How Resourceful Are Your Resources Pages?

Gyi Tsakalakis
August 27, 2010

Have you ever gone to a colleague's or competitor's website and clicked their resources tab? What did you find there? Links to relevant websites that contain more information on topics specific to the firm? Government websites where visitors can get more helpful information? Legal web portals? Usually not.

What you are likely to find there are around 30 to 50 links to other law firm websites with which the firm's search engine optimization consultants also work. The intention is that by linking all these sites together, each site will gain a tremendous number of back links from a diverse number of "legally relevant" domains.

For the most part, we try to avoid debating the "ethics of seo". In some ways, search engine optimization is about risk tolerance. Some clients want to "push the envelope" which may increase the risk of receiving a search engine penalty. Others may have a higher risk aversion and prefer to stay well-within webmaster guidelines. We believe clients should be given a good picture of the pros and cons of certain strategies so that they can make an informed decision with their own website. Generally speaking, we like to stick to what works. Which brings us back to resource pages.

It seems like everywhere you go, linking large numbers of resources pages is frowned upon by those in the seo business. For example SEOmoz's Rand Fishkin says:

It’s not about the quantity of links that you get, but rather the quality. Sometimes a single quality link is worth more than 100 non-quality ones. Beware of SEO companies that develop hundreds of links every month from resource pages that have hundreds of unrelated links.

I had a client who was not happy with my link building. He showed me a list of links that his previous SEO company had developed. I had one look at that list and was shocked. All links were from crappy resource pages and each resource page had more than 500 to 600 links on them. Wow, if only link building was so easy.

I had to get all those links removed to keep the client site from getting penalized. Always remember, it’s not about quantity, it is all about quality when it comes to link building.

On the other hand, this strategy is working for several law firm search engine optimization firms. And admittedly, some of our clients have opted for this strategy. So what are the risks?

Well, the most severe (and least likely) risk is that the search engines view this linking strategy as a link farm and either penalize your site or even de-index it. The less severe (and more probable) outcome is that these links will eventually be discounted. So, as long as you aren't relying on this strategy as your sole source of links, it's probably more a question of efficiency and effectiveness.

What do you think? Do you currently link to several other law firm websites through resource pages? Are you aware of the risks? Does your seo company encourage this technique? Is it working (probably more difficult to answer)?

link building for lawyers

Link Building For Your Law Firm Website

Learn About How To Build Links To Your Law Firm Website Including:

  • Common Strategies For Building Links
  • Why Having A Content Creation Strategy Is Important
  • How NOT To Ask For Links
  • Types Of Websites You Want Links From
  • The Importance Of Having A Diverse Link Profile
Gyi Tsakalakis
Co-Founder of AttorneySync
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Robert
13 years ago

Good article!

Let's Discuss Your Growth

Helping law firms grow profitably with digital marketing and can prove it.

Barry Conybeare

We are so impressed with AttorneySync and their digital marketing services. We started with an audit of our digital presence and hired them thereafter. Fixes to the website and other platforms quickly followed and we have seen a substantial increase in online traffic, new client calls, and new client contracts. Strongly recommend AttorneySync!

Let's Talk

How can we help?

More From Our Blog

June 8, 2023
On Local Law Firm SEO Rank Tracking and Reporting

Over the years, law firm prospects have sent us reports from just about all of our competitors. Unfortunately, even today, some law firm marketing agencies still mislead their clients via "reporting." One particularly egregious example comes in the form of ranking reports. Which prompted this LinkedIn post. To my surprise, I received a lot of […]

Read More
June 7, 2023
On Attribution

John Wanamaker supposedly said "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." In an an effort to figure out "what half is working," attribution was born. Coupled with a transition from traditional, offline ads to digital media, attribution became the holy grail for analyzing advertising spends. But […]

Read More
March 22, 2023
I asked ChatGPT to Recommend a Personal Injury Law Firm

I recently asked ChatGPT, "What are some of the top personal injury law firms in Chicago?? Actually, first I ask "who are some of the top personal injury lawyers in Chicago?" ChatGPT couldn't handle that one, so I modified the prompt. ChatGPT listed five very well-known firms downtown. Can you guess the other four? That's […]

Read More
February 17, 2023
My Take on Google Search's Guidance on AI-Generated Content & Law Firm SEO

If you're like me, you have some degree of AI, ChatGBT, Bard, exhaustion. Now don't get me wrong, this is stuff is remarkable and is changing, well, a lot. But before you hook up the ChatGPT API to your WordPress API and crank out 10,000 pages, here are a few things to think about. Let's […]

Read More
February 16, 2023
Google Adds New SEO Best Practices for Links

If you know me, you know my opinions about links and SEO advice from Google. If you don't, here's the TL;DR: Meh, links! Meaning, all things being equal, links still remain a competitive difference maker for ranking. Take Google's SEO advice with several grains of salt. Google has no economic incentive to help your site […]

Read More
February 1, 2023
Authenticity & Engagement

The best marketing advice I can give you is to be authentic. Of course, you don't find that very helpful in terms of meeting your growth goals. So, you might decide to game the system. As I'm writing this, one of the more popular ways to gain the system is to pay for engagement. This […]

Read More
January 19, 2023
ChatGPT for Legal Marketing

The following post was written by ChatGPT. ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, is a state-of-the-art language model that can generate human-like text based on a given prompt or context. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that businesses, including law firms, market themselves to potential clients. One way that a law firm could use […]

Read More
May 26, 2022
SEO Expectations for Law Firms

How long does SEO take? When can I expect to see results? What results should I expect to see? These are all reasonable questions that we field from lawyers every day. And, like many legal answers, the answer is: It depends. Yes, I know that's not the answer you wanted. But it's the most honest […]

Read More
May 6, 2022
Who Should Do Marketing?

And how much time should they spend doing it? I recently had the privilege of chatting with Tyson, Jim, and Conrad for an upcoming episode of The Maximum Lawyer Podcast. If you're not familiar with The Maximum Lawyer community, you should definitely check it out. Jim asked a really great question about who should do […]

Read More

Let's Discuss

Questions or comments? Let's discuss on social!
envelope
linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram