Blogs Integrated into a Website?

One comment and question I have seen come up a lot lately is, should a blog be integrated into a website? While I have no problem with putting a link on your website to your blog and vice versa. I do have a problem with actually integrating your blog into your website. I actually discussed this with Kevin O’Keefe of LexBlog today. Kevin is one of the most knowledgeable individuals I know when it comes to blogging. What follows is a summary of that conversation.

A blog is akin to an educational magazine. If you are updating your blog with new content, as you should be, you are publishing new issues of your “magazine” every time you do. You are providing free information to the public in a form and method people can use and understand. It is not the same type of promotional tool as a website. You are providing updated information on a blog often. You update it daily, weekly or monthly. And a blog is meant to be cited, people don't cite a website. The big advantage of a blog over a static website is just that, it gets cited. Not just from lawyers, but lot’s of other bloggers. If you put your blog inside the website, those cites to your blog will not happen. You will not get the same SEO either. Cites and links are what drive traffic to your blog and in turn drive you business.

A blog is networking and a conversation without physically leaving your office. You leave your office, but you are leaving it via a virtual relationship with your readers. The conversation continues on a blog by having people comment directly on your blog. The conversation also continues by having people drop you an email. Or by linking to you blog posts and either agreeing or disagreeing with you. This is something that you won’t get with a website. And in my view, it is not something you will get with a blog imbedded in a website.

Most if not all of the time, I don't even notice a blog that is imbedded in a website. The blog looks too much like the website for me to notice. And in that sense, you are actually harming your possible Search Engine Optimization (SEO), by imbedding the blog into the website. In addition, you are “shooting yourself in the foot and you are going to get lower Return on Investment (ROI) compared to having a completely separate blog. In addition, there is a significant SEO advantage, especially if you put the blog on a separate domain.

From my own experience, I get must better SEO in Kansas with my blog compared to most of the static websites. You should keep you blog separate from your website. Drive traffic to your website with your blog.

A website for the most part is a static creature. Something that once you put it together, it does not change. Now, I will admit, there are exceptions to that rule. But only a few. A static website is a lot like a firm brochure that stays static. It contains promotional content about the firm, lawyers, the work they do, the services they offer and contact information for all the firms employees, including staff.

However, dare I say, you can do the same thing with a well designed and professional looking blog. You can take advantage of a blog’s About page to provide the basic information a static website does and in turn get much better ROI and SEO.

I know this post is going to cause some of you to call foul. If it does, please comment. Lets keep the conversation going.

Comments

[mikedrechsel]

In response to Mr. OKeefe's question:

>And there are tens of millions of blogs not in websites. What's your point?<

You indicated that "Blog, not inside a website is what the rest of folks do." That is simply not true across the board. My point is that people work with the blogs in a variety of ways. While you're right that many people blog external to any website they may have, that's most likely the result of not having the know-how to integrate the two. Many people are using services like Blogger, Wordpress, etc., which are easier to run as separate sites (indeed, that is the default set up). Most people just go with the flow. That doesn't make it the best way to do things in all circumstances. That's my point. I'm sorry if I didn't explain it clearly enough.

Out of interest, can LexBlog users incorporate LexBlog's turnkey blogging solutions into a pre-existing website, integrating seamlessly with the style of the website, without hiring a professional to tweak the underlying code? To be honest I haven't looked into it. If that is possible, then I'm surprised that at least a few of your clients haven't done so. If it isn't possible, then it isn't very compelling to say that all of LexBlog's nearly 250 law blogs are run inside a website, since there is no other option. I'm not pretending to know anything specific about LexBlog's services, but it would be impossible for most blogging platforms to provide the kind of integration with a pre-existing website that would make the experience seamless for the end user. To create such a tight fit would require customizing certain aspects of the underlying code in order to generate the appropriate styles, structuring and presentation. In my mind, that disconnect between the "look" of the website and the blog is one of the main reasons most blogs are run separate from the website. Also, the fact that the default installation of most blogging solutions don't lend themselves to tight functional integration out of the box creates an additional barrier that few are willing to overcome. And one other point is that most firm websites have been created by web designers and are static. I get that. When it comes time to begin blogging, most people find one of the available blogging platforms and attempt to do it all themselves (enter LexBlog, right?). Thus, the two remain separated from each other, but not for the reasons advocated by Mr. OKeefe and Mr. Griffiths.

In sum, there are many reasons that people blog external to their website. Most of the reasons are not due to a better experience for the end user, but rather are the result of code barriers that the blog authors are not willing or able to overcome. I do strongly agree with part of Norm's comment that if the content of the blog and the website do not dovetail nicely, then separation is appropriate. But again, the general proposition that ALL websites should be separated from ALL blogs is flawed from the very beginning.

[Norman Gregory Fernandez, Esq.]

I agree with your article 100% I like the fact that a Blog gives me the freedom to divulge from my static page and write articles that I would not necessarily want on my static web-page.

I think the two should remain separate. In my case not necessarily for SEO, but for the freedom to write articles that I would never put on my main law firm web-page.

Norm
California Lawyer

[Kevin OKeefe]

>There are thousands of websites which incorporate a blog within the website.<

And there are tens of millions of blogs not in websites. What's your point?

[mikedrechsel]

First, if you need to garner credibility by locating your blog content at some url external to your main website url, you might ask yourself why your website would lead readers to regard your blog entries as lacking credibility. In an ideal world, wouldn't the firm reputation enhance, rather than detract from, the credibility of the material posted? And wouldn't the blog posts do the same for the website?

Second, it doesn't make any sense to say that a lawyer must leave the "trappings of a website" in order to fully engage in discussion on the net via his or her blog. It seems to me that this post, and the comments in support of blogs-external-to-firm-sites, aren't looking at the situation from the average readers' perspective. Instead, it seems that reader perspective is being relegated to the lawyer's SEO and ROI objectives. From my perspective, content is king and valuable content should only serve to enhance the website (and vice versa). To separate the two seems disingeniuos, to me. It also seems like separating the blog content from the website is a way to insulate the firm from discussion of topics which may be contrary to the firm's public image. If that is the case, then I agree that separation is probably a good idea. However, if the content of the blog is aimed at the practice areas of the firm, I do not understand the benefit of placing an arbitrary url-divide between the two sources of information.

Third, the idea that "[a] [b]log, not inside a website is what the rest of folks do" just isn't true. There are thousands of websites which incorporate a blog within the website. Not only do those sites generate direct connections between the content provided in the blog and the services provided by the company, the website becomes a centralized place for a client to interact with the company, both on an informational and commercial level.

Finally, I simply cannot agree that the benefits of unifying a blog within a larger website is "not open to debate." Of course it is open to debate. It's exactly what is going on here. The more I think about this, the more I start to wonder whether there isn't some sort of shameless promotional advertising for LexBlog's services going on here. Mr. Griffith's post, in fact, praises the very sort of business model that LexBlog is based upon, linking to both LexBlog and Mr. OKeefe. The fact of the matter is that there isn't a right or wrong way to do both a website and a blog. The real issue is whether the content of each serves to enhance or detract from the other. If the blog enhances the website (and vice versa) then there is certainly no reason that the two should not be integrated. In fact, very real benefits would be realized by integrating the two as tightly as possible. If the blog detracts from the goals of the website, then by all means separate the two. To say that all legal blogs should be separated from websites maintained by the same lawyer because 1) that's what everyone else (i.e., a normal blogger) does and 2) all of LexBlog's approximately 250 hosted blogs are structured that way is a gross exaggeration.

[Kevin OKeefe]

If firm has a website already and goal of blog is getting more work, far greater ROI from blogging when blog is not inside a website. It's not open to debate.

I am not referring to situation where a lawyer uses a blog exclusively and does not use a website. Grant uses a blog and not a website to get 8 to 12 new clients a month. He does not need a website to get work. I am referring to situation where firm has a website and wants to keep that for any number of reasons.

Here are some reasons blog should be outside of website:

* Credibility - a blog is akin to an educational magazine, an information resource to the public and the media; makes it much more likely that you will be contacted by the media as an authority, be invited to speak at programs and be looked at by prospective clients as authority.

* Discourse of discussion - there is an ongoing discourse on the net in any niche area of the law and locale; a blog is your voice to enter into that discussion - you leave your office, you leave the trappings of a website (your law firm brochure) when in that discussion; to put a blog in your site is like asking people to come to your office for the discussion when there is already an ongoing discussion on the net. As Grant mentioned, that discussion involves your posts getting cited by other bloggers, inside and outside the law - people do not generally link to law firm websites.

* Website and blog are two totally different ways of marketing. A website is a brochure with the contact info and background of all firm employees. Sure, it's nice to have updated content and clients and prospects will appreciate that. But what you have is a website, part, or perhaps all of it, running on blog software.

* Blog, not inside a website is what the rest of folks do. Lawyers should not be so self centered to think they do not need to be like non-lawyers. If you want benefits of blogging, join the crowd. Be like non-lawyers.

We've got approaching 250 law blogs run by law firm clients. Not one of which is inside a website.

[mikedrechsel]

I actually had to read your post a few times to determine whether this was intended to be humorous or not. Seriously. The idea that a lawyer's blog should be separated from that lawyer's website is not one that is either "right" or "wrong." While there may be personal preference one way or another, it should make very little difference to the end user who, at the end of the day, is merely clicking a link to go to "the blog," whether that blog falls under the same domain as the lawyer's main website or some other. Surely search engine optimization is not enhanced significantly by simply separating one url from another at the domain level. For instance, if my main url were "drechsellaw.com" and my blog address were "drechsellaw.com/blog" instead of "drechsellawblog.com," would I be at an SEO disadvantage? Not likely. In fact, I'm certain that there are advantages to NOT fragmenting your content all over the web under various urls. Further, the whole idea that the blog is updated regularly and the website is mainly static content makes very little difference to an end-user. Rather, I would imagine that most users would find it both interesting and reassuring that their lawyer (or soon-to-be lawyer) takes the time to not only regularly update his "website" (by posting to an incorporated blog), but also provide relevant, up-to-date discussion of material legal issues on the "website." To a client, the website and the blog are likely indistinguishable.

[Victor Medina]

I've gone with the two site approach to this issue, however my static site has an "updater" on the blog links page that shows the latest blog posts and links to them. That way, the information on my static blog links page stays current and relevant and I'm able to take advantage of both my website designer's uh, design and the blogging software's capabilities.

If I was really crafty, I'd find a way of copying my CSS design on my static website and using it as a template for my blogs (way above my paygrade right now).

[Imke]

I totally agree with not having a blog integrated into a website. For the most part, they don't feel like the real thing. But, unless you can't afford to have two sites, go with a static firm website in addition to the blog. As Grant said, there are SEO benefits to having two domains. If you only can afford one, go with the blog and integrate some static pages about your practice.

As usual, many lawyers are so arrogant about what is best for them, what works, what doesn't. According to them, blogging is for nerds and misfits. I heard a phrase yesterday that fits perfectly: "the curse of assumption."

In a way, I am glad, because these lawyers created my (and Grant's) unique selling proposition.

[Chuck Newton]

I turn my blog into my website, but I have not found a website that has a blog link to be exciting or beneficial to me. I think LexBlog does this best where it has added a few static pages for background and contact information.

[Grant Griffiths]

Gerad-

I have actually answered this question often. And have been mentioned in the March issue of Smart Money on this too. I get on average 300 visitors a day to my family law blog; http://kansasfamilylawblog.lexblog.com/

I average 15 to 20 inquires a week and 2 to 3 new clients a week.

[Gerad Wilson]

I'm not convinced that a law blog is the greatest thing since sliced bread. How many visitors does your blog get each month on average and how many new clients does it generate each month? I frequent a lot of law blogs and the law bloggers spout off about how great law blogs are, but no law blogger ever answers those two questions.

Gerad Wilson
Personal Injury Litigation