Does your law firm’s website regularly publish new blogs? 

If not, it really should be and I’ll tell you why:

Law firm websites that regularly blog get 6X the amount of traffic!

This six-fold boost in traffic can be leveraged to generate more leads from your law firm’s website. 

In this intro guide to law firm content marketing, we’ll teach you the importance of inbound marketing — how publishing free and useful content online can attract new visitors back to your website, gain their trust, and win you more clients.

At Kaleidico, content marketing is our bread and butter, and we’re happy to share our secrets with you. 

Read through this guide to gain a better understanding of content marketing strategy, and get the confidence you need to start writing blog posts today.

Determine Your Target Audience

If you don’t know who your audience is, how can you create content for them? 

Understanding your potential clients determines your entire content marketing strategy, including:

• Which types of content formats you choose (blogs, videos, infographics)
• The style and manner you present this content (professional, authoritative, compassionate)
• The topics of content pieces you’ll produce (legal how-to’s and legal advice)
• The websites and channels you’ll post this content on (your company’s website, social media, Q&A sites, Google Maps, etc.)

Maybe, you already have a pretty good idea of who you’re targeting. Your firm’s practice areas will pretty much narrow down the search for you.

If your legal services specialize in divorce, you’re looking for people on the verge of divorce, or who have already been served divorce papers.

If you specialize in medical malpractice legal services, you’re looking for people who recently have had serious illnesses or injuries caused by a doctor’s negligence.

Once you’ve determined your audience, begin researching keywords and blog topics to write about to attract these people to your website and into your sales funnel (more on that later in the guide).

The Larger Content Marketing Umbrella (Multi-Channel Marketing)

Law firm content marketing — that means blogging, right?

Yes and no. Blogging is only a subset of the larger content marketing umbrella. 

Blogs aren’t the only things people can stumble upon online that will lead them back to your law firm website. 

Your online audience will spend their time on the web, browsing through many different channels, such as Google, YouTube, Pinterest, Quora, Reddit, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. 

To increase your exposure, you’ll want to create different forms of content that can inhabit each one of these different online channels.

So for instance, instead of just posting blogs on your website, you can also create:

• Social media posts (Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram)
• Newsletters (mass emails, printed newsletters)
• Explanatory videos (YouTube and Facebook)
• Infographics (Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter)
• Questions and Answers posts (LegalZoom, Quora, Reddit)

However, I will say the majority of your website’s traffic will likely come from publishing new blog posts. 

With each blog post or content piece comes a new opportunity to litter your website with valuable keywords that will help improve your website’s Google ranking, making it easier for your audience to find you. 

Using Keyword and Topic Research to Predict Your Audience’s Needs

Your website’s keywords and blog posts will be the primary force driving traffic to your website.

But how do you determine what your blog posts will be about to reach the most people in your target audience? Through keyword and topic research.

Keyword research involves identifying and analyzing which search terms your audience is actively searching for online. 

With this information, you’ll have a better idea of the search frequency for specific terms, and with a certain level of insight, be able to predict which blog posts will be popular before they are ever written.

Keyword planning tools also allow you to study your competitors’ websites, telling you which of their blog posts are the most popular, or how much monthly traffic they’re receiving. 

Keyword analysis is incredibly helpful for many reasons:

• You can quickly see what kinds of content or blog posts are popular on existing websites, (so you can write better, longer versions of those articles that will rank higher)
• You’ll see which search terms are popular online, so you can use those keywords throughout your website’s copy to attract more search traffic
• You can understand the search frequency of your specific keywords (if a keyword only gets searched about 10 to 100 times a month, you’ll know to skip it and find a better keyword)

Once you’ve analyzed your market’s relevant keywords and search terms, you’ll get a sufficient idea of what kind of legal content to fill your blog with. Then you can begin cranking away at content to see which pieces work, and which don’t, so you can refine your process and churn out consistently high-ranking blogs that will attract more people to your website.

Creating Content Consistently Develops Trust in Your Law Firm’s Expertise and Authority

Producing consistent, high-quality content on your website over time will establish your company as an online authority for legal matters, which can improve your company’s reputation and get you more clients.

Let’s examine why:

• First, consistently publishing new blogs will improve your website’s SEO and Google ranking. For many people, having a high-ranking website is social proof that your company is legitimate, and your improved positioning on Google’s search engine results page (SERP) will get you more traffic.
• Second, producing new content regularly shows that your company is still in business! Ever been to a website where its latest blog was published 4 years ago? Not exactly very convincing, is it? That’s also four years of missed opportunities for that company’s website.
• Third, having a well-written blog post can impress your audience into trusting you. (If you’ve read as many legal blogs as I have, you’d understand the importance of spending a bit more time crafting a helpful article, instead of just throwing random keywords together.)

You could think of your blog posts and company website as your first point of contact with your prospective client — your first impression.

If they visited your website, got the info they needed, and you managed to charm them with your tone and expertise, they’d have no reason to work with your competitors or somebody with whom they have no prior relationship. 

Content Marketing Improves Your Law Firm’s Brand Recognition

The more content your website can produce, the more eyeballs will see your company’s name and logo, and eventually, more people will want to work with your law firm. That’s the idea, anyway.

Food advertisers are well aware of the effects of brand recall, and take full advantage of it. They know if they could flash their company’s logo on a TV screen or in a magazine, the next time you passed their product in the grocery store you would recognize it among the sea of unfamiliar products.

Content marketing is similar for online businesses. The more content your website can crank out, the more eyeballs will come across your company’s name and logo. When people ask, “Have you heard about X law firm?” the answer will likely be a “yeah, I’ve heard of them.”

Not everybody who reads a legal blog post needs a lawyer immediately. However, when they do need a lawyer, they’ll remember your name when looking through the search results, giving you a competitive edge over the unheard-of competition.

Why Lawyers Must Invest in Law Firm Content Marketing

People don’t use the phone book to find lawyers anymore. They use Google.

Think about it. When people want to find a lawyer, they’ll either Google “Lawyer near me,” or they’ll Google a specific scenario, “How to sue a surgeon for malpractice?”

In both instances, they’ll ultimately land on Google’s SERP and begin clicking through websites until they find a lawyer they’re comfortable working with.

But if your website’s SEO isn’t up to par, or you don’t have any blog posts, how will they ever find you? They won’t. 

Don’t let your competitors steal away all of your clients because they’re blogging and you’re not. Don’t be intimidated by keyword research or topic planning when figuring out which articles to write. 

Try to place yourself in your client’s shoes. Ask yourself:

•  “What are our clients’ pain points?” Maybe I can write blog posts about these issues.
• “What are the recurring questions they always ask?” Maybe I can create a FAQ page on my website that will attract these common questions.
• “What would I want to read to convince me to work with a lawyer?” Maybe I can write in a more compassionate, helpful tone.

Sure, as time goes on, you’ll want to be more scientific in your approach to content marketing, but don’t be afraid to just try and produce new articles and see what kind of traffic comes in. 

To start any new marketing effort, you need some prior data to work from, so publish a few articles on your company’s website and see what happens. 

Use those analytics to set goals, such as “Ok, this blog post brought in 50 people this month. Let’s double that next month, maybe we can write variations on the same article, since it’s proven to be popular.” 

Key lesson: just start publishing new blogs and see what results you get.

Remember, too, that Google takes weeks to find your new blog posts and index them, so to see sooner results, you must be publishing often and regularly if you wish to see increased traffic to your website.

More Legal Marketing Questions

Still have some quick questions about law firm content marketing? 

Does Content Marketing Work for Lawyers?

The internet has been (for several years now) the most popular option for finding lawyers. 

Content marketing boosts a website’s SEO ranking, improves its positioning in Google’s SERP, and boosts a law firm’s visibility to generate more leads.

What are Content Marketing Examples?

Let’s say your law firm’s practice area is medical malpractice. 

To attract your target audience to your firm’s website, you can begin by publishing several blogs each month related to specific scenarios related to these practice areas.

For instance, you could write a blog called “Can I Sue for Birth Injuries?” or “When Is the Right Time to Sue for Delayed Diagnosis?” or “How Can I File a Successful Medical Malpractice Lawsuit Case?”

In each of these cases, these blogs would appear in Google search results based on their corresponding keyword being actively searched, e.g., “suing for birth injuries”, “suing for delayed diagnosis”, “successful malpractice lawsuit case.”

Once a reader clicks on your blog’s link in Google’s search result, they will read your blog, and if you’re provided them with enough information in a helpful, and convincing way, they may contact you via a form placed on your website.

Once a lead has been generated, your team can contact that person to determine if they have a valid case to work with you.

Do Law Firms Need SEO?

A million times yes! 

Without SEO, nobody would be able to Google your website and find it. 

What is Law Firm SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) refers to how easily your website is discoverable by Google, other search engines, and real people!

Google primarily searches for keywords located through a company’s website (in its home page, about us, contact us, and blog page) to make a quick assessment of how useful and relevant the website is based on the searcher’s intent.

Make sure to use the keywords that properly describe your firm, e.g., medical malpractice law firm, divorce law firm, and sprinkle these keywords throughout your website in a meaningful, and non-spammy way to get more Google-referral traffic.

Get Started with our 90-Day Law Firm Marketing Plan

Kaleidico is a lead generation agency for law firms and mortgage lenders. 

We’ve been writing content as long as Google has been indexing it, so we know a thing or two about content marketing.

Our agency also specializes in branding, web design, SEO, PPC, and email marketing.

Are you an attorney looking to improve your law firm’s traffic and lead generation? 

Download our no-cost 90-Day Law Firm Marketing Plan or book a discovery session to tell us more about your project.

Photo by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels