When you’re developing the content on a new law firm website, it generally makes sense to start by building practice area pages. Good practice area pages help potential clients understand more about their case or problem, whether your law firm can help them, and what they should do next.
Here’s how to grow and develop your practice area pages over time.
Starting your law firm practice area page with a broad topic overview
When you first launch a law firm website, you may not have a lot of content.
That’s nothing to worry about.
If a potential client can identify who you are, where you are, and what you do, a law firm website can stand on its own as you begin developing the content that will eventually become the foundation of your law firm’s website. At first, your practice area pages can be a broad overview of a particular topic. We recommend that you cover each type of case that you handle or legal service that you offer on your website. When you’re launching a new site, we recommend that these practice area pages provide enough information so that a potential client can read what you’ve written and leave the page with a sufficient understanding of the topic.
A cluster technique that begins with broad overviews and ultimately ends with subpages that go into greater detail often makes sense because this structure allows for growth over time.
Let’s look at an example of a law firm website that uses the page cluster technique. For an immigration attorney who is just beginning to develop the pages on his or her website, the original practice area page content might look like this:
This drop-down menu features pages with basic coverage of topics such as “Citizenship,” “Family Immigration,” “Visas,” and “Immigration FAQ.”
When the site is brand new, the “Visas” page might cover various circumstances related to visas, or why someone would need one:
Maybe a potential client is someone who wants to come to the United States to study in a particular field, or they want to come to the US to work permanently, or they’re visiting for a brief period.
Then the page might discuss the various requirements to obtain a visa.
The page might end with a call to action where the attorney encourages the web visitor to contact their firm because they can provide the right services related to this particular need.
Similarly, a DUI attorney might begin with a few practice area pages that look something like this:
- DUI Law
- DUI Penalties
- DUI FAQs
- DUI Tests
These pages can provide a broad but useful overview to potential clients. For example, the “DUI Penalties” page might give a general overview of the potential penalties for a DUI in the geographic area where this particular DUI attorney practices.
Developing basic law firm practice area pages over time
Over time, these general practice area pages can expand to include specific subpages on increasingly specific topics.
Each of these subpages should include a high level of detail that educates potential clients about the subtopic that they’re interested in. Arranging topics in this way allows you to grow and develop your site over time in a way that makes sense to potential clients and works nicely in a law firm content plan, as well.
Returning to our original example about an immigration attorney, this attorney’s basic pages may grow over time as the content volume on the site increases.
For example, the primary “Visas” page may now drill down into specific subjects related to the main topic. The original “Visas” page stood on its own; However, in this example, this page is now a “parent” page, with “child” pages nested within it (“B-1 Visa,” “B-2 Visa,” “J Visa,” and “F Visa”). While at first, there was only an “Immigration FAQ” page, this attorney might choose to add a visa-specific FAQ page to include additional, visa-specific content.
Similarly, in the DUI attorney example from above, the foundational “DUI Tests” page may ultimately expand to include detailed information about specific kinds of tests.
Note: Keep in mind that you may want to include local elements on your pages for better geographic targeting. Adding local elements also help you write unique content — especially when it seems as if every topic has already been written about. To learn more about adding local elements to your pages, see our blog post: “Developing a Framework for Local Marketing on Your Law Firm’s Website.”
Adding extra elements to your practice area pages
Once you’ve built out some of your practice pages, you may want to consider adding additional features to your practice area pages such as maps (when it makes sense to do so), links to other relevant pages, images, videos, and infographics. LawLytics makes it easy to add these kinds of features.
Learn more about developing a content plan for your law firm website’s practice area pages
The best way to develop your law firm website’s practice area pages is to start with a good plan. A content plan helps you discover and produce the kind of website content that is most likely to benefit your potential clients — and, by extension, your practice. To learn about creating a content marketing plan for your law firm’s website, see: “How to Create an Effective Content Plan for Your Law Firm’s Website.”
