In a recent blog post, we went over the 3 types of search queries that a potential client for your law firm can make on a search engine. These included:
- Navigational queries,
- Transactional queries, and
- Informational queries.
Ranking well in each of these categories is crucial for your law firm’s online marketing success. For navigational queries that are only using a search engine to find a particular website, a high ranking on a search engine results page is necessary to make sure they end up coming to your firm’s page. For transactional and informational queries, most searchers find what they’re looking for in the first few of results, so not being near the top of the page means you’re losing a lot of their web traffic and business.
While legal blogging helps in all three categories, it can make a huge impact on how well your firm does on informational queries.
Refresher: What Are Informational Queries?
Informational queries are those that are done solely to find information. A 2008 study found that 80% of searches done online are informational.
However, while informational queries are only being done to answer the question that the searcher has in mind, they can quickly turn into transactional queries, depending on what the answer is. The common process goes something like:
- Google search for “What is an easement?” – an informational query, because the searcher is only looking for information on easements,
- Click on your law firm’s blog article describing what an easement is,
- Google search for “personal injury attorney in Miami, Florida” – a transactional query, because now the searcher is actively looking for an attorney
Legal Blogging Turns Informational Queries into Transactional Ones
By filling your firm’s website with quality content that answers a searcher’s questions about basic legal issues, you are promoting your website’s prominence for informational queries and bringing interested searchers to your firm’s site. If someone looking for an answer to a legal question – “What is the difference between a felony and a misdemeanor?” – and they find the answer on your site, and that answer leads them to the realization that they need an attorney, your firm is the first one they’ll look at. They don’t even have to return to Google to find a lawyer, because they’re already looking at your page.
This is one of the main benefits of hosting a high-quality legal blog on your firm’s website. Not only does providing information on basic legal questions and issues promote your status as an expert on the law, but it also goes to great lengths to make people looking for information take the next step, and look for an attorney.
Myers Freelance: Professional Legal Bloggers
Creating and maintaining a quality legal blog takes time and knowledge that you might not have if you’re running a law firm. That’s where Myers Freelance comes in. As professional legal bloggers, we understand how best to structure a legal blog and maintain it to maximize its impact on your firm’s bottom line. Contact us, and follow us on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook.