So, you’ve decided to write your personal injury lawyer SEO content by yourself. Whether you’re an attorney, paralegal, legal assistant, or some other poor soul sent off with instructions, we have you covered. In fact, when we (founders Victoria and Allen) started in this business, we had no clue how to do this either. We were the poor souls with virtually no instructions.
At Blue Seven Content, we’ve got this figured out by now. Our team writes law firm practice area pages daily and we’ve figured out a good system. When you’re designing and writing these pages, you have to remember you’re writing for an audience of two – your prospective clients and the algorithm. No, you aren’t included. You aren’t the audience. I mention that now so that you simmer down on those overactive “attorney hands” that’ll want to nitpick every word on your pages. It’s not necessary or worth it.
Let’s talk about how this is done.
- 1. Know Your Audience
- 2. Your Introduction Paragraphs Matter
- 3. Why Should They Choose You
- 4. Cover the Costs
- 5. Covering Your Types of Cases
- 6. Show Them the Money
- 7. Offer Practical Tips
- 8. Gentle Persuasion to Get Moving Quickly
- 9. Close Out Comfortably But With Urgency
- 10. Or Blue Seven Content Can Write Your Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Content
1. Know Your Audience
Focus on your reader – the prospective clients. The trick with personal injury law is that anyone could need your services. This isn’t like a professional license defense law firm that would cater to one specific audience. No, your audience is practically everyone in your desired coverage area.
This means you need easily digestible content. No fancy legal language. Here are some points to help with this process:
- 7th to 8th grade reading level. Your readers are often dealing with stress, pain, and confusion. They need clear, straightforward language, not legalese.
- Shorter sentences. Long, complex sentences can lose your audience. Keep things direct and to the point to ensure your message is understood quickly.
- Shorter paragraphs. Walls of text can feel overwhelming. Stick to 2-3 sentences per paragraph to make scanning easier, especially for mobile users.
- Utilize bullet points. When breaking down key information, such as legal rights, steps in a claim, or common mistakes, use bullet points to improve readability and comprehension. Think about how you read a page online, particularly if you’re reading from your phone. You skim until you see certain information.
Part of knowing your audience also means knowing the keywords. This page is more focused on crafting your personal injury SEO page after you’ve already narrowed down your keywords. You’ll use these keywords and their variations seamlessly throughout the page. By that, I mean that it won’t be obvious to the reader that you’re weaving keywords into the page.
2. Your Introduction Paragraphs Matter
This isn’t Pinterest or a recipe website, so cut the shit. Your reader needs assistance from an attorney, not a backstory about their town or the origin of the name of their injuries.
Just like we mentioned a moment ago, your introduction has two audiences. The reader needs a hook so they keep reading or, if you’re lucky, call you immediately. The algorithm is looking to your intro for a few different things that should be woven into the content seamlessly, so as to avoid confusing the reader.
Now, if you speak to five SEO “experts,” they’re going to give you five different ways to write personal injury SEO page introductions. What we’re going to give you is a list of things we strongly encourage you to include and/or learn about as you start the page:
- Your main keywords. You need to know this before you even start crafting your page. Whether you have a keyword research tool or you’re relying on an SEO team to give you topics, don’t start your page until you know the main keywords. Generally, the main keywords will be the same as your H1 (or page title). For example, it may be “Chicago personal injury attorney” or “Memphis commercial truck accident lawyer.”
- The “parent page” to your current page. Without getting too granular here, every page on your website will have a relationship to another page. Your page may be a “child” page of another page (the “parent” page). It’s crucial to know where your page falls in the hierarchy of the website so you get the internal linking done properly. This is for the algorithm, friends.
- Correct anchor texting. Anchor text refers to the word or group of words you link your internal and external sources to (creating a hyperlink). Believe it or not, there’s a method to which words you use that can help the algorithm better understand what your page is about.
- Avoiding external links (for now). We generally want to avoid adding external links (links that lead to a website other than yours) in the intro. While they may help with your page authoritativeness and help gain reader trust, save these for the meat of the page.
3. Why Should They Choose You
Unfortunately, just about every personal injury SEO page is the same. No flavor. Generic. Plain white chicken in the crock pot with a single potato and no spice. Now, some of that boils down to the fact that these pages all need to convey the same basic information. But how can you even stand out?
You.
You and your team are the answer. Use a section of your personal injury SEO page to talk about you and your firm. What sets you apart from the firm next door? Tell the reader why you’re the personal injury firm that cares about them.
We’re working with a client in the PNW who is expanding their personal injury practice. On their main PI page, the attorney posted their story about why personal injury law means so much to them. They’d experienced a serious injury and had been on the other side of the process. This lawyer’s story really highlighted why they cared and it helped gain readers’ trust.
As we revamped this page, we kept the story in its entirety. It was powerful and we crafted the whole page around that theme.
The point is that there should be some points that set you apart. Use a hundred to 150 words of your personal injury page to give your “selling points.” You can even do this in bullet point format. You can draw on client reviews (with approval from the clients) in this section as well.
4. Cover the Costs
One of the first questions a prospective personal injury client will have is something along the lines of, “How much will this cost me?” They want to know a few things that you can address upfront. First, is there an initial consultation fee? If you have free consultations, which I suspect you do as a personal injury lawyer, make it known.
As for the overall cost of the case, chances are, you handle these types of plans on a contingency fee basis. But guess what? Most people aren’t going to know what a contingency fee is.
Explain your pricing clearly and with compassion. By that, I mean you should meet the reader where they are. The reader or someone they know has just sustained an injury, and they need help. They may not have money and could, perhaps, be ashamed by that. Don’t make your reader feel more lost by throwing cold language around.
Empathy and compassion can shine through on these pages, especially when discussing costs. Reassure the reader that you’re there to help, and you want to make legal assistance affordable.
5. Covering Your Types of Cases
This is an area that can seem, to the outside reader, like a waste of words. If you knew me in real life, you’d know that I absolutely hate clogging up Law Firm SEO pages with unnecessary sections; however, sometimes, you really do need to play to the algorithm.
Your law firm’s basic personality pages, regardless of the location, will all likely have sections discussing the types of cases you handle. For example, while you may be a personal injury lawyer, you’re going to need pages for the main types of injury cases you’d like to obtain. For example, go on to any personal injury lawyer website, and you are going to see much more than just pages geared toward the keywords “personal injury lawyer.” You’ll see a list of the types of claims, usually each with its own page. An attorney will likely have a page for car accidents, truck accidents, dog bite claims, product liability cases, slip and fall incidents, premises liability claims, construction accident cases, and so on, and so on, and on.
But can’t you just write one personal injury page and mention all of those and skip all the others?
Nah, that’s not going to work. It certainly won’t work if you want to have any semblance of competitiveness in your particular coverage area.
Okay, all of that to say that you are going to have these “child pages” to your main personal injury page. On your main personal injury page, you’ll be able to link out to these other pages, and these child pages will all link back to your main personal injury page (well, the personal injury page in their location silo). This all helps create a wonderful internal linking strategy that is a major part of your overall SEO goals.
6. Show Them the Money
If you create a personal injury page without addressing potential damages, there’s a decent chance the reader will click the back button and go to the next law firm’s website.
No, you can’t make any guarantees about how much a case could be worth. However, you should discuss the types of compensation, and you should discuss that each case is different. This section is a good place to stress the importance of having a personal injury lawyer and to gently persuade the reader to call for a free consultation.
Spend a few paragraphs or bullet points highlighting special and general damages (but call them economic and non-economic, or at least explain the legalese). Keep in mind that most personal injury victims likely don’t know the full extent of the types of compensation available. They may not know the true value of their claim, especially if they’re only thinking in terms of recouping an emergency room bill, when in reality they’ve had to miss work and are partially disabled.
Clarify potential compensation as a way of encouraging the reader to contact you for help. This can be a powerful section.
7. Offer Practical Tips
There are ways to use these personal injury lawyer SEO pages to both answer readers’ questions and tap into frequently asked questions that Google and other algorithms seek out for AI overviews. Some examples of headings you could use include:
- What Documents Do I Need For My Claim?
- How to Speak to the Insurance Carriers
- Steps to Take in the Days Following the Injury
- What If There Was Shared Fault?
- How Long Will the Case Take to Resolve?
There are many others, but these are just some examples. For many of the questions and concerns readers may have, you won’t be able to provide concrete answers on a webpage. For example, when answering how long it could take the claim to resolve, you can’t really tell the reader that. You don’t know. But you CAN discuss the various factors that affect the timing of these claims while helping them understand why you and your firm are the best choice to help.
I caution you not to go overboard with offering tips, especially for things that do not really relate to the purpose of the page. For example, I recently stumbled onto a personal injury law firm’s page about lithium battery explosion injuries. One of the headings was “Stopping a Lithium Ion Battery Fire In Progress.”
Don’t do this. Nobody is coming to your page in the heat of an active emergency for that type of help.
8. Gentle Persuasion to Get Moving Quickly
You may or may not be able to explicitly state the statute of limitations for these claims. While most states allow it, a few aren’t favorable. So, you can approach this a few ways.
First, if you can mention the statute of limitations, go ahead and do it. Make sure it’s accurate and, just as important, make sure you mention any exceptions to the law.
What’s more important, in my opinion, is stressing the importance of starting this process long before the statute of limitations approaches. You can use this section to tell the reader why filing a claim as promptly as possible is crucial for increasing chances of success.
You want the reader ready to call you to get the ball rolling. Gentle persuasion with the right words can help this goal.
9. Close Out Comfortably But With Urgency
The final section of your personal injury lawyer SEO pages will be a “call to action.” This section doesn’t need to be long, but it should be direct. Close out with renewed empathy, restate the importance of filing a claim quickly, and remind the reader about the free consultation. You’ll have some keywords in the final heading section of your page and, hopefully, close out with some hope for the reader.
10. Or Blue Seven Content Can Write Your Personal Injury Lawyer SEO Content
Listen, you don’t need a pitch. You’re on our website so you know what we do. If you get overwhelmed by the prospect of writing these pages yourself, we can help. Yes, it costs money, but let’s be honest – if you don’t want to write these pages, one of two things will result:
- What you do produce will be crap.
- You’ll never write them.
If you DO want to write these pages, great! We encourage you to start typing today. Get these pages out there so you can start getting more clients!
But holler our direction if you get stuck.
Written by Allen Watson – Founder and CEO of Blue Seven Content
