GUIDES
The ultimate guide to content marketing for law firms
Developing a website, rich with relevant, authoritative, on-brand, targeted content will help your law firm appear higher in search engines, convince clients that you’re the solicitor for them, and help increase your overall number of enquiries.
Guide to content marketing
How to create a content strategy
Your content should be strategised, structured, and based on what people look for, not what you think they might look for. Utilising this type of content attracts and converts clients by demonstrating knowledge, expertise, and thought leadership in your practice area.
How to get started
As Google becomes ever more sophisticated, it focuses on delivering search results in terms of a user’s intent rather than focusing solely on keywords.
Good quality content, aimed at your ideal customer profile (ICP), attracts profitable, desirable business, and provides cross-selling opportunities to encourage existing clients to spend more money on more services with you.
Think of each piece of content as being like an open door which a potential customer can walk through. If this content is wrapped within a conversion-focused online asset, then you are beginning to get there.
Your content strategy should:
Align with business goals
Your site’s content must align with your overall business goals. Ask yourself; what do you want to achieve with your content? Do you want to drive traffic, generate leads, increase brand awareness, or establish thought leadership? Your content should be centred around your main goals.
You must identify your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Content must be relevant and acknowledge that users of different ‘personas’ are not only looking for different things, but also behave differently online. Content which is tailored to your client’s needs and expectations is more likely to lead to conversions.
Conduct a content audit
Your content strategy should be informed by your expertise and experience as well as providing users with high-quality and relevant answers to their queries. This can be achieved by reviewing your existing content, and identifying gaps in your content and areas which you can improve upon.
Develop a content calendar
A well designed content calendar should outline your topics, formats, channels, dates, and distribution for your content. Planning this in advance is essential as part of your overall business strategy. You must ensure your content is understood and resonates with your ICP, is readable, and likely to drive action.
Measure and optimise
This should be at the heart of your content strategy. You need to measure the performance of your content to ensure it is of high quality and suitable for your ICP.
Auditing existing website content
A content audit is a data-driven review of all the content on your website with a view to seeing what works and what doesn’t, what to keep, review, and restructure. The first port of call is Google Analytics (if, of course, your site has it installed! – you can find out here: http://www.gachecker.com/).
Then, navigate to the left sidebar and click ‘Behaviour’, ‘Site content’, and ‘All pages’. This will show you a list of all the pages on your site and associated metrics.
Make sure you set the date range in the top right to a suitable time (two-three years ought to be enough although you can go back further if you have data).
For present purposes, we’re most interested in the column headings ‘page views’ and ‘bounce rate’.
Page views
Page views tell us which pages are most read by your users. Clearly, we want to keep the highest-performing ones and whittle away those that add nothing.
We can also make a judgement on which ones aren’t performing and improve those. If, for instance, conveyancing is one of your key practice areas but no one is reading that page, then we need to work out why and fix it.
Bounce rate
Bounce rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who leave your site after only visiting one page, without conducting any other actions, such as clicking on a link, visiting any other pages, or filling out your enquiry form. In other words, they ‘bounce’ away from the site without engaging with it further.
The next step is to pull together EVERYTHING on the site using a tool like Screaming Frog.
This will help you find everything on the site and put it into a spreadsheet. It also shows key SEO elements, such as heading tags, which you can work on improving.
At MLT, we use several tools including Screaming Frog and URL Profiler to compile this data. You can begin to plan to fill gaps, to dispose of outdated content, to rework or repurpose older content, and to see where the depth of content falls short. The best starting point is your website’s sitemap. This (should) display all your site’s content in a logical structure. Then, it’s a matter of visiting each page and noting down the word count, comparing the URL to others to see if any content overlaps, then assessing the whole portfolio for gaps.What type of content should lawyers write?
A content marketing funnel is a strategic approach that focuses on guiding potential clients through the buying process by providing them with targeted and relevant content at every stage of the funnel.
Keyword research tools can assist your law firm when devising a content marketing strategy and ensuring your content is optimised.
How to use the content marketing funnel
The content marketing funnel is split into three stages: the top of the funnel, the middle of the funnel, and the bottom of the funnel.
Top the of the funnel (TOFU)
This is the awareness stage of the funnel where your potential clients are becoming aware of their problem/need but are unaware of your law firm and service offerings. During this stage, the content should be informative, helpful, and engaging to attract your ICP’s attention and create interest for your firm.
Middle of the funnel (MOFU)
This is the consideration stage of the funnel where your potential clients are considering several options and assessing practical solutions. Your content at this stage should be more detailed to provide high-quality information about their problem/need and address any concerns they may have.
Bottom of the funnel (BOFU)
This is the decision stage of the funnel, where potential clients are ready to make a purchase decision. Your site’s content at the BOFU should be focused on converting potential customers into paying clients. This content should be persuasive, emphasise the benefits of your services, and include a clear call-to-action that encourages the user to convert.
By following a content marketing strategy, your firm can guide potential clients through every stage of their journey and provide them with the relevant information required to make an informed decision.
The four ‘R’s of content marketing
Web content falls into four main categories; reach, roadmap, react, and repurposed. Rather than reflecting what the content is, each category reflects what the content is intended to do.
By that, we mean the content’s purpose – is it intended to inform existing clients, attract new ones, provide a detailed guide, or portray your expertise?
Reach
Reach content is intended to ‘reach’ out to a new audience. This type of content is unique, keyword rich, and search-engine-optimised. This is the ‘traditional’ form of content found on most legal websites which promotes your services.
It’s important to make sure that it’s more than a bullet-point list that lays out your practice areas. Reach content is low-risk, easy to produce, and should be added as permanent landing pages to the site as opposed to blogs or other transient media.
Roadmap
This type of content comprises focused in-depth legal guides. These go into detail on the law, use technical terminology, and lay out the process step-by-step.
While some lawyers are understandably reluctant to lift the veil on their practice, this type of content is extremely valuable in getting results online.
By including technical terminology (such as sections of Acts, Latin, and other niche terms), you will attract a much greater volume of ‘long tail’ searches – searches for longer queries or which use niche terms.
Obviously, there will be fewer searches for, say, the section of an Act, but there will be a great many for different terms. Capturing these searches is the key to succeeding online.
React
React content addresses an issue or event which is relevant to your business. This type of content can be harder to plan because you are ‘reacting’ to external events. Not only that, you are trying to provoke a reaction in your potential client base.
For instance, someone looking to instruct you in a conveyancing transaction has planned ahead and knows that the transaction is happening and that they will need a solicitor. However, with ‘react’ content you are trying to reach clients who may not otherwise have thought of instructing you.
Most commonly, ‘react’ content deals with things that are relevant to your business, like a celebrity in court/getting divorced, a judgement being delivered, legislation being passed, and so on.
This is more typical ‘blog’ type content in that its value is limited over time. This type of content doesn’t stay fresh for long, so it’s best posted to blogs or social media channels.
The key to this type of content is offering a new perspective or insight into the issue at hand. Ensure that you aren’t regurgitating tabloid headlines but are offering a unique legal perspective on events.
There will certainly be an increased volume of search traffic relating to the event, whether it is a new Act or a celebrity divorce. What you want to do is to contribute to the debate on the matter and engage your existing and potential client base.
This type of content increases your visibility online and demonstrates your practical expertise.
Repurposed
This is old content that is given a new lease of life in a different format. Repurposed content includes older landing pages, and externally-posted (or published) items such as journal articles. It also includes non-searchable items like PDFs, eBooks, whitepapers, and so on.
This can be a valuable way of quickly generating content at the outset of a content strategy. Providing the law is still current, this type of content can be reworked quickly to provide a solid base to start your content marketing campaign.
Google’s Helpful Content update 2022
Google’s helpful content update refers to a series of changes to the search algorithm that prioritise high-quality, informative, and engaging content in search results.
Four key areas to focus on to align with Google algorithm
Better user experience
Google's helpful content update is to provide better user experience, by presenting users with the most relevant and high-quality content which matches their queries.
Importance of E-A-T
E-A-T stands for expertise, authority and trustworthiness which Google considers when evaluating the quality of your site's content. You can focus on E-A-T by making sure your site's content is accurate, up-to-date and citing credible sources.
Focus on user intent
It is important to understand user intent and create content which satisfies user intent. This can be achieved by creating high-quality content to ultimately provide valuable information that meets your user's needs.
Quality and engagement
Google's algorithm uses machine learning to evaluate the quality of your site's content. This makes it important to focus on creating informative, well-structured, valuable and easy to digest content.
Google’s helpful content update emphasises the importance of creating high-quality, informative, and engaging content to meet the intent of users.
You can improve your search rankings whilst providing a better user experience by focusing on E-A-T, user intent, quality, and engagement.
Content is King for lawyers and law firms
Reasons why content is King
Thought leadership
Creating high-quality content based on legal topics can ensure your law firm is established as thought leaders within your specific practice areas.
Building trust
By consistently producing valuable content, your law firm can build trust with your ICP and target audience.
Increasing visibility
Publishing quality content on a regular basis will improve your site’s SEO. This makes it easier for potential clients to find your law firm’s website when searching for specific queries and services.
Differentiation
As a highly competitive industry, content marketing can be used to differentiate your firm’s website. Your firm can demonstrate its expertise in particular service areas and beat competitors by producing unique and engaging content.
Generating referrals
Valuable content can be shared on social media and other platforms to increase your website’s reach.
Tailored content marketing tactics for your law firm
The written copy on your site is your chance to engage potential and existing clients, persuade them of your expertise, and convey your ‘brand image’ and messaging.
This is your chance to encourage a user into making a call or enquiry. It is an essential part of a modern law firm’s online marketing efforts.
We also understand that there is a balance between optimised content and content that is useful and informative. Over-optimised, keyword-heavy content is likely to drive away users and results in search engines penalising the site.
With our monthly reports, you can see how our law firm content marketing efforts are influencing traffic and user behaviour.
We specialise in creating targeted, thorough, accurate content for:
Websites
Press releases
Blogs and news portals
Landing pages
Utilising keyword research tools, can create data-driven strategies that resonate with your target audience and potential clients. An effective SEO strategy also improves search engine rankings, and drive organic traffic to your law firm website.
With some SEO strategies, your site may appear to rank highly within a short space of time. However, unless your site has informative, engaging, and high-quality content, users are unlikely to return.
With our optimised, expertly-written content, users are more likely to return to your site and are more likely to engage your services. Our legal content marketing service is part of a wider strategy to convert users into customers.
CONTENT MARKETING FOR LAW FIRM SUCCESS
Ready to create a law firm content marketing strategy to drive success?
If you need help with your law firm’s content marketing efforts or our other digital marketing services, speak with us today by calling 0333 344 2722 or complete the online enquiry form and we’ll get back to you right away.
