Law Office Blogs Should Be Part Of The Main Website

A post over at "The Greatest American Lawyer" describes how that firm, a pioneer in legal marketing through weblogs, is redesigning its primary site and integrating its weblogs into the redesign. I can't argue with the decision, as it's the approach I believe law firms should take.

When I wrote about this subject almost a year ago, it was within the context of a particular, popular employment law weblog, That's What She Said. That weblog relates HR law to what happens on a particular TV show, The Office. The website has expanded to include four different weblogs - from different law firms. That is, on top of not drawing traffic directly to the sponsoring law firm's site, the popularity of the original weblog is now being used to leverage traffic to the weblogs of other law firms and companies. Also, despite the new content, the overall popularity of the site has apparently plummeted. (A consequence of the writer's strike?)

A point where I disagree (in part) with TGAL is that I don't view weblogs as being "something special". They're an easy CMS (content management system) - a way to get content online quickly and easily and, via RSS ("Rich Site Summary" a/k/a "Really Simple Syndication"), to get it in front of people who are sufficiently interested in what you write to follow your every word. They can be a very good tool to bring attention, links and traffic - "it's all about the links". But at the end of the day you have to be careful to achieve balance - particular weblog entries fade quickly into oblivion, and often your blog-based search engine rankings depend upon the weblog as a whole as opposed to individual posts, no matter how carefully written. A good website strategy will encourage people to link to stable, authoritative evergreen content - or content you periodically review and update. To put it another way, don't just blog - post articles on your website. And use your weblog to promote your articles.

I put all of this more concisely almost two years ago:

In my humble opinion, a law firm will typically benefit from a weblog, but the weblog should be integrated into the firm's site. The firm should build a collection of articles on the firm website, and use the weblog to feature its new article content. By featuring an article on the weblog (e.g., by announcing its publication with a short excerpt and a link), the odds go up that external links (those on other sites) will be directed at the article as opposed to the weblog entry, which in turn should help that article in future search engine results.

Where Did Everybody Go?

Looking at traffic trends on legal websites, there's a relatively consistent downward pattern. Even dominant sites like findlaw.com, nolo.com and lawyers.com are taking a serious hit. So what gives?

In recent months Google has seemed much more likely to produce pages from the Wikipedia in response to legal searches. I suspect that Wikipedia's "authority" ranking is leaching away traffic from legal speciality sites.

This, to me, represents a danger of current search engine algorithms. I will grant that some of their articles are very helpful, and some are suprisingly thorough. But with so much "authority" vested by search engines in the Wikipedia, their mediocre content, "stub" pages, and erroneous content can easily outrank professionally drafted and edited content from true authority sites.

Another Reason To Be Careful With Your Law Firm URL

I have previously mentioned my belief that law firms should take care about who owns the URL for the firm's website (or sites), and what happens to the URL in the event that the firm name changes or a partner leaves the firm. But here's another wrinkle.

Let's say you have been using a URL for a number of years, or even just a few months, and have advertised it, incuded it on your letterhead and business cards, or otherwise publicized the URL. The firm decides to change the URL for the website, a partner who owns the URL's registration leaves the firm, or the hosting company never transfers the URL to your firm and either goes out of business or won't release the URL to you when you switch hosts.

Within a short amount of time, you may find that all of that promotional material which continues to associate your firm's name with the defunct URL now points to a site owned by a competitor or, much more likely in the event that you had any appreciable traffic, a company which will "park" the domain and serve up ads to anybody who comes to it. If you're really unlucky it may end up owned by somebody who hates your firm and puts up a website describing how awful you are.

Go to a site such as domaintools.com and see... who does own your URL, and is it time for you to renew your registration?

An Interesting Pseudo-Law Firm SEO Site

I stumbled across a site called casedetails.com, which claims to be by somebody who has an interest in law firm SEO issues. The post, "Is Traditional SEO Dead" raises issues I have not seen on the blogs and sites of people who market themselves as law firm SEO specialists. The post suggests how difficult it can be to launch a new website, due to the evolution of the Internet and how search engines now treat new websites. It ends somewhat optimistically,

Traditional SEO may be dead, but it has been replaced by more traditional marketing ideas like i) offering visitors quality content they can use; ii) building of brand reputation & authority; and iii) the importance of developing an ongoing relationship with site visitors.

Yes, but.... great content of itself doesn't guarantee visitors any more, so with most sites a lot of the marketing and public relations effort needs to occur outside of the realm of search engines, to build interest, traffic and links which will ideally increase the site's importance and credibility as perceived by search engine algorithms. With most sites, that won't be easy.

The site itself reflects how SEO rules can change faster than even SEO professionals can keep up with them. Another post describes how search engines give better treatment to sites where the content appears at a higher location in the html code. This seemed to be true for a while, but no longer appears to be a significant factor. (Still, if you can do it, have your web designer rework your pages for clean code, a minimum of tables, use of CSS, and text instead of graphic links for navigation.) It is worth noting that the content on the casedetails.com website starts at line 186.

A quick note on things not always being what they appear: There's nothing on this site, other than perhaps the site owner's reluctance to identify himself, which shouts out "This guy isn't really a law firm SEO professional." He even critiques some law firm websites. So why am I skeptical? Well, the failure of the owner to clearly identify himself is a factor, as is the failure to provide any business contact information or details. The feedburner links are spammy. And the site owner describes himself as having interest in "hotel reservation/travel directory sites" - which he correctly notes are particularly challenging to place in search engines, but also are more consistent with somebody who is into marketing his own affiliate link-based sites as opposed to other people's websites. (Want to bet that that this is the same guy?)

Don't get me wrong - if I found an SEO who could effectively launch a travel affiliate website and get it to the top three search results on Google for a hot search term such as "New York hotel" or "cheap ticket", while using a long-term strategy and only "white hat" SEO techniques (those which search engines view, and are likely to continue to view, as appropriate and ethical), I would very much consider using that SEO to promote a law firm site. I'm just suggesting that with any SEO, before you hire, check under the hood and kick the tires. And if you hear somebody describe the hard and fast rules of SEO (a mistake this guy does not make), consider the probability that the person either doesn't understand SEO or stopped following search engine developments several years ago.

It's all about the links....

There is a conventional wisdom in legal circles that blogs ("blawgs") are great because they can generate traffic and interest which won't be generated by a traditional website, while helping to establish you as an expert. There is truth to this, but the reality is "it's all about the links".

If you have a decent weblog you have a good chance of being linked within the "blogrolls" of other weblogs. You also will periodically have your posts, typically your freshest posts, linked to other weblogs. "Look at 'this really cool thing' Mike wrote over at Crime and Federalism." "Paul Craddick's been a bit slow with the posts lately - is he waiting for something?"

Search engines love links, and more to the point they love natural links. (By "natural links" I mean those inspired by a genuine interest in the linked material, as opposed to links added for the primary or sole purpose of trying to inflate a site's search engine ranking.) Weblogs are a natural source of both.

Search engines also love fresh content, and sometimes give it a boost in their results for a few days after they find it. If you update a blog with any regularity, you are producing fresh content for the search engines.

Also, weblogs typically feature RSS feeds which can create an easy avenue for people to follow your work without actually visiting your site. That is a lot more efficient than trying to create and distribute an online client newsletter.

At the same time, the older material on a traditional site tends to do better in search engine results than do older blog entries. There are a couple of obvious reasons for this. First, although new blog content tends to generate links, linking tends to drop to nothing or near-nothing within a day or two. The absence of fresh links, and the fact that existing links are relegated to archive pages on other blogs, and the passage of the material from the front page of the weblog where it was published, diminishes the value of the linked content to search engine algorithms. In contrast, a traditional collection of quality articles will tend to continue to generate interest and links over time.

In my humble opinion, a law firm will typically benefit from a weblog, but the weblog should be integrated into the firm's site. The firm should build a collection of articles on the firm website, and use the weblog to feature its new article content. By featuring an article on the weblog (e.g., by announcing its publication with a short excerpt and a link), the odds go up that external links (those on other sites) will be directed at the article as opposed to the weblog entry, which in turn should help that article in future search engine results.