Back in the day, when people needed legal help, they’d consult the YellowPages to find a lawyer, without much more information besides a name and a phone number.

Today, people turn to Google to not only search for lawyers, but find immediate answers to their legal problems:

• “Should I sue for medical malpractice?”
• “How to settle out of court?”
• “I’m getting sued now what”

Around 96% of people search for legal advice through Google first. 

A savvy content marketing law firm will produce blog posts related to these legal issues to attract new visitors to their website.

But, if your law firm hasn’t started blogging or creating content based on your firm’s specific practice areas, or related search terms, then your potential clients are landing on your competitor’s websites, not yours.

So to answer our headline’s question, “Should you be blogging?” The answer is most definitely yes! 

What is Content Marketing for Law Firms?

The terms content marketing and blogging are often used interchangeably, but content marketing is an umbrella term. Blogging is only considered a subset of content marketing.

So what is content marketing, exactly?

It’s basically giving your audience free, helpful information so they can trust you, and eventually want to work with you.

Besides blogging, content marketing can also include these types of promotional content:

• YouTube videos
• eBooks
• Infographics
• Podcasts
• Downloadable PDFs
• Cheatsheet and guides
• Templates
• Checklists
• Webinars
• Social media posts
• Lead magnets

Basically, if you create information that people can stumble upon online, then you’ve created a form of content marketing. 

Reasons Why a Law Firm Needs to Maintain a Blog

A website that never publishes new content or regularly updates its web pages won’t rank well in Google, and as a result, won’t get much traffic.

Most of the content on your website will be static and not updated often. 

Think of your website’s About Us, Contact Us, History, Home Page, and Mission Statement pages. 

Once published, these pages are rarely touched again or updated for extended periods of time. These pages are important for SEO purposes, but they’re not the real traffic generators.

Blogs bring people to your website

Uploading and publishing blogs on a weekly basis gives Google new information to analyze and opportunities to index your webpages, making them easily searchable in the future.

But if you’re not regularly updating a blog, then your traffic will suffer greatly. This means a drop-off in web traffic, and fewer client leads generated.

No new blogs, no new traffic

Maintaining an active blog has numerous benefits, including:

• Increases traffic to your website. More blogs and content means more people will stumble upon your company’s website when searching on Google.
• Increases lead generation.
• Improves your website’s ranking on Google’s SERP, positioning your company above your competitors.
• There’s no time limit on content. Once it’s published, it can continue to attract web traffic for years. This effect is known as “Evergreen content.”
• Data gathered by measuring your website’s analytics and blog pages help you better understand your target audience.
• Blogging helps establish your company as a trusted authority and a thought leader in your industry.
• New blogs can be incorporated into email marketing campaigns, creating interesting content that your subscribers will open and read.
• New leads mean a larger email marketing base for future promotions.

There’s a mutual benefit for the content creator and the reader of blog content — the readers get access to free and helpful information, and the creator gets more website traffic and generates more leads.

So, why should your law firm start content marketing? It’s simple — get more clients and turn more profit. 

How Often Should A Law Firm’s Website Post New Blogs?

Posting a new blog every day is overkill unless you’re running an extremely large and successful website with tons of traffic. 

A good place to start is at least a blog post a week, preferably two a week. This gives your website 4-8 pieces of new content a month.

You should know, also, that Google doesn’t immediately get alerted once your website publishes a new blog post. Google’s crawlers routinely scan every website to look for new content. When it finds new content, it gets indexed and placed into Google’s SERP. 

This indexing process can take anywhere from a few hours, to a few weeks.

Therefore, blogging and content marketing is a long-term strategy that takes months and years to work its magic before giving your website that huge payoff you’ve been waiting for. 

Does that mean it’s not worth your time? Absolutely not! However, if you’re in a rush to see immediate results, there are other methods to get you traffic in the meantime.

Content marketing can be supplemented by PPC or paid ads. These paid ads allow the highest bidder to place their website’s link in the top paid spots in Google’s SERP. 

For this reason, SEO, content marketing, and PPC typically all work together in a greater marketing plan designed to generate as many quality leads as possible.

Strategies for How to Set Up and Maintain a Blog for a Law Firm

Many website builders, such as WordPress or Squarespace make it easy to publish and upload new blog posts.

You may choose to create a new tab at the top of your company’s website saying “Blog” or “Our Blog,” although we’ve also seen legal websites where the blog pages are hidden in a tab at the bottom of the website. 

One reason for this hidden placement is that blog posts attract people from Google searches, but once they’re on the website, they should be directed to the “Contact Us” page, or fill out a conveniently placed contact form on every page.

Deciding on Which Content to Blog About

You should start by writing content based on common searches related to your law firm’s practice areas.

If you practice criminal law, create content for people who have found themselves in tricky legal situations, such as “What to Do When You’re Being Sued.”

If your practice areas are related to medical malpractice, create blog posts about different scenarios related to delayed diagnosis, surgical errors, and birth injuries.

Once your marketing efforts become more sophisticated, you can work your way up to keyword and competitive research, studying the amount of traffic your competitors’ websites are receiving, and even finding out what search terms they’re basing their content on. 

As with any marketing effort, reporting and monitoring are essential to understand which blogs are bringing in lots of traffic, and which blogs need to be rewritten or reworked to rank better.

While these methods are essential, not every firm has the time to manage this internally. To get quality results, you’ll want help from the experts. 

Next Steps for a Content Marketing Law Firm

We hope this guide will inspire your creative output to begin blogging for your law firm’s website.

For assistance or an expert opinion on how to bring in more traffic and generate more leads, contact Kaleidico to schedule a discovery meeting.

Kaleidico has over 15+ years of digital marketing experience and specializes in SEO, PPC, content marketing, lead generation, web design, development, and email marketing for law firms, mortgages, fintech, and other businesses.

Let us help you take your firm to the next level.

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