Social media more powerful than SEO for drawing traffic to law blog?
I'm coming to believe that social media performance is more important in drawing traffic to your law blog than any search engine optimization (SEO) you may do. Traffic drawn via social media is also better traffic for you.
Two reasons. One, you draw more traffic to your law blog through the effective use of social media than SEO. Two, traffic drawn to your blog through social media is more preferrable.
I've been blogging less than the mad 2 or 3 posts I've done in the past. However, traffic to my blog for this month is the highest ever.
Why? Because of social media. By social media I mean people passing on to others what I say via a blog post or something I say on Twitter. Plus I've been more active on Twitter.
When I tweet about a blog post of mine, I share word of the post on Twitter. People following me on Twitter, retweet word of my blog post. Through this network I wouldn't be surprised if within an hour of my tweeting about a blog post 25,000 or 30,000 people receive word of my post through Twitter. That's a powerful network.
Without even linking to a blog post of mine, my using Twitter in general draws traffic to my blog. I'm a notorious sharer of news via Twitter. I'll share links to news and blog posts offering my brief commentary. I'll retweet what someone I'm following may have tweeted - so long as it's of interest to my followers. I'll also offer brief commentary without a link or a retweet on various subjects of interest to my followers.
In each case, whether it be a follower of mine on Twitter or a follower of someone who has retweeted what I've said, people look at my Twitter profile. That profile includes a link to my blog. And a lot of people click on that link to find out more about me.
Traffic to a law blog drawn via social media brings higher quality traffic than SEO. Good lawyers get their best work via word of mouth and people doing research on the lawyer. Doesn't matter whether the word of mouth is generated or the research is done offline or online.
Social media traffic drawn to your blog comes because someone else, more likely than not a thought leader in your field, blogged about what you've blogged about or retweeted about something you said or shared on Twitter.
Someone else sharing what you've said is a tacit endorsement of you as an authority. Why else would someone share what you've said with their friends and followers unless they thought enough about you or what you said? People are drawn to look up more about you when you have received a tacit endorsement. Those people end up at your blog.
Take it a step further and realize that these people who see your content via social media and then look you up are more apt to have a keen interest in what you're saying, what you do or about you personally. They're also a tad more advanced than someone, who previously went to the yellow pages, who goes to the Internet and keys in New York City bankruptcy lawyer. You want that kind of traffic to your blog.
Speaking in Toronto yesterday to law firm management professionals with medium and large law firms, I felt very comfortable telling them that social media through blogging was more important than any sort of search engine optimization of their law firms' websites or blogs.
Sure, you want your blog and website optimized by having the right title tags. You also want to have incoming links to your blog and website from other relevant sites. Social media and blogging will get you all the links you need.
But at the end of the day, I just wonder if social media, which includes effective blogging, is not a more powerful way to draw traffic to your blog than search engine optimization?
Good point and I generally agree with you. I wonder, however, if SEO might not be more important in certain practice areas such as family law, criminal law, etc. where clients do not have a need for repeated engagements (hopefully). Even in those practice areas it's critical to promote yourself to referral sources and social media is clearly superior to SEO with those important players.
But when someone needs a lawyer in a hurry for something unexpected, like a divorce, it seems to me that SEO is important in many cases.
It's pretty amazing to see the growth of importance of social media. Who would have thought we'd be debating which of these approaches matters more. Powerful stuff. The speed of change just blows me away sometimes.
Lee Rosen
Since I've started using Twitter and LinkedIn, I get a lot more new client inquiries from those two places than I do for my blog, ironically enough. But my blog is new -- SEO isn't playing a big role-- and I'm not marketing my blog through pay-per-click or any other way. So it's probably not a fair comparison for me to make. Plus, I'm not a lawyer.
I wonder how this is translating for lawyers. I'll be interested in reading the comments here and seeing how this discussion plays out.
Was thinking the same Lee, that being that like a tow truck, when you need a lawyer fast you go to the top search results on Google.
But I'm now able to click around the net in 10 minutes and find out a good deal about leaders in an area and then specific information about an individual I identify.
Like a dishwasher gone bad for our family of five. I don't just google 'diswasher.' In 15 miutes I can get some good reviews to get a good picture of what we ought to get for a replacement.
I think the average person will now spend as much time selecting a lawyer as an appliance.
Great post. Never thought the SEO might be trumped by social networking.
Kevin, good tweets from ltny. Good post above.
I will tell you this ... our office has spent the last two months learning about adwords, spending time on google campaigns ... HARD ... as in many many hours. By me. Tremendous results. Almost overwhelming in terms of volume and quality of potential cases.
Guess what? While spending time and money in the injury law arena to me the last 2 months have been as important as preparing for a key trial. I wouldn't send the receptionist to do opening statements, and I am NEVER again going to rely just on a tech outfit to handle a web campaign.
So while Legal Tech looks at 2.0, at least in the PI arena blogs are like billboards for a firm (helping with branding), while google adwords is network TV advertising.
I'll be reading
My point ... lawyers jumping in to social networks is nice, but spending time on getting in the clients via web (msn, or yahoo, or our choice, google adwords) makes the dough. Seems that many are rushing headlong into S.N.