9 Mistakes Firms Make When Creating Content (and How Law Firm Content Writing Services Can Help)
Sarah
Your law firm’s website is one of the primary tools you use to attract clients. If your site ranks highly on search engines for your practice area, you’ll find it easier to draw in new clients who need your legal services. Law firm content writing can improve your search engine rankings, especially if your articles address topics your clients need help with.
However, it’s essential to avoid common mistakes that discourage readers from becoming your clients. Here are nine typical errors we see.
1. Using Overly Technical Language
If you have a limited marketing budget, you might try to handle your law firm content writing yourself or assign the task to one of your staff members. After all, you’re an expert in your practice area, and drafting legal briefs is part of your normal day; how hard can writing a few blogs be?
Too many lawyers make this mistake, producing overly technical articles that don’t hold their audience’s attention. Your readers don’t want to read lengthy statutes about intellectual property rights in California; they want you to explain them in lay terms.
When you write an article for your law firm’s website, you’ll need to consider the characteristics of your typical clients. They probably aren’t lawyers; instead, they’re ordinary people who come to you because you’re an expert in your field.
Instead of creating blogs that only a judge or lawyer would understand, you must write for your clients. That means keeping the technical jargon to a minimum and sticking to simple language.
2. Failing to Offer Value to Your Audience
One of the main functions of your law firm’s website is to answer clients’ typical questions about your practice area. When you provide lots of legal content that addresses their questions, they’ll see you as an authoritative and credible attorney they can trust.
However, if your law content writing doesn’t fulfill their needs or leaves them with more questions, they’ll search for more answers — often on your competitor’s websites.
To make the most of your legal blog writing, you’ll need to brainstorm topics that are relevant to your practice area. For instance, if you’re a family law attorney, you might write about the custody laws in your state or explain how alimony works. Those subjects will be of particular concern to a potential client going through a divorce.
If you find it hard to come up with topics relevant to your clients’ needs, browse through your competitors’ blogs to see what they’re writing about. While you don’t want to copy another law firm’s content strategy, it may spark a few new ideas.
3. Neglecting to Optimize Your Content for Search Engines
You may not realize it, but you have another audience you’re writing for besides potential clients: search engine bots. These bots crawl your website, looking for keywords and other data to decide how to rank your pages. If you don’t use search engine optimization (SEO) best practices, your website will fail to outperform your competitors.
You’ll need to follow a few guidelines to make your website SEO-friendly. First, ensure that your content aligns with your legal practice areas. Each article you write should include commonly searched terms that are highly relevant to your topic.
For example, if you’re drafting an article on economic damages in a car accident claim, you’d want to include terms like “medical bills” and “lost earning capacity.” However, a keyword like “purple butterfly” wouldn’t be relevant and might confuse search engine bots scanning your page.
Along with writing about topics relevant to your practice area, pay attention to the metadata of each page. Metadata includes your meta title and description. The meta title is an alternative header for your article, and a meta description is a summary that describes what the reader will learn if they click on your blog.
Search engine bots scan meta titles to better understand your content. In some cases, search engines will use your meta description in the search results that appear when people look for information they can discover in your article.
4. Not Having a Law Firm Content Writing Strategy
It may be tempting to write about whatever comes to mind and publish when you have time. However, your law firm’s website isn’t your personal blog, and you can’t treat it like one. Just like when you take on a new case, you’ll need to follow a specific process when creating articles for your website.
If you don’t yet have a website — or the website you have lacks content — start by creating a content plan. This plan will outline the topics you want to cover that are relevant to your practice areas.
Next, decide how often you wish to publish. If you aim to rank for highly competitive keywords, you’ll need a website with lots of content. Search engines give precedence to voluminous sites with helpful articles; if you have only ten pages on your website, you’re unlikely to see the rankings you want.
Firms with a local presence should publish between two and five articles each week. A law firm with a regional or national client base must create content much more frequently.
Once you establish your content and publishing strategy, it’s essential to stick with it. If a search engine bot sees that you regularly share content on Tuesdays and Fridays, it will periodically crawl your pages, and your newer blogs will take less time to rank.
Conversely, if you publish once every six months, the search engines may ignore your site altogether. Instead, they’ll look to your competitors who publish more frequently and reward them with higher rankings.
5. Trying to Handle Your Content Needs on Your Own
To a lawyer, content writing probably doesn’t rank too high on the priority list. You have more pressing responsibilities, like taking care of your clients, preparing for upcoming court dates, and overseeing your firm. Finding the time to write five 1,000-word articles each week may be next to impossible.
While you can ask your paralegals or other team members to take on the responsibility, you might not see the results you’re looking for. Like you, paralegals are legal writers; they’re accustomed to technical language that your audience may not understand. They also have other responsibilities that take up their time.
Instead of trying to handle everything yourself, give the job to a qualified law firm content writing agency with experienced legal writers.
Professional legal writers understand the law; many are current or former paralegals, attorneys, or law school students. They rely on their prior experience to research complex legal topics and turn them into readable content that your clients will find helpful.
Working with an agency ensures you receive the content you need according to your schedule. You won’t need to spend your nights and weekends writing blogs; instead, a team of professional writers does the job for you.
6. Failing to Use Subheadings in Your Articles
Every page on your website should contain a variety of subheadings, carefully spaced paragraphs, images, and bullet lists. All of these elements help maintain your audience’s attention.
Consider this article as an example. You see multiple subheadings, each conveying what the subsequent text will discuss. Without the subheadings, the article would be a lengthy text block, and you’d have difficulty finding the common mistakes made in law firm content writing at first glance.
Subheadings, bullet points, and images break apart the text blocks to make your content more digestible to readers. Without them, your articles will seem overly lengthy and visually unappealing.
7. Not Measuring Results from Your Content
Blog writing for lawyers has three primary purposes: proving your expertise in your practice area, providing information to potential clients, and attracting qualified leads to your law firm. However, simply publishing your content isn’t enough; you also need to review traffic to your website to see if you’re getting the results you’re looking for.
As you embark on a written content strategy to bring traffic to your website, set a few key performance indicators (KPIs) to determine whether your approach is working.
Every law firm uses different KPIs to measure its success. A few of the most common include page views, engagement with other pages on your website, and qualified leads, like signing up for your newsletter or scheduling a consultation.
Remember that it takes time for a content strategy to bring results. If your law firm’s website is pretty new or if you just started blogging, it may take six months or longer to see steady traffic to your website. Be patient, and monitor the KPIs you use to measure your results. Over time, you should see them improve.
8. Failing to Target Your Content to Your Location
Most law firms have a local presence in their city or region. They’re not national outfits with clients from every state. Thus, targeting your content for the location you serve is critical. If you practice personal injury law in Delaware, you probably can’t help someone in Oklahoma.
Geotargeting your content for your local audience means you’ll compete with law firms in your area, not the rest of the country. When you narrow your content’s focus to your region, your website will rank higher for people searching for legal help in your area.
Your landing pages and articles should speak to clients in your region. If they don’t, you’ll have difficulty attracting qualified leads for your services.
9. Not Promoting Your Legal Content
Once you publish an article on your law firm’s website, you’ll want to share it with your audience. If your law firm has an email newsletter, you can share recent articles with your subscribers. You should also share new content on social media platforms, such as LinkedIn.
Promoting your content helps you build credibility and authority in your practice area. People who see your posts will learn of your law firm’s services and contact you when they need your help.
Sharing your legal content will also increase traffic to your website, as people click on the links you share to read more about the topics you cover.
A Law Firm Content Writing Service Can Enhance Your Results
There are a lot of complexities involved in creating legal content that attracts clients and establishes your reputation as the knowledgeable attorney you are. To maximize the benefits of your content strategy, work with an agency with a strong background in legal content writing: Write Collective.
A content writing service will create legal content designed to attract potential clients and inform them about critical topics. Legal content writers are comfortable researching complex laws and regulations and know how to readily translate them into articles your audience will understand.
An exceptional legal writer can help you increase conversions and ultimately expand your business. They’ll combine information with calls to action (CTAs) that encourage readers to schedule an appointment with you or sign up for your law firm’s newsletter.
A content agency will optimize your content for search engines. Trained legal writers will insert keywords and terms into your content that improve its relevancy, increasing your search engine rankings.
Write Collective Helps You Avoid Common Law Firm Content Writing Mistakes
You might think that you have the time to write one or two 1,000-word articles each week, but if other tasks come up, you’ll likely prioritize them, not your law firm’s blog. Your focus is your clients and your caseload.
When you partner with a law firm content writing service like Write Collective, you’ll ensure that your law firm’s website gets the attention it deserves. We’ll provide you with quality legal content designed to improve conversions and bring traffic to your office. If you’re ready to team up, check out our legal writing services!