Over 92 percent of internet users in the United States use search engines, according to Pew Internet Research.  That means search engine optimization needs to be an integral part of your internet marketing strategy.  With new algorithm updates from Google called Panda and Penguin, doing an occasional backlink check became more than just a good way to do analysis.  For many websites, it's now absolutely critical to check backlinks if you want to avoid negative consequences.  Keep reading this guide to find out why doing a backlink check is one of the best things you can do to improve your search rankings.

#1: Getting Rid of the “Unnatural Links” Warning

If you've already received an email from Google that warns you about a high percentage of what it calls “unnatural links,” you need to do a backlink check as soon as possible.  Every so often, since rolling out its new Penguin update to decrease the prevalence of “over optimization,” Google will check backlinks for your website.  If too many appear to be from dubious sources—for example, low quality article marketing websites—Google will send you this warning and may penalize your search rankings.

When you perform a backlink check on your website, you may see a wide range of links.  In some cases, if that range is too wide, Google may see these backlinks as being artificially created.  If you check backlinks to your website and find that many of the sites linking to you have very little to do with the topics covered by your site, you may want to ask for the links to be removed.

Often, when law firms get the unnatural links warning, it's because they violated Google's Webmaster Guidelines by paying for backlinks.  In order to avoid this kind of situation, it's very important not only to check backlinks, but also to make sure you're following those guidelines in the future.  Don't purchase huge numbers of backlinks for cut-rate prices—you'll get what you pay for, in the form of low-quality links that Google ignores or worse.

#2: Getting Rid of Bad Backlinks

Even if you have never purchased a backlink in your life, it's still possible that your website has bad backlinks that could look like paid for or irrelevant linking.  Performing a backlink check shows you where those links are and what percentage of your total links they constitute.

While you check backlinks, you may discover that you have a huge number of links to websites you didn't even know were linking you.  Some backlink check tools will help you to assess whether the links you've gotten are high or low quality, and whether you should ask the webmaster who controls those backlinks to remove them.

Keep in mind that there's no reason to be afraid of Penguin if your backlink check reveals just a few bad backlinks out of many good links.  Google's algorithm already takes into account the fact that just about any website could have some bad links.  It's only if you check backlinks and a significant percentage of your links are already poor quality that you need to worry.

#3: Understanding Your Reach

Sometimes, law firms don't even understand exactly where their reach extends to.  With a backlink check, you can see who's linking your website and how far your reach really goes.  You may find when you check backlinks that you are being linked by many websites with a particular focus, or that something you wrote generated a huge number of backlinks in a short time—even on high prestige websites.

Once you've looked at your reach, it's much easier to figure out where you need to advertise and what kind of advertisements might work best.  This is a great way to use your backlink check to inform other parts of your marketing and advertising strategy.

#4: Creating New Backlink Opportunities

If you notice during your backlink check that you've had a great deal of success getting backlinks from  a particular type of website or blog, that's great news.  It means that after you check backlinks, you may want to try talking to the owners of other websites or blogs that have similar content.  This can help you to generate new, high quality, contextual backlinks.

For example, let's say that you notice several different articles on your website (for a law firm of divorce attorneys usually representing wives) being re-linked on many different domestic violence information websites mentioning restraining orders, temporary restraining orders, and how to leave an abusive situation.  This lets you know that you may want to specifically seek out other sites like this, for guest posts or new backlinks.

#5: Checking Your Anchor Text

One of the other things that you may want to look for when you check backlinks is how similar the anchor text is for your various links.  When Google sees a huge number of links that all have identical anchor text, this is considered to usually be a sign that someone is engaging in link buying or other shady link building practices.

Some backlink check tools allow you to spot when too many links have the same anchor text, while with others you'll have to check this manually.  If you see a lot of identical text when you check backlinks, ask webmasters to change the link text on some of these websites.

How To Get Bad Links Removed

If your backlink check gives you a pile of bad links to have removed, you're going to have to contact a lot of different webmasters.  Often, webmasters will take down a link that is negatively impacting your search engine performance without another word.  However, some will outright refuse, won't acknowledge your message, or will demand payment.

If any of these things happen after you check backlinks, don't panic.  Instead, document your correspondence including dates and times of emails and send it to Google.  Google can actually review your documentation and may allow your website's rank to increase again even with a large number of bad links if this happens.

Backlinks are one of the best ways to differentiate yourself from your competition when it comes to search engine optimization.  According to the most recent American Bar Association survey, there are over 1.2 million licensed attorneys in the United States.  If you don't know what a backlink is or how to get backlinks, keep reading!  You'll find seven rules that will help you become a backlinks pro in no time at all.

Backlink Rule #1: Backlinks are Different Today

Until 2012, the answer to how to get backlinks was very easy: you bought them, and you could buy them very cheaply.  Many services existed that would charge you on a per backlink basis, and these services often charged extremely low rates even for thousands (or tens of thousands) of backlinks.

Today, many web marketing professionals are wishing they never bought those links.  That's because new changes to Google have changed how to get backlinks that work.  If you have paid-for backlinks or are obviously using the same text on many websites, Google will now consider your website “over optimized” and drop its rankings accordingly.  Every backlink that those web marketing professionals paid for, they're now having to ask to be removed—a time consuming and tedious process that no one wants to have to do.

Instead, today's marketers want to focus on getting smaller numbers of better backlinks.  By making sure every backlink you build is high quality, you'll be able to make your search engine optimization better without taking any unnecessary risks, like the risk of being seen as a spammer.

Backlink Rule #2: Variation is Key

Okay, so you learned how to get backlinks a few years ago, and you've now got a mess on your hands.  All that identical anchor text that used to raise your search engine result pages (SERPs) is now detected as possible over optimization by Google Penguin.  In order to avoid this problem, you need to learn how to get backlinks that have more variation.

Try mixing up your anchor text a little bit.  Using the exact same backlink phrases over and over will make search engines see your backlinks as fake or low quality.  Brainstorm some variations of your keywords and you'll have an easier time knowing how to get backlinks that won't get you blacklisted.

Backlink Rule #3: Tough Links are Better

While shortcuts like link buying used to predominate the backlink market, today, people know that you're more likely to have a high ranking website if you get the backlinks that are harder to get.  Learning how to get backlinks from high quality websites is a little trickier than just buying links by the thousand, but you'll end up with much better results as well.

For example, let's say that you work very hard on press releases about some recent cases that your firm has taken on and won.  These press releases, if they're circulated to the right media sources, could lead to a major news network like CNN talking about the cases or asking you for a quote.  Backlinks from reputable media sources like this will be much better for your website than a backlink from a random blog that often has guest bloggers.

This isn't to say that you should turn down any linking opportunity that's easy.  It just means that effort is worth it, and that Google has decided to reward the businesses who are putting the most effort, rather than the most money, into their backlinking efforts.

Backlink Rule #4: Work Your Connections

There's nothing wrong with leveraging your social networking connections for some backlinks.  This is one of the most tried and true methods for how to get backlinks, especially for a new website that hasn't yet built up much of an online reputation or presence of any kind.  

If you're using social media, make sure that you're posting regularly about the new website.  You should have user friendly content that will draw people in and make them want to share your message without any prompting from you.  If you're successful in creating this kind of content, you may not need much more advice about how to get backlinks—the backlinks will just come to you from your website visitors after a while.

Backlink Rule #5: Never Spam

The internet can sometimes seem like a vast and wild place where it's difficult to find the right answer to a question.  Don't make it worse by putting up misleading backlinks or otherwise creating spam.  Anyone who learned how to get backlinks in the earlier days of the web may have learned some bad techniques that led to spam creation.  However, if you're learning now, there's no excuse—any guide that encourages spam-like techniques can be safely disregarded in the post-Penguin era.

Backlink Rule #6: If It Looks Too Good To Be True…

Beware of any services that say they know how to get backlinks for much cheaper than anywhere else.  It's possible that they're still using the same kinds of methods that are getting webmasters in trouble today.  These services are often not particularly ethical, and will try to obtain backlinks online wherever they can, regardless of whether the websites linking you have any relevant connection to your business.

Check the fine print, and ask to see other websites that the service has search engine optimized.  If they'll only let you access case studies that came from before the Penguin update, you should find a new provider of backlink building services.

Backlink Rule #7: Audit Your Backlinks

Periodically, it's a good idea to check where your backlinks are coming from and whether they are of good quality.  If you see a backlink that appears to be from a spam website or other type of negative SEO content, it's best to ask promptly for its removal so that you don't face consequences from Google or other search engines.

A backlink audit can be made much easier using free web tools.  Google provides a number of these tools for free to users, as do a number of other websites, each offering different functions to help you decide which of your backlinks should stay and which should go.

Every website inbound link that Google indexes contributes to where your website appears in search rankings.  If your law firm, like 2/3 of businesses in the United States, isn't already working to build website inbound links, you need to start thinking about the future.  Website inbound link numbers now account for more than half of your overall search ranking placement, and you don't want to lose out on the huge percentage of legal clients (pegged in some studies as over 80 percent!) who do research online before deciding on which attorney to hire.  Keep reading to find out some easy ways to build website inbound links that work without taking up all of your time.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: The Blogosphere

Many attorneys at small law firms are already using blogs.  Of those attorneys, over half report that they've gotten new client business as a direct result of their blog entries.  What they may not know is that they may have gotten even more new business as an indirect result of those same blog entries.

That's because blogs are great ways to get your website linked by other attorneys and professionals in your community and beyond.  Every website inbound link that you are able to build on another person's blog will help to make your search rankings better, and because most people who use searches don't search beyond the first page of results, those rankings are absolutely crucial to your firm's success.

Comments aren't the only way to get website inbound links in the blogosphere.  You can also get a very high quality website inbound link by talking to a blog owner and arranging a guest post.  To get a guest post, you'll usually have to be able to prove you know your stuff, either with your professional qualifications or a blog of your own.  Guest blogging may prove a more difficult strategy for website inbound link building for brand new attorneys who haven't yet been able to make a name for themselves.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Local Websites

Today, it seems like search engines haven't just gotten more complex—they've gotten smarter.  That means that Google can actually tell whether your website inbound links are coming from websites that are local to you or ones that are from around the world.  It might surprise you to learn that a local website inbound link is actually considered more valuable than those that are from far away.  This is because Google assumes that local links are less likely to be purchased and more likely to be built through traditional networks of contacts.

If you're working to build website inbound links locally, talk to your local bar association and your local chamber of commerce.  Both of these organizations are fairly likely to have some online resources for you to include a new website inbound link on.  You can also talk to your local contacts, especially those with existing blogs or websites, to include you in their link directories.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Directory Websites

If you're in need of a quick and easy way to build a website inbound link that won't require a lot of new content creation, consider posting your profile to a directory.  Not all directories are high quality, and you should generally only use directory pages that have a high PageRank.  If Google believes you are spamming directories, even low quality ones, with your website's address, they'll generally consider this a sign of over optimization and work to penalize your search rankings.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Q&A Sites

Just by answering basic legal questions online, even without giving direct legal advice, you can build a number of high quality website inbound links.  Question and answer websites can be standalone sites, or can be incorporated into another website, like Yahoo Answers or the Answers feature on LinkedIn.

You should use caution when answering questions on these websites, because you don't want your answer to be misinterpreted as specific legal advice.  You don't want to find yourself in any legal trouble over your attempt to get a new website inbound link to help your search rankings.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Media Coverage

As a law firm, any time you have a significant victory you should consider building a website inbound link through press coverage.  You don't need to settle for fake “press release” websites that don't really have any good media contacts.  Instead, build your own media contacts with daily newspapers, weekly community newspapers, community magazines, radio stations, and television stations.  Every time you do an interview or a profile piece for one of these media outlets, you're likely to be able to build a website inbound link.

Because website inbound links from media sources tend to have a fairly high value compared to those coming from low to mid traffic blogs, it's worth investing some real time in getting press coverage.  Besides, the benefits to your SEO aren't the only benefits you get from the press—you'll also be able to convert people directly from the website inbound link.

Sources for Website Inbound Links: Viral Buzz

One of the best ways to generate a fantastic website inbound link presence is to just get noticed by enough people that the links essentially build themselves.  By creating really unique, interesting content on your own website or in the form of an infographic or app, you can get the buzz going.

Of course, it can be harder to create viral buzz than to use some of the other strategies for website inbound link building.  However, viral buzz looks organic because it is organic.  The links that you get from a viral marketing campaign will be natural and high value.  The reason that viral buzz can work so well for attorneys is that not many other law firms are really trying viral content yet.  If you're able to get in on the ground floor and really design content people want to see, you'll be streets ahead of the competition.
 

You can increase inbound link traffic on your website in a huge variety of ways, but Google now has some detection algorithms that can throw off your plans.  Google doesn't particularly like when websites increase inbound links inorganically, and has in the last year penalized over 15 percent of web pages for appearing to be over optimized.  If you want to increase inbound link traffic today, you'll have to be very careful to make the increase appear natural and organic.  If you don't know how to do that yet—keep reading, and you'll find out before this guide is over.

What Are Inbound Links—And Why Do I Need Them?

Any time a website links to your website, it does so in the form of an inbound link.  When someone clicks on the anchor text of the link, they'll arrive at your website and be able to look at your content.  In the early web, it was relatively common for most websites to have few links, except the ones that went to the websites of personal friends or websites that pertained to an interest or related industry.

Today, inbound linking has become big business.  That's because when you increase inbound link numbers, your search engine rankings get better across the board.  Search engines make an assumption that when you increase inbound links, it means that your website has more authoritative and trustworthy content.

If you're working hard to increase inbound link numbers for your website, though, you should know that Google has created some red flags.  If you increase inbound links in the wrong way, these red flags get tripped and your website's rankings go right back down to where they started from.  Knowledge is power—by knowing exactly what kind of inbound links will lead to trouble, you can avoid common pitfalls and keep your rankings rising.

Why You Should Increase Inbound Links Slowly

When a company starts trying to increase inbound link traffic using inorganic techniques, it shows.  One of the first ways that it shows is in a sudden increase in the sheer number of inbound links appearing for a particular website or specific web page.

When this sudden spike happens, search engines red flag your website.  Even if you're in a rush to increase inbound links, you can't do it too quickly or you'll be wasting your effort.  Increase inbound link numbers gradually, preferably in concert with any traffic that you've gained.  The more traffic that your website gets, the faster you can increase inbound links coming to you per day.

Where Your Links Come From Matters

A link coming from Joe Schmo's Discount Legal Blog isn't going to be worth as much as one that comes from Above the Law or The Volokh Conspiracy.  They're all blogs, so what's the difference?  The difference is in a number that Google calls PageRank.  

If you increase inbound link numbers at a good clip, but they're only coming from websites that are low visibility, Google may not take kindly to this.  While it's possible for an organic link building effort to yield these types of results, the more usual reason is that someone has tried “black hat” link building techniques—things that spam other websites and make the internet less usable for most users.

Because of this, Google weights rankings much more highly if you increase inbound link traffic from high PageRank websites.  By increasing inbound links in this way, you'll build better quality links—even if they're more difficult to obtain initially.

Increase Inbound Links With Your Blog

By using your blog in the right ways, you can increase inbound link numbers in a variety of ways.  One of the most obvious ways is in generating publicity for your firm organically.  As long as you're creating great content, even if you're not sharing it all that often, it's likely that your blog entries will be noticed and linked by at least a few other bloggers.

Of course, if you want to increase inbound link traffic even more, you can help the process along.  By talking to other blog owners, you can get put onto their blogrolls, which will give you new inbound links.  You could even get a guest posting gig, which is a great opportunity to increase inbound link traffic.

If you're not using blog comments for real discussions, you should start.  Some of the best ways to increase inbound links involve using blog comments.  As long as you're making relevant comments on other people's blogs, and as long as your link is at least somewhat relevant, a new inbound link usually won't be removed from a comment section.  Don't just spam post to blogs with no moderation.  Google can easily detect this method, and will know you are trying to increase inbound link traffic with black hat techniques.

Increase Inbound Links on Social Bookmarking Sites

Social bookmarking websites, including Digg, StumbleUpon, and Reddit are great ways to build new inbound links and get more attention to your website.  However, while these sites can increase inbound link numbers, it's actually somewhat uncommon for a lawyer to get much new business from them.  This is because you'll have tried to increase inbound links on a website that is being used by people worldwide, rather than just in your community.

This doesn't mean that it's worthless to increase inbound link numbers on social bookmarking websites.  On the contrary, these websites have high PageRank values and can make your rankings soar.  Just don't expect to get direct conversions—you'll see your results coming through in the changes to your SEO results.

Increase Inbound Links with Local Websites

The other strategy you can employ to increase inbound link numbers is to go local.  Instead of using only big, high PageRank, global websites, focusing on sites that matter to your community can be a great move.  First of all, there isn't as much competition for links at these websites.  Second, Google can identify when you're being linked by local sources, and will dramatically increase your rankings in geolocational searches for law firms.

The reputation of website owners often depends on the reputation of their website.  With tens of thousands of new attorneys graduating in 2012 and hundreds of thousands already working, you need to keep your website reputation great to stay competitive.  But how do you maintain a great reputation in website listings?  Keep reading this guide to find out 8 simple rules for protecting the website reputation you've worked so hard to build.

Rule #1: Think Like a Client

Your reputation for website quality depends largely on your ability to give clients what they need, when they need it, in an easy to understand format.  If you want a great website reputation, you can't spend a lot of time with jargon and posturing.  Instead, a reputation for website quality will come from having quality narrative and good information that helps potential clients come to a decision to talk to an attorney for the first time.

Thinking like a client also means that you should avoid risking your reputation of website quality just to get some extra links.  If clients find that your links are posted all over the web like spam, your website reputation will undoubtedly suffer and you may see your search rankings take a plunge.

Rule #2: Skip Out on Shortcuts

It's easy to automate the linking coming in to your website, but how will it impact your website reputation if you do?  The reputation of website quality you're trying to build isn't based on fooling people, it's based on being able to give real, quality information.  Forget trying to use automation to game the system.  Google will find out, and you'll end up wishing that you had tried to secure a reputation for website quality in some other way.

Rule #3: Accept Responsibility

At some time, every website and every business makes a mistake.  The thing that will determine whether your reputation of website quality remains the same or takes a nosedive is how you respond to that initial mistake once you learn about it.  The worst website reputation you can get is as a company that lies and fabricates new data.  Some people give up on any pretense of a reputation for website quality by using “astroturfed” comments and blogs to make it look like their position is stronger than it really is.

Instead of hiding from your mistakes, embrace them as learning opportunities.  If you show that you are sincerely sorry for the mistake, the reputation of website quality you've built will not just stay—it might even improve.  Website reputation tends to be quite high when companies take decisive responsibility for their actions and are honest about the factors that led them into making the initial error.

Rule #4: Know Your Marketing Contractors

Your reputation for website quality can be tanked faster by a bad web marketing contractor than just about anybody.  If even one of the companies you're outsourcing marketing services to decides to use a spammy marketing tactic, you could find that your website is suddenly being penalized and you're in a lot of trouble.

Make sure that any contractor you're using for marketing is reputable and comes with several firm recommendations from other professional organizations.  Law firms simply can't afford to risk their website reputation on an unproven contractor.  To maintain a reputation for website quality, you'll need to get people on your account who are understanding about your need for consistently high quality content and inbound links.

Rule #5: Go With the Flow

If you're trying to maintain your website reputation with a website that is basically doing things in the same way you did them ten years ago, you're barking up the wrong tree.  The web is changing from year to year, and a reputation for website quality is much easier to build when you change along with it.

For example, in 2012 and 2013, the mobile web is really coming into its own.  If you're not watching your website reputation for mobile customers as well as desktop ones, you may be missing out on a big target market that is ready for conversions.  If you're not going with the flow, you could be leaving a lot of money on the table.

Rule #6: Have Good Hosting

One of the fastest ways to lose a reputation for website authority is to have your website start failing to load.  If your hosting provider is inconsistent or has been having too many technical difficulties, it may be time to migrate to a new hosting provider who can give you the service you need.

Google actually bases some of its rankings and quality ratings on the speed at which your website is served to viewers.  Because of this, it's absolutely critical for you to make your speed fast if you want to be on the first page of search results.

Rule #7: Update Your Links

Periodically, in order to make sure your website reputation stays good, you should check the outbound links that lead away from your website and the inbound links that bring people to it.  If any of these links aren't working, you can update them with redirect pages or by changing the URL your outbound link is directing to.

Having outdated or missing links looks very amateur hour to seasoned web users, so be aware that poor linking practices can be one of the easiest ways to give yourself a poor website reputation.

Rule #8: Keep Content Fresh

You won't maintain a great reputation for website quality if your site maintains the same content year after year with no meaningful changes.  A constant flow of fresh content that uses links and sources from across the web will make it much easier for you to build a website reputation with authority.

Consider adding new content to your website at least on a weekly basis—two or three times a week may be an even better target if you're wanting the very best for your website reputation.

You've tried everything you know about SEO, but it's still not working!  What do you do?  If you're like four out of five American law firms, you contact SEO expert services to help you figure out what to do next.  Expert SEO services can get you out of your current search engine optimization rut and think of new ideas that you haven't yet tried.  Keep reading to find out why hiring SEO expert services may be some of the best money you can spend in your marketing budget.

Why You Need Specialized Expert SEO Services

When you start looking for SEO expert services, you may be very surprised at how many of them have proliferated on the web.  Today, expert SEO services are a multimillion dollar industry with professionals working on search engine optimization around the world.  With so many companies competing for your business, it's important to pick one that specializes in helping attorneys with SEO.

Sure, it's possible that expert SEO services that don't really understand the business model of law firms could lead to positive SEO results. It's also possible that they could fail miserably.  You don't want to risk your firm on untried SEO expert services.  Instead, choose someone who can already show you multiple case studies from law firms of a similar size to yours.

You should also avoid hiring any services that won't agree to a non-compete clause in your area.  Most specialized expert SEO services will only have one client from each geographic area, to avoid conflicts of interest.  You don't want your SEO experts to be working for your biggest competitor and knowing all of your best tactics.

SEO Expert Services for Lawyers: Developing Keyword-Rich Content

When lawyers learn to write in law school, they're taught a very particular style of content.  In much the same way, expert SEO services can help you write the best content for your chosen niche markets using the latest search engine optimization techniques.

Today's SEO expert services won't stuff your copy full of keywords (and if they do, they may not be much of an expert at all).  Instead, they'll make it look polished, professional, and still appealing both to humans and to search engine robots.

Because designing optimized content often means having to include many variations on the same keyword set, hiring expert SEO services is a great way to avoid the mind-numbing tedium of making sure that all of these words are inserted at the correct density.  You can even write your own content, then send it to SEO expert services for editing that will make it more likely to appear high up in Google's search results.

SEO Expert Services for Lawyers: Identifying Niche Markets

Another great use of expert SEO services is finding out which niche markets in your area have not yet been tapped.  By analyzing keyword use in searches made near you, SEO experts can help you branch out your practice in new and exciting directions.

Attorneys who are just starting out may also want to consult with SEO experts to learn some ideas about the niches available to them and which might be best to start with.  Because niche finding is a specialized service, you'll want to look for expert SEO services that have provided niche finding to a broad range of law firm clients in the past.

SEO Expert Services For Lawyers: Sharing Your Content

Even if you're great at writing your own content, on today's web, that's just not enough to stand out.  You'll also need to find ways to share what you've done, and that's where expert SEO services come in.  These services can help you to post your content online through a variety of platforms.

Depending on what your firm needs and what its desired client base is, SEO expert services may recommend a wide range of different websites and offline places to promote your site.  Especially if your clientele tends toward younger people (less than 50), your expert SEO services may discuss ways to more effectively share the content you've made with smartphone and tablet PC users.

SEO Expert Services for Lawyers: Analyzing Campaigns

Unless you have a quantitative background that lets you do some serious number crunching, you may want to leave the math to the experts.  That's why many expert SEO services offer analytics service.  Analytics is the science of understanding not just who's coming to your website and from where, but what those traffic patterns mean.

Trying to guess what's working and what isn't in your campaigns can lead to big mistakes.  Rather than using guesswork, your SEO expert services will use reliable mathematical and statistical methods to figure out where you're going wrong and why.  What's more, expert SEO services can actually design tests on your website to figure out what content and design contributes to the highest conversion rate.

This kind of analysis is best when it's done not just once, but continuously as your website develops new and better content based on the results of testing.  You may not see great results if you abandon your analytics research after a redesign, so keep testing and working with new ideas to find out what works best.

How SEO Expert Services for Lawyers Are Changing

As quality link building becomes a more important part of search engine optimization, expert SEO services have stepped up their game.  No longer the era of the “pure SEO” agency, today's services tend to offer a wide range of services including social media, mobile optimization, and quality link building across many different types of websites.

When you hire SEO expert services today, you'll also have to decide which of those aspects of complete search engine optimization you want to emphasize.  While many agencies can do any type of SEO, they're bound to have their strengths and weaknesses, and you should be prepared to identify those and prioritize what you believe is most important for your firm to improve.

Everyone in law marketing today wants to talk about niche markets.  But what is a niche market, really, and what niche market will provide you with the biggest profits in both the short and the long term?  When you're trying to compete against hundreds or even thousands of other law firms in your area, you need a way to differentiate yourself from the competition.  That goes double once you decide to market online.  In this guide, you'll not only learn about a history of legal niche markets, but also about how to find a niche market that helps your bottom line and your career satisfaction.

A Brief History of Niche Markets for Lawyers

Just a hundred years ago or so, most attorneys didn't have a particular niche market in mind when they started their practice.  In that much more rural America, being able to be versatile and flexible, handling all types of cases, was more important than asking what is a niche market.

Even in that era, though, some attorneys learned about niche markets and specialized in particular kinds of cases.  Some attorneys became private criminal defenders and began to carve out a niche market in the criminal court system.  As divorce became more common in the United States and no-fault divorces exploded, many attorneys started finding niche markets in family law.

The internet changed the answer to what is a niche market.  While a niche market used to just describe attorneys who'd chosen to specialize in a particular legal field, that's no longer enough.  In just your area, there may be a hundred other people working in, for instance, personal injury plaintiff's litigation.  You'll need to figure out niche markets to successfully compete against people who are already marketing heavily online.

What is a Niche Market Today?

Today's niche markets are smaller and more specific than ever before.  It's no longer enough to just answer “what is a niche market” with a basic practice area.  Instead, you're going to need to think about narrowing your field further.  For instance, instead of just practicing personal injury law, or even using vehicle accident plaintiffs as your niche market, you need to be more specific.

Consider specializing in a particular kind of vehicle accident: for instance, accidents that occur at stoplights, or drunk driving accidents.  This kind of specialization can make it much easier for you to generate web traffic for so-called “long tail keywords,” which happen when people type a very long list of search terms into a search engine.

Can Niche Markets Help Even if I'm a Solo Practitioner?

Sometimes solo practitioners in today's competitive market feel a need to try to take literally any new business that comes through their door.  When this is your legal philosophy, your question isn't so much “what is a niche market” as “why would I want one?”

What you may not realize is that by trying to be all things to all people, you may actually be cutting off your own best routes of getting new business.  You're never going to be able to compete with your biggest firm competitors in every area of the law—why not develop niche markets where you can be the big fish in a small pond?

A great niche market can be the foundation of a highly profitable solo practice.  While other solos are still trying to be generalists and haven't even asked “what is a niche market?” yet, you can be well on your way to niche success.

Getting Help Choosing Niche Markets

Marketing consulting agencies and computer tools can both help you to find a niche market if you're not confident about your niche marketing ideas yet.  Using an agency is usually the better idea if you have a large budget for your niche marketing, but if your budget is smaller you may have to rely on inexpensive or free tools.

Niche market finder tools are becoming popular with businesses all over the country who want to know what niche markets are in high demand and short supply in their area.  Remember, though, that computer tools don't always tell the whole story, especially if your niche marketing idea involves populations without a lot of computer use.

What if My Niche Market Gets Less Popular?

Sometimes, you can actually choose niche markets that you know won't be as popular in a few years.  What is a niche market with this kind of short period of viability?  Let's say that you want to make a niche in plaintiff's law for people who've been hurt by, for instance, a recently recalled vehicle or prescription medication.  If that vehicle or medication has been pulled off the market in response to lawsuits, you won't have that niche market forever.

However, that doesn't mean that these are bad niche markets.  What is a niche market good for if it doesn't last forever?  Well, you can make a lot of money in the meantime as one of the few attorneys operating as a specialist in those niche markets.  Just keep an eye on the market, and when it starts to run dry, start a new website for a closely related niche market (for instance, another recalled car or medicine).

Choosing Niche Markets Through Demographics

Another way to choose a successful niche market is to look at demographics.  What is a niche market that is demographically based?  Well, let's say that your law office is in or right next to a neighborhood with a high population of an ethnic group.  If that group tends to speak a different language than English, they may have a difficult time finding competent legal help when they have a problem.  If you're fluent in the language already, or can at least hire a translator to help you, you'll have much better success with the niche in your area.

You can also use age demographics to successfully target your niche marketing ideas.  For example, if you're in an area where many people are retiring, you may want to develop a practice based on asset management, wills, and trusts.

282 million Americans—nearly the entire population of the country—will be using the internet at some point this year.  Today, more than eighty percent of consumers report doing research on products and services online before deciding on one.  Finding the best link building service for your needs can make the difference between mediocre search results and top results.  Keep reading this guide for six easy to use tips that can help you compare link building services and pick a good link building service for your law firm.

Tip 1: Not All Links Are the Same

When you're starting to use a link building service, you need to keep in mind that search engines don't rank all links in the same way.  Building inbound links is part of the puzzle that link building services can help you solve, but the best link building service will help you to create quality links, not just any links at all.

What does a quality link look like?  A quality link is from a website that generally is considered to have a great reputation—people tend to post links from that website and it is generally popular.  However, the more outbound links that a website has, the less weighting any individual link will give you.  

For example, a website like Youtube has a good reputation online and used by many people.  However, with so many links on Youtube, each new link to your website only helps your search engine results pages a little bit.  On the other hand, if your law firm's website was linked by a major online magazine that only has a few links every day, you might see a significant jump in SERPs.

Tip 2: Not All Link Building Services Are The Same

Because links are weighted differently by quality, the best link building service will always emphasize quality over quantity.  You should be wary of any link building service in today's internet world that tries to tell you about the sheer number of links that will be generated for you.  Many of these link building services fall under the old “article marketing” category, which reposted articles on many websites.

A link building service that wants to just copy your articles and put them all over the web isn't the best link building service you can use.  You should be on the lookout for link building services that offer innovative ways to build your web presence, like setting up guest blogging opportunities or other ways to trade links with other real attorneys.

Tip 3: Know How Link Building Services Can Hurt You

While the best link building service you can hire will certainly help you to improve your SERPs, using a bargain basement link building service can actually harm your website's rankings.  Why?  Because many of these link building services are actually using seriously unethical ways of posting your links.  Some of them will post links as comments to completely unrelated articles on completely unrelated blogs—a terrible way to bring in new web traffic, and a tactic likely to get your website labeled as spam.

In some cases, if your link building service is trying to include terms about other attorneys in your website or links, you could even be subject to disciplinary action.  State bar associations are still working out their rules for advertising online, and link building services have periodically come under fire as unethical.  You should consult with your state bar association if you have any questions about best link building service practices or any practices that may be prohibited.

Tip 4: There's No One Best Link Building Service

While of course there are higher and lower quality link building services, the only best link building service is the one that is best for your law firm.  For example, the first link building service you contact may be able to show you great case studies that make you feel confident that you'll improve your SEO results.  However, if they've never done link building for lawyers before, they may not know how to make link building work in a legal services context.

The best link building service for you will usually be one that can show you some real results from other law firms or similar service-oriented industries (for instance, a link building service that has worked extensively with CPAs or medical professionals).  Link building services without this kind of experience may be more focused on selling products, not services, and are unlikely to give you good results.

Tip 5: Track the Progress of Your Link Building Service

Don't just take the word of your link building services that their package is working.  If you've gotten the best link building service available, the people working for the service will usually show you an analysis of your web traffic, as well as the search engine results pages your website now displays on, and how those two things have been influenced by the link building efforts they've handled.

While link building services can't give you overnight results, you can expect to start seeing changes within a few weeks or months.  Keep in mind that even the best link building service won't be able to increase your conversion rate—keep your website content high-quality so that the people driven to your website by your new link building efforts are impressed.  If your link building service hasn't delivered within six months, it's time to try a new strategy or a new service.

Tip 6: Find Link Building Services That Use Best Practices

One way to find the best link building service, whether it's 2012, 2013, or beyond, is to investigate the current state of best practices for link building.  Because these best practices are constantly changing, understanding the latest state of the art link building techniques can help you decide which link building service is best for you.  Keep in mind that any link building service using techniques that are even a few years out of date is sacrificing your web traffic.

Today, the world wide web contains about 9 billion pages—about one and a half for every man, woman, and child on the planet.  In that kind of crowd, standing out can be tough.  Building a link presence on the internet isn't easy, but it can bring incredible financial rewards to your firm.  Whether you are just beginning to ask “what is link building?” or you've decided to change your law firm's link building strategy, keep reading this guide to learn about today's best practices.

What is Link Building?

It's not easy for search engines to determine which website should be ranked #1 for a particular search.  The first, primitive web searches used information like keyword density to determine how early a page would appear in search results.  The problem with using keyword density metrics is that they're easy for spammers and other unethical web designers to game.

Now, keyword density is one part of where search engines put your results.  However, a more important factor is building a link presence online.  What is link building?  In the most general sense, it's simply the act of getting more inbound links to your website.  However, just asking what is link building won't get you to the real heart of the matter: building a link presence of real quality links.

Why does quality matter, and what is link building quality?  Quality has to matter, because if it didn't, all you'd need to do to get top-page results would be to have a service generate millions of links on bogus, barely-used web pages (some services still do this exact thing—more on that later).  When you start building a link presence online, today's best practices include making sure that your content is shared by as many quality websites as possible, not just as many websites as you can.

What is Link Building Good For?

Effectively building a link presence online will make it much more likely that your web pages will appear early in search results.  That's good news, because more than 95 percent of web searches never even result in the searcher looking at the second page of results.  Mobile searchers are even less likely to continue past the first page of results, so as mobile traffic gets more popular, it's important to learn what is link building and how to use it effectively.

If you're building a link presence in an organic way, you'll also be able to bring in people with your link building efforts who aren't coming from search engines.

Unethical Forms of Link Building

When they hear the question “what is link building?” some SEO firms today groan.  Why?  Because many early efforts of law firms to start building a link presence were based in paid article marketing services.  These link building services preyed on companies that didn't understand what is link building or what makes a quality link.

Building a link presence online with article marketing is cheating and spamming—it's making the web fundamentally worse.  As an attorney, you should never use an SEO firm that answers “what is linked building?” by directing you to an article marketing service.

Ethical Link Building: Social Media

Just because not all answers to the question “what is link building?” are ethical doesn't mean that there are no ethical options.  Most law firms today are already using social media websites in some way, but have you considered using your social media presence to help you with building a link reputation for search engines?

When you're trying to implement a link building strategy on your social media pages, you should include a number of links back to your website.  However, if you use too many links, you're no longer really link building, just spamming your Facebook friends and fans—and Google is likely to take notice.

What is link building looking like in the Facebook world?  Mostly like “shares.”  When people share your link, they're also posting it to their feed and will contribute to your number of inbound links, especially if a large number of people follow the link.

Ethical Link Building: Guest Blogging

What is link building with guest blogging?  Essentially, this is the nice guy's version of spamming your links in people's blog comment sections.  Instead of looking like spam (and being disregarded by people who might otherwise have been interested in your services), a guest blog post can help you with building a link presence.

One of the most common ways for attorneys to use this kind of link building is to trade guest blogging spots.  If you and another attorney have blogs about things that occasionally overlap or have an interesting intersection point, you may want to work on building a link to their website with a guest post in exchange for guest blogging on their site.

If you really want to get creative and collaborative, you might even begin a guest blogging series, in which you invite several different prominent attorneys to write on your blog.  This will also help to attract new readers to your blog who previously read these other bloggers.

Ethical Link Building: Getting Press Coverage

Now that most media has gone online, building a link presence doesn't have to be done with exclusively online sources.  Instead of just talking to other bloggers, try writing real press releases about interesting legal topics.

Your blog can also help you to do this kind of link building.  Often, when a reporter is trying to find an attorney to interview for a legal perspective on a news story, they'll come across law blogs.  If your blog seems articulate and intelligent, you might be tapped for a news story quote—and your firm may be linked from the story when it's published in the online version of the newspaper.

Getting real press coverage of this kind is great, because press websites already have a good reputation.  For the very same reason, you shouldn't release your article on fake press release websites.  While these websites offer a very low barrier to entry, they're also regarded as spam havens with little redeeming value and very low overall quality.

When you've started the process of website link building, you'll need to know which link building strategies actually work and which ones you can leave behind.  Today, Google Penguin (the search engine's new ranking algorithm) determines your SERPs based not just on the number of your links, but also on their quality.  This guide will go over link building strategies, starting with the best strategies and working our way to one strategy that most law firms are probably better off avoiding.  Keep reading to find out whether your existing website link building strategy is a great idea or if you should consider other alternatives.

Law Firm Website Link Building Strategy #1: Produce Great Content

The first and best of the link building strategies, and one that almost any SEO specialist will tell you, is to create content that people want to read.  If your content isn't good, it's unlikely that you'll be able to do the kind of organic website link building that leads to the best search engine page results.

Great content doesn't just mean one thing, and it doesn't have to just come in one form.  Your link building strategies may rely on, for instance, producing a blog.  If you're blogging, you can do a lot of website link building just by creating interesting and informative blog entries.  If you're creating blog entries that are using good search engine optimization, you can attract blog visitors relatively quickly and some of them may pass your entry along.  If you make Youtube videos, people can watch and comment on those videos, as well as share them.

Essentially, producing great content puts your best foot forward when you're doing website link building.  It shows that you're willing to go the extra mile in your link building strategies, and that you're not opposed to giving away real, informative content for free.  Don't think of your content as a giveaway—think of it as an investment in your website's future.

Law Firm Website Link Building Strategy #2: Make Something Different

With the market so saturated with legal blogs, it can sometimes be difficult to get attention when you're trying to use blogs as part of your link building strategies.  Instead, consider doing website link building with some other type of medium.

Today's computer use studies show that a large number of users are currently spending more time using mobile apps than they are browsing the web.  You may want to make a mobile app of your own that could help your typical clients.

Even just changing the structure of what you're doing can make your website link building more successful.  For example, while many link building strategies call for using blog entries, why not make a blog that's about some different topic in the law—or even a blog for other attorneys that uses a lot of humor?  That kind of content is likely to be reposted, which is the biggest rule for link building strategies.

Law Firm Website Link Building Strategy #3: Use Social Media

In 2012, social media is one of the biggest question marks in designing link building strategies.  Why?  Because most of the major search engines, including Google, are keeping quiet about how much weight they're assigning to links made from major social media websites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter.

While some website link building professionals believe that social media links will help your SERPs dramatically, and can point to examples of firms with good search engine placement and good Facebook pages, this correlation doesn't confirm that the Facebook links caused the high SERPs.  Even so, link building strategies today would be incomplete without at least some social media presence.  Whether or not this is one of the best link building strategies today, you should learn it for future use.

Law Firm Website Link Building Strategy #4: Media Coverage

It can sometimes be difficult to get bona fide media coverage for law firms, but incorporating press coverage into your link building strategies can be a great idea.  One of the biggest reasons for this is that typically, daily newspaper websites are considered a relatively trustworthy source with high quality content.  This means that when your website is covered by a local newspaper, you're more likely to rise in Google rankings.

The bigger the coverage you can get, the better your results will be.  If, for example, your intellectual property law firm was able to get name-dropped and linked by a blogger on Wired.com, you would very likely see your search engine results skyrocket.

Law Firm Website Link Building Strategy #5: Local Directories

Since over one fifth of searches today include a local geographic search term, you'll want to do some link building with local directories.  An example of a local directory that is easy to get access to is a chamber of commerce directory.  Once you've been linked by several local directories, Google will associate your website more with your local area, and your search engine results for people making those geographic searches will become higher.

It's also key to include a complete profile on Google+ Local to make this website link building strategy work.  It will be much easier for your website to appear early in local search results when you take steps to increase your local visibility.

A Website Link Building Strategy To Avoid: Article Marketing Services

A few years ago, many law firms started using article marketing services, or article “spinners,” as part of their link building strategy.  These services took one piece of content and either copied it completely or copied large pieces of it to reuse on hundreds of unrelated websites all over the internet.

Needless to say, these sites weren't really producing quality content, and Google has recently made several algorithm changes to crack down on this form of search engine optimization spam.  If you use an article spinning service today, at best, you'll be wasting your money.  At worst, Google will think that your website is spam and lower its page rankings accordingly.