How to Start a Law Blog or Service Professional Blog

Blogging makes so much sense for lawyers and service professionals. Think about it. You’re trying to reach clients who have a particular problem that you know how to solve. In all likelihood, they’re not going to go on Facebook, Tik Tok or Instagram to search for a solution to their legal or financial problems. They’re going to search online for written answers. Your blog post should be one of the first search results when they search your field of expertise. If you’re an attorney seeking to develop your own clients, why would you not start a law blog?

Why start a blog for professional or legal services?

In fact, any service professional trying to get clients should seriously consider blogging. A blog allows you to present helpful information in a genuine manner. Once published, your blog post is availabe 24/7. You get maximum leverage for the time spent writing a blog post.

How to Pick a Professional Blog Domain Name

If you’re early enough, you might be able to choose a domain name that describes your area of law. I started patenttrademarkblog.com back in 2006. You might need to get more creative if your obvious choices are taken.

Personally, I prefer to omit any geographical references in the domain name if your practice is not limited by location.

Adding geography might make sense if your practice primarily assists local clients. Since I represent clients throughout the US and abroad, I purposely chose not to include geography in my blog domain.

Is there a particular legal issue that dominates your field? Perhaps your domain name should either include it or allude to it.

What blogging platform should service professionals use?

When it comes to blogging, go with WordPress. While the platform started off primarily for blogging, it has become much more comprehensive. With the right WordPress theme, you can pretty much design a website to perform all the functionalities you might need for your legal services or professional services.

You will need a WordPress hosting service to start a law blog or professional services blog. I like Siteground because they are fast and affordable, and they provide solid customer service.

How to Start Writing Professional Blog Posts

If you’re not sure where to start, I suggest writing Q&A posts centered around key terms in your field. For example, I thought about legal topics that repeatedly come up in our client communciations. So I started writing posts like What Is a Patent? and What is a Trademark?

Lawyers can start with very basic legal terms. Service professionals can start with posts defining key terms or issues in their field. Essentially, you’re building an online glossary of common legal terms or business terms in your particular field. Afterwards, you can progress to “how to” posts.

The more articles you write, the more opportunities to include internal links in your future posts which helps with search engine optimzation (SEO). For example, if I’ve already written a fundamental article defining different types of patents, my subsequent posts can include an internal link to this foundational article.

Don’t Change Your Blog Post URL After Publishing

There are many things you can change after publishing your blog post, but you do not want to change the URL unless the article was recently published. The reason is that you may have increasing backlinks and internal links which would break if the URL were changed. So pick your blog post URL wisely. Try to include your SEO terms in the URL if possible.

By default, the title of your post becomes your URL depending upon the editor. If it’s too long, you can shorten the URL by deleting filler words.

How to Incorporate Blog Links in Your Client Emails

If you’re a bit older, you might remember a time when you mailed letter correspondences to clients. Some of you old school attorneys might still be sending original paper letters. What I love about email communications is that you can include hyperlinks.

When your professional service or law blog is filled with helpful glossary definitions, you can link to your definitions when you use a particular term in your email. This provides several benefits.

First, you have the convenience of saving time by not having to rewrite a bunch of stuff.

Second, and more importantly, it also showcases your authority in this field.

Third, the link to your article is easy for your clients to pass on to others who may be dealing with a similar issue.

Can you give away too much information in a blog post?

This one is tricky. If forced to choose, I would err on the side of being more generous with providing information. Let me suggest a few reasons why this might work in your favor.

First, think of all the other attorneys or service professionals who may have already provided superficial information. If your blog post contains nothing more helpful than those of your competitors, why would potential clients come to you?

Second, you may want to shift your business model to charge for more sophisticated legal services that can’t be answered in a simple blog post. In other words, use the simple blog posts to gain authority in your field so that you can get leads for larger cases.

Third, every blogger wants higher SEO. The more informative and helpful your post is, the higher it should rank on the search engine results page (SERP). The search algorithm takes into account factors relating to helpfulness such as word count and backlinks. If your blog post is one of the most in-depth articles on a particular legal subject, you will likely get more backlinks from other sites pointing to your post.

If you’re trying to start a law blog or service professinal blog in a crowded field, your blog posts should really stand out.

Still Not Sure Whether You Should Start a Law Blog?

Let me encourage you to write a simple outline or To Do list. Start with some baby steps. Find an available domain name and buy it.

Then pick a WordPress website hosting service. It gets a little technical in pointing your domain to the hosting service, but the hosting service should provide simple instructions. Some hosting services even allow you to purchase a domain name so that you can keep it all in one place.

If you’re new to blogging, I would suggest picking a pre-designed WordPress theme that is geared towards blogging. No need for perfection when you’re starting out. You just need something presentable so you can start writing blog posts.

You’ll learn about WordPress along the way, but there’s no need to figure it all out in the beginning. Just get to a place where you can start writing.

Let’s take at least one step each day or week to get away from being an unhappy lawyer or service professional.