What makes a great legal article?

A great way for new clients to discover you is by appearing on Google when they search for particular legal questions.?

How can you appear on Google?

By publishing legal articles and blog posts of course!

But publishing legal articles alone will not be enough to attract clients, your blog posts must be interesting, informative and helpful. Otherwise, no-one will want to read them and instead of attracting clients, you will be deterring them.?

So, how do you actually produce a good legal article?

Include all the right keywords

A good article is one that includes all the right keywords so that you are searchable on Google.

To do this, you must do a bit of keyword research and review which words are being searched by people.?

For instance: “how can I get a divorce”

Keywords are usually a collection of words or phrases that people look for.

The keyword in this example may be "get a divorce."

Once you have discovered the keywords that are being searched by people, you should ensure that you spread the particular keywords naturally throughout the text.

So in this example, you could use your keyword in different sentences such as "when can I get a divorce," "where do I go to get a divorce."

The reason why it is important to search for keywords is that you want to make sure that you are writing about topics that people want to read about.

If you are publishing articles that no-one wants to read then you won’t get traffic to your website and subsequently won’t gain new customers from them.?

Write about issues that aren’t addressed by other firms

There are plenty of companies out there that are publishing blog posts, so in order to stand out from the crowd, you need to make sure that you are writing about things that aren’t really addressed by other companies.

It is easy to write a simple article about “What is probate?” but there are so many other companies that have articles about this that you will have to compete with on Google.

Rather than write about a general topic or something that has been talked about thousands of times, try and write about something useful that is rarely addressed.

IMPORTANT: You have to strike the right balance between the topics being searched by people and topics that aren’t talked about by everyone.?

You can do this by making a note of frequently asked questions from your existing clients or by doing some online keyword research.

You could write about how particular law changes will affect people or how a particular person can resolve a specific problem.

The best way to be different is by being specific and niche.?

Being broad and trying to cover everyone is over-saturated.??

Make the article easy to read

Whilst other solicitors and legal professionals understand legal jargon, you have to remember that your target audience includes regular laypeople.??

In this sense, the blog post must be easily understood by your target audience.

Use easy language

The best way to do this is by thinking about whom you are writing for and what type of people you want to attract and write with them in mind.

You may want to simplify your wording and explain complex laws in simple terms so that they can quickly grasp the concepts.?

In some cases, it may be difficult to actually articulate how particular laws may affect them, so it may be best to provide examples and case studies that will help them understand.

Alternatively, you may want to provide a few example scenarios in relation to a particular law and then emphasise that each situation is subjective and that people should gain legal advice for specific information on their personal situation.

You don’t want people to assume that if one law applies to someone else, it will also apply to them if this is not the case. So it is always important to address this assumption in articles to avoid confusion.

Space out the text and use headings

Another way of simplifying your article is by spacing out the text so that there are no chunks of block text. This can be overwhelming and actually put people off reading the article altogether.

Headings and bulleted lists are a great way of making the text more manageable. Bite-size snippets of useful information is a great way of displaying your articles so that people will gain value quickly without having to read through reams of text.?

Provide the right content

You want to make sure that your content is right for your audience and that it is actually helpful and interesting.?

You can do this by writing “how-to” guides or talking about case studies and providing examples.

The most important thing to do when producing content is to make sure that it is relevant to your audience and that it is the kind of information that they will need.

Summary

It’s not enough just to write some information on a page. Nowadays it is competitive to get your content in front of people because there is so much readily available content around.

In order to stand out and give yourself a competitive advantage, you have to be different and you have to optimize your content so that it is the best it can be.