Welcome!

In this month’s newsletter, I will be focusing on three key elements of legal article writing, namely E-E-A-T, author bios, and a warning regarding using non-subscription sources when researching your articles.

E-E-A-T – what is it and why is it important?

E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is one of the ways Google establishes what content should appear in its AI Overviews and in the first few search results (after the sponsored content). Being a legal copywriter, I would argue that E-E-A-T is the most important ranking factor (sorry dear SEO specialist readers), because you can have all the keywords you like, but if you weave them into awful writing (and I include ChatGPT in that definition), one of two things will happen – either Google won’t rank your landing page or article, or readers won’t read it.

When writing content for your blog or landing page, Google advises that it should be evaluated against the following questions:

• Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?
• Does the content provide a substantial, complete, or comprehensive description of the topic?
• Does the content give an insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond the obvious? (Note – ChatGPT never does this)
• If the content draws on other sources, does it add value and originality or simply plagiarise someone else’s idea?
• Does the H1 heading tell the reader what the content is about?
• Is it the type of content you would want to share on your socials?
• Would you expect to see this content referenced in a journal, magazine, or book?
• Does the content provide substantial value when compared with other similar search results?
• Is the content grammatically correct with no typos?
• Does the content reference its sources and provide an author bio you can check?
• Is this content written by someone who knows the topic well?
• Are there any obvious factual errors?

In order to answer yes to all the above questions, your content needs to be written for people first, search engines second. Think long form – you cannot do a legal article justice in under 1000 words. Also, make sure you add your expert opinion. This must be handled carefully, especially if you are writing content for a corporate, whose critics will smack their gums with glee at the slightest hint of a controversial thought that could be used to vilify the company on social media. Solicitors and Barristers have a little more freedom, after all, your job is to interpret legislation and case law and provide an opinion on how it will affect clients’ lives.

Adhering to E-E-A-T principles will not guarantee your content will come up tops in Google searches or be featured in AI Overviews. Anyone who claims it can is lying, because Google has never provided an exact ranking formula. In fact, it specifically states that E-E-A-T is not a ranking tool. SEO remains vitally important, and the ideal situation is to have an expert legal copywriter and SEO genius working together on your content marketing strategy.

What is certain; however, is ignoring E-E-A-T will make it much harder to be ranked high enough in search results that your content reaches readers. So, ensuring every piece of content you publish is the best it can be for the reader is a no-lose approach and will make your website and socials something your firm or chambers can be proud of.

Author bios

As part of creating content that observes E-E-A-T guidelines, having an engaging author biography (author bio) is essential and something I am suggesting to all my clients. Experts will tell you that personalising content is fabulous for SEO rankings and part of this is writing directly to the reader, much like I am talking to you as I write.

An author bio is a short paragraph at the end of every blog or article that tells readers and Google that you have expertise and authority in the topic you are writing about and therefore they can trust it.

Great author bios:

• Are written in the third person.
• Contain keywords related to your industry.
• Are no more than a paragraph (100-250 words).
• State your qualifications and experience.
• Include links to your socials.
• Tell readers about some of your interests.
• Are injected with your personality.

Author bios are a quick win for increasing your E-E-A-T.

AI content warning

One concept about the past that my children (Gen Z and Gen Alpha) find almost impossible to wrap their heads around is that when you wanted to know or learn something, you either had to ask a human being or go to the library.

Well, it may be those days are returning, albeit the ‘library’ will encompass paid for subscriptions. Because the amount of AI written legal content that now proliferates the internet means that unless it is labelled AI free you cannot necessarily trust the accuracy of what you are reading. Now, I know I am probably unreasonably cranky about Large Language Models (LLMs), given that they tried (and thankfully failed) to put me out of business, but I can spot AI content a mile away and my suspicions are quickly confirmed when I run the copy through an AI Checker.

The wonderful news for you, dear reader, is that because so many law firms are now using AI to write their content (and most of it is barely edited), your human-written, E-E-A-T content will stand out to readers and Google. Because although Google does not penalise against AI content, it will, mostly, rank beautifully written, engaging, accurate copy higher than other content. LLMs, with their bland tones, clichés, and waffly and repetitive prose, will never write as engagingly as humans whose complexities, emotions, personalities, and experiences leak naturally into the words they type without them even being aware of it.

If the content you publish on your law firm’s website is human written, you can purchase stickers to state that fact for as little as $5 (USD) per year – Not By AI — Add the Badge to Your Human-Created Content.

When it comes to research, I now only trust my subscription sources (Practical Law, Westlaw, NLJ, Solicitors Journal, and the FT) and the BBC. It’s important that we are all alive to AI content that may well contain errors (especially concerning case law). Unfortunately, I have even spotted AI content in professional legal publications that are freely available online.

That’s all from me this month. Back to packing and painting.

Warmest wishes,

Corinne