Content Marketing in the Legal Industry
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Content is king. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a million times, but when it comes to the legal
industry, do you know how to make this type of digital marketing work for you?
Scripted’s writers often specialize in specific areas, including legal content, so we understand just how
important it is to ensure you have the best content out there. Whether or not you hire us to help you create
that content is up to you, but you should have a good understanding of digital marketing and SEO anyway.
What You Need to Know About Content Marketing
Why is content marketing so important? Providing content is still one of the top methods of affordable
marketing techniques. With 77% of adults
getting online daily, providing a way to reach them is essential.
According to the Content Marketing Institute (CMI), content marketing
is one of the top methods of business promotion. It’s also one of the most effective. That being said,
for roughly 60% of the population, content creation is too hard
to on a consistent basis. That’s not a problem, since you can outsource the writing, but it shows just
how essential this service is.
Of course, content isn’t a magic bullet that will instantly gain you more traffic to your website instantly,
but it does work. When you are consistent and produce good quality content, then you can rest assured
that it will pay off in the long run.
There are several types of content, including:
- Infographics
- List articles (listicles)
- How To articles
- White papers
- E-books
- Videos
- Social media posts
You certainly have your choice when it comes to which type of content you want to post. What trips most
people up is having to do it day in and day out. Working on a piece of content every single day can be
challenging, but when you have that consistency, you’ll see more results.
Decide today that you’re going to start putting out at least one piece of content per day to grow your
business. If that sounds overwhelming, don’t worry, we have a solution for that at the end of the article.
The Importance of Long-tail Keywords
You already know that keywords are essential
when it comes to ranking well in Google. Unfortunately, you’ll be hard pressed to increase organic traffic
if you just try to rank for the biggest keywords out there.
If you look at the search volume for “lawyer,” you’ll find that over 61,000 people search this keyword
each month. It’s also a keyword that insanely hard to rank for. A quick search on Google instantly shows
that the top-ranking search results are pretty impossible to budget. It’s also a prime space for local
lawyers to show up on Google Maps.
So, if you can’t easily rank for a relevant keyword like “lawyer,” what are you supposed to do? This is
where long tail keywords come in. These are keywords that narrow the search a little more, which is actually
what you want. When someone searches for lawyer, they are looking for general information. If you want
people who are ready to hire a lawyer, you want more specific searches.
Narrowing down your keywords by using the type of lawyer you are can really give you much better results. For example:
- Business lawyer
- Divorce lawyer
- Family lawyer
- Personal injury lawyer
- Litigation lawyer
These keywords are more specific and they’re also slightly easier to rank for. If you’re new to SEO,
though, you probably won’t get to the top of the search results with just these words. After all, there
are plenty of divorce lawyers out there.
Now you need to get even more niche. There are a few ways to do this.
Instead of just using the keyword “business lawyer,” you can make sure those in your area are finding
you. “Business lawyer in Tampa” will instantly eliminate a lot of the random results and competition.
Also, if someone is looking for a business lawyer in Tampa, they’re seriously considering hiring someone.
Adding your location is a useful way to ensure you show up on local searches. Consider using any of the following:
“Type of Lawyer” in “Location”
“Location” “Type of Lawyer”
Best/Top “Type of Lawyer” in “Location”
These are all excellent keywords to help you find potential clients via content marketing.
Buyer Intent Keywords
Certain keywords indicate that someone is about to buy or hire. That means you can include these words
in your content to ensure anyone searching in earnest will find your site. For example, words like top,
best, or most successful are high in the searches when people need to hire someone.
In this case, you could use something like “best personal injury lawyer” or “top business attorney.” These
will narrow the search results and they’re also easier to rank for on the search engines because fewer
sites are putting out content with these types of long tail keywords.
The more specific the keyword, the more likely people are trying to find something to buy.
Related Keywords
Sometimes, it’s best not to aim directly for the main keyword. You may be an attorney, but people might
not be looking for you. They may be searching for what you can do for them. In this case, you want to use
long tail keywords to provide these people with the information they want, and in the content, you can
offer your services.
Where “lawyer” has plenty of competition, something like “how to sue a truck company” has far fewer
competitors and is much simpler to rank for. Other similar long tail keywords include things like:
- How to sue my doctor
- How to get a divorce
- Can I go to jail over payday loans
- What happens if you don’t pay child support
As you can see, these are very specific keywords. Anyone searching for them is usually doing so for a
reason and they likely need a lawyer. Your content can give them the information they need, while suggesting
your services.
Of course, this isn’t just for lawyers, it can apply to any legal service. The idea behind them all is the same.
To make the long tail keywords even more powerful, you can combine each of the above techniques. You’ll
end up with something like:
- Best divorce attorney in Orlando Florida
- Top Austin business lawyer
- What are the child support laws in Seattle
- How do I form an LLC in Vancouver Washington
A little keyword research can go a long way. Once you know which keywords people are looking for, you can easily create the content (or have someone do it for you) in order to reach those people. The less competition there is for the keyword, the more likely you’ll hit the first page in the results.
SEO Strategies You Need to Use
Obviously, you’ll want keywords to appear naturally in your article, but should you just sprinkle them in
or is there a bigger game? In order to increase organic traffic, keywords really need to be carefully used.
While doing guest posts or getting a link to your site from another site is good, SEO starts with your
content pages. These include a few things.
Link to Your Site:
Even within your own content, you should practice deep linking, or linking to other content within your site.
Case Studies:
These are often favored by readers and search engines, so include some anonymous case studies. Your
potential clients can read these and get a better idea of how things work.
Featured Snippet:
There’s no guarantee you’ll get a featured snippet,
but you can boost your chances. Just be sure to add answers to commonly asked questions in order to be considered.
With these methods, in combination with regular SEO throughout your website and blog, you’ll find that
Google looks favorably on your site.
Quality Over Quantity
We’ve talked a bit about the usefulness of keywords and long tail keywords in particular in your content
strategy planning, but how does this help you rank in Google? Is focusing on keywords enough?
Google is constantly looking for the most useful content for its searchers. That means what you provide
has to be useful or it simply won’t last in the rankings. High quality content is every bit as important
as on-page SEO. We know this because pages that used to spam their keywords throughout the content no
longer rank at all.
There are two things to keep in mind. First, Google and its users are looking for information that they
can use. If you’re providing fluff and regurgitating what has already been put out there, you won’t get
very far.
Second, SEO strategies can take you a long way, but if there’s too much competition, you probably won’t
rank well anyway. The trick to fixing this is to focus on quality instead of quantity. Consider this . . .
someone looking for the word “lawyer” could be anyone. It could be someone in Asia trying to figure out
what the word means. The searcher could be a child, trying to write a report. These are not useful searches
for you, even if they mean traffic to your site.
Instead, consider someone searching for “the best divorce lawyer near me in Orlando Florida.” This person
is looking for something very specific. They need help and they need it now. If they like what they see,
they’re going to go ahead and call and book a consultation.
Which would you rather have? 5,000 kids writing essays on law or 50 people looking for you in particular
and ready to hire? The answer is pretty obvious, so now we just need to get that content out there.
When it comes to ranking for Google, you need to think beyond the search engine. SEO strategies, blog posts,
and content marketing are all great and can increase organic traffic, but really, you need to make sure
you are focused on the big picture . . . getting clients.
If someone shows up on your site, looking for your specialty, and they only find the same stuff you can
find in Wikipedia, they’ll leave. Not only that, but Google will notice that people are landing on your
page and leaving and consider you to be less worthy of ranking than someone with a lower bounce rate.
You can find out what your bounce rate is by signing up for Google Analytics and setting it up on your
site. This will provide you with all the information you need on who is visiting the site and what they
do while there.
Google also looks at who else is recommending your content. We’ll look at that in a minute, but keep in
mind that you need to focus on more than just your site. Expand your horizons and make sure your content
is shared elsewhere.
What Makes Great Legal Content
You know that quality is the most important thing when it comes to content writing and digital marketing,
but now it’s time to look at just what quality looks like. First, try doing a search for your own legal
specialty. There are multiple tools you can use to analyze the sites that show up in your search, but
you can also do it manually.
Now, you should click on the top three results that are not ads. This will provide you with a good idea
of what Google is ranking well. Check out the length of the content on the sites and look at the keywords.
How is the content structured? Are they reaching the target audience? Is the content tailored to the audience?
Once you have seen what other sites are doing, you can combine the best of all of them to build your
own content out. This is what our Scripted writers do. They carefully examine the top sites in your
niche and then create content that takes the best ideas from each of those. Plagiarism is never okay,
but using other sites for inspiration is fine.
Creating a Content Marketing Strategy
Every company needs a content strategy, especially anyone in the legal industry. Even though we know content is the way to go with promoting your business, a whopping 63% of businesses are lacking a proper content strategy.
You can’t market to anyone who might need a lawyer. Not only will that bring you a lot of unrelated traffic, it’s a waste of your time. The first thing you need to do is determine who your ideal client is and create an avatar for them. This is who you will be marketing to and writing content for.
When you work with your clients, what do you help them with? This will depend on the type of law you
practice. A divorce lawyer helps people get a divorce and manage the ins and outs of splitting up a
household, for example. You need to have a very good idea of what pressing issue you’re resolving for
your clients.
This is a good time to look at the purpose of your content, too. Are you trying to get them to call
you? To book a consult? Keep this in mind as you work.
We went over the best types of content to use in your marketing above, but there are dozens of options
open to you. Where will you promote your practice? What type of content will you produce?
Many legal firms use video, blogging, and social media to provide information to their potential
clients. It’s always a good idea to have your own blog, but producing content to put on social media
sites and even guest posting on other blogs can be useful.
If you’re running a blog, you can easily post once or twice a week. However, social media posts will
need to be daily in most cases. This means creating a schedule where you mark which type of content
will be posted, along with when and where.
Having a schedule means you can plan ahead. This is particularly important when it comes to holidays
and promotions. You want to schedule the content ahead so you are sure to hit those big days.
Guest posting means writing posts for other websites. You may post an article on divorces on Huffpost
or another widely popular site, then link back to your own site. This is a great way to get some off-page
SEO and to build up some good feedback.
Search engines look at what you write, but they also look at what other sites link back to you. If
high quality websites have links to your website, that’s a good indication your content is valuable
and worth ranking well.
While the ROI for your content strategy may not be obvious in the beginning, it will eventually begin
to show. It’s a good idea to set up Google Analytics
to see exactly how effective your content is.
When you realize that certain topics or types of content are more popular than others, you can spin
off on those. For example, if you offer a step-by-step guide to hiring an attorney and people love it,
you can create more step-by-step guides.
At this point, you should have a good idea of what good legal content looks like and you should be familiar with what top sites in your area are doing. From there, you can set up your own content strategy and start working on it. Of course, not everyone is up for creating content on a regular basis.
Outsourcing Legal Content Strategy
Let’s face it, your specialty is law, not writing. That’s why so many law firms actually outsource their
content writing. If you have a good writer for the job, you can let them turn out the content while you
focus on what you do best, law.
Scripted makes life much simpler. You can contact us and we’ll turn your content production over to our
legal writers, ensuring you get the best quality possible.
Are you currently looking for someone to handle your content strategy and writing? Let our expert writers
help! Contact Scripted today to learn more.
