Think Twice Before Writing Your Own Seo Content

According to a study done by Martindale Avvo, around 36% of consumers use an attorney’s website as a resource, and 46.5% said they choose a firm based on online research rather than relying on print ads or referrals. Knowing this, your website needs to appear in Google searches and appear trustworthy to Google. If Google does not think your site is trustworthy, it could hurt your performance. One of the ways that your performance could drop is if you have multiple pieces of content that target the same keyword.

Continue reading to see why writing your own content in union with SEO-optimized content might have you reconsidering doing so. Your website’s performance should always be a priority for you. If you need help with your website’s SEO, please contact the knowledgeable professionals at Array Digital to see how we can help your law firm.

Why Write Optimized Content?

People use Google as their way to solve problems, gather information, and make decisions. More frequently than ever, they turn to search engines to find the help they need, and those websites that rank highest in the search engine results page (SERP) are the most likely links people will click on to get the information they need.

By writing optimized content, you help your website’s information reach the top of the SERP. There are several reasons why this is critical, but none is more important than this bit of info: Less than 1% of users scroll past the tenth result of Google’s search results. That means unless you are in the top positions on the SERP, 99% of people will not see your information or your link.

Optimized content specifically works to rank at the top of the results page (rather than several scrolls down the SERP.) You may recognize the value of this, but how does writing your own content limit that success?

Your Content Production Might Be Cannibalizing Your Keywords

Many attorneys create fantastic content that’s packed with valuable information. They believe it to be the ideal type of content to add to their website. However, if you write your own content, there can be numerous negative effects.

The mistake here is assuming that more content – content that runs parallel to your agency’s SEO-optimized content – will go further and do more to help you rank higher on the SERP. It seems logical – why is more information a bad thing?

Google sees things differently.

If you’re trying to speed up how much content your firm produces, you might want to reconsider adding this material. In some cases, attorneys do this as a way to try to speed up SEO performance and cut corners, aiming to see more traffic sooner. Yet, it most often leads to keyword cannibalization.

Keyword Cannibalization

What does this term even mean? It sounds a bit cutthroat, and that’s because it is. It happens when one website has too many pieces of content that are trying to target the same primary keyword. As a result, the search engine isn’t able to determine which piece should rank higher. In some situations, it may position the wrong pages higher or may limit the amount of traffic hitting the website overall.

When too many pages of your website try to target the same keywords or topics, this may lead to Google ranking each one of these pages improperly, often leading to lower rankings. It does the exact opposite of what your intended goal is.

Now, you can add more content, but we highly suggest working with a digital marketing agency to do so in the right manner to avoid this huge, costly mistake.

What If You Want to Write Your Own Content?

As a knowledgeable attorney, no one can explain a legal topic like you can, and you want to create content that’s going to feature your voice. There are two considerations here.

• Are you trying to write search-friendly content alongside your marketing agency, the one you hired to write this type of content?
• Or are you trying to branch out on your own to write content for your website?

Here’s the difference and how it matters.

Writing Content Alongside an Agency

As noted, writing content alongside your digital marketing agency isn’t a good idea. It could hurt your firm’s ranking in the search engines and cannibalize your keywords. It’s much like trying to write a ton of content for a website at one time. Too much – even of a very good thing – can hurt your website.

The experts at Array Digital create a data-driven strategy first. We then execute that strategy at a velocity determined in the client’s contract. This defined, clear strategy helps us to assist our clients in avoiding cannibalization. As a result, it helps your content do its job and your website to see the results planned.

Array Digital also understands that many attorneys naturally enjoy writing. Therefore, we provide education and active guidance to attorneys to help you create your own content that actually compliments, rather than conflicts with, the keyword and SEO-focused content we’re creating for you.

Writing Your Own Content

If you are a business owner, for example, a partner within a law firm, your specialty is practicing a specific area or multiple areas. You have your area of expertise. This also means you may not be an expert at writing search engine-optimized content, and that’s okay. Writing content that meets these goals could take a lot of time out of your day that you could be putting towards other areas of building your practice and meeting your clients’ needs.

While we encourage you to learn what SEO is and how it works within your site, we also want you to realize that learning this process is more than just throwing a few keywords onto a page. It requires keyword research and then writing content that specifically targets very specific audiences. At the same time, we want to ensure the content genuinely helps the readers – your prospective clients – clearly. SEO content, while meant to perform well in search engines, is primarily supposed to be helpful to human readers.

In order to write SEO content, there is an additional layer of keyword research that informs the writer about what other people are searching for. This allows for content to be created more efficiently and with a better ability to meet your website goals. This takes research, and that’s a time investment you may not need or want to take.

What Type of Content Should You Write?

Let’s say you still want to contribute to your website. That’s great! We highly recommend that you write authoritative content (we’ll help you learn how) based on new laws that may impact your clients. Consider discussing your law firm, changes to the services you offer, and special announcements, perhaps of prestigious awards you’ve worn.

Keyword research is not easy. It requires access to expensive and sometimes hard-to-use tools (unless you take the time to learn them). Learning how to use SEO tools has a learning curve to it, and that may impact the results you get with your website until you master them. That’s where Array Digital can help you.

Benefits of Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency for Seo

A digital marketing agency is the ideal team to write the optimized content for your website. They have the expertise in your field but also the tools needed to propel your content forward. This helps ensure that your content has a design specifically to help you rank (and meet your reader’s needs at the same time).

Avoid Accidentally Sabotaging Your Site

Unfortunately, this type of situation isn’t uncommon. We’ve onboarded several clients over the years who came from irresponsible agencies that failed to audit their clients’ websites for duplicate content. We’ve been able to help these clients remediate their websites and witness excellent growth.

Still, we feel that every attorney should know what they should and should not do when it comes to creating their own content. We prioritize teaching our clients as much as we can to make informed decisions about their digital marketing goals.

Contact Array Digital today to learn how we can help you. Let’s talk about the right way to get your site to rank. Call 757-333-3021 or fill out our contact form now.