The biggest problem facing attorneys in the online marketing world today is the quality of the content on their websites. Many attorneys don’t even read the content on their own website, which can be problematic if the content is generic, inaccurate, ungrammatical, or has bar rules violations.
Attorney Web Copywriting
Attorneys make their biggest marketing mistakes by ignoring the content process. As a practicing attorney who is actively involved in the legal community, you have real world knowledge and experience that should be illustrated on the website.
At Internet Lava, we help you utilize this information to devise remarkable web copy that will help you soar above your competitors. The quality and depth of the content we create in-house can further enhance your image as an authority within your legal profession. Furthermore, we have an attorney on staff to ensure that all content meets rigorous standards for legal accuracy.
Enhancing Your Marketing Strategy Though Quality Content
- The Importance of Content on an Attorney’s Website
- Client Participation in Developing “Genuine” Web Content
- Content Distribution on Other Websites
- Using Content across Several Platforms
- Generating Direct Links and Further Distribution
- Web Content and Bar Rule Compliance
- Effective SEO Copywriting
- Keyword Density and Search Algorithms
- Types of Hyperlinks Enhanced by Content
- Tips for Writing Good SEO Content
The Importance of Content on an Attorney’s Website
The most important part of any lawyer’s website is the content. The content should be worthwhile to potential users and easy to navigate. You risk losing the attention of a potential client if the specific information for the issue they are facing is not readily accessible.
The website should convey the information most important to your ideal clients. By viewing your website this way, you can give the search engines exactly what it wants – unique, informative and constantly updated content.
The purpose of the search engines is to highlight the best websites that address specific inquires. For a lawyer’s website, the best content will begin to answer your potential client’s questions before they decide which attorney to retain. The most effective way to stay ahead of your competition is to have content that engages these concerns, presents your services in a positive light, and has strong calls to action.
At Internet Lava, we are dedicated to providing our clients with quality web content that is truly:
- Genuine – Your website content should be a direct reflection of you, your law firm, and the way in which your firm handles different types of cases.
- Unique – Content on your website should consist of specific information that is not available elsewhere on the Internet.
- Informative – Your website content should provide valuable intelligence to answer a wide variety of general legal questions and concerns a potential client might have.
- Comprehensive – Every issue related to your area of law should be addressed and explained in a way easily understood by the audience.
- Resourceful – Your website content should serve as a resource for those researching legal information, containing links and contact information to supplemental, outside resources.
- Compelling – Your potential clients should be engaged in the content and feel inspired to contact you as they read.
- Impressive – Your potential clients should feel confident that you are the right attorney to handle their particular legal situation.
Content must be the core foundation of any attorney’s website. Many other web companies will say they specialize in SEO Copywriting but fail to explain how. Oftentimes this content is generic and provides little of value to the user. This type of content is ineffective in terms of both SEO and user engagement.
At Internet Lava, we put a great focus on the content that can shape the way users and search engines weigh your website. Authentic and valuable content are the core of a comprehensive and effective internet marketing strategy. Furthermore, we work with you to ensure that the content accurately reflects the image you wish to present.
The Problems with Using “Generic” Web Content
One major problem that most attorneys face with their internet marketing campaign is that their website content is “generic.” For most attorneys, the information on their website could pertain to any law firm that practices the same area of law. Most attorney website companies will use a web copywriter to generate content for their client’s websites. The web copywriter will research the topic on the internet and then write out just enough web copy to fill the page.
Browse some of your competitor’s websites and you will see this illustrated. The content writers for most other companies simply copy content from other websites. This leaves open the door for inaccurate information and even attorney bar rule advertising violations. Content that lacks in originality will do little to help your search rankings and can actually harm your rankings.
While it is good to for web content to include a great deal of general information about the subject matter, you do not want the content to be entirely general. It’s better for web content to include a combination of highly detailed general information as well as genuine and specific information that reflects how your firm in particular may address a legal issue. This is not intended to present official legal advice, rather it helps the prospective users and search engines gain enough information to get a positive impression of you.
Some lawyer website companies will also “recycle” content. These companies re-word the same content over and over again for different websites or re-use content that was previously on another attorney’s website who cancelled. It is best to avoid these generic copywriting techniques and instead participate in developing up-to-date and authentic legal content.
Users can tell the difference in quality and would lean more towards a law firm that did not appear “cookie-cutter.”
Client Participation in Developing “Genuine” Web Content
At Internet Lava, we specialize in writing “genuine” content that only pertains to your particular law firm. In order to accomplish this, a moderate-level of client-participation is required. With a small investment of your time, you can help us really understand your practice and enhance the way it is portrayed to users.
In order for us to be able to write specific legal information about your particular firm, we need to gather a good deal of information from you, including:
- Selling points. What makes your firm stand out?
- A list of every single area of law that you practice.
- Information about how your firm handles each of these specific cases.
- A list of related topics for each of these practice areas.
- Information about how your firm addresses each of the related topics.
- A list of all your specific niche areas. What are your favorite types of cases?
- A list of every city and county where you are willing to take cases.
- Biographical information for each attorney in your firm, including:
- Education;
- Bar Admissions;
- Professional Memberships and Associations; and
- Trial Experience.
- Ideas for legal articles that will interest your audience.
- Ideas for news-worthy publications about your firm.
- If appropriate, a list of recent “case results.”
By acquiring a great deal of information from you, we will be able to better formulate unique content that relates to your specific firm. It is important that attorneys participate in the process for successful content development. Often, this entire process takes very little time for the attorney. In most cases, our web copywriters will use the information you provide to generate unique content that is methodically reviewed by an attorney and is available for your approval.
Some attorneys prefer to write some of the web copies themselves, and then send it to us for editing and optimization. Attorneys often find material that they have already used on a particular legal topic such as a recently submitted “memorandum of law.” This method is effective as the attorneys are intimately familiar with complex legal matters in their specific jurisdiction. This firsthand knowledge comes across in the content.
We want your website to be just that: yours. The more you participate in developing the content, the more personalized the website will be to you. We want you to be proud of the message your website delivers. At the end of the development, you should feel a personal connection to your website. Perhaps even more importantly, we want your clients to feel a personal connection to you when they read your website, increasing their confidence in you.
Content Distribution on Other Websites
Not only is it important to provide content for your website, it is also important that the content is used throughout your internet marketing strategy. If you have an online profile that promotes your legal practice and links to your website, add as much written information about your practice as possible. This may include adding descriptions of your practice areas and biographical information.
Taking advantage of these off-site resources will increase the relevance of the page and the SEO benefit of the link your website receives.
The presence of content about your law firm across the internet through concise and targeted content is oftentimes overlooked by marketing companies. At Internet Lava, we make sure that information about your law firm is presented accurately and completely in many different, widely-used online directories. This helps shape the way that a potential user sees your firm in addition to appeasing search engines.
Using Content across Several Platforms
At Internet LAVA, we write content for a wide variety of web sites, including:
- Website Content
- Every single area of law the firm practices
- Multiple sub-pages under each of these practice areas
- Blogs
- Routine blog entries about interesting and relevant topics
- Articles
- Informative articles about legal issues related to your practice
- Press Releases
- Regular press releases announcing news about your firm and insight into recent legal issues.
- Online Profiles
- Adding of relevant and biographical information to your profiles
- Directory Listings
- Adding of detailed descriptions to online directory listings
By using multiple channels to distribute your content throughout the Internet, we are able to build a powerful online presence for your firm. All of these different web pages will contain well-written and relevant information that will serve as a support structure for your website. Improving the natural search rankings of your website will involve regular additions and enhancements to the content.
Generating Direct Links and Further Distribution
We make sure to publish information that people will find interesting and informative. If you have good content that people are interested in, other internet users will find it and link to it. Search engines such as Google can see this and will consider your website as an authority on the topic being linked to. Having uniquely interesting content is one of the best ways to naturally acquire quality inbound links.
We are able to work with our clients to determine legal topics that are highly interesting and sought after. These topics may include:
- Recent changes in relevant state or federal law;
- Relevant political issues;
- Highly debated issues; and
- Local issues pertaining to your area of practice.
The best way to get noticed is to provide your audience with valuable information that may not be available from other sources. We work with our clients to successfully communicate information about sensitive issues and take advantage of these issues to distribute content that promotes their law firm.
When other people are drawn to your content, they will choose to re-distribute it themselves. For example, someone may read one of your web pages, press releases, articles, or blog entries and decide to tweet it on their twitter page, bookmark it on their social bookmarking page, or share it on their Facebook page. Thus, content can also lead to social engagement by users – another one of Google’s ranking factors.
Web Content and Bar Rule Compliance
State bar advertising regulations will often restrict the ways in which attorneys communicate about their services. Many state bar associations will prohibit the use of “laudatory statements” or statements that compare a lawyer’s services to those of other lawyers of firms. Terms like “best” or “better” will be considered as laudatory and cannot be used. Other prohibited terms may include words like “expert” or “specialist” depending on the state.
Some states will restrict the ways in which case results or testimonials can be displayed. Many states will require some type of disclaimer to be present as well. Adhering to bar rules is important in order to avoid sanctions for a violation.
At Internet Lava, we pay close attention to bar rules and keep them in mind when we write our content. We help you make sure that any written content is compliant with bar regulations for your state.
When writing content for a lawyer website, search engine optimization is always at the forefront of our efforts. We make sure to use the latest SEO techniques to generate content that is highly effective in search engines. However, we approach this in an organic fashion. The keywords and SEO is integrated seamlessly behind well-written and informative content.
Page relevance is very important in SEO for lawyer content. The content of your page should contain several different terms that are related to the main keyword phrase that the page is targeting. Simply writing a short page of web copy and mentioning the keyword phrase several times will not help your content stand out. For the content to truly stand out, it must talk about other topics and key terms that are closely related.
For example: this page is about “Attorney Web Copywriting.” Other key terms that are closely related to this keyword phrase may include:
- Legal Copywriting
- Promotional Copywriting
- Business Copywriting
- Internet Copywriting
- Marketing Communications
- Communication Design
- Advertising Agencies
- Freelance Writing
- Writing Website Copy
- Copyediting
- Newspapers
- Magazines
- Publishing
This page now has stronger page relevance because it mentions several other key terms that are related to the main topic. Content for attorney websites must be written in a similar fashion, integrating related keyword terms and topics.
Keyword Density and Search Algorithms
The abundance of a keyword on the page is calculated by a percentage of how many times they word or phrase appears on the page compared to the total number of words on the page. There are several online tools that people can use to measure the keyword density of a page. These keyword density tests are not very effective with writing SEO content. In the past, keyword density used to be a major factor.
As search engine algorithms have evolved, keyword density has become far less important. You do want to avoid over-using keywords in your content. Search engines may see this as “keyword cramming” or “keyword stuffing.” If a keyword or phrase is too dense, it can actually harm your rankings. Instead of concentrating on the density of a few particular keywords, it is better to use a variety of different keywords and related terms throughout the page.
Types of Hyperlinks Enhanced by Content
It is important to include hyperlinks throughout the website content. There are 3 different types of hyperlinks that should each be considered:
- Interior Links: These are links throughout the content that link to other pages within your website.It is important to use interior links in your web content. Interior links help greatly with site optimization because they make it easier for search engines to navigate the site. This type of link also helps reinforce the hierarchy of the content within a website, helping pages on the website to support each other and allowing search engines to understand the importance of topics.
- Exterior Links – These are links in your web content that link out to pages on other websites.Using exterior links can also help with your web page optimization. By finding pages on other websites that are relative to the topic and then linking out to them, you will provide the user with a better experience by giving them easy access to other valuable resources. Of particular importance are local government, educational, or non-profit organizations.
- Inbound Links – These are links on other websites that link to your webpage.Acquiring inbound links from other sites to your web pages can be somewhat challenging. Most of your inbound links will be to your home page. Links on other sites that point directly to an interior page will help the optimization a great deal. This is known as “deep linking.” It is important to find other websites that are relevant to the specific topic and then acquiring a link directly to your web page.
Tips for Writing Good SEO Content
- Talk to your audience, not at them. The user likes to feel like they are being talked to as opposed to just reading general information.
- Write content that is interesting. Determine a topic that you feel people will be interested in and provide your audience with valuable information on the topic.
- Have a specific SEO goal in mind for each page that you write. Determine a good keyword phrase to target and write a page that is focused on the optimization of that key term.
- Make sure your content easy to understand and formatted cleanly. Avoid long paragraphs. Use titles, headers, sub-headers, bullets, and short paragraphs.
- Use a variety of different keywords and related terms. Avoid “keyword cramming” and make sure that your content is relevant to the main topic.
- Use interior links throughout your content. It is also good to include a few exterior links to other resources.
Superior Web Copywriting Services for Attorneys
At Internet Lava, we don’t take shortcuts when it comes to web copy. Our in-house copywriters work to ensure that your website will rank highly in search engines and maintain that ranking over time. This content is also written at a comprehension level and tone best suited to your audience. It is then reviewed by our in-house attorney to ensure that legal issues addressed are accurate and presented effectively.
Call (800) 292-Lava (5282) to learn more about our law firm copywriting services.
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