Now that we’ve rocketed into the new decade, it’s clear that local results are becoming more and more important to Google, which is, of course, good for businesses like small to mid-size law firms. As with all things Google, it’s important to learn the ropes and to anticipate how best to participate. Looking into our crystal ball, we’ve curated some of the most interesting and relevant expert predictions for local search trends in 2020, and we’re happy to share.
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2019 is the year to get serious about your legal content marketing. Content is the foundation of your online presence, and in our hyper-connected world, content that connects you with your potential clients can increase awareness and generate new business.
Here are five key legal content marketing trends that you can’t afford to ignore in 2019.
One of the hardest things about content marketing is consistently creating fresh, compelling content on a regular basis. If you want to be competitive, you’ve got to come up with ideas day after day, month after month, and year after year. In addition, if you’re using your law firm’s blog content to target a specific type of user – say, car accident victims – it may feel like you’ve completely run out of things to write about. After all, how many ways can you tell your readers that they need to call an attorney after they’ve been in an accident? Read More
Legal Content Marketing Ideas: 4th of July Celebrations
Finding fresh, relevant topics is one of the hardest things about regularly creating content for a legal blog. Fortunately, the holidays and other seasonal events like the start of the school year or ski season provide law firms in certain practice areas with ample opportunities to create fresh content that speaks to clients that have timely problems that they can help solve. Typically, these issues tend arise in the areas of personal and criminal defense. Here are some of the ways that the 4th of July can provide marketing material for law firms.
4th of July Celebrations often Result in Serious Injuries
Thousands of people are injured during 4th of July celebrations each year – and many will be looking for a lawyer soon after they are hurt. Here are some of the kinds of personal injury cases that often spike around the holiday:
Criminal Defense
Parties, alcohol, and certain types of criminal behavior unfortunately often go together. For example, drunk people sometimes drive when they shouldn’t, and there is a clear link between drug or alcohol intoxication and violent crime. In addition, heightened enforcement efforts invariably ensure people who are truly innocent of the offense of which they are accused and who need legal representation to establish that fact.
As arrests spike the 4th of July, so will the number of people who are seeking a criminal defense attorney on the internet. This provides lawyers with an opportunity to connect with these potential clients by creating content that speaks directly to the situation in which they find themselves. For this reason, it is advisable to create 4th of July themed content around the following practice areas in criminal defense:
Let Our Legal Content Writers Start on Your Project Today
Timely legal blog content can help law firms reach clients that are injured in accidents that around holidays or certain times of year. Creating, posting, and syndicating high-quality and relevant content takes a significant investment of time, however, most practicing lawyers simply can’t do it consistently. Fortunately, we’re here to help. Call us today at 877-486-8123 to learn more about our legal content writing services.
Content marketing is a marketing technique that involves the creation and distribution of content designed to stimulate interest in a product or service. When employed by law firms, content marketing can establish the firm as a thought leader in its practice area and connect with clients searching for an attorney who practices in a specific area of law. Consider being at the top of the results when someone in your area searches for “car accident attorney” in Google. Not only would it establish your firm as trustworthy leader in personal injury, it would also result in a significant amount of business.
According to Adweek, more than 80 percent of consumers conduct online research before making a purchasing decision, making it essential for law firms that want to stay competitive to ensure that their brand is well-represented online – and nice-looking website is just the first step. It is critical for the content that consumers are reading to be well-organized, relevant, and address your potential clients’ pain points.
One of the main benefits of content marketing over many other marketing techniques is that it allows law firms to target individuals with specific legal needs. In order to do this, firms should come up with a list of questions that people in a particular situation may have and creating content that answers those questions. Some questions that would make for good opportunities to create some informative content include the following:
It is important to remember to writer for laypeople, not other attorneys – which is often difficult for lawyers who have been practicing for years and are used to writing for other lawyers, judges, and legal professionals. In addition, while you should invite the reader to contact the firm, remember that content marketing is not the same as advertising. Rather than pitching your services broadly, your content should deliver information that is valuable to your target clients and will help them make a decision about who to hire. By establishing a connection through content, you can make it much more likely that an internet searcher will call your firm rather than one of your competitors.
Quality content can help lawyers and law firms connect with potential clients in their area. Unfortunately, creating high-quality legal content on a regular basis is too time-consuming for practicing attorneys, but we can help. At Lexicon Legal Content, our team of JDs and attorney-writers specialize in generating compelling, accurate, and keyword-rich blogs and content pages for lawyers in a variety of practice areas, including personal injury, criminal defense, family law, bankruptcy, estate planning and litigation, and eminent domain. Call us today at 877-486-8123 or contact us online.
Regardless of your political leanings, one thing is certain: the Trump administration has shaken up the political landscape and created substantial uncertainty in many different areas of law.
And we’re not talking about esoteric constitutional issues such as the limits of executive power or the emoluments clause.The current administration is making moves that are affecting real people on a day-to-day basis, often resulting in significant uncertainty about legal issues that can have a direct impact on the most important aspects of their lives.
How does this affect legal content marketing? For one thing, it is providing lawyers and law firms (and their marketing teams) ample opportunity to create new, fresh content that is relevant and of interest to their target audience.
The First Travel Ban: A Case Study
To understand how this works, it is illustrative to look at a concrete example. On January 27th, the President issued an executive order banning travel to the United States for people from certain countries, and it was not immediately clear whether legal permanent residents (green card holders) from the affected countries would be allowed to reenter the country if they were overseas when the order was issued, which proved to be a source of significant controversy.
Here is a chart showing the number of searches for “Green Card Entry” over the past 90 days:
(Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. Likewise a score of 0 means the term was less than 1% as popular as the peak.)
As these data make clear, the number of people searching for “green card entry” spiked soon after the executive order was issued. Granted, some of these searches were people simply seeking information for information’s sake, but is also safe to assume that some of them were concerned that the order would apply to them or their family members – people who, for some attorneys, are potential clients.
Importantly, other words that are semantically related to the issue show similar spikes in traffic, and identifying these words and phrases is the foundation of creating a timely content marketing campaign.
By identifying the legal questions that people are asking and creating content that answers those questions, lawyers in any area of law can connect with individuals who are actively seeking their services. Here are some of the areas of law that recent actions taken by the Trump administration have affected as well as specific issues on which relevant, timely, and informative content could be created.
Immigration Law
Immigration law has perhaps been the most volatile area of law since Trump took office and the uncertainty has certainly captured the media’s attention.
The executive order banning travel from certain countries referenced above is just one area where there is significant uncertainty. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program instituted under President Obama directed federal authorities to use prosecutorial discretion regarding the removal of certain undocumented individuals who arrived in the United States as children. The program provides those eligible with a renewable 2-year work authorization as well as deferred action regarding their undocumented status. In other words, they may live and work in the United States without immediate fear of removal. The new administration has taken a tough stance on immigration and has yet to indicate what it plans to do with DACA – a program that Trump could decide to end at any moment.
Issues regarding the enforcement of immigration laws has also generated significant interest, as the administration recently expanded the list of individuals who were removal priorities significantly.
Criminal Law
In late summer of 2013, the Obama administration issued a memo to U.S. Attorneys in all 50 states indicating that “in jurisdictions that have enacted laws legalizing marijuana in some form… conduct in compliance with those laws and regulations is less likely to threaten the federal priorities..” and that “state and local law enforcement and regulatory bodies should remain the primary means of addressing marijuana-related activity.”
In practice, this directive has meant there is a lack of federal enforcement against marijuana operations and users who are in compliance with state law. Importantly, however, this could change with the stroke of a pen under the new administration. Aggressive enforcement could create chaos in states that have robust and established marijuana economies and could result in significant criminal penalties for individuals who have been operating under the belief that they are not an enforcement priority for the feds.
Personal Injury
While personal injury matters are generally matters of state law, there are certain cases in which federal regulations may have an impact on the outcome of litigation. For example, in some jurisdictions, noncompliance with FMCSR regulations could be used as prima facie evidence of negligence in truck accident litigation. In light of the president’s directive to repeal two regulations for every new one implemented, the regulatory landscape is on shaky ground, including for the trucking industry. Some regulations that were poised to take effect (i.e. speed limiters on newly manufactured heavy trucks) may never be implemented, and others may be repealed.
Title IX
Last May, the Obama administration issued guidance that directed all educational institutions to allow students to use facilities that are consistent with their gender identity. On February 22nd, the Trump administration withdrew the previous guidance, calling into question whether federal officials will enforce Title IX against schools that discriminate against transgender students in this manner. The issue is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court in G.G. v. Gloucester County School Board, where the court is expected to decide whether Title IX requires schools to treat students consistent with their gender identity.
Use Current Events to Generate Long-Tail Keyword Phrases
Of course, when creating SEO-friendly content, one of the main concerns is incorporating keywords that will signal that the content is relevant to particular topic. Long-tail keyword phrases that exactly match what a potential client is looking for will ensure that you are attracting the right kinds of visitors to your site. Some examples of long-tail keyword phrases that may be relevant to the practice areas listed above include:
Of course, these are just a few basic examples of phrases that legal consumers may search in response to political developments, and using tools like Google Trends’ Related Queries feature can help you come up with long-tail keywords to target.
As Questions Arise, so do Opportunities to Connect with Clients
These are just a few of the areas of law in which questions raised by the actions of the new administration are creating opportunities for lawyers and their marketing teams to create compelling and informative content of interest to their potential clients. If the trend established in the past six weeks is any indication, the questions will continue to arise.
To discuss your legal content strategy, call Lexicon Legal Content today at 877-486-8123 or send us an email at info@lexionlegalcontent.com.
A cursory search of the internet will establish that significant percentage of law firm websites greet their visitors with a pop-up window that offers to connect them with a live representative.
While live chat has the potential to increase the percentage of website visitors that become paying clients, they can also be annoying to users and now could have a negative impact on your site’s rankings in the SERPs. These types of pop-ups, known as “interstitials,” often cover up the main content of the site and can be difficult for users on mobile devices to dismiss.
Late last summer, Google announced that websites that use interstitials may not rank as highly after January 10th of this year. Specifically, the search engine stated that:
“Pages that show intrusive interstitials provide a poorer experience to users than other pages where content is immediately accessible. This can be problematic on mobile devices where screens are often smaller. To improve the mobile search experience, after January 10, 2017, pages where content is not easily accessible to a user on the transition from the mobile search results may not rank as highly.”
(Source: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/08/helping-users-easily-access-content-on.html)
There are some situations in which a site could continue to use interstitials and not be affected by the change. These include the following:
How to Keep Your Potential Clients Engaged
Of course, one of the main benefits of offering live chat is user engagement and setting an appointment so that visitors become paying clients. Importantly, this update does not mean that lawyers should not offer live chat – they simply need to not do so with a pop-up that covers up their content.
This new ranking signal is consistent with Google’s focus on rewarding sites that provide content that is useful for people searching the web. As content is critical to both search engine rankings and the impression that your potential clients get when they visit your site, it is important for attorneys to ensure that the content on their site is well-written, compelling, and provides site visitors answers to their questions.
Call Lexicon Legal Content Today to Discuss the Content on Your Law Firm’s Website
The content on your website has a direct impact on your site’s position in the search results. Unfortunately for busy practicing attorneys, creating a consistent stream of high-quality, informative, and useful content takes a significant investment of time. The team of professional legal blog writers at Lexicon Legal Content is available to provide your firm or marketing agency with content in a variety of formats that will provide value to your readers and improve the quality of your site. To learn more about our services, call us today at 314.691.8602 or contact us online.
Digital marketing for lawyers and law firms is becoming increasingly competitive, and gone are the days that an attorney could simply put up a website and wait for the phone to ring. Between professionally-managed search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, pay-per-click ads, and well-placed banner advertising, law firms need to engage in a wide variety of online marketing efforts in order to keep up with their competition.
Content marketing is the creation and circulation of original content that is of interest to your clients. Content can take a wide variety of formats, including blogs, videos, infographics, and E-Books, and the appropriate format will depend on a variety of factors, including the information you would to share and your target audience. For example, a list of personal injury accident statistics may be well-suited to an infographic, while a guide detailing the steps to take after a car accident would likely make an excellent E-Book.
The benefits of content marketing are myriad. Best of all, if you choose to create your content yourself, it can be free. For example, writing a blog post about potential consequences of a sex crime conviction and sharing it on your firm’s social media account will only cost you time. Furthermore, adding unique, keyword-rich content to has been explicitly identified by Google as a significant factor in the way a site ranks for certain keywords.
Outsourcing Content Marketing is an Option for Busy Lawyers
As an attorney, your focus should be on practicing law. With court dates, client meetings, legal research, and document drafting, many lawyers do not have the time to create high-quality, compelling, and informative content on a regular basis. In addition, it is important to keep in mind that the way that you write for the court is not necessarily what your clients or Google want to see. Fortunately, there is help available and freelance writers or a company like ours can provide content that will interest your potential clients and improve your site’s ranking.
It is important to keep in mind, however, that like with anything else, you get what you pay for. While you may be able to outsource content creation to India for pennies per word, the quality will likely suffer, especially for legal content. More importantly, as your firm’s site is an advertisement, it is subject to the Rules of Professional Responsibility in your jurisdiction. As a result, posting inaccurate content on your site or content that violates advertising rules could even result in an ethics complaint.
At Lexicon Legal Content, our team of attorney-writers generates high-quality and compelling content in a variety of formats, including blogs, practice area pages, press releases, and E-Books for lawyers, law firms, and law firm marketers. To learn more about how we can help you grow your practice or improve your clients’ online presence, call us today at 314-691-8602 or send us an email through our online contact from.
While the legal profession is known for adopting new technologies at a glacial pace, lawyers and law firms seems to be adopting content marketing surprisingly quickly. According to Contently, law firms are flocking to content marketing as a cost-effective way to reach potential clients who are searching for information on Google. In addition, content marketing is not going away – content is the lifeblood of the Internet and a significant percentage of users have learned to filter out obvious advertising, either through the use of ad-blocking software or simply by tuning it out.
More and more lawyers are starting to starting to understand the benefits of blogging and content marketing. It’s one thing to blog and another for people to actually read your blog, however. Here are some of the reasons that people may be passing over your blog posts.
Your Titles Aren’t Compelling
The importance of your blog post’s title cannot be overstated. A well-crafted title that piques the reader’s interest and makes him or her want to learn more will perform substantially better than a generic title. Consider the following two titles for the same hypothetical blog:
In our experience, the second one will generate significantly more traffic than the first one.
Your Posts are too Long
If you ever visit forums or the comments section after a blog post, “TLDR” probably means something to you. People often simply choose to skip reading something simply due to the perception that it would take a commitment of time. We live in an on-demand world and people browsing the internet want answers to the questions quickly and do not want to read a treatise on their legal issue. Keep your blog posts under 500 words and make sure to break up the text with headings and bullet points.
Your Posts Read like a Legal Brief
As an attorney, you are immersed in a professional world that has its own language and writing style. While it is important to be a competent and effective legal writer, your potential clients do not want to read a legal brief. In fact, depending on the area of law, non-lawyers may have a difficult time understanding what they are reading. Always keep your audience in mind when writing your posts.
You Aren’t Writing Content that Your Clients Want to Read
While exploring the finer points of collateral estoppel or res ipsa loquitor may be intriguing for you and your colleagues, your potential clients may not feel the same way. Generally speaking, people who are looking for an attorney have a problem they want to be solved and want answers to very practical questions. As a result, for maximum effectiveness, your blog posts should seek to answer these questions. Examples of the of questions that your clients may be asking include the following:
A professionally written and managed blog is an extremely effective marketing tool that can significantly increase your online visibility. Let our legal content writers keep your blog regularly updated with compelling and relevant posts while you focus on your legal practice.