Law blogs work when you get links to your law blog

I spent this summer Saturday afternoon, when sane lawyers would be doing far better things, politely asking fellow law bloggers by email if they would be nice enough to link to my blog from their law blog. I have a list of links to some of the better law blogs on the left navigation bar of my law blog.

Reminded me of a Jerry Lawson's great post on Netlawblog on which he led with “To get squares, you gotta give squares.” Jerry explained:

That was one of ex-World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer's sayings, recorded in his classic book My Six Memorable Games.

I've noticed a number of new legal bloggers do not include many links to other blogs. A modification of Fischer's advice should help these people:

“To get links, you gotta give links.”

Two of the best ways to build blog popularity of your blog are including a comprehensive, carefully-thought out list of links to other blogs in the form of a “blogroll” and mentioning other related blogs in the text of postings.

Jerry's right on about a linkage campaign. It's huge as far as helping people find your law blog or Web site among all the other law blogs out there. The first step, like Jerry said, is having a set of links on your law blog and to link to fellow law blogs in posts so you are in a position to ask for links to your own blog.

You are not getting links because folks are going to click on the link to your law blog – they are not going to. The search engines give preference (high results when someone does a search) to those law blogs and Web sites they think are relevant. Part of the way search engines determine relevance is to see how many other law blogs and Web sites are linking to your law blog. Note also that a link from a law blog or law related site helps the search engines know you are in fact a law blog – this also helps in search results.

Each link to your law blog is like a vote for your law blog. Unlike one person, one vote, some votes count more when it comes to links to your law blog. Links from law blogs or lawyer Web sites with a higher 'Google ranking' count a lot more.

I'll get it into it more in a later post but each blog or Web site has a 'Google ranking' of 0 to 10. The rankings go up geometrically so a ranking of 4 could be looked at as 400 and a 7 as 700,000. A link to your law blog from a law blog or Web site with a higher Google ranking helps your Google ranking more than links from law blogs with lower rankings.

If you can achieve a higher Google ranking, you will help people looking for a lawyer like you and the legal information your law blog provides because your law blog will appear higher in the search results in Google when they do their search.

It takes a lot of time knocking on doors, introducing yourself and asking for someone's vote. Not everyone does it, especially the vultures out there who hold themselves out as doing search engine optimization for lawyer Web sites.

But it's important for marketing with law blogs and can be a pleasant way of meeting some fine lawyers who publish their own law blogs. I strongly suggest it.