Five Tips to Writing an Effective Law Firm Website Home Page

Sarah Andropoulos reports:

"The primary purpose of the home page of your website is to present yourself to prospective clients and others who may wish to contact you. Among the characteristics that might set you apart from other attorneys and law firms are your education or training credentials, relevant experience, and areas of practice...While it may seem [counterintuitive] to discuss legal standards on your firm’s home page, it is critical to your site’s performance that this page reflect your understanding of your profession in terms that convey an authoritative grasp of the subject matter—in this case, the practice of law in your field. This means that simply describing career accomplishments or listing the types of cases your firm accepts is unlikely to be sufficient. Thus, when you are describing the areas of law you practice, it is important to include some substantive legal analysis. The kind of content that can help your site begin to make headway in the search engines should highlight the legal rules that you see most regularly in your practice, but do so in a succinct and reader-friendly manner...[E]xplaining the basic substantive law principles you work with most regularly not only helps you tailor your content to current SEO standards, but can also help clients to get an understanding of how you can help them with their specific legal problems. Providing this kind of legal [roadmap] communicates your understanding of what your clients are dealing with, and can provide an incentive for readers to get in touch with more specific questions, ultimately helping you convert home page visits into new business...[W]hile it is key to keep your legal discussion reader-friendly and avoid getting too academic, it is also essential that your website pages contain sufficient text. Indeed, posting pages with only a few sentences of text can actually harm your site’s performance. If you follow the basic format we describe, you should have no trouble coming up with sufficient text for your home page...[A]dding text that you have copied directly from another online source can hinder your site’s rankings. If taking time out to draft original content for your website is not realistic for you, consider hiring a local writer, or learn about Justia’s custom content services...If you follow current trends in the SEO industry, you have likely read about the importance of incorporating keywords in your content that relate to the case types and geographic areas you are most interested in. While keyword density is a significant component of your site’s performance, we caution clients against overusing these terms. As explained by Google here, using these terms too heavily, a practice also known as 'keyword stuffing,' can actually hurt your site’s rankings...The main idea here is to describe your practice in a natural and accurate way with regard to the case types and geographic areas you are most involved with or interested in. Using language that sounds spammy, or using the same terms repeatedly in an unnatural way, will diminish the value of your content and can impede your site’s performance...Now that you have drafted a high[-]quality, original home page narrative containing an appropriate level of legal substance, length, keyword density, and biographical information, be sure to include a final word to prospective clients regarding why and how they should contact you. This kind of language, also known as a 'call to action,' will reference things like available legal remedies (e.g., damages, potential dismissal of charges), no-cost initial consultations, and contingent fee arrangements as potential reasons for clients to get in touch with your office to discuss their legal issues. Including this information (again, making sure to follow all relevant legal ethics standards), along with a clearly visible phone number and email contact form, can make it easier for site visitors to contact you, and to take the next step toward potentially engaging your services."