Law firm website content with a local focus can make a difference in your law firm’s online visibility. It can help drive targeted, local traffic to your law firm’s website, as well as help potential clients quickly identify where your firm is located, whether you understand them and their needs, and whether you can help them solve their problem.
Here’s what you need to know to create engaging local pages that help local potential clients find you, like you, and ultimately hire you.
What are local pages on your law firm’s website?
Local pages are law firm website pages that provide relevant local information to your potential clients.
A number of your law firm’s website pages can be designed to engage local clients by providing local information that they’re searching for. Practice area pages, blog posts, case results, and many other types of pages can have a local focus.
For example:
- Personal injury law firms could create content that addresses local topics such as intersections that are often sites of accidents; local hospitals or places where people frequently get injured, such as parks and schools.
- Criminal defense attorneys can create pages that provide information about local criminal courts, police stations, jails or checkpoints.
Why create law firm website local pages?
There are a number of reasons to create local pages. One major reason to create local pages has to do with the way that your potential clients will likely think about their case or problem. Potential clients, especially if they don’t have a legal background, tend to think “locally, not legally.”
That means that while, as the attorney, you may know that something is governed by state law, for example — however, your potential clients will think with a local focus. As a result, they may attach local information to their search, such as “Seattle divorce law,” or “Can I get divorced in Pima County without an attorney?”
Google will seek to return search results that closely match the potential client’s query — so, if you have pages that address the question that your potential clients are asking, those pages are likely to be returned for relevant queries.
Attorneys sometimes overlook the local element of their content strategy. The result can be content that isn’t detailed enough to be found by the right people — local potential clients.
Local pages can also give your firm a competitive edge in that your competitors likely aren’t creating local pages. By creating pages that closely mimic how your potential clients search and providing them with lots of useful local information, you’ll be more likely to reach potential clients who are looking for details about their local case or matter (or what they believe to be a local case or matter).
How to start creating local pages on your law firm’s website
Law firm website local pages should also use the language that potential clients are likely to use. Rachel Chalot, our VP of Content Operations, offers this guidance for creating client-focused local content:
“Who are your potential clients, and what is their local language? How do people speak? How are locations commonly referred to? Think about how you might search for a dentist. Would you search by the name of your city? County? Township? Are there slang or colloquial terms that your potential clients might use when they look for information online?”
The best place to start developing your local pages is with your page titles and headers.
Your potential clients have a tendency to scan for information — and by providing them with location-specific titles and headers, you’ll help them quickly find the information that they need. For example, instead of a non-detailed title like “Drug Crimes,” a criminal defense attorney might try something like “Understanding Charges Related to a Drug Crimes Arrest in Phoenix.” Instead of a non-specific header like “Penalties,” try something like “Penalties for Drug Possession in Topeka.”
Develop location-specific content that indicates to potential clients that you understand their specific needs.
For example, a criminal defense attorney may want to include local information about where someone arrested for a crime will likely be taken to be booked; information about local jails, and information about local courts. A personal injury attorney might want to include information about local ordinances, local hospitals, and so forth.
You can continue to develop your local pages by providing local-specific images, videos and maps that help a potential client understand more about their problem. (LawLytics makes adding this kind of information easy.)
Local pages as part of an effective law firm content plan
Attorneys who are able to incorporate local elements into their content plan often increase their law firm’s online visibility as well as the rapport they have with local potential clients.
You know the details of your local practice better than anyone else — so by creating focused and relevant local pages for your potential clients, you are likely to engage potential clients more effectively than competitors who aren’t doing so.
For a detailed look at local page best practices, see “Lawyers: Get More Traffic With Local Pages.”
