Over 90 percent of internet users use search, including over 85 percent of prospective legal clients.  When you try to find out how to improve your search rankings, though, you can find a lot of contradictory information.  Sorting out the myths (which are usually perpetuated by services that have something to sell your law firm) from the facts can be tough, especially when it comes to building cheap backlinks.  Before you buy cheap backlinks, read this guide.  It could help you to avoid a costly mistake.

Myth: All Cheap Backlinks Help—At Least a Little

Because the quantity of backlinks matters, some people think that if they buy cheap backlinks, they'll see their search rankings increase.  You'll see some search engine marketing companies saying essentially this—that in spite of recent changes to the way Google and other search engines work, you still need big numbers of cheap backlinks.  Usually, these companies will acknowledge that not all backlinks are worth the same amount, but they still operate on the assumption that when you buy cheap backlinks, you'll increase your amount of “link juice,” or authority from backlinks.

Fact: Some Cheap Backlinks Can Hurt Your Website

Obviously, the companies you would buy cheap backlinks from have an interest in getting you to buy them.  Because of this, they may not tell you that some cheap backlinks will actually make your search rankings decline.

What kinds of links should you avoid purchasing when you buy cheap backlinks?  Don't buy any backlinks that aren't contextually relevant to your website.  If the context of the website they're on is completely different from yours, Google is likely to notice and suspect that you buy cheap backlinks instead of building them organically.

If you get cheap backlinks on a number of websites which are all owned by the same person and hosted at the same IP address, you're also likely to be flagged by Google.  Don't ever buy cheap backlinks without verifying that they will be from websites with different IP addresses.

Myth: Backlinks Should All Have the Same Anchor Text

If you started to buy cheap backlinks a few years ago, you may want to run a backlink checker program that can look at what anchor text is linking to your website from your backlinks.  You may find that almost all of your cheap backlinks have identical anchor text.  This kind of strategy was often employed to give websites better search engine optimization for a particular keyword or phrase.

Other times, you may find that almost every link to your website is a brand link—for example, one that lists the name of your firm or the URL of your website.

Fact: You Need to Vary Anchor Text

If you've used these tactics in the past, be warned: when you buy cheap backlinks with identical anchor text, it's very likely that you'll trip Google Penguin's over optimization detection.  If your site is seen as being over optimized, you will be penalized because you chose to use cheap backlinks instead of building quality links.

One of the easiest ways for Google to detect that you are trying to buy cheap backlinks is a lack of variance—remember that natural backlinks will have a very wide variety of anchor text, including not only brand and exact keyword matches, but sometimes just simple phrases that aren't designed as SEO keywords.  A good backlink audit can help you see whether your linking pattern appears natural or unnatural.

Myth: Blog Comments Are Bad Cheap Backlinks

When companies would buy cheap backlinks in 2011 and the early parts of 2012, their backlink purchases often included huge numbers of blog comments.  These comments were often very spammy and Google took action against cheap backlinks on unmoderated blogs.  Because of this, some companies today believe that all blog comments are risky and not worth trying when you buy cheap backlinks.

Fact: Some Blog Comments Work Well

While it's true that spam blog comments are bad cheap backlinks to buy, this doesn't mean that you should rule out blog commenting altogether as a source of backlinks.  Make sure before you buy cheap backlinks in the form of blog comments from any source that these comments will be contextually relevant.  This means that they need to be real responses to the blog entry, not mass produced “this was a good article” text that could go in just about any comment section.

Myth: Article Spinning and Press Release Sites Still Work

Some of the classic resources that law firms used when they would buy cheap backlinks in the “old days” before Penguin were called article spinners or article marketing services.  These services worked by reproducing a single article, or small variations on one article, through a huge number of affiliated websites.

Because of the huge quantity of cheap backlinks that law firms could buy using these services, they were one of the most favored techniques for a long time.  Unfortunately, today, they're not a good solution.  Google has identified most of the websites that are part of these affiliate networks, and no longer value the “link juice” from these links or even assign it a negative value.  Many law firms that had used article spinners are now having to request that their links (which they paid for months or years ago) be removed from low quality affiliate websites.

Fact: You Need Different Cheap Backlinks Sources

By far the best way to avoid any big backlinking mistakes is to have a diverse strategy.  If your backlinks are spread out on a number of different types of websites, and come from a wide variety of different post formats, odds are that your backlinks will be much safer than those from firms that put all their SEO backlinking eggs in one basket.

Diversify your backlink sources as often as possible by keeping an eye on internet trends.  By learning about new backlink sources before your competitors, you'll maintain a wider link variety and better visibility.

Not all strategies to improve your backlinks for SEO work equally well.  In fact, since Google's 2012 updates to searches, it's very possible that your law firm is using an SEO backlink strategy that could drag your page down fast.  Today, backlinks for SEO should form the backbone of your overall search engine optimization strategy—but which backlinks work best, and which are best left in the past?  Keep reading this guide to find out.

Why SEO Backlink Strategies From 2011 Don't Work

As the internet changes and evolves, search evolves along with it.  When Google noticed that a number of SEO backlink efforts had led to misleading links, spam websites, and over optimization, their engineers took action.  Today, if your backlinks for SEO look like they did in 2010 or 2011, you'll probably be very disappointed in the results.  Google now penalizes websites—sometimes severely—for appearing to buy backlinks for SEO.  If you're using SEO backlink strategies that involve purchasing links rather than building them organically, you're going to have to get a lot more careful and build your links in a smarter, more thoughtful way.

Here are a few of the SEO backlink strategies that have been devalued because of Google's new algorithm changes:

Using the same type of link over and over—for instance, having all of your inbound backlinks for SEO coming from blogs or directories.

Having identical anchor text for a high percentage of your SEO backlink traffic will almost always set off a red flag now.  You'll need to vary your anchor texts from now on.

Having too many backlinks for SEO that come from identical articles rather than varying your content will result in rankings penalties.

Using too many low quality websites for your backlinks will now also garner penalties.  You need to make sure that the PageRank of the websites that are linking your website is, on average, relatively high.

Fortunately, there are more ways than ever to leave your mark on the web without using outdated SEO backlink strategies.  The new ways of building backlinks for SEO are not only more likely to last, but also will give your firm a much better reputation online than spam techniques would have.

New SEO Backlink Sources: Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites allow for users to share a link that they find interesting, and then have the community decide as a whole how much popularity it will attain.  One of the biggest websites for social bookmarking in 2012 is Reddit, which has garnered both positive and negative media attention as its user base expanded rapidly.

Social bookmarking websites can be a fantastic source of backlinks for SEO, because many of these websites have high PageRank values.  All you'll need to do is get an account and start posting links.  The higher quality the content you're linking to, the more likely that your link will not only give you a better search engine ranking position, but also get positive attention from members of the community.

New SEO Backlink Sources: Google+ Local

Google Places became Google+ Local in 2012, and if your law firm hasn't already started its profile page you need to get onboard today.  When search engine users ask Google for law firms in a particular location, local search results now show up first.  This means that you need to have a fully completed Google+ Local profile and build your business's local web presence.

You can add to the benefits of making a great Google+ Local profile by, for instance, getting your website listed with local website directories or statewide attorney directories.  This can help Google pinpoint your location while garnering you new backlinks for SEO.

New SEO Backlink Sources: Facebook—And Don't Ignore Comments

While many law firms still don't have any Facebook presence at all, many of the ones that do still aren't using it particularly well.  On Facebook, studies show that users tend to trust comments much more than they trust actual posted content.  What this means is that in order to get the most backlinks for SEO by using Facebook, you'll want to post not only quality content, but content that engages users and gets them to post comments.

You may even want to ask friends or other social network connections to help you by adding comments that include a link to your website.  These backlinks for SEO will be on a high PageRank website (as long as you keep your Facebook posts public) and can be a great way to quickly enhance your rankings.

New SEO Backlink Sources: Twitter

As people have started to understand more about how Google's new search algorithms work, they've noticed some patterns.  One of those patterns is that when businesses use Twitter to build backlinks for SEO, they seem to be doing quite well for themselves.  Twitter links are apparently regarded as being relatively authoritative by Google, so your law firm should make sure that it has a Twitter account and that it is being used regularly.

You should focus your Twitter work on getting people to re-tweet the posts you've made and your links.  Infographics and other unique information sources are key to getting re-tweets, so these can be the best ways to build backlinks for SEO using Twitter.

Making the Most of Traditional SEO Backlink Sources

You can still use some traditional sources of backlinks for SEO.  For example, if you have already been using a blog to make some backlinks, this is still a great idea.  Make sure to keep your quality level up, and your blog links should make your search rankings increase.  You can also do guest posts on the blogs of other attorneys in your practice area or geographic area to make more backlinks for SEO.

Forum posts are also a great way to get backlinks, especially if they're forums that have a high PageRank.  However, if your posts seem like they're spam that is designed just to get a backlink, they will probably be deleted.  Make sure you're only posting relevant content, and you can rest assured that your backlinks will stay up.

Now that Google really monitors the quality of your backlinks, you need to get quality backlinks that will catapult you to the top of the rankings.  If you don't be one of the fifteen percent of websites that has been affected by Google Penguin and Panda, you'll need to learn about how to get quality backlinks sooner rather than later.  If you've already been affected by these updates, it's even more important to get quality backlinks and eliminate the low quality links that made your site get flagged.  Here are seven different types of quality backlinks, and how to get each type easily and quickly.

How to Get Quality Backlinks: The Elusive .Edu Backlink

One of the hardest types of backlinks to get is the .edu backlink.  Because it's a sign that you know how to get quality backlinks when you have .edu links, these links actually are considered to be higher quality than their PageRanks indicate.  The amount of “link juice” that you obtain when you get quality backlinks on a .edu website will be equivalent to the link juice you'd get from a .com or .org site with a PageRank score one or two points higher.

Now you want to know how to get quality backlinks on these websites.  It's actually relatively easy for attorneys to do, even though other types of business professionals can have problems when trying to get quality backlinks on a .edu domain.  Why?  Because law schools are almost always at .edu domains, and in today's legal hiring climate law students are eager to hear from real attorneys who are making it in the real world.

To get quality backlinks from a law school's website, usually all you'll need to do is find the student forums or ask if you can give some kind of talk about your area of practice.  You'll be helping law students decide what to do after school is over, and you'll have learned a great method to get quality backlinks fast.

How to Get Quality Backlinks: The Contextual Blog Backlink

Most of the time, law blogs are about some specific area of the law, not just about law in general.  If you are a blogger, odds are that you know some other blogs operating in the same fields yours is.  That's a great opportunity to get quality backlinks.  Consider asking for a guest blog opportunity to help yourself get backlinks—and you may want to offer similar guest blogger opportunities to people on your own blog.

In much the same way as how to get quality backlinks from a .edu website, you can also seek out backlinks from law student blogs.  Many of these students are eager to interview real attorneys about what they do from day to day.  You can easily get quality backlinks from this kind of interview or profile piece.

How to Get Quality Backlinks: The Directory Entry Backlink

Another way to get quality backlinks is to get your law firm listed in relevant, high quality directories.  Not all directories are quality resources, but a large number of them are.  From Google+ Local (which is one of the biggest generators of local search results) to the local directories created by your chamber of commerce or even your city or county government, directory listings are one of the easiest methods to get quality backlinks quickly.

Another advantage of learning how to get quality backlinks with directory listings is that these are often indexed very quickly by search engines.  This means that when you get quality backlinks with, for example, the Google+ Local profile you fill out, the content of that profile will be indexed by Google right away and you'll get the link juice from the backlink immediately.

How to Get Quality Backlinks: The Social Network Backlink

Social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are fantastic for any attorney who wants to get quality backlinks.  Social network backlinks can come either from you, or from people making comments relating to your website.  In order to get quality backlinks from other people, you may want to create new content like infographics or how-to guides that will be interesting to a wide swath of people online—interesting enough that they'll want to share with friends.

You can also get quality backlinks using social networking sites just on your main profile page.  However, in order for these links to count, you'll also need to make sure that your profile is public.  All of the content that you post on Facebook and other social networking websites should ideally be public in order to get quality backlinks as frequently as possible.  Because most of these sites have very high PageRank scores, it's important to get these links right away so you don't end up getting overshadowed by competitors who know how to get quality backlinks with social networks.

How to Get Quality Backlinks: The News Coverage Backlink

Public relations can often overlap with getting quality backlinks.  If you're putting out press releases, make sure that they're not just going to generic “press release” websites like PRWeb.  You should try to cultivate real working relationships with members of the media in your area so that you can more easily publicize your firm's victories.  Keep in mind that it's always easier to have the media cover your firm if you already have an angle in mind that will be of interest to news readers or viewers.

News coverage generally comes from websites with a relatively high PageRank, which means that these links are much more valuable than getting backlinks from most blogs or other types of websites.  Also, when you get a link through news coverage, you'll be more likely to get clients as a direct result of that link.  Don't think that it's impossible to get this kind of coverage.  Even if daily newspapers won't run your story in the actual paper, they may put it on a newspaper blog.  You can also ask weekly community newspapers, which tend to be easier to get press coverage in, whether they would be interested in doing a story about your firm.

Ten years ago, most of your search engine rankings were just based on your keyword density.  Today, over two thirds of your overall rankings depend on how many inbound links you have.  Now that search engine optimization has moved beyond keywords, how are you going to change your inbound links SEO strategy?  You should be dedicating a solid majority of your optimization time to SEO for inbound links and building new sources for links.  This guide will help you understand why inbound links SEO has become so important and how to make great links with a high value to search engines.

The Anatomy of an Inbound Link

Before you learn the details of how to do up to date inbound links SEO in 2012, you'll need to know a little bit of terminology.  If you already know basic terms pertaining to SEO for inbound links, you can feel free to skip this part and go right to the next section.

Inbound links are links to your website from other websites, and they're important to Google and other search engines because a higher number of inbound links typically means that your website is important and well-regarded.  Anchor text is the text that a person will click on to go to your link, and can be of several types.  Some SEO inbound links will include exact phrase matches in this anchor text for keyword phrases in the article.  Other inbound links for SEO, called branded links, will be words like your law firm's name or an attorney's first and last name.

Crafting Your Content for Inbound Links SEO

The first thing that you need to do to make optimal SEO with inbound links is to make your content great.  Inbound links SEO that takes people to a poorly designed, hard to navigate law firm website is bad, and if its design looks like something straight out of 2002, you'll have a hard time being heard.

Make your content conversion friendly, not only for your inbound links SEO but also for your overall conversion rate.  When people like your website and find it easy to navigate, it's easier for them to share their experience with others and give you organic links back to your website.

You should also make sure that any time you do SEO with inbound links, you have a mobile website ready for anyone accessing the website from a smartphone or tablet PC.  This traffic is unusually eager to convert, but only if you're careful about making a mobile optimized website version.  You'll miss out on the great results of mobile inbound links SEO if you're directing mobile users to a desktop site with tiny, tough to click links.

Making Great Anchor Text for SEO Inbound Links

The anchor text that you use for your inbound links for SEO matters.  If you're using the wrong kinds of anchor text, or using the same kind too often, your SEO for inbound links could end up hitting a brick wall called Google Penguin.  Google Penguin is an algorithm designed to spot websites that have been buying inbound links for SEO or otherwise building a link presence unnaturally.  Penguin basically ensures that if your links are too low-quality or have the same anchor text, no matter how many more you add, you won't see any positive results.

To keep Penguin at bay, you'll need to focus on varying your anchor text.  Not all of your inbound links for SEO should look the same.  In fact, some of your SEO for inbound links should be ordinary phrases, rather than the exact keyword phrases you're hoping for people to search for.  Take a look at blogs and other websites that exhibit a natural-looking link pattern, and try to learn from their example when working on your own inbound links for SEO purposes.

Finding Places to Put Your SEO Inbound Links

Today, there are a multitude of websites that happily host many types of content and links from anyone who creates an account.  When building inbound links for SEO, you need to make sure that the websites you're using are considered authoritative and have a high PageRank value (preferably at least 3 or 4).  The higher the PageRank of your inbound links for SEO, the more your rankings will show results.

Before submitting your SEO inbound links anywhere, make sure that they are formatted correctly for the website you're posting to and that you're not posting anything that would be considered prohibited content.  If your content is very interesting, you may want to try making inbound links for SEO on social bookmarking websites and social networks.  If it's good enough, it will very likely be shared by a large number of users on these sources.

Keeping Your SEO Inbound Links Working

If you've made sure that your links don't violate any written or unwritten rules at the website where you're posting, you've got a good chance of having a link that lasts for years.  However, let's say that you redesign your website a year after building fantastic inbound links, and part of your site redesign included changing the URLs of some of your pages.

Initially, you might think that this means your inbound links for SEO won't work any more.  However, if you run an analysis tool to detect which links are now broken, you can find out exactly which pages are still being linked to.  Then, you can create a redirect page for these pages that will bring the viewer directly to the part of your content they were trying to access.  This creates a much more user friendly experience than a redirect to your home page, which may make it hard to find the right content again.

Monitoring the Success of Your SEO Inbound Links

Periodically, you should check your search engine rankings so that you can tell if you're actually going up in the ranks.  You don't need to check every day or even necessarily every week, because indexing by Google can sometimes be slow.  However, if you're not checking at least once a month, you're missing out on the valuable data that you've gathered by creating inbound links for SEO.

Having a strategy to increase backlinks to your website can improve your SERPs by leaps and bounds. However, only about a third of companies today are pursuing these strategies.  If you're not sure how to increase backlinks without spamming, or you're unsure what your backlink presence should look like, this guide is for you.  By the time you're finished reading this guide, you'll have learned how to increase backlinks in half a dozen ways—none of which require you to spend money or use spam content.

Warning: Trying to Increase Backlinks Can Backfire

Before you learn how to increase backlinks, you should know about the limits of backlink building.  If you increase backlinks too quickly or do so by using low quality links, you not only won't get an increase to your search engine results, you could actually see them decline.

That's because Google Penguin notices what appear to be unnatural link building efforts, and punishes websites that have clearly worked to increase backlinks by spamming other websites and using non-organic link building techniques.  Therefore, your emphasis should be on how to increase backlinks organically (or at least, in a way that seems organic to Google's algorithms).  You can do this by working to increase backlinks from high PageRank pages, and by building your backlink presence slowly.

The worst things you can do to increase backlinks include spamming blog comments and plastering the same articles everywhere.  These techniques may appear in some guides on how to increase backlinks, but they only worked before Google's algorithms became more complex and better at detecting over optimization.

How to Increase Backlinks With Your Blog

So with many ways to increase backlinks no longer working, how can you make sure you're getting the backlink presence your website wants and needs to be competitive in today's economy?  A great place to start is with your blog.  Attorneys have adoped blogging faster than nearly any other profession, perhaps because their jobs are already so focused on writing and explaining legal principles.

If you already maintain a blog, you also probably read other people's law blogs.  If there are any law bloggers that you admire, or even a few you just get along with really well, consider asking for a guest blogger arrangement.  This is a great way to increase backlinks with really high quality content—content that may drive web users to your website even without using a search engine.

Lawyers who don't have blogs yet can still learn how to increase backlinks using them.  Instead of guest posts, you will have to use the comments sections.  Make sure that any comments you make are direct responses to the things discussed in the blog post—otherwise, they will probably be moderated away and won't increase backlinks for you at all.

How to Increase Backlinks With Press Releases

Press releases can be a fantastic way to increase backlinks, as long as you've got something to talk about.  A press release that just looks like an advertisement for your firm, without a lot of meat or any angle for a reporter to really report on, is likely to be ignored.  It used to be that many companies would just increase backlinks with press releases by posting them to press release websites.  However, this kind of backlink strategy now fails most of the time, because these press release websites are viewed as very low quality link sources by Google's Panda algorithm.

Instead, work with your local media and see what kind of legal stories they usually run.  If you can fit your story into one of the kinds of pieces they often do, you'll be able to increase backlinks and get a lot of positive media attention focused on your firm.  When you learn how to increase backlinks with the media, you're doing double duty—not only will your search engine rankings improve, but you'll improve your reputation and prominence in your community.

How to Increase Backlinks With Reciprocal Linking

Now, before you start to increase backlinks in this way, a word of caution: it's okay to have some reciprocal backlinks.  However, if Google notices that all or almost all of your backlinks appear to be reciprocal instead of one way, it may view this as a sign of over optimization that draws a rankings penalty.

It's easy to increase backlinks through reciprocal linking.  All you need to do is approach another person running a website in a similar situation to yours.  By linking to them, and them linking to you, you'll both look more popular and have better search rankings.

How to Increase Backlinks With .Edu Websites

The hardest domains to increase backlinks from are .edu and .gov websites.  While it's very, very difficult for anyone—even attorneys—to get backlinks from a .gov website, it can actually be easier than you think to get backlinks from .edu domains.

Consider doing a profile or interview with a college newspaper or law school publication about what you do and how to become a lawyer of the same type you are.  These kinds of pieces often appear both in print publications at the school and online.  The online version can contain a backlink to your website that will be considered very valuable because it came from a .edu domain.

How to Increase Backlinks With Local Listings

Another way to improve your backlink presence is to think very, very local.  Don't dismiss local websites, even if they are relatively low in PageRank or seem like they were designed several years ago.  Google takes note of how many local websites you're receiving backlinks from when people do geolocational searches for lawyers.  With 20 percent of legal searches being local—and local searchers being more likely to convert right away—this means your local websites can be a great way to bump up your rankings and your conversions.

Some of the best local backlinks you can get are from local directories.  If you're in a relatively small city or town, they might have listings of local businesses on the local government website.  Other directories you'll want to become part of include chamber of commerce directories, your local Yellow Pages, and Google+ Local.

If you're working on internet marketing for your law firm, you may need contextual homepage backlinks that help to give your website more authority in Google's search rankings.  Contextual backlinks are one of the best ways to make sure that your rankings rise steadily, and have many advantages over non-contextual links.  In this guide, you'll learn about your options for building contextual homepage backlinks, including organic link building techniques and hiring a contextual backlink service.  Keep reading to find out what strategy your law firm should employ for 2013 while building contextual backlinks in 2012.

What Makes a Backlink Contextual?

Simply put, there are two types of backlinks: contextual backlinks and non-contextual.  In a non-contextual backlink, a link goes from another website to your website, but the website the backlink is on doesn't need to have much relation—if any—to your practice or even your location.  For example, let's say your law firm purchased a large number of non contextual homepage backlinks.  These backlinks might appear on websites advertising products ranging from prescription drugs to work from home opportunities.

Contextual backlinks, on the other hand, rely on the context of a website.  When you build contextual homepage backlinks, they'll come from websites that discuss some of the same topics as your site and use some of the same keywords.  A contextual backlink service is a service that exclusively works on getting these types of backlinks for law firms or other companies.

Why Are Contextual Backlinks Best?

In the internet search world, contextual homepage backlinks are king.  Whether they're built by a contextual backlink service or organically grown, contextual backlinks make the web make more sense than a non-contextual link would.  When websites about similar topics are linked together via contextual homepage backlinks, it makes information more available to consumers.  Non-contextual backlinks, on the other hand, are much like email spam: website visitors didn't ask for them, and odds are, they never wanted them.

Contextual backlinks also help you to build more than your SERPs.  While your search engine rankings are important, it's also much more likely that someone will actually use contextual homepage backlinks to visit your website.  This is one of the biggest advantages of these links, whether you're getting them from a contextual backlink service or doing it yourself.  If you're using exclusively non contextual backlinks, you'll probably never (or at least, very rarely) see actual web traffic coming in from all of those backlinks you purchased.

Should I Use a Contextual Backlink Service?

There are advantages and disadvantages to getting your contextual homepage backlinks through a contextual backlink service.  On one hand, you'll get your contextual backlinks more quickly, helping you to build your rankings faster.  You'll also have the freedom to do other marketing tasks instead of painstakingly building individual contextual homepage backlinks.

However, giving up that control can make it so that your contextual backlinks aren't as high quality as you would like.  You'll want to make sure that your contextual backlink service makes only high quality links before using them.  It's also more expensive to use even the cheapest contextual backlink service than it is to just build backlinks organically, because most organically built contextual homepage backlinks are completely free.

Do Contextual Backlinks Work Right Away?

Whether you make them yourself or have a contextual backlink service make them for you, you can't expect for your contextual homepage backlinks to work immediately.  This is because before they can have any impact at all on your Google SERPs, they will need to be indexed by the search engine.  Sometimes, the process of indexing can take days, weeks, or even months depending on how deeply embedded in a website your contextual homepage backlinks are.

In some cases, your contextual backlink service will “tier” your backlinks, linking to your already existing contextual backlinks.  This can help them to be indexed more quickly.  If you're not using a contextual backlink service, some pieces of software also claim to do this kind of tiering automatically.  However, use caution: not all users of these pieces of software have reported positive results, and your mileage may vary.

Does Google Penguin Punish Contextual Backlinks?

One of the biggest questions many internet marketers have about any method of building links is whether it's Google Penguin safe.  In most situations, a contextual backlink service will guarantee that their links are Penguin proof (and if they won't, you should find a different service to provide your contextual homepage backlinks).

As long as you're building quality links, it's very unlikely that Google will punish you for any contextual backlinks.  After all, these are the kinds of links that tend to make the web better, by making it easier to move from one piece of information to other relevant websites.  Any contextual backlink service should be able to help you understand how your links are relevant and why they won't trip any red flags for over optimization when Google indexes them.

How Many Contextual Backlinks Should I Build?

When you start to work on building contextual homepage backlinks, don't go too crazy all at once.  If you build too many links in very short succession, it's very likely that Google will believe your website is over optimized and may take action against it in the search rankings accordingly.  Ideally, your backlink presence should be just a step or two beyond your real web presence—one of the main metrics that Google looks at is how many backlinks you have compared to your overall website traffic.

Consider starting by just making one or two new contextual backlinks per day at first, then working your way up to three to five per day.  This is an easy pace that you can easily continue on for the indefinite future.  What's more, if you're only making a few backlinks a day, you can make sure that they are the highest quality backlinks possible.  This ensures that your strategies will continue to be effective long into the future, not just until the next search update changes how Google looks at your links.

It seems like every search engine professional today wants to get free backlinks, and that's no surprise.  Because Google and other search engines now use backlinking for up to 70 percent of your search ranking determination, you need to focus on getting free backlinks as often as possible.  In this guide, you'll learn nine easy ways to get free backlinks that attorneys can start using today.

#1: Blogs and RSS Feeds

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get a free backlink, and it's not hard to see why.  After five to ten minutes of account creation, anyone with an internet connection can start a blog about any topic under the sun, and from then on, it's easy to create free backlinks on that blog.

Having your own offsite blog is a great way to get free backlinks, especially if you start interacting with the owners of other blogs and doing guest posts.  You can get even more free backlinks by syndicating your blog with an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.

#2: LinkedIn Questions

Because LinkedIn is considered a very high quality website, any free backlink you get from LinkedIn is more influential in your search rankings than many other websites' free backlinks.  A great way to multitask your marketing is to start answering questions that have been asked on LinkedIn by other attorneys or people with legal issues.

Not only does answering LinkedIn questions help you to get free backlinks, it also puts your name out there in front of a lot of people who might want to call your office.  If you're answering questions for other lawyers, you can increase your odds of getting referrals while you're getting free backlinks.

#3: Facebook

Even if your law firm doesn't do much marketing to consumers, you should make sure to get free backlinks by filling out a Facebook profile for your firm.  Ignoring the free backlink potential of Facebook would be a mistake, because it's by far the most popular social networking website in the United States.

You can create free backlinks on Facebook in a wide variety of ways, both on your profile and in your public feed.  Make sure that your posts are set to “public” by default, so that every free backlink you create to your website can be detected and indexed by Google.

#4: Twitter

“Tweets” are limited to 140 characters long but can still include a link to your website.  Twitter links are generally considered to be high quality, so this is a great way to build free backlinks that will really generate results.  The most interesting part about using Twitter to get free backlinks is that several studies that have compared the efficacy of every social networking site at raising search rankings, and Twitter seems to come out on top.  This may mean that a free backlink from Twitter is worth more than one from Facebook or LinkedIn.

#5: Social Bookmarking

From Metafilter to StumbleUpon to Reddit, social bookmarking websites take a wide variety of forms.  All of them can be great for free backlinks, if you're willing to play by their rules.  You'll need to make high quality content that people really want to read—and then you can put a free backlink to that content on their websites.

If you try to get free backlinks using these websites but are linking to poor quality content or direct advertising, it's likely that your links will be deleted.  This is a waste of your time and effort, so make sure the content is good before you create a free backlink to it.

#6: Press Coverage

To get free backlinks from the press is often easier said than done, but it's still worth trying.  If you get news coverage, the newspaper or television station will often include a free backlink to your website as part of their content.  Free backlinks can also come from commenting on news stories and including a relevant backlink as part of your comment.

#7: Yahoo Answers

Yahoo Answers has a lot of answers (both good and bad).  You can help to improve the quality of those answers while simultaneously getting free backlinks.  To get free backlinks on Yahoo Answers that will be in answers rated as “most helpful,” make sure that your link pertains to the topic of the question and isn't just inserted randomly.

Make sure that you provide all appropriate legal disclaimers when you answer any kind of legal question online.  No free backlink is worth an ethics inquiry from your state bar, so take every needed precaution before you answer any online questions on Yahoo Answers, a blog, or anywhere else.

#8: Blog Comments

Posts aren't the only place where blogs can provide free backlinks.  Another easy way to get free backlinks is to make informative, relevant comments on blogs about legal topics.  Every free backlink you get in this way can also help you to make connections with bloggers. Those connections can lead to new business, either directly or through word of mouth referrals.

Make sure that you're only commenting on active blogs, preferably those with moderation policies for comments.  This type of comment gives you a higher quality free backlink according to Google than comments on unmoderated blogs.  In fact, if you have too many free backlinks coming from unmoderated blogs, you could see your blog incurring over optimization penalties.

#9: Directory Profiles

The last place we'll talk about to get an easy free backlink is in web directories.  These directories offer a great way to get free backlinks while making it easier for people to find your website.  Every free backlink that you get on these websites will generally be considered high quality, as long as the directory itself isn't full of spam.

You may want to consider getting free backlinks on directories that are specifically for attorneys, or just for local businesses in your area.  Investigate all of your options to get the best free backlink arrangements possible.

In 2011, Google released an update called Panda that sent reverberations throughout the internet community.  Affecting 15 percent of websites, Panda started looking at where backlinks were coming from, rather than just basing search rankings on the total number of backlinks.  All of a sudden, companies didn't just want any backlinks, they wanted high quality backlinks—and fast!  Read this guide to find out how your law firm can build quality backlinks that pass muster on today's Google, and why you don't need to buy quality backlinks to be successful.

#1: Use Your Real Life Connections

Because quality backlinks are a part of the online world, many people forget that they can build high quality backlinks just by using their in person social circles.  Before you decide to buy quality backlinks, think about your connections.  People working for your law firm have social connections both locally and nationally, and can leverage those connections to get the kind of backlinking you want.

For example, you may find out that one of your real life friends or acquaintances has recently begun to keep a blog.  After they tell you what their blog is about, if you can think of a topic for a guest post, you'll be able to get high quality backlinks by piggybacking on their blog.  This is a great way to avoid having to buy quality backlinks even if you don't have very much web presence yet.

#2: Complete Your Profiles

One of the best and fastest ways to get high quality backlinks is to complete all of your law firm's profiles on social networking websites.  If you don't have a fully filled out profile, you're missing several different opportunities to create a quality backlink with great anchor text.  If you buy quality backlinks, creating these profiles will be one of the first things that a service does.  You can save yourself time and money by making these high quality backlinks on your own instead of purchasing them.

Usually, these profiles take about an hour or so to set up completely, so there's no reason to buy quality backlinks of this type unless you really want to.  For the relatively small amount of time investment required, you'll get quality backlinks that didn't require you to create any new content at all.

#3: Keep Quality Levels Up

Whatever content you're producing to generate your high quality backlinks needs to be at a high level of quality on its own.  If you're not producing good content, no matter how good your quality backlinks are, and no matter how well positioned your backlinking has gotten, you'll never get the conversions you need out of your backlinking.  Keep in mind that the end goal isn't just increasing your page rank, it's growing your business.

Some services claim to allow businesses to buy quality backlinks, but not all of them deliver on that promise.  High quality backlinks are often difficult to purchase, and you may end up with lower quality backlinks that help you much less.  Ask to see samples of the work any company is doing before you buy quality backlinks from them.

#4: Use Social Networking

Don't just abandon your social networking pages once your profile has provided you with some high quality backlinks.  You can create additional quality backlinks by participating and posting on these websites.  While you shouldn't overload your social networking feeds with backlinks to your website, an occasional link is a great idea—especially if it's to some content that's interesting enough for your viewers to share, creating even more high quality backlinks.

When you buy quality backlinks, this kind of posting is often included as part of the package.  However, if you choose this route for building quality backlinks, be careful.  It can be obvious to your readership that you chose to buy quality backlinks instead of making your own content and participating yourself.  Often, it's easier to make your own high quality backlinks, which your readers will be able to see come from a real person in your firm.

#5: Participate in Comments and Questions

No one likes the person who just talks and never listens.  Consider having some of your high quality backlinks come from asking your readers questions, and making comments on people's social networking feeds and blogs.  Note that this does not mean to make low quality backlinks by spamming blog comments with irrelevant links—you need to be really responding to what's being said, and participating in a two-way conversation.

#6: Talk to the Press

Why buy quality backlinks when a great public relations campaign can get them for free?  One of the best ways to get high quality backlinks on websites your competitors can't even touch is to get media attention.  If you've recently won a case that you think a local television station or newspaper might be interested in, get the publicity.  When they post quality backlinks to your website, you'll see your rankings skyrocketing.  Media sources are among the best places to position your high quality backlinks.

Now, unlike the kinds of links you get when you buy quality backlinks, you won't be able to set your own anchor text.  However, because these are such difficult high quality backlinks to get, they'll count for a lot in your search rankings even without great anchor text.

#7: Audit Your Backlinks

Every once in a while, you'll want to check to make sure that your backlinking is still effective and that the backlinks you've received still direct people to functional URLs.  This is even more important if you buy quality backlinks—without checking up on the backlinking, how do you know if you're really getting what you paid for instead of spammy backlinking attempts?

Many free web tools can help you examine your backlinks.  You can easily sort your backlinks by PageRank so you can find which are high quality backlinks and which are lower quality backlinks.  Quality backlinks will have a higher PageRank number (the maximum is 10), while lower quality ones will have lower numbers, all the way down to zero.

Is your firm having trouble learning how to get high PR backlinks for free?  Have you been considering a deal to buy high PR backlinks, because you don't know how to find them for yourself?  Don't worry—it's not nearly as hard to get high PR backlinks as you think.  Keep reading this guide to find out some creative ways to obtain high PR backlinks without needing to pay a service for every link you get.  You'll also learn why it can be a bad idea to buy high PR backlinks, and why this strategy can backfire dramatically on websites foolish enough to use it.

What Are High PR Backlinks?

Before we get started on how to get high PR backlinks, we need to take a look at exactly what they are.  PR stands for “PageRank” (all one word).  PageRank is a number on a 0 to 10 scale that is, essentially, a guide to how popular and high quality a website is considered to be.  The very most popular websites on the internet have a PR of 10, while a brand new website or one with very few connections to anyone else online would have a 0.

Backlinks are links to your website from another website.  If the website has a high PageRank, these are said to be high PR backlinks.  It's not always easy to get high PR backlinks, especially from websites that have very regulated submissions.  Because of this, many services exist to help people buy high PR backlinks.

Why Does PageRank Matter?

PageRank matters because not all backlinks give the same amount of ranking value to your website.  High PR backlinks are weighted significantly more heavily than low PR backlinks when Google decides where your website should appear in someone's search.  Because the vast majority of web users pick a website from the very first page of results, rather than going through many pages, it's critical to get high PR backlinks.

The reason that Google gives more weight to high PR backlinks is because these links give much more authority.  Typically, in order to get high PR backlinks, you'll need to have some type of relatively high quality content.  On the other hand, people can much more easily buy low quality backlinking services, so these lower PR backlinks are considered to be substantially lower quality.

Why is it much harder to buy high PR backlinks than low PR ones?  Mostly because there are far fewer high PageRank websites in total.  Before Google based a website's search rankings in part on the PR of its backlink sources, it was very easy for companies to use “article spinning” services that gave them hundreds of backlinks in just a few hours.  Now, with the changes to the search algorithm, it's considered much harder to get the kind of high PR backlinks you need to make your rankings rise.

How Do I Get High PR Backlinks to My Site?

Just because it can be difficult to get high PR backlinks doesn't mean it's impossible.  You definitely don't have to buy high PR backlinks in order to have them.  Some of the highest PageRank websites allow for public posting, and as long as your content meets quality guidelines, you can give yourself the links you want.

For example, one of the highest PageRank websites that you can post to quite easily is Youtube.  If you record some video content for your website and host it on Youtube, you can create backlinks in the description of your video.  These backlinks will come from a very high PageRank website, so they will be worth much more than if you had just gotten low quality links.

It's worth keeping in mind that Google's new algorithms also reward diversity.  If you buy high PR links exclusively, or just focus your energy on getting high PR links, you may end up having a backlink arrangement that appears suspicious to Google.  Generally, you should get high PR links as part of a comprehensive backlinking strategy, rather than working only for these links and not other types.

Should I Buy High PR Backlinks?

Even if you're struggling to get high PR backlinks, buying them isn't always a good answer.  While some services that allow you to buy high PR backlinks are on the level and offer good, contextual linking, others will post low quality items on as many high PR websites as possible.  Keep in mind that Google doesn't like it when businesses buy high PR backlinks.  Their search engineers have been getting better and better at identifying when people get high PR backlinks by buying them instead of earning them with great content.

If you do decide to buy high PR backlinks, use a lot of caution and check out the services carefully before deciding on one.  You don't want to get high PR backlinks, pay for them, and then find out that they haven't actually helped your website because it's now designated as “over optimized” by Google.  Only buy high PR backlinks from services that can show you a track record of success even after Google's new Penguin and Panda algorithms took effect.

Can I Get High PR Backlinks for Free?

There's definitely no real reason to buy high PR backlinks instead of making them yourself.  You can easily get high PR backlinks just by blogging, then linking to your blog entries on various Web 2.0 sites.  If you're making good content, you'll quickly have high PR backlinks without needing to buy a single one.

If you've already tried to get high PR backlinks in this way but haven't been successful, you may think you can buy high PR backlinks as an alternative.  Think about it, though: if people aren't coming to your website when you linked in those places before, could it be that your content quality was simply too low?  Consider making better quality content before choosing to buy high PR backlinks.