for Google to address this and tweak the way they correlate search engine link popularity with rankings next year.  So far, the trend has been toward penalizing automated SEO link popularity building, so you should start phasing out the use of automation programs, even if they're still working for now.

Differentiating Yourself From The Competition

The best way to make sure that your search engine link popularity continues to climb is having an effective brand identity and promoting that brand identity across the web.  If you just seem like another lawyer, without a lot to differentiate yourself from the competition, don't be surprised if your results are tepid.  Don't just do what everyone else is doing—if you want to be on page one, you need to build your search engine link popularity organically and contextually.

Running a free link popularity check tool isn't difficult, but most law firms aren't using a link popularity checker yet.  Why not?  It may be that many lawyers haven't yet really grasped how important link popularity is for their websites—so they don't even know that a link popularity check could be useful.  If you're not sure whether a link popularity check would be beneficial for your firm, this guide can help steer you in the right direction.  Here are seven different ways that a free link popularity check can make your firm's website easier to find for potential clients.

#1: Learn What You're Doing Right

When you run a link popularity check for the first time, you may be surprised by how many links you have.  It's very likely that the link popularity checker will reveal not just links that you've deliberately built for your firm, but also many other links that other people have made with or without telling you.  If you haven't run a free link popularity check in some time, or have never run one before, you're going to find out which of your pages tend to get the most links and which get the fewest.

By finding out what other people are linking to with a link popularity checker, you'll be able to understand which topics are most interesting to your viewers and which don't get as much traffic.  You may not have known that a particular niche was making so many waves for your firm online—this kind of understanding is one of the biggest advantages of running a link popularity check.

#2: Investigating the Competition

Knowing what your firm is doing right is only part of the battle.  The reality is, you've got competitors, and some of them may be doing a link popularity check right now—on both their website and your own.  Once you've already run a link popularity checker on your own website, do a free link popularity check on your competition's site as well.

The results from running a link popularity check on your competitor can be a veritable gold mine of information.  In many cases, you will find through your link popularity checker that they're listed on directory websites or other types of sites that you haven't yet built inbound links from.  You can get your links on the same sites, then re-run a free link popularity check on your own website to make sure they're showing up.

#3: Finding Different Websites For Links

When you use a link popularity check, you can find brand new websites to start posting on.  Maybe you'd never even heard of reddit.com, but now you find out through the link popularity checker that the social bookmarking website already includes three different inbound links for your blog.  Because of your free link popularity check, you can now start using websites where it's clear you or your competitors have had success.

#4: Learning Who's Following You

Having a great network of people is one of the best ways to build inbound links.  By using a link popularity checker, you can find out whether there are a few people or websites that are linking to you repeatedly and seem to be following you.  By identifying these people with your free link popularity check, you can start actually interacting with them and following them as well.

When you use your link popularity check in this way, you're actually building a small web community all of your own.  Make sure that when you reach out to these followers after running your link popularity checker, you don't just seek them out as a source of better links.  Treat them as people deserving of respect and consideration, and you'll have much better results and can possibly make a lifelong career networking connection because of your link popularity checker.

#5: Checking Reciprocal Links

If you've asked somebody for a link exchange, you may have used a link popularity check at the beginning of your arrangement to make sure they put up the link they promised.  But have you checked with a link popularity checker since then?  If not, running a free link popularity check can give you peace of mind and help you see whether anyone has broken their agreement.

If you run a link popularity check and find that someone is no longer running the link that they said they would be, you can talk to the webmaster and ask them to reinsert the link on their website.  If they refuse, you can take down the reciprocal link from your site.

#6: Making Sure Your Links Are Up To Date

When you redesign your website it's imperative to run a free link popularity check as soon as you can.  If you don't run a link popularity check periodically after a site revision, it's possible that your inbound links will direct to pages that you no longer maintain or update.  This means that people trying to follow these links won't get what they're coming for, and they probably won't search all over your site to find it.

When your free link popularity check reveals that some links are going to outdated pages, you have two options.  You can either alert the webmaster of the site where the link is hosted, so that he or she can change the link based on your link popularity checker results, or you can include a new redirect page on your website so that people don't get lost.

#7: Learning Where You Need Expansion

Your link popularity check can show you not only where you've already got links, but also where you haven't got them.  If a free link popularity check reveals, for instance, that you have few or no links from social networking sites, you may want to start pursuing a social networking strategy.  If the link popularity check reveals that you're not yet taking advantage of any type of commonly used link, you should definitely at least consider adding those links to your site.

A majority of marketers today rank link building as being a difficult or very difficult search engine optimization task.  How can your law firm improve link popularity numbers without running into problems with Google?  How can you increase link popularity in a way that will make sure that you're getting closer to the front page of search results every day?  Here we'll learn 8 ways to improve link popularity that work without “black hat” techniques.

#1: Improve Link Popularity With Quality, Not Quantity

If you learned how to increase link popularity in the early part of the 21st century and haven't brushed up since, you may need to start relearning some things.  Today, quality matters much more than just how many links you have.  If you want to improve link popularity for your website, you'll need to focus on getting links from websites with high amounts of traffic and high levels of authority.

Google will increase link popularity for a website more when it receives links from pages with a high Google PageRank.  This is because these websites are viewed as being more likely to be authoritative.  Similarly, because they are perceived as more difficult to get, inbound links coming from .edu top level domains will improve link popularity more than a similar link coming from a .com address with equivalent PageRank.

#2: Increase Link Popularity By Monitoring the Competition

If you're not sure where your strategy to improve link popularity could use improvement, use your competitors to get your next ideas.  Use a link popularity checker tool to find out what kind of links your competition is building, and then use those results to find your own link sources.  Whenever you find a website that your competitors are using to increase link popularity, you can work to get a link built in that website as well.

Consistent monitoring of your competitors can generate valuable intelligence about their strategies to increase link popularity.  Don't be too beholden to their results: remember that you should also strive to improve link popularity in ways that your competition hasn't yet figured out, so that you can more easily defeat them in the search rankings.

#3: Improve Link Popularity Organically and Contextually

Google has recently started paying more attention to whether a website is working to really improve the quality of its results or just the quantity.  Because of new, stricter scrutiny that Google is applying to websites' inbound links, you should try to make sure that many of your links are contextually based.  When you improve link popularity with contextual links, each of your links will grant you more link juice than if they had come from a website with very little in common with yours.

The best way, bar none, to increase link popularity is to have other people post your content and provide inbound links organically.  This means that people are posting links to your website without being asked or prompted to.  However, it can be difficult to improve link popularity in this way.  If you can't, try to at least make it look like your links have been naturally built rather than artificially.

#4: Increase Link Popularity Slowly For Best Results

A sudden spike in the number of links to your website won't lead to a meteoric rise and thousands of new hits.  Instead, it's likely to set you back, because Google will penalize websites that are seen to improve link popularity too quickly.  If you're in violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines, it may not happen today or tomorrow but you will be found out—and it can be absolutely devastating to search rankings when you are.

Start with three or four links per day at most when you start to improve link popularity.  If you increase link popularity more rapidly in a month or two, this won't look nearly as suspicious as if your link building had happened all at once.

#5: Monitor Your Google PageRank To Check Your Progress

You should consistently check your PageRank to see if your efforts to improve link popularity have translated into a direct result for your website.  If you're seeing your PageRank number slowly increase, you're probably in very good shape for the future.  Keep in mind that because PageRank is a logarithmic scale, even if you are an amazing web marketer, it's very unlikely that your website will ever become a site with PageRank 8 or 9.

#6: Use Analytics to Increase Link Popularity Efficiently

If you're just shotgunning your approaches, you may not know which method for improving link popularity is actually working best.  You should instead try a single method to increase link popularity at a time, and see how it works using analytics tools.  If you find that a particular method is ineffective, you can improve link popularity using a different method and then use analytics again for a side by side comparison.

#7: Improve Link Popularity With One Way Links

If you're using too many links that are reciprocal (that is to say, two way between sites), Google will assume that you have just been trading links.  It's fine to have some casual reciprocity, just don't make it the entire focus of your campaign to increase link popularity.  It's easy enough to build one way links today that you shouldn't have any trouble finding sources.  Reciprocal linking should only account for a small percentage of your overall links.

If you're not able to get enough one way links using conventional means, you may consider using an automated one way linking service.  However, this is usually a bad way to increase link popularity.  When you improve link popularity with one of these services, you're automating the link building process in a way that Google disapproves of.  If you're caught, you can expect to face stiff penalties in the rankings or even see your website de-listed from Google searches—the search engine optimization equivalent of the death penalty.

2012 has made significant changes to how link popularity is tracked and measured by Google.  As link popularity has become important, more firms than ever want to know how to search link popularity.  In this guide, we'll look at some of the reasons that law firms find it in their best interest to perform a link popularity search.  We'll also find out how to search link popularity effectively, and why it isn't always your website that you should be searching for.

Why Should We Perform a Link Popularity Search?

No matter what you've done to build your links, it's a good thing to know how to search link popularity.  Understanding searching techniques will make it much easier for you to monitor and track your reputation online.  By doing a link popularity search, you'll learn what kind of websites are linking to you and where you might be able to create profitable advertisements.  You'll also find out what kind of linking is most effective in bringing clients to your website.

When you thoroughly understand what kind of links you're getting, you can begin to develop a comprehensive plan for expanding your link presence.  Identifying existing strengths and weaknesses can make it easier to develop a more well rounded approach to link building.  This versatile approach is often neglected by online marketers desperate to cut corners instead of providing the very best advice and service.

How to Search Link Popularity: Getting Started

Before you actually start to learn how to search link popularity, it's a good idea to have your goals in mind first.  What kind of results do you want from your link popularity search?  Are you learning how to search link popularity so that you can compete more easily with a rival firm?  Will a link popularity search be used by your firm to figure out where to post your links next?  Understanding what you want will help you make better decisions about what tools to download and how to use them.

How to Search Link Popularity: Free Web Tools

The most common way for people to search link popularity today is by using websites that have free online tools.  These free online tools are a good way to keep people coming to websites, so nearly every search engine optimization guru has his or her own link popularity calculator for people who want to know how to search link popularity.

These tools change locations online constantly, and you may want to check more than one of these tools before you decide that you have a hard and fast number for your law firm's link popularity.  Doing a double or triple check with multiple tools is always a good idea, because disagreement among the results may be an indicator that the websites you're using for your link popularity search aren't working as well as you had hoped.

How to Search Link Popularity: Your Website

The first website that you should do a link popularity search on is, of course, your own.  Start by running a link popularity search that gives you your results for Google popularity.  Different tools will give you different information.  For example, if you learn how to search link popularity using seoprofiler.com, you'll find out how many of the pages of your website are in Google's Top 50 search results, as well as seeing a list of websites in direct competition with yours.

Other tools can just list a large number of backlinks in whatever search engine you prefer.  Don't hesitate to do a link popularity search that involves several different search engines—you may find that you have much better search rankings on one than another, and exploring why can help you create your next strategy for improving your link presence.

How to Search Link Popularity: Competitor Websites

Once you've looked at some link popularity search reports for your website, it's time to turn your attention elsewhere.  Where are your competitors building their links?  Are they getting inbound links by getting directory entries, or by having social media link to their site regularly?  Analyzing where your competitors' links come from can give you fantastic ideas for helping out your own website.

After you learn how to search link popularity, you can do it for any website at all.  If there's a legal website that you're in awe of when it comes to search engine optimization, a link popularity search can take away the mystery and make it easier to imitate that site.

Tracking Your Link Popularity Search Results

It's great to know how to search link popularity and run a search, but just one search is of limited use.  You'll want to use consistent tracking of link popularity in order to make sure that you're seeing whenever a new inbound link appears for your website.

At least once every week or so, you should be looking at a link popularity search.  Tracking changes over time to these results can be helpful in identifying patterns of behavior.

What an Ideal Link Popularity Search Will Show

Google monitors link popularity because some patterns indicate that the popularity has been built artificially.  If your link popularity search reveals that almost all of your links come from the same few IP addresses, you are probably skating on very thin ice with Google and should watch out—your website could be sandboxed at any second.

What you want to do when you learn how to search link popularity is to generate a real variety of links.  You should make sure that you're cultivating links of several different types on many different websites.  Your link popularity search should indicate that you're using varied anchor text and that you don't use the same content over and over for all of your inbound links.

Maintaining link variety is the only way to ensure that Google doesn't identify your website as being too optimized.  What's more, when you have a wide variety of links, you'll be substantially more invulnerable to new spam detection techniques.

Contextual Link Building: A Link Building Solution For Law Firms

As linking strategies have changed and become more complex, contextual link building has become one of the biggest trends of 2012.  Law firms, because their business is so context-dependent, are ideal users of contextual link building strategies.  Whether you want advice on finding a great contextual link building service or doing it yourself, keep reading this guide to find out exactly how to make your contextual linking dreams become a reality.

What is Contextual Link Building?

Traditional link building just refers to the process of getting other websites to link to yours.  Search engines, when trying to determine what website is the best source for a particular search string, consider these “backlinks” to be one of the biggest indicators of quality.  This means that if no one (or almost no one) is linking your website, you probably won't appear in the first few pages of search results—no matter how carefully you've search engine optimized your website's actual content.

Contextual link building is a particular form of link building that involves only building links to websites that share many similarities with your own site.  Why does this kind of link building work?  There are several reasons.  First of all, in order to combat the rise of backlink spam, many search engines now take context into consideration when deciding which links are “worth” more to the ranking algorithms.

Second, contextual link building is more likely to be seen as relevant by users.  This means that you're more likely to have your links shared by other people online.  Typically, a contextual link building service will advise having two or three links in a 250 to 500 word post, all of which link to keywords you're attempting to optimize.

Can My Firm Do Contextual Link Building On Its Own?

It's very possible to do this type of link building without hiring a contextual link building service.  You can build contextual links on many different types of websites.  Let's take reddit.com, which has been soaring in popularity throughout 2012 and looks to do the same in 2013, as an example.  Reddit allows anyone to post links to content, and users of the website can vote a link up if they decide it is high-quality, and down if it is low quality.  A contextual link building service may or may not post on websites like Reddit, but you can.

When you post to a website like Reddit or any other “Web 2.0” site as part of a contextual link building effort, you'll want to decide what your goals are ahead of time.  Try making the kind of post advised by a typical contextual link building service: 250-500 words (trying to keep on the shorter end—people prefer shorter, more concise content!), with two or three links to your website.

Is a Contextual Link Building Service Worth It?

If you're having trouble finding places to do your contextual link building, you may want to hire a service to handle it for you.  A contextual link building service will find the best websites to put your content on—websites that already have a similar context to your own site and will give you the best quality backlinks possible.

There are a few reasons that you may want to avoid doing contextual link building on your own.  If you don't have much SEO experience to begin with, it's probably true that even a mediocre contextual link building service will do a better job than you will—there's simply too much to learn for an amateur to become good at link building within days or weeks.

Contextual link building can also be tough because it involves knowing exactly the right kinds of websites and keeping up with the most up to date SEO trends.  Hiring a contextual link building service means that you'll never need to worry about reading search engine marketing blogs to keep up—they'll do it for you.

While every contextual link building service is different, in terms of both experience and price, ideally you shouldn't choose a service based on price points alone.  A cheap service may give you great results, or it might be using outdated contextual link building methods.  Ask to see not only case studies, but recent case studies from your contextual link building service so that you can be sure that your service is doing the kinds of link building you want.

What is Tiered Contextual Link Building?

While traditional contextual link building works fairly well to improve search results, there are ways to improve upon it.  For example, tiered link building is substantially more complex, but offers benefits for law firms.  Tiered contextual link building requires not just building a back link to your own website, but also building additional backlinks that link to the backlink.

Why does this work?  Because Google and other search engines are much more likely to believe that a contextual link occurred naturally when other websites are linking to it.  When not only your content, but your links and tiered backlinks are high quality, you'll shoot to the top of search engine rankings.

Having a two-tiered contextual link building effort is great, but if you hire an experienced enough contextual link building service they may actually advise you to do three or even four tiered link building.  This may seem like overkill, but some services have had great luck with this type of multi-tiered system.

Why Not Other Link Building Methods?

Because contextual link building can seem like such a challenge, you may be asking if there's a better way.  The answer—perhaps unfortunately for some law firms—is no.  Contextual link building offers unparalleled ability to control the message and keywords that your backlinks are using.  If it's done right, it will look completely natural, and like part of traditional web marketing efforts rather than straight-up search engine optimization. 

Other link building methods are often very obvious and are much easier for search engines not only to track, but also to shut down if too many websites begin using them.  Contextual link building, on the other hand, is here to stay—it's simply too hard to detect when it's done well.

How to Build Backlinks That Search Engines Will Notice

Three fifths of marketers believe that building backlinks is “somewhat difficult” or “very difficult.”  Have you had trouble learning how to build backlinks?  This guide can help.  In this guide, you'll learn the biggest principle for building backlinks—a principle that's used by the best search engine marketers and the search engines themselves.  You'll also find out how to build backlinks on a wide variety of different websites, so that you can diversify your web presence and prepare for whatever comes next in internet search trends.

The #1 How to Build Backlinks Principle: No Shortcuts

When people first learn about building backlinks, they start asking, well, how hard can it be?  After all, there are many guides online that show you how to build backlinks, and many of these guides suggest using article marketing services or press release websites that can give you dozens of backlinks within an hour or two.  Why not just use those?

It's true, those methods are easy.  What you may not know is that search engines have started to defend against websites using them.  Because so many websites trying to use these services were essentially spam sites, Google and other search engines have cracked down on websites that are building backlinks exclusively through low-quality websites like press release and article spinning sites.

Why the crackdown?  Because fundamentally, Google doesn't want you to know how to build backlinks easily.  In fact, Google would prefer that websites didn't focus on building backlinks at all as a search engine optimization strategy, and confined themselves only to organic backlinks generated because someone enjoys your content. 

As search engines have become more sophisticated, they've gotten better at identifying people who are using those old “how to build backlinks” guides.  Use their advice on building backlinks and you could find your website's ranking dropping rapidly.  There are no good shortcuts for how to build backlinks—nothing that will let you build hundreds or thousands of links in a day.  There are, however, ways to start building backlinks slowly and steadily that can make your website the top result in searches.

How to Build Backlinks: What Search Engines Like

Search engines are just computer programming, and search engine optimization marketers around the world work diligently to find out exactly what kind of backlink efforts work best with that programming.  They have found several common features of the types of backlink building that search engines seem to prefer.

Search engines tend to give better rankings to people who work on building backlinks that are contextual, rather than random.  If your link pattern is very random, search engines are likely to perceive this as spam.  Building backlinks to websites that are closely related to your site and are considered popular, high-quality websites will be much better.

You should make sure not to use the same keyword phrase every time for your links.  Search engines love variety—because variety is more common when building backlinks organically.  Try to vary your keywords, link text, and even just the types of websites that you're using.  Don't just use Facebook posts or blog comments, in other words—try something new!

How to Build Backlinks: What Search Engines Hate

In the process of building backlinks that work, many search engine marketers have also discovered strategies that do not work.  In some cases, these strategies rarely or never worked, while in others, they worked for a time until new algorithm updates accounted for people trying to game the system.

In brief, Google—and other search engines—don't like when people bring the quality of web results down by trying to improve their own search rankings.  This means that if you're spamming blogs, you're not building backlinks that are likely to be considered high quality by Google, Bing, or anyone else.  If you're using the same keywords over and over, or your copy is barely readable because the keywords are inserted so awkwardly, you've taken the wrong advice about how to build backlinks.

Just about any method that search engine marketers have developed to generate huge numbers of backlinks quickly will fail today.  Why?  Even if you find a new method for building backlinks fast, the sheer speed of it is likely to raise red flags about your content.  Google's algorithms know that websites don't engage in building backlinks of any reasonable quality at a rate of thousands a day.  You should ramp up your backlinking slowly, so that it's much harder to detect the artificial nature of your link building efforts.

This means that some of the most popular tools of search engine marketers in years past no longer work in 2012 and 2013.  Instead of using article spinning services that put the same content (or very similar versions of content, often edited by a computer program) into many different websites, today's search engine marketers are having to work harder for a smaller number of quality backlinks.

Building Backlinks Using High Quality Websites

If you want to get the most bang for your buck when building backlinks, you'll need to have your links on high quality websites.  One of the best things that you can do for yourself when starting to learn how to build backlinks is to learn what kinds of websites are considered the most trusted and highest quality—not only in general, but in your specific field of law.  Learning the big players in your specific field will help you target guest blogging opportunities and other chances for contextual link building.

When you build backlinks using these high quality websites, it may take a little more time to get each link in place.  However, each of them will be considered a high quality backlink that is worth much more than if you had inserted dozens of non-contextual backlinks on a wide variety of low-quality sites.  In other words, it only seems to take more time—you'll still get a better return on investment from link building on high quality sites.

7 Ways a Backlink Building Service Can Help Lawyers

New changes to Google's search ranking algorithms called Penguin have impacted about 65 percent of marketers worldwide.  In the post-Penguin era, quality backlink building services are among the best ways to improve where your law firm appears in search engine results.  A professional backlink building service can help your website become more visible in search rankings in several different ways—keep reading this guide to find out some of those ways, and how each one can change the way search engines see your law firm's website.

Finding New Places to Build Backlinks

Many of the online tools that used to be very effective in improving search rankings are no longer effective after Google's recent algorithm changes.  That's because those changes affect the listing status of some websites that were commonly used by backlink building services.  Instead of considering these websites' backlinks equal to those from other websites, Google now considers them to be worth very little or nothing.  In some cases, if a backlink building service has clearly abused these websites to improve search rankings, Google will de-list the website completely.

If your favorite backlink websites have been de-listed, it's time to talk to backlink building services.  Today, just about any backlink building service that is still in business has had to adapt to these changes.  Backlink building services will be able to identify places where your links will be quality content, rather than spam.

Building Backlinks with Directory Entries

It surprises some people that directory entries are still considered a valid way to build backlinks, but maybe it shouldn't.  After all, as long as a directory is high quality, directories serve to organize information in a very user-friendly way. 

Creating directory entries can be repetitive work that isn't very creative.  Backlink building services can take this boring chore off your hands, freeing you up to create new marketing content or otherwise attend to your law firm's other business needs.

Some of the directories that your backlink building service uses may be big, worldwide directories like DMOZ or Yahoo.  Smart backlink building services will also seek out local directories and specialized directories full of attorneys and law firms just like yours.  Local search results are getting bigger and bigger, and your backlink building service can take advantage of local by making sure that you're listed in all the right places.

Building Backlinks with Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking websites, like reddit.com and digg.com, have become increasingly popular over the last several years.  Even Barack Obama has become a user of Reddit, which is a website where any user can post a link and other users “upvote” or “downvote” it to decide on its level of popularity compared to other links on the site. 

Backlink building services can use Reddit and other similar websites to your advantage.  Because the content on these websites is user-generated, your backlink building service can start by posting a link to some of your most interesting content with a relevant headline.  If you're looking into backlink building services that offer this kind of linking, make sure that you take a look at the kinds of links they're offering.  Your backlink building service should be able to make links that fit in with the quality guidelines of the website and generate comments and discussion.

Creating Multi-Tiered Backlinks

Your backlink building service can increase the perceived quality of their backlinks even further by tiering them.  Tiering essentially means having not just backlinks, but backlinks that link to your backlinks.  That would be considered a two-tiered backlink—some backlink building services create three or even four tier backlinks for their clients.

This is one of the newest techniques for generating high backlink quality ratings, so you may have to do some searching to find a backlink building service that offers it.  Some backlink building services still work exclusively with single-tier backlinks and get good results, but the time is coming when that may just not be enough to compete with other law firms.

Guest Posting on Relevant Blogs

Backlink building services can also post your content on blogs by asking for guest blogging opportunities.  If this is a method that you want to use extensively, you should search for a backlink building service with a track record of getting great guest post leads.

If the backlink building services you're using don't have extensive knowledge of the legal field you specialize in, it may be a good idea for you to write the guest post content yourself.  However, your link building service may offer copywriting services as well, either as part of your package or for an extra fee.  Ask to see samples of copywriting from any link building services you are considering—you don't want to pick a service where the copywriters have poor grammar or stilted sentence structure.

Creating Press Releases

Not all press release websites are still considered legitimate by Google.  In fact, many websites which used to run press releases are now considered to be primarily vehicles for spam.  That's why when your backlink building service creates press releases today, they'll need to be careful about where exactly your press releases go.

Ideally, your link building service should avoid any press release websites that accept literally any type of content.  Take a look around the press release websites your service is considering using.  Do they look like they're full of legitimate press releases from companies you've heard of, or does it look like a website full of companies you'd rather not be affiliated with?

Generating Blog Comments

Not all approaches to link building are based in creating your own posts.  By using blog comments, your backlink building service can join in on the conversation for your law firm.  This means that you'll be able to put a link to your website in comments on legal blogs with high traffic.

Please note that creating legitimate blog comments is a very different method than what some backlink building services offer—blog comment spam.  Your law firm should never be involved in spamming any website for any reason, and should stop using any service that is clearly spamming blogs.