How to Write Dominant Practice Area Content for your Law Firm
•Download as PPTX, PDF•
1 like•432 views
A how-to guide on how to write better practice area content for law firms.
Recommended
Recommended
More Related Content
Similar to How to Write Dominant Practice Area Content for your Law Firm
Similar to How to Write Dominant Practice Area Content for your Law Firm (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
How to Write Dominant Practice Area Content for your Law Firm
- 1. Writing Dominate Practice Area Content Our Websites Impress. Our Marketing Delivers Results. By Peter Boyd, Esq. PaperStreet Web Design
- 2. Keeping 1,000+ Clients Happy Since 2001. paperstreet.com
- 3. • Become the Resource Online • Create Long Form Content • Detailed Pages • Step-by-Step Process • FAQs • Videos • Save time on Initial Meetings • Dominate Search Results How to Write Dominant Practice Area Conent paperstreet.com
- 4. • Pick One Practice Area • Choose on that is key to your Business • Choose one that is relatively Non- Competitive • Allows to Show Results Quickly Step 1 – Pick a Practice Area paperstreet.com
- 5. • Know your Competition • Go to Google – Visit Top 10 Sites • How long are their articles? • Check word count in MS Word • Write 10x Content Step 2 – Pinpoint Your Competition paperstreet.com
- 6. • Know your Practice Area • Topics and Subtopics • Overview, Questions, How-Tos, Process, Case Study, FAQs • Make it readible and scanable. Step 3 – Outline your Practice paperstreet.com
- 7. Child Custody – How does it work in Florida? Overview of child custody law in Florida How does the process work? What to expect? Realistic outcomes Laws on Child Custody Welfare of the child Parents right to custody Wishes of the child Court’s discretion Visitation and Custody What is visitation and custody? Types of visitation and custody Sole custody Time sharing Negotiated plan Supervised visitation Modifying custody and visitation Dependency court Outline Example – Child Custody Child Support What is child support? About modifying child Support Courts and Custody: How Cases are Handled Overview of cases and trials Burden of proof in cases Temporary orders Court’s jurisdiction Enforcement orders Attorney fees Key statutes UCCJEA in Florida Other acts FAQs Common Question #1 Common Question #2 Related Articles Link to related pages on your website paperstreet.com
- 8. • Long Page vs. Multiple Pages • Prefer Long Form Content • Single Relevant page, but multiple pages work well too • Just write! Step 4 – Write the Main Pages paperstreet.com
- 9. 1. Get Your Content Indexed 2. Ranking Algorithm: Words, Links and RankBrain 3. Authority and Links 4. Good, Real Press 5. Article Outreach Step 5 – Additional Steps paperstreet.com
- 10. 8 Time Winner 3 Time Winner Gold Winner 1st Place Winner 11 Time Winner 8 Time Winner
Editor's Notes
- Good morning. My name is Peter Boyd and I am the founder of PaperStreet Web Design. Today we will be talking about how to write dominant practice area content for your law firm.
- PaperStreet has been in business for 15 years now. We have helped over 1,000 clients and these are the best practices we have seen when working with our clients. In short, this is our checklist on how to rank higher in search through content.
- Want to dominate search results for your practice area? Then you need to produce the best resources. Invest in your content and you will continue to rank higher and higher in search. Here is step-by-step guide. So you wrote a practice page and it has 500 words. Great, that is a start. Most likely it will rank equally with all the other law firms that also have 500 word pages, which means you will be on page two, three or four of the search results. You will sit and wonder why traffic is not increasing. What you really need to do is produce the seminal guide to a practice area. Be the resource that clients want to read online. Create a practice area section with long-form content, detailed step-by-step processes, FAQs, translated videos and related resources (for a few starter ideas). If you do this, you will dominate for your practice. Moreover, you will probably answer many questions that clients ask on the first meeting. So, it will save time, long-term, by better informing your clients, before they even attend the initial consultation. Here is a step-by-step content guideline to dominate your practice area for 2017 and beyond.
- The next step is to check out your competition. Does your competition have a lot of content already? Is it relatively weak? Start by visiting the top 10 to 20 law firms when you Google your primary keyword phrase. Skip over the directories; Google prefers those right now and there is little you can do about that unless you produce a lot more content and a lot more links. Instead, figure out what specific law firm sites and pages are ranking high in Google. Do competing firms have pages with only 250 words on adoption law? How about 500 words? How about 2,000 words? You need to have more detailed information than your competitors, so figure out how much they have written and write more. You can easily check word count by copying the content into Microsoft Word and using its word count tool (on the bottom left). There are also various word count plugins for Chrome and Firefox that may work too (though they tend to count all words on the page, including menus, sidebars and footers). Rand Fishkin of Moz.com recommends writing 10x content. Most law firms write about 500 words per page for a practice area. So in some areas you may need 5,000 words on a topic to really dominate. However, we have found that often 2,000+ word articles are sufficient. Start with that and then expand with subpages and related articles. Now that you know your competition, you will find that you probably need to start with 2,000 words. This is about four pages, single-spaced, in Microsoft Word. If you research, write and type quickly you can probably get this completed in less than a half day of work. But how do you start? I recommend an outline format for writing – see the details in step three.
- The next step is to check out your competition. Does your competition have a lot of content already? Is it relatively weak? Start by visiting the top 10 to 20 law firms when you Google your primary keyword phrase. Skip over the directories; Google prefers those right now and there is little you can do about that unless you produce a lot more content and a lot more links. Instead, figure out what specific law firm sites and pages are ranking high in Google. Do competing firms have pages with only 250 words on adoption law? How about 500 words? How about 2,000 words? You need to have more detailed information than your competitors, so figure out how much they have written and write more. You can easily check word count by copying the content into Microsoft Word and using its word count tool (on the bottom left). There are also various word count plugins for Chrome and Firefox that may work too (though they tend to count all words on the page, including menus, sidebars and footers). Rand Fishkin of Moz.com recommends writing 10x content. Most law firms write about 500 words per page for a practice area. So in some areas you may need 5,000 words on a topic to really dominate. However, we have found that often 2,000+ word articles are sufficient. Start with that and then expand with subpages and related articles. Now that you know your competition, you will find that you probably need to start with 2,000 words. This is about four pages, single-spaced, in Microsoft Word. If you research, write and type quickly you can probably get this completed in less than a half day of work. But how do you start? I recommend an outline format for writing – see the details in step three.
- Since this is one of your primary practice areas, you should know this area pretty well. I recommend starting with an outline though – it helps focus your thoughts. Write your main headline, then five to 10 subheadings, maybe even include subtopics under those. You can specifically include overview, questions, how-to, process, case study, and other topics first. Then fill out the answers to those questions in paragraph form (usually one to two paragraphs per section is fine). This helps with readability, organization and flow. Here is an example outline for our running theme on child custody law for a Florida firm. Note that this is just a quick sample outline. It can be A LOT more detailed.
- Now that you have an outline, there are two ways you can attack writing your main practice page of content. I recommend going with a single longer page that has all the information. Let your design team figure out how best to create the layout. A single page with all of the information is better than splitting your content into multiple subpages on the same topic. Why? Because it is more relevant content and easier to read (without as many clicks). We estimate that you can research and write 2,000 to 5,000 words in a half day of work. However, there are branding experts, and firms, who will not want to see a long page of content. Fine, I get it; long pages can be boring to read. Of course, this can be solved by writing more interesting content and designing a better layout. But if you must, you can always split your content into multiple pages. Just make sure the pages are on-point for a specific topic and long enough to stand on their own (i.e. several hundred words at least). Option A – Long Form Page Use your outline to create a 2,000 plus word article with great headlines, subheadings, and answers to specific questions on the page. Make it easy to read and a how-to guide. If your competitors have 500 words, then you need to have 2,000 to 5,000. You can always add on content and subpages too. Option B – Short Form Practice Page with Links to Subpages This tactic can work too. We have seen plenty of firms rank high with a shorter, say 500-word, main practice area landing page. Then they link to five, 10 or 20 related articles about subtopics. Each of those subtopics ranks high for a specific question or topic. However, your landing page should include all your content such as related pages, blog posts, videos, FAQ links, related resources, and perhaps even social media tweets. Either way, the key is writing and getting all the content online. Moreover, your pages should link out to government resources, non-profits and other informative websites. I don’t recommend linking to other law firms, unless you have some type of partnership or referral relationship in place.
- Once you have your content written, you have a few more steps to improve your search results and begin to dominate. Get Your Content Indexed Typically it will take Google a few days to a week to naturally index the content. You can make this indexing faster by logging into your Google Webmaster Tools account and forcing a new index. Don’t have a Webmaster Tools account? Get one now. It will give you all sorts of cool information and help diagnose any issues, so will this blog post about how to use Webmaster Tools. Want to get your content indexed fast in an alternative way? Then you can also link to it from various other websites and social media. Typically inbound links to your website from popular platforms and websites will get your content indexed quickly too. Once Google visits your site and indexes the new content, they will start to rank your new content higher depending on its relevancy and authority. If you followed the guideline above, your content should be extremely relevant. However, you may need to make it have more authority. Let’s discuss the authority of your page and website. Ranking Algorithm: Words, Links and RankBrain Google still uses links as a basis for determining the authority of a website. Yes, RankBrain algorithm was released recently and the machine learning artificial intelligence is helping sort its results. However, RankBrain is still part of the overall Hummingbird algorithm that includes other algorithms such as the Panda, Penguin, Payday, Pigeon, Top Heavy, Mobile Friendly and other updates. There are still more than 200 ranking factors! Supposedly RankBrain is the third most important factor and Google will not state the top two factors. However, most experts believe that links and the actual words on your page are the top two factors, so let’s discuss those two. First let’s talk about words. This is easy; you have already covered the “words” part of the algorithm with your long form content. You should have more words than your competitors, a proper hierarchy, internal links, bolded terms, etc. Now that leaves you still with the opportunity to improve your authority through links. Authority and Links We have been talking about links for more than a decade now. Many predict their demise, but PaperStreet believes they are still a major part of the algorithm. Websites that have trusted links pointing to them typically rank higher. The key is getting high quality websites to link to your firm. This can include newspapers, journals, education sites, other top firms, magazines, social media accounts, and a very select list of top legal directories. Not all links are good links. In fact a lot of bad links can hurt your firm’s rankings. Your SEO team should be able to advise on what links to target. We have seen a few new areas recently that have had good success, so I will explain them here. Good, Real Press We have seen some recent success with some clients on creating real press releases and syndicating those. It’s not that the press release itself is a good link. In fact, Google does not count PR links anymore – so don’t sign up for PR just for the link. However, if the news event is valid and actually newsworthy, then you could get a real mention in an actual newspaper (go figure, a PR that actually works and gets you press). This is the key, if you get picked up in the newspaper, you will get legitimate traffic to your website and a legitimate trusted back link. Of course, you need a good idea on a newsworthy story. This is not easy to produce, but is worthwhile, once you have a good story to pitch. Article Outreach Further, in addition to PR, there are many websites where you can submit articles that you write. The goal is to produce content on other sites and gain links back to your website. Some have an editorial process that can take weeks or months to get approved. The harder it is to get approved though, then typically the better the publication. Most publications allow you to include a link back to your specific pages in the article, or, at the very least, the byline. This increases your authority for those specific practice pages. You should have a list of publications to try out your articles in order. Try out the best publications first and work your article down the list until it is published. If it never is picked up, then post it on your own blog or some partner website blog.
- Hopefully this helps your firm increase its web presence. If you need any help, give us a call and look us up at www.paperstreet.com
- Thank you.