5 reasons niches are riches for law blogs

Not a lawyer (that’s okay guys), but Mark Avey, publisher of a flight simulation blog, has a great post at Problogger covering the benefits of running a niche focused blog.

Mark’s points with few changes and comments by me:

A niche site can bring you a lot of dedicated readers. Though most of your traffic may come from search engines (around 75%). Most of the remainder are return visitors. Mark thinks a near 25% return rate is pretty good. I’m hitting a 24% return rate.

Expanding on point 1 a little, once you’ve been around a while (assuming you’ve got your blog SEO optimized), the search engines start to like you. If the search engines are picking you up (my posts get indexed in less an hour), people that are searching for your subject have a pretty good chance of finding your site.

Your name will get around. You’ll receive emails and LinkedIn requests from people who got to to know you through your blog. In addition to giving you a nice warm fuzzy feeling, it also means your name is being associated with that niche subject. If you do your job properly (blogging), this can turn you into an expert in your field, which is great news for your blog. This in itself will bring people to your site.

You can create a captive audience. Because there are so few sites dealing with the subject of your blog, people who are interested in the subject are more likely to return once they find you.

If you’re going to start from scratch with a blog, you’ve got more chance of finding a subject that few people have already covered. You’re going to find it hard to compete with a blog about divorce law. But on Austin divorce law, you rule.

Mark does raise some contra points to niche blogs, but the majority have to do with reduced ad revenue. That’s okay.

Lawyers have a built in revenue model. We earn more by further enhancing our reputation as a thought leader in our niche – more work, better clients, and more fun.