2. SETTING UP A BLOG

3. WITHIN AN EXISTING WEBSITE
• Many existing websites have the potential to add blogging functionality
• Using your existing website and domain has added benefits:
– People are familiar the firm’s website already
– The domain has established authority
– Content remains all in one place, which boosts the organic search value of
the website as a whole
• Open source, user-friendly platforms like WordPress allow for blogging
functionality to be easily integrated
• Depending on how each website is built, however, adding a blog might
require you to pay a designer and/or developer to code out page
templates and integrate them into to the existing website

4. WITHIN A DIY WEBSITE
PLATFORM
• A variety of “do it yourself” website platforms make it very easy to build
your own website, and many of them have blogging functionality
available, including:
– Wix
– Squarespace
– Weebly
– Gator
• However, these platforms often have limited functionality in order to
make them user friendly
• Generally, you have less control over style and formatting, and must
figure out how to build and adjust everything yourself

5. A FREESTANDING BLOG
• WordPress originally started as a straight-forward blogging platform
• There are now a variety of platforms available to simply host blog posts:
– Blogger, a free blogging service offered by Google
– Ghost, a minimalist blogging platform
– WordPress.com, a basic blogging platform that is easier to use than the
powerhouse WordPress CMS
• Freestanding blogs don’t have the same amount of content backing up
the blog posts in the way a fully integrated website/blog double feature
does, which can impact organic rankings

6. LET’S TAKE A POLL

7. SELECTING BLOG TOPICS

8. STEP ONE: TARGET
DEMOGRAPHIC
• Who are you trying to reach?
– The public at large, to educate them
– Potential clients
– Referral sources
– Other attorneys
• What kind of content would these target audiences find interesting?
• Remember to write for your audience… not for yourself

9. STEP TWO: BRAINSTORMING
• Brainstorm topics that relate to your practice areas
– Think about some of the most common questions you are asked by clients
– Check news sources for ideas
– Consider any recent changes in the law that will affect your practice areas
• Make sure to come up with a good mix of topics across all of your
practice areas
• Keep in mind: just because you might find a topic interesting doesn’t
mean anyone is actively searching for it

10. STEP THREE: KEYWORD
RESEARCH
• Figure out what people are searching for and craft your blogs around
those topics
• Utilize free tools like:
– Keywords Everywhere
– Google Trends
– Moz (limited data with free version)
• If a topic you brainstormed has little to no search volume, then try
adjusting to an adjacent topic or a broader topic
• Don’t be afraid of long-tail keyword phrases
• Keep in mind that most searchers will not use legal terminology, so
make sure you are researching how they would search as a client….not
how you would search as a lawyer

11. STEP THREE: EXAMPLES

12. NOW YOUR TURN

13. BLOGGING BEST PRACTICES

14. WORD COUNT
• Google has evolved to value quality over quantity
• Long-form content performs exponentially better than content with a low
word count
• A recent study found the average Google first page organic search
result contains 1,447 words
• Multiple studies have shown writing comprehensive, in-depth content
can help pages rank higher in Google
• Blog posts should be a minimum of 800 words and ideally closer to
1,200 words

15. KEYWORD DENSITY
• Keyword density refers to the number of times your target keyword
phrase appears in a blog post as a percentage of the total number of
words used
• If you use the researched keyword phrase too few times, Google won’t
know that’s what the blog post is about
• If you use it too many times (referred to as “keyword stuffing”), Google
will actually penalize your website in its ranking algorithm
• Optimal keyword density is between 0.5% and 2.5%

16. INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL
LINKS
• An internal link connects one page of your website to another page of
your website
• An external link connects hyperlinked content on your website to
another website on a different domain
• Blog posts should include internal links and external links
• Internal links should link back to the main practice area pages and older
blog posts on related topics
• External links should link to high-authority websites, such as news
sources or any website ending in .gov or .edu

17. IMAGES
• Images help a blog post in a variety of ways, including:
– Breaking up the text
– Providing visual stimulation
– Conveying additional information to Google and other search engines
• DO NOT RANDOMLY PULL IMAGES FROM THE INTERNET
– Stock image websites actively search for and come after websites using
unlicensed imagery
– Purchase images on websites like Shutterstock or iStockphoto
– Use good quality free images from websites like Unsplash, Pixabay, or
Pexels
• Make sure to fill in the “Alternative Text” (often referred to as alt-text)
– The alt-text for an image is what Google can read when it crawls your
website for images, and it adds additional SEO value to the website

18. METADATA
• Metadata refers to the title tag and meta description for the blog post,
which appears in organic search results
• While these have little to no impact on rankings, they do impact click
through rates
• Make sure to craft metadata using your identified keyword phrase
• Include a call-to-action, if applicable

19. CATEGORIZING
• Most blogging platforms allow for
categorizing of blog posts (and
WordPress requires all posts to be filed
under a category)
• Categories are meant to encompass a
large group of posts and organize them
by subject matter
• Categorizing your blog posts allows
users to easily find related content
• You only need between three and five
categories to start

20. REAL WORD EXAMPLE
• Blog posted December 2020

21. REAL WORD EXAMPLE:
RESULTS
• Gradual increase in impressions and clicks over six months
• High click through rate indicates the metadata matched search queries
• Long-form content of 1,145 words provided plenty for Google to “read”
• Image contained keyword rich alt-text
• The post utilized both external and internal links

22. HELPFUL RESOURCES
• Keywords Everywhere:
https://keywordseverywhere.com/ (available
for Chrome or Firefox browers)
• Moz: https://moz.com/
• Google Trends:
https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US
• Best free tool for WordPress: Yoast plugin
makes adding in metadata very easy and
automatically tells you if your keyword
density is right ->

23. CONNECT WITH STACEY
• Facebook: @MarketingLawyers
• Twitter: @staceyeburke
• Instagram: @MarketingLawyers
• LinkedIn: /in/StaceyEBurke/
• Website: www.staceyeburke.com
• E-newsletter: http://bit.ly/StaceyMail

24. CONNECT WITH LISA
• Facebook: @MarketingLawyers
• Twitter: @LisasLexicon
• Instagram: @MarketingLawyers
• LinkedIn: /in/LisaHopkinsTX/
• Website: www.staceyeburke.com
• E-newsletter: http://bit.ly/StaceyMail