Whether you practice immigration, criminal defense, medical malpractice or securities law, your FAQ page is vitally important to existing and potential clients. While you cannot answer every single question someone is bound to ask, if your law firm does provide solid answers to the most frequently asked legal conundrums, you get noticed. It’s just that simple.
It also helps to keep adding new questions your law firm fields as they come in. Staying up-to-date and relevant in your area of law keeps the search engine spotlight on your firm leading to more exposure and more conversions. The exposure and conversions only happen though if someone searching for help can find your FAQ page and once they get there, it is well-written and tight, offering the very tidbits of information someone needs to reach out and make a connection. In other words, it’s about caring that your audience gets an answer to their search queries by offering valuable information they need.
These days, the trend is toward voice searches (Google says 20 percent of searches are voice), which, in some respects, are helpful, but in others, not so much. Voice search is only as good as the engine software that is interpreting what it thinks someone says when asked for information. It means that perhaps the most useful search tool is the ever increasingly old-fashion way to search – type the query in the search bar and change the search parameters if what returns is not what is needed or wanted. Evidently, voice searches may be faster and an easier way to get answers. However, if the answer comes back and it is not what is wanted, faster does not count when it’s irrelevant.
What your law firm aims to achieve is that those searching for legal representation are sent to your well written FAQ page which can drive highly targeted traffic to your website. When that happens, it’s a win-win strategy. Plan to use your FAQ page(s) as winning content marketing by creating search engine optimization (SEO) friendly sections. Doing that helps:
How to make your FAQ page comprehensive, focused and relevant
First and foremost, before putting together a FAQ page for your law firm, make sure you have relevant questions and answers. This means putting some serious thought into answering questions that your clients have asked; questions that, by raising them, educate your website visitors. This takes dedicated, serious research and means talking to frontline receptionists, case managers, private investigators and on-staff nurse practitioners that handle medical files. In other words, talking to those individuals inside your firm that deal with clients regularly and get asked a lot of questions you could use in your FAQ section.
If you do not offer a way to provide feedback or evaluation of services rendered for clients, it is time to consider doing so. Using the feedback helps identify questions that could also be used for a FAQ page. Find out what is currently trending in the legal niches and start including questions you see being asked online. This keeps you and your law firm in sync with the people who need you the most. Your answers show your expertise. Make certain to also check out what the competition is posting on their FAQ pages and then aim to fill in the blanks that you identify.
Second on your list would be to use structured data. The simplest explanation for structured data is leveraging technology to combine several, typically disparate, elements such as location, rates, inventory, and product to offer an oranges-to-oranges comparison to similar goods/services. Structured data means platforms can recommend, align and suggest services/products to consumers looking for them. This is not to be confused with a Q&A page. Google does have support for FAQ structured data in Google Assistant and in search. You would likely want to talk to your website developer about this option to see if it would benefit your law firm.
Third on the list of things to do would be to think “visually.” It’s important here that you do not just answer questions using text. Use well-designed, eye-catching and memorable graphics, videos, images and/or illustrations. This adds visual appeal, can be used as a “teaching moment,” helps people learn and understand a concept or explanation and improves comprehension. Additionally, people remember what they have “seen” far more often than what they have read.
The fourth item to consider is superb, easy, intuitive navigation to and from the FAQ page. If users cannot find the FAQ page because it’s not clear how to get to it, they leave. If they leave, they do not get to read your excellent FAQ content. Think roadmap and how important it is to be able to get to point B from point A without getting lost.
Your FAQ is vital to your law firm’s website. Make sure people “find” it with ease. Have categories of your law firm’s services clearly laid out – categories that lead to further informative subheadings. You may also want to consider listing only questions with links to the answers. This is good SEO because it drives traffic to multiple pages on your firm’s website. Brag about your FAQ on social media to garner more traffic.
The fifth thing to consider is checking your analytics regularly. This only makes good sense because otherwise if you do not check analytics, how do you know if your firm’s FAQ is doing its job? Are you getting good traffic, using the right keywords and ranking well? Are website visitors using the FAQ page or skipping it? How long are they staying on that page? With a wealth of information to be offered by working with your firm’s website analytics you can then fine-tune the FAQ.
Don’t let your law firm’s FAQ page be or look like an afterthought, thrown in because all websites really should have one. Make that page just as important as the whole website because it can bring you a wealth of traffic when used correctly.
Kerrie Spencer is a content developer for law firms at Custom Legal Marketing.