Some lawyers blog for SEO, others blog to make a difference
I shared yesterday that food safety lawyer Bill Marler’s blogging may have sent two food executives to prison. After all Marler bird dogged for the last six years the case of salmonella tainted peanuts that killed nine and injured hundreds.
Marler was also blogging about victims and sharing information, both of which ended up part of a congressional hearing on the peanut-salmonella and food safety in general.
Imagine if Marler blogged with the goal of SEO to draw traffic to his website. Where’s the passion in that? Maybe contract out the blogging to content writers who sell their services to what they call real lawyers who focus on being on a lawyer not a marketer or social media pundit.
Maybe the SEO consultants would be half a million dollars richer (they charge North of $10,000 a month). But our food would be less safe, executives who ordered the dissemination of salmonella laced peanut products into care facilities and schools would be sitting in their mansions, and the victims would have gone uncompensated, or at least less compensated.
Not everyone is Bill Marler. Attorney Christine Wilton of Los Angeles personally blogs to help to help consumers on bankruptcy issues. New York Attorney Troy Rososco blogs to help injured workers in general and specifically Zadroga claimants who were Ground Zero workers killed or injured from cancer or respiratory diseases. He has two blogs. Miami Attorney Jim Walker, with his cruise law blog has not only righted wrongs in the industry, but also brought legislative change in other countries.
Years back Portland Attorney and blogger, David Rossmiller sank his teeth into the Dickie Scruggs judicial bribery in the State Farm Insurance Katrina claims’ suits. The Wall Street Journal called him the blogger of record on the subject and gave him a shout out for the information and insight he was disseminating.
There are hundreds of other American lawyers who put their passion and care for people before SEO and website traffic. These lawyers went to law school to make a difference, and they certainly are. Sometimes on a mass scale. Some by helping one person at a time through the passion, care and insight the lawyers personally share online.
The ironic thing in all of this is that the lawyers who blog with heart and care dominate the search engine rankings. These lawyers usually rank higher and generate more traffic than those lawyers who are too busy to help people online and instead pay and blog for SEO.
You see, SEO is not as complicated as some would make it out to be.
One it takes a good publishing solution and a little coaching as to publishing online. And two, good content as defined by valuable information and insight brought with passion and experience in only the way a real lawyer can bring it. This is what Google wants.
Sure engaging others with relevant interests whether they be other lawyers, bloggers, reporters, referral sources, and potential clients on social media and the like will help rankings. But this sort of activity comes naturally over time to those lawyers who care enough to get out and help folks.
The blogging lawyers I mentioned above do not spend one cent on SEO. Yet they rank above most all of the lawyers who do. I wonder what they would be told to do, to watch for and pay for had they chosen to blog for SEO.
These bloggers blog to make a difference. They blog to fulfill the dream they had heading into law school. The result is blogging that is more rewarding – personally, professionally and financially. They are the real lawyers.