Content

Advertisement

Close

How a law firm describes its practice areas will determine the quantity and quality of visitor traffic that it attracts. A website with a cursory description of all its practice areas on one page will not fare as well as another website that offers pages of substantive legal analysis and in-depth coverage for each of its practice areas.

For example, personal injury law firms should consider explaining legal concepts, such as strict liability, standard of care, or comparative negligence. They may also want to write about legal issues that arise in common scenarios, such as side-impact collisions, MRSA infections in hospitals, or adverse drug reactions. When a law firm provides strong content in these areas, it will have an opportunity to rank well for related keywords. Likewise, potential clients who have a questions about their situations will be more likely to contact the law firm if the website answers their basic questions and invites them to call for a free consultation.

Law firms focused on criminal defense can follow a similar approach by discussing the different types of criminal cases they handle. They can explain the elements of various crimes, the standard of proof required, or the plea bargain process. Even for a specific crime, such as drunk driving, the law firm can expand their content to cover field sobriety tests, blood alcohol tests, or penalties for repeat offenders. By expanding the breadth of your content, your website will match more search engine queries submitted by potential clients.

To rank for a geographical location, a website must have the name of the location somewhere on the website. Developing content that targets each location will be more effective than just listing the cities that you serve.

A targeted location may include the name of a state, county, city, town, village, district, or borough. The specific locations you choose to target depend on the reach of your practice and geographical considerations. A common strategy is to target the largest nearby city, as well as the surrounding suburban cities.

The design, navigational elements, and organization of a law firm website should support the content of the website. The color palette, fonts, and layout should make the text pleasing to read. The navigation elements should indicate how the website is organized and allow the visitor to easily traverse the website and locate the desired information. If you have a large amount of content, organizing it in a logical and consistent manner will help your potential client understand your firm better.

Law firms should present original content on their websites. While copying content from another website may seem to be a short cut, such behavior carries significant risks. First, taking someone else’s content without permission may violate copyright laws. Additionally, search engines disfavor websites that present duplicate content. They want to present their users with 10 unique results, and not 10 copies of the same result from different websites. Accordingly, a best practice in content development is to invest the time needed to draft your own content.

Search engines look at the density of keywords on a page in determining whether the page is relevant for a particular query. Without the relevant keywords your site is unlikely to be pulled up. However, if the law firm overloads a page with too many of these keywords and phrases, the content may appear dense and unnatural, as well as off-putting to potential clients. In turn, content that is too dense can also be detrimental to your search results.