How To Write Legal Web Pages That Land Clients
When writing a page for your law firm’s website, you should do so with one goal in mind – to entice a potential client to pick up the phone and make an appointment with one of your fee-earners. Sounds easy right? Well, yes and no. When drafting a particular web page you need to be mindful of the basic rule – “write for the reader”. However, you also have to be conscious of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies and understand how to elegantly weave these into the content.
Different Legal Topics Require Different Tones of Voice
When drafting web pages for your legal website, you need to think about the person who will be reading the content and the type of writing style they will respond to. Although it is important for a website to have a cohesive and consistent tone, a page describing your law firm’s expertise in banking law should be written in a very different tone to a page on divorce.
Take the time to picture the type of reader you want to attract. For example, if one of your firm’s strategies for 2019 is to attract more high-net-worth divorce clients, then picture a stay-at-home parent in Surrey. They are likely to be worried about what will happen to their home and their children, and how they will fund their legal costs. Address these concerns on the web page you are drafting. The same goes for commercial pages. Think of the average entrepreneur; whatever their age, they are likely to be energetic, optimistic and interested in how you can help them achieve the lofty goals they have set for themselves. Therefore, ensure your web page on business start-up advice is full of vitality and demonstrate that your fee-earners know what it takes to succeed and understand business.
What About Keywords?
Keywords are definitely important, but they should never take precedence over the number one rule of writing for your intended audience. You will notice that this blog is full of words such as legal, law firm, web pages and website, all contained within the same sentence to satisfy the Googlebots; however, this page has been drafted primarily with you, dear reader, in mind. The longer your web page there more opportunity you have to weave in keywords naturally. Ideally, you should have an SEO expert, who has the right tools for the job, run a search for the keywords related to your topic and provide these to your copywriter.
Remember the Call to Action
Every single page on your law firm’s website should have not one but two calls to action. When I draft web pages for my clients I like to put the first call to action just below the opening paragraph, and another at the bottom of the page. Always include a phone number, email address and link to your contact page.
Long Copy Sells
There is plenty of evidence that long copy converts more than short copy. There are many reasons for this, the most basic being;
- a larger word count enables you to include more long-tail keywords;
- you have more opportunity to showcase your firm’s experience and expertise; and
- the reader is more likely to feel they have been provided with valuable information, rather than a short snippet that does not tell them much about the topic.
I think one of the reasons long copy received a bad rap in the past is writers used to write pages and pages of irrelevant content so as to stuff in as many keywords as possible. Thankfully, those days are well behind us (one would hope).
If you are going to write long copy, and for a web page this means anything over 800 words, then ensure the content engaging, informative and make an effort to connect with the reader. Do this and you can be assured they will want to keep reading and ultimately, instruct your firm.
The Legal Copywriting Company is dedicated to helping law firms and barristers achieve their marketing goals by creating engaging, SEO friendly content for their website and marketing materials and managing their social media. To find out more, please fill in our contact form or email corinne@www.thelegalcopywritingcompany.co.uk or phone 01691 839661.
