Similar to a plant, the content that lives on your law firm’s website goes through a lifecycle…or at least it should. If you are creating content and just forgetting about it, you are likely missing out on opportunities to improve the quality of your site and, in turn, help your firm to rank higher on search engines. Additionally, because the laws are constantly changing and evolving, it’s imperative that you have a good grasp on the lifecycle of your content to ensure that your site is providing the most up-to-date and accurate information for current and future clients.

Five Stages in the Law Firm Content Lifecycle

The lifecycle of your law firm’s content can be broken down into five stages. Let’s explore those now.

1. Strategy and Planning

The very first step in the content lifecycle is the strategy and planning phase. This step is perhaps the most crucial because without a well-thought-out content strategy and plan, all of the hard work that follows could all be a waste of time. Some important aspects to consider and think about during this stage include:

• Identifying Your Goals For the Content Strategy
• Identifying Your Target Audience
• Conducting Keyword Research
• Building Out a Content Calendar

Once you have a concrete plan in place it’s time to get to work!

2. Creating

With your strategy and plan fully fleshed out, it’s time to begin actually creating the content. Whether you are writing the content yourself, assigning it out to attorneys, or outsourcing, this is the step where the magic happens.

This step should also include the content review process. This is especially relevant if you are outsourcing your law firm website’s content writing; you’ll want an attorney with expertise in the subject matter to review for legal accuracy.

3. Optimizing

After you have your content created it’s imperative that you go in and make sure it’s thoroughly optimized. To optimize your content some things to consider include:

• Internal Linking
• External Linking
• Keywords
• Headings
• Title/Meta Description

If you’re unsure where to start when it comes to optimizing your content for search engines, it’s best to ask an SEO expert, such as someone from the team at 9Sail!

4. Publication

Once the strategy is set, the content is created and properly optimized it is time to publish it! Whether this content is being used on your website or as a guest blog on someone else’s website, the goal of this step is to get your content out into the world.

This step can also include distribution. For example, I’d recommend sharing your new content on social media or even within your firm’s newsletter, if you have one.

5. Refreshing

Last but not least, you have the refreshing stage. This part of the process can happen at various times after the publication stage. For example, if a law changes and your current content becomes outdated, it would be time to enter this refreshing stage.

Refreshing your content is critical to ensure that your content is the most up-to-date. This is not just beneficial for current and future clients, but also for search engines. Search engines such as Google reward those with the best most up-to-date information that can satisfy a user’s query, so don’t forget to take the time to review your content and see ways in which it can be improved and refreshed.

Does the Content Lifecycle End?

Is the content lifecycle ever finished? The content lifecycle should be a continuous process. As we’ve mentioned earlier, the legal landscape is evolving continuously so it’s important to keep track of the content on your website and ensure it is up to date with the most relevant information. To do this, you may consider conducting a content audit at least once a year. This will allow you to determine a few different things:

1. Top-Performing content – Understanding the top-performing content on your law firm’s site provides valuable insight into what topics are performing best for your firm and whether it is beneficial to driving new business.
2. Low-Performing Content – Understanding the low-performing content on your website helps you determine when your content may have reached the refresh stage of the content lifecycle.
3. Outdated Content – Sometimes your content may become outdated and not worth it to refresh and that is perfectly fine. It is honestly better to remove the outdated content on your website because it can help bolster your position with Google and other search engines.

Get Your Law Firm’s Content on the Right Track

A parting statistic for you to think about is, according to a study by the Content Marketing Institute, they found that content marketing generates three times as many leads as traditional outbound marketing but costs 62% less. Whether it be blogs, news updates, practice area pages, and so on, content is a critical piece of your law firm’s website. If you are not paying attention and dedicating the time to a continuous content creation process, you could be hurting your firm in the long run. If you are serious about getting your law firm’s content on the right track, reach out to our team at 9Sail! We work with clients to create a strong content strategy that is backed by thorough research to get the best results possible. We also provide legal content writing services for firms that do not have the internal resources to do it themselves.

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