§ 01
SEO by industry · Lawyers
SEO for law firms
Legal is the most expensive corner of local search. A single click on “car accident lawyer near me” costs $190 in paid ads. Organic and the map pack are the only places that click is free, and they are won by structure, reviews and a page per practice area — not by a bigger budget.
§ 02
What your customers actually type
US monthly searches, what a click costs in ads, and how hard the organic slot is to win (0–100). Source: Semrush, September 2026.
Difficulty under 20 is winnable in months for a well-built page. Over 50 is a long campaign. The point of the audit is to tell you which of these you can take in your market, and in what order.
§ 03
How search works for law firms
The mechanics are local-service mechanics. The details are yours, and the details are where the rankings are.
Local Services Ads sit above everything
For most legal queries Google now shows “Google Screened” Local Services Ads before the map pack, before organic, before anything. They are pay-per-lead and worth running — but they reward the same things organic does: review count, response time and a verified profile. We set both up so the money you spend on one lifts the other.
Practice areas beat locations
A plumber needs a page per town. A law firm needs a page per practice area first, then per office. “DUI lawyer” and “estate planning attorney” are different people with different fears, and Google will not rank one “Practice Areas” page listing twelve things for any of them. Each practice area gets a real page: what happens, what it costs, what the first call is like.
Bar rules shape the copy
State bar advertising rules forbid words like “best” and “specialist” in most jurisdictions, require disclaimers on case results, and can make testimonials a problem. We write within them. An SEO agency that has never read your state’s Rule 7.1 will hand you a page you cannot legally publish.
§ 04
What we usually find
Three faults that show up on most law firm sites we audit. None are exotic. All are fixable.
Fault 1
One page for every practice area
A single “Practice Areas” page with twelve headings. Google reads it as a page about nothing in particular, so it ranks for nothing in particular.
Twelve markets, zero rankings.
Fault 2
Attorney bios with no structure
Bios are the pages Google trusts most for legal — the person is the product — but they ship as a photo and three paragraphs with no schema, no bar number, no practice link.
Your strongest trust signal, invisible to the crawler.
Fault 3
The wrong Google Business Profile category
Categorised as “Law firm” when the money is in “Personal injury attorney”, “Divorce lawyer” or “Immigration attorney”. The primary category decides which map packs you are eligible for.
Not in the pack for the searches that pay.
§ 05
What the engagement looks like
Audit in two business days. Site live in three to four weeks. Month to month after that, cancel any time.
Audit the firm and the market
Every practice area you take, every metro you serve, and who currently holds the map pack and organic slots for each. In writing, within two business days.
Rebuild the practice-area tree
A page per practice area with real content, attorney bios with Person and Attorney schema, and office pages for each location with its own profile.
Profile and reviews
Primary and secondary categories set by practice area, review generation that stays inside bar rules, and Local Services Ads set up alongside.
Content that intercepts the decision
“What is my case worth”, “how long does a DUI stay on my record”, “what does an estate plan cost” — the questions people search the week before they hire someone.
§ 06
Questions law firms ask us
Do you handle Local Services Ads too?
Yes. For legal they are usually worth running, and the setup work — verification, review flow, response time — is the same work organic needs. We manage the profile side; the per-lead budget stays in your account.
Can you write within our state bar rules?
Yes, and we ask for your state before we write a word. Terms like “best”, “expert” and “specialist”, testimonial handling and case-result disclaimers vary by state. Anything we are unsure about goes to you or your compliance counsel before publishing, not after.
We have three offices. Do we need three sites?
No. One site, one page per office, one Google Business Profile per office, and practice-area pages shared across them. Three sites split your authority three ways and usually rank worse than one.
How long until a new practice-area page ranks?
DUI, immigration and estate planning pages typically move inside two to four months because difficulty is low relative to volume. Personal injury in a major metro is the hardest keyword set in local search and takes considerably longer — we will tell you which you are in before you commit.
Next step
Find out what your site is costing you
Send your domain and the towns you deliver to. You get a written audit back within two business days: the technical faults, the service areas you have no page for, and the exact terms your closest competitor ranks for that you do not. No call required to receive it.