Introduction
Do you know what blogs are? A blog is an online journal or informational website displaying information in the reverse chronological order, with the latest posts appearing first. It is a platform where a writer or even a group of writers share their views on an individual subject.
There are many reasons to start a blog for personal use and only a handful of strong ones for business blogging. Blogging for business, projects, or anything else that might bring you money has a very straightforward purpose – to rank your website higher in Google SERPs, a.k.a. increase your visibility.
As a business, you rely on consumers to keep buying your products and services. As a new business, you rely on blogging to help you get to these consumers and grab their attention. Without blogging, your website would remain invisible, whereas running a blog makes you searchable and competitive.
So, the main purpose of a blog is to connect you to the relevant audience. Another one is to boost your traffic and send quality leads to your website. A static website is no longer going to help your law firm generate new business opportunities.
While 46% of consumers consider web design the top factor in a law firm’s credibility, they need to actually see your website before that even comes into play.
If you have a 10 page website with the same information as your brochure, your website will only help you when someone already has your business card and is doing a little background check before hiring you (or more likely your competition if your firm’s website isn’t up to par).
So, why your Law firm needs a blog?
So, why your Law firm needs a blog? When people need a lawyer, they naturally turn to someone they trust. Perhaps a neighbor or friend happens to be a lawyer, or maybe they know someone who just had the same kind of legal problem. Even with a referral, however, smart legal clients do research before retaining a lawyer to represent them or their company.
It makes sense — they want to know something about you beyond your firm name and your JD status. So is a law blog a good idea? In my opinion, the blog is a wonderful idea, because if we find some statistic, we will see that 77 percent of web users read blogs. Prospective clients are among them.
Small- and medium-sized firms have a huge untapped opportunity to establish a relationship with clients and prospects through blogging. As of 2016, only 26 percent of law firms had law blogs, and only seven percent of lawyers maintained an individual blog for professional purposes. But now is 2020, and 86 percent of law firms had law blogs. Moreover, they are very successful and their customer base is growing every day.
Now consider this: 86 percent of internet users read blogs. That’s more than 3 billion people. Not all of those people are prospective legal clients, of course, but it seems fair to assume that a big chunk of your prospects read blogs.
Having a blog for your law firm will:
- Help you build credibility, with Google and your readers.
- Give you more pages to be found in search engines.
- Increase the amount of keywords that your law firm’s website ranks for.
- Fuel your social media strategy.
- Educate your prospects to more likely become clients.
Building Credibility With Prospects
When a prospect comes to your law firm’s website and sees that you are frequently publishing articles about the different areas of practice you offer and your success stories, they are going to feel that you are a leading expert in your industry and the best option to help with their legal issues.
Building Credibility With Google
Google’s job is to provide the best answer for someone who is searching for a solution to their problem. The more expertise you are able to publish on your website and get indexed by Google’s search engine, the more credible they will find you and want to provide your answers to the Google searcher.
More Web Pages Means More Search Engine Traffic Opportunities
A common misconception is that Google ranks websites. Google gives authority to websites as content publishers, but it is individual web pages that are indexed in the search engine and shown to people searching for answers.
Think about it, when you are searching on Google for something, how often do you actually click on link and go to the home page of a website? I bet it’s not very often, and if you do, you probably click the back button and look for a page that is directly going to help you. Which is exactly what Google wants to help you accomplish.
Google wants to send you straight to the answer that you’re looking for. If a web page (in this case, a blog article) is titled “Why Your Law Firm Needs A Blog” and discusses all the reasons why your law firm would need a blog, then Google is going to rank this specific page in their results when someone is searching for reasons a law firm would need a blog.
Social Media Is Fueled By Content
If you plan on generating business for your law firm through the web, you can’t ignore social media. The reasons are abundant, but that’s for another article.
The reason you need a blog to fuel your social media strategy is so that you actually have your own information to share on those different channels.
Using social media to build thought leadership and credibility with your peers and prospects can leverage content curation to a great degree, but you will still need your own articles to share and drive traffic back to your own website for the chance to get those prospects to become leads.
When you have a growing online library of articles, you can start to leverage that to actively engage your target audience. You can monitor social media for certain keywords and discussion topics that you are knowledgable in and have an article about already. When you find someone asking a question that you’ve already answered in a blog post, you can quickly respond to them with the link to your website.
Now you are helping educate them on how to solve their problem and putting them on your real estate. This is considered having the right message for the right person at the right time in the right place. The perfect equation for getting a new client.
Educating Prospects With Your Blog
While going through the consumer decision making process, a prospect will have a better chance of landing on an article from your blog when searching Google than coming across your home page. If you’re strategically planning your content, then your blog will help educate this prospect to understand what they need to know in order to hire a law firm just like yours to solve the problem just like the one they have.
Getting on the same frequency like this with your prospects increases the chances of them hiring you exponentially. If a prospect is self-educating before making this hiring decision and they’re getting all of the information they need from your website, who do you think is going to be the first law firm that they call to hire? I think, it will be yours.
A law blog will generate clients. Blogs lure readers to your website where they become leads, the lifeblood of any legal practice. But a law blog also gives lawyers an opportunity to establish credibility and actively attract the type of cases they want. Target the types of cases you want to attract in your blog posts.
For example, a Florida firm that represents motorcycle riders in personal injury suits blogs about topics of interest to motorcycle enthusiasts. Another example is a commercial law firm that includes a law blog on regarding Texas HOA Law, Louisiana condo law and more.
Both firms know their desired clientele and the issues that matter to them, and they provide valuable information on a consistent basis to those audiences.
Conclusion
An added plus point for a law firm’s website is to have a blog page where the firm’s recent case studies and trending legal issues are posted, and they may talk to their audience about any queries. By doing so, an impression is being made on the eyes of search engines by providing relevant content, with the most searched keywords.
A blog page offers you an advantage over your competitors, in a sense that it’s the direct tool that’s completely in your hands. It allows you to give a unique voice to it so that the readers and visitors of your website can judge your work relatively better than those of others.
Furthermore, a well-developed blog page demonstrates your authority in the law domain and acquires more potential customers, as you create problem-solving blogs for their minor and major pain-points!
Bottom line results
If you master in employing the above-mentioned key features, nothing else can stop you from gaining the throne.
Additionally, create a clutter-free website which shows minor to major details in the most suitable form.
Considering the importance of a law firm website, imagine it as a tool that provides you an edge over all your competitors. Now, it’s totally up to you how well you can manage to create a dent in the universe and let your website see areas beyond a confined region, within which it’s used to!
The success of a law firm’s website is closely tied with word-of-mouth testimonials and referrals.
Positive testimonials, either written or in video form, supplement your reputation and support a cause for a prospect to invest in your company. This is why large and successful businesses focus on developing a healthy relationship with clients and insist on multiple revisions within some time.
This allows them to receive more positive reviews from their happy customers. A happy customer, undoubtedly, brings a four-fold benefit to your business.
The key point to exercise here is to ask a satisfied client to leave a review based on the service you’ve provided for them. This bolsters your website in two standpoints: it provides a boost to local SEO, and also it elevates your online reputation.
What you actually show on your website becomes supplemented with the curated recommendations from third parties. Here, three major weapons are award exhibition, brand recognition, and reviews posted on Yelp, Google, and distinctive social media platforms.
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