Creating high-quality legal content on your website is a great way to increase your standing with search engines like Google. Great content will also help potential clients get more information, build trust in your firm, and ultimately become clients.
Writing content can seem difficult even for writing champs like attorneys, so I’ve put together a guide to writing great content to maximize the return on investment of your digital presence.
To build an effective company blog, you need an optimized website, an audience avatar (research driven deep description), keyword research, and a plan. Here are some tips to get you moving toward that goal.
Audience and Experience
1. Keep your law firm website goals in mind
What do you want your website to do for you?
If you want your legal website to increase brand awareness of your firm and practice areas, you’ll want to create search engine optimized (SEO) content that helps you rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs). By ranking as high as possible on SERPs, you can drive more visitors to your law firm’s website; page 3 of Google is a ghost-town for visitors.
If you want to use your site as a generation and lead capture tool for your legal practice, you’ll need valuable content that prospects will be willing to trade their contact information for. You’ll also need follow-up content (like email campaigns) to continue marketing to your prospective clients.
You need to determine what your website goals are and prioritize them before you begin creating content.
2. Put your audience first
You can’t create effective law firm website content without knowing who your target audience is. By understanding who you’re creating content for, you’ll know what type of content to create, and how to create it.
For example, if you focus on corporate law, you’ll want your content to have a slightly more formal business tone. You want to convey that you understand your clients’ business requirements. Longer-form content (like articles with more than 1200 words) may be more appropriate to showcase your expertise in their specific area.
A family lawyer, on the other hand, you understand that clients will generally be looking for you during stressful and emotional times. You’ll want to communicate in a softer, more human tone. Knowing that in many cases clients want to quickly move through this difficult time in their lives, you’ll want to keep your content concise as well.
Putting your audience first means stepping into your audience’s shoes and creating content that appeals to them.
3. Deliver a memorable website experience
The user experience on your firm’s website is critical to ensuring that visitors stay on your site and engage with your content. “User experience” refers to the perceptions and responses that people have from using your law firm’s website and content. Imagine if your law firm website content is difficult to read and your site is a challenge to navigate. Visitors will likely leave (bounce) before visiting that valuable “contact us” page.
When creating content, keep the following in mind:
- Keep content short and scannable: Sentences should be 20-25 words, paragraphs 4-5 sentences.
- Use subheadings to break up longer pieces: Sections should be no longer than 300-350 words.
- Use images and media to convey information: Present data as charts and graphics where possible, and choose photographs that your prospective legal clients can relate to.
4. Don’t stretch yourself thin
Be realistic about the time, effort, and budget you have to spend on content marketing for your law firm. As an attorney, your time is valuable. However, content creation can be time-consuming and expensive to outsource. How much law firm website content you choose to create and how often you choose to publish it will depend on the time and resources you have available.
Also, keep in mind that the quality of your website’s content determines its usefulness—content that is created as an afterthought will not produce the desired results.
Conclusion
Writing content is one of the basic pillars of modern marketing. Without great content your audience will struggle to find your, trust you, or hire you. I provide services that will create a stunning website with great user experience as well as provide SEO & copywriting services that can meet your goals and build the foundation for your marketing success. Click Here to see our portfolio and schedule your discovery call.