Effective website content can make a significant impact on the growth of a law firm. Website content is key for your SEO (search engine optimization) strategy. It also educates and persuades website visitors. Effective content marketing can heavily influence a potential client’s decision in hiring a law firm.
In this article, we will examine attorney website content and how to make sure it’s effective. We’ll go over different types of content, best practices, and how to create content for your legal website. Let’s get started!
What is Website Content?
Website content is the text, photo, audio, or video content that appears online. It is designed to help and guide individuals as they gather information about a specific topic. The goal of a legal website should be to inform, educate, and increase conversions. Achieve this goal by publishing different forms of website content.
Each content type serves a different purpose. Search intent varies and your content should reflect this so it appeals to various audiences.
In addition to building different forms of content, your website navigation matters just as much. Check out the screenshot below of an SEO-friendly website menu.
Notice how they have structured their main menu at the top of the screen based on the different attorney website content their firm specializes in. This is a great example of a framework to remember when building your content.
SEO content writing is essential for all businesses with an online presence in today’s world, especially legal websites. People start their research process online and websites make or break the first impression with potential clients.
Let’s check out some of the most common and important types of attorney website content.
5 Essential Types of Content for Law Firm Websites
1. Service or Practice Area Pages
Arguably the most important pages on a website are your service pages that define the work you perform for your clients. It’s common for most law firm’s to offer more than one service. For example, let’s say you specialize in “injury law”. You still cover a variety of areas including general accidents, slip and fall, or motorcycle injuries.
It’s best to create separate pages for each of these practice areas with a target keyword assigned to each one. They should fully outline the topic and benefits that clients can receive when using your services. This helps their online search engine visibility along with the value they provide to users. You can also use pictures and videos where applicable for more engaging content.
Keep SEO in Mind
Practice area pages can also act as landing pages for new website visitors. A landing page is simply the page that website visitors will see when they find and click on your website. In order for users to find your landing pages on search engines, local SEO for law firms is necessary.
It’s important for these pages to include keywords targeting the services your law firm specializes in. For example, a website user may search for “criminal defense lawyer” or “personal injury law firm near me”. Adding relevant keywords into service pages can improve your rankings on search engines.
2. Location Pages
Create separate location pages if your law firm has:
- Multiple office locations
- Services several geographic locations
For example: If you have law offices in both Atlanta and Alpharetta, Georgia, create pages for each location. This helps users easily find the geographical areas you serve. It also helps improve your online visibility for “near me” searches. When individuals type in the keyword and location, include the service and location to improve your local rankings.
3. Client Success Stories
Publishing success stories is all about telling “the story”. They should explain the difficult situation the client was facing and how your services provided solutions. These types of stories don’t need to be complex or complicated. In fact, the simple stories often resonate more often with website visitors.
To share the success of your former clients, you don’t necessarily need to create entire pages. It’s important this type of web content weaves seamlessly into the rest of your content. For example, you could include a success story of a client (along with name and picture) within the home page.
This provides trust with new users and potential clients. Like reviews, these stories showcase the excellent work you provide for your clients.
4. About and Home Page
About and Home pages help people find the most important information quickly. An About page should provide a background for your law firm. Keep this content simple and professional. Prospective clients want to fully trust and depend upon the lawyer they choose to hire.
If applicable, include contact information so clients can reach you easily. Don’t hide your contact information on your website making it difficult for people to contact your office.
The home page should also display the contact information clearly. It’s also a spot to use CTA’s (calls to action) to drive action from site visitors. Showcase the most important aspects of your business along with your impressive background.
Make it extremely easy for website visitors to find information and engage with your website. Include your NAP in either the header or footer navigation so users can easily get into contact with you. NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. This also helps capture local SEO value.
In addition to that, use videos and images in your content to break up heavy text. People can digest information more easily through videos and images.
Photos also serve the purpose of improving the user experience on a website. People can become familiar with a law firm before visiting in-person. This helps create a foundation of trust.
5. Resource and Informational Content
Within your website, include valuable resources and information that relate to your law firm and its services. If you’re a bankruptcy lawyer, include links to official government websites that outline the official law in your area.
Let’s say you specialize in areas like estate planning or workers compensation. Include helpful resources to guide people in the right direction or videos that answer complex legal questions. And remember to display your law firm’s contact information clearly on your website to encourage more calls.
On-Site Blog
Along with including valuable information throughout your website, create a blog page. Frequent blog posts can help update individuals about your services and practice areas. It can:
- Allow your legal office to rank for long-tail keywords (ex: how to apply for workers comp)
- Shows search engines your business posts frequently
- Updates users on new law changes within your area
- Informs readers about new trends within the industry
Now that we understand what the essential pages are, let’s go over some strategies to create effective attorney website content.
How to Create Effective Content for Law Firm Websites
When it comes to website content (text, photos, or videos), it’s important it has a purpose. Without meaningful ideas, web content for lawyers will not provide value to users or search engines.
Remember, search engines want to display the best possible information to its users. To create excellent attorney website content, it takes a fair amount of preparation. The steps outlined below will help you get started with a content marketing strategy.
1. Determine your Target Audience
Before you begin the content creation process, it’s important to define and determine your target audience. Your target audience could also be referred to as your “target market” or “target customers”. This will help you create content focused on the demographics and psychographics of your clients.
For example, let’s say you manage a law firm in Tennessee. Your legal office could answer the following questions when determining your target audience to get started:
- Location: What cities do you want to target? (i.e. Nashville, Franklin)
- Age: How old is your target market (i.e Adults, 30-55 yrs old)
- Income: How much do your potential clients make per year? (i.e $70,000 -$100,000)
- Customer Needs: What type of lawyer do they need? (i.e. Injury, Family Law)
After you answer these questions, it will help narrow your intended target audience. This makes it easier for you to create content tailored to the individuals who you engage with.
2. Perform Keyword Research
If you want your attorney website content to rank on Google, it’s essential to perform keyword research. Keyword research will help your law firm find which keywords are best to use within your content. Additionally, it will help you determine which keywords to target based on relevant competition.
Naturally, some keywords will have more competition than others. For example, the keyword “lawyer” in a large city will have more competition than “motorcycle attorney” in a smaller city. The combination of great content with the right keywords can help improve your law firm’s visibility online.
Tools, like Semrush, display important data including keyword intent, search volume, and keyword difficulty. Choose a keyword that has high search volume, low keyword difficulty, and matches the intent of your law firm.
Additional free keyword research tools to use:
3. Study the Competition
Before (and during) the web content creation process, take an in-depth look at your top competitors’ content. Not sure how to find your online competitors? Simply type in your target keywords into Google search and click on the articles from similar law firms.
It’s important to never duplicate the content they create, this will hurt your SEO and online presence. Instead, analyze the topics and titles of your competitors to generate some ideas. Look for areas where competitors succeed, along with opportunities where your law firm could dominate.
4. Audit your Site
When creating a web content strategy, consider the existing web pages you currently have on your site. In some cases, your site already may have quality existing content that you can use or repurpose. Make a document of content you already have, along with areas that need improvement. An in-depth audit can help save time and money as you carry out your law firm’s web content strategy.
5. Focus on Optimized Content
Now that you have taken the time to create a plan and prepare, it’s time to begin creating content for your law firm. Use the information and data gathered from the steps above as you create outlines for your content.
Web pages with too little text or copy with lots of “fluff” will not provide value. Search engines and people need content that answers their questions fully. This is extremely difficult to achieve with thin content.
Web content for lawyers that is redundant or filled with unnecessary words also defeats the goal. Focus on creating content that:
- Appeals to your target audience
- Incorporates relevant keywords
- Highlights your USP (unique selling proposition)
Remember, this applies to your website’s copy, photos, and videos. As you focus on these elements, it will improve the value of your content. Building value in your content is important to both your website visitors and for search engines.
If the steps above seem too difficult or time-consuming, greatinflux can help. Learn more about our organic SEO services to make sure your web content is fully optimized.
How to Enhance Your Legal Content
At this point, you should have a framework on how to create new attorney website content. Once your content is published, give it some time to perform and rank on search engines. To optimize further, let’s go over a few ways to improve your existing content:
- Repurpose: If you have old content that is on your site, you don’t necessarily need to delete and start over. You can update, optimize, and re-publish old content for great results.
- Add Visual Elements: In today’s ever-changing digital world, users demand more out of content. Adding photos, infographics, or videos when possible can help provide a more engaging experience.
- Promote: Once you have great content for your law firm, consider promoting to reach different audiences. You can promote your content with email marketing, social media, or affiliate marketing.
- Build Internal Links: Create a content index with all the content you have published to keep things organized. Refer and link back to existing content for better SEO results.
Don’t let your efforts go to waste! The combination of these strategies will help advance the content you have worked hard to create.
Get Help from the Experts Creating Attorney Website Content
Remember, the process of creating and improving law firm website content is a process. It takes consistent effort and experience to generate traffic and sales through your website. If done well, your website can play a key role in the success of your law firm.
If your law firm doesn’t have the time or experience to create effective website content, greatinflux can help! We have helped over 40 million businesses succeed online. greatinflux also gets a website ranking in Google’s top 10 results every 5 minutes.
Learn more about our affordable local SEO services and get connected with a greatinflux Client Success team member for details!
