Law Firm SEO Services

Technical SEO: a site Google can read

Technical work comes first because anything else depends on it. We crawl the entire site like Googlebot does and we then check against what Search Console reports as being indexed against what should actually be there. Law firms often run into similar problems: pages for different cities competing with each other, practice pages very hard to find (four clicks down), old URLs that don't work anymore and return 404s because they were redesigned and those URLs no longer work, and also pages built using widgets or page builders which send big chunks of code to phones.

• Indexing and crawl paths. XML sitemaps that list only the pages you want found, correct canonical tags, single-hop redirects and no orphan pages.
• Mobile speed. When most people look for a lawyer they do so via mobile. We test using Google's Core Web Vitals including loading speed, responsiveness and stable layouts and we fix anything that doesn't pass muster.
• Structured data. We mark up the firm as LegalService and mark each lawyer as a Person. We put BreadcrumbList on every page and we add FAQPage only if questions are visible. The markup has to match exactly what the user sees.
• Crawler access for AI search. A robots.txt that lets Googlebot, Bingbot and the AI search crawlers (OAI-SearchBot for ChatGPT, Claude-SearchBot for Claude, PerplexityBot for Perplexity) reach the pages you want quoted.

On-page SEO: one page, one job

Every search that's worth winning results in building one page to address it directly. "Car accident lawyer in Riverside" and "what is my car accident case worth" come from different times and different individuals, so they each get their own page. On-page work covers the title tag and H1, an opening paragraph that answers the question, headings that follow how people phrase it, links from related pages, and a next step that works with one tap: the phone number and a short form.

If pages on the same website compete for the same keywords then they split up their signals and often end up ranking lower. As part of every audit we create a map that shows which keywords each page targets, so that no single URL pursues the same keywords as others on the site.

Content by practice area

The majority of growth for our case studies comes from content. Westview Law, an employment firm in Los Angeles, picked up most of their new clicks after their website overhaul in 2026 due to articles about getting fired because of work restrictions and also after using Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave. The most clicked page for Burg & Brock after their home page is one that discusses average settlement amounts for car accidents in California.

Good legal content answers the question in the first paragraph, then adds what a lawyer would: the deadline, the statute, the court, what happens next. An attorney at your firm reviews it before it goes live. Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines put legal topics in the Your Money or Your Life category, and your state's advertising rules apply to every page. So we write with your attorneys, not around them. More on our legal web content process.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile

The map pack typically appears above organic results when searching for "lawyer near me" and "[practice] lawyer [city]". Google's own help page on local ranking says that local search results rely mostly on relevance, proximity and how well known the business is. You can't physically relocate your office near each and every person who searches for something, but you do have control over most of the rest.

That means picking the right main category, filling out a detailed profile, having a listing only at real, staffed offices (not virtual offices according to Google guidelines), getting consistent reviews from real clients, matching names, addresses and phone numbers in different directories, and having a page about each office on your own website. Details are on our page on local SEO for law firms.

Links and digital PR

Links from other sites remain important just like votes do. For law firms, the most valuable links are local and related to law: such as bar associations, local newspapers, community groups that you actively participate in and directory websites like Avvo, Justia and FindLaw. Timely stories will also be valuable. Burg & Brock's work for 2026 involved a press release on California's SB 371 concerning ride sharing insurance. That is an example of a timely story a reporter could pick up.

We do not buy links or participate in any kind of link network; according to Google's anti spam policy paid links that transfer ranking credit are considered link schemes. Cleaning up after getting hit with a manual action is much more costly than what those links would have been worth in the first place.

AI search: Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity

Today many people get answers from AI for legal questions before they look at any lists of links. In SEMrush data from fall of 2026 we saw that for all the searches we track under "law firm SEO" that receive at least 200 monthly searches in the US, Google showed an AI Overview for 104 out of those 113 searches. Google AI Overviews and AI Mode along with ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity all read pages of websites and frequently refer to them.

Google's Search Central page on AI features says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: a page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, and no special markup is needed. In our work, four things make a page more likely to be quoted: a short, direct answer near the top, firm facts that match everywhere they appear (site, Business Profile, directories), named attorneys with their credentials, and enough specific detail to be worth citing. We check where your firm appears in AI answers for the questions that matter in your market and track it month to month.

Go deeper with our AI SEO for law firms service, the guide to generative engine optimization for law firms, and a step-by-step on how to rank in AI Overviews.

We work with law firms across the United States and Canada from our office in West Hollywood, California. Local SEO happens one market at a time: the counties and courts you cover, the firms already in the map pack, and how people in that city phrase their searches. A Houston PI firm and a Seattle family law practice need different pages even when the work behind them looks alike.

See every market on our areas we serve page, or go straight to Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, Houston, Miami or Seattle.

Most firms see early movement within the first few months. New domains take longer. Four things set the pace:

• How much trust the domain has already built with Google.
• How competitive the practice and the city are. Personal injury in Los Angeles is a different race from estate planning in Omaha.
• How much needs fixing before new pages can rank at all.
• How quickly your attorneys review drafts.

Here's what the curve looked like for two clients. Westview Law's new domain launched in January 2026 and brought in 46 to 62 clicks a month through the spring. After the May rebuild it reached 271 clicks in June, 531 in July and 757 in August. Burg & Brock's new site went live on June 2, 2026, and monthly clicks went from 304 in May to 698 in August. Both are measured in Google Search Console, and neither is a forecast for your firm.

For what you should expect to see in months one, two and three, read how long it takes to see results from a law firm marketing agency.

We don't publish a price list, because two firms rarely need the same work. These are the factors that move the number:

• Practice and market. Personal injury in a large metro takes more content and more links than estate planning in a mid-size city.
• Where the site starts. The cost of rebuilding a site is higher upfront compared to doing a tune up. For example, Westview Law had a complete rebuild that resulted in 95 pages and Burg & Brock moved from just one landing page to over 250 pages.
• Offices and markets. Each real office needs its own Business Profile, citations and location page.
• Languages. A bilingual site is close to two content programs, each with its own review.
• Content volume. How many pages and articles a month, and how much attorney time goes into review.
• Scope. SEO alone, or SEO with paid search, intake and reporting run by one Consulting CMO.

Engagements run on a monthly retainer. Our how we work page explains the engagement step by step. For the wider budget, see our posts on building a law firm marketing budget and what a law firm website costs, or the full channel view on our law firm marketing page.

Most firms talk to three or four agencies before they sign. These questions separate them quickly:

• If we leave, who owns the website, the content, the analytics and the Google Business Profile? The answer should be you.
• Can you show Search Console data for a law firm client, with dates, instead of a traffic chart with no axis?
• Do your reports go as far as calls, consultations and signed cases, or stop at rankings?
• Who checks content against our state's attorney advertising rules before it goes live?
• How many firms in our practice area and city do you already work with?
• What exactly happens in the first 30 days, in writing?

Step away from sure first page rankings, lengthy contracts that charge termination fees, link packages sold by the hundred, and sites made up of hundreds of nearly identical local pages. Google calls those pages 'doorway pages' according to their policies.

We have a full checklist for choosing a law firm SEO company here: how to choose a law firm SEO company. We also discussed aspects of choosing legal marketing agencies in an earlier piece: choosing a legal marketing agency. If you want to get to know who's doing this work, check out our team.