Law Firm Marketing Agency
Is your firm committed to a dynamic content strategy? Do you want to create a supremely valuable one-stop shop website that answers all your visitors’ legal questions? Then you need these tips for increasing engagement and, ultimately, the length of time a visitor spends on your site.
The key to your site’s success is a clever content discovery strategy. Without the right strategy, your visitors will bounce around like Toto in a tornado. But with the right tools, you can create a valuable and memorable experience that will uplift your users and grow your business—like a yellow-brick road.
Keep reading to find out why time on site is so important and how to produce content that will keep people on your site for longer.
Why is it important for website visitors to stay longer?
The longer a visitor stays on your website, the more value you can deliver and, ultimately, increase the likelihood of making a memorable first impression.
The more easily someone can recall your brand, the more likely they are to take action that will boost your business. In other words, more time spent on your site increases the chances that a website visitor will contact you, hire you, bookmark your site, and refer you.
Dwell time and average time on page are also two important SEO factors.
How to keep people on your site longer
Before you start churning out a bunch of content, pause. It is important to provide value at every step of the user journey, from the first click to the last—and lead the visitor confidently by the hand.
Take a moment to think through a user’s complete journey on your website. Start by answering some important questions about the user’s motivations. What do they need? What did they originally come for? What related information could you offer them? What might their last action be, and what mood will that final interaction put them in? What will they know about your firm when they finally leave your website?
Here are several foundational content discovery tools that can help guide your website visitors along a value-laden, feel-good, yellow-brick road that never has to end:
- Publish high-quality content: Your website needs well-written content on topics that will resonate with your users. Each piece of content should provide value and enjoyment. Professional copywriting help is an incredibly important investment for firms.
- Create a diversity of content: Multiple formats keep people interested and engaged. A video provides a different perspective than a long-form article, for example.
- Categorize content properly: Every blog post should be categorized with tags. This allows visitors to easily search for the content they need. It also allows you to serve up related content, which will increase time on site and the perception of value.
- Use links strategically: The anchor text should be descriptive, enticing users to click through to learn more.
- Add a search feature: If your site has enough content to become a leading resource in your practice area, add a blog search or universal search feature. Do not take this step prematurely, as it can highlight content deficiencies.
Finally, consider offering a sign-up form to invite visitors to receive new content as it becomes available. If you have the capacity to produce good content regularly, a newsletter can be an especially powerful strategy. It works even better if a user can sign up for specific topics.
With the right content delivery mechanism, you can nurture interested parties, encourage return visits to your site, and prompt engagement with your practice.
Use metrics to measure your success
A good content strategy is not static. It involves regular check-ins with key metrics so that you can adjust your tactics.
Here are three key metrics for assessing how well content is performing:
- New vs. returning visitors
- Dwell time and average time on page
- Bounce rate
Be careful with the bounce rate. On a simple landing page with a short sign-up form, a high bounce rate is normal. However, a high bounce rate is a bad sign if content discovery (aka spending time exploring multiple pages on a website) is the priority.
The bottom line is that tracking metrics must be a core tenet of your content marketing strategy. The only thing worse than bad data is no data.
Review and next steps
Creating a site that encourages engagement, and keeps visitors on it for a longer period of time, will improve your SEO and increase brand awareness. To increase time on site, provide valuable content, tag it appropriately, and review your metrics regularly.
We get it—content marketing and website design can make you feel a bit like Dorothy in the Land of Oz. Which path should you follow? Who should you trust? And when will the madness finally end?
If you’re in Oz, then consider us your trustworthy companions. Reach out to the Omnizant team today and we’ll get you a roadmap from Kansas all the way to the Emerald City.