How to Choose What Content to Write for Your Law Firm’s Website

Date: July 14, 2022

You’ve been told by your marketing team that your law firm’s website needs a blog. You’ve been told that search engine optimization, or SEO, is necessary to the success of your business. But how do you begin the process of choosing the content for your law firm’s website and getting it written? What feels like an overwhelming undertaking can be eased and guided by proper research, prior planning, and the help of your trusted SEO team.

Does My Law Firm’s Website Need Content?

It may seem unnecessary to create a blog for your business’s website. After all, shouldn’t the facts about your law firm be enough to entice prospective clients? However, it is vital to your marketing strategy to create website content for your law firm. Creating content fills your website with keywords, or terms that potential clients are searching for. These keywords give the SERPs, or search engine results pages like Google, places to grab onto your website. The more website content the SERPs see on your website that’s relevant to potential customers, the more likely they are to make sure that your site is seen by your target audience. This drives traffic to your website and results in more business for your firm.

Creating Content: What Is the Process?

In the broadest terms, creating content is not dissimilar from writing any other well-planned document. You might brainstorm through an outline, or view competitors’ websites for ideas. The goal is to appeal to your target audience in a way that also enhances the mission of your firm and demonstrates the depth of your knowledge. 

The actual content writing can be approached from several different directions. You can choose to have someone in your organization write your content, or your SEO team can help you employ a content writer who has experience in writing for your niche.

What Do I Write? And What Should It Include?

Once you understand how your law firm is going to approach your content, the next vital step is figuring out what topics your audience wants to see. What are people searching for? What are the most common questions you get asked by potential clients? What are your competitors talking about? What can you offer that nobody else can? 

Trending Topics

A great place to start when choosing a blog topic is looking at what topics are trending in the legal sphere and in your community. Read the news, scroll through social media, and check out competitors’ websites for ideas. What are the questions that are currently being asked? What can your specific expertise provide in response to those questions? For example, if you are a real estate attorney, see if you can connect what is happening in the current economic climate with what your potential clients may be considering. If you’re an estate attorney, consider any current health crises or nationwide law shifts that might affect how people will approach their estate plans. See if you can answer their questions before they even have to ask them. You know your branch of law best – see if you can connect the dots for prospective clients by making it relate to their real-world questions and experiences. 

Keyword Research

Something your SEO team can do to help you choose what to write about and what to include is keyword research. Your SEO firm is experienced in taking a topic or idea and finding the associated terms that will infuse your content with what the SERPs want to see, and by extension, will connect your article with prospective clients. These keywords reflect what your target audience is asking, as well as what direction your competitors’ similar blog posts may be taking. Often, because these keywords will be associated with broader topics under your jurisdiction, the resulting article will be perpetually relevant to the work that you do, and could make a lasting impact on your website by acting as thorough, knowledgeable resources.

Let’s say you’re a divorce attorney, and you know that you want to write a blog post about co-parenting, but you don’t know where to start. Your SEO team knows what tools to use to find the keywords most associated with that topic, and will encourage you to incorporate those terms into your blog post. These terms can provide guidance in your piece – for example, in your blog about co-parenting, you may be directed to keywords like “emotions,” “mental health professional,” and “problem solving.” This tells you what people are searching for, and what competitors are saying about this topic. In incorporating these keywords, not only will these keywords give you some direction in your writing, but you will also be incorporating sticking points that will help your blog climb the ranks of the SERPs, ensuring that potential clients see the piece you’ve worked so hard to write. 

Press Releases and Other Media

You may already have some ready-made content that is suitable for posting without you realizing! Press releases are an effective way to get your law firm’s attorneys’ names out into the ether and into search results in a way that closely associates them with the wonderful work they do. If your law firm regularly publishes press releases as newsletters or within publications, transposing them onto your law firm’s website will keep them in the public eye for even longer. 

Similarly, your law firm may offer free resources to potential clients, like worksheets for estate planning or Medicare checklists. These resources can act as another level of content on your law firm’s website, using keywords and common questions sought after by your target audience to bring you to them in a way that demonstrates both knowledge and compassion. These are resources that will remain evergreen on your website, keeping potential customers visiting your website as they learn more about what you do and solidifying for them that you are the right firm for their needs. 

Content Writing: Making Content Happen

Once you’ve settled on your topics and formats, it’s time to make your website content a reality. Creating content can take many different forms, and it may take a few tries to find out what method of content writing is right for your law firm. You may choose to write your content in-house, or you may ask your SEO team to help you find a content writer so you can focus on other things. Whoever writes your content should keep readability in mind in addition to accuracy in order to attract your target audience, who likely has less legal know-how than your content writer. Let your SEO team optimize your content with keywords and other technical features, and your content will be ready for posting in a way that will ensure it appears in search results. 

Do You Have a Trusted SEO Team to Guide Your Law Firm’s Content?

If you’re ready to take your law firm’s website content to the next level, you’ve come to the right place. At 9Sail, we specialize in helping attorneys like you with their SEO marketing and content creation. Therefore, we know a thing or two about how an external blog can impact your website’s search results rank.

We encourage you to set up a free consultation with our team of experts to find out whether you should use an internal or external blog for your law firm’s website. You can make your appointment by calling or submitting your contact information through our online form. We also offer an audit & blueprint project so that you can get a better idea of your site’s SEO performance.