SOURCE: LAWYER MARKETING

Writ­ing valu­able blog posts is a crit­i­cal aspect of online legal mar­ket­ing. A good law blog can help boost SEO, raise a law firm’s brand aware­ness and prove your exper­tise to legal con­sumers inter­est­ed in hir­ing you.

But start­ing a blog is one thing. Most attor­neys have the knowl­edge and tal­ent to go on at length about com­mon top­ics in their prac­tice area. But a well-craft­ed post is only one part of the process. Opti­miz­ing your con­tent so that it gets found is anoth­er. Below are a few tips to boost your legal blog’s search engine optimization.

#1. Be the Authority

The objec­tive of your blog is to prove your exper­tise to con­sumers before they walk in the door. Google refers to this as “author­i­ty,” and it’s a met­ric they use to decide if your site is one that legal con­sumers should see.

Build­ing author­i­ty on your blog starts with cre­at­ing posts that pro­vide detailed infor­ma­tion a con­sumer may need or analy­sis of cur­rent events fac­ing your prac­tice area. Your con­tent should be very spe­cif­ic to your brand and your legal con­sumers. It should also be local. Because “near me” search­es are on the rise, Google wants to offer up con­tent that’s rel­e­vant to someone’s com­mu­ni­ty. Writ­ing about local issues will help the search engine rec­og­nize you as some­one valu­able to that legal con­sumer just down the street.

#2. If You Lack Authority, Build It

It doesn’t hap­pen overnight. You already know the ques­tions your prospects are ask­ing, so answer them on your blog. And answer them in detail.

Accord­ing to Snap Agency, Google is look­ing for blog posts around the 2,000-word mark. That’ll give you plen­ty of room to expand on your ideas and prove your exper­tise to both search engines and readers.

#3. Make Your Content Relevant

Make your posts rel­e­vant to con­sumers and make them easy to read but as com­pre­hen­sive as pos­si­ble. The law is com­pli­cat­ed, so don’t be afraid to tack­le the com­plex­i­ties when you’re writ­ing. Google appre­ci­ates the word count and con­sid­er­ing the vol­ume of free advice and DIY con­tent on the web as a whole, a thor­ough post may be just what it takes to con­vince read­ers that the law is too intri­cate to go it alone.

#4. And Your Cadence Regular

Speak­ing of DIY, for many attor­neys, putting words on the page once in a while real­ly isn’t the hard­est part. It’s estab­lish­ing a reli­able con­tent vol­ume that stymies many would-be blog­gers. No mat­ter how expert­ly craft­ed a sin­gle post is, if you’re not fol­low­ing it up with more reg­u­lar con­tent, search engines will treat you like a one-hit-won­der at best.

Main­tain­ing rel­e­vance in the eyes of search engines and prospects means writ­ing and pub­lish­ing new con­tent on a reg­u­lar basis. A cadence of week­ly or bi-week­ly posts serves as a sign of life search engines can scan for.

If you’re not main­tain­ing a con­sis­tent sched­ule, you’re send­ing search engines a mes­sage that your web­site and blog can’t be relied upon. Pub­lish reg­u­lar­ly, how­ev­er, and you’re giv­ing them a rea­son to trust your website.

#5. Don’t Forget Keywords

It might seem odd that I’m address­ing key­words last, but author­i­ty and rel­e­vance real­ly should take pri­or­i­ty in your SEO con­tent plan­ning. That’s part­ly because the impor­tance of key­word search­es has decreased since the ear­ly days of key­word stuff­ing. Back in the old days, repeat­ing words and phras­es rel­e­vant to a query was enough to show up in search.

Google, Bing and the like are now more sophis­ti­cat­ed. They know when a web­site is attempt­ing to manip­u­late them in this way. Nowa­days Google is more con­cerned with detailed answers to a user’s ques­tion than the raw vol­ume of key­words in a giv­en post.

That’s cer­tain­ly not to say key­words can be ignored. They need to be incor­po­rat­ed into your writ­ing – both nat­u­ral­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly. Search engines are smart enough to rec­og­nize your tac­tics and they know when you’re adding words because you think it’s nec­es­sary. Keep the writ­ing flu­id and you’ll please Google along with your human readers.

With regards to strat­e­gy, there are plen­ty of web­sites that offer help nar­row­ing down a list of key­words based on all vari­ety of fac­tors. I’ll admit, there’s a bit of a learn­ing curve to these sites to say the least. But with some effort and dis­ci­pline, attor­neys can use them to build a list of key­words to weave into their blog con­tent. Just remem­ber, keep things nat­ur­al and rel­e­vant to your tar­get audience.

Legal blogs have been a key com­po­nent of dig­i­tal law firm mar­ket­ing for years. But the days of high-vol­ume low-strat­e­gy out­put are behind us – if they ever real­ly exist­ed at all. To draw in more read­ers and increase your pool of prospects, your blog con­tent needs to be opti­mized well and often. Not quite ready to go it alone with your SEO and con­tent strat­e­gy? Rosy Strate­gies can help. Sched­ule an appoint­ment with your local con­sul­tant today.