Backlinks are one of the best ways to put up points on the search engine optimization (SEO) board. Whenever some other site links to yours, it signals to search engines that your site is relevant and important.
However, as soon as search engine marketing professionals realized this, they started dropping links so quickly and in so many places that search engines like Google said, “Enough!” Now, links are closely monitored, and any sign of fraudulent backlinking is punished with severe penalties.
While this is often an issue of where backlinks to your site come from, though, it can also apply to where backlinks on your site go to. This is not a problem, if you’re careful. However, if you don’t do your research, you can stumble into a penalty for linking to sites of disrepute. Additionally, if you allow people to comment on your content and don’t monitor it closely, it’s probably only a matter of time.
Google Penguin and Penalizing Backlinks to Your Site
So, you made a website for your law firm. Now, to increase its ranking in the search engine, you want to build a robust portfolio of links on other sites, pointing back to yours. There are markets where you can pay other websites to host links back to yours. Additionally, you can copy and paste your URL and romp around comments sections and forums all over the internet, dropping backlinks to your site.
Both of these will incite the ire of Google’s Penguin Penalty, doing more harm than good in the long run. However, these are not the only links that Google Penguin regulates. It also monitors links from your site, going elsewhere.
Google Penguin and Penalizing Outbound Links from Your Site
Your law firm’s website is just up and ticking, and you want to build its prominence in the rankings by legal blogging. You know enough about legal blogging to understand the importance of including at least one outbound link to another site, to signal to the search engines that you’ve done some research and that your article is reputable.
Where you send that outbound link is crucial. Putting a link to a site of disrepute in your legal blog can make search engines suspicious, resulting in a penalty.
This is why you need to be careful with all of the content that you host on your law firm’s website, especially the content that you don’t write, yourself. People trying to spread word of their own website still copy their URLs and romp around the internet, dropping a link into every unprotected comment box. If their site has been flagged for misconduct by search engines, and your comment box was hit, you could feel the pain, as well.
Myers Freelance, the Professional Legal Bloggers
Promoting your law firm’s website online is a risky endeavor. Some of the smallest oversights can result in some severe sanctions that can be difficult and costly to overcome. This is why it’s important to hire the professional legal bloggers at Myers Freelance. We keep our ear to the ground in the ever-evolving world of search engine marketing, and apply what we learn to your law firm, to keep it ahead of the curve.
Contact Myers Freelance today to get started.