Link building is essential for law firms that want results from their websites. Virtually no other SEO practice can move the needle as much as link building.
But how can you start building links to your website - and how can you do it the right way so that you get maximum benefits?
This guide will help you understand that. We’ve outlined what we’ve learned during more than a decade in this industry. Let’s dive in.
Contents
Successful Law Firm Link Building [Example]
“How does link building help law firm websites?”
The best way to answer that question is to check the results law firms are currently getting from link building.
We’ll analyze a site owned by Cordell & Cordell, a law firm that specializes in domestic litigation.
The website has over 72K backlinks from almost 4,000 referring domains:
Above, you can also see that the website gets 87.8K monthly visits and ranks for 49.1K keywords. That includes highly competitive keywords, such as:
- child support lawyer
- child custody lawyer
- child custody attorney
- divorce attorney
- divorce lawyer
- family law attorney
In fact, the website ranks on page #1 of Google for all these competitive keywords - and is among the top three results for three of them:
We can’t attribute these results to just link building. They’re probably also related to good on-page SEO.
Still, we know for a fact that backlinks help sites rank higher and get more organic traffic. That’s how we know that link building is responsible for at least a part of the results we’ve analyzed.
TL;DR: Law firm link building results in higher rankings for (competitive) keywords and increased organic traffic.
What To Consider When Building Links
Want to get maximum SEO benefits from your link building efforts?
Then consider these five things when building links.
✅ Inbound links
Inbound links are links that point to your law firm’s website from other websites.
They’re different from outbound and internal links.
- Outbound links point from your website to other websites.
- Internal links point from one page on your website to another page on your website.
When talking about link building, we’re talking about building inbound links. These links have the most impact on your SEO, but they’re also the hardest to build. We’ll refer to them as “backlinks” or simply “links” in the rest of this guide.
TL;DR: Your link building campaign should revolve around building inbound links.
✅ Do-follow links
Your backlinks can be do-follow or no-follow, depending on whether they have a nofollow tag in their HTML:
- HTML code for a do-follow link: <a href="[URL]">[anchor text]</a>
- HTML code for a no-follow link: <a href="[URL]" rel="nofollow">[anchor text]</a>
Do-follow links will help you see SEO results faster than no-follow links.
So, ideally, the majority of the links you build will be do-follow.
TL;DR: Shoot for getting do-follow instead of no-follow links.
✅ Domain authority
Every site has a domain authority (DA) score.
Domain authority is a metric that indicates a site’s quality. High-quality sites have high DA scores; low-quality sites have low scores.
But DA can also tell us a lot about link quality - i.e., how likely it is that a link from one site will help improve another site’s rankings.
In fact, DA of linking URLs seems to be the strongest predictor of ranking positions:
In other words, links from sites with high DA are worth more. They have a greater and faster impact on your SEO and will help you increase your rankings asap.
That’s why we suggest you build links on sites with DA scores of 40 or above. These are average or above-average DA scores, and you can expect your links to reflect this.
TL;DR: Focus on building links on sites with DA scores of 40 or above.
✅ Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text of a hyperlink. It’s what you see instead of a URL.
👉 This is an example of an anchor text.
Its purpose is to give search engines and readers context about a link’s destination. And how well it fulfills that purpose can make or break your link building efforts.
So, how can you write anchor texts for maximum impact?
According to Google, there are two correct ways to go about it:
- “Make the link text match the exact text of the title or heading that you're referencing.” - Example: For the best results, learn How to build links with HARO.
- “Write a description of the destination page to use as the link text, capitalized as if it's part of the sentence.” - Example: You can use blogger outreach tools to automate these tasks.
Try to follow these rules when writing your anchor texts.
Also, always include your target keyword (or its variations) in your anchor texts. That will help search engines connect the link destination to a keyword more easily.
TL;DR: Make your anchor texts descriptive and ensure they contain your target keywords.
✅ Link relevance
The more relevant your link is to the website it’s coming from, the more benefits you’ll get from it. And vice versa: if your link isn’t relevant, it won’t greatly affect your SEO.
For example, your law firm’s website wouldn’t really benefit from a link in a beauty blog. Your link simply wouldn’t be topically relevant to the website it’s coming from.
So, you should try to build links on sites related to law and more specific, niche-related topics. E.g., a law firm specializing in business litigation can benefit from links in publications like Entrepreneur, Inc., or Forbes - and not just websites strictly related to law.
TL;DR: Build links on sites that are topically relevant to your own website.
11 Best Law Firm Link Building Strategies
Here are the 11 best link building strategies we’ve used ourselves to build links for dozens of law firms.
1. Get Listed In Directories
Listing your business in legal directories is probably the easiest way to get links.
You can find many paid and free directories for law firms online. Here are a few to help you get started:
You’ll usually have to submit your business info to get listed, including your name, address, phone number, and website.
Make sure you submit the same info to all the directories you contact, or you may confuse Google and other search engines. For example, if you submit different addresses to different directories, Google may not know which is right and which to show to users. This may cause the search engine to ignore your listings altogether.
Overall, this strategy has multiple benefits, and they go beyond SEO. A directory listing puts you in front of people who are actively searching for a lawyer, builds credibility by placing your firm alongside other practitioners, and improves your visibility on legal-specific searches that Google’s general results may not surface.
However, directories usually have low domain authority, and their backlinks are often nofollow. Also, most directories don’t let you choose your anchor text yourself. In most cases, you can expect the name of your law firm to be used as your anchor text.
With that said, we wouldn’t skip this method if we were you. Despite being low-quality, links from directories can still help you achieve your SEO and marketing goals.
2. Create Link-Worthy Assets
If you’re looking for a good link building strategy that will never get you penalized - this is it.
Creating linkable assets is the most natural method you can use to build high-quality links. It’s more about attracting and less about actively seeking links.
You attract links by creating useful assets that other sites want to link to.
Three types of assets generally work the best: guides, studies, and tools.
For example, Quittance opted for creating a tool - an injury compensation calculator:
This page alone currently has 165 backlinks, 48% of which are do-follow:
The upside of this strategy is that it can help you get high-quality links - links that are do-follow, have optimized anchor texts, and come from high-authority sites.
The downside is that this strategy may take a lot of time, and the results can be unpredictable. That’s why we suggest coupling it with blogger outreach - i.e., promoting the assets you create to bloggers that can link to them.
3. Expert Sourcing (HARO / Featured.com)
Law firms have an underused advantage in expert sourcing: journalists and student editors constantly need attorneys on the record for stories about litigation, regulation, and legal news. Answering those queries earns editorial links from law schools' student-run publications, legal trade press, and mainstream outlets - the kind of citations Google's 2025-26 ranking signals actively reward.
The mechanics:
- Sign up for Featured.com (the relaunched HARO), Qwoted, and Help a B2B Writer.
- Filter queries down to legal, regulatory, business, and personal-finance topics where your firm's practice areas line up.
- Reply to fewer queries with better answers - 200 words of usable, attributable expertise from a named partner beats a templated pitch from a paralegal every time.
- Pitch directly to law-school student journalists at the major school papers in your jurisdiction. A $0 retainer interview about a current case earns you a real editorial .edu link.
4. Create Shareable Graphics
Most site owners struggle with images. They know they shouldn’t use stock photos, but they don’t have the time or money to create unique images from scratch.
So, imagine if you created unique graphics that other site owners could use for free. Most would probably be happy to use your images. And they’d probably be willing to link to you as the source.
Infographics seem to work especially well for this purpose. Here’s an example of an infographic created by one law firm:
According to TinEye, this same infographic appears on 17 different websites:
So, this infographic potentially helped its creators get 17 backlinks.
You can get the same or even better results. Just make sure you create something other people want to share.
5. Unlinked Brand Mentions
Unlinked brand mentions are mentions of your brand across the web that aren’t linking to your site. You can easily turn them into links because your website is relevant to the context.
All you have to do is find your unlinked mentions and ask the site owners to link to you. You can use a brand monitoring tool to find your brand mentions more easily:
Just enter your brand name to start tracking it. You’ll automatically see all mentions of it on other sites and social media.
6. Local Sponsorships And Community Partnerships
Sponsoring a local event, charity, bar association CLE, or law school career fair tends to earn you a website link on a .org or .edu page - the kind of domain that's almost impossible to acquire any other way and that AI search products lean on heavily when surfacing local-intent answers.
What works in practice:
- Sponsor a 5K hosted by the local bar association or a legal-aid nonprofit.
- Fund a scholarship through your nearest law school and ensure the firm name links to your site from the scholarships page.
- Underwrite a high-school mock-trial program or a Habitat-for-Humanity-style community build.
- Take a booth at a county-level pro bono clinic and ask for a sponsor link on the event recap.
These links are slow to acquire, but they hit a sweet spot Google and AI Overviews both reward: real-world entity reinforcement, locally relevant context, and a domain class (.edu / .org) that no link broker can hand you.
7. Write Guest Posts
Guest posts are blog posts you publish on other sites. They can help you build high-quality links and attract qualified traffic.
You can include a link to your law firm’s website in your guest post - if it fits the context - or in your author bio.
But you can also instantly connect with readers through your post. That’s a big pro since most other link building tactics don’t give you a chance to stand out in front of the audience.
You can find guest posting opportunities by googling query strings such as:
- “write for us” + “law”
- “guest posts” + “law”
- “contribute” + “law”
Try including iterations of the keyword “law,” too. You may want to replace it with “lawyers” or “divorce” to find even more guest posting opportunities that would better fit your niche.
To give you a head start, here are a few websites accepting guest posts from lawyers:
Once you find a website that seems like a good fit, it’s time to come up with an idea for your guest post.
You should write about topics you want to become known for or associated with. But you should also check if your desired topics have already been covered on your prospect website before pitching it.
And don’t forget that how you pitch your topic is almost as important as how well you cover it. Your guest post may seal the deal, but your pitch will help you get your foot in the door.
So, in your pitch, try to explain how your guest post is relevant to a particular website. Mention how your idea will help a site’s audience and why you’re qualified to write about it. Or use our template for pitching to bloggers.
8. Answer FAQs
FAQs are “frequently asked questions,” or the questions people often type into a search engine.
Answering these questions can help you land a featured snippet - which is basically the top position in the SERPs:
But how will answering FAQs help you build links?
Well, the idea is that many people will see your answers because you’re answering frequent questions + you may end up at the very top of the SERPs. And some people may find your answers useful if you write them well. Because of that, they’ll want to link to you in their own content.
Fortunately, there are many questions people have connected to the legal industry.
You can find them by entering your target keywords into Google. Just scroll to the People Also Ask section and click on the questions that seem relevant. When you open one question, more questions will appear:
If you need more questions, try using specialized question research tools like Answer The Public or AlsoAsked.
All that’s left to do is answer the questions. You can copy&paste the questions, and then give straightforward answers in your content. That way, you’ll give yourself the best chance to rank.
9. Podcast Link Building
Getting on podcasts can have multiple benefits for your law firm:
- You’ll expand your reach and audience.
- You’ll build relationships with other experts in your industry.
- You’ll establish your expertise.
- Aaand, you’ll build links to your website.
Many podcasts link to their guests’ websites from the episode pages:
You can use Google to find a podcast that would be interested in featuring your law firm.
Here’s an example of a query string that helped us find two relevant podcasts for law firms:
Feel free to use variations of this string to find more opportunities.
10. Legal Roundups
Roundup posts are posts that list multiple items in the same category. Two types of roundup posts can be especially useful to law firms:
- Expert roundups - Expert roundups are posts that collect quotes from several experts on the same topic.
- Law firm roundups - Law firm roundups are just what they sound like: posts that list multiple law firms in the same category. For example, they can list 50 of the largest law firms in the U.S. or the best law firms for veterans.
The easiest way to get featured in roundups is to find existing posts and ask to be included subsequently.
We searched for “lawyers share” to find expert roundups:
Then, we googled “best law firms in texas” to find law firm roundups:
You can use variations of these keywords to find results that are more relevant to your business: “best divorce attorneys,” “best immigration lawyers in Houston,” “top 10 lawyers in Houston,” etc.
From there, simply reach out to the authors and ask to be included.
That won’t always work, but you’ll still form connections with writers and journalists. So, even if you don’t get included right away, you may get considered the next time the authors are writing about a similar topic.
11. Broken Link Building
Broken link building is a straightforward link building strategy. It comes down to finding so-called “broken links” and replacing them with links to your website.
Broken links (or dead links) are links that lead to 404 pages - pages that don’t exist or can’t be accessed. When you click on them, you’ll usually see a message like this:
Your goal with this link building strategy is to find broken links on other sites. That can be pretty time-consuming, as you may have to browse multiple sites before finding any dead links.
Still, the results can be worth your efforts. Most site owners will be happy to replace dead links with yours because they don’t want to send their readers to 404 pages.
And that brings us to the next step: reaching out to site owners.
Once you find broken links, you should notify the site owners or webmasters and offer them a link to your site as a replacement. But keep in mind you want your link to be super-relevant to the context.
For example, if the original anchor text said something like “how to file a wrongful death lawsuit”, don’t just send the site owners a link to your home page. Send them a link to your guide on this topic instead.
“But what if I haven’t already published a suitable guide?”
In that case, you want to create it. There’s no getting around it. A high-quality site will simply never link to an irrelevant page.
It’s true that creating a new piece of content is time-consuming. But it’s worth the effort. Once you’re done, you’ll get a link and a brand new piece of content that can attract more readers to your site.
Alternative: Hire Link Building Companies
Building links on your own can be demanding, especially in competitive niches like law. That’s why you may want to hire someone to do it for you - a link building company.
Link building companies can do all the heavy lifting for you, from finding the best link building tactics for your business to putting them to practice.
Many link building companies (like ours!) will also write your guest posts for you and won’t charge you unless they build you the links you want. That way, you don’t need to spend money or time on something that doesn’t yield results.
If that sounds good…
Get In Touch With Our Experts In Link Building For Law Firms
Our agency will help you build the links you want, or you don’t pay us a single cent. And if the links we build for you ever go down, we’ll replace them with new ones or give you a full refund.
Want to get started? Schedule your free consultation today.
