These days, having a blog is necessary. Marketers and companies with blogs receive 67 percent more leads than marketers and companies that don’t have one. While hosting a blog is essential, your blog needs to be relevant to your industry.
This is good news if you’re in the legal niche.
So, how do you ensure prospective clients find your blog? You have to attract more web traffic and rank higher in Google. Here are seven tips for legal blogs.
1. Optimize Your Blog for Industry-Specific Keywords
Before even conducting topic research, check and see which keywords are ranking in the legal niche. This will give you an idea of what customers are searching for and how to beat out the competition.
There are a couple of different ways you can find trending legal keywords:
- Use keyword research software
- Conduct competitor research
When you find trending legal keywords, you can optimize your posts for these terms to generate traffic to your blog.
What are some examples of industry-specific keywords? First, you should always optimize for local traffic. Say you’re a lawyer in Washington D.C. Research legal-specific keywords that are trending in the D.C. area.
Are you in a specific legal niche? You can find keywords that rank in that niche.
Examples include “patent lawyer” and “divorce lawyer.”
2. Write Catchy Headlines
Your readers need to find something about your blog that entices them to read it.
For most blogs, it’s the headline. A well-crafted headline attracts readers and urges them to click.
Headlines also attract search engine love. Google’s search bots can easily crawl the headline to pick up keywords and gauge what the post is about.
So what headlines work the best? Lists are the highest-ranking blog formats, and you can easily turn a boring legal topic into an interesting list.
Say you’re a divorce lawyer writing an article about divorce legal facts.
Instead of writing a title like “Your Guide to U.S. Divorce Laws,” come up with a headline like “12 Facts about U.S. Divorce Laws.”
3. Post Frequently
Are you planning on handling your own blog? This seems cost-savvy and effective, but you’ll want to hire a writer or outsource this task. As an attorney, you’re busy; you’re juggling multiple clients and have a lot on your plate.
Do you really have time to blog every week?
There’s a reason why consistent content is important. Blogs get old and outdated after a while. Google recognizes this and ranks your website lower.
Fortunately, you don’t have to write multiple blog posts a day.
You don’t even have to release posts daily – strive to publish once a week. If you can’t blog that much, that’s also fine. If it comes to the point where you don’t blog in months, then Google will start penalizing you.
4. Narrow Down Your Niche
As mentioned previously, write about topics in your profession. But niche topics perform the best.
Unfortunately, you’re not the only lawyer blogging. SEO competition is heavy. You can easily outperform your competitors by focusing on a specific niche.
You can have a client wanting to sue their doctor, and the next client will want to sue another driver for an auto accident. You can easily write one blog about medical malpractice and the next blog about auto accident personal injuries.
What if you cater to one type of client, such as those who want a divorce? There are plenty of topics and keywords in the divorce law niche. Read more here for ideas.
5. Promote Your Blog on Social Media
Is Google the only way to engage your audience? If this is what you think, you’re missing a core marketing opportunity: social media!
While you should strive to reach the first page in Google, that’s not the only goal you should set. A large part of your blogging audience will likely come from your social networks.
What if you don’t have a huge social media following?
Your blog can be the tool to build a larger social following. If it provides value, your current followers will share the blog on their social media pages, thus extending your reach.
Where should you post your blog? Most lawyers have the best luck promoting their content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
6. Add Tags to Your Blogs
While Google can crawl your blog for keywords, it’s nice to make its job easier by including tags. These include keywords and important phrases that help identify your blog’s niche.
What tags should you include? Start by tagging your keyword, and then read the blog and find other important keywords and phrases. Always include branding keywords, such as your practice name.
Keep in mind, not every CMS platform allows you to add tags.
Popular CMS programs like WordPress have a section to add tags. If your CMS platform isn’t optimized for tags, then don’t worry. But it will help to find a plugin or consult with a developer.
7. Don’t Forget Linking
One of the goals of blogging is to get backlinks. But you also shouldn’t forget about your own linking.
The best blogs use a combination of external and internal links. External links point to other websites while internal links direct to other pages on your website.
External linking helps achieve credibility. If you’re citing some complex legal information, it’s helpful to link to a non-competitor legal influencer who already blogged about that topic.
Internal linking encourages your readers to continue reading your blog. You can also link to your services or appointment page. This takes the reader through the sales funnel in hopes they will become your next client.
Both external and internal links help with SEO as Google will better identify your website and your niche.
Time to Write the Highest-Ranking Legal Blogs
As you see, driving traffic to your legal blog and gaining exposure online isn’t that difficult. All you need is a plan and some discipline. Learn the basics of SEO, write your first posts, and improve your strategy along the way.
Are you ready to get your legal blogs to Google-driven fame? You can’t achieve this without first knowing your rank! Check your ranking here.
