Susan Cartier Leibel twitted a link to Grant Griffith’s Blog For Profit that disturbed me, both for the position taken and because it suggests a direction to be propounded to new blawgers that could lead them down a path they might not prefer.  It’s all about the name.

Kevin O’Keefe and I have discussed blog-naming a few times, including during a panel discussion at the City Bar. Kevin’s view is that blog names should be descriptive in order to maximize search engine optimization.  In other words, the name of my blog should be New York Criminal Defense Lawyer, since that’s the most likely search someone would use if I wanted them to find me as a lawyer.  But Kevin, while recognizing the point of SEO, similarly harps on LexBloggers providing substance in their posts, noting that SEO alone doesn’t cut it, since potential clients will immediately see that a blog without substance reflects a lawyer without substance. 

While I disagree with Kevin about the name, arguing that every top blawg has a unique name, spitting in the face of SEO and achieving relevance on the basis of its content rather than ability to game the search engines, I at least respect Kevin’s efforts to inform his clients that SEO is but a part of the equation.

Not so much with this guest post by Michael Martine.

Getting a domain name, naming your blog, and coming up with a tagline can feel like tough decisions, but they don’t have to be. If you have a good idea of what you’re going to blog about, everything is easier. You have two main considerations: search engine optimization (SEO) and branding/positioning.

Search Engine Optimization

As much as we’d love to think that if you just come up with a clever, catchy blog name, the world will beat a linkpath to your URL, it just ain’t so. People will find you via search. The question is, with what keywords will they find you, and how high in the rankings will your blog be? You want the main subject of your blog to be in the domain name if possible.

In fairness, that is precisely what the blawgosphere is all about to two discrete groups, marketers and consumers of marketers, those lawyers whose primary purpose in being here is to get business.  While I may harbor some problems with these folks for clogging the pipe with what I deem worthless spam, this is the right advice if marketing is your purpose.  Whether it will pay off as the marketers claim is another matter.

When I expressed my disagreement to Susan, she told me that naming blogs is one of the biggest issues she hears about from people who are going solo, and potential consumers of Solo Practice University.  I don’t doubt that for a moment, though that doesn’t answer the question of whether one should name a blawg based solely on SEO considerations or whether there’s an alternative.  It’s my hope that the SPU curriculum will not be so single-minded as to ignore the possibility that marketing is not the answer to every solo lawyer’s desires.

So why does this concern me enough to write about it?  Because the blawgosphere is currently comprised of maybe 80% of blawgers whose purpose is to get business, and 20% whose primary purpose is to provide substance.  No, the two are not mutually exclusive, and yes, providing substance also serves to market, whether it’s the purpose or not.  Let’s take the obvious canards off the table, though marketers so love the obvious that its nearly impossible for them not to restate it a half dozen times.

My problem is that naming a blawg, purchasing a URL, is something that will follow a blawger down the road, and will have a substantial impact on how that blawger is perceived by the rest of the blawgosphere.  When the only advice given, and given with such clarity, comes from the marketing perspective, a newcomer to the blawgosphere can forever taint his existence by following the marketers’ formulaic approach.  If you want to game the search engines, then name your blawg using SEO language.  Your chest will swell with pride when first you hit enter on Google and see yourself on the first page.

If your purpose is join the conversation in the blawgosphere, to establish your relevance as thoughtful contributor to the analysis and discussion, however, you may want to ignore the SEO/marketing path and select a name that identifies your blawg’s real purpose.   As Seth Godin says, be the “the”, as in Attila the Hun rather than Iowa Real Estate Hun Attila.  One will be more easily searched.  The other will be more highly regarded.

Consider the top blawgs around.  Volokh Conspiracy, Above the Law, Overlawyered, What About Clients?, f/k/a, Defending People.  Notice anything?  Nary a one is search engine optimized, but you won’t find a single blawg that follows the marketers rulebook that can hold a candle to these blawgs with respect to recognition, respect and, yes, volume of traffic. 

I do not contend that the Blog For Profit post is inaccurate.  Indeed, it is right on target for the quickest, easiest and most obvious way to generate quick traffic via a search engine.  I only want to make sure that newcomers know that there is another approach, an alternative to the marketers’ rulebook, that could prove far more effective in accomplishing your longer term goals than the quick and dirty SEO route.  And by taking the easy route, you may well find that you’re choice has started you off on the low road, where you will have to fight much harder to rise above the marketing taint to establish your substantive worth.

Again, each new blawger needs to make the choice as to the path that best suits his or her purposes.  But you should know that the marketing path is not the only one available to you, and may well prove not to be the path you really want in the long run, and a path that brings regret as you find it a struggle to overcome the taint of the marketing blawg.