Why are properly formatted links from related websites so important?
Links are not the same – here’s the little known inside scoop on what works and what doesn’t.

Most potential clients searching for a lawyer will do so using search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Most will click on the links “above the fold” – the first 5 or so firms listed.

The law firm search engine game is extremely competitive. I have worked with law firm sites since 1999, and I can tell you – it is very difficult to get high rankings for a law related site. But I have had some great successes.

Link popularity is proving to be the deciding factor on what will or will not rank well, especially on Google. Google’s algorithm ranks law websites mainly on:

1. The count of incoming links
2. The quality of the incoming links
3. The anchor text (link text) of the incoming link to your webpage.

Search engines give a higher value to one way links to your website.
Aside from a clean, useful – content rich site the top method used to achieve a high search engine ranking for a law firm website is:

Valid inbound links from related sites.

This is absolutely the top law firm SEO tactic. Google recognizes that if there is an inbound link from a related site it validates the site. But links are NOT the same. Links from “link farms” are disqualified. A perfect link is this:

1. One-way (no back-link from your site to their site).
2. Link text contains your key words and/or your domain name IF it contains keywords. Keyword domains are key to SE rankings. Link page heading contains your keywords.
3. Link is from a page with the same content.
4. Link source domain name contains your keyword(s).
5. Link page is ranked on search engines.
6. The link source page has few other outbound links.

Search engines count this and reduces the value of a link if there are more than 8-10 other links on the page. Some say more than 50 disqualifies ALL links…!

So links on the common “resource” page don’t count as much as a single link on a page with related content. One way to achieve this is to set up separate pages for various practice areas on a domain with some of the keywords in it.

The absolute best links are found on the HOME PAGE of a very related website.

How do you get links like that?

1. You ask for them.
This is difficult, since for one – it’s competitive. And who will give you a valuable link if there is not a link back of similar value? The way around that is to ask someone with several sites to link from one site and to give a link to another. Then both are one-way.
By the way – another SE tactic is to have many web sites with similar content on different domains and servers.

2. You pay for them.
Sites like text-link-ads.com will charge anywhere from $5-20 per month for a link on a law related website.

3. You create them.
The best way to do this is to write articles and submit them to web-based article databases. Such as http://www.isnare.com
You can also be active in blogs and forums related to your practice area. Make sure your link is correctly formatted as per above. ** Note: Many blogs now tag links with a . This means the link is not picked up by search engines.

Press releases are another great way to create one-way inbound links.

So – bottom line is: if you want search engine rankings – correctly formatted inbound links is pretty well the only way you will achieve this.

Author Bio: Ingvar is the author of web marketing articles specializing in law firm marketing. For more information see: http://www.CredibleWebsites.com http://www.MedicaidWebsites.com http://www.WebCredibility.ca

Category: Business
Keywords: lawfirm marketing,lawyer seo,lawfirm linking