FAQs which of course is an acronym for frequently asked questions are an effective tool for increasing traffic to your law firm’s website. Google is all about delivering the best possible user experience and FAQs help with this. Algorithms measure how long visitors stay on your website and FAQs help increase the time spent which makes it more likely that Google sees you as authoritative.
It should be obvious how important Google thinks questions are in search content. The addition of the People Also Ask section in search results years ago made it clear that questions people are searching for are hot topics. At Forward Lawyer Marketing we use a tool that gives us the People Also Ask data. This tool not only helps us with writing FAQ pages and FAQs for Google Business Profiles but is excellent for generating content ideas in general.
Writing FAQs should be split up into three separate tasks in my opinion.
We want to begin our FAQ page strategy on your website. This is not only going to help bring more traffic to your site but can also be used for the Google Business Profile and linked to and from in blog content. So, the first thing you’re probably thinking is “where do I get the questions?” If you haven’t been in business for years or haven’t kept some kind of log of questions clients ask relax, we will show you how.
The first tool we will use to look for questions is the keyword explorer tool from AHREFs. I like to use this tool because it gives us more in-depth data than we can get in some of the more simplistic tools which you can see in the image below.
In AHREFs, we choose the Keyword Explorer tool, enter a seed keyword phrase and it gives us all of the data shown here and more for that phrase. Some of the data includes:
This tool alone will probably give you more than enough data to write on innumerable subjects but you can also use the People Also Asked tool mentioned above as well. We want to utilize this information to create questions and answers for topics that your law firm’s ideal clients are seeking.
If you have a practice that handles a wide variety of legal issues you may want to consider FAQ pages for each major area to keep it more focused. An example of this would be if you are a law firm that handles family law, estate planning, and criminal law. All of these are very different and the potential clients will be much different as well.
Here is a good example of a Criminal Law FAQ page.
After we have done our initial research and written our FAQ page we want to elaborate on the topics in long-form blog posts. We can then use these blog posts and link back to the FAQ page as well as link from the FAQ page to the blog post using descriptive anchor text. While a minimum suggestion for word count is generally over 500 we try to write 1500 words or more when possible because it historically delivers better results.
For these blog posts, we want to cover the topic in as much detail as possible. Google hates fluff! Writing a long blog post just for the sake of a longer post will actually hurt more than help. The competition among law firms is intense so it pays to know what your competitors are doing so you can do more.
In case you haven’t noticed, Google has a section in Google Business Profiles that allows for questions to be asked and answered. These questions can be asked and answered by anyone and as of now, Google doesn’t preclude business owners from asking and answering their own questions. That said, the way we do it is to use a different Google profile to ask the questions and then answer them from the appropriate Google Business Profile. These FAQs can help you improve your local rankings and increase interactions with potential clients.
Just bear in mind that this isn’t the place to impress visitors with your legal knowledge. The purpose of FAQs is to briefly answer specific questions in layman’s terms so that they are easy to understand. We have to keep in mind that the average reading level of Americans is at a sixth-grade level so writing grad-level content will lose them. Be sure to stay informed on Google’s Rules and Guidelines for Google Business.
As stated previously, FAQ pages and blog posts that answer questions also create link-building opportunities. The opportunities for internal links are ongoing and never-ending for more prolific sites. Internal links help search engines discover more content within your site that is relevant to the content being linked from. Internal linking also helps to prevent “orphan pages” which are like dead-end streets to search engine spiders. The new upgrades in the AIOSEO plugin for WordPress make this easy by identifying pages and links to include.
External backlinks are a longtime ranking factor, the more high-quality backlinks you have from other websites linking back to you the more authority you’re assumed to have. Linking to other sites is good for SEO also because it helps search engines and visitors alike better understand what a page is about.
Using the suggestions we have given here can help you to keep your content updated. It is a good idea to review your data in Google Search Console as well as utilizing the tools we have talked about like AHREFs to create fresh content. In many cases, you can take a post written several years ago and spend a little time updating it for a new boost of traffic. Additionally, laws change frequently in some cases and you definitely want to be abreast of the latest laws and statutes.
At Forward Lawyer Marketing, content writing is one of our core lawyer marketing services, and it’s the foundation of your online presence as a lawyer. If you find yourself falling behind in your publication schedule, we’re here to help you catch up. Contact our content team at your earliest convenience. We can discuss the scope of your project and get started right away. Call us at (888) 590-9687.
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