How to Choose the Best Lawyer SEO Company for Your Legal Practice

Over the pas few decades, there’s been a massive shift in how clients find legal representation. The days when people primarily relied on referrals or the Yellow Pages are largely gone. Now, when someone needs legal help, what’s the first thing they do? They search online.

The reality is, most potential clients use Google to find legal services. They’re typing in phrases like “divorce lawyer near me” or “personal injury attorney in Boston.” If your law firm isn’t showing up for these searches, you’re missing out on a significant number of potential clients.

What’s interesting is how competitive the online legal space has become. In some practice areas and locations, the competition for top search positions is incredibly fierce. This makes choosing the right lawyer SEO company absolutely essential for your practice’s success.

So if you’re a lawyer or marketing director at a law firm looking to improve your online visibility, this article will help you navigate the process of selecting an SEO partner that actually delivers results. I’ve worked in SEO for 15 years, working in-house at a law firm for five of them, and I want to share what I’ve learned about what makes a good lawyer SEO company.

Why SEO is Important for Lawyers

When it comes to marketing a law firm, SEO should be a fundamental part of your strategy. Here’s why:

First, SEO improves your search engine rankings. When potential clients search for legal services related to your practice areas, you want your firm to appear at the top of those search results. According to research, 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results. If you’re not on page one, you’re essentially invisible to most potential clients.

Second, SEO drives more organic traffic to your website. This isn’t just any traffic – it’s targeted traffic from people actively searching for the legal services you offer. These visitors have high intent and are more likely to convert into clients than people who find you through other channels.

Consider these statistics:

• For law firms, SEO has the second highest conversion rate of any marketing channel at over 4% (RulerAnalytics)
• 49% of marketers state that organic search has the highest ROI of any marketing channel (Search Engine Journal)
• 92% of global traffic comes from Google (Semrush)

For law firms specifically, the numbers are even more compelling. Statistics show that 96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine at some point in their process (Google Consumer Survey). And 74% of consumers visit a law firm’s website before taking action (Google Consumer Survey). If your website isn’t optimized for search, you’re potentially losing a lot of your possible clients.

Think about it this way: your strongest competitors are already investing in law firm SEO services. If you’re not, you’re essentially handing them clients that could have been yours.

Factors to Consider When Choosing a Lawyer SEO Company

Expertise and Experience

When looking for a lawyer SEO company, one of the first things you should consider is their expertise and experience, particularly in the legal industry.

Working with a company that specializes in SEO for law firms is valuable because legal SEO has its own unique challenges. The legal industry is highly competitive online, certain practice areas have different user intents, and the content needs to be technically accurate while still being accessible to potential clients.

You should look for companies that have achieved results specifically for law firms. These provide evidence that the company has successfully helped businesses similar to yours. Ask to see before-and-after metrics for law firms they’ve worked with, such as:

• Increases in organic traffic
• Improvements in keyword rankings
• Growth in leads or client inquiries
• Return on investment (ROI) figures

Many lawyer SEO companies even have in-house law firm experience or were founded by former lawyers. This dual expertise in both SEO and legal practice can be incredibly valuable as they understand both the technical aspects of SEO and the specific needs and challenges of law firms.

For example, they’ll understand the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) for legal websites since law falls under the YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) category in Google’s quality guidelines. This matters because Google holds these websites to higher standards.

Also, experienced legal SEO specialists will know which keywords convert best for different practice areas, how to create content that addresses specific legal concerns while avoiding providing legal advice, and how to optimize for local searches for law firms with a geographic focus.

Services Offered

A good lawyer SEO company should offer a comprehensive range of services tailored to the needs of law firms. Here are the key services to look for:

SEO Audits: The company should start with a thorough audit of your current website domain, evaluating factors like site structure, page speed, mobile-friendliness, and existing content. This baseline assessment helps identify immediate issues and opportunities.

Keyword Research: This is fundamental to any SEO strategy. The company should conduct extensive keyword research to identify terms potential clients use when searching for legal services in your practice areas. This isn’t just about finding the most searched terms – it’s about finding terms with the right intent that align with your services and have a reasonable competition level.

Content Marketing: Content is at the heart of SEO for law firms. Your SEO company should be able to develop a content strategy and create high-quality, legally accurate content that addresses the concerns and questions of your potential clients. This might include practice area pages, blog posts, FAQs, case studies, and resource guides.

Link Building (Off-page SEO): Backlinks remain a crucial ranking factor. A good lawyer SEO company will have ethical strategies for building quality links to your site from relevant, authoritative sources. This might include legal directories, local business partnerships, speaking engagements, or guest posting on legal publications.

On-site SEO: This covers everything from optimizing meta titles and descriptions to improving internal linking, image optimization, and schema markup. On-site SEO ensures your website is structured in a way that makes it easy for search engines to understand and rank your content.

Local SEO: For law firms serving specific geographic areas, local SEO is essential. This includes optimizing your Google Business Profile, managing local citations, targeting location-specific keywords, and implementing local business schema markup.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO focuses on the backend of your website – fixing issues that might prevent search engines from properly crawling and indexing your site. This includes improving site speed, fixing broken links, ensuring mobile responsiveness, implementing SSL, and addressing crawl errors.

What’s crucial here is that the approach should be tailored to your specific law firm. A corporate law firm targeting businesses nationally needs a very different SEO strategy than a personal injury firm focusing on a specific city.

The lawyer SEO company should create a customized strategy based on your:

• Practice areas
• Geographic focus
• Target clients
• Competitive landscape
• Current online presence
• Budget and goals

Transparency and Communication

From my experience, transparency and communication are often what separate good SEO companies from great ones.

The best lawyer SEO companies are completely transparent about their pricing, strategies, and expected timeframes. SEO takes time – usually months rather than weeks – and any company promising immediate results is setting unrealistic expectations.

You should expect:

• Clear pricing with no hidden fees
• A detailed outline of their proposed strategy
• Realistic timelines for implementation and results
• Regular updates on work completed and progress made

Communication is equally important. Your SEO company should be accessible and responsive. They should explain their process and recommendations in terms you can understand, not hide behind technical jargon.

You should have a main point of contact – a person who understands your firm’s specific needs, and is able to answer your questions or address concerns promptly.

The right SEO partner will make you feel like they’re an extension of your team, not just an external vendor. They’ll take the time to understand your firm’s goals, values, and unique selling propositions (USPs) so they can represent your brand accurately online.

Reporting and Tracking

A professional lawyer SEO company should provide regular, detailed reports that track your campaign’s progress. These reports should go beyond vanity metrics and focus on metrics that actually impact your business.

Key metrics to track include:

• Organic rankings for target keywords
• Local rankings for relevant searches
• Website traffic from organic search
• User behavior on your site (time on site, pages per session, bounce rate)
• Goal completions (contact form submissions, phone calls, chat initiations)
• Conversion rates (CVR)
• Client acquisition costs (CAC)
• Return on investment (ROI)

The reports should be clear and easy to understand, with insights into what the numbers mean for your business. Your SEO company should be able to explain any fluctuations and adjust the strategy as needed based on the data.

Look for a company that sets up proper tracking systems from the start, including:

• Google Analytics 4
• Google Search Console
• Call tracking
• Form submission tracking
• Goal tracking

This data is essential not just for measuring success but for making informed decisions about where to focus efforts moving forward.

Ethical Practices

In the SEO world, there’s a distinction between “white hat” techniques (ethical practices that follow search engine guidelines) and “black hat” techniques (manipulative tactics that violate guidelines).

For law firms, ethical SEO practices are particularly important. As a lawyer, your reputation is everything, and being associated with unethical or spammy SEO tactics could damage that reputation.

A reputable lawyer SEO company will only use ethical practices that adhere to Google’s guidelines. They’ll focus on creating valuable content, earning quality backlinks, improving user experience, and technical optimization – rather than trying to “trick” search engines with keyword stuffing, hidden text, link schemes, or other manipulative tactics.

While black hat techniques might provide short-term gains, they carry significant risks. Google regularly updates its algorithms to identify and demote sites using such tactics. A penalty could cause your site to drop significantly in rankings or even be removed from search results entirely – potentially costing you more in lost business than you ever saved with cheap SEO.

Client Ownership

This is an often overlooked but critical factor. You need to ensure that your law firm maintains ownership of:

• Your website
• All content created for your site
• Your domain name
• Associated accounts (Google Business Profile, Analytics, Search Console, etc.)

Some SEO companies will build and host your website on their servers, maintain control of your domain registration, or keep ownership of created content. This can create significant problems if you ever want to change providers.

Make sure your contract clearly states that you own all of these assets. If the SEO company will be setting up or managing any accounts for you, ensure they’re created in your name and that you have full admin access.

Focus on ROI

At the end of the day, SEO is an investment, and like any investment, it should provide a return. The right lawyer SEO company will focus on metrics that directly impact your bottom line, not just vanity metrics.

Vanity metrics might include:

• Rankings for keywords that don’t drive relevant traffic
• Raw traffic numbers without regard for quality or engagement
• Social media followers or likes that don’t translate to inquiries
• Backlink quantity without regard for quality or relevance

What really matters is whether your SEO efforts are bringing in more cases and clients. Your SEO company should be able to track and report on leads generated through organic search and help you calculate the ROI of your SEO investment.

Questions to Ask a Potential Lawyer SEO Company

When interviewing potential SEO partners, here are some key questions to ask:

“Can you show proof of your previous successes?” Look for case studies, testimonials, and concrete examples of how they’ve helped other law firms improve their marketing and generate more clients.

“How do you track results?” The company should have a clear system for tracking and reporting key metrics. Ask to see a sample report to ensure it provides meaningful insights.

“Will I have a point of contact?” Having a consistent point of contact who understands your firm’s needs is valuable for effective communication and strategy implementation.

“Which geographic markets do you have experience in?” This helps assess whether they understand local SEO for law firms and can develop a strategy that matches your geographic targeting.

“Which practice areas do you have experience in?” Different practice areas have different competitive landscapes and keyword strategies. Ensure they have experience with your specific practice areas.

“Which keywords do you have experience ranking for?” The SEO company should be able to explain their keyword research process and how they’ll identify valuable keywords for your firm.

“Do you have experience in local SEO?” If you serve a specific geographic area, local SEO should be a significant component of your strategy.

“How do you approach on-page optimization, technical SEO, local SEO, and content creation?” Their answers will reveal their expertise and whether they take a comprehensive approach to SEO.

Potential Red Flags to Watch Out For

Be cautious if an SEO company:

Guarantees specific results or rankings: No one can guarantee specific rankings in Google, as search algorithms are constantly evolving and competitive landscapes change. Companies making such guarantees are either uninformed or dishonest.

Is focused on clicks, traffic, or vanity metrics without tying them to business outcomes: Traffic and other metrics that don’t convert into clients aren’t valuable. The focus should be on qualified traffic that has a high likelihood of becoming clients.

Vague regarding their process: If they’re vague about their strategies or claim to have “proprietary methods” they can’t disclose, this could indicate they’re using black hat techniques they don’t want to reveal.

Requires long-term contracts with significant cancellation penalties While SEO is a long-term strategy, being locked into a lengthy contract with a company that isn’t performing well can be costly and frustrating.

Final Thoughts

Choosing the right lawyer SEO company is a decision that can significantly impact your firm’s growth and success. With the right partner, you can improve your online visibility, attract more qualified leads, and ultimately gain an edge over your competitors in search results.

To recap the key factors to consider:

• Look for expertise and experience in legal SEO
• Ensure they offer comprehensive services tailored to law firms
• Demand transparency and clear communication
• Expect detailed reporting and proper tracking
• Insist on ethical, white hat SEO practices
• Maintain ownership of your digital assets
• Focus on ROI and metrics that matter to your business

Take your time researching potential SEO partners. Review their case studies, speak with references, and ask detailed questions about their approach. The right company will be happy to explain their methods and set realistic expectations.

Remember that SEO is not a quick fix but a long-term investment in your firm’s visibility and marketing. When done correctly by a knowledgeable and ethical lawyer SEO company, it can be one of the most cost-effective ways to generate a steady stream of new clients for your practice.