5 Tips On Generating Content for Your Law Firm Practice Areas
By Autumn Singh on May 28, 2021 in Content
Are you attempting to update your practice area pages? Or perhaps you have a new area of practice you would like to include on your website. Often attorneys who are well-versed in their areas of practice do not know how to generate content for their website that is both web and client-friendly. At PaperStreet, we consult our attorney clients frequently on this topic as they are concerned the content will come across with too much legalese. This is a valid concern as quality content is critical if you would like to boost your SEO rankings and gain traffic.
Content is King — It Really Can Define the Success of Your Website
Creating strong practice area pages is an excellent way to ensure that your website has a solid foundation. Practice area pages will define your experience and services and give you the tools to market your firm effectively. Some guidelines to help you get started:
#1 Define Your Audience
Understanding who you are trying to communicate with will make it much easier to set the tone and style of your content. Always keep your target audience in mind when writing material, and make sure to address their questions. They will quickly leave to a competitor site if you are not speaking to them. A personal injury firm, for example, will need content geared at the mass population, while a firm with business customers can use a more sophisticated tone in their writing.
Pro-tip: Read reviews. Reading Google reviews for your own and competitor firms is one strategy to use to help you better understand your customers, what problems they’re having, and how you can help solve them. The content and tone can then be adjusted accordingly.
#2 Be Unique and Interesting
Unique: Google despises duplicate content and will penalize your site if it is not unique. Be distinct from competitor sites and avoid any duplicate content within your website as well.
Interesting: Assume your reader has no former knowledge of the topic you are covering—make your content informative and educate them. Content that is simple without legalese will make your pages more engaging and help with SEO.
The more quality content you have, the better. Keep the reader on your page as long as possible—Google will then consider your page more relevant and improve on SEO.
#3 Easy to Scan and Read
Snappy and concise is always the best practice. When someone visits your practice area page for the first time, they will scan it to see if you have the proper response and whether you are a good fit. People are busy and need easy and quick answers without having to dig to get there.
- No matter who your target market is, keeping your content very simple and easy to read is still essential.
- Avoid long paragraphs and sentences – they are not web-friendly.
- Remove the legalese and create something easy for most people to read
#4 Break Up the Monotony
When generating your practice area pages, the last thing you want to do is plop paragraphs of text on the page. When a reader first opens the page, the amount of text without formatting can be intimidating. A few simple guidelines will help you break up the monotony:
- Create strong headlines
- Always use short paragraphs
- Keep the content well organized
- Use bullets when discussing topics with more than three points
- Include a graphic or picture to make the page more engaging
#5 Links, Links, and More links
Internal Links: An internal link connects one topic on a page to a different page on your site. Adding internal links to your practice area pages is another great way to avoid duplicate content and build relationships throughout your website to feel cohesive. Internal links are also beneficial to your SEO because they aid Google and users in comprehending the structure of your website and locating content.
Links to Authority Sites: This is an excellent technique to substantiate your statements. For example, if you refer to something from the FDA, create a hyperlink to their site. Readers will see that what you’re saying is accurate, and it’ll help your SEO.
How PaperStreet Can Help
For most attorneys, marketing their firm and updating the website can seem like an overwhelming task. We get it. You have a busy practice, and this type of project can feel like a burden. The PaperStreet team can help. We have an entire team of attorney writers who can either guide you or take on the task for you. Contact our team today to kick start your content writing.
