Distributing Content: You Can't Beat the Network

When it comes to publishing legal content online, you have a lot of options. You can claim your profile on Avvo, publish a blog, create a website (or have someone else do it), use article syndication sites, etc. All of these are great ways to distribute your content, get traffic, and build a reputation online.

Ultimately the goal of this effort is to get people (potential clients) to read your articles, click your profile and call you; and it all begins with traffic. I don't think anyone will argue if I said the best type of traffic (at least for attorney marketing) is search traffic. If they did, I wouldn't listen. Whether it's organic or paid, capturing someones attention at the moment they're looking for you is critical for lawyer marketing, since people generally don't purchase legal services on impulse. Since my focus is organic search, let's talk about getting traffic to your content via SEO, and why Experthub's content contribution feature is such an effective way to distribute your content.

The Importance of Backlinks

Most people publishing content online understand that getting links on other sites, pointing to your content, is one of the most important (and difficult) parts of SEO. Search engines use these links like "votes", to tell them what content is credible. Let me break it down for you in my terms.

A Scientific Look at Links

Page A gets published.

Page B has been around for a while, is about a subject relevant to Page A, and gets organic search traffic (It's ranked).

Page B links to Page A = Page B smells Page A's butt and it smells good

Link Anchor reads "Legal Content" = Page B tells Google Page A smells of legal content

Google thanks Page B for the insight and Ranks Page A for "legal content"

Simple as that.

Why Experthub's Contributed Content Gets Traffic so Quickly

We leverage the network. Experthub manages a large network of legal websites, and we can utilize the credibility of "ranked" pages to help new content gain credibility quickly. By placing relevant, contextual links to our contributed content, on pages of a similar subject, new contributed content stands a much greater chance at getting organic traffic quickly. In some cases, I've seen new pages ranking in the top five for a relevant search term after only a week.

Now, I'm not going to say there aren't many other factors playing into this success, there are. The content is good, all on page SEO best practices have been performed, and all new content is displayed on the homepage of our hubsite, LawFirms.com.

But the thing that sets this program apart from other types content distribution is the power of the network.

A Case Study

Let's test how well this works in the real world with a piece of content that was just published yesterday.

This page on Workers Compensation was just contributed by one of our attorneys, and we've published it in the appropriate section of our resource center. It's also being displayed with other lawyers' content on our home page.

Most importantly though, a "featured article" block has been added to a highly relevent page on another experthub property here. Included is a brief intro of the article, as well as a link back with an appropriate anchor text.

This helps tremendously with getting the new content indexed and ranked quickly, as well as adding value for anyone reading the original workers comp page. It's the best kind of SEO, because it adds value to both pages.

I'll be coming back to this in the next couple weeks with the results. I'm sure you will be impressed.