Venchito Tampon Jr

SEO For Cybersecurity: Actionable Tips and Strategies

If you plan to rank your cybersecurity firm for your target commercial keywords, you'll have to compete with search giants like Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, and McAfee. 

These big brands have dominated the search market for cybersecurity-related keywords. So, targeting head terms that receive thousands of searches may not be the best strategy, especially if you're new to SEO. 

That's not to say you can't outhustle the big guys, but you should create and execute a solid SEO campaign to climb Google's search results for topics where you'll have an advantage and can make a wider content gap or link profile gaps. 

What is Cybersecurity SEO? 

Cybersecurity SEO is the process of optimizing a cybersecurity website and its commercial pages to get visibility on search engines while balancing technical accuracy, compliance, and brand authority with its blog content to attract more top-of-the-funnel content suited for audiences like Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), IT Directors and Managers, Risk Management Officers, and Compliance Officers.

SEO Strategies For Cybersecurity Websites 

Let's walk through how you can execute this. It's really not different from a typical SEO campaign. Most fundamentals will help, but cybersecurity needs nuance or a new flavor.

Implement Technical SEO 

In our experience, cybersecurity websites typically have the following technical SEO issues to monitor and fix regularly: 

Overly Strict Security Measures Blocking Crawlers 

The most secured websites must come from cybersecurity. After all, it's what they're good at providing for their clients. 

However, we've found interestingly that overly strict security measures, with a lack of understanding of SEO, can prevent them from having their web pages crawled and indexed by Google. 

Firewalls, bot protection, and DDoS mitigation tools (e.g., Cloudflare) may accidentally block search engine crawlers from crawling the website, especially if misconfigured, preventing the indexing of important webpages.

The best course of action would be these three: 

• Whitelist Googlebot, Bingbot, and other legitimate crawlers in firewall and security settings. 
• Ensure the robots.txt file does not unintentionally block important pages  (e.g. Disallow: /blog/)
• Use server logs to identify if security tools are mistakenly blocking search engines.

Excessive JavaScript Use in Security Features

Some cybersecurity websites rely heavily on JavaScript-based authentication and encryption, which makes critical content unreadable to search engines. CAPTCHA and login-based access to key resources can also limit indexation.

Many cybersecurity websites use excessive security scripts, tracking codes, and redundant plugins, leading to bloated code that slows down page load times.

Essential actions to take:

• Use server-side rendering (SSR) or dynamic rendering to ensure JavaScript content is indexable.
• Implement progressive enhancement so critical content loads first without JavaScript dependencies.
• Test pages using Google's Mobile-Friendly and Rich Results Test to ensure visibility.
• Reduce reliance on CAPTCHA for SEO-relevant pages and provide bot-friendly alternatives.

Frequent 403 and 404 Errors Due to Content Restrictions

Strict access control measures can result in 403 (forbidden) errors, affecting crawlability. You would also notice broken links and 404 errors from expired threat intelligence reports or removed security advisories. 

Depending on why the URL is giving off the 404 status, 404s can be corrected by bringing back the live web page via redirection or by doing nothing with 404 status. 

Poor URL Structure Due to Compliance Needs

Many cybersecurity firms rely on dynamic URLs with query parameters as they require most of their website initiatives to adhere to compliance, security protocols, or content access restrictions. This results in URLs like:

• example.com/service?id=1234&region=us&compliance=iso27001
• example.com/article.php?post=5678&category=cybersecurity

These poorly optimized structures can cause indexation issues, duplicate content, and difficulty tracking in the analytics tools. 

You might also find obfuscated URLs for security reasons, which make them less user-friendly and harder for search engines to understand. 

Certain pages behind login restrictions or access control mechanisms (e.g., requiring authentication to view security reports) might not be indexed.

What to do with these? Here's your quick how-tos: 

• Use SEO-friendly, static URLs instead of dynamically generated ones (e.g., /cybersecurity-services/ instead of /service?id=1234). If you discover appropriate keywords to target, optimize the URL structure with the target keyword—it's one of the first things search engines look at when trying to rank a relevant webpage. 
• Keep URLs descriptive and short, avoiding unnecessary query parameters.
• Implement canonical tags to prevent duplicate content issues from compliance-based variations.
• Regularly audit URLs and use 301 redirects for outdated or non-compliant structures.

Schema Markup

Cybersecurity firms often overlook structured data markup, which is one of the intermediate SEO techniques that search engines use to recognize a firm's credibility and expertise. 

Here are a couple of resources to help you with implementing schema markup in your cybersecurity website:

• Intro to How Structured Data Works
• Schema Markup 101

Map Content to Buyers’ Journey of Your ICPs

Learning how to map out a content marketing plan to target your individual ideal customer profiles can help you craft content assets that are specific to your target audience's needs, pain points, and how-to desires.

This is apparent for cybersecurity buyers with different technical expertise, priorities, and purchasing behaviors. 

For instance, there are distinct concerns between a CISO at a multinational corporation and an IT Manager at a mid-sized company. The former is a high-decision maker who based his action plans on how particular cybersecurity measures can help the company's business objectives, while the IT managers' major concern is looking for an ideal cybersecurity solution to be presented to their upper management in their organization. 

Most cybersecurity firms don't have clear ICP, as most doing the in-house SEO work aren't adept at fundamental marketing principles, leading to many misaligned content assets they produce on their websites—either too technical for decision-makers or too simplified for hardcore IT professionals. 

The best way to make sure your content hits home to your potential buyers is by segmenting content based on how it speaks to: 

Define ICP and understand their top priorities, pain points, and what cybersecurity is for them. Here's what it looks like:

CISOs & Security Leaders → Risk management insights, compliance reports, executive-level security strategies

These high-level decision-makers need strategic content that helps them assess risks, align security with business goals, and ensure regulatory compliance. The key factors are business numbers and social proof. 

Show your cybersecurity solution can help them achieve growth in their business numbers based on specific metrics related to their performance. 

Example: "How Zero-Trust Security Reduces Enterprise Risk" (high-level strategy guide).

IT Directors & Engineers → Technical deep dives, cybersecurity architecture, hands-on security implementations

If you're targeting mid-level management people, create in-depth, technical content that explains security frameworks, configurations, and implementation details. Talk about long-form actionable guides addressing daily challenges, from minor issues they couldn't solve to higher strategy work they must present to their superiors. 

Example: "Configuring Firewalls for Ransomware Prevention" (detailed technical guide).

Small Business Owners (SMBs & Startups) → Jargon-free cybersecurity guides, affordable security solutions, and practical checklists

You don't need to publish overly technical guides here. It is best to ideate and create simple, actionable content that helps them understand security essentials without technical complexity. 

Small business owners care more about how it helps them achieve their business goals (profit, growth, operations, delivery, etc.). Think of the many functions of a business owner where your cybersecurity solution can best fit.

Example: "Cybersecurity Basics for Small Businesses: 5 Ways to Secure Your Data" (step-by-step guide).

Related Resource: 21 Content Marketing Tips for 2025

Create Dedicated Landing Pages to Target Individual Keywords (1:1 Approach) 

The most common mistake in basic SEO, and often a challenge for my SEO work for cybersecurity websites, is not targeting individual keywords for their landing pages. 

In order to rank for your target keywords, your domain must have a dedicated webpage that talks directly about the keyword. The absence of it makes SEOs wonder why their cybersecurity websites don't even appear on pages 2 to 4, let alone on page 1 of Google's SERPs. 

To maximize your SEO efforts, you can tap into topic clustering (others call it a topical map strategy).

Build Parent Pages + Topic Clusters for Better Structure & SEO

Instead of standalone pages, create a hierarchical structure (parent + child pages) for cybersecurity services that signal to Google what your website is about, specific to the commercial keywords you're vying for. 

Doing so helps your search engines crawl your web pages better, improving crawl efficiency. It also helps your users navigate your website seamlessly, as they can see exactly which pages they should visit based on a logical site architecture and smart internal linking system. 

Here's what the topic clustering strategy looks like for cybersecurity firms: 

Parent Page: /services/cybersecurity-solutions/ (Broad Overview)

• H1: "Comprehensive Cybersecurity Solutions for Businesses"
• Provides a general overview of all services offered.
• Includes internal links to more specific service pages.

Child Pages (Topic Clusters for Each Service):

• /services/cloud-security-enterprise/ → Cloud Security
  Covers AWS, Azure, Google Cloud security, and compliance.
• /services/penetration-testing/ → Penetration Testing
  Explains external/internal pen testing, vulnerability assessments.
• /services/managed-firewall-smbs/ → Managed Firewall Services
  Details SMB network security, firewall monitoring, and maintenance.
• /services/incident-response/ → Incident Response
  Covers breach recovery, forensics, and cyberattack mitigation.
• /services/ransomware-protection/ → Ransomware Protection
  Focuses on threat detection, encryption, and endpoint security.

Customize head term targeting, service pages, and their target keywords based on your firm's service offerings. 

The above strategy is worthwhile and should be helpful enough to give you a headstart. 

Industry-Specific Cybersecurity Service Pages for Better Targeting

If there's an advanced-level SEO strategy that could be implemented well for cybersecurity firms, it is the ability to publish industry-specific cybersecurity service pages to cast a wide net in brand reach and capture more organic traffic from potential buyers in different markets. 

The best thing about cybersecurity SEO campaigns is their wide variety of potential customers or clients, as compliance requirements, security risks, and all its related solutions are applicable in many companies. That itself is a good opportunity to leverage targeting a variety of industries. 

Examples of Industry-Specific Cybersecurity Pages:

• "Cybersecurity for Healthcare: HIPAA Compliance & Data Protection" →
  /industries/healthcare-cybersecurity/
• "Cybersecurity for Financial Services: Preventing Bank Data Breaches" →
  /industries/financial-services-cybersecurity/
• "Cybersecurity Solutions for E-Commerce: Payment Security & Fraud Prevention" →
  /industries/ecommerce-cybersecurity/
• "Cybersecurity for SaaS: Secure DevOps & Data Encryption" →
  /industries/saas-cybersecurity/

My best recommendation is to craft content for each landing page that is tailored to the pain points, solutions, and messaging of each industry. 

One of the most common mistakes, when they use this strategy, is simply rewriting one industry page, creating almost similar (nearing duplicate content) that's often hurting their website rankings instead of helping it. 

Hire copywriters and content specialists to work on these different industry pages and optimize them for the industry keyword—at best, if you do it comprehensively (long-form, more information, in-depth). You don't have any reason not to rank for your target keywords. 

EEAT Is No Longer a Nice-To-Have — It's a Must

Google favors brands in many cyber-security keywords (like in any other industry), where demonstrating E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is no longer just a part of your SEO checklist but a necessary SEO initiative. 

Here are a couple of actions to ensure you display these brand factors on your website. 

Publish thought-leadership content assets

As mentioned earlier, you're dealing with highly educated readers in the cybersecurity space. Authors who display a level of experience are essential to ensuring the caliber of content displayed on webpages.

Release threat intelligence reports, security trends, breach analysis, and share data-driven insights about emerging cybersecurity threats. When writing content, include entities— cite government, security organs, and research institutions (e.g., NIST, CISA, MITRE ATT&CK).

Create author bio pages for each of your organization's in-house experts (e.g., CISSP, CEH, CISM holders). Include educational background, professional achievements, affiliations, and organization each expert has been part of or affiliated with. 

By demonstrating enough credibility of their individual expertise, they send rich signals to Google that your website is topical and relevant to a given subject discourse. 

Include First-Hand Insights in Blog Content

This won't be a difficult task for your content team, as most can interview in-house leaders in your organization. They can share lessons, actionable insights, and industry trends that they observe or have credible opinions about—all displaying author expertise for your website. 

Display Trust Badges 

Trust badges are a small overlooked trust factor, which cybersecurity firms can take advantage of in sending more trust signals to search engines and users. 

SEO teams can display ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, and NIST compliance - and other related trust budgets on their websites’ landing pages. 

Strengthen Authority with High-Quality Backlinks

The best thing is that once you have covered the basics of SEO, if done right, you'll get significant rankings for your webpages. But if you want to aim for three positions on Google's SERPs, it's inevitable that you will build high-quality backlinks.

However, beware of the many link vendors and "middle-man" link builders who only get backlinks from lower-traffic multi-category websites. While it's easy to pay them peanuts, you're likely to end up with your website penalized or unable to rank on the first page of SERPs as they don't contribute any link equity to your website.

If you're just getting started in link building, it's not that easy to get featured in cybersecurity news sites like Dark Reading ThreatPost and KrebsOnSecurity or even tech-focused sites (e.g., TechCrunch, Wired, or SC Media). 

The best way is to launch a digital PR campaign where it helps build thought leadership of your brand through expert commentaries, data-driven campaigns, and reactive PR, while getting high-quality editorial links to your cybersecurity website.

Here are a couple of guides we've written to help you launch your link building campaigns:

• How to Get Backlinks in 2025
• How to Get The Strongest Backlinks

SharpRocket—Agency of Choice For Cybersecurity Firms

Whether you want to execute full-scale SEO campaigns or ramp up your landing pages with high-quality backlinks, we cover everything you need to increase your organic traffic. Book a call with us today, and we'll create a cybersecurity SEO roadmap for you. 

by Venchito Tampon Jr

7 Compelling Reasons Why You Need to Invest in Backlinks

One of the most common questions we get from new SEOs or business owners is why they should do link building for their websites. 

It is a valid question for marketers as they want to learn more about the importance of backlinks before putting their money into this search engine optimization activity. 

Without understanding its value, they won’t invest in this highly important area of SEO, let alone take the first step.

Now, let me go straight to the 7 reasons you should invest in backlinks. Then, we give you actionable tips on achieving it with your link building campaigns.

Why You Need to Invest in Backlinks?

1. Branding

When you build links, you associate your brand with other brands and entities in your space. The exact anchor text, placement of the link, and the type of website where you have gotten the link tell so much about how you take care of your brand.

We’ve had the privilege of working with enterprise clients for the past couple of years. And it is critically important before we actually engage in any link building strategies for them to know that any plan would 

For example, we are working with an enterprise SaaS, and given their prestigious reputation, we could quickly get links across different industries by simply suggesting their resource or free product.

That kind of branding has amounted to several online and offline recognitions and has proven to be effective in bringing the company (not just the website) to the next level.

As a branding tool, link building helps new websites engage in SEO to increase their brand awareness further and, ultimately, get a more significant market share in their industry through SEO means.

“Link building as a branding” mindset will impact how you plan, strategize, and execute your link building strategies. 

You won’t engage with publishers and bloggers that are too far-stretch regarding relevance to your brand. This forces you to qualify domains/sites in the link prospecting stage before emailing them for link requests.

When you properly place links on sites/entities you want to better associate your brand with, you’ll have higher chances of bringing in new branded searches for your company, personality, or product. 

When readers see your backlinks featured on reputable A-list digital publishers, it would spark interest in them and try searching for your brand on search engines. 

Link building is significant in developing your holistic branding campaigns, not just in organic marketing. 

One of the ways backlinks affect branding is you can populate your brand name’s SERP real estate with your owned media or web properties. This would help you establish a robust online reputation. 

Actionable Tips To Enhance Branding with Backlinks:

Focus on the reasons why people link. 

Two primary reasons people link to your brand are relationships and content. 

The content you publish and distribute (i.e., product, service, offering, information) and the relationships you establish with link sources (e.g., strategic link partners, industry friends, or brands you actually partner with or use).

When strategizing for a link building campaign, answer these questions:

• What content assets are going to attract linkable audiences? 
• Can we leverage existing relationships for content distribution (for links)? 

Treat your content as a product. 

Most marketers view content creation as another marketing activity they have to do consistently. But when you treat your content as a product, you release with the highest quality possible.

At SharpRocket, we share case studies and actionable link building strategies that are proven to work for our clients and we think might be useful to our readers. We differentiate our content assets from other agencies' blogs by diving into the real practical side of link building and SEO - to share the most actionable advice in every blog post.

2. Crawl Budget 

Crawl budget refers to the quantity of pages crawled on a website within a specific timeframe. When your site has a larger crawl budget, more pages are indexed and reassessed, improving search engine rankings.

Simply look at Google Search Console to get an idea of what your crawl budget is. 

According to many SEOs, there are key factors to optimize the crawl budget: 1) popularity and 2) freshness. 

Popular domains get crawled more often (popularity). Websites with more updated and new content will likely be crawled (freshness). 

Three link building activities can help make websites more popular and fresh: proper internal linking, inbound link acquisition, content audit, and upgrade.

You help optimize your site’s crawl budget by actively pursuing inbound backlinks. SEO Spyglass did an SEO test in which they found a strong correlation between having more inbound links and more spider visits to a page.

3. Traffic

“The links that people want to follow carry the most weight”. - Bill Slawski. 

The types of links that matter in today’s SEO are the ones that send relevant traffic to your site. These are most potent in that they capture the very purpose of having a link to drive users to the destination page (serves as an additional reference or offering). 

Link building allows the site to capture a constant traffic flow from relevant sources. And this traffic can bring additional sales (conversions) to the business site. 

Actionable Tips To Gain Traffic with Backlinks:

Distribute content on relevant websites. 

Not all potential link sources should be highly relevant to your site. But at the foundational level, you should aim for an initial set of backlinks within the same industry. 

I’ve covered this degree of relevance (Searchworks’ framework) in my other link building guide on strongest backlinks to help you marketers expand their link prospecting lists by tapping into different levels of target link sources. 

Think highly of strategic backlink placement. 

You can’t expect traffic to be sent to your site by placing inbound links on any place on the referring page. 

The more visible your links where users click on them, the more likely you’ll get referral traffic from linking pages. 

The best way is to pursue contextual links (backlinks placed within the body of the content) to ensure clicks on links.

4. Trust and Authority 

Trust and authority are intangible SEO factors most marketers ignore when investing in a link building campaign.

The most beneficial part when you’re actively pursuing the right types of backlinks for your site is that audiences who don’t know you before start familiarizing themselves with your work and the content you produce.

When there is trust, the momentum starts growing in building the authority and thought leadership you need to attract new link opportunities and relationships for your business. 

Actionable Tips To Build Trust and Authority with Backlinks:

Acquire links from highly credible sites. 

Get backlinks from sites that both people and Google trust and see as an authority in your space. The way to know it is to see which publications/sites have a massive following of readers and are constantly producing valuable information in your space.

For example, Daily Coffee News and Fresh Cup are highly credible publications in the coffee industry that constantly attract passive links from other content creators. 

These sites get more popular as they publish highly valued content their target audiences (coffee owners, roasters, baristas, coffee lovers, etc..) would be willing to consume, share, and distribute to their peers. 

This blog also gets featured in top listicles because of the credibility and proof of work we did over the past decade.

So, getting referential links from these trusted and authoritative sites can boost any brand’s presence in the industry.  

Utilize Digital PR. 

Digital PR is now mainstream, but I’ve seen brands still skeptical about its effectiveness in establishing the brand's authority.

If you want to expand your territories in other regions/countries, you will likely benefit from Digital PR campaigns.

In my previous article on SEO in 2024 insights, I covered one client of ours who is heavily invested now in digital PR to push through their brand awareness in the Southeast Asian region (starting first here in the Philippines).

By getting backlinks from reputable sites, readers of those publications start becoming curious about the brand, what it is about, and how it can add value to their lives. 

5. Conversions

Link building helps drive assisted conversions to your site. 

When you target link sources that can drive more customers (highly engaged traffic) to your site, you’re likely to see conversions for your business.

Actionable Tips To Get Conversions with Backlinks:

Aim for referring pages with middle-of-the-funnel intent. 

These include lists of products/services in your sector or region. Getting links from these pages attracts potential buyers to your site who are into their decision-making purchase in finding solutions to their needs.

Leverage relationships to get links from credible sites’ top-ranking pages. 

Some highly credible publications have strict editorial guidelines for publishing content from external authors. This would require you to build internal relationships with in-house editors and staff to land a chance to be a guest author. 

That said, if you have some relationships with link partners that you can use to land authorship opportunities for industry publications, you can get backlinks from these distributed content.

These relationship-driven links are difficult for your competitors to acquire, which increases the link gap against other ranking competing sites. 

6. Rankings

We’ve covered enough reasons to invest in backlinks for your site. 

If you have the right mindset of building links, this obvious imperative to ranking your site is highly possible. 

Google is largely a link-based algorithm that will stay the same for years. But not all links are equal. You should acquire backlinks that matter most. 

Actionable Tips To Improve Rankings with Backlinks:

Build foundational links at the start. 

Google rewards websites that continue to send trust signals (off-page). 

Start by getting backlinks from social profiles, citations, and local niche-specific directories. Do it like what a regular business does. A legitimate company would have complete social profiles (Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, etc.). 

Passively attract natural links via ranking for informational keywords. 

Publish assets with the intent to rank for informational and question keywords. When other content publishers find your content helpful to use as references (while researching their topics), they’ll be more likely to link to it from their content. 

7. Innovation For Next Brand Offerings

This one is related to earlier branding reasons. Another core benefit of link acquisition is it allows brands (especially starting ones) to innovate their product or service offerings based on the current demands.

For example, we’ve been revamping our SEO strategies for my coffee brands. We are constantly thinking of new business models we can touch on to expand our offerings. 

Through ranking for the best coffee service keywords here in the Philippines and other link building partnerships, we’ve added a new coffee cart package.

It stems from the idea that other suppliers, like local wedding event companies in the Philippines, are linking to our coffee blog. 

Build links to see consumer behavior patterns and where their attention is going. This would give you insights into new product or service offerings you can offer with your brand. 

That’s all for now. If you have questions, feel free to comment below. And you can also follow me on Twitter @venchito14.

by Venchito Tampon Jr

SEO in 2025: Insights To Outrank Your Competitors

This post is not about SEO predictions in 2025. Instead, I’ll dive into the insights I gathered and learned from 2023 that would still make a mark this year forward. 

We’ve been publishing heavily on link building, so we’ll have actionable tips on what we think is highly important to build the strongest backlinks in 2025. 

1. Stronger Emphasis On Experience

The “E” of experience added to EAT impacts how brands publish assets based on authenticity and real-life scenarios. Google’s ranking algorithm will better reward websites with first-hand verifiable experience that demonstrates authentic thought leadership.

Here are some things we did that helped our sites and our clients’ sites demonstrate first-hand experiences even more. 

Inviting Real Practitioners For Content Contribution 

Relationships will always be a critical factor in addressing the demands for content creation. Being surrounded by trusted leaders, authors, and personalities in your industry can help you tap into their expertise to shell out expert-driven content for your website. 

Invite them to collaborate with your brand to benefit both parties’ audiences mutually. 

With their real-life experiences, you can increase the content's credibility (and quality). Thus making it more appealing for readers and other content creators to distribute it across their networks. 

First-Person Guest Posts 

Guest posting is still a viable link building tactic for most marketers. Still, it has become difficult to scale for the most part, given that most bloggers today demand payment for published articles or have high restrictions on who can only contribute to their blogs. 

You can use “experience” as a selling point when pitching mid to high-tier publications in your space. By writing topics that demand expertise and first-hand experiences, you’ll be more likely to turn your email pitches into guest posts.

2. Search On Social Media

A strategic approach to SEO starts by acknowledging other mainstream channels that demand optimization, including social media posts. 

We’ve seen how impactful TikTok and Youtube Shorts (Youtube being the second largest search engine) are in acquiring users and letting them stay on the platform. The search for information isn’t anymore. 

Marketers are paying attention to optimizing their social media posts as much as they do with their blog content. Seeing this as a shift requires a holistic SEO strategy to capture a wider audience for brands. 

Repurpose Assets and Distribute Them Across Social Media Platforms.

Find evergreen assets already published on your blog and think of ways to repurpose them as social media posts. That way, you send similar brand messages across different channels but in various means, content formats, and styles. 

Invite Social Media Influencers To Participate in Content Creation.

Identify new upcoming influencers in your space and incentivize them to create outstanding content based on expertise and experience. 

You may also want to repurpose it into written content you can optimize for keywords to rank for. Leverage more of this, and it’ll help you establish topical authority with several content pieces published around a single topic or content theme.

3. Link Building For Organic Rankings and EEAT. 

Links have certainly been the most significant reason we helped our clients quickly improve their site’s organic traffic. 

We’ve also tested our websites to see what link building method works best and what their effectiveness is to their target pages after Google updates.

Here are some of the things we observed to be crucial factors that make every link building campaign successful: 

Diversity of Links

You can’t rely on a single link building strategy. 

While there are scalable techniques such as high-quality guest posting, digital PR, and resource links that work well, there are advantages to diversifying your links:

• Outranking your competitors better. As you have diversified link types, you can gather link opportunities your competitors haven’t acquired before and aren’t easy to replicate. 
• Natural link profile. You’re less likely to be hit by algorithmic penalties and, therefore, avoid sudden loss in rankings and organic traffic. 
• Establish the foundation of your website from an EEAT standpoint. Natural and profile links can help bring trust signals to new websites, enabling your site to rank your pages faster. 

My top advice if you’re outsourcing link building services is to ask for their strategies and collaborate with your team so they can creatively think of ways to publish assets that attract passive links. 

Quality of Links 

It’s obvious, but I’ve seen more marketers relying on their systems on AI. That said, it’s either making the processes more practical or they are innovating ways to improve their systems to produce better quality output. 

As an SEO consultant, brands and SEO agencies now suggest to their clients that quality matters more than quantity. Yes, it would help to deliver more links, but even with a few links in today’s SERPs, you can outrank your competitors.

4. Scale The Unscalable 

More often than not, what is easily scaled is widely used by marketers, which dilutes the strategy's effectiveness—case in point with guest posting and infographic outreach. In 2010-2013, you can achieve a 15 to 40% conversion rate with manual outreach. But not anymore.

Invest 30 to 40% of your time to execute unscalable link building strategies. These would require intensive resources and assets from your team but would make a substantial advantage in the long term.

Some of these unscalable strategies are:

• Link earning to rank for low-competition industry-specific keywords that other content creators would use and describe when they write their content.
• Partnerships to reciprocate links for both websites- mainly cross-promote relevant linkable assets.
• Publishing external comprehensive content assets with high chances of ranking for competitive keywords using other sites' high domain authority.

You need a full year to implement these strategies on your site consistently. But this will undoubtedly result in passive link acquisition with a flywheel effect on links and skyrocket your rankings and organic traffic. 

5. Link Building Ties in SEO Integration

Most clients we’ve helped scale their link building are integrated into the overall SEO campaigns.

Whether it is a featured-centric link development campaign for SaaS or building consistent 7 to 10 links/month for a local brick-and-mortar biz, we build links with business objectives in mind.

2025 will be a year where top brands and SEO agencies no longer care about vanity metrics in links.

Some quantifiable metrics are good for assessing domains for potential backlinks initially. But in a grander view, every link must contribute not just to the rankings.

To give you practical examples, the clients we worked with aim to: 

• Maintain local and/or national rankings for top competitive keywords 
• Get a bigger market share via organic rankings from their top pages. 
• Point links to top resource guides with internal links to similar resources (which ultimately helps build the site’s topical authority).
• Acquire mentions from top niche sites that drive referral traffic from targeted audiences.
• Target NEW product feature pages and get new customers to their all-in-one tool suite (for SaaS) 

All aim to put the brand in a better position in SERPs and their industry.

6. Power of Digital PR

Most in-house SEOs now understand the power of digital PR in driving high-authority links to the website, which helps strengthen its entire domain authority. 

We worked with clients with large amounts of customer data, allowing them to effortlessly produce highly valued assets (data visuals, interactive assets, etc.).

They use digital PR to increase the reach of their assets further. 

Ultimately, these use it to capture other regions. In one case, they want new signups from South East Asian customers.

7. National Links Drive As Much Impact As Local Links

With limited opportunities to get links on a local level, most of the links can be built from a purely relevance perspective.

SEOs would have a higher chance of landing more links and doing so at scale with the national level.

At most, the impact can be much higher to drive rankings on targeted pages.

8. Organic Rankings As A Research Tool For New Products/Services 

Through keyword research and real-time rankings for the brand, terms can now give insights into new potential services/products a brand can make.

For eCommerce, it is a great way to scale operations that fit into customers' current demands. Diving into upfront research on what types of products or services are searchable by users - and even the specific type of product names and brands - are valuable insights for any business owner and investor engaging in SEO. 

by Venchito Tampon Jr

SEO For Immigration Lawyers

People search on Google when looking for immigration lawyers. 

So, if you want to increase quality leads to your legal practice through SEO, here’s a step-by-step guide.

SEO For Immigration Lawyers

SEO for immigration lawyers depends on your target audience. 

If you’re targeting local clients, you only need local SEO. You must optimize your site for national keywords (e.g., US audience) if it's a national audience. 

Unlike plain SEO, local SEO isn’t limited to improving rankings in the regular Google's SERPs. It also focused on getting your business to climb the top of local business map packs displayed on top of search results pages. 

You can rank for both Google Business Map packs and organic search listings if you want greater visibility. 

Imagine having your website appear on Google Map Packs while they could still see your brand in organic search engine listings as they scroll the page. 

Now, let’s get into how to rank your immigration law firm for Google Map packs and organic search listings. 

How to Rank Your Immigration Law Firm? 

1. NAP Consistency   

NAP represents business name, address, and phone number (NAP), the three most essential elements of a local SEO campaign. 

By consistently placing it across prominent places on your site and other sites for citations, you help Google identify your brand and associate it with its geographic location. 

Include NAP in your About Us page or sitewise in your website’s footer or header sections.  

2. Claim Your Google Business Profile 

Google Business Profile is a free Google service that allows you to create a business listing online. 

When search users look for your business, your Google Business Profile will display its map location, image, and other general business information.

Create your Google Business Profile here. Fill out the fields in your account, even the ones with optional fields. This would allow you to get ahead and outrank your competitors. 

Write a detailed business description. 

Add original photos of your office, staff, and any relevant business pictures. 

Ensure you accurately input the correct category. Google has now added specific categories in Google Business Profile. 

Link to your social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter (X), Linkedin, and TikTok. It’s a feature of Google Business Profile where you can add more trust signals to your business/site. 

And lastly, get genuine reviews. You can ask your clients to leave reviews on your Google Business Profile. This would help your GBP to rank higher on Google Map Packs and increase conversions from potential clients checking social proof of your site. 

3. Be Strategic in Your Keyword Research 

Ranking for immigration lawyer keyword isn’t an easy feat.

Take a look at how competitive local SEO is in the legal space. 

However, you still have a fighting chance if you take a different approach to keyword research given that keyword difficulty shouldn’t be your sole indicator for search competition. 

By looking at Google’s SERPs for your target keyword, you’ll then see who are the top-ranking pages and what are their current domain authority. 

For instance, if you do a Google search for “immigration lawyer in St. Louis”, you’ll that some of the ranking websites have Ahrefs’ Domain Rating of less than 30. 

It shows you have a high chance to rank for this keyphrase even if you have a new website.  

Target Long-Tail Immigration Lawyer Keywords 

If you have a specialized service, i.e., immigration legal service for Filipinos, you may target a more specific keyphrase, “Filipino immigration lawyer Chicago”. 

This type of keyword typically has a low search volume but a high intent of converting into clients and has lower competition. 

Aside from creating landing pages that target your head terms, “immigration lawyer in Chicago”, you can publish more landing pages that optimize for “Filipino immigration lawyer Chicago”.

Publish Informational Content Around Your Target Keywords 

One of the best ways to rank for keywords is to build topical authority. Topical authority refers to gaining a level of authority within a specific expertise or area in the industry that Google recognizes you as an expert/authority in that niche. 

Start creating blog content for people asking questions related to your legal service. 

Enter the keyword in Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer. Go to Questions. 

Though most of these keywords have low search volume, the traffic you’ll get from ranking for these long-tail keywords will pile up and help build your site’s topical authority. 

Steal Traffic From Other Immigration Lawyers Websites

Reverse engineering your competitors’ sites would reveal keyword insights you can also rank for (and hopefully steal the traffic from by outranking their sites).

Enter Competitors’ Domain in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer - Organic Keywords. Then, filter results by “Top 10” and Keyword Difficulty of 15.

Here are interesting findings from this keyword research exercise: 

• More specific keywords to target additional landing pages (deportation defense lawyer, green card lawyer NYC, fiancée visa lawyer New York, removal defense attorney)
• Informational keywords to attract more traffic (e.g., “k1 visa did not marry”).
• “immigration lawyer reviews” - you can optimize your client reviews page for this keyword.

I’m only scratching the surface. There are a couple of more keywords you can find from doing competitor keyword research. 

4. Localize On-page SEO Elements

On-page SEO for local legal services needs to reflect the target geography in the following fields:

• Title tags - indicate what your immigration law firm is serving.
• Meta descriptions - help increase CTR, so better mention your target location.
• H1 text - the main headline text of the page must be marked by the H1 HTML tag.
• Body text - mention the country, city, or area you’re targeting in the body of your content as you naturally write the content. 
• Entitles and LSI - include variations of keywords and entities (businesses or personality names) when appropriate in your content copy. 

5. Localize Content

A big chunk of local SEO is crafting localized content targeted to an audience within a geographic setting.

Write content that is applicable and specific to your target area. For instance, if you’re writing content to possible clients' questions, such as, “How Long Does It Take to Get a Green Card Through Marriage?”, mention entities specific to your target location.

You may include the policies, laws, and culture of that city. This way, you send rich signals to Google that you are relevant to that location. 

6. Build Foundational Links

One big mistake most SEOs make is acquiring inbound links without building the right off-page trust signals to their websites.

Before doing guest blogging, resource page link building, or digital PR, begin with the basics.

Social Profiles

Place your links on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social sites to initiate link building campaign. 

Optimize profiles by filling out all information, uploading images, and posting content on these social platforms. 

This is what a real company does with their social accounts, so gaining trust signals by building your social profiles. 

Get Listed on Legal Directories

Legal directories tend to rank for your target head terms like “immigration lawyer in New York”, as these pages satisfy the search intent of providing more options for legal services to search users.

With the recent Google algorithm updates, you’ll notice two or more pages ranking from the same domain. For this Google’s SERPs for “immigration lawyer in New York Google Search”, you see two pages from Justia ranking for the key phrase. 

Though these SERP patterns may change, being listed on legal directories is a colossal advantage that helps improve your brand's visibility for people directly visiting these directory sites.

While these directory links help improve the ranking power of your website. 

Resource Lists

If you are part of any advocacy groups or non-profit organizations, they may have specific resource lists where your immigration lawyer site can be listed.

Reach out to them and get direct link placements from their dedicated pages for attorneys. 

Advanced SEO For Immigration Lawyers

If you have covered the SEO basics, there may be a few optimizations you can make to your legal site to dominate rankings for your target local keyword. Here are some of the legal SEO strategies you can test. 

Steal Link Building Ideas From Immigration Lawyers in Bigger Cities

You may have noticed I’m using immigration lawyers from New York as my examples. The reason is that most optimizations, including link acquisition, are heavily invested in these bigger cities. 

Steal the best ideas for link building from immigration lawyers in bigger cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. 

You’ll find creative link building ideas that aren’t only applicable to their dedicated cities but for your geographic area, as well.

Replicate their link building strategies to acquire local links for your legal site. 

Execute Digital PR Campaign

Legal isn’t a sexy niche. However, there are ways to utilize legal brand stories that would allow you to attract contextual links from local newspapers and authoritative publications naturally.

Take a look at this link from the New York Times, which one immigration lawyer was able to acquire. 

The expertise of the lawyer on the topic becomes the reason for journalists to cite him in their content. 

Digital PR isn’t scalable, particularly for legal space. However, if you can partner with legal experts if you’re doing SEO for legal clients, acquiring links your local competitors in your space can’t build would be a creative strategy. 

Conclusion

SEO for immigration lawyers helps improve your branding visibility and increase quality leads looking for legal services. Contact us today if you need help with link building or full SEO campaigns for law firms. 

by Venchito Tampon Jr