The most successful law firm websites provide a deliberate but simple organization that helps web visitors find the information they’re looking for.
Without organized, comprehensive website information, you’ll miss a lot of opportunities to drive more web visitors to your firm’s site from the search engines.
There are smart and simple ways to provide the right kind of structure on your website. These structures help search engines understand your site’s content and provide that information to potential clients when they make relevant searches.
One of these methods is known as pillar pages and topic clusters. Here’s what you need to know about using pillar pages and topic clusters for your law firm’s website.
What are pillar pages and topic clusters?
Creating pillar pages and topic clusters is a method to easily organize your site’s information in a search engine and user-friendly way.
This architecture consists of three components — pillar pages, cluster pages, and hyperlinks.
A pillar page covers aspects of a topic relevant to your practice area(s), (e.g., Business Law, Family Law, Criminal Defense).
The pillar page and topic cluster is made of three components: a pillar page, subtopic pages that make up a “cluster”, and the internal links which connect those subtopic pages to the main pillar.
Topic clusters are subcategory pages. These pages cover key subtopics related to a pillar page (e.g., Real Estate Litigation; Divorce, DUI/DWI).
The depth of topic clusters can go even further, explaining increasingly detailed aspects of particular practice areas (e.g, Commercial Real Estate Disputes, Grounds for Divorce in Your State, Penalties for a First Time DUI Arrest).
Imagine pillar pages and topic clusters like a book: A pillar page is like a book itself, and the topic clusters are like chapters. Links connect these pages together in meaningful ways.
The more content that you develop for a particular pillar and its related subtopics, the more opportunities you have to connect these ideas together in ways that benefit search engines and potential clients.
The organization of pillar and topic clusters is one that we recognize; by moving from broad to increasingly specific topics, your web visitors can easily select the depth level with which they’d like to explore a topic.
Examples of pillar pages and topic clusters
To organize your website’s content using pillar pages and topic clusters, you’ll want to start by developing your pillar pages. For example, an attorney may want to start by dedicating a pillar to a particular practice area, such as family law or business law.
This pillar page can cover a broad overview about the practice area. In a family law example, an attorney may want to cover topics such as:
- What is family law?
- What family law-related services do you provide?
- Who can benefit from hiring a family lawyer?
- Under what circumstances should someone hire a family lawyer?
An example of a pillar and cluster set for the practice area of family law.
An attorney creating a pillar page for business law may want to cover topic such as:
- What is business law?
- What business law-related services do you provide?
- When should someone hire a business lawyer?
- Under what circumstances should someone hire a business lawyer?
Once these pillar pages are established, it’s time to create related pillar pages. In our family law example, there might be cluster topic pages for:
- Divorce
- Spousal Support
- Child Custody
- Post-decree modifications and enforcement
- Adoption
- Paternity
An attorney who handles real estate litigation might add cluster topic pages for:
- Commercial lease disputes
- Enforcing rental agreements
- Breaking a commercial lease
- Landlord/Tenant disputes
- Evicting commercial tenants
Why do pillar pages and topic clusters work for law firm websites?
When your website’s information is useful, engaging, and easy to consume, web visitors stay on your site longer.
This engagement sends positive signals to the search engines about your site. As a result, search engines perceive your site as authoritative and useful for people searching about related legal matters.
Pillar pages and topic clusters are effective because they explain and connect pieces of information in a highly organized fashion that benefits both search engines and your potential clients.
Search engines understand the relationship between the content in topic clusters and your pillar page. The more high-quality information you provide and connect through internal linking, the more you’ll be seen as an expert on the topic in the eyes of Google. This is rewarded with better placement in search when potential clients make related searches.
The end result is a well-organized and highly visible law firm website that attracts more potential clients from the search engines.
LawLytics’ software, support, and strategy helps you build a thriving law firm website.
Using our software, support, and strategy, LawLytics members build thriving, information-rich websites that drive the right potential clients to their firms.
The LawLytics platform and support makes it simple to follow Google’s best practices without struggling with technology or overpaying for website marketing.
If you already have a LawLytics website and you’d like guidance around creating content (or help taking it to the next level), we’re here to help.
If you don’t have a website (or if you’re using a platform or agency that makes your online marketing complicated), switching to LawLytics is easy and affordable. See how easy it is to grow your practice through Google by doing a quick interactive demo of LawLytics.
To learn more about how to reliably attract and convert clients from free search engine traffic, see our 2020-2021 Guide to Law Firm SEO.
