In the past, the legal profession was somewhat reluctant to advertise or have a presence online. Some in the Bar Association felt it was not a niche area that should operate online due to the sensitivity of information by clients and the possibility of a data breach. But most lawyers have now realized that you can have a website that provides information to your clients without having to risk dealing with personal information.
Most lawyer sites have a contact form where you can leave your basic information and ask for a callback and set up an appointment that you do live in the attorney’s office. The American Bar Association’s official viewpoint on online lawyers is to do so at their own risk. They have a page up that shows the level of security they have observed with online sites in many of the states. This page mainly deals with cloud services used by attorney websites and how they can be more secure in their data collection and transfer practices.
Basically, as long as a client does not put information about their case online or in emails to lawyers, there should be no reason to worry about the security. Most legal sites are highly valuable to legal clients as they give important legal information to people who are in need of legal help while offering a contact form for them to ask for an appointment with a lawyer.
Link Building Practices
When it comes to link-building for attorneys and legal firms, there are some standards and ethics considerations you should keep in mind if you own a legal website. Below are some tips to consider when building links on your legal sites that keep in mind the general ethics of the legal profession.
1. Focus on geographic searches by location. When linking to other sites, focus on making your search results specific to your geographical location. This will avoid sending people from your site to other locations where you will be promoting other areas rather than your own area. If you are referring people to generic legal information sites, that’s fine. But always focus on your state or regional area most.
2. Provide valuable information about legal matters and situations. The main reason people come to legal sites is for information about legal issues that they do not understand. Often they have been arrested for a crime or think they could be arrested. If the legal issue involves civil law or procedures, you can focus on that to give visitors information on what civil cases involve.
3. Put links to the main site in all blog articles to increase backlink strength with Google. As long as your links are relevant, quality links, you can put plenty of them in your articles back to your main site or contact page to increase your ROI and engagement levels. If you link out to other sites, make sure you are sending them somewhere that will be beneficial to them while staying relevant to your topic. For example, if you are discussing how to find a good lawyer in your blog article, provide a page with tips on how to find the best lawyers in your area. Then be sure to include a link to your own law site for local people searching for legal help.
4. Use linking in all YouTube video ads and other media in the descriptions. When you create video content or other media for your legal site or blog, you should always put in a powerful “call-to-action” within the body of your YouTube or other video description. Include your links to social media as well as to your main site also. You may also want to include a link to your contact form at the bottom of your YouTube description with a strong call-to-action.
5. Provide several other services to visitors like a photo gallery or list of legal services. While your focus should be on legal issues and your legal services, you can also provide some other perks like a nice photo gallery or other aspects to increase your views and engagement levels. Just make sure your other links are relevant to what you do as a legal firm and don’t stray too far from your topics or services.
The Most Important Things
Successful websites are highly focused on their topic. If you are a lawyer and want to create a successful website, you must focus on what you do best and how you can solve your client’s problems. Try to put yourself in the place of your potential clients who have a specific legal problem they are seeking help with.
This is how you engage potential clients to want to learn more about what you do as a law firm. Be sure to include a strong section about your attorneys where they can get to know the lawyers who will actually be helping them with their case. They need to know a little about the attorneys and their credentials before they will want to contact you. Providing a link back to the attorneys’ social media sites and biography pages may also be helping in increasing the trust level of clients for your lawyers.
Focus on sign up or contact page
Remember the end result of your website. You want to provide valuable legal information that will help people understand the legal process. But you also want to get them to sign up for a free consultation. This is where you will provide a link in your final call-to-action on your site to ask them to sign up for a free appointment.
Getting the initial appointment where you can meet the client and see if you can help them is the key to getting regular clients in your geographic area that will help you build your law practice using your online website to do so.
Follow all standards for legal practices
As a legal firm, you are probably quite familiar with the standards of ethics in your state that you must follow to be in compliance with the regulations. You should make sure you are familiar with all of the regulations in your area and keep in mind all ethical practices of both civil and criminal law in your state.
Finally, make sure you provide a link to your credentials such as your law degree or other licensing if needed to help increase your level of credibility.
Using backlinks to promote and improve the impact of your brand can help you as a legal firm as long as you follow the standards and provide value to your potential customers.