Why Adding A Law Firm Blog To Your Website Is Non-Negotiable
The legal industry is highly competitive, so legal professionals must craft a focused marketing strategy to attract new clients. You should be implementing several types of marketing strategies to help grow your firm, and blogging is a great way to reach your audience and avoid the red tape and high costs associated with other channels like paid marketing in Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
A great way to promote your firm’s legal services is to start a blog to provide helpful information to potential clients while researching legal solutions like the ones you offer. Many companies host an active blog as part of their content strategy. Still, this collection of articles can be incredibly lucrative for a legal practice looking to generate leads and find new clients.
But does a successful blog really make a significant impact on a law firm’s bottom line? The answer may surprise you.
Let’s look at the benefits of blogging for law firms and seven ways you can write high-quality legal blog posts that drive traffic to your website and generate qualified leads for your legal practice.
What Are The Benefits Of Blogging For Law Firms?
Legal blog writing must be a pillar of your digital marketing campaign regardless of your law firm’s practice. This is because Google implements several strict “filters” to determine if a firm has the authority and expertise to present trustworthy information to online searchers.
All law firms, whether their focus is on Personal Injury, Criminal Defense, or Real Estate Law, need to meet strict criteria to improve their rankings in Google. This is because law firms are part of a special group created by Google called Your Money Your Life (YMYL) sites. These sites include the medical, legal, and financial sectors, and Google pays close attention to information shared by these types of sites due to the impact poor information could have on readers.
Since you are trying to market your firm, and your firm is a YMYL site, you need to provide educational content to show Google and your readers that you are an expert in the field. The only way to boost your trust with Google is to improve your Expertise, Authoriveness, and Trust (E-A-T) in the eyes of Google.
Writing educational blog posts about your area of law will show Google that you are an expert in that given area, which will lead to higher rankings whenever people search for the services you provide.
Along with building your authority and trust with Google, you will also enjoy additional benefits when you maintain an active blog for your firm like:
- Build authority: An SEO-optimized blog will help your law firm’s website build authority with Google, causing it to rank higher in the SERPs.
- Boost rankings: If you publish blogs with local content, it will help you rank higher for people in your area looking for legal advice.
- Develop credibility: A polished legal blog shows both people and search engines that you understand your clients’ needs and can be trusted to serve them.
- Gain a social media following: With any digital marketing campaign, social media is a crucial component. Since blogs are highly shareable, they can help you build visibility on various social media platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Cost-effective marketing: Blogging is a great way to stay well within your law practice’s content marketing budget.
Now that we’ve looked at the benefits of blogging for your law firm, let’s look at seven ways you can write excellent legal blog posts to help build your law firm’s marketing strategy.
7 Tips To Write Great Legal Blog Posts To Attract Potential Clients
Legal blogs are essential to any digital marketing strategy because they help you get in front of potential clients by answering questions they have as they begin to research for legal services. A great blog post will answer specific questions that your target market asks and help position you as the best solution when they start to choose a law firm to work with to resolve their problems.
Blogging may seem like an overwhelming task, especially for busy legal professionals. But if you start small, soon, you’ll build a robust legal blog that provides valuable information and attracts your target audience.
So if you’re starting from scratch or looking for ways to improve the performance of your existing blogs, use these seven tips to take your blogs to the next level.
1. Write Posts Based On Your Practice Area And Specialty Services
The first step to a high-quality blog is finding the right topics to build your blog posts around. You’ll want to write posts that reflect your specific practice area, like family law, bankruptcy, or personal injury.
Make a list of blog topics that allow you to show off your knowledge and expertise. You can start by gathering common questions your current and past clients have asked you. You can also look at message boards, Reddit, or other forums to find the public’s questions, so you can write blog posts to answer those questions.
Consider adding case studies, local current events, and legal news that relates directly to your law firm’s offer. This will show that you have your fingers on the pulse of the legal industry and can offer the most up-to-date information for Google and your audience.
2. Brainstorm The Questions And Needs Of Your Customers Have
When potential clients are looking for legal advice, they will often type a question into a search engine and begin their research from there. You can use a blog post to provide in-depth information about your clients’ common problems. This approach will help you rank in Google for valuable search terms, and you will be able to drive more sales as your client see that you are the best person to address their needs since you built trust with them through your free content.
Make a list of common questions you hear during free consultations and your specific customers’ needs. As you write your posts, make sure you structure each blog post properly to maximize your impact. This means you should break each blog post into smaller sections with H2 and H3 heads, include bullet points, and link to other blog posts on your site.
These are all part of building content that is easy to read, so your audience is more likely to consume your content and take action after reading it.
3. Start Writing Posts For Services That Are Most Profitable
While your firm name may be synonymous with a specific practice area, start your blog by focusing on the services that bring the most money into your law firm.
For instance, if you are a Personal Injury firm and you gain the most revenue from car accidents compared to slip and fall cases, you may want to focus your blog posts around information for people recently in a car accident. Now, I’m not suggesting that you ignore all other markets or services, but it could be a good idea to focus your energy on blogging around topics that matter most to customers who need specific services that will generate higher income for you.
Blogging is not just about writing fluffy content found online because you need your content to drive leads. Aligning your blog content to your business goals will help support your revenue streams and help you grow your firm.
Investing in a proper content strategy for your firm won’t be cheap or easy, so it’s always good to consider profitability to ensure you can sustain the marketing strategy for years to come.
4. Write The In-Depth Content Your Audience Needs
Blog posts typically range from 500 words to over 5,000 words depending on the purpose of the post and the complexity of the issue being discussed in the blog post itself. That is a pretty wide range to consider, so how do you decide what length you should make your blog post?
Long-form blog posts that range between 1,000 words and 2,000 words have become popular in the marketing world because these posts allow you to dive deep into specific topics without burdening your readers. You may find it challenging to organize high-ranking keywords or add internal links (links to other pages or posts on your site) to shorter blog posts because there is not enough room to organically add this information due to length.
We always aim for 1,000 – 2,000 words whenever we write for a law firm because this length gives us room to insert stats and internal links and establish our clients as experts in the field. This length of blog posts provides room to implement some great elements for SEO and readers like:
- Introduction: A 200-word introduction to open up the discussion and provide context to your readers about what you are about to write about.
- Sections: At this length, I like to break my article into 3-4 sections. Each section has an H2 title with a keyword in it, and each section talks about a specific aspect of the larger topic. I like to make each section around 300-words to ensure I can dive into each subtopic enough to show value to readers and our expertise.
- Bulleted lists: I like to add one or two bulleted lists throughout the article to break up the visual layout of the blog post and break down complex ideas into an easy-to-read format.
- Conclusion: Write a 100-word conclusion that ties together all the points you made throughout the post. You should also pitch your services, and be sure to include your contact information so potential clients can reach you.
Remember to format your blog posts, so they are easily skimmable. Use headings, brief sections, and a bulleted list to make the information easy to digest. This will help prevent readers from bouncing away from your blog if they can’t find the information quickly.
5. Tailor Your Writing For Both Search Engines And People
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of enhancing your blog posts to increase their ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs). Google and other search engines implement highly sophisticated algorithms to ensure the best information is served to online searchers using their search engines.
When writing content, you need to consider your audience’s needs and optimize your content to get found by Google and other search engines.
Strike a balance by writing for both people and search engines by including great content for your human readers but also include various elements of SEO like keywords, formatting, and adding links to other pages/posts on your site.
- Use keywords organically and keep your sentences simple and easy to read.
- Avoid flowery language and wit, especially when tackling a complex topic to ensure your clients will see that you are an expert in the field and that they can trust your advice.
- Incorporate visual aids like tables, bullet lists, and infographics to help make your blog post more valuable.
- Optimize all images by using target keywords in the file names to help search engines understand the context of those images.
Not only will this help readers better understand what you’re saying, but it will also help your blog’s quality score, ultimately improving your rankings.
6. Format Content For All Devices
Gone are the days when your target audience was locked in front of a desktop computer, searching the Internet for answers. Now, people seeking legal advice are searching on their phones, tablets, and laptops, in addition to their desktops.
You’ll need to format your content to display properly on all of these devices. If you don’t, you’ll lose potential customers as they grow frustrated with your article and leave your website for yoru competitors’.
Here’s how you can format your blog posts to read well on any device:
- Use a responsive WordPress theme or customize your own
- Create a clear, easy-to-spot call to action
- Use mobile-friendly opt-ins and plug-ins
- Write in short paragraphs, with no more than 2-3 sentences each
Be sure to test your blog on multiple devices to ensure all images and blog posts load correctly and are easy to navigate. You can look at Google Analytics to see how many people come to your site through mobile and desktop devices.
You will likely notice the majority of your traffic from mobile devices, which means you will need to write your content in a way that looks great and easy to read on mobile phones and tablets.
7. Keep The Blog Active
The worst mistake you can make with your blog is not updating it. Think about it: a potential client navigates their way to your blog, only to see it was last updated two, four, or even six years ago.
Not only does this demonstrate a lack of attention to detail, but it paints your legal practice in a negative light. The customer may wonder, how will they handle my case if they cannot adequately update this blog?
Letting your blog sit for years without an update also signals to search engines that your website is no longer relevant, causing it to drop ranking and miss out on attracting prospective clients.
Add relevant, meaningful content regularly. This will help improve your favor with search engines and new clients.
Grow Your Firm With Blog Posts
Blogging is a great way to help get you found by potential clients looking for your services. Unlike other marketing channels like PPC, you can answer questions that people have about your area of expertise to build a long-term marketing strategy that drives traffic for years to come.
If you feel like blogging is overwhelming with your busy schedule, consider hiring professional blog writing services to ensure there are always SEO-optimized, high-value blogs on your legal website.
About the Author: Chris
