Archive for the ‘Content’ Category
Writing Good Content for your Legal Website
Good Content
A website is only as good as its content. You may hire an SEO expert to write page titles, keywords, and meta tag descriptions which target your location and area of practice, but without valuable content all the SEO work you do will be for nothing. The benefit of good content incorporated with SEO guidelines will improve your rankings in search engines.
What do I write about?
Of course you can’t jam your whole entire law practice into one website. However, you can map out the important areas and what you want your readers to know about you. You can start with about ten pages, and then add articles and newsletters at a later time.
Types of Content Pages
Most lawyer websites have standard pages, which are:
Home Page
About our Law Firm or Mission Statement
Attorney Profiles
Areas of Practice
Contact Us
Directions
Areas of Practice Pages
If your law office handles multiple areas of practice such as real estate, wills and probate, and business, separate pages should be written for these topics. Then, these areas of practice can be further broken down into additional pages such as residential real estate, commercial real estate, wills, probate a will, forming a business, and bankruptcy. In this scenario, nine pages of content were added. They are:
• Real Estate
o Residential Real Estate
o Commercial Real Estate
• Wills and Probate
o Wills
o Probate a Will
• Business
o Forming a Business
o Bankruptcy
Elements of Good Content
Content should be unique and not duplicated from another internet site or another page on the website. The writer needs to be aware of writing for search engine optimization and use headings which include target location and area of practice. There are tools provided by Google which would show the value of certain keywords for a certain area of practice. Valuable links can be incorporated into the content from reputable government or educational websites, which would give your content more value to a search engine. Pages should be at least 300 words and include a paragraph with the law firm’s contact information.
After the content is written, a good practice would be to check it for spelling, grammar errors, and plagiarism. You certainly wouldn’t want to seem unprofessional if a reader read a slew of typographical errors, and you wouldn’t want to be sued for duplicating another website’s content.
It is easier to outsource the content writing unless you have a professional writer on staff that can use the SEO practices to create good content.
Remember, gaining in rankings will not take overnight.