In Defense of Stating the Obvious on Your Law Firm’s Website

Perhaps you had a professor in law school who reacted with outrage when first-year law students did not know what a tort was or had never heard the expression “black letter law.” Maybe you have a good laugh when a prospective client tells you that she doesn’t think her ex-husband deserves unsupervised parenting time simply because he lets the children watch more TV than she considers reasonable or another that expects you to bribe the police to make his DUI charges go away. “Some people just don’t understand” is a refrain that we hear too often; it usually serves no purpose other than to make the speaker feel smart. Being amused at other people’s ignorance is not a good look for lawyers. What is the job of attorneys in public-facing practice areas such as family law, criminal defense, and estate law, if not to help people understand the law? What better way to inform the public about the laws and legal procedures related to your practice area than by regularly updating your website with informative, understandable legal blog content?

Nothing Is Obvious

According to Robert Rose of Content Marketing Institute, 90 percent of success in content marketing is attributable to successful communication. The root of the problem is that speakers assume that something is so obvious to the audience that the speaker does not need to say it. He is referring to communication between clients and professional content creators, but the rule applies equally well to communication between the author of the content and the audience.

By this logic, you should not shy away from stating the obvious in your content, because it probably is not obvious to prospective clients. For example, how many clients contact personal injury lawyers after they have accepted an insurance settlement that is not enough to cover all their accident-related medical expenses? You would be able help a lot more clients get a lot more money if the general public knew more about the events in the days and weeks after an accident where insurance companies make it harder for injured people to recover settlement money that will cover all their accident-related bills. It is a good idea to write blog posts about how you should have a lawyer contact the insurance company when they ask you to give a recorded statement or before signing the insurance settlement offer. Most people don’t know that they should do this, because most billboards and TV ads do not make it clear. In other words, it is obvious to personal injury lawyers, but not to the people who need their services. Remember that, in a law firm blog, your audience has almost no background knowledge about the law; it is not like when you are giving a presentation at a conference for lawyers.

The Obvious Can Still Be Interesting

The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers will compose legal blog content that explains basic legal concepts to your target audience in an engaging way.

The 4 Elements of an SEO-Friendly Blog Post

Google’s algorithms are changing all the time, and there is robust debate among search engine optimization (SEO) professionals about which metrics deserve the most of your attention. Should you write longer content to increase users’ time on page? Should you devote your time to building backlinks, which would require you to make a good impression on your competitors? Should you Google the name of your own law firm and ensure that its name, address, and phone number (NAP) is accurate on every website where it appears? If you devote most of your law firm’s marketing budget to following the latest SEO trends, it will only leave you feeling overwhelmed. A better use of your time is to follow the SEO practices that have been helping businesses attract web traffic for as long as business websites have existed. In other words, keep updating your website with factually accurate, readable legal blog content that has all the elements of an SEO-friendly blog post.

Content

Prospective clients will visit your website if it contains information about topics relevant to them. Think of your law firm’s blog as a constantly evolving frequently asked questions page about your practice area. It can also include commentary on current news stories that relate to your practice area. Choose your blog topics based on questions that current clients have asked you, rather than on what you think would make the best SEO keywords.

Keywords

You don’t want your blog post to sound like a parade of keywords, but it is worthwhile to do some keyword research. It is sufficient to use a keyword once in a title, once in a subheading, and once in the body text of the blog post.

Links

Don’t think of linking your blog post to other websites as an SEO gimmick; if you approach it that way, Google will see right through it and penalize your site. Instead, approach the incorporation of links into your blog post as citing your sources. In other words, link to sites that you would be proud to share with your law school professors.

Formatting

Content is king, but no one will stay on your web page long enough to appreciate your awesome content if the formatting of the page is too difficult to read. Whatever you do, do not format your blog post as a single, continuous block of text. SEO experts differ as to the ideal length for a paragraph; some say that you can safely include up to 12 sentences in a paragraph, while others go as far as to recommend single-sentence paragraphs. Regardless of the paragraph length you choose, your blog posts should format easily on mobile devices and tablets as well as on desktop and laptop computers.

When You Need More Than Just the Basics

Anyone can write one blog post, but most lawyers do not have the time to write a steady stream of them, which is what Google prefers. The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers will deliver informative, well-researched blog posts week after week.

Can Natural Language Processing Bots Help You Overcome Writer’s Block?

You may not have ever heard Bernie Taupin’s name, but if you are a Baby Boomer, a member of Generation X, or a Millennial, you have heard his lyrics. If, before law school destroyed your creativity, you wrote a blog entitled “Count the Headlights on the Highway,” “Thank God My Music’s Still Alive,” or “A Couple of Vodka and Tonics to Get You on Your Feet Again,” you have him to thank. If you have not, then the reason those phrases are familiar to you is because of the tunes you immediately hear in your mind when you read them. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics to most of Elton John’s songs, and their songwriting partnership is one of the most celebrated in music history. For many of the songs, Elton John only had to read the lyrics once before he could imagine melodies and arrangements to go with them. If Elton John has ever single handedly written a song, music and lyrics, you and I have never heard it. Maybe what you need to fill your law firm’s website with content is for someone to write a series of not especially interesting phrases that you can then artfully spin into engaging legal blog content, and you don’t even need to enlist the help of a lifelong friend to do it; natural language processing bots are up to the task.

Bots Write for Google, and You Write for Humans

Natural language processing (NLP) software can generate content by remixing content it has already read. Just as parrots apparently know what to say based on cues, without comprehending situations. (Writing an epilogue to Kafka’s Metamorphosis is not one of those situations, at least not yet.) You can, however, input a keyword into SEO software such as Ubersuggest, and the NPL bots can produce the following elements of a blog post:

· Title

· Subheadings

· Meta description

· First sentence to go under each subheading

By this time, you will be about a quarter of the way to a 500-word post. Some software applications will let you choose from a list of generated titles and subheadings. This way, even if you do not get a burst of inspiration to write eloquent prose, the task of finishing a blog post can feel more like you are filling out a form. In other words, it can feel like one of the less intellectually demanding tasks in your workday. You might not end up with a Pulitzer Prize-winning blog post, but you will end up with blog content that is exponentially more valuable to readers than if you had simply commanded NPL bots to create a blog post from beginning to end. If the purpose of your blog is to show Google that your site frequently adds content, then good enough blog posts could be just what you need to direct readers to your site, where your credentials speak for themselves.

Don’t Feel Like Being Writing Buddies With a Chatbot?

The professional legal content writers at Law Blog Writers will compose law firm blog content by, for, and about humans, blog content that Google will love, too.