One of the three main benefits of third-party legal blogging for lawyers is the ability to develop authority and trust in ways a firm website or blog can’t. This is based on a few key factors – your digital footprint, website performance, SEO practices, and the structure, value, and quality of your content.
As a lawyer who wants to increase online visibility, you must meet the demands of search engines and AI programs. These systems are placing more and more importance on content and consistency – how often you author original articles and how clearly you answer questions. Your content must be factual and anticipate the audience’s needs, with solutions or pathways to other relevant information.
But where a lawyer’s words and name can be found by search systems is what tips the scales from being somewhat discoverable to proving you’re an authority and source they can trust. And when you become the latter, your firm shows up in search results that matter and secures the type of brand identity that will keep you in front of a larger audience.
This is the second of three posts that delve into the details of the benefits of third-party legal blogging for lawyers. Next week, we’ll discuss how firms can build and reinforce their brand.
The Importance of Lawyers Being Active on Third-Party Websites
Search systems require third-party context to understand who you are and your expertise to determine whether what you say should show up in search results and be cited in AI Overviews. An effective way to do this is by sharing blog posts on a third-party website. Doing so creates crucial backlinks – something search systems consider to be proof of trustworthiness.
Maintaining topic authority, trust, and credibility is an ongoing process.
You might not want to hear this, but greater importance is being placed on how much original content you publish, its quality and structure, and where it can be found. This doesn’t mean you need to blog every other day; quality over quantity should always be your focus.
Search engines and AI programs see business websites as a source of self-promotion, even if you have great information and resources on there (like you should). They just don’t trust what you’re saying if you can’t be found elsewhere.
Why should this matter to you? Potential clients use the internet and AI to research lawyers and legal topics that affect them. Failing or refusing to adapt to the demands of today’s search landscape means your competitors get the visibility, attention, audience engagement, and leads you could have generated.
The good news is, integrating a third-party blog into your legal content marketing strategy is simple. Lawyers can earn recognition and be considered an authority and trusted source of legal news and information by sharing professional insights and experiences that make your expertise clear.
How Third-Party Legal Blogs Build Credibility & Authority
There are two key reasons why expanding your digital footprint to include third-party blogging is a smart business move. To best explain how blog posts can build trust with both search systems and your target audience, let’s look at the limitations of your firm’s web properties.
Search engines and AI systems rarely cite business websites.
Unless you’re active on other platforms, and you’re connected to relevant industry associations, your firm website will produce limited results. But…
There’s an inherent level of trust that lawyers benefit from when they publish content on established sites.
The likelihood of your firm website gaining high search result rankings is next to zero without using other platforms. Keywords are not the main drivers of search results. They still matter, but a perfectly written, keyword-optimized page on your firm website won’t be able to maintain visibility on its own. Building trust for SEO success is what will have a long-term impact.
The type of content needed for today’s search landscape goes beyond a firm’s website.
When we talk about the type of content that gets the attention of AI and search engines, we’re referring to how well it meets the needs of users and if it can be trusted.
Search systems evaluate sections of content to answer parts of questions. This is why you see multiple sources linked to or referenced in AI Overviews. Business websites aren’t enough for them to understand who you are, so they aren’t very visible. But blogging on an established legal platform provides consistent proof of your knowledge, developing authority that complements your own web properties.
Building High-Impact, Engaging Content
How successful you are at leveraging a third-party legal blogging platform to build and maintain credibility comes down to the content itself. Salesy blog posts with legal jargon or that’s written in a way readers won’t understand or relate to won’t build topic authority.
For example, when someone searches “What are the steps to filing a hurricane insurance claim?”, the results that search tools provide are based on more specific pieces within the query. They’ll look for related topics and questions, like what evidence homeowners need to file a claim, what you should and shouldn’t do after a hurricane that may affect a claim, the types of policies and coverage that are in play, the geographical location of the user, and so on.
Since the way they function is much more complex than a surface-level question (like the example), the type of content lawyers publish must be driven by more specific topics and sub-questions. Clearly answering and anticipating questions is an effective way to gain the attention of AI.
Another thing to consider is how shareable content is. When your audience shares your legal blog posts, it provides social proof that others trust what you're saying, which automatically builds credibility with a wider audience.
Interested in improving your legal content marketing strategy? Learn how being a Contributor on The Legal Examiner can help your law firm.
