Content writing for single entity business (The use of I)
-
Most of my clients consist of single entity law firms in which my clients repeatedly use the pronoun "I" to describe every service they provide.
I have always preferred using the business name The Law Office of..." put lawyer name here".
Is it ok to repetitively use the pronoun "I" in the content. To me it feels lack luster and childish not very professional, however I have a hard time convincing the lawyers of this.
What are your thoughts? Can good content be written with the repetitive use of "I"? If not is the business name sufficient or maybe another pronoun?
I will be showing responses to my clients if that is ok.
-
Hey Donald,
What I'm understanding is that your clients use
"I offer estate planning services"
as opposed to
"At Adams Law, comprehensive estate planning services have been designed to help you ..."
And that you feel the second example seems more professional. I can see where you're coming from. I can also see that overuse of the word 'I' can start to look rather narcissistic. There's an anecdote about Teddy Roosevelt writing a book so full of the word 'I' that his typesetters had to purchase more of that letter! And, interestingly, this same topic has been coming up in the 2016 primary cycle in which pundits are counting the number of times one Democratic candidate is using the word 'I' vs. the other using the word 'we'. The upshot is, at least in my view, that pronouns definitely set a tone and say a lot about a person or a business. Here's what I think:
-
Legal firms are supposed to sound professional because they deal in matters of serious import for their clients. Most people would not want to entrust their legal affairs to a law firm that seems sloppy or careless. So, a small but significant signal of professionalism is the company's name. Adams Attorneys At Law sounds very official, right? More so than "I do law and stuff like that." would. Then, too, web copy should always be modestly optimized with a brand's name, just for the sake of associating the brand's content with the brand's name in the user's mind.
-
However, mention of the brand's name does not need to exclude use of personal pronouns like 'We' or 'I'. As in, "I want every client of Adams Law to be empowered with accessible, affordable counsel." Or "We will make sure you feel comfortable at Adams Law from your first phone call, to your first meeting, to your final settlement." You can use both. A key point of using first person pronouns is to indicate that a human being or group of humans are communicating something. This is meant to engender a sense of approachability - of someone manning the ship, right? "We are here to help you" is more indicative of a personal communication than "Adams Law exists to help clients".
-
But how far you go with with this depends on the culture of your business. A lawyer who deals with family law may want to project more personal empathy than one who deals with taxes. Or, one who is managing wealth may want to project more of an energetic, hip vibe than one who is trying to appear aggressive because he takes criminal cases.
-
I've written copy for so many different industries over the past 10+ years and my preferred pronoun for nearly all business models is actually not 'I' or 'We'. It's 'YOU'. For most business models, I advocate that 'you' be the most frequently used pronoun, and that 'I' or 'We' come second to that and the brand comes third. How you finesse this relates to how formally a business interacts with its customers. From stuffy to downright laid back, knowing the preferred tone of a client's culture is what should set the tone for all copy, creating consistency and a clear message.
Hope this helps!
-
-
The client can still write their content using the pronoun 'I'. Your copywriters could adjust that content using pronouns such as 'they', and then see if your client prefers the amended content.
-
Trevor,
I am very much in agreement with you.
-
Personally, I think readers of content written in the first person are less likely to trust and like what is being conveyed. A person or company that talks about themselves is much less credible than that person or company being talked about by someone else. Show your clients examples of first-person writing vs. third-person writing and see which they prefer. As you say, client is boss.
-
Many of my web design clients like to write their own content instead of having my copywriter do it. Sometimes this works out, most times it does not. I ask this question because many of my lawyer clients love to write their own content and this "I" is consistent amongst all of them who do write their own.
It is not how I would write it and I recommend other options but the client is boss!
-
I don't think that there is anything wrong with using the word "I" in these situations. I believe that it is a matter of personal style. I see it as more "transparent" than if the attorney used "The Law Firm of..." as that might convey to some people that there are multiple attorneys at the office and that my work might be given to associates. It would make me feel that my work is going to be done by "The Man" or "The Woman" who is the face of the firm.
The only downside of this, is if the attorney does take on associates or partners in the future, then these articles would need to be edited for any service for which the work will be shared or for which the primary attorney will not be determining the philosophy and methods that will be used and holding signature authority over each job.
================================
Applying this to SEO... If I hired someone to work on my websites and they were outsourcing that work to others, I would not be happy with that being done undisclosed. If others are being used, I would want to know who is making changes to my site and be able to have full faith in their work, integrity and competence. I realize that this is common practice by many individual SEO providers, just saying that I would not like it.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
International subdirectory without localized content - best practice / need advice
Hi there, Our site uses a subdirectory for regional and multilingual sites as show below for 200+ countries.
Local Website Optimization | | erinfalwell
EX: /en_US/ All sites have ~the same content & are in English. We have hreflang tags but still have crawl issues. Is there another URL structure you would recommend? Are there any other ways to avoid the duplicate page & crawl budget issues outside of the hreflang tag? Appreciate it!0 -
Using posts to make static pages - A best practice or a bad idea?
I have started working with a few law firms this year. They already have websites and I am doing various marketing tasks such as copywriting, redesigns, and, of course, SEO. In a couple of cases I was surprised to find that they had made the pages describing their various practice areas post content. I'm not sure why. But I suspect that the idea might have been to have the phrase: /practice-areas/ as a part of their URL. I didn't really like the idea of treating pages like posts. It seems a bit like working the system. But apart from that, wouldn't pages have a higher value as "permanent" content? As posts - their publish date has more weight, right? And they'd get old? But maybe the previous developers were on to something and the category/post approach to listing practice areas is the way to go? I am starting a new site for a new firm and I'd like to feel more confident about the right structure to choose for this kind of website before I start. Does anybody know the right answer? Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | Dandelion1 -
Can you, somehow, use dynamic number insertion on a click to call button (image)
Hello Moz! I have been beating my head against the wall for a few hours, and I am starting to get a headache. My question is simple: I am doing some work for a local salon, and we started a PPC campaign recently. It's very important that I get accurate ROI metrics from both our PPC efforts and Yelp advertising program, and the best way to do this is by using custom phone numbers and dynamic number insertion w/ CallRail to track phone calls being made to the salon. I can then cross reference the numbers used to call with the salon POS software to see what they spent, how many appts. they booked, etc. A VERY large portion, the majority in fact, of traffic comes from mobile, and in the past I had a big, fat, beautiful CTA click-to-call button that showed the salon phone number. However, I have found that with dynamic number insertion, and my near non-existent programming skills, it is impossible to have the number dynamically insert into an href image. Sooooo...any ideas on how to do this, or is it just not possible????
Local Website Optimization | | Sean_Gutermuth0 -
Does anyone have a good program they use for full site audits?
I'm looking to find a program that will do the following: Scan for page errors including code issues, hosting issues, redirect issues, etc. Pages missing Google Analytics Google + Local audit to identify issues with NAP, citations, category selection etc. Find pages with title issues including missing page titles, duplicates or titles that are too short or too long, header tag issues such as missing H1 tags Meta description issues including missing meta descriptions, duplicate meta descriptions or meta descriptions that are too short or too long Link issues including broken internal or external links or missing anchor or ALT text Identify internal or external links using rel=”nofollow” Image issues, such as missing ALT or title text and broken images Identify pages using Schema.org microdata I know there are probably a couple programs that will do little bits here and there so I'm open to suggestions. Thank you.
Local Website Optimization | | SimonWorsfold0 -
Local site went from dominating first page - bad plugin caused duplicate content issues - now to 2nd page for all!
I had a bad plugin create duplicate content issues on my Wordpress CMS - www.pmaaustin.com I got it fixed, but now every keyword has been stuck on page 2 for search terms for 4 months now, where I was 49 out of 52 keywords on page one. It's a small local niche with mostly easier to rank keywords. Am I missing something? p.s. Also has a notice on the Dashboard that says: "404 Redirected: There are 889 captured 404 URLs that need to be processed." Could that be a problem? Thanks, Steve
Local Website Optimization | | OhYeahSteve0 -
How can I rank my .co.uk using content on my .com?
Hi, We currently have a .com site ranking second for our brand term in the .co.uk SERP. This is mainly because we don't own the exact match brand term which comes from not having a clue what we were doing when we set up the company. Would it be possible to out rank this term considering we the weighing that google puts towards exact matches in the URL? N.B - There are a few updates we could do to the homepage to make the on-page optimisation better and we have not actively done any link building yet which will obviously help. competitor SERP rank 1 - MOZ PA38 DA26 Our Site SERP rank 2 - MOZ PA43 DA32 Thanks Ben
Local Website Optimization | | benjmoz0 -
Duplicate Theme, different Content, competing keywords?
Hello, We have 2 versions of a website. Notes: They will be the same theme, and slightly different images but the written content is different. SEO optimization is the same for both sites targeting the same the city and they will be competing for certain keywords mainly vanity keywords. So we have websites examples:
Local Website Optimization | | EVERWORLD.ENTERTAIMENT
http://mycompanytor.com http://mycompanytoronto.com How does google handle 2 websites like this, will one get penalized? Or will it treated as 2 different sites, even though the company name which is the brand shows up on the main url? Thanks for your help0 -
How to get facebook likes, for a business that no one would like?
Ok so a crazy title, but please hear me out. I have a construction website. It's a small business. It serves people one time, we get the job done right the first time, and usually never go back. A lot of our clients are older, some who have a rotary phone still. So for the sake of social seo, how do you get people to like a company on facebook, when its a local business who basically gets in and gets out. I read somewhere to place ads with poll type pictures. For an example say, Like us if you like a clean bath tube. It sounds weird, but it seems to help some. It gives you a like, and they all add up. So for a business who is trying to get likes, without buying them, how do you approach it? Thank you Chris
Local Website Optimization | | asbchris0