An effective local content strategy can help increase your law firm website’s visibility in search engine results and improve your ability to connect with and engage local clients.
By providing relevant information that answers local potential clients’ questions, almost any page on a law firm website can become a more effective local online marketing tool.
Here are six suggestions for creating engaging local content on your law firm website.
Localize your law firm website homepage and navigation
Your law firm website homepage and navigation should make it easy for local potential clients to quickly see what you do and whether you practice in their geographic area.
If you have a lot of local content on your law firm website, consider reflecting that in the site navigation structure. This will help potential clients quickly drill down to find locally-relevant information on your website.
Your website navigation and homepage don’t need to list every town and city you practice in. At the same time, you don’t want potential clients to have to do a lot of digging to determine what you do and whether you can help them with their problem.
Localize your law firm blog content
Blogging can help demonstrate that you are engaged and knowledgeable and that you care about local clients.
Good potential sources of timely, relevant local blog content include local current events and cases, recent court experiences or proposed rules that may impact potential clients.
For example, if you were in court and saw that the main parking lot is closed for construction, you could write a blog post advising potential clients on alternate parking and that they should plan to arrive earlier than usual for their court appearance.
Because the law changes infrequently in some places and for some practice areas, you may want to consider blogging about changes in jurisdictions outside of your own and discussing those topics in the context of your geographic area.
For more on this subject, see our blog, “Should Attorneys Blog About Jurisdictions Outside Of Their Own?”
Adding Local Information To Your Attorney Bio & “About Our Firm” Pages
Attorney bios and “About Our Firm” pages are often some of the most-visited pages on law firm websites, and they are good places to demonstrate your local experience and knowledge.
As you are writing these pages (and other website pages), consider your audience.
What information is relevant to potential clients in your area? It’s also likely that many of your potential clients won’t have a legal background. You may need to provide additional context or explanation, so that someone without a legal background can easily understand your experience and accomplishments.
A potential client often wants a personal connection with their attorney. Sharing your journey to practicing law in your specific geographic area can help reinforce your connection to the location. It can also help potential clients form a personal connection to you.
Think about why you decided to practice in that specific geographic area. What drew you to that location? How long have you lived and worked there? Did you grow up in the area or go to law school nearby?
You can also highlight locally-relevant experience, case results and recommendations in your bio(s) and About Our Firm pages. This can help local potential clients see that you have helped people like them who had similar problems in their area.
Describing your community involvement, volunteer activities, local awards and local press coverage can further reinforce that you are engaged in your local community.
Practice Area Pages & Detailed Law Pages
Practice area and detailed law pages can provide useful information to local potential clients, while highlighting your local knowledge and skills.
The information on these pages should provide meaningful, detailed answers to potential clients’ questions. You shouldn’t create different local pages by simply performing a find-and-replace on the city, town or jurisdiction name. Duplicate content like this doesn’t provide helpful information to your potential clients, and it can violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Even if a law is the same state-wide, there may be local nuances to rules and procedures that could affect local potential clients. For example, perhaps police stations in different jurisdictions handle arrests for the same crime differently.
Practice area and detailed law pages are also an opportunity to highlight your local experience. For example, a detailed law page about assault laws in Arizona law could include statements such as “Our firm has handled X number of assault cases in Maricopa County.”
For more tips on creating client- and search-engine friendly practice area and detailed law pages, see our blog post, “3 Attributes Of Successful Substantive Law Firm Website Pages.”
Adding Local Information To Case Results
Recommendations and case results can show potential clients see that you have helped people like them in their area. They provide important social proof of your law firm’s prior successes.
When possible, you may want to provide local information about the case or matter. Including location information in areas such as your case results can increase the likelihood that your law firm’s website will appear in search engine results for local potential clients when they make a relevant search.
Consider including locally relevant visual elements to case results. For example, a personal injury law firm case result could include maps, images and video that show where the accident happened or the courthouse where the case was decided.
(LawLytics makes it easy to add local content such as images and videos to case results).
Visual elements can make your content more engaging and provide color and emotional depth to your case results.
Law Firm Office Location Pages
Your office location page is an opportunity to reinforce that you are local and locally knowledgeable.
You can make your law firm location pages more engaging for local clients by enhancing location page(s) with locally relevant visual information, such as images and maps. You can also provide helpful additional information, such as nearby landmarks, directions, where to park, and whether parking needs to be validated.
The LawLytics system makes it easy to create and manage compelling office location pages. You can create location pages and enhance them with maps, images and other locally relevant content with just a few clicks.
For more tips on creating effective location pages, see our blog post, “4 Easy Ideas For A Better Office Location Page On Your Law Firm Website.”
