Are you looking into internal linking for law firms? As a law firm, it is vital that you have an effective website that will inform prospective clients about your practice and services. These clients will then be able to simply click on your site for more information and contact you if they have suffered an accident or injury for which they wish to make a claim.

Moreover, the site could also provide useful content and advice through the use of blogs and FAQs. 

Unfortunately, any type of educational material you post will be completely pointless unless people can find your website and read the content. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) can prove invaluable.

This is an organic and cost-effective way of leading potential clients to your site. But first, you need to develop a suitable optimization strategy and perform on-page SEO. As part of the audit, it is imperative that you immediately optimize your internal links.

Before we get deeper into the topic, make sure to go to our homepage and claim your lawyer profile. Most lawyers already have a profile on our website (even if you didn’t create one.) This is key for SEO.

What are internal links and why are they useful?

Internal links are search engine optimization tools and they can be used to direct visitors to another page within the same website. For instance, if you list “divorce work” as a service on your homepage, you can then include a link to a specific page about the divorce proceedings in your province.

In addition, internal links are often included in a website’s navigation menus or within a specific page or copy.   

You will have probably surmised by now that internal links are useful navigation tools for your web pages. They will also help prevent users from getting stuck on a particular page.

If one of your objectives is to convert visitors into clients, then every page should have a link giving details about how they can contact your firm. For instance, you can link a page about car accidents to another page telling people why they should get in touch with one of your lawyers if they have been involved in a car accident.

You should also consider adding a call-to-action (CTA) internal link to your firm’s contact pages, preferably in the final paragraph of your content.  

Internal linking for law firms

There are two types of internal links: navigational and contextual.

As the name implies, navigational links help users navigate through your different web pages. They also help search engines such as Google understand the structure of your website. There are four navigational links.

Header

Headers are your website’s top navigation tool and as such, they should have visual appeal and be user-friendly. They will make it easier for search engine bots to understand your pages. For this reason, you must ensure your page headers fulfill certain criteria:

●        They focus on the most important pages

●        They include links to your home page, attorney profiles, practice, blogs, contact page, testimonials, and case results 

●        They are intuitive for users

You should also keep your dropdown menus to a minimum so as to avoid the possibility of your header looking “spammy”.

Internal linking for law firms- Footer

You should never neglect your footers as the majority of users will expect them to contain valuable information, such as:

●        Address

●        Contact details

●        Social media links
You can also use the footer to place additional navigational links on your site.

Sidebars

You can use sidebars to customize the navigation to your:

●        Website

●        Practice areas

●        Individual web pages

For example, on an attorney’s biography page, you may wish to add links to practice areas that are specific to that lawyer’s particular expertise; if they specialize in fraud, incorporate a link in the side navigation.

Internal linking for law firms- Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are typically a set of links that are located below the header but above the content. Their primary function is to help users navigate your website. 

There are three types of breadcrumbs: hierarchy, attribute, and history. The majority of law firms prefer the hierarchy-based breadcrumbs as they allow users to visualize their location within the site structure. Users will also be able to see the pages that will return them to the homepage.

The breadcrumbs may look something like this: Home>Practice>Criminal Law>Fraud.

Breadcrumbs are a valuable SEO tool as they make it easier for search engines to understand your website setup.

Contextual links

These are the links within the text that point to other relevant pages, especially if they contain related topics. They are often included within the main body of a page’s content.  

Contextual links are also useful in SEO as Google will use the text around the link in the search results. With this in mind, you must ensure that the anchor text for your internal links will tell users exactly what to expect when they click on them.  

How do you ensure your internal links are working?

An SEO audit can help you identify a variety of actual or potential internal link problems.

Broken links

In SEO, broken links are also known as 404 errors and they can:

●         Harm your site’s authority and credibility

●         Impair the user experience

●         Have a negative effect on your SEO efforts

You can fix a 404 error by removing the page or replacing it with a link that points to a live page.

Orphan pages

Web pages that are not linked do not rank well in Google searches, even if you have included them in the XML sitemap. Make sure you curate your internal links to search for and remove orphan pages.

Linking different pages with the exact text

Using the same text link on different pages tends to confuse Google as to which site is more authoritative for that term. Therefore, try to avoid using the exact same anchor text for two or more pages.

When auditing your internal links, remember to:

●        Link your new content to an older and more authoritative page 

●        Consider the relevancy of the content

●        Ensure the linked pages offer a pleasant user experience

You should also ensure that all your essential pages are included in the header, footer, and other primary navigation menus. 

A guide to internal linking for law firms – key takeaways

It is vital that you perform search engine optimization on your law firm’s website. One useful SEO tool is internal linking. This will guide users to the precise page and information they are looking for. Internal links will also help guarantee a first-class user experience while establishing your site’s authority and expertise at the same time.

However, you must conduct regular SEO audits to ensure your links are working. Finally, developing an internal linking strategy will require a certain amount of expertise so do not hesitate to reach out for help.

Author: Emma Carter, a content writer at Recruitment Traffic