The SEO Benefits of Guest Blogging for Law Firms

As a law firm, you should take whatever steps you can to boost your ranking on search engines. One method that is frequently overlooked is guest blogging. When done correctly, guest blogging for law firms will provide SEO benefits by helping you build links in a manner that search engines view as organic.

Why Guest Blogging Is Helpful

Guest blogging can help with SEO in several ways. The most obvious is the ability to generate more backlinks to your website, which in turn improves the search engine rankings. Additionally, high-quality guest blogs encourage Google to view you as an authority source, which also boosts your rankings. This latter point is frequently considered more important since Google decides you are more authoritative if your name and content appears on a longer list of websites, but not in a spammy manner.

If your goal with guest blogging is to actually drive traffic from those posts, you will be disappointed. Informal surveys have shown that guest blogs do not actually drive traffic. Instead, their benefits are more focused on SEO.

Guest Blogging Is Not Dead, Just Spam-Filled Versions

In 2014, Matt Cutts circulated a post saying that guest blogging for SEO purposes was decaying. If you take a closer look at the article, however, it becomes clear that Cutts did not mean all guest blogging was over, just a specific type of it. The type of guest blogging that is no longer useful, and has not been for several years, is content of a low-quality without insight or associations with an actual author.

In fact, Google specifically outlines tactics that related to guest blogging that can reduce your search engine ranking. These include overuse of keyword-rich links in the article, hiring writers without real knowledge, and using similar (or worse, identical) content across articles.

How to Make Guest Blogging for Law Firms Work

Based on the information from Google and the clear indication that guest blogs written by uninformed authors to create low-quality work, there is still a way to successfully use guest blogging to promote your law firm. The trick is to actually create the blogs as a way to share information and knowledge, not just for a link. Let the post show that you know what you are writing about by including methods that have worked for you, results you have seen, and/or case studies.

The problem may arise when you run out of unique topics that lead to hundreds of different guest posts. To overcome the issue, take advantage of copywriting strategies, such as the Robin Hood technique where you borrow topics from top blogs, fill them with your experience, and offer them as guest blogs to less popular blogs. You can also divide up a complex topic into many smaller guest blog topics or adjust a subject to appeal to a different target demographic each time.

What to Avoid with Guest Blogging

Just remember a few simple rules as you create your guest blogs so you do not fall victim to the type of guest blogging that is indeed dead. Do not create mass blogs with similar topics that are clearly just for backlinks. Similarly, do not outsource the content to writers who are cheap but unfamiliar with the information or rewrite the content in different ways for multiple websites. Finally, avoid overstuffing guest posts with anchor links that are filled with keywords.

Takeaway

When done implemented in an effective manner, guest blogging will provide SEO benefits to your law firm by helping you build links organically. It will also help you form relationships with industry influencers, increasing your firm’s own thought leadership prowess. If your law firm needs help improving their SEO efforts, we can help.