ChatGPT Isn’t Good Enough for Your Construction Website Content

When ChatGPT and other similar AI programs were introduced in early 2023, the content world was shaken up. Many construction companies, contractors, and anyone else needing content in any form began looking for ways to leverage ChatGPT in the content creation process. In doing so, they believed they could reduce their marketing costs and create compelling content for their readers. Unfortunately, ChatGPT for construction and contractor websites has turned out to be a huge mistake. 

ChatGPT just isn’t good enough for your construction website content. AI and construction websites need to connect with readers. Your construction company cannot rely on AI-generated content if you want to build authoritativeness and trustworthiness to outrank your competitors. You need a respected team of professional SEO content writers writing landing pages, FAQs, blogs, social posts, and other online content who know how to write compelling copy in a way that ChatGPT will never be able to. Blue Seven Content is here to help you connect with the right SEO content writers for your business. Using ChatGPT for construction companies could be one of the biggest mistakes business owners make.

  1. The Power of AI 
  2. Why ChatGPT Is the Wrong Way to Create Content for Your Construction Website Content 
  3. Have Our Professional SEO Content Writers at Blue Seven Create Optimized and Original Content for Your Construction Website 
Should you use ChatGPT for your construction or contractor website?

The Power of AI 

AI and ChatGPT were major disruptors in the content marketing industry almost as soon as they became available for use. Many industries began turning to ChatGPT for the ease of being able to create content in a matter of minutes. Consumers were blown away at the ease with which they could suddenly build seemingly articulate and well-written content. As time went on and Open AI aimed to improve on the results generated by ChatGPT, conversational AI developed. 

With an easy conversational tone and the ability to respond to prompts based on the user’s query, consumers could not help but be convinced of the power of AI. When building a contractor website, you might be drawn to ChatGPT and other AI models when you are not prepared to allocate a portion of your marketing budget towards content creation and optimization. After all, ChatGPT has been praised for generating human-like responses efficiently. 

ChatGPT initially appeared to be revolutionary. If you could build an entire website, handle social media posts, and even generate responses to customer questions, concerns, or complaints simply by adding a new prompt, the thought was that it would save companies millions of dollars or more. In theory, you would no longer need to hire content marketers if you could do it yourself by using ChatGPT. 

Early Red Flags With ChatGPT 

Professional content writers all over the world began to panic. They believed AI and ChatGPT were going to make their positions obsolete if it was as great as “experts” claimed it to be. However, users soon began to realize that ChatGPT did not come without risk. In fact, there were some serious red flags almost as soon as it became available for public use. ChatGPT creators themselves warned users that the program could generate biased content or even harmful instructions. They conceded that while sometimes ChatGPT would write content that sounded plausible, it could also create content that is nonsensical or incorrect.

Many up-and-coming and professional content writers and digital marketing agencies then turned to ChatGPT to create content for their client’s websites to save time and resources. However, the more content they generated, the more ChatGPT issues became glaringly obvious. 

Why ChatGPT Is the Wrong Way to Create Content for Your Construction Website Content 

Websites for contractors need to be comprehensive. You are not creating content for the sake of creating content. When you have high-quality landing pages and blogs that provide valuable information to your readers, your website is more likely to rank well in the search engine results pages (SERPs). ChatGPT may be a fast way to create content, but it is by no means the best. 

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the concept of utilizing specific optimization techniques to boost a website’s rankings on Google and other popular search engines. With hundreds of millions of websites online, how will yours stand out without SEO for construction companies? In fact, construction SEO and website content must be designed with web users in mind. Websites need to be easy to navigate, web designs must be appealing, and content must be written in a way that answers every question a reader might have for a given target keyword. 

Unfortunately, even though ChatGPT can generate responses quickly, the system has no knowledge of contractor SEO and how SEO for contractors works. While you could ask ChatGPT to explain construction SEO, it cannot generate content using SEO best practices. And, as it turns out, according to a recent MIT study, most people prefer content created by humans. When a user knows how content is created, they will almost always choose human-written content over AI-generated content. 

Even though ChatGPT and other AI programs have exploded in popularity, human favoritism means the best way to meet your target audience’s needs is by writing well-thought-out and original content. Despite its best efforts, this is not something you will get with ChatGPT. What you really need is an SEO company for contractors that understands the intricacies of search engine optimization and will connect with your readers in a way that ChatGPT is incapable of.

ChatGPT Does Not Do Research

When you choose SEO services for contractors, you have a team of professional contact riders at your disposal. Your contact team will be able to help you identify target keywords and longtail phrases so you know what types of content to produce and which keywords you want your construction company to rank for. 

Then, when we start writing content, we thoroughly research the subject to ensure the content is factually accurate and credible. Contact should always be written to fully address the reader’s needs. Every piece of information the reader would expect to find on the page needs to be included. With ChatGPT, there is no research. It simply generates responses to prompts. 

AI Programs Generate Identical and Plagiarized Responses

For an SEO contractor website to rank well in the SERPs, the content needs to be written in a way that Google’s algorithm recognizes it as an authoritative source of information. Content should be written for readability, which means it should be skimmable, avoid technical jargon, and use images and bullet points. The use of semantic keywords is critical to ensure users are being given all the information they might be looking for when searching a specific keyword or long tail phrase. Google crawls websites and determines which web pages are the most credible and trustworthy. Plagiarized content is one of the fastest ways to get your website penalized. Not only could search engines lower your rankings, but they can remove your website from the platform altogether. 

Enter ChatGPT. When asked a specific query, ChatGPT will almost always generate identical responses. Whether you were hoping to use generative AI to create an entire webpage or simply wanted to create an outline for a page you were going to write yourself, the results are almost always the same. Users have tried to get creative with their prompts in an attempt to avoid generating identical results, but the information ChatGPT provides is essentially stolen and plagiarized. 

These AI programs are using information and writing styles that were already online. When search engines crawl your web pages, if the search engine believes the continent was plagiarized, your company’s entire website could be in jeopardy. Local SEO for contractors is the better option. Google favors original and unique content. If every other construction company in your area is using ChatGPT, using the same prompts, and generating the same responses, they could be devastating to your reputation as a contractor. Hiring a team of highly qualified SEO content writers is the best way to create well-written content that is sure to rank and boost your construction company’s authoritativeness and trustworthiness online and in your community.

ChatGPT and AI Content is Not Always Correct

Using ChatGPT to create content for your construction company’s website could destroy your reputation and web rankings. SEO for builders is the only way to ensure the information on your website is correct. Information, laws, and consumer needs are always changing. One of the biggest issues with ChatGPT is that it often returns completely inaccurate results. ChatGPT has been known to fail basic math equations, is incapable of answering basic logic questions, and will even generate results that claim to be factual even though they are inaccurate or blatantly false. 

This can be dangerous when you work in an industry that can be inherently risky, like construction work. ChatGPT users in the legal community, healthcare industry, and even historians have found ChatGPT inadequate. ChatGPT does not use the Internet to generate content. The program uses information already built into the system to generate responses to prompts. 

When you are writing a comprehensive how-to guide on home builds, for example, the information must be accurate. ChatGPT might recommend materials that are no longer available, encourage readers to take on these projects on their own or suggest inherently dangerous building techniques. This means you could even be putting your target audience at risk by using ChatGPT to create content for your construction company’s website.

Have Our Professional SEO Content Writers at Blue Seven Create Optimized and Original Content for Your Construction Website 

Construction companies and contractors are in one of the most competitive digital marketing industries. If you do not have original, optimized, and unique content on your website, search engines are not going to prioritize your pages, and you will not outrank the competition. ChatGPT may be able to give you answers and create copy in a short period of time, but the content will be plagiarized, unoriginal, and in some cases, even biased. 

Do not put your construction company’s website at risk. Generate the traffic and leads you need to rank at the top of the search results by working with a team of expert SEO content writers. Contact Blue Seven Content today to request a free consultation today and learn more about how to build a compelling keyword campaign for your website and how our writers create engaging content that ranks better than generative AI ever could.

Written by Dianna Mason – Legal and Construction Content Writer

White Label Law Firm SEO Content – What It Means

Law firm marketing in the digital age is all about getting the attention of potential clients. How a law firm is able to distinguish itself and its services from other law firms with similar practices is the difference between receiving a steady stream of prospective clients and wondering where the next client will come from.

Well-written SEO content is a vital component in any law firm marketing strategy. Good content is what helps a law firm attract and maintain quality clients. Bad content causes potential clients to click away – if they even see the content in the first place. 

The content that goes on a law firm website can’t be an afterthought. Writing quality law firm SEO content is a skill. It has to be thoughtfully tailored to achieve a specific purpose. Content must be interesting, informative, accurate, persuasive, and written with search results in mind. It should be created so it performs consistently over time and produces measurable results.

Pursuing white-label law firm SEO content is a way for law firms and legal marketing agencies to obtain the consistent production of expertly crafted original content written to client-specific preferences. 

  1. What White Labeling Means
  2. Is SEO Content Still That Important for Law Firm Marketing?
  3. Law Firm Content Must Rank High in SERP to Get Results
  4. Why White Label Law Firm SEO Content?
  5. How To Choose a White Label Content Provider
  6. Why Blue Seven Content for Your Law Firm White Label Services?
  7. Grow Your Legal Practice with Blue Seven Law Firm SEO Content
Blue Seven Content provides white label law firm SEO content reviewed by practicing attorneys.
Blue Seven Content provides quality, well-researched law firm content.

What White Labeling Means

White-labeling is a type of business outsourcing. Outsourcing is a way for businesses to save time and money and still be able to offer high-quality products or services. White-label providers create products or services that other companies can purchase and then brand as their own. 

White-label legal content writers are ghostwriters for hire. They have a working knowledge of the subject matter and the research capabilities to create accurate and authoritative content.

The writers receive information about what to write and often who it is to be written for and then produce content that will be owned by and branded as the law firm client. 

White Labeling Does Not Mean Generic Reproduced Content

White labeling can describe a generic product that is branded and sold by different companies. However, it cannot describe law firm content because duplicate or very similar content found on different sites is not SEO-friendly. Therefore, each piece of white-label law firm SEO content must be distinctly crafted to the specifications and business practices of individual law firms. 

Is SEO Content Still That Important for Law Firm Marketing?

Well-written SEO content is as critical as ever for successful law firm marketing. Content that is easy to read, informative, accurate, and optimized to reach the right type of client is still a key component in a law firm’s overall marketing strategy. 

Most people with legal issues are going to begin to search for answers online. According to a recent survey conducted by legal marketing services provider Attorney Sluice, 70% of the persons surveyed said if they needed to find an answer to a legal question, they would first search for the answer online. 

About 45% of those surveyed said they would start their search to hire an attorney online either by using a search engine or visiting a social media platform. When asked about the significance of placement in search results, 34% believed the best lawyers were those ranking the highest. Another 12% believed higher search result rankings meant more legal experience. 

Law firms wanting to have their content appear before persons with legal questions or needing legal services have to publish content that is going to rank as high as possible in response to targeted search queries. Content that is poorly written or not optimized properly will likely not be seen by those it’s trying to reach, thus wasting a law firm’s valuable time and marketing dollars. 

Law Firm Content Must Rank High in SERP to Get Results

Being highly ranked on page one of the relevant search results is the desired position for any law firm content targeting a specific search inquiry. The content must compete with and outrank a lot of similar content in order to achieve a top position. Consequently, close attention must be paid to the specific details that can affect ranking when creating content. 

According to the SEO tool suite platform Semrush, the page landing in the number one spot in Google search results has an almost 28% chance of a click-through. The click-through rate drops by about half for the number 2 spot and falls all the way to 2% for content in the number 10 spot. Content that appears on page 2 of the search results or beyond has very little chance of ever being read. 

Well-optimized content lets a search engine know that it best meets the needs of a search inquiry by including quality factors that set it apart from competing content. Following are some content creation tips that indicate content quality and can boost search engine placement.

  • Content should thoroughly cover a topic so it doesn’t leave a reader needing to look elsewhere for additional information.
  • Tell Google the content is reliable by demonstrating E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness).
  • Make the content unique by incorporating original ideas or examples.
  • Make sure time-sensitive content is updated to keep it relevant to current searches. 
  • Try to write content at about an 8th-grade reading level so it is easy to understand.

SEO marketing expert Backlinko recently analyzed close to 12 million Google search results to identify factors that correlate with first-page search result rankings. The key findings included the following factors relating to content:

  • Better link authority (the measure of how many other websites link to your content) means higher ranking.
  • Content that covers a topic in-depth ‘significantly outperforms’ superficial or incomplete content.
  • The average Google first page search result contains just under 1,500 words.
  • Websites that people stay on longer (because of great content!) tend to rank higher.

Why White Label Law Firm SEO Content?

If law firms want to achieve their marketing goals, they need to publish a lot of quality content on a consistent basis. Trying to produce a large volume of content can be time-consuming, costly, and detract from core law firm business operations. 

In addition to lots of it, the content needs to have all the pieces so that it ranks well, engages readers, builds trust, enhances brand awareness, drives traffic to a website, and ultimately results in law firm clients. That means the content must incorporate current SEO best practices and be written in such a way that it pulls the reader in and convinces them they have found the solution to their legal problem. 

Whether a law firm does its own marketing or uses a legal marketing agency, white-label law firm SEO content writers are specialists who can produce engaging, well-researched, original content in high quantities while maintaining consistent quality.  

Law Firms  

Digital marketing has become very specialized. To be good at it takes consistent practice and staying on top of an ever-changing digital landscape. It can be a full-time job all on its own. Yet, in addition to practicing law, lawyers also handle marketing in the majority of US law firms. Only about 33% pay internal staff or an outside agency to handle legal marketing. 

So, what is the problem with lawyers creating their own content? Well, there can be several problems for the lawyer looking to improve a law firm’s ROI. 

  • Content creation takes time away from practicing law
  • Content may not be promoting the law firm brand
  • Content may not be adequately optimized for search engines
  • Content may not be written to prompt readers into action
  • Content may not connect with the right readers
  • Content may not be produced consistently

The bottom line is that it is typically more cost-effective and gets a law firm better marketing results to purchase tailor-made content from writers who regularly create SEO content for law firms.

Legal marketing agencies offer a suite of services to help law firms with marketing. Content marketing is often among them. Initially, marketing agencies may produce content in-house, but as a business grows and demands for content increase, it may make sense to cut agency overhead and use a reliable white-label provider for content creation. 

Legal marketing agencies may have the technical prowess to produce fabulous content, but they may be able to scale their businesses more efficiently to meet the demands of clients by outsourcing content production to white-label writers. 

How To Choose a White Label Content Provider

A white-label content provider is going to create content that a law firm will be using to represent its business to potential clients. There has to be a fit between provider and client so the content is consistent with how a law firm desires to brand itself. 

Some basic criteria that can help determine the best fit when selecting a white-label content service include:

  • Qualifications/Experience – Visit the website and social media platforms of a white-label content provider. Do you like the content posted by the provider? Are you confident in the abilities of the writers? Do they offer the services you need?
  • Customization – A good white-label service provider will create content to meet specific client preferences, whether they be stylistic, brand specific, or in order to optimize the content for a particular purpose. 
  • Quality Control – Content is intended to build trust between a law firm and potential clients. Readers expect it to be factually and legally accurate without grammatical errors. How is the content edited? What assurances exist confirming the quality of the product?
  • Accessibility – How available is someone to answer questions, respond to feedback, and address concerns? What is the level of commitment to client satisfaction?
  • Transparency – Does the white-label service provider say what they do and do what they say? Are they clear about services and pricing?  Are you confident the company operates with the utmost integrity? Will your privacy be respected?

Just as a law firm’s content needs to build trust between the firm and its clients, there needs to be trust between a law firm and its white-label service provider to achieve the best marketing results. 

Law Firm White-Label FAQs

How does white-label SEO content specifically address the unique ethical considerations in legal marketing?

White-label SEO content for law firms should be designed with an understanding of legal marketing’s ethical considerations, ensuring content complies with regulations and standards specific to the legal industry. This approach includes creating content that is accurate, informative, and respectful of confidentiality and advertising rules, addressing the unique ethical concerns that law firms face in their marketing efforts.

What are the specific steps a law firm should take to integrate white-label SEO content into their existing marketing strategy?

To integrate white-label SEO content into their marketing strategy, law firms should first identify their target audience and key practice areas, then select a reputable white-label content provider for law firms

that understands legal industry nuances. The next steps involve collaborating with the provider to create a content plan that aligns with the firm’s marketing goals, ensuring the content reflects the firm’s brand voice and ethics, and finally, integrating this content across their digital platforms for a cohesive online presence.

Can white-label content be customized to reflect a law firm’s specific brand voice, and if so, how is this achieved?

Yes, white-label content can be customized to reflect a law firm’s specific brand voice. This is typically achieved through a collaborative process where the law firm communicates its branding guidelines, tone, and target audience to the content provider. The provider then tailors the content to align with these specifications, ensuring it resonates with the firm’s brand identity and appeals to its desired clientele.

Why Blue Seven Content for Your Law Firm White Label Services?

Blue Seven Content writers are a dedicated group of professionals who love creating quality content. Our writers are carefully selected and receive ongoing training to keep their skills on the cutting edge of SEO content creation. The content we produce is well-researched, original, accurate, and designed to engage targeted readers. 

All Blue Seven writers have secondary education. Some have legal experience and education. They all have diverse backgrounds and life experiences, giving them the ability to meet the expectations of even the most discriminating clients.  

Providing a quality product that gets results for a client is the goal of Blue Seven Content. We are a very detail-conscious bunch and hold ourselves to high standards of performance. Each of our creations must pass through a multi-layered editing process before ever reaching a client’s inbox. 

We are discreet about the law firms and legal marketing agencies we provide white-label services for. Our clients appreciate our discretion, and we are happy to respect their privacy.

We value our clients. On those rare occasions when a problem does arise, Blue Seven Founders Allen Watson and Victoria Lozano are quick to respond and work to resolve any differences to the satisfaction of the client. 

Law firms need to publish a steady stream of great content to attract new clients and retain existing ones. At Blue Seven Content, we can provide law firms and legal marketing agencies with amazing content guaranteed to be authentic and 100% written by human wordsmiths. 

Whether it’s practice area pages, niche landing pages, FAQs, or blogs, you can expect high-quality, fairly priced content customized to suit your business needs. Your law firm SEO content solution is only a message away. Reach out. We will be glad to show you what we can do. 

Written By Mari Gaines, JD – Legal Content Writer

Blogs for Law Firms – How to Start Your Legal Blog in 2024

A substantial number of people dealing with legal issues turn to the Internet to look for the right attorney to take on their case. This means your law firm’s popularity, credibility, and visibility online have a substantial impact on how successful your law firm may be. 

Although blogs for law firms may seem like something you do not have time for, the truth is that having a comprehensive blog with valuable information for prospective clients can not only help generate business but also improve your law firm’s website search engine rankings and help build authority online. 

  1. Search Engine Ranking Factors for Law Firm Blogs
  2. What High-Quality Legal Blogs Cover
  3. The Buzz Around ChatGPT and Why You Should NEVER Use AI to Write Lawyer Blog Content
  4. Connect With Our Wordsmiths at Blue Seven Content Today 

Search Engine Ranking Factors for Law Firm Blogs

If you hope to get your lawyer blogs and law firm practice area or landing page ranking, it is important to understand the essential ranking factors. Some of these can be handled by your digital marketing company. For example, having high-quality backlinks, fast page loading speed, and core web vitals are crucial. However, none of these ranking factors will matter if your web content leaves much to be desired. In December 2022, Google released an algorithm update that focused on ranking content that more adequately meets user’s needs. The most notable include E-E-A-T and YMYL.

What Is E-E-A-T?

E-E-A-T is an acronym that stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. Although E-E-A-T is not technically a Google ranking factor, Google and other search engines are more likely to rank pages with strong E-E-A-T. Here is a rundown of how you can utilize these factors to improve user trust, build authority, and create content that converts traffic into leads:

Experience

The content on your law firm blogs should always be high-quality and provide users with the information and subject matter they are looking for. Your blogs should be written in a way that users understand your law firm has first-hand experience in this area of law. One way you can do this is by highlighting your law firm’s case results, awards, and accolades in handling legal issues similar to what your potential clients have experienced.

Expertise 

Google is more likely to boost your lawyer blogs in the rankings if users can see that you have the credentials and qualifications to provide the knowledgeable and reliable information they are looking for. Lawyers providing valuable information about their practice areas through blogging is a prime example of topical expertise in action online. 

Authoritativeness

Authoritativeness describes your online reputation in the legal community. If your law firm or attorneys are widely recognized as being respected and knowledgeable in their subject matter, the pages accredited to them are more likely to perform well in search engine rankings. 

Having a reputable SEO content provider that devotes their efforts toward legal content writing may be the best way to put your law firm on the map. Then, your competitors will help boost your website’s authority by linking back to your content because it provides value to web users. This will help set your law practice up as a leader in the legal marketing industry. 

Trustworthiness

Your blogs and web pages absolutely will not rank if they are not deemed trustworthy. Google Quality Raters will consider the factual accuracy of a page and whether trusted sources have been cited, such as legal statutes and government (.gov) pages when determining whether a blog, landing page, or practice area page is trustworthy enough to rank in the top three search results. 

What Is YMYL?

YMYL refers to “Your Money or Your Life.” These are topics that could have a significant impact on the reader in some way. For example, information about local car accidents in the news may not be useful to most readers. However, a blog post about how to report a car accident or obtain copies of a crash report would be. The more YMYL content on your site, the better your rankings will be.

Blogs for law firms in 2024 - Start planning today.
Blogs for law firms in 2024 – Start planning today.

Most lawyers do not have time to create their own blogs. You are likely not a professional writer – you are a legal representative who needs to devote as much of your attention as possible to your client’s cases. Having a legal content writer craft compelling blogs on your behalf is the answer. Legal writers and content consultants can not only write content that ranks but also offer suggestions on what topics you should cover on your law firm blog. 

What to Do’s and How To’s

When you are trying to decide what to blog about, consider what your target audience is searching for. Most often, they are searching for long-tail phrases and keywords that focus on What to Do’s and How To’s. Some examples could include:

  • How to Deal With the Insurance Company After a Car Accident
  • What to Do if Police Try to Question You Without a Lawyer
  • How to Avoid Probate
  • What to Do if A Client Breaches a Contract
  • How to Appeal a Denied Social Security Disability Claim

Why Potential Clients Need an Attorney

People dealing with legal issues almost always think about trying to navigate their case without a lawyer. They envision lawyers as being expensive, greedy, and maybe even conceited. Writing blogs about why your readers can benefit from a lawyer will challenge these preconceived notions while boosting traffic and leads to your site. 

What to Expect Articles 

Many people who truly need a lawyer are hesitant to reach out for help. When you write what you expect articles on your law firm blog, you can help prepare potential clients for what’s to come. 

This can give them the confidence boost they need to fill out your contact form or contact your law office directly to schedule a free or confidential consultation and discuss their specific needs. You can even write blogs that focus on what to expect from your attorney fees when costs are holding would-be clients back from contacting your office for help. 

Comprehensive Guides

Writing comprehensive guides is another way to build authoritativeness and trustworthiness online. Even someone dealing with a legal issue likely has little to no understanding of the intricacies of the laws and which statutes are going to impact their case. Although these guides should be comprehensive, they should also be written in a way that helps readers easily understand the laws and feel confident that you truly understand what they are going through.

Updates to State and Federal Laws

One of the best ways to blog on your law firm’s website is by writing content that describes updates to state and federal laws affecting your potential clients. For example, in 2023, Florida made major changes to its personal injury statute of limitations and contributory negligence laws. When you notify your readers of these changes, it can help set you apart from your competitors and ensure your readers understand that law changes could have a profound impact on their case.

Thorough FAQs

Frequently asked questions blogs are some of the most untapped and underutilized resources you can offer to your readers. Not only do FAQs give web users answers to questions they may be too intimidated to ask, but Google has an entire section on Page 1 of the SERPs devoted to “People Also Ask,” where your law firm blog could rank as a featured snippet.

The Buzz Around ChatGPT and Why You Should NEVER Use AI to Write Lawyer Blog Content

When you do not have time to write compelling law firm blogs for your website, it may be tempting to turn to AI and ChatGPT to generate these blogs for you. However, we strongly discourage any law firm from utilizing AI products in any way, shape, or form. While many in the digital marketing community have embraced ChatGPT, our team at Blue Seven Content has no preconceived notions about how ChatGPT and other AI programs work or how AI content will impact your law firm’s rankings.

When you use these programs to ask specific queries or write content for a specific target keyword or longtail phrase, it will generate nearly the same response every time it is asked. This is problematic when other law firms across the country are also asking ChatGPT to write the same types of content. Not only will your content be unoriginal, but in many cases, it will plagiarize existing content online, which will have a devastating impact on your rankings.

Furthermore, ChatGPT and other AI models are not always accurate. In fact, at this point in time, they are not updated regularly enough to give accurate information or answers to your readers. For example, when laws are changed, if the AI model has not been updated to reflect these changes, you run the risk of creating content that is factually inaccurate, which would seriously harm your authoritativeness and trustworthiness. 

When you do not have time to write content for your law firm website, do not turn to these artificial intelligence programs. Instead, work with a professional legal content writer who will do thorough research and already has an in-depth understanding of the information users are looking for to craft compelling and original content for your lawyer blog.

Connect With Our Wordsmiths at Blue Seven Content Today 

Our expert legal content writers at Blue Seven have extensive knowledge and experience writing high-quality SEO content for law firms and law firm websites. Whether you need to build out your practice area pages, are interested in focusing on niche landing pages, or are ready to focus on your law firm’s blog, our wordsmiths know how to write content that is sure to rank. 

When you are ready to improve your existing web pages or craft evergreen blog content, connect with our digital content marketing professionals at Blue Seven Content. Complete our confidential contact form or call us to get started as soon as today.

Written by Dianna Mason – Legal and Construction Content Writer

6 Ways to Quickly Create Law Firm FAQ Topics

A FAQ section for your website is a great way to create new conversions and leads by improving your SEO, but you need to have the right law firm FAQ topics. When prospective clients visit your page, they will undoubtedly have questions regarding what they can expect when working with you, the services you offer, your attorneys, and how you work. Many of these questions can be covered under the law firm FAQ sections rather than clients having to search multiple places. 

Adding a law firm FAQ section on your practice area pages provides a more user-friendly experience for clients. A FAQ section can provide your clients valuable information while saving your law firm resources and time by answering these common questions less often. Below, we discuss how to get started with a FAQ section and how it can benefit your law firm.

Craft quality, well-researched FAQ page to help your reader better understand the issues.
FAQs are a great way to improve the reader experience on your law firm’s website.

Benefits of Creating a FAQ for Your Law Firm’s Website

The benefits of your law firm having a legal FAQ section are numerous. Here are just a few of those benefits.

Saves Your Law Firm Money and Time

Your law firm is likely to receive the same questions from prospective clients consistently. If these questions are easily accessible in your law firm website’s FAQ, your staff will save time by not having to respond to these questions.

Improves User Experience 

Visitors are looking for easy access to legal information, and you provide that for potential clients when giving them a FAQ section. You can provide a positive experience leading to established trust with potential clients by saving them time and effort when interacting with your website.

FAQ sections on landing pages and blog posts should be easy to navigate and well-organized. You should use logical structure, clear headings, and bullet points to help visitors easily locate any information they seek.

Builds Your Law Firm Website’s Trustworthiness and Credibility 

Creating a FAQ can contribute to your law firm’s trustworthiness and credibility. A FAQ section demonstrates your firm’s knowledge and legal expertise in their practice area by providing clients with comprehensive and accurate answers to their legal questions. 

Such information leaves potential clients feeling more comfortable with choosing to work with you. Your law firm will have a solid reputation for trustworthiness and credibility when you share some free legal knowledge to prove your attorneys are highly capable. 

Creating an Effective Law Firm FAQ

Here are the six steps to quickly creating your law firm’s FAQ.

1. Identify Your Law Firm’s Most Common Questions

Sit with your staff and discuss the questions your clients ask you most frequently. You likely have a good list of questions you should include. But if not, ask your staff to write them down as they come up and update your FAQ with repeat questions.

One tactic may be to research some pinpoint keyword questions that have been typed most often into Google that are relevant to your practice area and add those to your FAQ.

2. Organize Questions by Topic 

After establishing the list of questions you want to include, you should organize them by practice area or topic. Doing so makes it easier for potential clients to find the information they are searching for while helping you create a more visually appealing FAQ.

3. Use Easily Understandable Language 

The best law firm website content has language that clients can understand. You want the answers to your FAQ to be easily understood by using plain language and avoiding complex legal jargon. It is best to assume that the majority of visitors to your website are not familiar with legal terminology, so keeping it simple will give you the best results.

4. Frequent Updates

You will want to keep your FAQ section updated by adding new questions and by updating any existing answers. Updating your content on a regular basis will help with overall SEO, and potential clients will appreciate that you have provided them with the most up-to-date information.

5. Make Your FAQ Easily Accessible 

The location of your FAQ is just as important as the questions you answer. Pick a prominent location on your law firm’s website to add your FAQ. We suggest you link the FAQ in the main navigation bar so that it is visible from every page.

6. Provide Accurate Information

When answering any FAQ questions, you need to be sure your answers are accurate and up-to-date with current practices and laws in your area.

Writing Engaging FAQs for Law Firm Websites 

You want your FAQs to be engaging for those who are reading them. The following are some tips you can follow to create an FAQ that will capture the interest of your audience.

You are trying to answer questions for your clients, and when you use confusing legal jargon, you might further confuse them. It is critical to remember that many visitors to your website have no background in law and appreciate the time you take to use plain language when answering questions. 

Answer in a Conversational Tone

When answering your FAQs, you should speak directly to your potential clients rather than writing as though it is a legal paper. Your content will be more engaging and relatable when you use a conversational tone, and it helps you avoid looking haughty.

Use Examples and Visuals 

You should consider the addition of relevant media, such as infographics and videos, to help strengthen the answers you provide. This type of information can be helpful in answering the more complex questions your clients may ask. Adding case studies or real-life examples can help boost your law firm’s credibility and make your legal content more engaging for your clients.

Answer Proactively 

You should think proactively by considering what follow-up questions your potential clients may ask. By thinking proactively, you can answer anticipated questions, further saving your law firm time and energy by addressing client questions in advance.

Use Professional SEO Content in Your Law Firm FAQs to Boost Conversions 

By creating the ultimate FAQ page, you can easily boost the conversion rate of your law firm’s website. By following the above tips, you can attract more traffic both organically and by Google ranking when creating a law firm FAQ. Contact Blue Seven Content to discuss your law firm’s web content needs today. Complete our secured contact form or call us to get started.

Written by Dianna Mason – Legal Content Writer

The Nuts and Bolts of Law Firm SEO Writing – It’s More Than Just the Writing

Law firm SEO writing is evolving at a rapid pace, with artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, and Google all throwing major curve balls over the last year. But it doesn’t change the fact that your law firm needs content and that content should serve a purpose. Yes, you want to be on page one of Google’s SERP, and you want to pop up in featured answers and SGE results. 

A skilled legal SEO writer needs a combination of skills, of which quality writing is certainly the most important. However, there is so much more that goes into a law firm page than just research and writing. There are what we call the “nuts and bolts” of the page that really complete it and have it ready for the client and the intended readers.

  1. Make it an Easy Read 
  2. Get Those Headings Formatted Properly
  3. Choosing the Right External Links
  4. Internal Links Back to Your Page
  5. Anchor Text for Links
  6. The Right Tone for Your Call to Action (CTA)
  7. Get the Law Firm SEO Writing Nuts and Bolts Done Right 
Help ensure your great law firm SEO writing also looks great on the page.

Make it an Easy Read 

Your page should be easy on the eyes, but this means a few things. A law firm practice area page, blog post, or any other page on the website should, first and foremost, be written in a way that’s easily understandable. The reading level needs to be appropriate for your intended audience, and this could look different depending on many factors, including the types of practice areas targeted and the education level of the website’s usual reader.

Seventh and eighth-grade reading levels are typically appropriate, but you can occasionally bump that up toward the college level. For example, you probably don’t need overly complex language or sentences if you’re a personal injury firm. However, if you handle, say, license defense for professionals such as doctors, financial advisors, or insurance agents, then you can get away with more elevated language. 

Moving Beyond the Reading Level

Aside from the reading level of your law firm website content, there are various other ways to help make the reading process more enjoyable for the reader. This includes some easy formatting techniques. 

  • Enough headings. Headings lay out a roadmap for the reader. They break up the page and give the reader a heads up about what’s next, allowing them to skim for the info they really need. You need the right amount of H2s and H3s, and this will vary depending on page length and the requirements of the page. 
  • Shorter sentences. Long and complex sentences aren’t helping anyone. The rule of thumb is to keep your sentences shorter, but you can occasionally mix it up with a compound sentence. 
  • Shorter paragraphs. Keep your paragraphs short for the most part. I know those high school English classes stressed five sentences a paragraph, but three is generally okay. Again, shorter means a person is more likely to read the information.
  • Bullet points. When the opportunity presents itself for a good bullet list, take it. Think about what your eyes do when they read a webpage. They probably skim, and they probably stop and read the bullets. 

Between having the appropriate reading level and properly formatting a page using the suggestions above, you’ll be well on your way to crafting good content for a law firm website. 

Get Those Headings Formatted Properly

We previously mentioned headings, and here we are again. Headings get their own heading in this article (SEO dad jokes?). 

Your headings need to look right, and that’s not always as easy as it sounds. There are two main types of capitalization styles for headings on a website page: sentence case and title case. 

  • Sentence case. In sentence case, only the first word of the heading and any proper nouns in the heading get capitalized. The following are examples of sentence case used:
    • Types of compensation available for a medical malpractice claim
    • How long do You have to file a slip and fall claim?
    • Choose Blue Seven Content for Your law firm SEO needs
  • Title case. In title case, all words except for articles, conjunctions, and shorter prepositions are capitalized (the last word of the heading is capitalized no matter what). One way to understand this without thinking too much about it is that words with four letters or more are capitalized, while most shorter words aren’t. Proper nouns will get capitalized, as will verbs, no matter their length, so “You,” “They,” “We,” “Do,” “Is,” etc. will get capped. The following are examples of title case properly used:
    • Types of Compensation Available for a Medical Malpractice Claim
    • How Long Do You Have to File a Slip and Fall Claim?
    • Choose Blue Seven Content for Your Law Firm SEO Needs

Which Style is Best for You?

The capitalization style you use for your legal SEO content will depend entirely on the preferences of your client. Over the years, I’ve seen the pendulum swing from using sentence case to title case multiple times, and I have clients who prefer each style. Right now, most clients prefer title case for headings. Still, others may prefer that every word in a heading be capitalized. This is something that is easy to get right when you work with a client regularly. 

One of the main issues here is to keep it uniform. If you use title case for your headings with a client, always use title case for them. And you certainly don’t want to switch it up mid-page – that just looks sloppy. Before you start working with a client or handling content for your law firm, go ahead and decide how you want your headings formatted. Keep them uniform throughout the website as much as possible.

External links are a good way to bolster your law firm website content. An external link to a quality source can help establish the facts of your page in the mind of the reader, adding credibility to your content. External links can also help increase the authority of your website. 

However, you can really screw things up if you don’t use good links. Your law firm content writer should focus on reputable sources. We’re talking about looking for good .gov, .edu, or other sources from reputable entities. What you don’t want to do is link to other law firms or places like NOLO or FindLaw. While you can certainly peruse these places for information, don’t link to them on your firm’s website. 

For blogs, depending on the topic, you can search for reputable news sources, but that can be tricky. Even though we’re legal marketers, we have to keep current political issues in mind. Half the country hates half of the news sources available, and the other half of the country hates the other half of the news sources. Don’t get mad at me. I just want peace. 

Internal links have to be a part of your strategy. Listen, we’re the content people. That’s all we do, so we don’t know your exact internal SEO strategy. But you’re going to need some internal links on each practice area page, FAQ page, or blog post

Internal links help bolster your website in the eyes of search engines. They create an ever-evolving map for Google and others to use so they can understand the intent of your website. However, you don’t need to go linking to just any page. Be strategic about it. When you work with a skilled SEO team and content writers who “get it,” you’ll have the right internal linking happening to lead your readers and the search engines on the right journey.

This may not seem like a big deal for law firm SEO writing, but remember, we’re talking the nuts and bolts. The way a page looks and is formatted matters, and that includes the text used to incorporate internal and external links – the anchor text. 

Anchor text has always been a pet peeve of mine. It’s not something you’d ever even notice on a page when it’s done correctly, but you definitely notice if it’s not. 

Anchor text refers to the words you use to hyperlink your source into the law firm content page. I think some examples will help best illustrate this (ignore the actual sentence because I go in to look for data). In these examples (not actually linking out, but I’ve made it clear what the anchor text should be), we can see how the anchor text for a hyperlink should be a few words and centered on an area that would seem natural to click. We’ve all seen hyperlinks in just about everything we’ve read online.

Not so Good

  1. When we examine data available from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, we can see that there were 40 billion motorcycle accidents last year across the Commonwealth. 
  2. When we examine data available from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, we can see that there were 40 billion motorcycle accidents last year across the Commonwealth. 
  3. When we examine data available from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, we can see that there were 40 billion motorcycle accidents last year across the Commonwealth. 

Good Example

  1. When we examine data available from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT), we can see that there were 40 billion motorcycle accidents last year across the Commonwealth. 

When you write your page, you don’t need to actually “bold” the anchor text. I only did that so you could more easily see which words were used. Some key rules we try to stick to are:

  • Don’t link the first word of the sentence (first example above).
  • Don’t link just a single word. 
  • Link the whole name of an agency or entity if you link some of it (including acronyms at the end).
  • Don’t link more words than necessary (like example three).
  • Link relevant words (not like example two).

If you take a minute to read some reputable sources, you’ll quickly see that hyperlink anchor text should look seamless. Check out Investopedia, Forbes, Wired, and others for some good examples. 

The Right Tone for Your Call to Action (CTA)

Your call to action can be fairly obvious or more subtle. This depends on your brand personality, the type of firm, and even the type of page. For a practice or service area page, you may want a more clear CTA since, in theory, your reader is there because they need your help for some pressing issue. You should make it clear why you’re the help they need and that they can call you now for a consultation.

However, for a blog or FAQ, you may want a more subtle CTA. You may not even want one at all. Again, it depends on several factors that you need to know before crafting the page. A good call to action is nuanced and examines all of the parameters you and your client lay down. 

Get the Law Firm SEO Writing Nuts and Bolts Done Right 

Having a good writer is everything. A quality legal SEO writer is worth their weight in gold, but they can turn to silver or bronze if they mess up the page basics. When you work with a content writing team, you want the whole package. Otherwise, you’ll just end up spending valuable time editing an otherwise well-written page. 

At Blue Seven Content, we have regular meetings to review all of this and more. All of this is included in the guides our writers receive and in the initial training we provide. Not only that, but each piece passes through an editing phase to double-check all of this before a client gets anything.

We’re ready to help, and we don’t need a long adjustment period to hit the ground running with your law firm or legal marketing agency. Give us a call or send a message today, and we’d be happy to discuss these aspects of law firm SEO writing with you and your team.

Written by Allen Watson – Founder and CEO of Blue Seven Content

Local SEO For Contractors – Getting Ahead of Your Competition

Local SEO for contractors. Websites for contractors. Neither of those are probably are likely things you thought of when you decided to go into business. Yes, you know your skills, and you know them well. Perhaps your reputation has been established in the local community through word-of-mouth. 

But, contractor websites and SEO services for contractors can really enhance your local game. If you provide licensed and insured contractor services for your local community and want to stand above the competition, even your larger, wealthier competitors, you can do it. You just need to know where to start. 

  1. What is Local SEO and How Can it Help Your Contractor Website?
  2. SEO for Contractors – A Local Flavor
  3. How Many Locations do You Need to Target for a Successful Contractor SEO Strategy?
  4. Your Content Should be Clear and Concise
  5. Other Benefits of SEO for Builders and Contractors
  6. Local SEO Guide for Contractors: 9 Steps
    1. Step 1: Maximize Your Google My Business Page
    2. Step 2: Utilize Local Directories for Your Website
    3. Step 3: Use Local Keywords to Optimize Your Website 
    4. Step 4: Creating Location-Specific Pages
    5. Step 5: Maximize Your Website for Mobile Users
    6. Step 6: Add Local Content
    7. Step 7: Obtain Links from Independent Websites
    8. Step 8: Build Positive Reviews
    9. Step 9: Social Media
  7. Blue Seven Content is Your SEO Company for Contractors

What is Local SEO and How Can it Help Your Contractor Website?

Local SEO should be part of the digital marketing strategy for construction companies and contractors. The very nature of the business model for this industry means there should be a focus on local client acquisition, as opposed to a website focusing on selling kitchen appliances. 

Local SEO is a strategy to rise above your competitors in a specific geographic area. This can include targeting a specific state, region, county, or town. In many cases, a contractor could benefit from targeting multiple locations for each service they offer, but more on that later. 

Your goals with a local contractor SEO strategy are multifaceted and include:

  • Improving organic search results traffic from local customers
  • Rank higher in local search results on Google and other search engines
  • Optimizing the website for specific geographic locations
  • Building trust and reputation
  • Gaining an understanding of the evolving nature of local search

To be sure, a contractor SEO approach with a local focus should involve more than just your website’s written pages. As someone who depends on reputation and reviews, your focus will also include:

  • Optimizing your Google Business Profile (GBP) and other review websites like Yelp
  • Creating and maintaining a strong reputation on websites like Angie
  • Getting placed on local business directories 
  • Creating and maintaining a strong social media presence

If this sounds like something you didn’t sign up for, we get it. You know your stuff. You know valuable trade skills, and you’re good at it. The last thing you have time to focus on is building your construction SEO strategy. But this is important. Whether you’ve been in business for a while or are just starting, you can benefit from a local SEO strategy. You don’t have to do all of this at once, but you shouldn’t put off the next steps, either. 

Local SEO for contractors
Stand above local competition with a solid SEO strategy for your contractor website.

SEO for Contractors – A Local Flavor

As a contractor or handyman, you’re already well aware of the power of word-of-mouth but think about the process your prospective clients take before they pick up the phone and call. It may look something like the client:

  • Having a need (they want a new deck, need a kitchen counter remodel, want to install a new toilet, etc.).
  • Asking friends or family members if they’ve used someone they would recommend.
  • Checking online directories like Angie (formerly Angie’s List) for trusted local help.
  • Typing in their exact problem into Google or another search engine. 

That last point is where Local SEO plays a major role, and one you should capitalize on, especially because many people jump right to the last point anyway. Whether you specialize in installing toilets, weatherizing homes, or pressure washing condos, it is crucial that you show up above your competition on the search engine results page (SERP) when your prospective client performs their search.

How Many Locations do You Need to Target for a Successful Contractor SEO Strategy?

Where do you want to work?

Seriously. What geographic area do you want to draw your customers from?

If you’re a local handyman in, say, Charleston, SC, chances are you’re going to want to target your local SEO strategy around Charleston. But we can also dig a little deeper, particularly as we learn more about your needs. As we discuss the following line of thinking for a local SEO strategy for contractors, we want you to think about your particular geographic area and all of the towns, counties, or regions that people refer to in your area. 

Let’s make a theoretical scenario for a local handyman who handles a range of types of home repairs, but specifically on gutter cleaning and repair. If this handyman lives in Charleston, it makes sense to target the Charleston audience with the website. However, Charleston likely isn’t the only area the handyman wants to look for clients. 

Think about all of the other areas around Charleston that are within reasonable driving distance that could also have the desired market:

  • North Charleston
  • Mt. Pleasant
  • Folly Beach
  • Summerville
  • Goose Creek
  • James Island
  • West Ashley
  • and more…

It’s all about understanding your local clientele. You know your area, and you know what people are looking for and where they’re looking from. You may be based in Charleston, but you want the search results to show your services when someone types in “Folly Beach gutter cleaning” or “Mt. Pleasant gutter repair,” you want to show up. Yes, there’s a chance your Charleston page will make it to the SERP of a Folly Beach or Mt. Pleasant search, but that’s no guarantee. 

In many cases, a Charleston gutter cleaning handyman would benefit from creating website pages for their services for multiple locations around Charleston as well. A good strategy in these situations is using your personal knowledge about where most of your clients have come from before and also analyzing population data. If your budget allows for five solid local SEO pages, it may be wise to target the five most populated towns around your area. 

This whole example was made based on one area and a very specific type of handyman, but this applies to just about any other type of local contractor or construction outfit. You have specific areas you serve and specific services you offer. Your website content should focus on that to increase your organic search results power. 

Wait, do we really want you to have five of the same type of page on your website?

Maybe. Maybe two, three, four, six, or more. All for the same service.

Okay, it’s not the same page. We don’t want you to copy your services webpage for one area, swap one local name for another, and then paste it into a new webpage. Copy and pasting website content is one of the fastest ways to guarantee none of your website pages show up in the search results.

Each page needs to be original, even if they convey basically the same information to the reader. What this does is create a whole page for your particular service that’s targeted to each different area you want to gain clients from. You’re trying to improve your chances of landing in a prospective client’s SERP, no matter where they’re looking in your targeted areas. 

Your Content Should be Clear and Concise

Simply having content on your website isn’t enough. You need content that’s at the appropriate reading level for your desired audience, and you need to make sure the page is formatted well. 

Think about how you read a webpage. Whether you’re browsing on your computer or phone, you’re likely skimming the pages until you find the information you need. You probably haven’t thought about it much, but creating a good, local SEO page for contractors involves a deeper understanding of website content writing.

Your page should have relatively short paragraphs. Walls of text aren’t going to help. There should be bullet points when they’re relevant, easily identifiable, and relevant headings and content that is easy to read. What reading level is appropriate for your construction or contractor website? It’s probably somewhere in the seventh or eighth-grade reading level. 

Believe it or not, it can be challenging to craft a webpage that hits all of these marks. You need to convey industry-specific information in a way that any prospective client will understand immediately. 

Construction and contractor SEO writers can help you do this.

Other Benefits of SEO for Builders and Contractors

Building trust with a prospective client is like giving them the pieces to a puzzle. Each piece assembled builds a more complete picture of the type of business you operate. The more details a prospective client has, the more trustworthy you appear. 

Your website needs to be more than just service pages targeted to locations. Once a client lands on your website, there are other ways to convey a sense of trust and calm. 

The process of talking to and hiring a local contractor is intimidating for many people. Prospective clients are reaching out because they need help with something they don’t know how to do, but they also don’t know where to start their search. Clients don’t want to get taken advantage of, so they are going to need more pieces of the puzzle before making a decision. 

Essentially, whichever local contractor or company created the clearer “trust picture” with those puzzle pieces is going to win.

Your website will benefit from:

  • A complete GBP. Any local business that wants to succeed really needs to have a complete Google Business Profile. This gets you onto Google Maps and in the local search results. Your prospective clients will use the GBP to check out reviews, your business hours, a quick glimpse of your services, your phone number and website, and more. 
  • Highlighting local community involvement. Prospective local clients will respond well to businesses involved with the local community. If you’ve been in the area for a long time, you probably have some deep roots and connections. If you participate in local charity events, your website can show that. Locals want to support locals. 
  • A solid “About Us” page. One of the most trafficked pages on most websites is the “About Us” or “Team” page. People want to know who they’re getting when they hire a local business. They want another piece of that trust puzzle completed before they make a decision. 
  • Showing licensing and insurance. You’re licensed and insured. If you aren’t, then local SEO is the least of your concerns. You can not only discuss your licenses and insurance, but you can also provide links to official websites (if available in your state) so prospective clients can check for themselves—another piece of the trust puzzle.
  • Reviews and testimonials. Yes, your GBP and other places like Yelp and Angie’s have review sections, but you can also have a separate testimonial page on your website. Ask satisfied customers if they wouldn’t mind providing a written review. You can include these on your website with photos of finished projects. 

Local SEO Guide for Contractors: 9 Steps

Step 1: Maximize Your Google My Business Page

In addition to “near me” searches, an essential aspect of Google searches is the local pack results. A local pack is a little but powerful pop-up box triggered when someone does a local business search through Google that contains website listings sorted by intent, review, and geography.

In order to be listed in a local pack search, you must create a Google Business Profile. These local pack “near me” searches generate at least 44% of website clicks, which drives an enormous source of online traffic to your webpage. 

Optimizing your Google business profile will help you rank for local pack searches. It is super easy and free to create a Google Business Profile.

Optimizing Your Listing for a Google Business Profile

After you have created your Google business profile, the following tips ensure that your profile remains optimized for local search rankings:

  1. Maintain a consistent business name, phone number, and address
  2. Provide several ways for consumers to contact your company (website, store hours, phone number, etc.)
  3. Under the About section, prepare a brief description of your company
  4. If applicable, supply a list of your products, including prices and quotes
  5. Provide your customers with updates about the content you create or upcoming events

In general, when a “near me” search is conducted, a list of company results is generated based on distance and keyword variations (even slight variations), so it is critical to be thorough with the account information you provide.

Step 2: Utilize Local Directories for Your Website

Next, you will want consumers to locate your construction company via trusted websites that are utilized by many consumers to find contractors. For general contractors and construction companies, these websites may include:

  • Yelp
  • Angi
  • Blue Book
  • Construct Connect
  • Iambuilders.com
  • Construction.com
  • Better Business Bureau
  • Home Advisor

When listing this information, follow the above rules for filling out account information on each website to ensure contact information is correct and easily accessible. The use of local directories can considerably boost referral traffic to your webpage.

Step 3: Use Local Keywords to Optimize Your Website 

Websites for contractors can be optimized by using local keywords and help you to rank for:

  1. Region-specific and city keywords
  2. “Near Me” searches

For example, if a consumer were to search for sandwiches in Las Vegas, Nevada, they would find themselves with a plethora of results from Google Business Profile listings and Google’s traditional search page. Therefore, you can optimize your website ranking by using location-specific keywords, such as “Las Vegas Sandwiches.”

Optimizing Your Website for Local Searches

Google Ads is free to users when they sign their business up for a free advertising account. This keyword search tool will help you decide which keywords are best for you.

  1. Choose relevant keywords: By choosing keywords with a lower volume and better intent, such as “highway construction company Tampa” or “ commercial construction company Tampa,” you will bring the more qualified traffic, but not necessarily the highest traffic.
  2. Filter Your Search By Intent: Keywords with lower Top-Of-Page bids are typically more informative, while higher bids are more commercial. 
  3. Find Keywords of Competitors: You are able to search which competitor’s keywords are ranking through Google Ads.

Step 4: Creating Location-Specific Pages

Skipping this step is the top mistake that companies repeatedly make. You should never ignore how important location-specific pages are when creating SEO for construction companies. Let’s say your contracting business is based out in Atlanta but serves the surrounding suburban and metropolitan areas.

Many companies choose to have one webpage (i.e., their homepage) that covers the entire Atlanta region. If you are a consumer in Sandy Springs and search for local contractors, you will most likely see top results for the contractors headquartered in Sandy Springs. Companies can account for this search issue by creating location-specific pages within their website for each city they are trying to target.

Step 5: Maximize Your Website for Mobile Users

The majority of searches done through mobile phones are for local businesses. It is crucial for mobile users to easily access your website. You can optimize your webpage for mobile users by following these steps:

  • Limit the click conversion
  • Limit the scrolling amount
  • For easy contact, add click-to-call buttons on each page
  • Location information should be clearly visible
  • Limit the number of top-navigation pages
  • Build a fast webpage
  • Utilize high-quality photos
  • The front of your homepage should have a clear CTA

Step 6: Add Local Content

Adding a section on your website for a local blog is a fantastic way to highlight community engagement and to help educate your customer base on various construction topics. By using keyword research, you can discover which topics are trending in your local area.

As you continue creating content, you will naturally gain links over time. Backlinks help to build authority for your webpage while generating traffic.

Often, construction companies have to reach out to local bloggers and websites to manually build links. This can happen by conducting an interview or requesting a business mention on their blog to earn you an easy link.

Step 8: Build Positive Reviews

Once you have created a user-friendly webpage with the correct keywords, you want to create good exposure for your construction business by building positive reviews. It is not unethical to ask customers for a review after a successful business or contract engagement.

Reviews on external websites, like Yelp, Facebook, and other local directories, must be managed by adding solutions to negative and positive reviews.

Customers tend to purchase a product after they have seen a positive business review. Reviews are crucial to the success of construction SEO because projects and contracts are often expensive and require a higher upfront trust than some other service-based businesses. It is essential for contractors to cultivate positive reviews on all online platforms.

Step 9: Social Media

Social media may not be the most important place to gain customers, but it is still a great way to showcase current and past projects. Facebook provides an easy way to invite people to like your page and gain word-of-mouth referrals in your area.

Blue Seven Content is Your SEO Company for Contractors

Blue Seven Content has extensive experience handling written SEO content for contractors and construction companies. Our team carefully selects writers with knowledge in the industry to write content for clients. We want to help get your content game up to speed so you can improve your local customer acquisition processes. 

SEO services for contractors is a long game – there’s no such thing as overnight success with this, but there is such a thing as real success that can put your contractor services on the local map. You can fill out the contact form on this page or call us at (843) 580-3158 for more information about how we can help you today.

Written by Allen Watson – Founder and CEO of Blue Seven Content and Dianna Mason – Legal and Construction Content Writer

Law Firms and Search Generative Experience (SGE)

Law firms are beginning to explore what the search generative experience (SGE) means for them. Surely, most law firm marketing directors or partners have spoken to their marketing agencies, and there may be some internal panic. 

At Blue Seven Content, we only generate written content for law firm websites, so SGE has the potential to significantly affect our business. In fact, if SGE and ChatGPT play out how many in the industry think, we won’t have a business at all. 

But I don’t think it’s as bad as people think. So far, as I’ve delved into SGE responses for law firms and law-related queries, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it’s working. 

Law firms and search generative experience, how will Google's search revolution change the legal marketing industry?

The Law Firm Short-Tail Keywords

When thinking about where to begin my search generative experience journey, I figured the best place to start would be where it all started for me – typical keywords for crafting a law firm practice area page

You know what I’m talking about:

  • Los Angeles personal injury lawyer
  • Car accident lawyer in Denver
  • Palmdale slip and fall attorney

When it comes to the SGE results, it doesn’t currently seem like Google is trying to make waves. I typed in “medical malpractice attorney Charleston SC,” after I geocoded my location to Charleston. First, I got the usual SERP results, but there was also a “generate AI response” option for me to press:

Typing medical malpractice attorney charleston sc gives me the option to click an SGE button.

When I clicked the AI button, it seemed like it pulled a list of medical malpractice attorneys in the area, and it appeared to reward reviews from various sources (uh oh, back come the directories?). However, what doesn’t seem to play a role in this generative response (yet) are the PPC or organic results you’d usually find on the SERP. They give these as 4- or 5-pack for each search:

The SGE gave me a directory of sorts.

At the bottom of the SGE response, there were a few prompts for related follow-up questions, presumably what people typically ask around the same time they are looking for a medical malpractice lawyer:

  • How long do you have to sue for medical malpractice in South Carolina?
  • What is the statute for medical malpractice in South Carolina?
  • What are the limits for malpractice in SC

These types of responses are the norm for SGE when you type in the usual keywords that would bring you to a law firm practice area page. It does not yet give you an automatic generative response – you have to choose to click it. 

We should really pay attention to the follow-up queries on the bottom of these responses. These are the type of long-tail keywords that lead to responses we already write answers for, but this gives us an idea of what Google (and readers) want to see. 

These types of queries are harder for SGE to even make a coherent response for. What are they going to do – describe what a car accident or family law attorney is? No, I think these queries will remain relevant to the traditional SERP results. 

However, the long-tail keyword queries are a different story. 

The Law Firm Long-Tail Keywords

I’ve predicted that Google would keep legal queries YMYL, but that may not actually be the case. Of course, this is all still experimental, so I may be proven right. I could just as easily be proven wrong. 

So, I decided to delve into general queries such as “steps to take after a slip and fall accident” or “when should I call a lawyer after a car accident.”

I’ve found that these types of searches generate an automatic SGE response. For these queries, we’re getting a response you could expect to find on ChatGPT, except Google can draw from, well, Google. This AI can access the internet.

When you type in these types of searches, the SGE does give you a response, and it does show a 3-pack (4-pack if you scroll right) of pages where it draws its answer from. Usually, these are law firms, but there are other sources, depending on your question. 

My immediate questions, and ones that people smarter and with more experience than me are tackling, are:

  • What makes a page “good” for SGE to draw from?
  • How do we best optimize for SGE?

I geocoded myself to Charleston, SC, again and typed “steps for a medical malpractice case in Charleston.” I got the SGE answer straight away, above the fold:

Ask a long-tail keyword geared towards a legal question, and you get an automatic SGE response.

You can see a small photo of, supposedly, where the information used to generate the response comes from. Again, I want to know what makes these the “best” pages to use for an SGE response. 

Again, we get the same follow-up prompts on the bottom that we got when we looked up the “medical malpractice attorney Charleston SC.” 

Below the SGE, we go right into what we’re used to seeing on the SERP, but not sponsored ads. It goes right into the organic search results (my content writer’s heart sings when ads aren’t first), but I also know that so many searchers won’t go beyond the SGE response. 

Something funny happened when I typed, “when should you call a lawyer after a construction accident.” I got the sponsored results first, and THEN I got the SGE response in the middle of the page, finally followed by the organic results:

I’m sure these results will be replicated the more I play with SGE queries. Again, Google is experimenting with all of this, and they will try to figure out what works best for the average user AND for them. Google is not going to throw away revenue, so having the sponsored results show up first shouldn’t surprise anyone. 

Do We Already Know How to do This?

As I think about law firms and search generative experience exploration, I was curious as to how this would work when I entered the keywords that Blue Seven Content usually ranks well for anyway. First, I typed in “law firm practice area pages”:

We already ranked second in organic for this keyword (on most days), and we show up in the SGE as well. Look what happens when I expand the SGE result:

When I expand it out, Blue Seven ranks number one in the SGE response. Now, the results don’t show the meta description that we have for that page, but that’s not surprising. Google has a way of looking at your meta and ignoring it anyway, so there’s that. 

I did the same with “law firm FAQ pages” because we’re frequently number one with that search. Here’s the result:

Here, we show up number one in organic SERP and number one and two in the SGE response:

We Still Have ChatGPT to Deal With

As I’ve noted multiple times before, ChatGPT is a “threat” to us legal content writers. Not legal marketing agencies, though. Legal marketing agencies that handle all of a law firm’s online marketing will always be around, and they’ll adapt. No, it’s the content writers who have to worry.

But do we?

Okay, maybe some legal content writers have to worry. The ones who can’t produce content better than ChatGPT are certainly on the chopping block. But that was always going to be the case. What I think will happen, as I’ve said before, is that ChatGPT has had its sugar rush. It’s given the industry a high (or a bad trip, depending on what your role is). 

But as I’ve toyed around with Google’s SGE, I’ve seen that good content matters. Google is meeting AI in a way that (1) provides simple answers that users are looking for and (2) seeks to maintain the main revenue driver for the platform – ads. 

For now, SGE results are generally pulling answers from well-ranking organic content that already answers, or closely answers, the search query. Could SGE end up pulling content that someone generated with ChatGPT and published? Yes, of course. But not if that content isn’t better than what’s already out there. 

Currently, ChatGPT has many flaws. Phantom court cases and rulings. Massive plagiarism. Predictable writing that reeks of AI. Zero human touch. 

And, of course, there’s the issue of what happens to content online when ChatGPT gains access to the internet (it’ll happen eventually) and begins learning new stuff based on content people have generated using ChatGPT. It’s a self-feeding loop with little new input from actual humans. 

Content degradation is waiting to happen.  

Was there content degradation with human legal content writers consistently regurgitating each other? Of course there was. This is why I’ve said I’m grateful to ChatGPT for snapping us (at least Blue Seven) out of any comfort zone we may have fallen into. 

We have to constantly improve. We have to be better content creators, thinkers, researchers, and writers. Writers have to be better than the silver bullet LLMs that many (lazy) marketers think will be their golden ticket. 

With my intro research into SGE responses to legal queries, I’m positive that quality, human-written content will reign supreme. Humans can and should use the tools available at their disposal, much like SEOs use Ahrefs, Semrush, and Clearscope. They should use tools like editors use, including Copyscape, Grammarly, or Hemingway. These technological advancements didn’t kill the SEO or the editor, and those who are good at their craft don’t completely rely on the tools. Because they are tools used to build the larger product – a good piece of writing. 

Law Firms and Search Generative Experience (SGE) – My Take for Now

I think SGE will seek to answer basic queries with assistance from results that already rank. Perhaps this will go to paid results eventually, but Google is drawing from organic results for now. Ranking in SGE will be more competitive because it’s taking from 3 or 4 organic sources now, then the rest of the SERP responses appear. 

Who knows what this will look like in six months or a year, but I don’t think it’s the death of the legal content writer. I think it’s the beginning of a new search experience, and we have to adapt. What we’re adapting to is still up in the air. How will law firms respond to search generative experience? Stand by, we’ll be back for more.

Written by Allen Watson – Founder and CEO of Blue Seven Content

ChatGPT And The End Of Our Complacency

Sometimes, complacency is an accident. Nobody wakes up and says, “I think I’m fine with not improving.”

No. Complacency sneaks up on you.

At Blue Seven Content, we’ve tried very hard to be intentional about what we do and how we do it. We’re a company that only provides written content for websites (mostly law firms and, more recently, construction companies). If we’re going to only do one thing, we better be good at it.

And we have been good at it. However, I’m willing to admit that we may have gotten a little complacent.

2022 and the Release of the Beast

2022 was a good year for us. We had a ton of growth, and thankfully, we’ve had amazing clients to work with. We even let a few clients go for various reasons (usually, it’s clients who expect work that’s three times beyond what they want to pay).

Do you remember what happened at the end of November 2022?

It’s all anyone in the industry has talked about since.

ChatGPT.

“It’s the end of content writing.”

“It’ll save companies tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

“Look, I just tell it what I want, and it spits it out.”

Okay, I’ll admit. I was impressed with ChatGPT at first. Hell, it’s still impressive. But as time has gone on, the flaws have come out to play. Not only is ChatGPT super dull, but it is a notorious plagiarizer, and it makes things up. Seriously, sometimes it just invents things, including court cases. The writing is predictable, and it’s clear there’s no human behind it. Currently, it can’t connect to updated information.

Will these issues get resolved?

Of course. It would be foolish of me to say, “Ha! See, humans are better.”

ChatGPT was released less than a year ago, and we know OpenAI and other companies are rapidly working to advance the technologies involved in large language models. ChatGPT will gain access to the internet at some point, and these AI programs will learn how to sound more human.

The issue that many have pointed out is that AI will begin to take information from the content that it’s created. Does anyone want to guess how many millions of ChatGPT pages have been published since November of 2023? I don’t know the exact number, but imagine what happens when it gains access to the internet.

This will be a machine that feeds itself, with each iteration slightly degraded from the last. But that’s for a later post. For now, I want to send out thanks to AI and ChatGPT.

Thank you for snapping Blue Seven Content and me out of complacency.

ChatGPT has challenged legal and law firm content writers.
Behold, our Gen Z creation. But this does illustrate how we’ve felt this year.

Why I’m Thankful (Begrudgingly) for ChatGPT

Even though I think ChatGPT is currently inferior to human writing (I think it will remain that way for quite a while), I do fully understand that AI has completely devastated the freelance writing community, as well as many agencies that create content.

We built Blue Seven slowly, working only with writers that we hand-pick and continually work with on a daily basis. We train, have manuals, and constantly adapt to industry changes. We respond quickly to client requests and concerns, and our writers really are good at what they do. Not every company does it this way. In fact, many of our writers have written for other agencies, and we have an idea of what their shortcomings are.

The problem is that ChatGPT has become the go-to complaint for clients who have any issues with our writing. What does this look like:

“ChatGPT could have written this.”

“Why should I use you when AI can do the same thing?”

One thing I always try to get from clients when they throw the “ChatGPT” lines at me is more detailed feedback. I want to know, specifically, what the client doesn’t like about the piece. You see, since the birth of website content writing, clients have always struggled when it comes to providing feedback. It can be like pulling teeth.

That’s not necessarily the point, and I don’t fault the client. When you don’t like a piece of writing, you don’t like it. That’s honestly enough for me to get it redone. But feedback would help.

Now, though, clients have ammo when they want to skip detailed feedback. They just say, “This is like ChatGPT.” They’ve got the trump card, so to speak.

We’ve heard it. I’m not sure there’s a seasoned writer or company that hasn’t gotten some kind of feedback like that over the last six months. Even worse is when clients use completely unreliable “AI detectors” to say something was written by AI. Any “AI detector” on the market now is about as effective as a red shirt on a Star Trek away mission – useless and dead in the water.

At Blue Seven, we’ve really pushed to improve quality even more. We’ve taken a hard look at Google’s algorithm updates to see how they’ve responded to AI so far. We stress to our writers that we are a company that prides itself on human content curation, and we’ll remain that way. Our internal content team keeps a closer eye on anything that could be considered “fluff” and have taken the steps necessary to provide consistent feedback. We’ve adjusted to the needs of each client we have.

Our 2022 was great, and our 2023 has been good, too. We’ve actually gained clients in the face of ChatGPT, though I know for certain we’d have more if ChatGPT hadn’t hit when it did. Add that to a shaky economy, and I’m thankful we’re still around. So many companies and firms have hit a pause on additional content and marketing overall.

ChatGPT has snapped us out of complacency. We’re not ignoring it. Why would we? AI is here, and it will improve – but so will we. I’m certain that law firm website content will remain YMYL, which positions Blue Seven to be in the right place when companies and law firms realize that human writers are necessary.

Our goal is to stand out as the content providers to turn to for content that’s not only “Original, Researched, and Optimized” but also “Attorney Driven, Human Curated.”

There will never be a time when we aren’t looking to improve on what we do. Both myself and my business partner Victoria Lozano are dedicated to standing as a company, with every single writer, five years from now (and onward). We know this takes dedication. We know it takes continual improvement. There’s a place for technological advancements. There’s certainly a place for LLMs and AI. We can’t ignore it.

But humans want to read content written by other humans when they need real help. As humans, we all have shared experiences. We can empathize. We can connect.

Blue Seven won’t be complacent. We’re not going to simply assume we have a chokehold on what “good writing” is. We’ll take the steps needed to create writing that meets clients’ expectations. We’ll create writing that meets Google’s expectations.

Most of all, we’ll foster the best environment possible for our clients AND our writers to succeed.

Written By Allen Watson – Cofounder and CEO of Blue Seven Content

American Bar Association Resolution 604 – A Response to ChatGPT?

The American Bar Association has responded to ChatGPT. 

The increasing use and fascination of ChatGPT are reminiscent of Wikipedia. I remember in school being told not to use Wikipedia as a source because the author cannot be trusted. We see the legal industry viewing the use of ChatGPT much the same. Even though you input a question or demand, the answer is curated by an untrustworthy and anonymous author – an algorithm.

The ABA’s Take on AI 

The American Bar Association has responded to the legal community’s concerns about the use of AI by adopting Resolution 6043 at its 2023 midyear meeting. In summary, the resolution addresses how leaders should address accountability, transparency, and traceability in artificial intelligence. The resolution states three major components: 

1. Adopt Guidelines 

Using AI as a tool to better accomplish tasks is one thing. To rely on it completely is another. The initial factor is to ensure guidelines are created to maintain a human as the authority over the AI product. For example, there may be copyright and trademark issues at hand if a software engineer uses AI to help them create code for a page. Depending on the application of AI, the code may not be eligible for copyright. Thus rendering any monetization of the engineer’s idea useless. 

American Bar Association ChatGPT response - Resolution 604

2. Be Accountable and Take Reasonable Steps to Mitigate Harm 

The second prong of the resolution calls for entities and organizations to take accountability for their misuse of AI unless they can show that steps were taken to mitigate the harm. This sounds vaguely familiar to an employment attorney trying to defend a discrimination charge by stating that there were policies and steps in place for the alleged victim to have used. Conversely, it is asking companies and businesses to be more proactive about how their employees and leaders use AI tools. 

We know that algorithms can carry biases. We know that there are sets of data and codes that also carry biases. If a company is aware that this kind of activity is occurring, then it is on them to take accountability. For example, Amazon was using an AI-generated program for hiring. The algorithm for that program perpetuated a bias toward women’s applications. This resolution definitively places the blame on the companies and entities that use such programs to help with things like their hiring process. 

3. Document Key Decisions Regarding Use of AI

This final prong of the resolution seems to speak to the developer’s use of AI when curating intellectual property, data sets, designs, coding, etc. Using AI is inevitable and should be used thoughtfully while also making diligent notes of its use. Illinois had been one of the thought leaders implementing strict laws regarding the use of AI. For example, for any biometric data collected, there has to be a series of notices provided to the user about where their data will be stored, how it will be protected, and, hopefully, deleted. They are asking for a similar standard for the use of AI. 

The Reason for the Resolution 

The purpose of this American Bar Association ChatGPT / AI resolution is beyond the scope of using the tool to write an email. Instead, they are considering the production of self-driving cars, medical development in surgeries and medical devices, and autonomous systems. So how does this relate back to legal marketing? It is all about the audience. 

How Resolution 604 Relates to Legal Marketing 

Attorneys do not want the headache of being the brunt of a lawsuit or being the reason for a lawsuit. Using ChatGPT to curate your law firm’s pages means inputting your law firm’s data into a database and relying on an unreliable author to curate your media/content. 

Importantly, that goes against the first prong of the resolution and easily bleeds into the second. How is your firm mitigating the harm of AI if they are letting the marketing department use AI to curate its marketing content? It begs the question, how else are they using AI in their firm? What guidelines are they implementing in one department but not the others? 

The legal industry is heavily reliant on reputation. If you are reputable, then you are referable. If your site does not reflect your reputation, how can you keep relying on those referrals?  

It’s not a new message. We have been writing about this since the initial launch of Chat GPT. The use of AI is a delicate dance. You want to use it as a tool but not rely on it like a religious text. However, as the legal industry continues to explore the use and implication of AI, we start to see more and more legal barriers. 

We also have to consider how Google is reacting to the AI trend. We know that ChatGPT is limited in its scope, and certain industries are trying hard not to let details like their pricing structure fall into the ChatGPT data hole for fear of trademark issues or breach of trade secrets. Many companies are legally asking their employees not to use ChatGPT so that OpenAI does not get information like that stored in its database.

Like the old Wikipedia, ChatGPT is an unreliable author (and regurgitator of information). It can provide great outlines, but its content is repetitive, lacks accuracy, and can be curating material from biased sources which ultimately leaves your reputation in question. The ABA’s resolution lays down the groundwork for how the legal industry needs to frame the use of AI: as a tool but not as the “end all, be all.” 

Blue Seven Content is Attorney Driven, Human Curated 

At Blue Seven Content, we are attorney driven, human-curated. Our writers are well-equipped and experienced to research and include reliable sources that will drive your authority on a subject and increase your site’s credibility. When a reader who needs you views your website, their instinct to trust will help turn that viewer into a client. If you have any questions about ChatGPT or your law firm’s content, reach out to us for a chat today. We are powered by attorneys who understand American Bar Association resolutions and trends with AI and ChatGPT. We’re here to help.

Written by Victoria Lozano – Attorney, Co-Founder & Consultant

ChatGPT and Law Firms – From the Mouths of Industry Decision Makers

Anecdotally, ChatGPT is a non-starter for law firms and legal marketing agencies. That’s based on the discussions I had with lawyers and marketers at the Legal Marketing Association 2023 conference in Hollywood, FL.

The moment ChatGPT 3 was released in late November, I knew it would be a big deal in the industry. I immediately started playing around with it and, honestly, was a little scared. This is absolutely the best large language model that’s ever been released to the public. I wrote a piece about ChatGPT that’s been updated a few times. Conrad Saam, John Reid, and I had a discussion about what we thought we knew about ChatGPT in December. Much of what we said then wasn’t correct, but I think we were pretty spot on in some cases. Check out the video if you have some time.

Our Conversations at LMA 2023

This is the first year that Blue Seven Content has attended a major industry conference. Going in, we fully expected that there would be conversations about ChatGPT. We honestly thought the questions would revolve around why companies or law firms should use our team as opposed to plopping their request into a system that’s inexpensive and can work non-stop.

Let’s face it – human writers are going to cost more, especially if you want original, researched, and optimized content. We know that, and we have to be able to talk to people about why we (or any legal content writer) are better than AI. If we can’t properly explain it, much less actually do it, the business is doomed to fail.

But we were ready – the questions came, usually in some variation of:

“How have you responded to ChatGPT?”

“Have you lost any clients due to ChatGPT?”

“Do you use ChatGPT?”

“How do you know writers aren’t using ChatGPT?”

“Do you fact-check all of your work?”

I won’t delve into in-depth answers for all of this other than to say we’ve responded as a company, we certainly encourage the use of any tools that can help generate (not write) ideas, and yes, we fact-check our work.

We’ve recently updated our slogan to include “Attorney driven, human-curated.” Our goal is to stress that this business is partially owned by a practicing attorney (with many other JDs on staff) and written and then edited by qualified writing professionals. Our process is pretty extensive, beginning with writer training and continuing through the writing and editing phases. Yes, we still make mistakes, but we always guarantee that we’ll fix our mistakes promptly and for free.

Anecdotal Conversations With Legal Professionals at LMA

As I describe the conversations we had with lawyers and legal marketing professionals at the LMA convention, just know that anything written here is anecdotal. I didn’t record the conversations, and I don’t have the name of everyone that I talked to. But what I’m going to relay here is what all five of our team members heard throughout the three-day conference – not a single person at this event was enthusiastic about the use of ChatGPT for their website content.

The first conversation I (Allen) had about ChatGPT was on day one. It was with a legal marketing agency content director, and he asked me how we’ve handled ChatGPT. I went into my semi-prepared statement, but he stopped me halfway through. He said, “Yeah, that’s what we think as well, and I can tell we’re on the same wavelength.”

One attorney approached us and said that their firm had seriously played around with crafting blogs for their website using ChatGPT. By the end of December 2022, they realized that wasn’t a good idea. Their pain points revolved around accuracy and plagiarism. To erase those pain points, either an attorney or skilled paralegal had to spend an extreme amount of time fixing the pages. Overall, this firm found that ChatGPT wasn’t up to the level it needed to be to replace even the most basic blog writer.

There was a session held at LMA23 pertaining to ChatGPT, and I was able to catch some of the conversations coming out of the session (wasn’t able to attend). There was curiosity, likely due to the fact that nobody has stopped talking about AI since November. However, the general consensus was “approach with caution,” particularly when using ChatGPT to help with case work. Nobody quite knows who owns the inputs into the LLM system, and if legal staff are putting client information into the prompt, that could be a major privacy issue.

One person commented something that I’ve been saying, and something that makes relying on ChatGPT dangerous – it has excellent spelling and grammar. It “looks” right, so many people just assume it is right. It’s not always right.

We Were Prepared for the ChatGPT Conversation

Blue Seven Content has tried to stay ahead of the ChatGPT and overall AI curve. Our business is built solely around providing written content for law firms (and other industries), so this was a potential negative game-changer. But we’ve also built a company that’s focused on quality, human-written content. We have a team of writers with serious professional backgrounds. Some are lawyers, and all of them are professional writers.

Even so, we tested ourselves against ChatGPT outputs. The thing about ChatGPT, and I’ve said it before, is that ChatGPT presents incorrect information as if it’s a fact, and it does it confidently. That’s a problem, especially if you don’t have someone who 100% knows the law/information OR have someone who can fact-check every single line.

Writing a quality page for a law firm using ChatGPT would involve so much fact-checking that it almost makes no sense to use AI in the first place. It takes just as much time.

Since ChatGPT 3 (and later ChatGPT 4) have been released, there’s been an upheaval in the writing industry. Take a quick trip to the freelance writer forum on Reddit, and you’ll see post after post about work drying up for many writers. But the writers losing work are the ones who probably shouldn’t be writing website content in the first place. AI can most certainly do a better job with low-level SEO content that requires little fact-checking than a human.

But that’s not what we do at Blue Seven.

ChatGPT offers a lot, but it’s not ready for the big time.

Are there times when we’re asked to craft a page that only takes minimal brain power? Sure. But even then, we try to make sure the page is of a quality that makes people say, “I bet Blue Seven wrote that.”

Our company has doubled in size since ChatGPT came out, and that’s not due to luck. We’ve found what works, and we’re always taking steps to improve. We have a tight-knit group of writers who all get to communicate directly with one another whenever they want. This creates an environment that encourages everyone’s success, not just the success of a CEO or owner.

What’s Next for ChatGPT, AI, and the Legal Writing Industry?

The biggest issue is that law firms and various other industries can’t betray the trust of clients, and they certainly can’t broadcast false or plagiarized content. Until AI can spit out content that is 100% correct 100% of the time, there needs to be human involvement.

Now, do I think ChatGPT or another AI will always be off-limits for law firms and legal marketing agencies?

No. In fact, use it as a tool. It’s fine as a tool.

I also think that the level of human involvement may decrease as these large language models improve. But that’s questionable, and the timeline for AI improvement is unknown. The release of such an advanced LLM scared folks, and it seems that a pause in further development is happening while the aftermath is examined. Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, has said that they do not plan to train their systems for ChatGPT 5 for a while.

In my opinion, we’re on the tail end of the initial “AI hype,” and we’re figuring out what comes next. We’re all processing what this means for marketing, academia, and the professional realm.

Blue Seven Content is going to stay on top of AI trends, particularly as they relate to writing content for law firms. We WILL NOT be using ChatGPT to craft our pages. ChatGPT and law firms don’t mix well right now. Clients deserve to know that we have a human writer and editor behind every page. 

I invite you to check back on our website for future updates!

Written by Allen Watson – Blue Seven Content CEO & Founder