Content is one of the most potent driving forces of Lawyer SEO. The more content you create, the better your chances of getting new site visitors, finding interested clients, and ranking higher on the SERPs.

Since users need to consume your content to be effective for SEO and marketing, you need to make sure that the readers understand and get value from them.

After all, the harder it is for people to read and understand your legal content, the less likely they’ll be to read more posts, explore your website, or remember your law firm’s name. So instead, what’s likely going to happen is that they’ll click off, do another search, and click on other websites that provide better information.

That said, there are several ways to create valuable, understandable, and user-friendly legal content for your law firm’s website. Let’s look at these tips:

1. Write For Beginners

When people look up legal blogs, they’re looking for legal information to help them with their current needs. While some lawyers might look things up, it’s safer to assume that your audience doesn’t know much about the law. Both beginners and experienced lawyers alike will still understand simplified legal content.

On the contrary, legal blogs chock-full of niche language, technical terminologies, and unexplained concepts won’t be as generally user-friendly. Your fellow lawyers will understand what you’re saying, but the beginners who are likely potential clients won’t. This makes it counterintuitive to your law firm marketing efforts, as you’re alienating the people who require your legal services the most.

So, make sure you’re using concise, easy-to-understand language that caters to people with varying levels of legal knowledge. Avoid very niche language, legalese, and unexplained acronyms.

2. Focus On Getting Information Out To The Reader

While composition, sentence structure, and metaphors are all elements of excellent writing, they don’t always make great web copies.

The internet has allowed for fast information acquisition. If you need to know something, you just do a quick Google search, and you’ll get your answers in seconds. If a website or a blog post takes too long to give someone the information they need, they can simply click off and find something else.

So yes, it’s discouraging for readers to get through a huge wall of text to get the information they need. People will read your content expecting to get not more or less than they need. So, if you find yourself rambling on too long about unrelated topics in your blog post, it’s time to make some changes in your writing.

So, make a habit of writing concisely. Avoid long and winding sentences, use simple vocabulary, and get straight to the point. If something needs to be explained more thoroughly, consider writing a separate blog post that you can link to a relevant keyword.

3. Write In Sections

Speaking of large walls of text, one way to break them is to section your content by using headings. Not only do they break up long texts, but they can also help the reader find specific sections easier.

For example, if you’re writing a guide to Personal Injury Law, you’ll need to discuss different aspects of it. Sometimes, people don’t need to know everything about a topic, so they’ll scroll down to specific information like the statute of limitations and damages. If you don’t have headers separating these sections, your readers might have difficulty finding the precise information they need.

You can also use headers in listicles (like this blog post) to separate different ideas from each other. Not to mention, these headers are HTML and can be used by screen readers to help visually impaired readers navigate your blog post.

4. Use Bullets And Numbers

On the topic of concise content and breaking up walls of text, a great way to deliver your ideas quickly and concisely is through lists. Instead of listing ideas in long paragraphs, you can list them with bullets or numbers.

These lists don’t only apply to singular items; you can also use them for phrases and sentences. For example, some writers would write lists like notes and highlights, allowing you to present the most important ideas without having the reader go through a long paragraph.

Not to mention, listing things also makes it easier for readers to find the content they need. Instead of finding the exact sentence amongst a wall of text, they can just scroll through a list and take what they need from there.

5. Link Related Blogs

As mentioned briefly in an earlier section, you might be using terms and vocabulary that your readers might not be familiar with.

So, for example, when you mention “non-economic damages,” readers who know very little about the law aren’t going to know what that is and how it applies to the rest of your blog post. Ideally, you want to briefly explain what “non-economic damages” are within the same paragraph (i.e., use parentheses to describe it in one sentence). After all, you still want to make sure people stay on the page for as long as possible.

However, you can also write dedicated blog posts regarding the topic, then link those dedicated posts within the text. This makes it easier for people who might want to learn more about a newly-introduced concept or topic. For example, if someone encounters the term “non-economic damages” in your post, they could simply click on the hyperlink and read the dedicated post discussing what the term means. Just make sure your associated blogs are well-written and optimized, too!

Bottom-line

High-quality content doesn’t just provide the most helpful information but also delivers the information in the best way possible. After all, no matter how comprehensive your blog post is, it won’t be beneficial to potential clients if they’re hard to read.

And as we know, legal blogs as content marketing tools are only ever effective when people consume them. So, make sure your blogs are readable so that they’re valuable to the people you want to attract to your law firm.

Author’s Bio

JC Serrano is the founder of 1000Attorneys.com, one of the very few private enterprises certified to process lawyer referrals by the California State Bar. His marketing strategies have continuously evolved since 2005, incorporating ever-changing SEO strategies into lawyerleadmachine.com.