By Yvette Valencia

If you’re hoping to increase website traffic and generate more leads, don’t hire a wizard.

What does that mean? Anyone who tells you that you can dramatically increase your web leads and boost your site traffic in less than three to six months has to either be a wizard or involved in black hat SEO.

The truth is, content success takes time and continuous effort. Great websites with thousands of hits per day didn’t get that way overnight. They gained their popularity through years of publishing great content.

The Secret to Increase Traffic to a Website

The secret is: there is no secret. There’s no magic formula, no tricks, and no amount of money you can pay to get solid leads and genuine increases in web traffic. There are still black hat SEO marketers who use unscrupulous techniques like link schemes and shady link networks to generate quick web traffic.

While it’s a quick trick to temporarily boost your traffic, what you’re paying for ultimately is a short-lived reign at the top followed by the risk of de-ranking by Google and a low chance of generating good leads.

The plain and simple truth is that truly successful websites and blogs generate leads and increase web traffic through quality content. Just like any publication, gaining traction on the Internet takes time. You have to find your niche and build a fan base, milestones that take time to reach. Spend that time crafting and curating a library of quality content designed to attract and capture potential leads.

Now, how do you set up your content marketing strategy for success?

The Content Saturation Index

Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion hit the nail on the head when he coined the term “Content Saturation Index” or CSI. The estimated time it takes a website to gain traffic and leads through a content marketing strategy depends on the content market you are entering.

In the legal content industry, you can break down the types of content into three levels.

• Broad content that talks about the fundamentals of the industry (what a personal injury attorney does, the benefits of hiring a lawyer).

• Narrow content that deals with the specifics of a type of law (how injury attorneys get paid, the differences between drug trafficking charges and drug possession charges).

• Niche content that talks about information specific to your practice and geographic area (DUI laws in Pennsylvania, Texas divorce laws).

The speed of the success of your content marketing depends on the type of content you’re writing.

Content in the broad category is everywhere; it’s the most highly saturated category of content on the Internet. If you’re writing only at the broad level, increasing your traffic and generating more leads may be almost impossible without paying for clicks and leads.

Writing more in the narrow and niche levels gives your website a better chance to stand out from the crowd and rank faster for the key terms most closely associated with your practice. When you focus on saturating these less competitive levels with your quality content, you’re setting yourself up for a faster – but not overnight – track to content success.

Saturate Your Content

At We Do Web Content, our experienced team of writers, content managers, and editors know how to craft a content plan to safely and honestly improve your Internet presence. To get started, give us a call or fill out our contact form to speak with our sales manager about all of the services we offer to help grow your business through Internet and SEO marketing. Call 888-521-3880.

We’re always on the lookout for useful content for our friends and clients.  Today we welcome guest blogger Yvette Valencia.  She is the co-founder and COO of WeDoWebContent.  I hope this is useful to you!

By Yvette Valencia

Are you sitting in your office wondering why your attorney website content isn’t generating a flood of leads? Are you racking your brain for ways to increase your online presence and conversions to no avail? Well, you’re in luck! In this post I will reveal the number one mistake you could be making with your content strategy.

First things first – take your hand to your face and gently remove your blinders. It’s time you come to terms with the fact that you are in one of the most commercially competitive spaces on and offline. So, it makes sense that as you journey off to make a name for yourself online, you look for ways to set yourself apart from the hive and become the king or queen bee of an untapped/under-serviced area. In other words, dominate a piece of space that is not so competitive.

It’s equally as important to understand that before you can begin to think about conversion, you have to know the type of clients you want to represent. Be honest with yourself. Do you know your target audience as well as you know yourself? When asked what you want to do, do you vaguely respond: “I want to represent ‘anyone’ who has been seriously injured in an accident.” If you’ve answered “no” and “yes” respectively, it’s time for some tough love. You are not converting because your attorney website content is not laser-focused. If you’re not creating the content searchers are looking for, you will never convert them to clients.

Consider this before starting an online marketing strategy – develop a niche. Sure, some folks might say that niche marketing is bad business or that you’ll be limiting your potential clients. Not true! In fact, it’s quite the opposite. Niche marketing can open the door to:

More Effective Marketing

Focusing on the cases you really want enables you to market directly to that segment of the population with clear and actionable attorney website content. This focus will also help you and your prospects understand the types of legal scenarios your firm will and will not handle, saving you time and money, as well as increasing the amount of attention you can devote to viable cases.

More Referrals/Cases

When a prospect contacts you with a legal situation you don’t handle (or care to handle), it’s likely you know an attorney who does. A referral partner whose name pops into your mind immediately. Think of all the referrals you’d get if your peers thought of you in the same way? That’s exactly how it goes down when you position yourself as an expert in a particular field. “The dog bite attorney” or “the lawyer for toxic mold injury claims,” for instance.  Your networking partners – other lawyers, doctors, etc. – will no longer have to guess who your “anyone” is. They will know who your ideal client is because you have taken the guesswork out of the equation for them. To get business, you have to make it easy on everyone. No guesswork allowed.

More Networking Opportunities

Speaking of networking, when you begin to pursue your newfound niche, you’ll start meeting other professionals in your field. For example, if you’re looking to represent individuals with injuries from asbestos exposure, you may be connecting with construction and medical professionals in the respiratory field. These connections build your potential client pool and can eventually lead to speaking engagements at industry seminars. Suddenly, your reach goes from hundreds to thousands just by narrowing your focus!

Convinced? Great!

Find Your Niche Now!

Let’s start the niche exploration process by asking yourself the following questions:

• What cases do I care most deeply about?
• Which clients do I relate to or sympathize with the most?
• Who will benefit most from my services?
• Which area of law do I already have the most experience with?
• If I were in a room with 200 potential clients and could only represent one, who would I choose?
• Who are the clients that are most likely to give me positive feedback on my services?

Once you know the answers to these questions, your path (and ultimately your attorney website content) will become clearer. Only then can you begin the process of validating your potential niche.

Validating Your Legal Niche

Start exploring your niche by researching how your ideal clients are searching for information online. Google’s AdWords tool is free and effective in identifying the terms your ideal clients are using at various stages of the buying cycle. It can also provide suggestions for similar keywords (and maybe even a new niche!).

Keyword research is also critical in determining whether your potential niche satisfies these three criteria: 

• Demand - are there enough monthly searches to justify going after the term?
• Buyers - is this segment of the audience hiring lawyers online? If not, you will have to identify another niche.All Posts
• Viability - are the search terms you want to go after reasonable in terms of competition? Always aim for medium to low. Otherwise, expect to engage in a costly pay-per-click campaign for the highly-competitive terms.

If your potential niche is worth the investment, it’s time to start implementing. You do this by identifying and creating the content that will satisfy your potential clients, as well as the search engines. This is the winning combination that gets your law firm found and increases your conversions.

Remember, searchers will only click on the content that promises to answer their queries. If your attorney web content is off-mark or misaligned with their needs, they will continue their search until they find a legal website that will.