Why Aussie Lawyers Should be Blogging

You don’t have a lot of time, so let’s not waste it. If you’re a lawyer, you should be blogging on your law firm website. Why? Let’s give it to you in short:

• Aussie law firms are behind the curve when it comes to Google’s Penguin update. The Penguin update was the latest algorithm refurbish to solidify the relationship between good content and good search engine rankings. Create better content for your law firm and you can get ahead of that curve.
• “Good content” means providing informative and well-written content that is both up-to-date and evergreen. Getting your evergreen content shared can be more difficult than getting a quick opinion piece about a trending news story, but the latter should lead audiences to the former.
• Search engines want to provide the best experience possible for users. To this end, they seek up-to-the-minute content to answer search queries. According to Search Engine Watch, “In algorithmic terms this is known as Query Deserves Freshness or QDF, where more weight is given to recent content on trending or spiking topics. Generally, the search engines interpret recent updates to mean that the page has more relevance and currency than a website that has not been updated in months or longer and would be a better user experience for its customers.”
• Every new page is a new opportunity to rank. Now, Google doesn’t necessarily say “the bigger the better” but the more pages on your website, targeted to various search queries, the more opportunities you have to rank in the search engines.
• Building backlinks to your content is important. Now, you may have heard some bad things about backlinks but let’s be clear, not all backlinks are equal. Having authorities such as Wikipedia or news websites link back to your website is still an incredibly powerful ranking factor. What you don’t want to be doing is hiring a dodgy SEO agency to spam your backlink profile with Russian pornography and buy-a-bride websites.

So why aren’t more Australian law firms blogging regularly?

Firstly, and as mentioned earlier, a lot of Australian law firms aren’t in-step with digital trends. Their websites still function as postcards for their offices rather than as dynamic and informative spaces for potential lead generation.
 

Secondly, lawyers are busy people and the idea of committing to yet another task can be utterly unpalatable.

But running a regularly updated blog shouldn’t be an all-consuming task. It doesn’t need to be, nor should it be, a collection of hard-hitting legal advice. It should simply facilitate a discussion between you and your audience.
 

So how can you make it easy on yourself?

• Delegate. If you have a team of at least four employees and you assign each employee to write one article a month that equates to one article a week. That should be your minimum benchmark for content turnover.
• Curate. Use an extension like Pocket, bookmarks or a good old-fashioned spreadsheet to keep track of what you’re reading. As an informed legal mind you can offer commentary and opinion on the writings of journalists around certain trending legal topics such as metadata retention or the legalisation of medical marijuana. Link to the original article, write down your thoughts, and you have a blog post.
• Opine. Occasionally it’s worthwhile to share your opinion about something that really matters to you. Take a political stance and express it. Law firms need to establish communities and that doesn’t mean appealing to everyone all the time.
• Remind. Your blog is a good place to remind people about the law and the possible run-ins with it they may have. Party season approaching? Remind revellers of their responsibility not to break the law regarding drugs or alcohol and keep them up to date about legislation that may have changed since last year. Work Christmas party just around the corner? Give a refresher course in appropriate conduct during workplace functions and what exactly could be considered in breach of workplace harassment laws. These quick little pieces keep your audience informed but they’re also easily turned into neat little news fodder for journalists.