How We Increased A Law Firm's Backlinks by 800%
Backlinks are the heart of SEO but they are often difficult to get. In this case study, we’re going to explain how we helped a law firm to increase its referring domains from 45 to 500.
They came to us with a significant amount of high-quality content which we could use to help them get more links from domains with a high authority.
Through a long-term link building and guest post strategy, we were able to help them to increase their monthly organic traffic from 300 to over 5,000 today.
Keep reading to learn how we did it.
Background
A prominent personal injury law firm started working with us at the end of 2019. They were interested in increasing their number of backlinks to help boost their online ranking and presence.
Law firm SEO is notoriously competitive because there are so many firms in one community vying for the same keywords. When ordering PPC ads for law firms, for example, the cost-per-click (CPC) can be hundreds of dollars.
When they started working with us in October 2019 the firm had less than 50 referring domains, which is the total number of websites linking back to them. Our goal for their SEO campaign was to increase backlinks while simultaneously helping them to promote quality content.
The SEO Audit
Before we can start helping a new client, we need to conduct an SEO audit of their website to understand their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth.
In October 2019 the firm’s organic traffic was around 300 visitors per month and they were ranking for approximately 650 keywords. To put this in perspective, their biggest competitor is currently receiving about 3,000 visitors per month.
We knew it was possible to boost their monthly traffic by building backlinks and helping them to optimize their sites with ranking keywords.
Our first step after the site audit was to identify “easy win” keywords and make them start working for our client.
The “Easy Wins” Keyword Analysis
In any campaign, this step is a quick and effective way to start boosting a client’s SEO. So what are “easy win” keywords exactly?
These are keywords that you’re already ranking for in positions 4-30. They aren’t in the top three positions but they are still ranking which means with a little love, we can get them into the top 3. It’s a quick and easy way to take already successful keywords and boost them up to help drive traffic.
Some examples of these “easy win” keywords included “grapevine conditions,” “101 freeway,” and “car accidents near me.”
Once these keywords are identified they can be used for web copy or blogs. For example, “grapevine conditions” was used in a blog about what to do if you get stuck on this iconic California highway.
Competitive Gap Analysis
The sophisticated digital tools we use for SEO help us to analyze everything about our clients and their competitors. Doing this helps us find out what’s working in the market and to identify new opportunities for our clients.
Our intention of doing a competitive gap analysis isn’t to do the same thing as our client’s competitor. We understand every law firm is different and not all legal keywords would apply to every practice. This analysis helps us find keywords that our clients have in common with a competitor.
For example, the law firm is currently ranking for 11,279 unique keywords. They are sharing 6,577 keywords with their closest competitor. But, the competing law firm is ranking for an additional 11,035 keywords that our client isn’t. We can look through this list and find keywords that would work for our client.
We can also get a look at some of the websites providing competitors with backlinks. There may be an opportunity to get a backlink from the same place or generate new ideas to help our client.
The SEO Campaign
When the law firm started working with us in October 2019 we first helped them distribute content and gain new links through HOTH Syndication. This product helps clients to syndicate their content across 300+ high authority news sites. The law firm syndicated articles on legal topics in which they were featured.
They were pleased with the results of the content syndication and kicked off a large HOTH Foundations campaign for the rest of 2020. Similar to HOTH Syndication, this service gets clients in-content, contextual links back to their website from high authority blogs.
Our Foundations service is completely white label and our account managers work with clients on crafting the most effective anchor texts.
To boost their link building, the law firm also had their Campaign Manager add HOTH Guest Posts to their project:
- DA 50 Guest Post
- DA 40 Guest Post
- DA 30 Guest Post
- DA 20 Guest Post
- Guest Post Pro – 25K
Our guest blog service helps clients to write an original blog with a backlink and get it published on a site with domain authorities (DA) ranging from 10-50. As you can see by what they ordered, the law firm wanted their content to appear on sites with a higher DA.
After putting all of these things in place, we noticed that the law firm’s traffic really started taking off in the summer of 2020. Let’s take a look at the results below.
Results
In one year, the law firm’s number of referring domains jumped from less than 50 to 450 — an increase of 800%.
By identifying and incorporating those “easy win” keywords, as well as a targeted strategy to gain keywords in rankings 1-3, we helped them obtain 20,177 organic keywords.
As you can see below, their ranking keywords in the top three positions jumped from around 40 to 240.
And our final indicator of campaign success was organic traffic, which is influenced by the number of backlinks and ranking keywords.
Their traffic skyrocketed to 10,000 monthly visitors at the end of 2020 and today they are getting close to 6,000. It would cost the law firm $30,000 of paid advertising to get this amount of traffic, but they’re receiving it organically!
Takeaway
You should better understand the power of backlinks after reading this case study. They are the most effective way to boost your SEO ranking but they’re challenging to do.
Businesses trying to get their own backlinks need to write an original blog post and contact websites to see if they would publish it as a guest post. It takes a lot of time and effort.
The HOTH, on the other hand, has a team of talented content writers to create blogs. We also have existing relationships with high authority websites. Our link building and guest post services make it easy for you to get more links to your site.
Want to hear how we can help you? Reach out to our digital marketing experts to discuss your goals.
