SEO Content Writing For Law Firms: 5 Seo Writing Rules

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

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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. Write Longer Content

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.