Before you have a chance to speak to potential clients, your web content speaks to them on your behalf. According to Google, 74% of people searching for legal advice online visited a law firm’s website to take action before picking up the phone.

When trying to motivate more clients to contact your firm, searching for overlooked typos won’t be enough. Instead, turn to the finer points of editing content for web marketing. After all, when website content is clear, concise, organized, and optimized to convert, it will bring in clients for you.

Revise Lengthy Sentences

You'll find no shortage of studies that warn just how little time web users spend reading a site's content. These statistics unfortunately encourage many writers to edit for clickbait titles instead of looking to body text for revision. In reality, your readers’ diminishing attention calls for concision across the board.

Here's how you can go from wordy to concise:

• Eliminate redundant lists of adjectives
• Shorten phrases in which a single word may suffice
• Separate run-on sentences that obscure your point
• Avoid legal jargon readers may not understand

Nix Passive Voice

Active voice: eGeneration sells leads. Passive voice: Leads are sold by eGeneration.

Though grammatically correct, passive voice creates a weaker sentence. On the other hand, using active voice will help you communicate your value to potential clients more clearly.

Active voice makes a sentence easier to understand – especially for readers skimming the page – because passive voice obscures who completes the action.

Sometimes this is intentional. Politicians often use passive voice to deflect blame; businesses occasionally use passive voice to soften a negative message; and crime reports use passive voice when it’s unknown who is culpable.

When your readers subconsciously find it less clear that help from your firm allows them to navigate personal injury or workers’ compensation claims, passive voice can hinder their motivation to take action.

Revisit Content Structure

Along with sentence clarity, clear paragraph structure can help guide your readers to conversion – be it setting up an initial consultation, submitting a personal referral, or signing on as a client.

Some businesses conform to the traditional structure of introduction, body, and conclusion. Others swear by the inverse pyramid technique, which positions the takeaway at the top of each page or paragraph and works backwards from there.

Either technique can be successful, so long as after reading, a reader’s next logical step is to contact your firm.

This is a balancing act, however. Rush site visitors to reach out to your law firm before demonstrating your value risks losing their trust (and their case). Bury your call-to-action in a mountain of text, and you may find that readers won’t spend the time to learn how to contact your firm at all.

Gear Content Toward Conversion

The best web content delivers readers information they value, while also providing a path to fulfill your marketing goal. To increase your law firm’s contact rate, revising the way you convey what you offer your clients can make all the difference.

• Use second person pronouns

  Using “one” as a subject may sound official, but it’s also impersonal. Opt for “you” and “yours” to hold a reader’s interest.

• Show, don't tell

  Readers already know you’re an attorney, so they’ll assume you know how to practice law; instead of boring readers by listing your credentials upfront, outline what you can offer and achieve for your clients.

• Convey a sense of urgency

  This becomes especially important if your practice area involves a statute of limitations. Readers may not be aware that certain settlements are a lost cause after a period of time.

• Break paragraphs into digestible parts

  Few readers persevere through a wall of text, and even fewer retain the entirety of its message. Instead, become best friends with your space bar. There are no rules as to how long or short a paragraph must be.

These are just some of the ways we optimize the content at the heart of our lead generation strategy at eGenerationMarketing. Armed with these web copy conversion tips, you’ll be able to improve the quality of your inbound interest from internet searchers, and sign more cases as a result.

Of course, editing content with a fine-tooth comb assumes you’ve already done a lot of the hard work that we’ve found goes into creating web copy that converts, like conducting target audience research, using pictures and graphics to aid your storytelling, and keeping your content up to date.

While you test a new content strategy, eGenerationMarketing can supplement your caseload with real-time, exclusive Social Security disability, personal injury, workers’ compensation, and employment law case leads. If you’d like more information about how we can help grow your firm, reach out to us at 617.800.0089.