Whether you have decided to write your own blog posts for your law firm’s blog or have hired a legal content marketing firm to write them, it is worthwhile for you, the lawyer, to brainstorm some topics you would like to see on your blog. In just 25 minutes (the length recommended by the Pomodoro method for a work session), you can come up with enough topics to yield months of blog content.
If, during this brainstorming session, you can also think of subheadings, that is even better, because then you will already have a rough outline for some of the posts. In a post on the Inbound Law Marketing blog, Calin Yablonski offered some advice on how to write effective post titles and subheadings for law firm blogs, or, as he calls them, blawgs.
The Ideal Post Title: 60 Characters or Fewer
Yablonski’s choice of 60 characters as the maximum length for the ideal law firm blog post title is not arbitrary; it has to do with attracting clicks. Any longer and Google will truncate your blog post title on the search results page. He reasons that users are more likely to click on a non-truncated title than a truncate one, even if the non-truncated title is lower on the page. Therefore, all the SEO sorcery in the world won’t help you if your competitor’s post appears as “How to Claim Pain and Suffering in a PI Lawsuit” and yours appears as “How Plaintiffs Can Claim Noneconomic Damages in a Personal.”
Think of ways to shorten common words and phrases in your post, even if, out of a sense of professionalism, you would never use the shorter forms when talking to clients. In blog post titles, say “ex” instead of “former spouse,” “med mal” instead of “medical malpractice,” and “car crash” instead of “car accident.” Save the professionalism for the body text of the post. The client will never find out how well you write if they are too busy clicking on your competitor’s reasonably sized blog post title.
The Ideal Subheadings: The Post in Miniature
People who search for law firm websites often want an answer immediately. Someone is complaining about his miserable marriage during poker night, so his buddy whips out his cell phone at the poker table and Googles how long it takes to get divorced. He wants to be able to tell his unhappily married friend, right then and there, how long the divorce process takes in their state. With the perfect subheadings, he can glance at his phone and find the answer, even as he ponders his poker hand and his companions talk about whether he is bluffing.
A snippet will probably say “6-12 months,” but if he clicks on the perfect post, he can just read the subheading out loud to give his unhappily married friend an overview of the steps to divorce. All he has to do is glance at his phone in the middle of a poker game to see, “File a Divorce Petition. Serve Your Spouse with Papers. File a Financial Affidavit.” Maybe the poker buddy is just running his mouth and isn’t really serious about wanting to divorce his wife, but those clicks are important to your SEO rankings.
Contact Legal Content Writers
If you don’t have 25 minutes to brainstorm blog post topics, you can entrust that part to professionals, too. You can count on Law Blog Writers to compose the ideal titles and subheadings for the blog posts on your law firm’s website, as well as the body text of the posts.