In our previous article, Start Investing in Content Marketing for Your Law Firm, we discussed the benefits of content marketing and writing legal blogs on your website.
Whether you’ve decided to restore an existing blog, or if you’d like to start in order to increase your chances to be found on online searches such as Google, one of your goals should be to give your visitors and potential clients a reason to visit your website and have them return.
In this article, we’ll discuss tips and best practices for posting blogs. Whatever legal blogs you decide to post, this guide will help you in creating informative and engaging blog posts that are search-engine friendly.
Do Your Research and Save Data and Statistics
One of the best things you can do is to post consistent and engaging blog posts. However, most lawyers struggle to come up with topics to write about on a regular basis. It’s important to have some sort of database or list of topics handy so that you can rely on it if you are having trouble with coming up with something to write about. Even the author experiences writer’s block, attorneys and lawyers are no different.
In addition to the topics you write about, it’s important to build trust and engagement through data and statistics that you find in order to support your claims. So be sure to save images, data, charts or videos that you can turn to later on if you need support to back up your topic.
Stay Relevant and Up-To-Date with Your Area of Expertise
Similar to Legal Marketing, every area of law is constantly changing and evolving. One case resolved in court can affect the outcome of future similar suits.
It’s important to constantly adapt to these changing environments and find time to figure out what your paying clients and potential leads are looking for, and adapt your blog topics and articles in order to drive this attention. For starters, you can use social media as a platform to pay attention to individuals, corporations and competitors and find out what they are posting about.
The more connected and relevant your posts and legal blogs are, the more interest they’ll receive, and the legal blogs you write will be more interesting to your readers, maybe interesting enough that they may share them with others. After all, word of mouth is a powerful and free marketing tool.
Get Feedback from Your Current and Previous Clients
Similar to receiving referrals and testimonials, your clients are one of your greatest resources when coming up with blog topics or finding information about what your visitors are looking for. Each one of your current clients found you one way or another, but they all were seeking advice, legal consultations, and answers from you. Try recording and noting their inquiries and questions, and perhaps you’ll notice a trend.
Be mindful of the tone, wording and language in which each question is asked, and tailor it into your blogs. By doing so, you’ll be able to use keywords in your blog which will make your blog more search engine friendly and also more engaging.
Avoid the Use of Legal Jargon
You’re writing blogs in order to strengthen your online presence and to attract more visitors to your website, you’re not trying to attract other lawyers or attorneys. Avoid the use of legal jargon, since many of your readers may not understand them. Instead, write in a tone where you are sharing your expertise and area of practice assuming your reader knows nothing about the world of law. If you need to use legal terminology, be sure to elaborate and explain the meaning behind the term so that your reader will benefit from the blog or article once they’ve read it.
Spend Time Creating a Captivating Title
When you search for something on Google, how often do you click on the second page? When you’re reading the news, what makes you decide which articles you read? Writing headlines that incorporate your keywords and captivating your audience to read the article is crucial.
Here’s a tip: the title of your blog should be between 5-12 words, and just shy of 70 characters. Make sure that you are using trigger words and keywords to make your article more enticing. At the same time, make sure that it relates back to what you wrote about.
Know Your Audience
Who do you want your content to target? It’s important to understand who your visitors are (age, gender, education, income, demographic, etc). From there, you can tailor specific content to those individuals to increase engagement and visitors. Using Google Analytics is a good place to start, which gives you complete information about the users on your site and helps to track performance metrics.
Write in Shorter Paragraphs
In addition to the content you’re creating, it’s also important to structure your legal blogs in a way that is easy on the eyes. Articles are now being read on desktops and mobile devices so you want to make sure that it’s optimized for both.
Most of the time, your visitors will skim through your content and will decide whether it’s worth reading or not based on its structure and whether it’s relevant to them. Anything that you can do to make it easier to read and navigate through will benefit you and your readers.
You’re trying to engage with your readers by showing them that you can be trusted in your area of practice. It’s better to organize your thoughts and ideas instead of writing novels. This way, your readers will be able to absorb more of that material in less time.
Optimize Your Legal Blogs for SEO
Search Engine Optimization (also known as SEO) is a powerful legal marketing tool that aids in improving your site and increasing your visibility on online search such as Google.
By optimizing your legal blog post for important SEO ranking factors, you’ll be able to secure a high ranking on Google. When someone searches for your keywords, Google organizes this information and finds the most accessible and useful pages for them. So be delivering relevant content, you’re taking a huge step in getting on the first page of Google.
According to Google, when it ranks and indexes the content on your webpage, it checks several factors. These include:
- What the purpose of the webpage is?
- What is the quality of the content on the webpage?
- Can this website be trusted?
- Are users interacting with the website or are there error messages?
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