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How We Work and What Law Firm SEO Costs

How much does law firm SEO cost? There's no single price. It depends on your market, your practice areas, how many offices you have, how much content you need and the state of your site. GLP works on a monthly retainer, quoted after we've looked at your market, so the fee follows the work.

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In short

Every engagement follows the same path: an audit, a written plan, then the build, content, technical, local and AI search work, with reporting that ties results to calls and signed cases wherever the firm's intake data allows. You pay a monthly retainer. What it costs comes down to six things, explained below, and we put the scope in writing before you sign.

By the GLP Marketing team · Published October 2, 2026

The process

What we do, in the order we do it

  1. Discovery and audit

    Starting out we look at your website, your Google Business Profile, your Search Console data and any analytics data you have as well as taking a look at other businesses that rank higher than yours. We also talk about your company; we ask about which types of cases you'd like to get more inquiries for, how much you value those cases, and how your intake process currently works. Our free audit is a shorter way of doing this step.

  2. Strategy

    We decide which practice areas and cities to target based on considering the potential value of the cases along with how hard winning them would be. We then document our strategy: which pages to focus on, which fixes to implement, which markets to target and in what order.

  3. Build

    If the site can't carry the plan, we fix it or rebuild it. Westview Law's site went from 38 pages to 95 in one relaunch, and Burg & Brock went from a single landing page to more than 250 pages in English and Spanish. More on that in law firm website design.

  4. Content

    Practice pages, city pages and articles that answer what people search before they call a lawyer. Your attorneys approve anything that states the law. Our approach to content for lawyers goes into the detail.

  5. Technical SEO

    Crawling and indexing, redirects, page speed, structured data, and the quiet errors that keep good pages from ranking.

  6. Local SEO

    Your Google Business Profile, reviews, citations and a page for each city you actually serve. See local SEO for law firms.

  7. AI visibility

    We look at how your firm is represented on Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude. We then create content they can quote directly from and cite such as clear answers and factual information along with details that match across different places. The service page on AI SEO for law firms contains all this information.

  8. Reporting tied to signed cases

    On one side is Search Console along with analytics tools; on the other side you have calls and forms as well as signed cases that you receive through intake. We match spending to cases where we can track that information. If we can't track this information, we let you know and help you fix it so that we can do better matching.

Communication

How often you'll hear from us

You have someone who is your day-to-day contact and that means you won't have to bounce questions around different teams. Behind this person are the people in charge of SEO, content, and development whom you can meet on our team page.

Scheduled calls vary based on the engagement. For SEO and AI Search engagement we have a monthly strategy call. Strategy calls with reporting happen weekly for Consulting CMO engagements; this is because that kind of work involves more moving parts like working with paid media, intake process and other vendors.

Between calls you can see the work as it happens: the keywords we're targeting, the pages we publish and the leads that come in.

The engagement model

A monthly retainer, in one of two shapes

GLP works on a monthly retainer. There are two ways to set it up, both described on our get started page:

  • SEO and AI search. Audit and strategy, content, technical and local SEO, link building, and tracking of how often AI answers cite you. This suits firms that already have someone handling ads and intake.
  • Consulting CMO. Everything above, plus oversight of paid media, intake and conversion, and your other marketing vendors, with reporting that follows the money through to cases. This suits firms that want one accountable owner for all of it.

Monthly retainers keep everyone on their toes: we need to earn again next month and at the end of every month you can see what they paid for.

Pricing

What drives the cost of law firm SEO

Two firms can ask for "SEO" and need very different amounts of work. These are the things that move the number, roughly in order of how much they matter.

1. How competitive your market is

Ranking for "car accident lawyer" in Los Angeles is a different job from ranking for the same search in a town of 50,000. In crowded markets the firms on page one have years of content, links and reviews behind them, and catching up takes more pages, more links and more time.

2. Your practice areas

Personal injury cases along with criminal defense and family law all face strong competition in most cities. Narrower practices such as lemon law or specific types of employment work generally have less serious competition. Thus each page gets a better chance. But having more practice areas also means there are more pages that need planning, writing and upkeep.

3. How many locations you have

Every real office needs its own Google Business Profile, plus managing reviews and creating local pages as well. If you have four offices you have four local markets to compete for instead of one market.

4. How much content the plan needs

Often content makes up a big chunk of a budget for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A firm which has to create 60 new pages about practices and cities within the first six months will be spending on a different level of research, writing, editing and reviewing by lawyers compared to one that needs only 10 pages.

5. The condition of your site

Some sites just need some fixes. Other sites use a platform that is not under the firm's control or they have a lot of old pages that are thin and duplicated. If rebuilding or moving the site is necessary first, those things come before anything else. We also wrote a post about law firm website design cost, which talks about what drives that part.

6. Whether paid media is part of the plan

Advertising brings phone calls while SEO builds. If you have them planned, keep these separate too: money you put towards advertising with platforms and the work involved in running campaigns. We have a page that explains this for law firm PPC.

Why no price list

Why we quote after an audit

A published price would have to be either too high for a small firm in a quiet market or too low for a multi-office firm in a crowded one. So we look first. On the strategy call we review your site, your profile and the competition, and then quote a retainer with the scope written out: the pages, the fixes, the markets and the reporting.

Think about it from your perspective first. Our law firm SEO ROI calculator works backwards using the value of your cases and your closing rate. We also have a guide to setting a law firm marketing budget which looks at the big picture too.

Know before you sign

What a retainer doesn't cover

  • Guaranteed rankings or AI citations. Nobody controls Google's results or what an AI tool decides to quote. Google's own guidance, Do you need an SEO?, warns that no one can guarantee a number one ranking.
  • Legal sign-off. We handle writing and editing but final approval comes from your lawyers for legal statements and compliance with ads. Rules about lawyer advertising, such as ABA Model Rule 7.1 and those from your state, apply to the firm.
  • The ad budget itself. Money spent on Google or other ad platforms is separate from the work of running campaigns.
  • Answering your phones. We can review how calls and forms are handled and show where cases leak, but your team runs intake.
  • Work outside the written scope. If the plan changes, we agree the change in writing first.

Fit

Who we're a good fit for, and who we aren't

A good fit

  • Law firms. That's the only kind of client we take on now.
  • Firms with room to take more cases in the practice areas they want to grow.
  • Partners who will share intake numbers, so marketing can be judged on signed cases.
  • Firms willing to give SEO months, not weeks, and run ads alongside it if they need calls sooner.

Not a fit

  • Anyone who wants a guaranteed ranking or a guaranteed number of cases.
  • Firms that need a full caseload next week and have no budget for ads.
  • Buyers who want shared leads sold by the batch. We build your own channel instead.
  • Firms that can't answer the phone when it rings. More calls won't fix that.

The work in practice

What the process looked like for two firms

All five studies, with sources, are on our case studies page. For timing, read how long it takes to see results from a law firm marketing agency. If you're still comparing agencies, our guide on how to choose a law firm SEO company lists the questions to ask, including the ones to ask us. The service itself is described on our law firm SEO page.

Individual results vary. Past results don't guarantee future outcomes. Earnings disclaimer.

Related services and guides

Questions about cost and process

Yours isn’t here? Ask our team

How much does law firm SEO cost?

It varies based on different factors including the market where you operate, practice area, the number of offices you have, the amount of content needed for the plan, and the condition of the website itself. A solo practitioner operating in a small city and an injury law firm with multiple offices in Los Angeles will require very different levels of effort. GLP quotes a monthly retainer price after considering your market and scope details are spelled out in writing before signing occurs.

Do you have fixed SEO packages?

We offer two kinds of engagement: SEO and AI search, or a Consulting CMO engagement that adds paid media, intake and vendor oversight. The work inside each one is set per firm, because the right number of pages, fixes and markets changes from one firm to the next.

Do I have to sign a long-term contract?

We work on a monthly retainer. We walk you through the terms on the strategy call, before you sign anything.

How long does law firm SEO take to show results?

Most companies see early movement within the first few months, but timing varies depending on where you start, what the market is like, and whether there is a lot of work involved. New sites take longer to get going. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) builds gradually; bigger benefits generally come after steady work for a full year and no one can give an exact date for success.

What happens on the free strategy call?

We look at your site, your Google Business Profile and the firms that outrank you for the searches that matter in your practice area. You leave with our honest read on what it would take, whether or not you hire us.

Get a quote built on your market

Book a free strategy call. We'll look at your site and your competition, and tell you what the work would involve before we talk numbers.

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