SEO for Lawyers

A Step-by-Step Lawyer SEO Guide

Are you ready to attract more clients to your law practice through organic search? Keep reading to learn how a targeted SEO lawyer marketing strategy can help you get found by potential clients online.

In this guide you will learn:

Chapter 1
Intro to SEO →

Chapter 2
Keyword Research →

Chapter 3
On-Page SEO →

Chapter 4
Off-Page SEO →

Chapter 5
Best Practices →

Chapter 6
FAQs & Resources →

What is SEO for lawyers?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of optimizing a website or web page to increase its visibility in search engines like Google and Bing.

SEO is a critical tool for any lawyer or law firm looking to attract more clients. The higher your website ranks in search engine results, the more likely potential clients are to visit your site and contact you for legal services.

Think of it as the legal equivalent of maintaining a strong case file for your website.

Just as a well-organized and compelling case file strengthens your argument in court, SEO ensures your website is optimized and ‘healthy.’ This means it’s structured, content-rich, and easy for search engines to find and rank. A well-optimized website increases your visibility and drives more traffic, ultimately helping you connect with more clients.

A person searching for a lawyer on Google may use a search query like “lawyer near me” or “best law firm in [city name]”.

They may search for specific services such as “emergency legal advice” or “divorce lawyer”. Or they may even include their financial situation in the search query, such as “legal aid lawyer in [city name]” or “no win no fee lawyer in [city name]”.

In order to benefit from SEO, you want your website to rank for these kind of searches.

Why is law firm SEO important?

Here are some of the benefits of using SEO for your law practice:

• Increased visibility: SEO helps your law firm’s website rank higher in search engine results, making it easier for potential clients to find you when searching for legal services.
• Cost-effective: Compared to traditional advertising methods like print, TV, or radio, SEO is a cost-effective way to reach a broader audience actively searching for legal help.
• Targeted audience: SEO allows you to optimize for specific keywords relevant to your legal services (e.g., “family lawyer near me” or “estate planning attorney”), ensuring you attract clients who need your expertise.
• Local SEO: Local SEO focuses on improving your visibility within a specific geographic area, helping you connect with potential clients searching for legal services in your region. This is especially beneficial for practices that rely on local clientele.
• Building trust: A well-optimized website with high-quality, informative content helps establish trust and authority with both search engines and potential clients. By consistently delivering valuable information, you strengthen your reputation and encourage new client inquiries.

How do search engines work?

Search engines work by crawling billions of webpages with their own web crawlers, known as search engine bots or spiders. These are then stored and saved in an index.

Google Search Essentials (formerly Webmaster Guidelines)

The Google Search Essentials define the actions that webmasters can take to make their websites better indexable or crawlable.

Read them here: Official Google Guidelines

The guidelines are based on three central aspects:

1. Crawling – webmasters should support Google in finding websites.
2. Indexing – webmasters should help Google to classify and “recognize” the content.
3. Usability and user experience – webmasters should support the users of the websites in their use (usability and user experience).

Essentially, according to these Google guidelines,  a website should support the search engine in crawling and indexing and ensure a good user experience. 

Before you get started with SEO, there are a few prerequisites you want to check off first:

SEO Basics

At a bare minimum, you want to make sure you cover these basic standards before embarking on doing SEO:

• Website Speed – Have a fast loading site so potential customers don’t get tired of waiting for things to load.
• Mobile Friendliness – Make sure your site works on mobile as over 50% of users browse on mobile devices
• Analytics – Setup Google Analytics, Google Search Console & so you can understand what is and isn’t working.
• XML Sitemap – search engines use this to get your site’s URLs
• Robots.txt – tells search engine crawlers where they can (and where they can’t go) on your site.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is the process of making website and server optimizations to help search engines to crawl and index your site more effectively (and therefore help to improve organic rankings).

Technical errors can hurt a website’s ability to rank. There are potentially a lot of errors, but here are some of the most common that will have the biggest impact when fixed:

• 404 errors
• Broken backlinks
• Poor URL structure
• Duplicate/thin content
• Poor internal linking
• Poor website architecture
• Missing metadata (page titles & meta descriptions)
• Missing H1 tags

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What is keyword research?

Keyword research is the process of identifying the words and phrases that people use when searching for specific products or services:

Once you understand the keywords your target audience is using, you can optimize your website to appear for these in search results.

Think of keyword research as a discovery process for your website. Just as a legal consultation helps you understand a client’s needs and the best course of action, keyword research helps you uncover what potential clients are searching for online when they need legal services.

For example, if you specialize in family law, keyword research might reveal that people in your area often search for terms like “divorce lawyer near me,” “child custody attorney,” or “spousal support lawyer.” By understanding these search terms, you can optimize your website to rank higher in search engine results for those specific keywords.

This ensures your website appears prominently when potential clients are actively seeking the legal services you provide, helping you attract more inquiries and grow your practice.

Why is keyword research important?

Keyword research is important for lawyers because it helps to:

• understand what people are searching for when they are looking for legal services, and to optimize their website accordingly.
• identify the specific needs and pain points of their target audience, which can inform the content they create and services they offer, ultimately leading to more conversion and better client experience.
• identify the competition in the local area and understand what they are doing, so they can create a more effective SEO strategy.

What keywords are best to target?

Understand that there’s no “best” keywords, just those that are highly searched by your audience. With this in mind, it’s up to you to craft a strategy that will help you rank pages and drive traffic.

The best keywords for your SEO strategy will take into account relevance, authority, and volume. You want to find highly searched keywords that you can reasonably compete for based on:

• The level of competition you’re up against.
• Your ability to produce content that exceeds in quality what’s currently ranking.

How to do keyword research for your law practice

To start keyword research: put yourself in your customers shoes.

What words, phrases and terms might they use in order to find solutions to these problems? These are the keywords you want to find and target.

Here is a simple process to follow:

Step 1) Make a list of broad topics

Create a list of general topics related to your business. These might correspond to product categories, services or anything you believe your target audience would be interested in.

For example, broad topics like:

• Family Law
• Personal Injury
• Criminal Defense
• Estate Planning
• Employment Law

Step 2) Expand topics into a list of phrases

Now you want to take those topics and expand them into a list of related phrases to target.

Imagine yourself as a buyer looking for your product or service and ask yourself: what would I type into Google?

Whilst keyword research tools are useful here, you can do this for free by Googling your keyword.

For example, Google “corporate law services” and you’ll get a list of related questions people ask (which you can answer with blog content).

As well as related searches which may uncover other keywords to target:

Step 3) Analyze your keywords

Once you have a list of potential keywords, you need to gauge which terms are worth targeting.

You’ll need to use a keyword research tool here to pay attention to the following keyword metrics:

• Search volume
• Trends
• Search value over time
• Difficulty
• CPC
• SERP features

But most importantly, you want to consider relevancy and search intent:

Relevant keywords:

For relevancy, you want to ask yourself:

• Are these keywords relevant to my business?
• Do I have a chance of ranking for these terms based on the competition?
• Is ranking for these keywords going to have a positive ROI?

If you can answer YES to the above questions, chances are you have picked a relevant keyword

Search intent:

Search intent is the goal and purpose of a search query in Google. When someone searches for something, they are typically looking for more information before performing an action.

Search intent falls in four buckets:

• Informational – Searchers looking for information, they’ll use words like: how, what, why, when etc.
• Navigational – Searchers trying to find a specific site, they’ll use words relating to the service/product/brand
• Transactional – Searchers looking to purchase, they’ll use words like: buy, cost, pricing, cheap etc.
• Commercial investigation – Searchers researching prior to making a purchase, they’ll use words like: best, review, comparison etc

Not only is it important to select good keywords, but also to pick keywords you have a chance of ranking for.

For example, if you want to rank for the keyword: “Business Litigation Advice” but your page doesn’t provide legal advice on litigation, you are not meeting a searcher’s intent and may struggle to rank for it.

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What is on-page SEO?

On-page SEO describes specific elements of the pages on your website that you control, such as:

• Title tags
• Meta descriptions
• Header tags
• Internal linking
• Images
• Content

Why is on-page SEO important?

On-page SEO is crucial for lawyers because it ensures that a law firm’s website is easily found and understood by search engines. This increased visibility can drive more traffic to the site, ultimately leading to more client inquiries and cases.

For example, if a law firm offers a service like “estate planning” and this service is not mentioned or prominently highlighted on the website, the site is less likely to appear in search results when someone searches for “estate planning lawyer” or related terms. Conversely, if the website is optimized with “estate planning” as a focus keyword, it is more likely to rank higher in search results and attract clients specifically seeking that service.

In addition to improving search rankings, on-page SEO enhances the overall user experience. A well-organized, easy-to-navigate website with clear calls to action—such as “Schedule a Consultation” or “Contact Us”—is more likely to engage visitors and convert them into clients. This combination of search engine visibility and user-friendly design ensures your law firm’s online presence works effectively to grow your practice.

On-Page SEO Checklist

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What is off-page SEO?

Off-page SEO refers to specific actions done outside of your website, such as getting backlinks from other websites or social media.

What is link building?

Link building is the practice of building one-way hyperlinks (also known as “backlinks”) to a website with the goal of improving SEO. Common link building strategies include content marketing, building useful tools, email outreach, broken link building and guest posts.

Why is link building important?

Link building is important for lawyers because it helps to increase the visibility of a website on search engines. Google, for example, use links to a website as a way to determine the authority and trustworthiness of a website.

The more high-quality links that point to a website, the more likely it is to be considered an authority in its field and be given higher rankings in the SERPs (search engine results page).

This increased visibility can drive more traffic to a website, which can lead to more clients for the legal practice.

Link building is a key strategy for law firms to establish themselves as reputable and trustworthy providers of legal services. High-quality links from reputable websites in the legal industry, such as legal directories, professional associations, or trusted news outlets, signal to both search engines and potential clients that the firm is well-respected in its field.

Additionally, link building can drive referral traffic to a law firm’s website. For example, visitors may discover the firm through a link on a legal resource website or a blog discussing relevant legal topics. This not only increases brand awareness but also helps the firm reach new audiences who might not have otherwise found their services.

In summary, link building is essential for law firms because it enhances visibility, builds credibility and trust, and generates referral traffic to the website. These factors combined can lead to increased inquiries and a growing client base.

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Lawyer SEO Best Practices (+ 4 Tips)

4 Actionable Legal SEO Tips

Here are some things your legal practice can do to begin the process of developing a good legal marketing strategy.

1. Add relevant keywords
2. Optimize for local searches
3. Start blogging
4. Earn links

1. Add relevant keywords to your website

People searching for legal services often look for specific types of assistance, such as “divorce mediation,” “estate planning for small businesses,” or “DUI defense attorney near me.” Long-tail keyword searches typically have lower search volumes but bring in highly targeted traffic that is more likely to convert into real clients.

For example, instead of only optimizing your website for broad terms like “lawyer” or “legal services,” you can target more specific phrases such as:

• “Family lawyer in [your city]”
• “Criminal defense attorney specializing in DUI cases in [your state]”
• “Estate planning attorney for entrepreneurs in [your area]”

By incorporating these long-tail keywords, your website can attract clients actively searching for the specific legal services you provide, increasing the likelihood of inquiries and conversions.

2. Optimize your site for local searches

If your SEO plan doesn’t use local SEO to target specific areas, you’ll likely miss out on some great leads. Adding the name of your town and nearby towns to your website copy is the easiest way to get better results.

But don’t forget about things on your site besides writing copy. You should also add places to the titles and URLs of your pages.

Also, make sure that your business is listed on Google Maps and local directory sites. This will help your business show up more in local searches.

3. Start writing useful content

The main goal of lawyer SEO is to get more clients by making your website more visible in Google.

One effective way to enhance your online presence is to write a blog. By creating blog posts that provide valuable insights, such as tips on preparing for a divorce, understanding the probate process, or navigating workplace discrimination, you can attract interested readers who may become potential clients.

As your blog content attracts more traffic, your search rankings will improve, making it easier for people searching for a lawyer in your area to find you. Over time, readers will begin to see you as a reliable and knowledgeable source for legal advice, increasing the likelihood that they will turn to your firm for their legal needs.

4. Earn quality links

How high your site ranks in search results for keywords and phrases related to your business depends on how many and how good the links are to it. This means that you need to get good links if you want to keep your rankings.

You can do this by making good content and reaching out to bloggers and leaders in your field to ask them to share it. This will not only help you move up in search results, but it will also make your legal practice look like a leader in the field.

Backlinks are a very important part of SEO for lawyers. They are like a vote of confidence for the content your practise puts out. Because of this, links are one of the most important ways that search engines like Google decide how to rank pages.

How does lawyer SEO work?

SEO for lawyers means making sure that your website is optimized for both search engines and users. This makes your website more visible in relevant and organic search results.

Optimizations include:

• on-page SEO
• link building
• technical SEO review
• content audit
• local citation audit

Why do law firms need marketing?

It helps you set your practise apart.

Marketing is essential for law firms to stand out in a competitive field.

Your clients are your customers, and a well-crafted marketing plan not only helps you identify your target audience but also communicates why potential clients should choose your law firm over others.

A strong legal marketing strategy can help attract new clients, retain existing ones, and increase awareness of your services. The primary goal is to encourage potential clients to reach out—whether by calling, scheduling a consultation online, or filling out a contact form—so you can grow your practice effectively.

How long does lawyer SEO take?

Typically, law SEO takes at least six months to deliver results.

In some cases, practices may start to see results like increased traffic, phone calls, and appointments, in faster timeframe than this.

Although typically 6 months is a good benchmark as SEO is a long-term strategy vs. a short-term strategy like PPC.

How much does SEO for lawyers cost?

Prices for lawyer website SEO depend on multiple factors, but the average cost for lawyer SEO is $1500 – $5000 per month.

If you’re looking to partner with a consultant or law SEO expert, the average rate is $100 – $300 per hour.