Creating content that sets your law firm apart from your competitors begins with understanding what makes your law firm unique. What value does your firm offer that the current pages that are ranking for your same keywords do not?
Once you discover your website’s direction and tone, it is important to write valuable content that supplies your prospective clients with the information they need to connect with your law firm.
Google will demote low-quality content and promote high-quality content, which means writing pages simply for the sake of having them does optimize your ranking. Your website must contain substance.
Things you should avoid when creating your website content includes:
Thin Content
Google is clear that you should always have a comprehensive page on a topic instead of multiple, weaker pages for each variation of a keyword. When writing your home page, practice area pages, and even attorney bios, the page should be fleshed out to include your law firm’s details, and what solutions you provide as an attorney.
Duplicate Content
Plagiarized content is a clear violation of all online rules, and should absolutely be avoided. Keep in mind, as an attorney, your law firm may share the same practice areas, geographical location, and affiliations with other firms, so it is important that your content is unique and valuable to the reader.
Keyword Stuffing
Google is definitely searching for keywords and related concepts on your site, but the pages within must add value outside of its keyword usage. That means adding keywords naturally, so your readers can understand the content. Do not intentionally repeat your practice areas in nonsensical ways. Keyword stuffing clutters the page and leaves the reader confused.
Auto-Generated Content
Computer programs that produce content provide very low-quality results that are designed to manipulate search engine rankings and typically make very little sense when being read by a human being. The results are not only poor quality, but unnatural and provide zero value to the reader.
Real-Time Content Solution: 10x It!
Google ranks pages highly when they provide the best answers to the searcher’s questions. Even when your writing is smart, it must provide value to searchers and be better than any other page Google that provides the same answers.
Here’s how:
- Search the keyword(s) you want your page to rank for
- Identify which pages are ranking highly for those keywords
- Determine what qualities those pages possess
- Create content that’s better than those pages
Creating content pages that are 10x better than your competitors will not only lead to Google’s approval, but it will allow your firm to stand apart.
Quality Content Strengthens Your Law Firm SEO Efforts
Successful law firm SEO marketing tactics place your complete law firm on display, using the content your target audience wants and needs to make an informed decision when choosing an attorney.
That includes expanding your marketing content to ensure quality over quantity in your attorney:
- Practice Area Pages
- Profiles and About Us Pages
- Frequently Asked Questions Supporting Pages
- News and Media Coverage
- Settlements & Verdicts Section
- Monthly Updated Blogs
- City Pages in Your Law Firm’s Coverage Areas
- Testimonials and Reviews
- Complete Contact Information
Quality content supports your law firm’s dedication to the community and drives confidence in prospective clients who believe that your experience and skill can produce results for their unique case.
Behind the Scenes Content Requirements:
Headers Tags, Links, And Anchor Text
Header tags are an HTML element used to designate headings on your page. These are important to your SEO efforts and should appear in both main headings and sub-headings.
First: H1, the main header tag, is normally used as the title of the page.
And appears as:<h1>Page Title </h1>
Next: The sub-headings go from H2 to H6 tags, with H2 being the next important behind H1 and the balance in descending order from there. Your web pages do not have to contain each heading type.
Typically, an H1, H2, and H3 header tags will separate the information on the page and highlight your keywords accurately.
For example:
H1: Experienced Personal Injury Attorney In Los Angeles, California
<h1>Experienced Personal Injury Attorney In Los Angeles, California</h1>
H2: Your Law Firm’s Los Angeles Personal Injury Practice Areas
<h2>My Law Firm’s Los Angeles Persona Injury Practice Areas</h2>
H3: Car Accident Injuries
<h3>Car Accident Injuries</h3>
Be careful when adding header tags, as they should not be applied to non-heading elements.
Internal Links
Internal links are an important part of a website’s crawlability.
Linking to other pages on your attorney website will allow the search engine crawlers to find your connecting pages. You can effectively pass link equity and ranking power to other pages on your site by linking to practice area pages from the homepage, which will also help visitors easily navigate your attorney website.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text that links to internal pages and sends signals to the search engines regarding the content it is linking to through keyword text. Take the Attorney Marketing Network website, for instance.
The HTML equivalent is:
<a href=”http://attorneymarketingnetwork.com/”></a>
The live view equivalent is:
https://attorneymarketingnetwork.com/
With keyword text for website design, the HTML equivalent becomes:
<a href=”http://attorneymarketingnetwork.com/” title=”Keyword Text”>Keyword Text</a>
The live view equivalent becomes:
https://www.attorneymarketingnetwork.com/website-design-for-lawyers/
Keep it simple and natural. Too many internal links using the same keyword anchor text can appear as though you are trying to manipulate a page’s ranking.
Alternative Text
Alternative text, or Alt text, appears within images to describe what visually impaired readers may not be able to see.
Search engines crawl alt text to better understand the website’s images, which gives the added benefit of providing better image context. It is important that your alt text descriptions read naturally, so avoid keyword stuffing.
Bad example:
<img src=”typing.gif” alt=”person typing, person is typing, person typing gif”>
Good example:
<img src=”typing.gif” alt=”A woman is typing in front of a computer screen”>
Title Tags
Your web page’s title tag is a descriptive, HTML element that is nested within the head tag of each page, and specifies the title of each page.
Title tags appear as:
<head>
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>
Each page on your website should have a unique, descriptive title tag, as this is what searchers are going to see in their results.
The title tag plays a large role in how prospective clients see your website, as it serves as their first impression.
The more compelling your title tag, combined with high rankings in search results, the more visitors you’ll attract to your website. This underscores that SEO is not only about search engines, but the entire user experience.
How Do Search Engines Work Google Webmaster Guidelines Keyword Research for Lawyers Content Creation for Lawyers Technical SEO for Lawyers Link Building for Lawyers