Law Firm Marketing Agency
Starting a blog can be exciting for anyone. Whether it’s your first or your hundredth, the process of finding your niche, gathering readers, and ultimately building a community around the hearth that is your content, is your goal. One of the questions, however, that bloggers often ask themselves is what sort of platform to use for their blog posts. Is it better to host a blog on your website or create a separate website for your blog with its own domain?
Like many subjective questions, it’s best to pair this with an objective answer. There is no better or worse; only you will be able to determine which platform works best for your blog depending on the goals of your blog, and the success it generates online once it’s live. According to Darren Rowse, a key figure in the blogging world, “success is not reliant on the tool you use- it’s about how you use it.” In this article, we’re going to dive into some of the pros and cons of hosting your blog on your law firm’s website or as a separate standalone site.
A Blog on Your Firm’s Website
If you’re looking to generate more business from your firm’s website, you might want to consider having your blog included on your practice’s main site; this approach provides more SEO benefits. Blog posts, infused with relevant keywords, not only establish your credibility with site visitors, but also with the search engines that have reinforced their commitment to high-quality content time and time again.
In creating comprehensive articles that address the questions you most often receive from clients, you’re delivering value to site visitors and getting your firm in front of prospective clients as they consider legal solutions. You’re also more likely to have third-party websites link back to these articles. These earned backlinks, when included on highly-relevant websites, can be helpful in getting high-quality traffic to your site.
Finally, advocates of this approach maintain the importance of branding with blog inclusion on a firm’s website; if you are using a blog to establish yourself as an expert in a certain field, it’s best to keep it on your main website so visitors associate your expertise with your practice.
Stand-Alone Blog Platforms
Oftentimes, stand-alone blog platform users favor themselves as self-sufficient creators that can handle the creative freedom stand-alone blog websites require. Having different stand-alone blog platforms can increase your visibility; in certain cases, depending on the focus of your blog, you may end up competing with your law firm’s main site for certain search queries. In this case, competition isn’t a bad thing; in fact, it might help you generate more business from the web.
If you see yourself with exceptional managing skills and are able to continuously oversee your websites’ traction, the stand-alone blog can be just as successful, if not more, than a blog hosted on your firm’s website.
Like business owners, attorneys who are ambitious enough to create an online presence want to see it reach its peak in terms of ranking and revenue. One of the crossroads they face in their pursuit of search engine notoriety is choosing the right blogging platform for their website.
What Your Law Firm Should Do
Above we have explored the two common routes creators tend to follow in their site building; both have been proven effective to those that are able to keep a keen eye on maintaining their sites. But if we are looking to lean in a particular direction for law firms, frequently we see success in those who keep their blogs within their main website. This consolidation makes managing your web presence more efficient. Attorneys have a lot of responsibilities as it is, maintaining a single, yet flourishing website should be the outlet where they allow their creative as well as their business-like mindset to run free. The key at the end of the day is to not allow your blogs to go stale; it’s important to keep everything up to date on your website to ensure continued readership and ongoing success.