Dri­ving valu­able traf­fic toward your web­site is a key goal in every search engine opti­miza­tion strat­e­gy. The best way to do that is by rank­ing high­er on browsers like Google and Bing. 

A good SEO strat­e­gy will help you get there. How­ev­er, you will need a bit more than tech­ni­cal SEO, and opti­miz­ing your key­words is only part of the battle.

This is where qual­i­ty SEO writ­ing comes into play. Opti­mized con­tent plays a cru­cial role not only in help­ing crawlers bet­ter under­stand your web­site but it also increas­es the user expe­ri­ence on your pages. User expe­ri­ence is among the most impor­tant fac­tors to rank­ing higher.

How can law firms get the most out of their con­tent? Read on to find out.

What is SEO Content Writing? 

Defined in the sim­plest way pos­si­ble, SEO writ­ing entails cre­at­ing writ­ten con­tent in a way that helps both crawlers and users under­stand what your site’s about. 

Opti­mized con­tent (with the use of the best-fit­ting key­words) helps browsers make a bet­ter judg­ment of your site and thus, improve your place­ment in the search results. 

Good SEO writ­ing helps you get on the first page of the search results. And why is that impor­tant? Accord­ing to 2021 data, the first five organ­ic results account for 67.60% of total clicks. 

On the oth­er hand, SEO writ­ing is an endur­ing mar­ket­ing tech­nique that will remain on your web­site as long as it’s online. For instance, many peo­ple use PPC adver­tis­ing to dri­ve more traf­fic to their sites. How­ev­er, when their bud­get reach­es its lim­it, the adver­tis­ing drops,and the traf­fic drops. In the case of live opti­mized con­tent, that won’t be an issue, mak­ing it a great long-term investment.

Last­ly, entrust­ing your con­tent to a sea­soned con­tent writer will mean that the blog and page con­tent will be opti­mized both for search engines and humans. Qual­i­ty SEO writ­ing is all about find­ing the best blend of key­word-opti­mized writ­ing and cre­at­ing some­thing that’s easy to read and about your vis­i­tors find­ing val­ue on your web­site even before they choose to use your services.

The Basics of Optimized Content

Close Up Businessman Hand Writing Content or Somethings on Notebook With Using Laptop at Wooden Table at Home Office

Writ­ing search engine-friend­ly con­tent is easy to under­stand but chal­leng­ing to mas­ter. Every SEO writer knows that there’s no mag­ic for­mu­la for writ­ing first-page-guar­an­teed con­tent, but they know that there are quite a few ways to tip the scale in the content’s favor.

Imple­ment­ing prop­er key­words is prob­a­bly the first gold­en rule of good writ­ing prac­tices. Google’s crawlers active­ly scan both for key­words and relat­ed words to your main key­words to bet­ter under­stand what your pages are all about. These crawlers also look at your site to see whether the SEO writer has pure­ly writ­ten the con­tent for SEO pur­pos­es or for an actu­al read­er audience. 

Writ­ers always aim to strike a bal­ance between writ­ing for opti­miza­tion and for humans. Key­word stuff­ing is some­thing that can poten­tial­ly ruin the user expe­ri­ence, but using too few of these main words and phras­es can fail to sig­nal crawlers which is the sole pur­pose of the content.

SEO writ­ing is also about qual­i­ty. Crawlers assess the lan­guage of the con­tent. If it’s way too sim­ple, it won’t be regard­ed as high-val­ue. Thus, a good SEO writer must have the knowl­edge and the expe­ri­ence that meets all these cri­te­ria, cre­at­ing a prod­uct in the end that has all the tech­ni­cal require­ments while still flow­ing naturally. 

Best Practices for Optimizing Content

So how can law firms get the most out of the con­tent on their web­sites? Here are a few must-fol­low rules that will great­ly improve the qual­i­ty of your content.

  1. Be User-Centered

SEO writ­ers write for humans. This sounds fair­ly sim­ple, but it’s easy to get car­ried away and focus only on prop­er key­word placement. 

Writ­ing qual­i­ty con­tent starts with know­ing who you are writ­ing for. For firms that deal with legal mat­ters, this can even be more chal­leng­ing since writ­ers also have to sim­pli­fy the legal ter­mi­nol­o­gy so that it is more acces­si­ble to wider audiences.

  1. Know Where to Look for Keywords

Per­form­ing thor­ough key­word research is essen­tial for writ­ing opti­mized con­tent. Assess­ing which is the most pop­u­lar and choos­ing the right long-tail key­words can great­ly improve your chances of rank­ing better.

Opt for vari­ety when it comes to key­word usage. Some terms may already have way too much com­pe­ti­tion for the top spots in the SERPs. Because of this, incor­po­rate key­words that have low­er search volume.

  1. Using Relat­ed Words

The lat­est algo­rithm updates also take into account the words you use that accom­pa­ny your key­words. These accom­pa­ny­ing words help the search engines assess that the top­ic is real­ly about what you’ve writ­ten in your headline. 

Research­ing seman­tic index­ing can help when it comes to defin­ing the best accom­pa­ny­ing words you can use, and it’s a must for seri­ous SEO writers.

  1. Under­stand­ing the Algorithm

Prop­er SEO writ­ing starts with under­stand­ing Google’s algo­rithm. When you know how the largest search engine ranks pages, writ­ing high-rank­ing con­tent can become a lot less daunting, 

With­out going into detail, Google wants to be as pre­cise and effec­tive as pos­si­ble. Being clear, con­cise, and user-friend­ly can help a great deal in improv­ing your site’s position.

  1. Write Longer Content

Portrait of a Young African American Woman Sitting at the Desk With a Laptop, Typing an Email

With the Google Pan­da 4.1 update, the search engine’s algo­rithm favors longer con­tent forms.

With­out being over­ly spe­cif­ic, law firms (and busi­ness­es from every niche) should aim to have at least 1,000 words of qual­i­ty con­tent per page. 

Aim­ing for longer con­tent forms also gives more space to SEO writ­ers who can incor­po­rate more elab­o­rate ways of serv­ing infor­ma­tion, like using tables, lists, and so on.

Also, well-opti­mized web pages can include dif­fer­ent types of con­tent to help the read­ers (and search engines) bet­ter under­stand their intent.

Descrip­tive pic­tures, graphs, and videos can all be excel­lent in this regard.

Last­ly, the opti­mized con­tent should also be unique. Good SEO writ­ers know that they should avoid pla­gia­rism from oth­er web­sites, and they use use­ful pla­gia­rism-detect­ing tools to make sure what they’ve writ­ten has no match­es online. 

Apart from all this, you should also aim to:

  • Link your con­tent to qual­i­ty web­sites: when you do this, search engines (and your audi­ence as well) per­ceive you as “cred­i­ble,” enabling you to build more trust.
  • Don’t for­get meta descriptions.
  • Use sub­head­ings: break­ing up the con­tent will make it eas­i­er to digest for your read­ers. If you incor­po­rate key­words in them, search engines will have an even eas­i­er time deci­pher­ing your pages and rank­ing them higher.

Writing Content the Right Way

As stat­ed above, writ­ing with SEO in mind is pret­ty straight­for­ward but com­plex with no def­i­nite mag­ic for­mu­la. Cre­at­ing high-qual­i­ty, up-to-date con­tent that’s opti­mized both for search engines and the read­ers takes time and requires the writer to be well-versed not just in the lat­est SEO trends but in legal top­ics as well.

For the most part, law firm employ­ees may be able to write con­tent from time to time, but it might often inter­fere with oth­er oblig­a­tions. By out­sourc­ing SEO and con­tent writ­ing, law firms will not only be able to improve their online pres­ence with­out hav­ing to invest the nec­es­sary time to opti­mize their site pages and the con­tent on them, but they will also have more time for their clients, pro­vid­ing them with the legal help they need.

That being said, if you need any help with SEO or with SEO-friend­ly con­tent, don’t hes­i­tate to reach out to us.