Any business owner worth his or her salt in the Internet age has a website, but not all business owners know that they should be blogging. The truth is, search engines like Google or Yahoo value content that’s new and fresh. Keeping a blog is one of the simplest ways to ensure that this happens.
Here are five things that your blog needs to make both your visitors and the search engines happy, whether you own a law firm or a local restaurant.
1. Good Design is Useful Design
Good design doesn’t always mean pretty design, though pretty design lends itself to people liking your website. That said, good design means that your blog/website can be easily accessed by people doing a mobile search and that it loads fast for all searchers.
Pages that are heavy on graphics look cluttered and load more slowly. Given that almost 80% of all searches done on mobile convert to contact/sale of some kind, according to Search Engine Watch, it’s important not to overlook this fact.
Additionally, for lawyer and law firms, some colors and fonts may not be pleasing to all visitors. And depending upon the device that your readers use, these elements may not translate well visually. While you can use cascading style sheets to overcome some of this, often times, a simpler visual design is just better.
2. How Can I Get a Hold of You?
So you’re probably already excited about the prospect of having 80% of the people who visit your site sign with you or at minimum, at least to contact you. That being the case, the next logical element on the list of the top five things you want on your website is a way for people to contact you.
Make sure that your contact button is easy to see and that you remind people on the various pages of your site to contact you should they need help. And given that many of your web visitors will find you first through one of your blog posts, also ensure that each post has your social media buttons and contact information at the end of the post.
3. Speaking of Social
Social media involvement means more than just making a few comments on Facebook now and again. If you have good content on your blog, you’re going to want to make it easy for people to share. Not only does this help you gain more readers, but according to Search Engine Journal, search engines have been taking an increasing interest in social sharing.
From a search engines perspective, this means that if your content is important enough to people to share it on a regular basis, then it’s probably important enough for the search engines to reward your site accordingly.
Therefore, when you’re planning your blogging activities, make sure you’re creating entertaining, useful content that people will want to share.
4. Shareable Content
Like most of the elements on this list, one works with the other. Making your content something that people are excited to share counts as one excellent way to involve people in your law firm and get them to care about you. Creating evergreen content that helps solve a problem is one way to do this.
For example, if you own a law firm, some sample blogs you might create include “The Complete Guide to Filling Out Simple Legal Forms” or “When is the Best Time to Hire a Lawyer?”
5. Have a Schedule
Finally, the best legal blog in the world won’t do you any good if people don’t know when you’ll post. As you’re planning your blog, make sure that you take to really think about how often you want to post and when.
Once you decide on a schedule, stick to it. Your readers will come to expect your posts on certain days. That is how you’ll eventually build a following that’s not dependent upon search engines alone.
When you’re trying to build a clientele and get referrals, this means a lot, especially for more “static” industries like law that don’t change frequently. If you can create something of value that people find interesting, you’ll find you eventually have a very loyal following, indeed.
Conclusion
Many ways exist to build a great legal blog. Your blog can really be the voice of your law firm, allowing people to experience a side of you and your firm they might not otherwise. This way of personalizing your law firm builds business, because it gets people to care about you.
The five steps in this post offer you some general guidelines on how to make your legal blog a blog that will show a more personal side to you and help you build your business in the process.
Continued Resources
51 Best Link Building Tools and Software in 2018
Getting the Word Out: How Blogging Directly Benefits Your Law Firm
