Best bios: Include your marketing message in each bio
In my work as a writer and ghostwriter for lawyers, law firms and other professional services providers, I spend a lot of time doing research on the Internet. I see a lot of service provider Web sites and online bios. I see a lot "inside" Web pages -- including bios -- that do not include language that identifies the firm and what it does. This is a mistake.
Not so long ago, most people would enter your Web site through its home page -- where they would discover what the firm does -- and click through to subsequent pages. This is no longer the case. Now that all pages of a Web site are optimized for search engines (as they should be), visitors can enter anywhere -- often skipping the home page entirely. If they skip your home page, do they miss your marketing message?
Your firm's marketing message needs to appear on each page of its Web site -- preferably in the text itself, where it can be read by search engine spiders. If your message is in "art" that automatically appears at the top of each page, the spiders are less likely to read it.
Your bios are the most-often-visited page on your Web site. Each bio should begin with language that succintly describes the firm's (or practice area's) overall marketing statement. It should continue with a statement of how the featured individual contributes to that overall effort -- and then the rest of the bio content.
In addition, since a potential client will often print a hard copy of an interesting bio for future reference (without its surrounding Web site pages), each bio must be capable of functioning as a stand-alone marketing document for the firm -- as well as the individual lawyer.
The same holds true when a law firm is posting lawyer profiles on social network or content sites. If the firm is doing this on behalf of its lawyers (rather than the individual lawyers posting their profiles or content on their own time), the firm will benefit from inclusion of the firm's simple marketing statement on each profile or item of content.
When it comes to getting your firm's marketing message across, and impressing search engine spiders, simple repetition is an important part of the game. Make sure that your marketing message appears on each page of online content -- especially the popular individual bio pages.
