Legal Content Writers Explain How Many Words Should Law Firm Blog Posts Be to Help your Legal Website

One of the most common questions that lawyers ask are how many words should law firm blog posts be to help SEO.  The answer is, unfortunately, that “it depends!”  Yes, that is a lawyer answer because our legal content writers are licensed lawyers.  But the length of your law firm blog posts and legal content depends on several factors, which include the following:

• Google’s algorithms (minimum 300 words!)
• What practice area based on competitiveness (there are more personal injury lawyers advertising than there are admiralty lawyers advertising)
• How competitive is the market (Miami is much more competitive than Dakota, Alaska)
• What type of online marketing are you doing (paid versus organic), and
• Many other factors.

Using these general factors from our legal content writers, let’s address some issues that could help you decide how many words should law firm blog posts be for your practice group.

Follow Google Webmaster Guidelines and Recommendations

Let’s be honest, Google is the king of search engines.  Yes, Bing and Yahoo have sizable markets.  But most people say “go Google that” or something is “Googleable.”  Not “go Bing that” or this is “Yahooable”; you might be charged with harassment if you said that to someone on street!

This is why you should be following Google Webmaster Guidelines.  These guidelines will help your website and law firm blog get better results on Google searches.  While these guidelines are directly tailored to Google’s search engine and algorithms, they are still applicable to best practices for Yahoo and Bing.

One of the most important points for Google is content.  If you look at Google’s basic and overarching Webmaster Guidelines, their main focus is on content.  It is frequently said that “content is king” with Google.  This is why there is a minimum recommendation of 300 words for any website content.  Content that is less than 300 words has a very low probably of being indexed, and an even lower probability of it appearing on the first page of Google.  

When it comes to content, length is the most important aspect for your law firm blog or legal content website.  This is why many law firm blogs and legal content writers will recommend blog posts of at least 500 words and sometimes over 1,000.  Other legal content writers will have blog posts span over 1,500 or 2,000 words.  These articles are always great for length purposes to get more traction on Google searches.  

But it is also important to realize something else—you need to write for people!  If you have unwieldy long blog posts and legal content, visitors may come to your website and be easily overwhelmed.  This may cause them to quickly “bounce” off of your website.  Quick website bounces are measured by Google and can hurt your SEO rankings.

Thus, make sure your content length is proper for Google and for readers.  This is why 500 to 1,000 are ideal, with some posts over 2,000 words to help power through some rankings on more important topics or length topics.

What is Your Practice Area Regarding Competitiveness?  How Many Words Should Law Firm Blog Posts Be Depends on How Competitive if your Practice Area

Admiralty lawyers are few and far between.  They are actually one of the few lawyers that, when properly certified, can call themselves a “specialists” in that area of law.  This is why admiralty lawyers need to advertise on Google a whole lot less than say personal injury lawyers.  

Now, there are millions of personal injury accidents every year so this makes sense.  But there are hundreds of thousands of personal injury lawyers in the United States.  Thus, if you want to be competitive in the marketing arena for personal injury lawyers, you will need to write longer and more authoritative law firm blog posts than an admiralty lawyer.  This is because the content of your personal injury blogs most be stronger than other PI lawyers advertising online.  This is why having a personal injury legal content writer is a good idea.

How Competitive is Your Market?  Legal Content Writers Highlight This Factor

One of the most important traits that you need to know regarding how many words should law firm blog posts be is how your competitors are doing.  Yes, even after law school rankings and the dreaded curve grading system, lawyers still have to measure their efforts against their colleagues.  This is especially true on Google.

Remember, the entire purpose of Google is to connect people searching with the information they want.  To do this, Google ranks websites and law firm blogs.  The more relevant the content the better it will be in searches.  But in a hot market like Miami, New York City, Los Angeles, Houston, and other cities, the more relevant content there will already be.  This is because many other lawyers will have relevant content out there in the market.

So how does one personal injury lawyer distinguish his or her relevant content from another personal injury lawyer with relevant content?

Length of law firm blog posts.  Google is looking to deliver content that is more informative than other sources.  That is how it ranks search page results.  Thus, if your website content is longer and more authoritative than other lawyers in your market, Google will put you ahead in search engine posts.  

This is why many lawyers will frequently have law firm blog posts and legal content articles posts online that are over 2,000 words.  These articles definitely deliver front page results.  But this is very hard to constantly delivery relevant and authoritative 2,000 word blog posts.  Personal injury lawyers could hire legal content writers to help them which is the cheapest and most efficient manner.  This is because personal injury legal content writers like ours have been doing this for a decade.  We have actual litigation experience handling personal injury matters.  Our founder is the personal injury law firm blog writer and he is appointed to the New York State Supreme Court as a court attorney to a Justice.  If you have legal content needs of over 2,000 words, you ask someone with these credentials to write the content for your law firm.

Now, as mentioned above, it is important to fluctuate the length of your blog posts.  Indeed, posts that are 2,000 words long should not be the only posts you have.  This may turn off some readers.  Having posts between 300 and 500 words will help get those individuals who may not be able to read well or review 2,000 words.  Thus, it is a necessary mixture of length in any law firm blog marketing plan.

But the bottomline, how many words should law firm blog posts be is all premised on your competitors in your market.  You need to be 5%, 10%, 20%, or even 30 to 40% higher than them to ensure your content overcomes them on Google’s first page.  At this juncture, it’s a numbers game.  

Curveball: What are You Drafting Content For in Terms of Marketing Plan?

How many words should your law firm blog post be also depends on how you are marketing your law firm website.  Are you using paid ads?  Then you should really have shorter and sweeter blog posts.  This is because you need to write for an 8th grade reading level.  You want the length of the law firm blog post to not be intimidating.  You need to make sure you have the proper content to present a problem, the solution, and show you are the solution getter.  These blog post should be no more than 500 words, preferably less.

But are you going for organic search engine results?  These are search engine results that come up on Google without paying an advertising fee to Google or the search engine.  These results are “natural” in that they come up based on how the content is searched by a person looking for information.  Organic search engine results are always preferred.  They are powerful.  But they are much harder to get.  These blog posts should be above 500 words and some blog post should hit above 1,000 words.  Some really powerful posts should be over 2,000 words.  This also depends on the other factors above that our legal content writers mentioned.

Ask Us to Review Your Website and Market to Determine How Many Words Should Law Firm Blog Posts Be for Your Law Firm

Our legal content writers have a decade of online legal marketing experience.  We also have seven years of actual legal experience on the defense side, plaintiff’s litigation, and now with chambers staff.  If you have law firm blog content that needs to be drafted, we can help.  Ask us how we can start working on your law firm blog and legal website today!