When it comes to Google organic search results, there is no question that content is king. Law firm websites with the best content containing accurate and interesting legal information will rank higher than others. How to ensure that your legal content is up to snuff? In this article, find out how to update your content to increase law firm leads. Forward Law Marketing can assist you if you need assistance with content marketing for lawyers.
If you have informative content on your website helping you rank in Google, you might think, do not fix it if it works. However, regularly refreshing ranking content can help drive even more traffic to your website and improves SEO. Remember, people use Google to find the most helpful and recent content to solve their legal problems. When a blog or article is several months or years old, it may contain updated information. If the viewer sees outdated content or just sees that the article is eight years old, they may use another source.
How do you know the time has come to update your content? Here are several clear signs:
We know fresh content has been a Google ranking factor since 2011. Also, patents filed by the search giant show that data that relates to the content inception date is one of the factors that the Google algorithm considers when ranking pages.
Google tells us that fresh site content is like warm cookies that come out of the oven. If that does not tell you that Google likes new, informative content, we are not sure what does! The site also notes that searchers want to see the most relevant content related to their search. Further, research shows that some of the best-ranking content online is less than one year old. That tells us that new and updated content is the way to higher Google rankings.
You are getting ready to update your site’s content. But first, you should see what your legal competitors are up to. It will speed things up when updating content if you see what others in the field are doing.
Take a look at the top Google results for the legal keywords you want to target. Then, check what the best pages are doing to get those results. Do they have essential keywords in page headings? Are there videos and images? Is there anything in their content that your pages are missing? Looking at competitor sites might seem like an extra step, but you do not always have to recreate the wheel. Just see what others are doing well and do it even better in your content updates.
Now that you know you need to update some website pages and blog posts, how do you go about it? Here are some simple tips:
The first part of updating your content is to know all of the content on the site. So, you should do a content audit. Doing this will tell you which content should be updated first. It is often best to start with more than a year old content. Then, move on to more recent content to see if anything is outdated or can be expanded on.
Then, look for content gaps in the pages and posts you will update. You should look for strategic and informational content gaps. Consider if the page has anything you could expand upon for information. Also, can you take out anything to narrow the focus? Can you improve the readability and formatting to make it easier to read on cell phones? How about adding photos, graphs, and infographics?
On the strategic side, look for spots in the content where you can refer to your law firm specialty or case. Also, what is the next logical step for the reader after finishing the page and is the call to action clear? You can have updated content, but if the call to action is outdated, the page will not perform as well.
Suppose you have a blog post on Arizona car accident laws that has gotten excellent traffic and leads this year. But you notice that leads are starting to tail off. Instead of scrapping the page, study your content and competitors’ pages on similar topics and see how you can update it with follow-up information. There are usually developments in personal injury and car accident laws every year that you could use for more information.
For example, maybe there is a new law about personal injury settlement caps in your state. Anything that has an impact on the money people can get in a settlement will be of interest.
You might have done guest blogging to enhance your Google ranking. Some of these posts can just be republished on your blog. Just ask the site owner if it is okay. It was published on their site already, so it should be fine. Remember to link back to the initial site it was published on. The content may be old for you, but it will be all new to your legal blog. This type of blog marketing for lawyers will bring more leads to your website.
So, that page on DWI penalties in Wisconsin has done well this month. Fantastic! To make it better, you might not even need to refresh the content. Instead, add bonus content that people will find valuable. For example, you could add a graphic on the Wisconsin DWI penalties page that illustrates the different penalties and charges based on how many DWIs the person has. People like it when more value is added to a page’s content.
These simple tips will make your successful content look even better and more recent:
This is a neat way to highlight your best past content. Write a round-up or summary of your best content over the months or years. Make sure that the content on each of those pages has been updated. Then, you could do a round-up like this:
When you do a content round-up correctly, the post could become more popular than some individual pages. People love to see legal informational round-ups that pertain to their legal questions. Having so much crucial legal information in one place means less time looking for it online.
Updating your content is never done. You should often do evergreen content. Some legal SEOs have blog posts that perform well that are five years old that they update every year. After you see how minor changes can improve performance, it is something you want to keep doing.
You should habitually update one or two content pieces monthly for excellent results. While writing a new blog post every week, always identify pages that need to be updated and complete one of those, too.
Site content is so critical to the success of your law firm website and your Google ranking. Of course, writing new, informative content is always necessary, but you can turbocharge your content strategy by simply updating your content with new information. If you need assistance with content writing, Forward Lawyer Marketing has the talent and resources available to help you. Contact Forward Lawyer Marketing for help with content marketing for lawyers today by calling (888) 590-9687.
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