What does it mean to create a content plan for your law firm website? Too often, attorneys struggle to devise a strategy to make their website content work for their practice.
To begin working on a content plan, it’s helpful to first understand the purpose of your plan – to create a map of your website. By building a system, you create a website that ultimately works for you by converting visitors to clients consistently and reliably.
Read on for the top pages solos and small law firms should include and plan out in detail when developing a website content map.
Page #1: Homepage
In many instances, your law firm website homepage will be the first point of contact with a potential client. An effective homepage should communicate who you are and who you serve while also appearing professional, modern, and trustworthy. Your homepage has a specific set of objectives for your website, including:
- Clear communication of who you are and the services you provide
- Establishing immediate credibility and authority
- An overview of your practice areas or services
- Nurturing your potential clients’ curiosity
- Easy guidance to answers
- Quick ways to get in touch
In addition to understanding what your homepage needs to communicate, it’s helpful to also think about what your potential clients may be looking for when visiting your website. This perspective can help to guide your content decisions moving forward. The following is what your potential clients are likely seeking when visiting your website:
- Who you are – including basic information such as your name, firm name, and location
- Your practice areas
- Your representation style (e.g., aggressive or compassionate)
- Your mission statement
- Steps to moving forward in their process
Page #2: About The Firm
Your About page is a great opportunity to deliver your firm’s mission statement while also establishing your firm’s brand personality. Essential elements of your About page include who you are, what you practice, your representation style, how you conduct business, and why someone should hire you.
Once a potential client can better understand your purpose, they can better understand why you’re the best choice to represent them. The About page on your website is an essential part of the trust-building process for your potential clients.
Page #3: Practice Area Pages
When web visitors read your practice area pages, they’re looking for easy-to-consume information about their problem, your firm, and a potential solution.
Effective practice area pages also follow certain guidelines and tend to:
- Remain evergreen. Evergreen pages aren’t likely to change significantly over time unless there is a major change in policy that would require an update to the information.
- Introduce a practice area. These pages will describe the services your firm provides, your role in the situation, and persuade a potential client that hiring you is in their best interest.
- Become increasingly specific. Practice area pages tend to have pillar topics with subtopics to provide robust coverage of the practice area. This helps your firm’s website to be found online when potential clients conduct searches related to their legal problem.
- Answer legal questions. Effective practice area pages work to provide answers to the questions your potential clients are seeking as thoroughly as possible.
Practice area pages are the foundation of your law firm website and should always include the following elements:
- Your law firm name and contact information
- Internal links to allow visitors to navigate from page to page intuitively. This may include links to the “About The Firm” page, testimonials, case results, as well as to other practice area pages and blog posts
- External links to relevant, educational materials (Note: These links must be to credible sources only, e.g., Supreme Court website, government websites, law reviews, etc.)
- Easy-to-read formatting: Short sentences, bullet points, quotes, concise and clear explanations of complex legal concepts
The more value you provide to your potential clients through detailed, accurate information, the more likely you are to build trust with your audience and search engines.
LawLytics members can create and publish practice area pages in minutes with the built-in content creation engine. With over 250 practice area topics across 13 practice areas, your “blank page” days are officially over. Simply choose a topic, customize the content, and publish directly to your website to begin targeting your ideal client online. Take a peek into the tool here.
Page #4: Attorney Bio
The purpose of your attorney bio is to create an emotional and logical connection that shows potential clients that you are competent, caring, and the best person for the job. Because this page will be among some of the top visited pages on your website, it’s important to write your attorney bio with intention. To avoid writing your attorney bio similar to a resume, include the following:
- Your journey to law. What inspired you to choose this profession? Was there something in your formative years that made you passionate about a particular practice area? Explaining this in your bio helps a potential client feel a personal connection with you. It can demonstrate that you care deeply about your work and their matter.
- Who you are as an attorney (and as a person). Are you involved in the community? Are you passionate about certain causes or issues? Including these interests and activities in your bio can help a potential client see that you care about more than just making money.
- Who you’ve helped. Paint a picture of the kind of people you help and why you enjoy doing it. That way, a potential client can see that you’ve helped people like them in the past and that you can help them as well.
- What you’ve accomplished. This is an opportunity to provide context for your awards and accomplishments. For example, talk about what went into being selected for an award, why it matters, and what it meant to you to receive that award.
Page #5: Case Results
Your law firm’s case results can be an effective needle-mover for potential clients who are researching available representation online. Case results provide attorneys with the unique opportunity to hold a mirror to their potential clients and allow them to picture themselves with a successful outcome with the help of your services. When case results are well written, they will demonstrate the care you have for both your clients and your work and also give context to what a potential client can expect.
Effective case results tend to follow a similar structure and include:
- Case facts. Provide context of what the client was facing and what was at stake for them.
- The challenges. What were the obstacles both you and your client were up against?
- The result. Go further – how did the result impact your client’s life?
Page #6: Testimonials
These days, many of us rarely make a purchase decision without seeing what other people have to say about a product or service. This is likely to be particularly true in cases where a purchase decision requires significant expense and/or the failure to make the right choice could significantly affect a person’s life, such as hiring an attorney.
To grow your website’s testimonials bank, it’s most helpful to ask for them from happy clients. The best time to do this is following the closing of their case. Be sure to make it very easy for the client to complete your request (e.g., clickable link) and that you briefly explain why it matters to you that they review your firm. For LawLytics members, it’s quick and easy to get new testimonials for your law firm website. Our platform includes a built-in recommendation feature to help you gather and publish engaging recommendations on your law firm website.
If you’ve received a vague testimonial that doesn’t show what you’ve accomplished or how for that client, it’s possible to add context of your own. For example, you could add the type of case or matter, what was at stake for your client, what you did to help them, and the impact of your efforts on your client’s life.
Page #7: Blog
Blogs can help you declare your stance on topics of interest to your potential clients and can be a great strategy for enhancing your website’s visibility on the internet. In general, blogs are increasingly niche in topic, great for specific passions, thought leadership, and tend to have a conversational tone. Blogs can be used for:
- Reporting news stories. Use your blog as a place for analyzing news stories in a way that relates to your practice areas and the geographical area you serve. Avoid simply summarizing a news story, instead give the reader your view of the event.
- Providing timely information on changes in the law or proposed legislation. Potential clients will likely find it worthwhile to learn about policy changes directly from a local, trusted attorney. Take advantage of this opportunity to develop your online voice and show you are engaged and excited about what you practice.
- Answering common questions. You may hear a lot of the same questions and concerns from your clients. These are perfect ideas for blog posts, allowing you to thoroughly address the pain points of your potential clients.
- Adding value to your website and drawing potential clients in. Blog posts provide extra value to your website that gives potential clients the chance to connect with you personally and professionally.
To have the most impact on your website, blogs should have:
- Links. Similar to practice area pages, blogs benefit from internal and external linking practices.
- An appropriate length. While there is no exact formula to blog length, it’s best to provide enough information so that you effectively answer the reader’s question.
- A consistent posting schedule. Websites benefit from fresh content that is of high quality and there is evidence to suggest that Google uses fresh content as a page ranking signal.
One of the biggest challenges to blog writing is deciding what to write about. When choosing a blog topic, think about what would be of value to your potential clients. Below are some potential subject areas that you could explore when blog writing:
- Common questions from clients
- Common concerns from clients about their legal problem or the legal process
- Complex legal concepts that can be broken down into bite-sized bits of information
- Detailed case results
- Seasonal topics that affect your potential clients
- Repurposed materials or information from CLE events or other seminars
- Timely topics that are relevant to your practice area (in the news, new policy, etc.)
Mapping out your law firm website content this way is proven to attract, engage, and drive more business to your practice online. If you’re not yet a LawLytics member and would like to know more about how to get started on your website’s content plan, you can schedule a 20-minute interactive demo with us.