Content. It’s the most significant factor in the creation of a successful law firm website. It must be informative. It must be engaging. It must be optimized for search engines. And it must tell your story and promote your law firm brand.
When successful, a law firm website does many things, the first of which garners leads and the second of which converts those leads into new clients.
But content requires a lot of resources, like time and money, to get it right. Those are resources that attorneys, especially solo and small law firms, would rather use in the actual practice of law rather than on a website. Understanding this problem, LawLytics has created a solution: The Content Assistant.
What is the LawLytics Content Assistant?
The Content Assistant is a new feature offered to all LawLytics members. The feature automatically displays when a member creates a new page, and that is true regardless of whether the new page is created from scratch or via the LawLytics Content Library tool.
At the bottom right-hand corner of any new page, a lightbulb appears, and hovering over it reveals a callout that says “View tips and content suggestions.” When you click on it, you are provided with four to five tips. For pages created using the LawLytics Content Library tool, many of these tips are unique to the practice area or the individual sub-topic page.
In general, the tips suggest:
- What to include on the page
- Where to insert specific information
- Why to include certain information
- How to make use of other features, like the content library, widgets, and more
- How to maintain the page
- How to personalize the page overall
In addition, the tips are loaded with links to additional resources so that you can quickly and easily learn more about best practices on law firm webpage creation.
The Content Assistant is designed to help our Members spend less time focusing on content and more time thinking about client cases.
Improve Law Firm Website Visibility with the Content Assistant
Ranking well on search engines, like Google, is the primary way to increase online visibility. Visibility matters because it is how a law firm is found online. To rank, you must have quality content. The purpose of our Content Assistant is to help you transform good content into compelling content that proliferates your online presence.
Content that gets ranked is content that is:
- EEAT-friendly
- User-friendly
- Relevant
Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness
Experience-Expertise-Authoritativeness-Trustworthiness, also more commonly referred to as EEAT and formerly known as Google EAT, is an important part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines. Though this is specific to Google, the criteria still apply to other search engines.
EEAT is a way to “score” websites and webpages for ranking purposes. Our Content Assistant takes the guidelines into consideration, for example:
- Google, in part, considers the author’s personal experience or opinions as it relates to the subject of the page to establish “experience.” To prove your experience, we suggest places where case examples would fit well or where images (e.g., of the attorney) would best work.
- Google, in part, considers the author’s knowledge, qualifications, and credentials to establish “expertise.” To prove your expertise, we suggest using Google My Business on certain strategic pages and identify where to provide links to bios, testimonials, and case summary pages – all of which Google uses to assess expertise.
- Authoritativeness refers to your reputation in your industry. Branding is key to building that reputation, and our Content Assistant provides different ways to develop your personal brand.
- Trustworthiness refers to how trustworthy your webpage and website are, and this materializes in many ways. Our Content Assistant offers many tips in this regard, including tips noting places where to highlight specific qualifications that signal to the audience you are an authority on this subject and therefore are trustworthy.
The above are only a few examples of the many tips we offer to develop your EEAT score.
User-Friendly Content
Web users come first, and that’s why Google and other search engines place a high priority on user-friendly content. Part of this user-friendliness is the ability to find information on the website as easily as possible, and that is achieved through smart website navigation.
The Content Assistant helps you improve website navigation in three specific ways by suggesting:
- How to organize navigation menus, for example, using a parent page to create a content hierarchy;
- What keywords to use as anchor text to link to internal webpages that complement the current page; and
- How to cross-link between content silos so that pages that do not get as much traffic benefit, for example, providing a link in your call-to-action to your firm’s About page.
Ultimately, making life easier for your audience makes ranking your webpage easier for search engines.
Relevant Content
Google’s algorithm emphasizes what’s most relevant versus what’s new. In order for Google to match a search query with the most relevant websites or webpages, it considers many factors, the main ones of which are:
- Page length
- Specificity
- Local indicators
- Keywords
- Images
These criteria are important to Google because it believes more content is more useful and deems the same for more specific and locally-concentrated content.
The Content Assistant suggests when, where, why, and how to insert keywords and images to make pages more relevant to potential visitors. The Content Assistant also identifies where content can best be developed to add local and more specific information that contributes to the overall word count. For example, on a page for DUI/DWI defense attorneys discussing Ignition Interlock Devices (IIDs), the Content Assistant suggests using the map widget to provide local IID retailers and mechanics.
The LawLytics Content Assistant provides strategic tips and suggestions, where applicable, so that you can develop local SEO and customize the page with state-specific content with the end goal of maximizing relevancy.
See How the Content Assistant Helps You Create Great Content
If you have a law firm website, then you need to have quality content to ensure the website performs for you. If you are currently a LawLytics member and would like to know more about this feature, contact Support today. If you are not yet a member but would like to learn more about how this feature specifically and LawLytics generally can help you increase your visibility online, schedule a 20-minute interactive demo with one of our product experts today.
