Hiring an SEO link building service can seem like a good idea for law firms trying to stand out on today's internet, where over 2/3 of U.S. legal clients look up attorneys online.  However, SEO link building services aren't for everybody, and if you're not careful, you could get in trouble with your bar association for unethical advertising techniques.  In this guide, we'll take a closer look at what sets a good SEO link building service apart from a bad one, and how to decide whether you need these services at all.

Reasons to Use an SEO Link Building Service

SEO link building services have exploded onto the scene in recent years to solve a problem.  It doesn't help to have a website if no one knows how to get there.  The vast majority of internet users simply click on one of the first few results for their search, rather than doing extensive research over dozens or hundreds of pages.  If your law firm appears too late in the search results pertaining to your legal field, you'll have to pay for advertising to increase your website's visibility.

However, paid strategies have weaknesses.  Many people don't read contextual sidebar ads, the type that attorneys are most likely to use.  Instead, people prefer to use the “organic” search results—the non-ads.  Today, search engine optimization to get to the top of the search heap involves a great deal of link building.  This means you'll need to get your website linked by other websites.

But what if you don't know a lot of owners of other websites or blogs?  How can you do the link building you need to get the search engine results you're looking for?  SEO link building services are staffed by experts who can help you understand several different link building strategies and make a good decision about which one to pursue.

When you use an SEO link building service, you won't have to learn much about SEO or link building yourself.  SEO link building services can be crucial to the success of some small firms where no one is able to take on additional web work.  Instead of hiring a full time staff member for your link building, hiring an SEO link building service helps you save money.

Reasons to Avoid SEO Link Building Services

Even though it may sound like hiring an SEO link building service is win-win, this is only true for certain services.  Some SEO link building services can actually harm your online reputation by associating your website with spammers or worse.  If you aren't good at vetting online services, you may want to avoid looking for an SEO link building service unless one has been recommended by another lawyer you trust.

You may also want to avoid SEO link building services if you're trying to keep tight control over your content and how it is used.  Some services tend to post your content on many different web pages, which is often of limited use.

There's also the fact that today, no SEO link building service has really figured out exactly what Google's looking for when it comes to website quality.  Google's own answers are vague, and SEO link building services are generally having to simply use their best guesses.  While it's possible that an SEO link building service in 2012 can help you build your business, it's also possible that you'll throw money at the problem without seeing a solution.

Finding the Best SEO Link Building Services

Your best chance of making a profit by using an SEO link building service is if you can find one that has already been recommended by other attorneys.  SEO link building services that haven't yet tried optimizing websites for law firms should be avoided at all costs.

You'll also want to get a handle on some basic new trends and SEO concepts, as well as which concepts are considered outdated (like press release submissions).  Any time an SEO link building service uses out of date strategies, it will come straight out of your bottom line.

While the most expensive SEO link building services aren't necessarily the best, the cheapest are unlikely to be worth using at all.  A cheap SEO link building service may build your links by posting them in irrelevant places or with misleading blurbs.  This is sloppy, and should never be part of the SEO link building strategy for a law firm or any other group of professionals.

Alternatives to SEO Link Building Services

You don't necessarily need to hire a high priced SEO link building service to improve where your website shows up in search results.  Instead, consider doing your own link building by building a quality blog.  There's really no substitute for the creation of your own, high-quality content that really matters to the kinds of clients your law firm brings in.

You can also direct your link building attention toward social media websites.  Social media search engine optimization can be a much better way to have your content “go viral” and increase the visibility of your website than SEO link building services.  Websites like LinkedIn and Facebook make it easier to share links than ever before.

Monitoring the Progress of Your SEO Link Building Service

SEO link building services will generally be of use for your mid to long term marketing strategy.  In the short term, it's unlikely that an SEO link building service will be very helpful—Google's indexers will take time to notice the increasing quality of your website and the number of inbound links you're receiving.

Just because it takes time, however, doesn't mean that your SEO link building services can make you wait forever for results.  No matter what, you should be able to see a difference to your bottom line after six months.  If you don't, your service may not be using the best techniques, or you may be having conversion issues that are preventing you from making the most of your new higher search results.

If you've been reviewing your options for link building solutions, you have probably found many different outsourcing companies.  But can you really outsource link building successfully?  Recent changes to Google called Penguin and Panda have changed the way that link building works for most websites, including law firm sites.  Over a million websites saw their rankings decline and six million requests for link removal resulted.  How does this impact the viability of your link building solutions?  Keep reading to find out.

How Have Penguin and Panda Changed Google?

What do Penguin and Panda have in common?  It's not just that they're both black and white.  They're also the names of two new Google initiatives that have been launched in just the last year.  The reason that Google began to work on these initiatives was that many companies were using unethical link building solutions.  While some companies would outsource link building to reputable agencies, others used techniques that involved spamming and paid links.

When the Panda and Penguin rollouts took place, websites were no longer just ranked based on the number of inbound links they had.  The quality of the links started mattering, too.  This removed a lot of the incentive to use unethical link building solutions.  Today, companies that want to outsource link building need to keep Panda and Penguin in mind.

What Are the Advantages of Outsourcing Link Building Solutions?

Obviously, the biggest advantage if you outsource link building will be that you just don't have to do it yourself.   In a post-Penguin world, you may want to avoid working on the kinds of difficult and time consuming link building solutions that are still useful in improving search rankings.  When you outsource link building, you'll be able to devote more time to what matters: doing legal work for your law firm.

Another advantage of using outside link building solutions is that if you find a good link building company, they'll stay on top of new developments to search engine optimization strategies.  You have enough on your plate without trying to keep up with SEO technology and new link building tools.  When you outsource link building, you can go hands-off and let the link building company figure out your next strategy.

Are There Disadvantages to Outsourcing Link Building Solutions?

Absolutely.  While it may seem like it's a great idea to outsource link building, you should also consider that not every link building service is ethical.  If you hire someone to provide your link building solutions, there is always a chance that they'll do it in a way that reflects negatively on your law firm.  Make sure that you have seen samples of past link building solutions for law firms in your outsourcing provider's portfolio.

You also lose some of your flexibility when you outsource link building.  If you had created your own link building solutions, you'll be able to change and adapt them as needed.  Not every outsourcing provider keeps abreast of new developments to search engine technology.  If you feel more comfortable keeping up with the state of tech than letting someone else do it, you may want to provide your own link building solutions instead of hiring someone else.

Preparing to Outsource Link Building

If you do choose to outsource your link building, you'll need to take some steps in preparation.  Your website needs to be attractive and designed to be conversion ready if you're outsourcing link building solutions.  Remember, no matter how much your search engine results are improved, that won't help if your traffic all bounces out due to a poorly designed website.

Speed matters too.  Google now bases part of its search engine rankings on how long your website's pages take to load.  For slow websites, this creates a double whammy: searchers are less likely to stay on your website already, and now Google also negatively impacts your rank.  Before you outsource link building, verify that your website is fast and that all pages are downloading correctly.

What Kinds of Link Building Look Good to Google?

Generally speaking, Google wants to reward “difficult” link building to authority sites, not easy link building to spam sites.  For example, let's say that through your public relations efforts, you landed an interview with a national magazine and they included a link to your firm in their online edition.  These link building solutions are some of the best ways that you can get links from authority websites.

Another kind of linking that will look good to Google is when you insert your law firm's profile into a directory, whether a local directory of businesses or a ratings directory specifically for lawyers.  The more of these directory links that you have up to date and with accurate profile information, the more likely it is that your website will appear higher in search and local search results.

You can also build links by asking people on Facebook or LinkedIn to share your content with others.  This is a great way to have your links shared not only by the people you know, but also by the people they know.  If you have some content that “goes viral” by being spread through word of mouth, you'll soon see your reputation and rankings rise up.

What Kinds of Link Building Look Bad to Google?

Usually, if you try to cheat, Google will notice.  If you outsource link building and your link building company primarily works by putting links to your site on spam websites, your reputation will suffer and odds are that Google will drop your search result rankings.

You're also going to have a bad time with most types of link building solutions that involve automated press release companies.  While press releases are certainly a valid link building strategy, these kinds of automated services are not able to really provide you the kind of readership that a real public relations service could.  These websites are not really a substitute for professional press releases or media relations.

As the year begins to draw toward a close, niche marketing strategies have begun to change to reflect recent changes to the online legal marketplace.  With over 80 percent of consumers now researching attorneys online—mostly with search engines—before deciding on who to call for a consultation, you need a great niche marketing strategy more than ever as 2013 gets nearer.  Keep reading to find out how you can take action now to make sure that your niche marketing strategies are still working well into the future.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #1: Get Social Today

One of the best niche marketing strategies of right now is to integrate the rest of your search engine optimization with your social marketing campaigns.  If you're not already using social media, you should start as soon as possible.  In addition to improving your niche marketing strategies and SEO results, becoming active on social media websites can steadily improve your online reputation.

Depending on what your niche involves, you may decide to use different social media websites to prop up your social media strategy.  For instance, if you're primarily marketing to other businesses, you may want to start building your network on LinkedIn and discussing your niche using LinkedIn groups.  If you've got a more consumer-oriented practice, Facebook is probably a better place to focus your social media niche marketing strategies.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #2: Update Your Website

Niche marketing strategies involve giving some things up in order to focus on your niches.  You can't really implement a niche marketing strategy properly if you're maintaining a website that barely acknowledges your new niches except for on their landing pages.

Decide on your niche marketing strategies for 2013, then get a website update ready starting now for the best possible implementation.  You'll attract a lot more clients for your niches if you look like you're actually dedicated, not just trawling for traffic.

When you update your website, you should also implement any mobile niche marketing strategies and have a mobile friendly version of your entire website.  This niche marketing strategy can help you to get a big chunk of the market that a lot of other attorneys are ignoring.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #3: Go Local

Think about your local area when you're developing your law firm's niche marketing strategies.  You'll do much better when you're trying to decide between competing niche marketing strategies if you already know what the local market wants.

Consider the ways in which your area is changing in terms of demographics, and how those demographic changes might change what people want in an attorney.  Trying to provide a solution to these problems is a great way to build your niche marketing strategies in a way that no one else can match.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #4: Unique Niches

If you're stuck trying to develop new niche marketing strategies, maybe you just need some better niches to market to.  Consider just tinkering with Google Instant to find out what kinds of attorneys people are looking for in your area.  You may find that when people search for a criminal defense lawyer in your town, there's a niche that isn't being well covered by the existing options.

Niche market finder programs can automate a lot of this tinkering, and if you're serious about developing niche marketing strategies, you might want to download one.  However, not all niche market finders are great for developing a niche marketing strategy for law firms specifically.  You may want to ask the developers of the software whether law firms have had good results, and ask for reviews from law firms that have previously used their software.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #5: Types of Niches

The type of niches that can create successful niche marketing strategies are very diverse.  You might want to think about talents you have in areas other than law when trying to develop a new niche marketing strategy, especially if you're developing niche markets as a new attorney or one who has recently hung a shingle.

For example, if you speak a language other than English, you may want to make that other language part of the focus of your practice and cater to other people who speak it.  You can also build a niche based on what you did before you were an attorney.  For instance, a special education teacher who used to teach autistic children could become an impressive attorney in a firm specializing in the legal challenges of autistic education.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #6: Look to the Future

When you're planning long term niche marketing strategies, you should be thinking about the already observable demographic trends in your community.  If, for example, your community seems to be filling with retirees, for the next 20 years a practice that works mostly on estates and wills will probably be successful.

If it seems like everyone is leaving the town where you're living in, it may be time to pack up and move with them.  Law is a service industry, and no niche marketing strategies will help you be successful if there aren't enough clients living within reasonable driving distance of your office—or if too many other attorneys are between you and those clients.

Niche Marketing Strategy Guide Tip #7: Beware of Scams

When you're trying to develop niche marketing strategies, make sure that you're not falling prey to any scams to try to enhance your niche SEO results.  “Article spinning” services, for example, may tell you that they'll repost your article in a wide range of places, thus improving your search engine results.

The problem?  Google cracked down on these services last year, by creating a search algorithm that disregards article spinners.  This means that if you're trying these article marketing techniques now as part of your niche marketing strategies, you're probably wasting your money and time.  It's very unlikely that indiscriminate repackaging of your article will actually lead to more clients in the long term, and it could do a lot to hurt your online reputation.

Law firm SEO has been changing as rapidly as the rest of the web in recent years.  Today, with about 85 percent of legal clients doing research online before they decide on an attorney to hire, SEO for lawyers has become more than just a cool tech tool.  Today, lawyer SEO is a necessity for any attorney who wants to stay economically viable.  Keep reading this guide to find out the newest and best techniques for law firm SEO that can help you stay on top of the latest technological developments for attorney websites.

What's Hot: Social Networking SEO For Lawyers

If you think that LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are just something people use to waste time, you need to change the way you think about social networking websites.  Far from just being entertainment, these websites present some of the best opportunities for law firm SEO.

First of all, you should make sure that your law firm has a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook profile, and a Twitter account to make it easier to set up SEO for lawyers on the sites.  Then, you should complete your profiles on these websites including some keywords that might be used to find you.

This isn't the only time that you can use lawyer SEO on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn.  You can regularly link back to pages on your website with posts on any social networking site.  These posts are also easy to share, garnering you more inbound links (another critical aspect of law firm SEO).

What's Not: Lawyer SEO That Looks Like Spam

Just because you're using SEO for lawyers doesn't mean that you should spam your Facebook and Twitter followers.  If you use too much law firm SEO copy in your profile, or especially in your posts and status updates, you'll turn potential clients off in a hurry.

Make sure that your lawyer SEO links to genuinely informative articles and interesting content, and doesn't just link to your front page.  If you keep linking repeatedly to your front page as part of your law firm SEO strategy, you'll soon find yourself losing most of the people you've worked so hard to bring to your Facebook or Twitter pages.

If you're ever in doubt as to whether something is lawyer SEO spam or whether it's genuinely good content, ask someone you trust.  Remember that people don't usually like to read advertisements, and that your SEO for lawyers should be a lot more creative than just some basic ads.

What's Hot: Mobile Law Firm SEO

No, not a mobile law firm—mobile SEO, which optimizes your website for people who are accessing it through a browser on their iOS, Android, or other smartphone operating system.  Mobile SEO for lawyers adds new layers of difficulty.  Mobile visitors won't be able to scroll around as easily, or click as easily on small text.  It also means that they won't be able to read small text without zooming.

Getting onboard with the new mobile lawyer SEO trend is a great idea no matter what kind of law firm you have.  Studies show that by the end of 2014, most web traffic in the United States is likely to come from mobile devices, rather than desktop computers.  If you're not using mobile law firm SEO, you'll actually be losing out on most of your potential internet traffic.

What's Not: “Article Marketing” Services

Don't believe anyone who tells you that article marketing is still a good idea for lawyer SEO.  This was a method commonly used for SEO for lawyers in the 2000s, but in 2012, it won't work.  Google's search indexing algorithms have become too sophisticated for these services, which worked by copying the same article onto hundreds of web pages.

Article marketing today won't just make you look bad if someone realizes you're doing it as part of your law firm SEO.  If Google notices that this is the technique you're using for lawyer SEO, it can actually stop listing your websites.

All paid article links, as well as reciprocal link directories, are also likely to end up reducing your rankings.  Avoid these forms of SEO for lawyers at all costs, even if a “behind the times” service tells you that they're still good law firm SEO methods.

What's Hot: Latent Semantic Indexing SEO For Lawyers

One of the newest methods of lawyer SEO is using many different keyword variations in the same page instead of a repeated keyword.  This is called latent semantic indexing, and this is a strategy that should be learned by anyone who uses SEO for lawyers.  While this may sound like a very technical concept, it's actually much easier to learn than you might think, and is at the very forefront of law firm SEO today.

Latent semantic indexing works for lawyer SEO because most search engines have become smart about looking not only for the exact word that you're searching for, but also that word's synonyms and variants.  You can use this SEO for lawyers tactic whenever you want to make your copy sound more natural.  The lack of repeated keywords makes it much easier to read, and you'll have better conversion rates from this type of lawyer SEO.

What's Not: Law Firm SEO With Keyword Stuffing

When you do any kind of lawyer SEO, you need to avoid stuffing the same keywords over and over into your copy.  Google and other search engines will notice if your keyword density looks too high.  While this has been the case for some time, recent changes to Google make it even harder to get the keyword density right when writing copy for SEO for lawyers.

That's because now, Google may even consider relatively low keyword densities spam, if you're not being careful to use different keyword terms for your links.  If you use one keyword term repeatedly, linking it over and over, you'll be punished in search results even if the overall density of the keyword being used would normally be within acceptable parameters.