Prospective clients searching for a lawyer want to know that the professional they ultimately hire has the legal chops to help them achieve the best possible outcome. Effective content marketing provides a unique opportunity to position yourself as that experienced, knowledgeable attorney.

When it comes to legal content writing, consistent messaging is one of the most important factors in building trust with your readers. Provide valuable, actionable information that answers the questions they have about your specialty area.

Many busy attorneys make the smart choice to hire a professional firm to create relevant, high-quality content that supports their marketing goals. Whether you decide to outsource content development or plan to go it alone, keep these best practices in mind to attract and engage readers and to increase client conversion.

The Value of Legal Content Marketing

Content marketing can maximize the ROI of your firm’s marketing budget. Consider this data reported by the Content Marketing Institute:

• Every dollar spent on content marketing generates three times the leads than a dollar spent on paid search ads.
• Content marketing costs 62% less than traditional outbound marketing and generates three times as many leads.
• Small businesses that have a blog report 126% more leads than comparable firms without a blog.
• Content marketing produces a conversion rate six times the conversion rate of traditional marketing methods.

Even when firms invest in writing services from professional content marketing companies, they still tend to save money and produce much better results than with traditional methods of marketing and advertising.

Start With Primary Content Pages

Evergreen primary content pages create the backbone of your legal website. Each should focus on a practice area or business development goal and highlight popular keywords relevant to that topic. For example, an attorney who focuses on family law may want to develop primary content pages for divorce, child custody, child support, adoption, guardianship, paternity and other key services he or she offers.

The more comprehensive, rich content you can provide on these pages, the better position you are in to achieve a high ranking on Google and other search engines. In fact, Search Engine Journal notes that Google’s three most important factors when judging page quality for ranking purposes include “expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness.”

Develop a Content Calendar

If you want to attract and keep readers, publishing high-quality content is the most important step. Secondly, your readers should be able to count on a regular posting schedule with consistent updates. If you add a new blog post every Friday, over time site visitors will begin to count on that content.

Blogs with rare posts usually suffer attrition, which means that readers visit once or twice and never return. Search engines also boost the ranking of sites that frequently post new content. The older the information on your site, the less likely that you’ll appear on the first page of local search results.

Repurpose Valuable Content

In content marketing, a blog post isn’t just a blog post. In fact, none of your content should be stagnant. The more ways you can use an article, the greater its reach and the better your return on investment. Be sure to adjust the messaging so it’s appropriate for each platform by paying attention to word and character counts, attractive headlines and eye-catching images.

For example, a family law practice could create a series of blog posts answering common client questions about child custody, spousal support, property division and other hot topics. Each post should be distilled into a brief snippet that can be used to attract readers on social media. Then, you could pull interesting statistics from each post to create an infographic. Once you complete the Q&A blog series, pull the posts together and offer them as a longer whitepaper or e-book download.

Cater to Your Audience

The type of writing you need for the web is quite different from the writing you probably do as an attorney, where the use of precise legal language is necessary. When online, jargon and complex legal concepts don’t translate well to a general audience.

Instead, write in the voice you would use with a new client when explaining the legal concepts that apply to their situation. Strive to be clear, concise and understandable. Focus on showing your readers how you can solve their specific problems.

Utilize Social Media

The phrase “if you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to websites. Connecting with your clients and potential clients on social media drives traffic to your site, where visitors are hopefully converted to hire you for their legal needs.

Sharing your blog posts on social media is a great start, but your strategy shouldn’t end there. You can highlight client reviews and testimonials, certifications and industry accolades, community service efforts and reader questions.

Keep Readers Engaged

When determining how to rank your site, search engines also look at the bounce rate. This number refers to site visitors who immediately click away from a page without spending time reading or interacting.

Interactive features and detailed content encourage readers to stay on your page. Consider videos, infographics and long-form media to boost your relevance and value to visitors. You can write a downloadable guide centered around your practice area and use this strategy to gather visitor email addresses.

Share Relevant News

Set up a Google alert related to your practice area. Weighing in on current events and legal news that affects your readers helps establish you as a thought leader. This is also a free source of ideas for your blog posts, no brainstorming required.

Focus on education, not promotion, when covering topics as part of your content marketing strategy. According to statistics cited by Forbes in 2019, 90% of people who find content marketing success prioritize audience education in their content.

At BKA Content, we specialize in effective content marketing strategies for busy professionals who believe in the power of leveraging online content but don’t have time to actually write. For legal content marketing to succeed, it must convey a consistent message that highlights trustworthy knowledge in your practice area. Our content shop is ready to help with your writing needs both large and small, boasting a team of professional writers trained in SEO best practices. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help your firm shine online.