10 Best Practices for Your Law Firm’s Blog

The benefits of your law firm’s blog should not be understated. A blog fraught with accurate, relevant, and engaging content can earn your firm recognition as an authoritative source and thought leader. In fact, 56% of marketers who leverage blogging say it’s an effective method. Want to start getting results with your blog? Here are the 10 best practices for your law firm’s blog that will enable you to boost readership, increase traffic, and deepen your relationships with prospects that land on your website.

1. Focus on the interests of your target audience

The goal of your blog should not be to simply break news, nor should it be used to share overly promotional content regarding your firm’s achievements. Instead, your blog should focus on spotting trending issues relevant to your audience and tell a story. Focus on content that connects with their needs and interests. This is by far one of the most essential best practices for your law firm’s blog.

2. Keep blog posts succinct

The ideal blog post length is 300-800 words, a length that has been proven as most consumable for readers. A post longer than 800 words tends to lose readers, while a post less than 300 words does not qualify for SEO (search engine optimization).

3. Avoid legalese

Legal terminology will not be readily understood by most of your reading audience. Your blog should be a helpful resource for prospects so be sure to use simple, and direct language when explaining complicated legal matters. As an example, you may want to substitute the word negligence for tort, or deadline for the phrase statute of limitations.

4. Focus on keywords that match the intent of your target audience

While writing a blog post, identify a keyword (or keywords) for which your target audience would likely search for on the internet when they are in need of legal services or advice. Incorporating keywords in your blog post 2-3 times will optimize your blog content for SEO, allowing you to be discovered more easily by your prospects.

5. Enhance a blog post with visuals

Blog posts should include images that help explain and support your content. Images are better for the user experience and they assist in increasing SEO within a specific post – as long as the image includes alt text!

6. Make sure your blog is mobile friendly

More people are accessing search engines from their mobile devices and this trend is not disappearing anytime soon. No matter how engaging and well-written your content is, if your law firm’s blog is not responsive on mobile, you’re losing out on valuable traffic. In fact, 83% of mobile users expect a flawless experience when they visit a website on their mobile device. So, it’s of the utmost importance that your blog is optimized for mobile.

7. Always end your blog post with a call to action

All law firm blog posts should close with a clear CTA (call to action), designed to lead your readers to take another action. Capture your visitor’s information to build an audience of qualified marketing leads with a prompt to subscribe to your newsletter or register for an upcoming seminar, as an example.

8. Share your law firm’s blog posts on social media

Drive traffic to your blog posts by sharing them with your law firm’s social media accounts. Your social post copy should include interesting facts or statistics pulled from your blog in order to capture the attention of your followers. Encourage all attorneys from your firm to share as well, extending the reach to an even wider social audience. Don’t forget to use hashtags on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram!

9. Broaden your audience by guest posting

Think beyond your own blog. Volunteer to guest blog for an association or industry blog that has your target readership. Before volunteering for a guest blog post, ensure that the blog for which you are guest writing will agree to include a link back to your blog. A link back to your blog will give readers a way to connect with you after reading your blog post.

10. Analyze performance with Google Search Console

Google’s free Search Console is a reporting tool that can be used to identify which of your law firm’s blog posts garnered the most readership, who your readers are and how they found upon your content. Such actionable insights can allow for you to optimize your content strategy towards topics that your readers find valuable.

Takeaway:

There you have it – the 10 best practices for your law firm’s blog! These techniques will increase your visibility on search engines and deepen your relationships with readers, leading to more business. Don’t have the time to publish consistent blogs? Our team of award-winning writers and editors, The Legal Writers Bureau, can help.

This blog has been edited and republished from Oct. 18, 2019.