Local SEO Blog
Everything About Local SEO Blog
According to Google, over 20 percent of searches today are for local services. This number is even higher when it comes to attorneys. Most clients want a lawyer who is local, so when you start your blog, you should make sure it's a local search engine optimization blog.
Local search results act a little bit differently from other types of search results, and your blogging strategies for a local SEO blog should change accordingly. Keep reading to find out ways that you can make sure you're creating a true local search engine optimization blog.
How Local SEO Is Different
Let's face it: results for a fantastic law firm in New York City aren't going to be all that useful for most people who just need basic legal services in Albany. To combat the problem of non-local search results appearing in people's search queries, a number of search engines have now made it possible to search by location. The most popular of these is Google Places.
Google Places results now appear as the top page of results when you make a local search. Since most search users pick a link from the first page, it's very important to have your firm represented on Google Places. It's very easy to set up your Google Places page, and to buy additional tags for your website if you want for more searches to be directed to your firm.
How does Google Places tie in with a local search engine optimization blog? Well, your local SEO blog should at least sometimes link back to your Google Places page. This kind of inbound linking from your local search engine optimization blog can elevate your Google Places results in searches.
Picking a Topic for Your Local SEO Blog
Once you've decided to specialize your blog as a local search engine optimization blog, you can start to think about the specific topic areas you're interested in writing about. The topics for your local SEO blog should always play to your firm's greatest strengths. If your firm handles several very different types of cases, you may consider developing a different local search engine optimization blog for each of the main categories you practice in.
When you've decided on your topic, start to think of some real questions you've gotten, or common misconceptions you'd like to clear up, about that area of law. If it's something that is interesting to clients you've had in the past, odds are it will be interesting to others as well when you include it on your local SEO blog.
Because you're trying to maintain a local search engine optimization blog, you'll want to keep your topics locally focused. If a national issue is critical, your local SEO blog can still talk about it, but try to confine the vast majority of your discussions to issues with local and state laws or notable figures in law.
Linking and Comments
If you're talking about something in your local search engine optimization blog that you'd already referenced in an earlier post, you should link to the old post in your new one. The more links and connections that are in your blog, the more likely it will be to appear early in search results.
Don't just link to yourself, though. Who wants to be the person at the party who can only talk about himself? Open up the conversation by linking to other blogs or websites with your local SEO blog. A good local search engine optimization blog will link to local resources and help for people who are having legal issues.
For instance, if you're a divorce lawyer, you may want to include a blog entry on your local SEO blog about domestic violence shelters and resources for abuse victims. Someone who works a lot with landlord and tenant law can link to the state's Uniform Landlord and Tenant Act or similar law on their local search engine optimization blog.
Headlines: First Impressions Mean Everything
When you write your local SEO blog, it may be tempting to give some of your articles a headline that makes your readers scratch their heads and keep reading. That kind of headline, though, won't play well with Google's search algorithms, which look at headlines to figure out what your article is about.
If you want your local search engine optimization blog to show up early in search results, you'll need to make your headlines crystal clear and very direct. A subtitle or later section titles can be more creative, but your title needs to include an exact phrase match for the keywords you want to search engine optimize for.
Link Building For Lawyers
Making your local search engine optimization blog appear relevant to search indexers requires building inbound links on other websites. You can start by posting some of the best articles from your local SEO blog to an online article submission site, including links to several of your blog entries. Press release websites can also be a great way to get more inbound links.
What If It Doesn't Work?
There's always the chance that even if you work very hard on your local search engine optimization blog, you won't get the visitors you want. Or you'll get visitors, but you won't see an uptick in your actual new business. These are two different problems, and they need two different solutions.
If your local SEO blog just isn't getting any web traffic, you need to work harder on your search engine optimization skills. Figure out better keywords and link to your blog from social media websites in order to get more eyes on your content.
When plenty of people are seeing what you have to say, but they're not responding the way you had hoped, you need to change your content. This can often be an indicator that people find your local SEO blog to be too generic or not relevant enough to the keywords they were searching for. With a few conversion-friendly modifications, you should be able to increase your conversion rate.
