SEO Content Writing For Lawyers And Law Firms
Content writing is an essential part of marketing and fundamental to digitally growing your legal practice. Identifying the problems your potential clients are facing and creating accurate, high-quality content around them can be one of the most effective ways to improve traffic and capture leads.
This comprehensive content writing guide for lawyers and law firms will help you find relevant topics to create content around. We’ll also discuss how to develop content structures for your articles and repurpose each piece for maximum effectiveness.
Let’s dive in.
Why Should Law Firms Invest in Content?
Improve E-E-A-T score
So E-E-A-T (acronym for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) was first introduced in 2014 in Google’s search quality guidelines. Since then, it has slowly and steadily become an important ranking factor. Google, when ranking websites for particular queries, takes into consideration the credibility of the domain or the person writing the piece of content. If you want your law firm to rank for specific keywords (and keywords like “startup lawyers in indiana” can be challenging to rank for), you’ll have to maintain a high E-E-A-T score. One way to do this is by regularly publishing factually accurate, lawyer-vetted content. Also, create dedicated pages for the writers/lawyers who contributed to the article to provide search engines with social proof.
Drive traffic
The more niche-specific content your law firm puts out, the more targeted traffic it will get. You can create various content types, from news articles to long-form blog posts to ebooks and ppts. When you provide information written by experts and optimized for search, it’s bound to get new visitors to your law firm’s website.
Get found by potential clients
Google search is the place where most people start their solution-finding journey. This goes for almost all industries, including the legal sector. Your clients are searching for legal aid that you may have expertise in. Identifying the phrases your potential clients are searching for and creating content around them can be a gateway to capturing valuable leads. You can use tools like Answer the Public or Also Asked to get an idea of what your clients are searching for.
Acquire backlinks
An essential component of attaining higher rankings is having a good link profile. Content that is well-researched and written can get backlinks from other websites. Additionally, you could create different forms of content like PPTs, infographics, videos, or data-packed articles that have a higher chance of attracting links from authoritative websites. The more number of authoritative domains that link to your site, the better your chances of ranking higher in search results pages.
SEO Content Writing Tips For Law Firms
Use practice areas
Some law firms are full-service firms that offer almost every type of legal service under the sun. Others might specialize in a single or a handful of practice areas. The practice areas are the best place to start your topic research. Think of your practice areas as your seed keywords that you can use to generate ideas to create content around. Let’s take the practice area “startup legal service” for example. You could make several helpful pieces of content around fundraising for startups, legal compliance for startups, the need for a startup lawyer, etc.
Interlink Pillar and cluster posts
This aspect of content optimization is often overlooked by legal marketers but has proven to be highly beneficial time and again. Every practice area or legal service should have a pillar post (a long-form information-rich article) and a couple of cluster posts (articles covering other aspects of the practice area). The idea is to interlink the clusters with each other and to the pillar post. You can also link from the pillar posts to clusters and the main service page for that practice area. This helps distribute link equity throughout your law firm website and helps search engines better understand your site’s content. Remember to use meaningful anchor texts and always open the new post in a new tab.
Incorporate relevant keywords
Keywords play an important role in law firm SEO. Naturally, you’d want to ensure you’re using relevant keywords within your content so that your law firm website can rank higher for that query. There are various ways to find appropriate keywords to include in your legal articles. One of them is to put the primary keyword you want to write about into a tool like Semrush and see related and LSI keywords. Another way is to enter a URL of a competitor that is ranking for the main keyword and view the organic report section within Semrush. This will show the list of keywords that the article is ranking for. You can sort through the list and pick the most relevant ones to add to your article.
Content should be attorney-vetted
When it comes to SEO content writing for lawyers and law firms, it’s generally recommended to have attorneys with field knowledge and experience write the content. But in some cases, that is not possible because lawyers are busy with client work and don’t have time to write for the site. In situations like this, you can hire a content writer with experience in legal article writing. Have them write the content but ensure it is vetted and edited by someone on your team before publishing. People often search for legal information online. You want to provide accurate information once they arrive on your site.
Think like your client
When creating your content calendar (and you must always consider using a content calendar to track your progress), think of the terms and phrases your potential clients are searching for. For example, suppose your law firm offers HR and employment legal services. In that case, you’ll want to write about topics your audience wants to consume, like “importance of employment contracts” and “types of employee benefits.” Thinking like your client will help generate many content ideas you wouldn’t have come across otherwise.
Always add FAQs
FAQs are an asset that legal marketers often overlook. A grave mistake that should be avoided at all costs. Frequently asked questions can help not just with winning rich snippets in search results but answer your audience’s questions in the simplest way possible. FAQs can be added within individual blog posts or could have an entire section dedicated to them. By answering questions related to a particular article or practice area, you help your audience learn more about whatever information they’re already consuming. Also, some readers might only want to read part of the article to find the answer to the query that got them to your website. A FAQ section allows them to skim through and find the answer they were searching for, resulting in higher user satisfaction.
Consider other forms of content
Text-based content is excellent but insufficient if you want to reach a wider audience. Other formats of content, like video and podcasts, have gained unprecedented popularity in a relatively short amount of time. It would be unwise not to use them to reach potential clients. Law firms can leverage their lawyers’ knowledge to make videos sharing information on complex legal matters. Additionally, you can also incorporate client testimonials into your videos. Podcasts can also be an excellent medium to connect with your audience. You could speak on issues within your practice area or share your opinion on a trending event.
Share on social platforms
Publishing content on your law firm’s website is great. You want to create a content calendar and stay consistent to see results. The same applies to social media. Facebook, Instagram, and Linkedin are all good places to keep followers updated on your law firm’s latest deals & developments. Although you could use all social media platforms, Linkedin is where you’ll want to put most of your energy in. It’s great for networking and could help you connect with potential clients. Use carousel posts and polls to engage your audience. Moreover, you can repurpose content by sharing the articles you publish on your website on these platforms to get additional traffic.
FAQs
Why is content important for law firms?
You attract your audience when you provide them with value free of cost. One way to provide them value is by creating factually correct high-quality content. Detailed well-written content helps position you as an authority and build the trust needed to attract and retain clients.
How to optimize content for search engines?
Use relevant keywords that you wish to rank for within your content. Also, link to other pages within your site to ensure Google can better crawl your pages. Write keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions. And use structured data within your pages to help search engines understand the contents of your pages.
Should law firms publish content regularly?
Law firms should publish content regularly to attract more clients to their websites. That being said, the content should have the correct information and be plagiarism-free to do well in search results.
What topics should law firms write about?
The best place to find topics to create content is to look at the services offered. Use the primary practice area to create a long-form detailed piece of content. And write articles around subtopics within the practice area. Interlink articles covering the same central practice area help to distribute link equity throughout the site.
How to find keywords to include within your content?
To find keywords to include within your content, you’ll need to use a tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Put in your main keyword, and the tool will give you related keywords you can use. Or analyze a competitor’s URL to find the keywords they are ranking for. Pick the ones relevant to the content you’re about to produce and include it in them.
