Main takeaways:
- Leverage Trust with Foundational Links: Learn how social profiles, citations, and legal directories can build your website’s credibility with Google, fast-tracking your rankings.
- Maximize SEO Results with Strategic Backlinks: Not all backlinks are created equal. Patrick explains which websites offer the highest authority and why they’re crucial for law firm SEO.
- Long-Term SEO Success: Foundational link building isn’t a one-time tactic—it’s a scalable, long-term strategy for consistent SEO growth and greater revenue for your law firm.
In this episode of The Optimized Law Firm Podcast, Patrick Carver dives deep into the world of foundational link building, also known as entity stacking. Learn how to use this powerful SEO strategy to build trust with Google and fast-track your website to the top of search engine rankings.
Discover which websites you should be targeting, the importance of social profiles, legal directories, and citations, and how this tactic can bring more traffic, clients, and revenue to your law firm. Tune in for expert advice that will transform your SEO game!
Timestamps:
Introduction to Foundational Link Building
Timestamp: 00:00:02 – 00:04:12
The Right Websites for Foundational Links
Timestamp: 00:04:12 – 00:12:19
Long-Term Benefits of Link Building
Timestamp: 00:21:04 – 00:27:53
Short on time? Watch these digestible videos instead:
Transcription:
00:00:02:25 – 00:00:42:03
Patrick Carver
Imagine a weight gain Google’s trust without spending a dime of your own money. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about foundational link building, also known as entity stacking. And this is a linked strategy that is ultimately going to help you get to your SEO goals faster. So we’re going to get into what this actually is, what websites you need to be targeting for these links, and then how you can use this to create leverage so that you are going to rank faster, getting those first page positions, creating that traffic, and ultimately leading to more leads, more cases and more profit.
00:00:42:05 – 00:01:06:07
Patrick Carver
I’m Patrick Carver and welcome to another episode of the Optimized Law Firm podcast. So happy to have you. And this is the podcast where we talk about how to run a more profitable and enjoyable law firm. And today’s episode, we’re gonna be talking about the foundational link building strategy that you really can’t afford to miss. If you’re someone who’s looking into SEO or you’ve been doing SEO, but maybe not getting the results that you want.
00:01:06:09 – 00:01:31:19
Patrick Carver
This is something that is absolutely essential for for every law firm who wants to use SEO as a tactic to gain more clients and ultimately add more profit to the bottom line. And, you know, there’s a simple strategy that will dramatically improve your website’s trustworthiness in the eyes of Google. We’re talking about foundational link building. In this first section of the cast.
00:01:31:19 – 00:02:03:04
Patrick Carver
So what is it and why does it matter? And how can you go about actually implementing it for your business? So foundational link building also called entity stacking. It’s hard percent more than a buzzword, and it’s actually a really crucial tactic for establishing your law firm’s website presence online and really create this initial layer of trust and authority that your website needs to escape what is called the Google sandbox.
00:02:03:07 – 00:02:26:29
Patrick Carver
So let’s go back a little bit and kind of talk about why this is important and what the applications for it. So imagine you are just starting your law firm’s website or let’s say you started one a few years ago and you’re coming back to it with some intent of actually doing an SEO campaign. The big problem you’re going to have is that you are one of literally millions and millions of websites.
00:02:26:29 – 00:02:53:17
Patrick Carver
And I don’t know the exact number, but literally millions of new websites get started every day. And so for Google, this is a big problem because they are known to be the most authoritative, most wide, wide ranging or right far reaching search engine that has this amazing ability to go out there and find all of the web’s information and bring it all together in a useful way for search.
00:02:53:20 – 00:03:17:08
Patrick Carver
The problem then, for somebody like yourself is that when you’re starting a website and you immediately want to get the benefits of being found in Google search rankings so that when somebody is out there searching for a lawyer, and particularly your type of law, that they find that you are visible at that really important junction where they’re looking for a service, you have that service that they need.
00:03:17:11 – 00:03:39:16
Patrick Carver
Now, if you’re just starting out, it’s basically impossible to get into that space of this specific area because Google doesn’t know who you are. You are just one of millions and millions of other websites out there who are looking for attention, looking to prove to them that you are, in fact, trustworthy. And so this is really where foundational link building comes into play.
00:03:39:16 – 00:04:12:29
Patrick Carver
So a big part, if not the biggest part of Google’s algorithm, especially with a new site, is trying to get some of those trust signals so that it actually understands what your website is all about. And more or less you need to be found on other websites that Google already trusts to give Google that little nudge that says, Hey, I think this website’s a good website and deserves to be in your index because these other websites over here that we really trust are posting links to it.
00:04:12:29 – 00:04:42:20
Patrick Carver
Okay. And so the more of those opportunities that you get, the more times your website’s allowed it’s going to be crawled by Google. And so more of those connections that you create where you are being featured on these other websites that Google already trusts, it starts to see you and recognize you more. That is a key foundational way to establish that trust so that you are then in contention for positions through Google search engine.
00:04:42:22 – 00:05:09:24
Patrick Carver
So the more times you get found on these high authority websites that Google already trusts, the better off you’re going to be. You’re going to want to continue to do this throughout the life of your website. So you really are never going to stop link building. But there’s a specific kind of framework or structure that we like to take with our websites that really expedite the process, because when it comes down to it, not all links are created equal.
00:05:09:27 – 00:05:36:23
Patrick Carver
So just getting a link from some random website or a a friend who owns a different type of business and puts a link up on your website, those are not the type of links that are really going to move the needle for you as you start to begin trying to get more traffic for your website. So let’s talk a little bit about what types of links you actually need to build to create these foundational links.
00:05:36:26 – 00:06:08:07
Patrick Carver
Did you know that there are a bunch of special websites that can actually boost your authority and Google XYZ all for free in section two of this podcast, we’re gonna talk about how to build the right backlinks for your foundational link building. And so as I mentioned a moment ago, not all links are created equal. So let’s discuss some of the types of websites that are going to be the best for you to target in terms of creating this this entity stack or these foundational links that are going in to your website.
00:06:08:07 – 00:06:32:03
Patrick Carver
So let’s talk about some of those right websites. So there are a couple of things to think about here, and we can talk about it first from a type of website and then we’ll get into the metric component that goes into whether or not a site is is, quote, high authority. So what type of websites are we looking for for this foundational link building?
00:06:32:03 – 00:06:56:03
Patrick Carver
And it really comes down to about three. So you have social profiles, you have citations, and then you have in the case of Attorneys Legal directory. So a little bit of a gray area here between a citation and a legal directory listing. It’s effectively the same thing, but I like to distinguish them for law firms because that’s specifically who we go for and we classify them different internally.
00:06:56:03 – 00:07:24:15
Patrick Carver
So the first one, social profile. So think about having your business on Facebook, on Instagram, Reddit, you know, Google my business or Google business profile any of those, and then you get into citations. And so this is a little bit different because it’s a different type of website that is going to have your business information, but it’s not going to be like a platform for sharing content, cat videos and yelling at your uncle and stuff like that.
00:07:24:18 – 00:07:54:05
Patrick Carver
So these are really just for putting your businesses information on the Internet. And so that’s like, you know, address social links. Sometimes you’re you URL, phone number, all of that stuff. And these are the ones that really are, in my opinion, the most important out of out of these because they’re the the ones are going to get most commonly crawled by by Google’s indexing system.
00:07:54:08 – 00:08:22:06
Patrick Carver
So with all of these, you are going to want to basically just set up a profile on all of these types of websites. So your your socials, your citations, and then also your legal directories. And so an example of a citation for out of the broad general public is going to be something like Yelp. Also Google business profile where you don’t have to be a lawyer to be on Google business Profile or Yelp.
00:08:22:06 – 00:08:50:24
Patrick Carver
They service a lot of different industries. Same thing with any of the social profiles like being on X or being on Facebook, Instagram, etc. where it changes a little bit. And I think this is one aspect of law firm SEO that is unique to lawyers compared to some of the other businesses out there who might just stop at the kind of generic citations where you want to go all the way to all of the high authority law firm directories out there too.
00:08:50:24 – 00:09:27:13
Patrick Carver
And so, yes, it does hurt a little bit to say, hey, go to fine law, go to Avvo.com just because of the experiences we here with some of our clients after working with them and, you know, and stuff we’ve seen personally. But nonetheless, they serve a purpose. And really the only purpose, in my opinion, of these or only advantageous marketing aspect of these big box legal directory websites is going to be the fact that you can get a link on their website and publicize your business’s information on their website.
00:09:27:13 – 00:09:49:20
Patrick Carver
And so I would venture to say that these are, you know, just as important or even maybe more important now I’m going back and forth. But I think for average business, these citations, general citations are going to be the most important. But when we get into when every law firm has those general citations, the legal directories can really start to move the needle a little bit more.
00:09:49:20 – 00:10:16:08
Patrick Carver
And we like those as well. We like those because they are going to be highly relevant. So not only are a lot of those on high authority Web sites not as high as maybe like Facebook.com or something like that, but they’re super relevant. Right. And that’s a benefit to you because you’re effectively telling Google what your website is all about by where you’re getting those links from.
00:10:16:10 – 00:10:38:02
Patrick Carver
And so the more that you can go and show Google that you are a business and not only just a business, but you’re also on these legal directories like just the IBO, even your state bar association, your local bar association, all of that stuff. And get a link pointing back to your website. That’s going to be super valuable in showing Google that you are a trusted website.
00:10:38:02 – 00:11:04:22
Patrick Carver
You’re on all of these places that they expect to see law firms across the Internet. So having all of these and doing it at the beginning of your journey with SEO is super important and it’s going to be a huge way where you are able to get on Google’s radar and it reinforce all of the content work that you’re doing by adding pages to the website, doing optimizations, all that stuff.
00:11:04:22 – 00:11:25:22
Patrick Carver
So it all works together and you want to make sure to have this because it’s going to make your life so much easier. Once you start publishing content, it’s so much easier then for it to get crawled and ultimately indexed. If you already have this base power on your website and you’re a bit of an authority in Google’s eyes.
00:11:25:24 – 00:11:50:28
Patrick Carver
So how do you go about getting these all important links for your foundational setup? The first way is pretty basic and can ultimately do it. You can do it yourself. Only challenges is it’s a manual process and it’s going to probably take you a long time to kind of organize all of this and then go out and sign up and get everything squared away.
00:11:50:28 – 00:12:19:03
Patrick Carver
But this is a process that we do for our clients where we map out all of the most most important social profiles, citations, legal directories. And then one other category I forgot to mention was reference sites. So that’s like your core other kind of like Reddit crowdsourced answer type type websites there. And so you’ve probably already signed up for a few of those like Google business profile, very straightforward process, right?
00:12:19:03 – 00:12:45:20
Patrick Carver
You don’t have to pay any money, although a lot of these like Yelp or like the big box legal companies are going to try to upsell you and give you like you know, better level of visibility and all. That’s really a, you know, going I say a total scam because people do see our live from it. But I would say the benefits are greatly over exaggerated from not only the big box legal marketing companies but your Yelp’s and everybody else.
00:12:45:22 – 00:13:08:24
Patrick Carver
So that’s the first and easiest way, right, is just go down this list. You go out there and we are actually sharing a document that’s got over 100 of these free foundational link sources for law firms. And so it’s a really nice document that’s got all the social profiles, citations. Then we have a big list of legal directories as well.
00:13:08:24 – 00:13:35:01
Patrick Carver
So just doing this can really elevate your SEO game. If you’ve been writing content and doing some other things. This can be a really great piece to your arsenal that’s that’s going to improve your performance pretty quickly as you go. So feel free to download that. We’ve got it. We’ve got that in the notes and you’ll be able to get it free of charge and basically just go out there and do a big part of what we do.
00:13:35:01 – 00:13:57:12
Patrick Carver
On the foundational link building side. Now we don’t give all of that of what we do in there and of course we can do all that for you in a much quicker amount of time than you would be able to, but nonetheless take advantage of it. It’s a great way to get get going on the links, especially if you’re a DIY or doing a lot of this stuff on your on your own.
00:13:57:15 – 00:14:33:00
Patrick Carver
Much faster way to get on these websites is going to be using a tool called a citation syndicator. So the way this works is that across the internet there’s like hundreds and hundreds of these websites that keep business information, like business directories like Yelp and Foursquare and Yellow Pages and and all these other. So interestingly, they, they is there’s actually a big consolidation behind the scenes going on between all of these.
00:14:33:00 – 00:15:08:07
Patrick Carver
And there’s really only about four I think or five of these like giant data providers that control hundreds and hundreds of websites. So imagine, you know, kind of at the top of top of the chart, you’ve got one of these providers like Yext or now. Now the other ones are escaping me at the moment, but when you put your information here, it’s then going to get distributed all the way down the chain to like hundreds of websites.
00:15:08:07 – 00:15:38:24
Patrick Carver
And so you can actually utilize something called a citation syndicator that is going to syndicate your information. And then it just gets aggregated across like 800 or 1000 websites for you. And that is absolutely the most efficient way that you can do it. And it’s not terribly expensive either. So you can use a company like Bright Local, they have a service for this or you can go individually after these big data providers.
00:15:38:24 – 00:15:59:24
Patrick Carver
And if you’re interested in how that all works, just Google like local search or local directory ecosystem picture or something like that, and you’ll see that, you know, there’s just like all of these tentacles that go back to four or five big, big providers. And that’s easily the best way to do it because it’s going to save you a ton of time.
00:15:59:24 – 00:16:19:09
Patrick Carver
It’s really not that expensive when it comes down to it. Otherwise you might have to pay a couple bucks per to get that done by, you know, someone that you would assign, you know, to go do it like a VA or, you know, someone in your office. It’s going to take them like a little bit of time to go in, register confirmed links to all that stuff.
00:16:19:16 – 00:16:40:11
Patrick Carver
This kind of bypasses all of that so that you can get your accurate business information out there relatively quickly. So the only downside of this is that it does take a little time for that information to be syndicated and get updated across all of these hundreds and hundreds of websites. But this is just a perfect way for you to step in and do this.
00:16:40:11 – 00:17:04:05
Patrick Carver
And it’s going to create these some of these foundational links for you and have a huge quantity for a very small amount of money. Another way that you can build some foundational links in this area is is a press release. So we’re talking a little bit outside of the the citation world where we’re not going and signing up for your business information.
00:17:04:07 – 00:17:26:14
Patrick Carver
We’re basically going to just use a normal PR newswire style service where we’re going to give them an article and it’s going to have your business information, including your URL. We’re going to come up with some sort of story or some sort of news event. And, you know, contrary to popular belief, there’s, you know, you can literally write a press release about anything.
00:17:26:14 – 00:17:48:04
Patrick Carver
So if you have a new office pet, you can do that. And I mean, other fun examples at the moment, but literally, if you have like 50 or 100 bucks, you can get a press release, right? You just want to make sure that you’re not using overly optimized anchor text. You want to really just make it look like a business card, right?
00:17:48:04 – 00:18:15:07
Patrick Carver
You your URL is exactly as it is. You’re not using some sort of hyper optimized keyword target like best accident lawyer in San Diego or or anything like that. And this is going to produce a lot of links for you very, very quickly, probably between like 50 or 100, depending on, you know, the type of of press release that you end up actually using.
00:18:15:09 – 00:18:46:06
Patrick Carver
These will pretty much all be nofollow links and there is going to be a certain amount of decay on these links after like six months to a year, you’re basically just paying for them to get blasted out to a bunch of these news websites and other other types of websites that share media like that. The benefit of this is that it has the similar effect as getting all of these links from the foundational sources.
00:18:46:08 – 00:19:15:23
Patrick Carver
So they are in effect, these are foundational sources as well, slightly different. But often when these press releases go out, they are getting sent to like local news organizations, local local websites, local newspapers, a lot of TV, local TV stations, like your local CVS, ABC affiliates, things like that. And immediately you’re on these, you know, pretty noteworthy, authoritative websites.
00:19:15:23 – 00:19:38:12
Patrick Carver
And so, again, it has the exact same impact where your information, your link is now on these authorities websites that are getting crawled a lot because they have a lot of visitors going to them. They’ve done a lot of link building, whether intentionally or unintentionally. So the more you’re found on these credible websites, the better off you are.
00:19:38:12 – 00:20:01:13
Patrick Carver
And Google XYZ, Google is now seeing your information from a variety of sources, and that goes into improving their understanding of what you’re all about, of who you are, what you know, how you should be plugged into the search ecosystem and at what level. And so this is a building block of what you need to do for the rest of your your time.
00:20:01:15 – 00:20:26:19
Patrick Carver
With an SEO campaign, you’re going to be continuing to build this growing, grow and growing the authority over time so that at some point you can actually rival or best some of these foundational sources and you are in fact becoming the foundational source yourself. Now that’s a tall task, right, to get up to some of these websites and probably not really a goal, you know, that you need to be going for, Right?
00:20:26:19 – 00:21:04:15
Patrick Carver
But if you can even do 25% of that or half of the level of authority, you’re going to have a huge advantage over your competitors. And just by doing some of these steps that we’ve talked about, it’s going to dramatically improve your performance over vast majority of the other people who are out there doing SEO, because there’s so many factors that go on in SEO that by doing a lot of these that we consider the basics, you are going to vault yourself above all of these other people out there who are doing a really do or see great job on their SEO and not taking a lot of these steps like you are.
00:21:04:18 – 00:21:26:06
Patrick Carver
A foundational link building is a great asset to your business and can produce a ton of revenue in the long term. I think it’s one of the best long term investments that you can make when it comes to your law firms marketing. So let’s get into the details in this third section about long term benefits of foundational link building.
00:21:26:09 – 00:21:50:14
Patrick Carver
So really, in a nutshell, what we’re trying to do with SEO when it comes to law firms is build that that trust relationship with with Google over time. So you can do this really to two key ways, right? You’re either creating links or you’re creating content. They both have to work in order to really maximize the results that you are going to get with Google.
00:21:50:14 – 00:22:23:15
Patrick Carver
And so when it comes to talking about what are those results like, Why are we doing all this work, investing all of this time and energy? It’s putting you at the most critical juncture for when people are out there looking for legal services. And so there’s been a number of studies on this, but the most often cited one is a Google study that appeared in the National Law Review that something like 92% of people are going to use a search engine when looking for looking for a law firm or lawyer.
00:22:23:18 – 00:23:11:02
Patrick Carver
And they’re not going on social. They’re not really looking at billboards, they’re not looking at mailers like all of those things can and do work, but not anywhere close to the level of success that you can get from utilizing search engines. So whether that’s advertising or search engine optimization, where you’re showing up organically, building yourself your own pipeline of highly targeted potential clients coming through and when they’re at their biggest moment of need, your website pops up and you provide valuable, helpful information that leaves an enduring mark in their head and ultimately you are in pole position to collect those clicks, right?
00:23:11:02 – 00:23:31:26
Patrick Carver
Get those people on your website and ultimately, you know, turn those people into into clients. So this is the foundation of our work with law firms. We like advertising, we like email, we like social, we like doing all of that stuff. But when it comes down to it and you look head to head, organic SEO is always the best, right?
00:23:31:26 – 00:24:02:02
Patrick Carver
And not just because we focus on it. We’ve we’ve tested this with people who spend significantly more with advertising as opposed to SEO and the cost per lead, the the efficiency, cost efficiency of getting those leads through organic SEO typically always wins in those things. Now the caveat, of course, right? So you have to get into that position for your website from an authority perspective and a content perspective to actualize those gains.
00:24:02:02 – 00:24:30:03
Patrick Carver
Right? This is a huge piece of that. Okay. So if you are, you know, just kind of struggling along and, you know, you’ve worked with an agency or two and done some of the SEO stuff and not really seen any benefit, that’s pretty common. Right? And this is probably one of the reasons why you are struggling is because, you know, they came to you and said, hey, we’re going to write five blogs a month, we’re going to build some links and, you know, and we’re going to have you up on the first page in no time.
00:24:30:06 – 00:24:56:12
Patrick Carver
Well, they probably did some of that, but not nearly to the degree that is needed in an ultra competitive environment, like for legal services. And so building these foundational links is, of course, the foundation for helping you get this and acquire this organic traffic over over the long term. And so remember, these links that you get are going to help you rank faster on Google.
00:24:56:12 – 00:25:31:09
Patrick Carver
That is the primary reason why you want to be invested in this whole exercise is that you want to establish your relationship with Google quicker. Now, in terms of the cost and benefit of this, the ongoing value of these links is that you’re going to pay once and in the case of, you know, like doing a content syndication, you’re going to get probably like over 100 links, maybe two or 300 for like 150 bucks or less than that.
00:25:31:11 – 00:25:51:14
Patrick Carver
Having that, those links will typically remain permanent on those websites and you’ll be able to take advantage of those links throughout the life expectancy of your website. And so when you think about it, building these foundational links is extremely cheap and you can do it all by yourself. You don’t even have to pay an agency to do it.
00:25:51:17 – 00:26:12:03
Patrick Carver
So if you’re doing this yourself, you can get out there and go capture all of the social links. Just go on Google search. Give me a list of the top 100 social Web sites are top 50 or whatever on the Internet and then go sign up, go put your link in there and boom, you’ve you’ve done it. Same thing with directories, same thing with doing a press release.
00:26:12:09 – 00:26:49:03
Patrick Carver
All of these are accessible, free or low cost things that you can do as a law firm owner, and you don’t need someone like me to go and do it. Now, I will argue that it is better for time efficiency for your time. It’s also going to have a better impact in terms of the performance. If someone like myself actually goes in and does these and does the press release the way that it should be, there is nuance to this stuff and you will get more value by going with a good SEO agency with all of this stuff.
00:26:49:03 – 00:27:10:25
Patrick Carver
But ultimately it’s up to you. And I always talk about this with with clients is that you want to have a good knowledge of SEO so that you can understand what we’re doing, understand the value of it, and ultimately see that connecting point between the actions we’re taking, the time that we have to wait, or the time that it takes to actualize those results.
00:27:10:25 – 00:27:35:25
Patrick Carver
And then ultimately the big picture where you are getting new clients because of more visibility on search engines. So if you’re not using foundational link building, now is the time to take advantage of this low cost, high value strategy. By implementing foundational link building, you’re going be able to establish trust with Google Rank faster and do all of that without breaking the bank.
00:27:35:28 – 00:27:53:15
Patrick Carver
If you have any questions about link building, how to implement this strategy or if you’ve already done it, how to take it to the next step and what other types of links you should be building. Once you get done with all of these foundational pieces, please reach out to me my emails Patrick and go Constellation dot com. I’d love to help.
00:27:53:18 – 00:28:19:04
Patrick Carver
We are not a sales heavy organization or pushy so we are going to meet you where you are. I would love to help and offer some free advice if you are getting the SEO game because I’m passionate about it. I want to help law firms make more money, make more profit and do it in a transparent way that we can show you that marketing agencies do in fact have integrity and can help you get where you want to go.
00:28:19:04 – 00:28:22:27
Patrick Carver
So thanks for tuning in and have a great day.
