Ask Girl Geek: How Do I Get More Links to My Website?

Hi Girl Geek,

How do I get links to my law firm's website?
D

Hi D,

As far as increasing links to your site, here's my understanding of how this works and ways to get links. Remember, all links are NOT created equal. You must request links from sites that are relevant to yours.

There's really no guaranteed or systematic way to do this that I know of, so you can select one or several strategies and see what happens.

First, if you site has interesting, useful, or newsworthy information, other sites may spontaneously link to yours. This is ideal.
Otherwise you have to create or ask for others to link to your site.

Ways to do that include:
1. Provide a "Link to Us" page at your website. On this page, provide suggested links to your site, include the HTML tag so people can just grab it and drop it into their site. If you write your own link, you can include important keywords in the link.

2. Register with search directories, like Yahoo ($299 submission fee) and the Open Directory project (www.dmoz.com.), local directories and regional directories, such as chamber of commerce, local attorney referral services, etc.

3. Contact professional association sites and ask them to provide a link to your site.

4. Contact companies or colleagues you do business with and ask them to provide a link to your site and you will to theirs. This is called Reciprocal Linking.

5. Submit to announcement sites, such as www.URLwire.com or send out press releases online at http://www.internetnewsbureau.com/ or http://www.free-press-release.com/submit/free-press-release.php or http://www.floridatoday.com/forms/services/release.htm

6. Find sites that are linking to your competitors and ask them to link to yours also.

7. Search for "keyword add URL" online and find sites that fit your business/industry and link there.

8. Contact email newsletters that your niche market might read and either advertise there or write an article for them, include your website in your byline.

9. Create a blog - post newsworthy comments on hot topics. Many blogs are read by search engines. Plus, if you link from your blog to your own site, you'll add another link.

10. Mention your site in online discussion groups, listserves, and blogs. Although you can't officially advertise in these, it can be part of your email signature.

11. Syndicate content from RSS feeds and blogs.12. Write articles for legal news sites, like http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20040114_marquis.html and include a link to your site.

13. Wait...eventually people will start linking to your site.

Thanks for asking!
Annette