In this article, I’ll share my insights on creating content structure and copy that addresses your audience's needs, helps people who need your services find you easier through search, and ultimately drives conversions.
What you will learn:
- The importance of understanding your firm’s customers (profile and intent)
- Content structure and copy tailored to your customers and their needs
- Essential SEO for law firm websites to make your prospects easier to find you
- Content marketing for law firm websites to create a long-term strategy to rank on various keywords
- How to improve and optimize the existing content of your website
- Strategies to measure and understand if your law firm website content actually works (search, conversion)
Understanding your target audience
Before diving into content creation, it's crucial to understand who you is your website for. This section will guide you through identifying your target audience, including potential clients and their specific pain points. We'll discuss how to use this information to tailor your content, making it relevant and engaging.
This research step is essential for anyone looking to improve the website content of your law firm, as it guides you through tailoring your content to meet your clients' needs.
Demographics
- Age: What is the age range of your ideal client?
- Gender: Does your law firm cater more to males, females, or is it gender-neutral?
- Location: Where do your clients typically live? Consider city, state, or even country.
- Education Level: What is the typical education level of your clients? High school, college, graduate degrees?
- Occupation: What fields or industries do your clients work in?
- Income Level: What is the average income range of your clientele?
Psychographics
- Values: What are the core values that your clients hold? How do these influence their decision to choose your firm?
- Interests: What interests or hobbies do your clients have outside of their legal needs?
- Lifestyle: What kind of lifestyle do your clients lead? Busy and fast-paced, relaxed, family-oriented?
- Challenges: What challenges do they face that your law firm can help with?
- Goals: What are their personal or professional goals, and how can your services support those goals?
Legal Needs and Preferences
- Type of Legal Services: What specific legal services are they looking for? (e.g., family law, business law, criminal defense)
- Previous Legal Experience: Have they used legal services before? If so, what was their experience like?
- Decision Factors: What factors influence their decision when choosing a law firm? (e.g., cost, reputation, location, personal recommendations)
- Communication Preferences: How do they prefer to communicate? (e.g., email, phone, in-person meetings)
- Content Preferences: What type of content do they consume? (e.g., blogs, videos, podcasts) What platforms do they use?
Behavior Patterns
- Research Habits: How do they research and find legal services? Do they rely on search engines, social media, or personal recommendations?
- Service Expectations: What are their expectations regarding customer service, response time, and legal outcomes?
- Online Behavior: What online platforms do they use most frequently? (e.g., LinkedIn for professionals, Instagram for a younger audience)
Goals for Creating the Persona
- Identify Pain Points: Understanding the challenges your clients face can help you position your services as the solution.
- Tailor Marketing Strategies: Knowing where your clients spend their time and how they consume information allows you to tailor your marketing efforts.
- Enhance Client Experience: By understanding their preferences and expectations, you can enhance the client experience, fostering loyalty and referrals.
Remember, the more detailed and specific your customer persona, the more effectively you can tailor your offerings and marketing efforts to meet the needs of your target audience. It's also beneficial to create multiple personas if you serve different segments within the market.
How can a customer profile influence content structure, copy and design?
Imagine your ideal customer is in their late 50s to 60s, bound to a specific location due to your service's nature, and possesses a high income or net worth. While they are internet-savvy, they have a preference for communicating via phone calls, valuing the reliability of a lawyer.
This understanding shapes your website's design strategy to cater specifically to their needs. Your web content can afford to be more detailed, employing a larger font size for readability. The copy and perhaps even the main headline should include the location. The visual elements should be designed to evoke calmness and trust. Most importantly, ensure the telephone number is prominently displayed and easy to find, aligning with their communication preference.
I hope this examples provide a clear connection between the customer persona and the content, experience and design of the website.
Let’s now look at the content structure and copy.
Content structure and copy for law firm websites
Once you’ve defined your business’s customer personas, everything else aligns to their profile and intent.
In essence, content structure and copy is your customer’s user journey on the website. If they are there to research and hire you, every section and copy must be aligned to those goals.
An effective content structure for a law firm website includes several key components:
- Value proposition: what problem do you solve and what benefits you create for your customers?
- Services breakdown: explain in detail how your services are going to help to solve your customers’ problem(s).
- Trust: create trust and authority through case studies, testimonials and expertise.
- Contact: provide several ways for your prospects to reach you or book an appointment.
- Objections and open questions: Addressing common objections and open questions to help your customers to make a decision and convert.
When crafting the content for your website, the emphasis should always be on the benefits and value your services offer to your clients. This approach involves shifting the narrative from the accomplishments and attributes of your law firm to the tangible ways in which you can support and address your clients' needs. For example, rather than highlighting the history of your firm or your team's qualifications, prioritize explaining how your expertise translates into solving specific legal challenges your clients face.
The key is to articulate clearly the specific problems you address for your clients. Ask yourself: "What exact issue am I solving for my clients, and what are the direct benefits they will experience as a result?" This might involve stating how you can expedite the resolution of legal disputes, reduce the stress and complexity of navigating the legal system, or protect their financial interests in legal matters. The aim is to immediately communicate the value proposition to your visitors, making it evident how they stand to benefit from your services.
It’s obvious once you know about it, but 99% of the law firm websites have very generic and uninformative headings, copy and visuals.
Let’s talk about SEO.
Essential SEO for law firms
SEO it’s such a worn down topic in 2024, but I think it’s still important.
Yes, it has become very competitive and it’s much more difficult to rank in search results, but it’s still possible.
At the minimum, your website must implement the following SEO aspects:
- Basic keywords related to your customers to include in your copy.
- On-page technical SEO that includes meta descriptions, proper headings, and URL structures.
- Local SEO that includes creating a Google Business profile and adding location keywords on the pages.
- Schema markup to help search engines to identify your business and services.
- Performance and Core Web Vitals play an important role in page ranking. Make sure your website loads fast on desktop and mobile.
Even if you don’t rank for competitive keywords, it’s fairly easy to rank for “law firm in [location]” queries. Also, it’s worth mentioning, that it’s impossible to rank for a broader and less competitive keywords with just 2-3 page website. If you want organic traffic for keywords that relate to your services, then you’ll need to implement a content marketing strategy.
Content marketing SEO for law firms
Content marketing is a long-term SEO strategy. It aims to rank for keywords with less competition. These keywords may not directly relate to your services but they help establish your company as an authority in your niche. This strategy creates a flow of organic traffic from which some visitors can discover your services. As a result, they may convert into clients or become aware of your brand and company in case they need you in the future.
Here are a few types of content that can be valuable for your prospects:
- Educational Content: This involves simplifying and explaining legal concepts for those without expertise in the field. Given the complex nature of law, such content is particularly useful and valuable, making legal information more accessible to everyone.
- Blog Posts: Offering regular updates on recent legislative changes and sharing legal tips can be an effective way to attract organic traffic. These posts keep readers informed about the latest developments in law and offer practical advice. For instance, being an immigrant in Germany, I’ve been trying to find information on the latest changes in law, but couldn’t do so. The only place I could find some guidance was… Reddit. There’s a lot of potential and uncovered topics.
- Case Studies: Presenting examples of successful cases can help build trust with potential clients. These narratives demonstrate your firm's expertise and success in handling legal matters, reassuring prospects of your capability to manage their legal needs effectively. Testimonials are great, but case studies make the real swing in the decision making. When one sees how you solved a problem for someone else and what benefits you created, it speaks far better than accolades and words.
Creating valuable and useful content is one part of the story. If the competition is really low and your visitors actually find the content engaging, then you can rank in the first 10 results. However, if there’s competition and they pages have backlinks, you’ll also need them.
Backlinks are a measure for search engines to evaluate the page. It’s almost like a citation in the context of science papers. The more you have backlinks, the more authority the page gets, and higher it’s ranked in the results.
Let’s talk about measuring performance of your website and content.
Measuring and adapting your content strategy
For essential website pages, like your homepage and service offerings, focus on two primary metrics: traffic influx and conversion rates.
Traffic Analysis: Utilize tools like Google Search Console to examine the organic traffic to your pages. Pay attention to the keywords your pages are ranking for. If, after a period of 3-6 months, you notice stagnant or declining rankings, investigate potential issues. These could range from content that isn’t fully optimized, low user engagement, absent meta descriptions, to a shortage of backlinks.
For instance, if your "Family Law Services" page isn't ranking well, you might find that enhancing the content for clarity, adding authoritative backlinks, or tweaking the meta description could improve its visibility.
Conversion Rate Analysis: Determine how many visitors are taking desired actions, such as contacting your firm or booking a consultation.
A common culprit for low conversion rates is a poor user experience, where visitors struggle to find necessary information, the value proposition isn’t compelling, or the website lacks trustworthiness. Addressing these issues requires identifying the problem areas, hypothesizing solutions, and implementing tests to find what works best.
For example, if potential clients are visiting your "Contact" page but not completing the form, testing different layouts or simplifying the form fields may increase conversions.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
CRO is a systematic approach to improving your website and content to boost the number of visitors who perform a desired action. It involves:
- Identifying issues: Use analytics to pinpoint where users drop off or fail to engage.
- Formulating hypotheses: Based on your findings, hypothesize why certain pages underperform and how changes might improve performance.
- Experimenting: Test these hypotheses with A/B testing or other methods to see which adjustments lead to better conversion rates.
Conclusion
In this article, we've explored the importance of understanding your target audience and crafting content that addresses their specific needs. By focusing on creating structured and engaging content, you can enhance your law firm's online presence, making it easier for potential clients to find you through search and ultimately drive conversions.
If you're looking to improve your law firm's website conversion rate, generate organic traffic or you are planning to build a website, then please reach out at ayk@maray.ai.
