Attorney Web Copywriting

The biggest problem is that lawyers simply do not pay attention to the content on their website. Many attorneys don't even read the content on their own website. Attorneys make their biggest marketing mistakes by ignoring the process. As a practicing attorney who is actively involved in the legal community and the local court system, you have real world knowledge and experience.

At Internet LAVA, we help you utilize this information to devise remarkable web copy that will help you soar above your competitors. We have an attorney on staff who can talk with you about your goals and write content based on your specifications.

The Importance of Content on an Attorney's Website

The most important part of any lawyer's website is the content. In many ways your website is a publishing project. Your navigation system is the table of content. New sections of content can be added to the website over time and placed within that navigation system.

The website should convey the information most important to your ideal clients. By viewing your website this way, you can give the search engines exactly what it wants - unique, informative and constantly updated content.

The purpose of the search engines is to highlight the best websites to answer certain specific inquires. For a lawyer's website, the best content will begin to answer your potential client's questions before they decide which attorney to retain. The most effective way to stay ahead of your competition is to have better content with a unique and detailed web copy.

At Internet LAVA, we are dedicated to providing our clients with quality web content that is truly...

Content must be the core foundation of any attorney's website. Many other web companies will say they specialize in SEO Copywriting but fail to explain how. At Internet LAVA, we put a greater focus on explaining the techniques that will make web content stand out. That is exactly how SEO is achieved; it's simply a matter of publishing information that is truly authentic and valuable. The search engines will reward websites with high rankings if the content is exceptional.

The Problems with Using "Generic" Web Content

One major problem that most attorneys face with their Internet marketing campaign is that their website content is "generic." For most attorneys, the information on their website could pertain to any law firm that practices the same area of law. Most attorney website companies will use a web copywriter to generate content for their client's websites. The web copywriter will research the topic on the Internet and then write out just enough web copy to fill the page. Read some of your competitor's sites and you will see exactly what we are talking about.

The content writers for most other companies simply copy content from other websites. Content that lacks in originality will do little to help your search rankings and can actually harm your rankings.

While it is good to for web content to include a great deal of general information about the subject matter, you do not want the content to be entirely general. It's better for web content to include a combination of highly detailed general information as well as genuine and specific information that reflects how your firm in particular may address a legal issue.

Another problem is that generic content is a collection of basic information that could pertain to a number of other firms. In fact, some lawyer website companies will actually "recycle" content. These companies re-word the same content over and over again for different websites or re-use content that was previously on another attorney's website who cancelled. Other attorney web companies will have a collection of pre-written web content that is entirely generic. It is best to avoid these generic copywriting techniques and instead participate in developing up-to-date and authentic legal content.

The Importance of Client Participation in Developing "Genuine" Web Content

At Internet LAVA, we specialize in writing "genuine" content that only pertains to your particular law firm. In order to accomplish this, a moderate-level of client-participation is required. With a small investment of your time, you can help us really understand your practice.

In order for us to be able to write specific legal information about your particular firm, we need to gather a good deal of information from you, including:

• Selling points. What makes your firm stand out?
• A list of every single area of law that you practice.
  • Information about how your firm handles each of these specific cases.
• A list of related topics for each of these practice areas.
  • Information about how your firm addresses each of the related topics.
• A list of all your specific Niche areas. What are your favorite types of cases?
• A list of every city and county where you are willing to take cases.
• Biographical information for each attorney in your firm, including:
  • Education;
  • Bar Admissions;
  • Professional Memberships and Associations; and
  • Trial Experience.
• Ideas for legal articles that will interest your audience.
• Ideas for news-worthy publications about your firm.
• If appropriate, a list of recent "Case Results."

By acquiring a great deal of information from you, we will be able to better formulate genuine content that relates to your specific firm. It is important that attorneys participate in collaborating, writing, editing, updating, approving, enhancing, and providing feedback for successful content development. Often, this entire process takes very little time for the attorney. In most cases, our web copywriters will use the information you provide to generate unique and genuine web content and then send it to you for enhancement and approval.

Some attorneys prefer to write some of the web copy themselves, and then send it to us for editing and optimization. Attorneys often find material that they have already used on a particular legal topic such as a recently submitted "memorandum of law." This method is the most effective and most genuine because attorneys are extremely knowledgeable about complex legal matters and because they can write directly about how the firm and the local court system may handle specific types of cases.

We want your website to be just that - your website. The more you participate in developing the content, the more personalized the website will be to you. We want you to be proud of the message your website delivers. After all, it's your message. In addition, we want you to feel a personal connection to your website. Perhaps even more importantly, we want your clients to feel a personal connection to you when they read your website. The goal is to build confidence in the potential client's mind so they feel they have found the perfect attorney who is best equipped to resolve their legal issue.

Content Distribution on Other Websites

Not only is it important to provide content for your website, it is also important that the content is used throughout your internet marketing strategy. If you have an online profile that promotes your legal practice and links to your website, add as much written information about your practice as possible.

These off site resources will increase the relevance of the page so the link will be more beneficial. For example, you could log into one of your profiles and add a list of all your practice areas with a short description of each as well as biographical information such as your education and professional memberships.

By hiring us to help you set up all of the profiles and use much of the information that you provide us, a small investiment of your time can be use to effectively market your law firm. While other internet marketing companies focus on generic content, we help attorneys use a small investiment of their time to radically increase the effectiveness of their website.

A Wider Variety of Web Pages

At Internet LAVA, we write content for a wide variety of web pages, including:

• Website Content
  • Every single area of law the firm practices
  • Multiple sub-pages under each of these practice areas
• Blogs
  • Routine blog entries about interesting and relevant topics
• Articles
  • Informative articles about legal issues related to your practice
• Press Releases
  • Regular press releases announcing news about your firm
• Online Profiles
  • Adding of relevant and biographical information to your profiles
• Directory Listings
  • Adding of detailed descriptions to online directory listings

By using multiple channels to distribute your content throughout the Internet, we are able to build a powerful online presence for your firm. All of these different web pages will contain well-written and relevant information that will serve as a support structure for your website. Improving the natural search rankings of your website will involve regular additions and enhancements to the content.

Using Quality Content to Acquire Links and Further Distribution

We make sure to publish information that people will find interesting and informative. If you have good content that people are interested in, other Internet users will find it and link to it. Having uniquely interesting content is one of the best ways to naturally acquire quality inbound links.

We are able to work with our clients to determine legal topics that are highly interesting and sought after. These topics may include:

• Recent changes in the law;
• Hot political issues;
• Highly debated issues; and
• Controversial issues.

The best way to get noticed is to provide your audience with valuable information that may not be available from other sources. We work with our clients to successfully communicate information about sensitive issues and take advantage of these issues to distribute content that promotes their law firm.

When other people are drawn to your content, they will choose to re-distribute it themselves. For example, someone may read one of your web pages, press releases, articles, or blog entries and decide to tweet it on their twitter page, bookmark it on their social bookmarking page, or share it on their Facebook page. By doing this, they are basically saying "Hey everyone, I read this article and it is very interesting, Check it out!" People do that all the time. When this happens, traffic to your pages will increase, your web pages will acquire quality inbound links, and your law firm will receive priceless exposure.

Web Content and Bar Compliance

State Bar Regulations will often restrict the ways in which attorneys communicate about their services. Many state bar associations will prohibit the use of "laudatory statements" or statements that compare a lawyer's services to those of other lawyers of firms. Terms like "best" or "better" will be considered as laudatory and cannot be used. Other prohibited terms may include words like "expert" or "specialist" depending on the state. Some states will restrict the ways in which case results or testimonials can be displayed. Many states will require some type of disclaimer to be present as well.

At Internet LAVA, we pay close attention to bar rules and keep them in mind when we write our content. We help you make sure that any written content is compliant with bar regulations for your state.

SEO Copywriting

When writing content for a lawyer website, search engine optimization is always at the forefront of our efforts. We make sure to use the latest SEO techniques to generate content that is highly effective in search engines.

Authority for Information

The most effective method to writing good SEO content is to provide the end-user with material that is truly interesting and valuable. When people are attracted to the subject matter of your content, they will link to it and share it with others. Acquiring this type of content promotion is the best way to stand out in the search engines. When this happens, your firm will be viewed as an authority on the topic and the search engines will rank your pages higher. This will allow the end-user to easily find your material when they search for keyword phrases related to that topic. Many times, this can result in acquiring the exact kinds of cases that you really want.

Page Relevance

Page relevance is very important. The content of your page should contain several different terms that are related to the main keyword phrase that the page is targeting. Simply writing a short page of web copy and mentioning the keyword phrase several times will not help your content stand out. For the content to truly stand out, it must talk about other topics and key terms that are closely related.

For example: this page is about "Attorney Web Copywriting." Other key terms that are closely related to this keyword phrase may include:

• Legal Copywriting
• Promotional Copywriting
• Business Copywriting
• Internet Copywriting
• Marketing Communications
• Communication Design
• Advertising Agencies
• Freelance Writing
• Writing Website Copy
• Copyediting
• Newspapers
• Magazines
• Publishing

This page now has a stronger page relevance because it mentions several other key terms that are related to the main topic.

Keyword Density

The abundance of a keyword on the page is calculated by a percentage of how many times they word or phrase appears on the page compared to the total number of words on the page. There are several online tools that people can use to measure the keyword density of a page. These keyword density tests are not very effective with writing SEO content. In the past, keyword density used to be a major factor.

As search engine algorithms have evolved, keyword density has become far less important. You want to make sure and avoid over-using keywords in your content. Search engines may see this as "keyword cramming" or "keyword stuffing." If a keyword or phrase is too dense, it can actually harm your rankings. Instead of concentrating on the density of a few particular keywords, it is better to use a variety of different keywords and related terms throughout the page.

The best advice that we can give as far as keyword density is: don't worry about it. Other factors such as page relevance and inbound links are far more important for SEO.

Hyperlinks

It is important to include hyperlinks throughout the your website content. There are 3 different types of hyperlinks that should each be considered:

Tips for Writing Good SEO Content

• Talk to your audience, not at them. The user likes to feel like they are being talked to as opposed to just reading general information.

• Write content that is interesting. Determine a topic that you feel people will be interested in and provide your audience with valuable information on the topic.

• Have a specific SEO goal in mind for each page that you write. Determine a good keyword phrase to target and write a page that is focused on the optimization of that key term.

• Make sure your content easy to understand. Avoid long paragraphs. Use titles, headers, sub-headers, bullets, and short paragraphs.

• Use a variety of different keywords and related terms. Avoid "keyword cramming" and make sure that your content is relevant to the main topic.

• Use interior links throughout your content. It is also good to include a few exterior links to other resources.

Internet LAVA's Superior Web Copywriting Services for Attorneys

At Internet LAVA, we don't take shortcuts when it comes to web copy. Our copywriters use the latest techniques to ensure that your website will rank highly in search engines and maintain that ranking over time. If you're interested in finding out more about our services, please call (800) 292-LAVA.