Building backlinks is the foundation of any strong search engine optimization effort in 2012 and 2013.  However, as nearly every search engine marketer knows, it's not easy to build backlinks that get noticed, get indexed, and work to bring your search rankings up.  New changes to Google have made it important to look not only at what backlinks you're bringing in, but where they come from and what they look like.  Keep reading this guide to find out how your law firm can start building backlinks that work—and why you may not need a backlink generator to do it.

Building Backlinks 101

The more websites that link to a site, the more trustworthy Google usually assumes that website is, and the higher its search rank climbs.  This makes a lot of sense: think about the kinds of websites that are typically linked by huge numbers of people.  Facebook, Youtube, CNN and other news websites, Wikipedia, Google, and so on are all websites that people search for quite frequently.  When these appear earlier in search results, people searching don't have to spend as much time looking for what they want and can use the web more efficiently.

While the traditional way of building backlinks is to create exciting or informative or humorous content, then wait for it to spread into the web (perhaps after giving it a little nudge by getting linked by people you know), for some marketers, this wasn't fast enough.  These marketers created backlink generator software that was capable of creating backlinks all over the web much faster than any human beings could.

How a Backlink Generator Works

In order to start building backlinks at breakneck speed, backlink generator software works by having a large database of websites in its programming that are easy to post to.  When you start using one of these pieces of software, it starts writing automatic comments on blogs and making automatic posts to many different websites.  Some generators work by submitting an article you've written to large numbers of websites that allow for unmoderated submissions.

By building backlinks in bulk, the idea behind a backlink generator is that it can bring a website from being relatively new and unlinked to being on the front page of keyword searches within a very short period of time.

The Problems With Using a Backlink Generator

While that's how generators work in theory, building backlinks in practice is actually a bit more difficult.  There are several different reasons that you might want to avoid the use of a backlink generator completely.

One of these problems comes from the nature of the work a law firm does.  People are already reluctant to trust most law firms, and it takes much more time to gain trust than it does to lose it.  If your law firm starts using so-called “black hat” techniques that produce large volumes of low quality content in order to promote your website, people will see it.  When they do, is that the kind of reputation your law firm is hoping to achieve, both in your community and—keeping in mind that the internet is a public space—around the world?  No attorney passes the bar just to become a spammer.

The other problems with using a backlink generator come from just one new search engine algorithm: Google Penguin.  Building backlinks after Penguin was activated in April of 2012 has been much tougher and much more quality focused.

Penguin Kills Most Backlink Generators

Google had no love for backlink generator programs.  They were regarded as something akin to web smog, obscuring the view of the websites people really wanted to see.  To get rid of this method of building backlinks, they released Penguin, a search engine update that stopped many of these generators cold.

How did they do it?  By penalizing websites that met any of several criteria for being over optimized.  For example, because automated backlink generator technology isn't very good at varying keywords and keyword phrases, websites that used the same anchor text over and over with no variation have been hit hard in search rankings.  When you start building backlinks, you need to be careful to make a natural-seeming variety of anchor text keywords.

Another way that Penguin changed building backlinks was by penalizing websites that have backlinks exclusively from low PageRank websites.  If your backlink generator worked by spamming articles on hundreds of low quality domains, you've now got a mess on your hands.  Because Google sees this as evidence of building backlinks artificially, you'll have to ask the webmasters of those domains to take down the mentions of your website.  If they don't, you'll have to show Google the documentation that shows you tried.  It's a long, tedious process, and you're better off building backlinks of high quality from the start.

Do Any Backlink Generators Still Work?

It's true that there are still some programs that do currently help with building backlinks.  Many of these are still using very spammy techniques, but have found loopholes and end runs around the Google engineers' detection of low quality link building.

However, even if you think you've found a good new way to run a link generator without running afoul of Penguin, use caution.  It's very likely that Penguin is just the first in a series of updates designed to improve backlink quality and decrease the prevalence of link spam.  Plan for the future, and get backlinks the way they were intended to be gotten: by giving people content so interesting that they can't help but share it with others.

Building Backlinks Without a Backlink Generator

There are hundreds of resources—many of them right here on lawfirms.laws.com—on how to build backlinks without using any kind of automation.  You can build backlinks using blogs, social networking, videos, even traditional media coverage.

The important thing about these links is that they're developed in accordance with the content of the website they're on.  These aren't links that are about making it harder to get where you want to go—instead, they make it easier.  Those are the types of links you need to think about making, and when you do, you'll never find yourself in trouble with Google again.

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.