More and more lawyers are turning to WordPress for building their law firm website and/or blog. How do I know?
First, I work for lawyers as a web consultant and I use WordPress for their websites. They love the sites and the blog.
Second, I have a few posts on this website about WordPress themes for lawyers and it’s one of the most visited web pages on this website.
Why is a WordPress website good for lawyers?
WordPress is great for business websites in general. The reasons I believe WordPress is excellent for lawyer websites are as follows:
- It’s inexpensive. In fact the WordPress platform is free. However, you must pay for web hosting and it’s also not a bad idea to buy a premium theme (they’re not expensive – $30 to $120 generally).
- Easy to manage – lawyers can easily learn to add blog posts without knowing any code.
- Highly flexible – you can build static home pages and traditional websites with a powerful blog component.
- WordPress is extremely popular and as a result there are literally tens of thousands of designs to choose from (I set out some great WordPress themes for lawyer websites here).
- There are many website designers who work with WordPress so finding a quality designer to build a site relatively inexpensively is not difficult.
How do you create a website for lawyers and law firms in WordPress?
You need the following:
1. A business theme with a static home page
This isn’t mandatory. However, it’s my recommendation. WordPress is traditionally blogging software. However, since it meteoric rise in popularity, there are thousands of theme designs that create a static home page and traditional business style website with a blog option built into it.
2. Web hosting
Sure, you could build your own server, but why bother when web hosting is cheap. For approximately $5 to $7 per month you can get excellent web hosting with user-friendly dashboards for managing your website(s).
3. Do it yourself or hire a WordPress web designer
You can certainly do it yourself. See the box below this post for access to a full video tutorial series on how to build a business website with WordPress.
Or, you hire a web designer familiar with WordPress to install, set up, and customize your WordPress website.
Steps in building a lawyer website in WordPress
1. Keyword Research
Before I start any website, I do keyword research. Ideally I put together a list of at least 20 keywords for the first 20 pages/posts of content. I want to know exactly what to title the preliminary pages and posts before I publish them.
Keyword research is absolutely critical. Sometimes I put together a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords. I sometimes spend days doing this (fortunately I like doing keyword research).
If you want to learn about keyword research for lawyer websites, get a copy of my LOCAL Business Keyword Research and SEO Techniques Guide. In this guide I use a fictional law firm as an example of how to do robust keyword research and advanced SEO.
Once I have a list, then I set out to build the website.
2. Register a domain name for your website
If you don’t have a domain name for your website, then you need to get one. You can likely register your domain name with your web hosting service.
3. Install WordPress on your domain
Before you design your lawyer website, you must install WordPress. This is done via your web host’s panel. I like the CPanel user interface, which is available with both HostGator (get 25% off with coupon code: 25OFFHOSTGATORB2WEB) and Bluehost (I use both of these web hosting services).
Once your WordPress installation is complete, you’ll be provided access to your WordPress dashboard login. You’ll also be given your login code and password. You can customize your password once you log into your WordPress dashboard.
4. Basic WordPress configuration
When I install WordPress, the first 4 things I do (even before installing a theme) are:
- Change the password;
- Customize the permalinks structure;
- Add Google XML Sitemap plugin; and
- Ensure the site is NOT viewed by the search engines (once the site is done or ready for launch, I change this setting to ensure it’s viewable by the search engines).
5. Install WordPress theme
This is where design begins. If I’m using a parent/child framework such as Genesis (read my Genesis theme review), I install both the parent and child themes immediately (in that order). If I’m using a traditional theme set up such as ElegantThemes (read my ElegantThemes review), I’ll simply install the chosen theme.
6. Configure Theme Options
WordPress themes come with their custom theme options panel. This is where you configure and set up your WordPress theme. Each theme has different options to some degree. However, most premium themes have similar options but may be laid out differently. For example, ElegantThemes has an ePanel that is a robust customization dashboard while Genesis offers a less detailed theme options panel.
7. Customize the Header and Footer
You definitely want to upload your firm’s logo and fine-tune the header.
With respect to the footer, I like removing the links to the theme developer and instead add links to the Privacy, Disclaimer, and any other pages that are important for the site but shouldn’t be in the main horizontal menu bar at the top of the site.
8. Home page configuration
Every premium theme is slightly different in how the home page is configured. Some use widget zones while other use pages. Regardless which method, I set out to add the images and content for the home page.
I like using themes with a slide show or slider on the home page. I set this up at this time.
I spend a fair amount of time on the content of the home page because this is the page that is viewed the most. I consider it the most important page of the website.
9. SEO Configuration
SEO starts on your website. Most premium WordPress themes include SEO panels. SEO on a WordPress website requires both site-wide and individual page/post configuration. My starting point with SEO is to set up the site-wide SEO options. It’s straight-forward. I set out the home page meta title and meta description. Sometimes I’ll have the site title appended to every page and post. Other times I choose not to. It depends on the site.
As I add pages and posts, I do the SEO work for those individual pages and posts. Because I did my keyword research up-front, it’s a simple process for doing the SEO for each page and post.
10. Navigation Planning – Setting up Menus
I plan out the first main pages and a few blog posts. This way, once I publish the initial pages and posts, I know exactly how to configure them for navigation. It’s easy at this point to set up the menus and blog categories.
Navigation planning includes setting out the blog categories. I usually publish one blog post for each category before launch.
11. Publish pages and initial blog posts
Once I have my navigation planned, I write and publish the initial pages and a few blog posts. For lawyer websites, a good starting batch of pages include:
- About
- Services (or practice areas)
- Contact
- Testimonials
- Results (if permitted by your governing body)
- Lawyer Bios
- Blog (page where the blog displays)
This is a sufficient set of pages for a functional attorney website. You can add more pages in the future if you like. For example, if you offer a variety of legal services, you can publish a page for each service you offer.
12. Bells and Whistles
For attorney websites, the following bells and whistles are good:
- Contact form on the contact page AND in the sidebar (so it displays on every page/post).
- Telephone number displayed prominently in the header.
- Testimonials on the testimonials page and a few snippets in the sidebar.
- Map installation on the contact page.
At this stage, the lawyer website is pretty much ready for launch. However, I do a final check of everything by going through my website pre-launch checklist.
IMPORTANT: If you hid your website from the search engines at any stage, be sure to go back and change the setting so your website is viewed by the search engines. The last thing you want is to wait weeks and months for traffic only to realize you failed to change this setting.
Get B2Web’s Video Tutorials for Building a Business Website in WordPress
I created a full video series on how to build a business website in WordPress. Essentially, I go through the entire process set out above in a video that captures me building a business website. You can read about my WordPress business website video tutorial series here.
You can get this video series for free. Simply fill in the form below.
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- How to Create a Business Website in WordPress: Free Video Tutorial Series
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- 4 Ways to Create a WordPress Landing Page Template or Templates
- 6 Hour Lawyer Marketing Plan: Powerful Attorney Marketing Blueprint
