Whether you run your own blog, eCommerce platform or business website, brand advertisement is a constantly looming question worth thinking about. According to 99 Firms, 44% of website referral traffic goes through Google as it is the biggest global search engine out there, with 72% of marketers stating that content relevancy is the biggest challenge when it comes to SEO positioning.

Content marketing and link building both add to the overall SEO ranking and general positioning of your brand in their own respect, to varying degrees. Given that the nature of this question is complex, we will go through several points in regards to both content marketing and link building to unearth which approach to SEO would suit your needs the most. Let’s start off with the basics and go through the most poignant questions on the matter.

Basics of SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is often considered the de facto deciding factor in a brand’s search engine relevancy. SEO trends are constantly shifting in favor of fresh topics, original keywords, and content relevant to individual search queries.

Technical optimization elements such as keyword density, content formatting, multimedia optimization, and link building are considered baseline requirements for brands that aim to reach the first page of Search Engine Result Page (SERP). However, balancing how much content you produce against how much attention you pay to link building (promoting your hyperlinks on other websites) is a matter of perspective.

Some businesses aim for split attention between the two while others (such as in the case of eCommerce sites) go for a totalitarian approach and place all of their resources into either one or the other. Both approaches are viable and neither is the wrong choice when it comes to search ranking optimization. With that said, optimal SEO will bring your brand certain perks that would otherwise not be available to you.

Advantages of SEO

When it comes to direct advantages related to SEO of your content and website as a whole, there are quite a few items to consider. According to Tech Jury, 93% of online experiences begin with search engine queries, while only 7% of users will go as far as the third page of SERP in order to find relevant content for their engagement.

This effectively means that businesses that don’t regard SEO as an important element of their online brand awareness strategy will effectively lose a tremendous amount of traffic to other brands. Applying the right combination of link building and content marketing to your website however can bring several advantageous points to your brand, including but not limited to:

• Streamlined and accessible website User Experience (UX)
• Higher engagement and conversion rates
• Better brand positioning and industry authority
• Better networking and affiliate marketing opportunities
• High return on investment (ROI) in terms of incoming traffic and revenue

Without Content, There is No Link Building

An important point of discussion can be made in regards to choosing either content marketing or link building while completely disregarding the other side of the SEO equation. While possible, this type of approach to brand-building is ill-advised for several reasons.

For one, in order to practice efficient link building, you should have quality content available on your website, whether its blog posts, product pages or other forms of media. No platform, blog or business will promote your links or embed them in their content if there is no tangible value on the other side of the hyperlink. On the other hand, content marketing by itself might yield you positive SEO and traffic over time. However, without link building, your site will come off as very competitive and unfriendly when it comes to networking or cooperation with other businesses.

Without content, there is no link building to speak off in terms of organic SEO and traffic generation. Without link building, there is no high traffic or content engagement, leaving your site barren of leads or word of mouth. As we’ve mentioned previously, both of these SEO approaches offer valuable advantages – let’s dive deeper into each one to discover the minute details which will help you decide on the best combination of the two for your specific business and industry.

Content Marketing Gives your Site a Voice

In the proverbial sea of websites, having a distinct voice is one of the most essential aspects of brand positioning. Content marketing can give your website a voice in regards to how the audience perceives your products and services and differentiates it from others in your industry. Your business culture, long-term goals, company vision, and mission statement will all add to the effect of brand marketing for whoever decides to visit your website.

No amount of link building will ever manage to help your website “speak” to the audience through blog posts or creative product descriptions as content marketing is able to. Backing that content up with well-positioned links on competitive industry websites and aggregates will ensure that your site is reputable and professional in the eyes of stakeholders.

Link Building Promotes your Brand

Speaking of brand positioning, every industry is a competitive battlefield when it comes to vying for the customers’ attention. For better or worse, your website is one of many in a specific industry, with clearly positioned leaders, followers, and newly-launched businesses. Link building can ensure that your website is visible to potential customers, curious B2B clients, and individuals who might be interested in networking and collaboration.

You can spread your link building efforts to other, related industries and thus offer unique services to that website’s audience. For example, if you run a graphic design agency, positioning your links in the arts or photography blogging niches can do wonders for your lead generation. Find interesting niches to position your brand in and use existing content marketing materials as a precedent for those businesses to consider embedding your links into their pages for mutual benefit.

Content Marketing Boosts your UX

Once you attract an audience through your link building, it’s important to create some form of value for their time and (in case of products and services) money. Content marketing in the form of blog posts, detailed product portfolio descriptions and multimedia should be created to further cement your link building efforts. This will create an efficient loop for your SEO efforts and ensure that your visitors enjoy a well-thought-out UX as a result.

Link building without any relevant content or value to back the effort up will quickly deteriorate into your brand’s reputation as a spam website. Most importantly, your SEO ranking will drop as a result of link building which isn’t backed up by quality content in the placed hyperlinks. Strive for engaging UX on your website and work on your portfolio’s sales pitches, calls to action and other engagement opportunities before devoting your attention to outreach and link building.

Link Building is a Long-Term Gain

One notable factor to consider when it comes to link building is that it can provide your website, SEO and brand as a whole with long-term gain. Once your links are positioned on competitive websites and prolific industry portals, they will most likely stay there for the foreseeable future. Whether today, tomorrow or in two years, anyone who visits those particular pages will encounter your links and be tempted to follow up on them to see what value they hold for their interests.

Content marketing, on the other hand, leans more on current trends and what is considered a hot topic now as opposed to two years ago. If you write blog posts about topics which are stale and old news in everyone’s eyes, they won’t drive new traffic to your website and most certainly affect your SEO in a less than stellar way. In this aspect, link building holds a clear advantage but it should be noted that the content your links are embedded in will grow older over time, prompting you to seek new link building opportunities constantly.

SEO Mistakes to Avoid

To cap things off, it’s worth noting that not every SEO activity will hold net benefits for your website or ranking. Even too much of a good thing can become bad as a result of spam or overreliance on singular optimization activity. In that regard, let’s take a look at some of the most prevalent SEO pitfalls you should keep in mind in your content marketing and link building efforts going forward:

Poor Internal Sitemap

Your website’s internal structure will play a major role in the SEO ranking and visitor engagement efforts. In this aspect, you should categorize your links according to their content and role in your business. Gather all of your links into a sitemap and make the map accessible through your landing page for both your visitors’ and search engine algorithm’s benefit.

Content for Content’s Sake

There will always come a time of the year when content ideas simply run dry. When that happens, you shouldn’t start creating content for the sake of publishing “new” posts or pages on your website. Look for new trends to discuss, opinion piece topics to tackle and other forms of creative content marketing instead. Patience is a virtue in this regard; it will showcase that your brand is about quality more than it is about the sheer quantity of pages.

Content quality is another important thing search engine look at. It is always a good idea to work with a variety of usual tools, writing and translation services as well, such as TheWordPoint, Grammarly, Readability Score or Hemingway Editor, to ensure the relevance, high-quality and readability of their posts.

Lack of Website Auditing

Website audit is what is commonly referred to as “SEO spring cleaning”. Even though you should actively look for new opportunities for content marketing and link building, you should also tidy up your website on a semi-regular interval. Check your pages in regards to keywords, active links, ads and other content which will affect not only your SEO but the overall UX of your website. Don’t get caught with dead links, broken media or wrong keywords in your content by running an audit on your site every once in a while.

Best of Both Worlds (Conclusion)

When all is said and done, choosing between content marketing and link building shouldn’t be a mutually-exclusive choice. Find a healthy balance of both in regards to your brand’s marketing strategy, resources, networking and most importantly – product and service portfolio available for lead conversion.

Start with relevant content and look for link building opportunities that will be happy to work with you in terms of brand positioning going forward. Before you know it, you will settle into a routine of content marketing followed by link building in a production cycle which suits your staff and resources regardless of what popular trends or industry leaders might say on the highly subjective matter of either-or.

Author:
Erica Sunarjo is a communications professional with more than five years of experience. Erica runs her own blog BestWritersOnline and is proud of her an uncanny ability to explain the most complex subject in simple terms.

Lawyers practicing law in either a small town or a busy metropolitan area can try these simple steps to improve their local search engine rankings. You don’t have to be tech-savvy to implement these steps. Instead, here is a simple approach to making a few changes to your lawyer online presence that can put you in front of more prospective clients in need of your legal services.

What is SEO?

Search English Optimization (SEO) is a method of increasing the visibility of your website allowing for it to be more readily discovered. Unlike paid options, like Google PPC, SEO is an unpaid process which results in organic or earned search results.

According to Google, many people are performing local searches to find the services and solutions they require. In regards to lawyers, people may be searching for the following:

• Location of a lawyer’s office
• Checking opening/closing hours
• Looking for the cost of service
• Shopping around for the best lawyer

Some of the research that Google performed to understand people’s search behaviors found that:

• 4 in 5 people use search engines to find local information
  • 88% on smartphones
  • 84% on computers
• 50% of people who made a search from their smartphone visited a store’s location on the same day
• 4 in 5 people want ads to be customized to their local surroundings

Local searches allow for people to find the information they need to make important life decisions. As a lawyer, having your legal services listed and accessible makes it easier for people making searches to find and choose you over your other lawyers.

Here are a few more of Google’s findings regarding the selection process people go through when using local searches:

Lawyers using local SEO can add a competitive advantage to their services. One important point to remember is that people want to see directions and call buttons to guide them toward their solutions.

The remainder of this guide will show you different ways for lawyers to improve their local search engine rankings.

Business Listings / Directories

Getting your legal services on a business listing or directory site is a quick and easy way to improve a lawyer’s local SEO.

Start with putting your area of practice, contact information, directions, and a link to your website. It is important to keep your information consistent across all channels you decide to use.

Some of the most popular listings are those provided by the search engines themselves:

• Google My Business
• Yahoo Local Listings
• Bing Places

There are other directories dedicated to lawyers where you can also list your legal services for free:

• Avvo
• Justia
• Law Guru
• Lawyer Central
• LawQA
• Law Link

Alternatively, you can add your website to a paid listing. While some of these may not be dedicated local listings, they can have a positive impact on your overall SEO:

• Mediate ($29/month)
• Jurist ($100 one time fee)
• State Lawyers ($50 per month)

Note: Some listings may require you to verify your practice before accepting your profile.

Keyword Research & Keyword Optimization

Keywords are the foundation of how the entire search engine system operates. Depending on the keywords you use, this will directly influence how your legal services get discovered. Let’s look at an example.

If you’re a criminal defense lawyer, you’ll want to use a range of related keywords in both your listings and throughout your website to improve your local SEO.

For help you find relevant keywords, you can use Google’s free Keyword Planner. To access this keyword research tool, you’ll first need a Google Ads account. You won’t have to pay for advertisement.

Setting up a keyword strategy will be effective for an SEO campaign. The more related words and search terms you can use, the better your rankings will be.

To understand the power of keywords, let’s split up their potential into two categories:

Research Keywords

Research keywords are those used by people whose intentions are to find information or to learn about a topic. These kinds of searches look like, “Do I need a contract for my business?”

These kinds of searches may not result in someone taking action. Instead, they are just performing research to gather the information they need for their situation.

Actionable Keywords

Actionable keywords are those used by people ready to take action. Action keywords could be in the form of contacting a law firm, setting up a consultation, or finding a location to visit your office.

For example, someone searching “criminal defense lawyer in New York” is likely looking for a lawyer to hire in their area. These are the kinds of keywords you want to focus on using within your website.

Website Optimization

Lawyers with a website should use both actionable and research keywords throughout their website. This is one of a few things you can do to improve your local SEO.

On the more technical side, here are a few more necessary steps you can take to improve the SEO of your website and where to use those keywords:

1. URL. When you are creating pages and posts on your website, choose a primary keyword to be used in the URL (i.e. www.yourlawwebsite.com/primary-keyword).
2. Headers. Headers are distinct sections within your pages that separate the content. When you input this information onto a website, it will be coded as tags: <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, <h5>, <h6>. The most important tag to use is <h1> which tells search engines what the main information on the web page is about. In other headings, you can use variations of your keyword to make your page’s SEO stronger. All of AmazeLaw’s websites come optimized for Google SEO.
3. Body. The body is the main content of your web pages. You are reading the body right now which, in code, is referred to as <p>. Here you’ll want to use the keyword throughout the body. Having pages with 200 to 1000 words are a great start to improving your local SEO.
4. Meta Description. The meta description is a small piece of information that describes what a web page is about. This is another place to use your keywords. Try to keep your meta description under 140 words.

Conclusion

Understanding local SEO allows lawyers to improve their search rankings and find more clients. While there may be some technical aspects to SEO, putting your legal services on listings and directories is a quick and easy way to get started.

You don’t have to be a computer programmer to understand the fundamentals of marketing your law firm’s website. To increase the number of clients inquiring about your legal services, there are a few easy steps to take. Let’s get started by laying a foundation for the basics of law firm SEO.

Some SEO Advice from a Google Expert

If you plan on getting your website on the front page of Google, it is important to know about Matt Cutts, an SEO Specialist and Engineer with Google.

To stay on top of your website’s optimization and attract new clients, here are a few tips from Google’s search engine expert:

As you can see in the video above, how your website is structured, the quality of your backlinks and the authority (or the importance) all play a part in whether your website shows up in the search results.

Now, let’s see if your attorney website is search engine friendly. Here are 7 SEO tips for lawyers and law firms:

SEO Tip #1: Improve Site Speed

Your website’s load time has a direct impact on both a visitors experience and your search engine rankings.

Think about this: a one-second delay in page load time could:

1. Reduce page views by 11%
2. Increase visitor dissatisfaction by 16%
3. And, reduce client acquisition by 7%

The speed of your website can have a dramatic effect on your business. Prospective clients searching for a lawyer may not be patient to wait for your website to load before jumping back on Google to find a faster loading lawyer website.

To put this into perspective, Google has performed some research on the average site speed for websites in the United States:

To check the performance of your law firm’s website you can use Google’s free Page Speed Insights Tool. If we take one of the top search results for “California law firm” and put it into this tool, here’s what you’ll see:

Marshall Law Firm has a good score for the desktop version of their website and offers suggestions to improve its performance.

You may want to talk to your web developer to make the appropriate adjustments to your law firm’s webpage load time (i.e. reducing web coding and server response time).

However, according to Yahoo 80% of your website’s load time comes from the different images, videos, and design style to that page. If you can reduce either the size of these files or minimalize your site design, you can improve the performance of your load times.

SEO Tip #2: Focus on Visitor Experience

Google and other search engines want you to focus on user experience and site design. Their goal is to offer the best websites to provide only the best experience.

Your law firm’s website should be responsive which means it can be viewed on both a desktop and a mobile device. Since so many people are using their smartphones to find information, you don’t want to lose potential clients to a competitor staying ahead in the digital race.

Another feature about user experience includes the content on your pages. All your pages should have text and a few images, this is what search engines use to determine what your pages are all about.

Think about some of the best websites you enjoy. That’s the kind of experience you want to provide when someone visits your website or reads your law firm’s blog.

SEO Tip #3: Use Words People Search For

Understanding which words are being used in search engines is the most important part of your law firm’s SEO strategy.

Keywords, the words or phrases used in searches, should be used throughout your website and blog to increase your website’s search engine rankings and help you attract potential clients.

There are a number of free research tools you can use to find exactly which keywords people are using. Here are a few you can start using now:

1. WordStream
2. SERPS
3. Google Keyword Planner
4. Keyword.io (for longtail keywords)

SEO Tip #4: Create Keyword Specific Pages

Once you have discovered the keywords related to your law firm, the next step is to start building pages or blog posts with them in it.

Be sure to use specific keyword phrases and don’t be afraid to create pages from keywords that have low competition. For example, if a keyword phrase like “low price divorce attorney” only gets 10 to 50 searches per month, yours may be the only website specific enough to answer their questions (and potential business inquiries).

SEO Tip #5: Avoid Penalties

No one fully understands how a website is ranked by search engines, however, there are a few known penalties that can affect you. Here are a few you should know about:

• This penalty occurs if your website is showing full content to Google and partial content to your visitors. For example, if you force users to sign-in, register, or log-in to see the full content.
• Hacked Site. If your website has been hacked and its redirecting visitors to spammy sites, search engines like Google will quickly pick up on this and flag it. The results can lead to your website getting buried in the search engines.
• Keyword Stuffing. From time to time, using keywords in your law firm’s blog is how search engines know which content to offer their searchers. However, if you use the keyword too many times, known as keyword stuffing, your website can be penalized for it.

Getting a penalty on your website can dramatically damage your standings on the results pages of search engines. Here, the best SEO tip for lawyers is to avoid these penalties and use search engine webmaster tools (such as Google Search Console) to monitor your website. If there’s ever a problem with your website, for example, if it gets hacked, Google Search Console will send you an immediate notification.

SEO Tip #6: Add Your Law Firm’s Website to Google My Business

Google My Business is extremely important to your website’s search rankings as it affects your local SEO. After you sign up, you have to wait for a postcard to be sent via mail to verify your business. As soon as you get it, verify your website so you can show up in localized and map searched.

Other search engines have their own local listings and directories which you should add your website to:

• Yelp
• Brown Book
• Yellow Pages
• Yandex
• Bing
• Jayde

In addition to these popular business directories, you should also put your website up on these lawyer specific listings:

• Avvo
• Best Attorney Rankings
• Justia
• Law Guru
• Law QA
• Law Link
• Lawyer Legion

SEO Tip #7: Use a Strong CTA

Of all the lawyer SEO tips to help improve your website’s search rankings and attracting more visitors to your website, this is the one tip that matters most.

A call to action is a unique and noticeable statement telling visitors what to do when they arrive at your website. When potential clients are coming to your website you should have a dedicated page with a contact box, location, and other ways to reach you.

Additionally, you should think about how to make your number and contact information pop-off the page. Or, consider offering a free consultation if they schedule an appointment online. Whatever you do, after putting all this work into getting people to your website, contacting you should be obvious and easy to do.