Lexicon Legal Content

Google Wants You to Know that It Pays to Be Helpful

Posted on September 16, 2022March 8, 2023 by David B. Arato

The world of SEO is abuzz about the helpful content update recently published by Google. While this latest offering doesn’t seem to be earth-shattering, it is important to familiarize yourself with it – and to generally keep up. As such, there are five basic tips that can help anyone out there who needs to pay attention to SEO, which means any law firm with an online presence. The message driving Google’s latest offering is that you should be taking a people-first approach – rather than writing for bots. When Google embraces its human side, it’s time for businesses to follow suit.

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how to increase traffic to your website?

Posted on May 18, 2022April 27, 2024 by David B. Arato

Your law firm’s website plays an important role in terms of marketing and reaching your target audience – and your content matters. Generating relevant and compelling content is the name of the game, but if you find yourself at a loss when it comes to choosing inspiring topics that resonate with your widest potential audience, you are not alone. Many firms find themselves recycling the same, tired titles time and time again, but you can do better, and we have some helpful hints to get you started.

Think Seasonal

The seasons hit us all the same, and they make a great anchor for developing content.

The Spring and Summer Months

With summer nearly upon us, your content should focus on legal matters that relate to summer living, including:

With the kids out of school, there are summer child custody schedules to tweak, and child custody modifications are common.
With warmer weather, we see more road trips, which can inspire a wealth of topics, including traffic accidents, road safety, travel routes, destinations, and much more.
Summer means vacay, which lends itself nicely to articles about premises liability claims related to hotels, resorts, and pools.
Boats and jet skis hit their stride in the warmer months, which makes articles that explore related accidents a gimme.

There are also the summer holidays to consider, which deserve some attention of their own.

Memorial Day

This year, Memorial Day is on May 27, and it tends to kick off summer break for all the kiddos out there. Memorial Day is a three-day weekend that brings family and friends together for beer, brats, and yard games (or some variant thereof), and it’s a great opportunity to visit and spruce up the gravesites of our lost loved ones – with a focus on veterans. Memorial Day, however, is also closely associated with some heavy-duty traffic accident statistics, including (according to the National Safety Council, NSC) that traffic fatalities spike over the Memorial Day weekend (compared to the weekends that bracket it). In other words, you can treat Memorial Day as a springboard for a wide range of related articles.

Fourth of July

The Fourth of July falls on a Monday this year, which – for many people – means a 4- or 5-day weekend. Fourth of July has everything that summer has to offer on tap, with some extras thrown in for good measure, including:

Elevated car accident statistics related to increased traffic, increased impairment behind the wheel and increased distraction
Water-related accidents
Injuries caused by fireworks

Labor Day

Labor Day means back to school and the child custody concerns that are often sparked by this transition. There are also topics about accidents on school grounds and accidents related to children making their way to and from school – including bus accidents, pedestrian accidents, and bike accidents – to consider.

We can all relate to the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day – and all the other holidays – on a very personal level, which makes the summer holidays a great platform for blog topics. Don’t be afraid to give your blog entries and articles your own spin – it’s the best way to find your voice and to really speak to all those searchers who can truly benefit from your services. If you have a unique topic in mind, don’t back-burner it simply because it’s not what everyone else is doing – you might have a real winner on your hands, and when you speak from a place of authentic concern, it can have a profound impact.

The Fall and Winter Months

As temperatures and daylight hours decrease, there’s a lot going on – and there’s plenty to keep you busy in terms of content. Consider all the following:

Winter driving risks
Holiday travel
Increased holiday traffic and traffic accident statistics
Increased impairment behind the wheel
Weather-related premises liability claims
Holiday-related stress and the accidents it causes

These basic topics are the starting point for articles that can be woven into your own masterpieces of content – that also address your potential clients’ needs. Remember, too, that a well-polished title and outline – about a subject of your choice – is going to take you farther than a rote reinterpretation of the basics.

A Feast of Topics

If your firm focuses on personal injury, medical malpractice, workers’ compensation, or any combination of these practices, NSC has a treasure trove of potential topics on offer. Each year, they publish a Safety Observance Calendar that focuses on specific national health and safety awareness campaigns (replete with valuable resources for you to explore). For example, just a few of the many topics on tap for May and June of 2022 include:

May is Motorcycle Safety Month, National Bike Month, National Electric Safety Month, Trauma Awareness Month, National Water Safety Month, National Building Safety Month, and much more.
May 21-27 is National Safe Boating Week.
June is National Safety Month.
June 5-11 is National Trailer Safety Week (tractor-trailers).
June 20 is National Ride to Work Day (focusing on those who commute to work on motorcycles and scooters).

This is the tip of the iceberg. If you’re looking for current content ideas, NSC has got you covered.

Keeping Your Content Fresh

In order to create quality content, you need great topics, but that – of course – is not the end of the story. The topic sets the stage, but your content has to deliver. Factors to focus on include:

Creating a strong outline that flows seamlessly from your introduction to a solid conclusion
Allowing the reader to hear your voice
Inspiring your readers to take the next step in moving from potential client to actual client

Finally, don’t shy away from revisiting older content and jazzing it up. Polishing the title, tightening the writing, updating the statistics, and including an eye-popping example or two can breathe new life into work that is down but not out.

Get More from Your Current Content with Historical Optimization

Posted on February 28, 2022 by David B. Arato

You recognize that content is king, but you may not be making the most of the content that you already have. And this is where historical optimization shines. Historical optimization sounds more technical than it needs to be – the bottom line is that it involves breathing new life into the content you’ve already published, which can do you a world of good in terms of giving your return on investment a bump.

10 Legal Content Marketing Terms You Should Get to Know

Posted on February 8, 2022 by David B. Arato

Marketing your legal content seems easy enough – write stellar copy and get it out there where it needs to be. There are, of course, challenges along the way. One of the primary building blocks of solid legal marketing is understanding the terminology that populates its principles and methodologies. Because even major players use terms in different ways – sometimes with newly imagined meanings – it’s important to have a nuanced understanding of the basics. Others may play fast and loose with their legal marketing terms, but once you and your team have settled on meaningful definitions that work for you, you’ll be far better prepared to make your mark in legal marketing.

Four Easy Ways to Find Fresh Ideas for Your Law Firm Blog

Posted on January 7, 2022February 15, 2023 by David B. Arato

Whether you are a solo practitioner or part of a large law firm, improving your Google search rankings and online authority should be one of your top marketing priorities. When your audience likes and can relate to what you are publishing online, Google rewards you, as do your prospects when they turn into clients. The best way to accomplish these goals is to draft high-quality content for your website frequently.
However, creating compelling content isn’t as easy as it might sound. For most attorneys, wordsmithing tasks become buried by the dozens of other duties they must complete. Publishing excellent content that resonates with your desired audience must be a priority, or your blog won’t be an effective marketing tool. You won’t reap the rewards you desire. In fact, it’s so crucial that we highly recommend creating an editorial calendar that can serve as a guide and will remind you to keep creating content.

Finding Fresh Content Ideas

Sometimes it’s less about prioritizing your blog and more about fresh ideas. Far too often, lawyers give up on their blog because they run out of topics they want to talk about or think their audience wants to hear. Generating new content doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming—consider these tools to help keep your content up to date and innovative.

What Are People Asking About Online?

Research what people are asking about online. Garner ideas from questions people are asking about in your area of practice. TextOptimizer is one tool that can help you get inside your readers’ heads. It allows you to research what questions are being asked about specific topics. Simply type in a keyword on the “Find Content Ideas” page. For instance, typing “personal injury” reveals these results:

Do I have a personal injury case?
Do I have a personal injury claim?
What is a personal injury lawsuit?
Do I need a personal injury lawyer?

For more detailed results and tools, you can pay for the subscription service on the site. Its additional features can help you narrow down content suggestions and find keyword combinations that meet search engine requirements.

Many people turn to the internet daily for answers to their questions. If your website can provide a reliable answer, it will see more traffic and reach higher rankings.

Enlist the Help of Your Intake Team

To help specify your topics even further and keep them relevant to your potential clients, consider asking your intake team to document your prospects’ questions and concerns. This step can provide you with insight into what your audience is looking for when it comes to legal information and help.

Apps such as Slack or Google Docs are an excellent way for them to record the questions they receive on intake. Such a database will provide a convenient way to view them easily in one place when you are ready to do so.

Use Keyword Research Tools

While keywords are typically thought of in terms of SEO, they can serve other purposes. Taking the time to research relevant keywords can give you some valuable insight into your prospects’ questions and interests. Check out these tools:

Kparser generates several keyword ideas around the main topic of your choosing. It can provide you with fresh topic ideas that you may never have even thought about.
Answer the Public allows you to use keywords or key phrases and receive an aggregated view of the questions Google and Bing receive. For example, if you type in “slip and fall,” you will receive hundreds of different answers and topic ideas.

Recognize Seasonal Trends and Relevant News

Your audience experiences many of the same things you do, including seasonal trends such as:

Holidays
Back to school
Summer vacation
Travel
The Super Bowl and other popular sporting events
Gearing up for winter weather conditions

Suppose you practice family law. In that case, you may want to focus on parenting topics and shared custody during the Christmas season or summer vacation. If your practice focuses on estate planning, make it a point to discuss tax topics during the first quarter of the year.

You may also want to focus on what is nationally recognized on certain days or weeks of the year. For example, if you are a business attorney, publish a blog about National Small Business Week a week or two before it’s recognized.

Making your blog timely and relatable to what is going on will also help draw traffic to your site. Your prospects also pay attention to the news from various sources. As such, if there have been recent news stories or changes to the law that impact your area of expertise, be sure to address these matters in your content. Not only will it help increase your online traffic, but it can show your audience that you stay up to date and are an authority in your area of practice.

Do You Need Help Publishing Frequent Fresh Content?

It’s easy to get bogged down when it comes to publishing fresh and timely blogs on your law firm’s website. Whether you find it challenging to make room in your schedule to write and post your blog or to keep your readers coming back for more with fresh content, our team of attorney-led writers can help. Call us today at 877-488-8123 or contact us online. Our seasoned marketing professionals are happy to address your content needs and show you how we can help.

What Is Content Readability and Who Defines It?

Posted on December 7, 2021December 7, 2021 by David B. Arato

Most of us think something is readable if we enjoy it. We want a piece to have a beginning, middle, and end, preferably in that order. If it’s fictional, we want it to be about people we care about or like. Sometimes, it’s a book you just happen to come across or a title or a cover that drew you in, and you couldn’t leave till you finished the story. Sometimes, it’s something so powerful that you simply can’t let it go. However, these qualities aren’t the only kinds of readability.

When it comes to getting your law firm website to rank, content readability is an important factor. Search engines analyze readability and reward it. In other words, they rank (and put at the top of the SERPs) the articles that have the features the engine thinks will make a reader stick to the end. Aside from all the other things the contributed to readability, being current and up-to-date is one of the most important factors. Keeping your firm’s website current and up-to-date with content that people want to read will go a long way to keeping you high on that first results page.

Do We Know It When We See It?

One of the ways a search engine defines readability is by determining how long a reader stays in place before sliding on to the next result. It doesn’t just matter how many people click on your page; it matters how long they stay after they get there. There are ways to encourage them to stick around, such as with video and audio content and eye-catching graphics. Paying attention to these things takes more time than simply reading – or not reading – whatever copy you’ve offered. Still, words are usually far less expensive than sound, pictures, and graphics, so it is very much worth your time to offer the best and most readable content you can provide.

Key Readability Factors

Factors that Google will focus on when deciding the readability of your page include:

Sentence Length & Variety

You want short sentences but with some variation in their length and style. Avoid unnecessary or overly formal words. Additionally, it’s better not to crowd your text with words like “actually” and “usually,” which give you no value for the space. Avoid using too many adjectives and consider breaking up long, complicated sentences.

Structure & Style

Again, short sentences are vital. Each sentence should have a subject and a verb – preferably in that order. Make sure to include graphics and video here as well. They are supporting tools and hold your visitors. Avoid fussy fonts.

Paragraph Length and Formatting

Use short paragraphs made up of short sentences. Readable paragraphs are usually 5 or 6 lines long. Use a title and subtitles. Bullet points are your best friends, and you should always try to include at least one. Don’t forget to include keywords. You’ll want to put them in subtitles as well as in your paragraphs and try to repeat them without sounding like you’re just adding keywords.

Make It Work for You

All of these factors and more can make your website attractive and engaging to readers. You can contact us to help you provide the most readable copy for your website. We will even provide a free sample, marketing written expressly for you to help you decide how best to move forward with your legal content.

Assessing and Changing Underperforming Content

Posted on September 25, 2021February 15, 2023 by David B. Arato

Although SEO strategy is multi-faceted, content optimization is a big-hitter when it comes to successful marketing. Like other methods that bring traffic to a website, ups and downs are common in content marketing. Unfortunately, many companies using best practices still find that their content underperforms or that it is not reaching as many people as they would like.

If you find this happening with your content, don’t simply chalk it up to a natural waning in your marketing. Content that isn’t performing or working to increase the success of your business demands your attention. It’s a wake-up call that something needs to change. You should start by reevaluating your content to detect what contributed to its poor performance.

Who Is Your Target Audience?

No matter the business, it makes sense that you want content that will reel in the most user traffic. However, having your content geared towards an audience that matches your company’s brand is imperative. Carefully select content topics, ensuring that they will reach and interest the audience you need to attract. Your content should establish your knowledge and expertise within your field. Furthermore, headlines are a significant piece of garnering traffic—they should grab the readers’ attention and draw them in.

Additionally, you should consider the type of promotion and your desired audience when determining the length of your content. For example, individuals who dive deep into scientific journals will be more than willing to read longer content than someone who browses blogs. Using email newsletters or websites as a platform for content advertising won’t reach as many people as social media platforms. While newsletters and websites may give you more digital real estate to publish content than social media platforms, the priority should be quality over quantity.

Deciding on a Topic and Avoiding Duplications

If you have a built-out SEO strategy, you may have already published numerous blogs and other pieces of content. Although this is usually a good thing, it can create duplicate and overlapping topics within the content. It’s critical that you are mindful of your previous publications so that you can avoid repeating topics and significant overlap.

Suppose you already have a well-performing page or blog with the same predominant topic. It could be receiving more of an audience than a newly published one. In that case, reconsider your current content, reframe it, or focus just on the original piece itself.

Overdone topics also lead to underperforming content. It’s crucial to recognize that readers can locate hundreds of versions of one single topic. It can all blend together and, honestly, might bore your readership. Content marketers should pivot from these old habits and instead utilize a unique and fresh perspective when approaching their content marketing strategies.

For example, search for holes in competitor content. Use those weak spots to target where there will be little, if any, competition. Another strategy would be to integrate attention-catching components into your blogs—such as:

Altering the headline
Adding certain keywords like “free” or “instantly”
Using visuals and an easy-to-read format

Changing underperforming content to successful content is often a challenging task. However, organizations can attain substantial improvements in their reach and conversion rates by:

Reevaluating their marketing strategies
Working towards more effective SEO practices

If you aren’t quite sure what your next steps should be when it comes to SEO and content marketing or if you are simply ready to let someone else take the reins, our attorney-led team of legal writers is here to help. Join the many law firms and digital marketing agencies with legal clients that rely on us to create highly effective and visible content marketing campaigns. We promptly provide ethics-compliant content that establishes your authority in your niche. Our team will focus on your content while you focus on serving the needs of your clients. Call our office today at 877-488-8123 or contact us online to discuss your content needs with one of our marketing experts.

Your 2021 Legal Content Marketing Toolkit

Posted on April 23, 2021May 16, 2023 by David B. Arato

If you’re a law firm and you’re unsure about this content marketing you hear so much about, there’s no reason to panic. Content marketing consists of publishing content on various platforms. The content you publish can be blogs, social media, podcasts, videos, or anything else that allows you to connect with your potential clients. When it comes to legal content marketing, the most important point to keep in mind is that it matters. In fact, according to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing for your firm can garner about three times the number of leads you’re likely to bring in with paid searches.

Potential Clients Appreciate a Genuine Approach

The web is full of flashy ads that very few of us actually rely upon. In fact, the average online consumer is bombarded with thousands of ads a day, and the sheer volume alone has a way of dimming their shine. It’s difficult to break through that wall of advertising noise with an ad of your own, no matter how well-produced it is. Your potential clients are looking for professional legal guidance, which means they are looking for authenticity, authority, and accessibility. While online ads certainly have their place, they can’t help you connect with potential clients in the same way that well-written, targeted, and informative content can, and this is especially true for law firms.

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SEO Predictions for 2021

Posted on March 1, 2021February 26, 2021 by David B. Arato

A person pointing at an analytics chart on a screen

2020 is finally behind us, and the best and the brightest in the SEO and content marketing space are weighing in on what just happened. They’re also dusting off their crystal balls and making a few predictions about what we should be on the lookout for in 2021. While the early focus for 2020 was spam reduction, the whole global pandemic tipped that on its head, and things went in a different direction. Google was busy putting out other fires, and spam stayed put.

How Important Are My Competitors’ Keywords?

Posted on April 22, 2020February 15, 2023 by David B. Arato

When you’re strategizing for SEO, it’s only natural to consider your competitors and their keywords, but knowing where to begin can be a problem. There are some keyword zingers out there that seem to be surefire bets, but you’re looking for a good fit and a good value. Fortunately, there are some basic guidelines that can help you make the most of your keyword journey.

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