The ultimate legal marketing competitive advantage: ranking high in search engines.
Law firm SEO can be a game changer, increasing your firm’s search engine visibility and driving intakes.
According to a poll by Search Engine Journal, 49% of marketers report that organic search has the best ROI of any marketing channel.
However, most partners believe legal marketing SEO is simply optimising your site using Yoast.
Wrong.
Law firm SEO extends far beyond basic keyword optimisation.
In this article, we’ve compiled 24 years of experience optimising websites for law firms and producing SEO-driven content.
It’s how we hit the top-3 position on Google for over 20 high-value keywords in less than a year for Hudgell Solicitors.
And it’s how you can too if you follow our advice.
So, as always, let’s dive in.
Keyword research.
Any effective law firm SEO strategy begins by identifying relevant keywords your prospective clients are searching for.
SEO tools like UberSuggest and Semrush help you identify the terms your audience is searching for and their monthly search volume.
Once you’ve identified these terms, you’ll need to create service ‘topic clusters’.
Topic clusters are groups of keywords based on a specific topic.
Here’s an example of a topic cluster of terms you might use when targeting someone who has had an accident at work and is considering a solicitor:
- claim for injury at work
- injury at work claims
- injury at work compensation
- injury at work lawyers
- injury at work solicitors
- injury at work no win no fee
- accident at work can I claim
- accident at work how to claim
- how much can you claim for injury at work
Note: These are ‘commercial’ focused keywords that show high intent on using the solicitor's service(s).
Optimise your service pages with commercial-focused keywords.
However, your prospective client may not be at a stage where they are ready to contact a solicitor.
They may be searching for answers to a particular question, using ‘informational’ search terms. For example:
- hurt back at work what do I do
- I fell at work what are my rights
- accident at work employers responsibilities uk
In fact, according to Moz, 8% of searches are phrased as a question. This is your opportunity to share your thought leadership.
Create advice articles based on informational search terms to drive organic (not paid) traffic to your site.
Link to your service page from your advice articles using text hyperlinks.
This signals to Google that your service page is authoritative, which helps boost rankings.
The more high-quality content on a topic you produce, the more your rankings will improve.
On-page SEO.
Optimising individual pages is another crucial element of your law firm’s SEO strategy.
On-page SEO helps Google understand the context of your pages.
This boosts your position on search engine results pages (SERPs) and attracts more prospective clients.
To achieve this, refine both visible and back-end elements of your content.
Keyword optimisation.
Firstly, your title tag (the H1 title) introduces the content of your page.
It should be descriptive and include your main keyword to signal the page's topic to search engines.
For example, ‘Medical Negligence Solicitors London’.
Your title should be followed by optimised H2s, H3s, and so on, including target keywords wherever natural and relevant.
For example, your H2 could be ‘No win, no fee medical negligence claims’.
Headers should be ordered in terms of size and importance, giving your page a hierarchical structure to improve readability and user experience.
A law firm SEO client asked me a simple but very important question recently – one I have perhaps taken for granted after being in the SEO game for many years.
"Do you have to use the exact keywords from your research in your content?"
The short answer is no. Here's why:
- Google understands search intent – In 2015, Google launched its RankBrain algorithm update. RankBrain shifts from keyword matching, instead focusing on user search intent.
- Combining multiple keywords is effective – Long-tail keywords, combining multiple terms, capture specific search intents effectively.
- It’s better to write for users first – Google actually favours content that sounds natural and is easier to read. A sentence that flows with a slight variation of your keyword will rank better than one where the keyword is forced.
In the back end of your site, you have your metadata.
It’s what users see in the SERPs, comprising of a meta title and meta description.
For metadata:
- Include relevant keywords – ensure both the meta title and description incorporate primary keywords that accurately reflect the page's content and search intent.
- Keep them concise and compelling – meta titles should be under 60 characters and meta descriptions under 160 characters to avoid truncation in search results while encouraging clicks.
- Create unique and descriptive text – craft a unique meta title and description for each page, clearly describing its content and purpose to differentiate it from other pages and improve relevance.
When it comes to the main body of your content, place keywords strategically to signal relevance to search engines.
Warning:
There's no strict rule for keyword use, but avoid keyword stuffing and ensure they flow naturally in the content.
As a rough guide, for 1000 words, use your focus keyword 3–5 times.
However, don't get hung up on this – Google now understands context better, making exact keyword frequency less crucial.
Just make sure it sounds natural when keyword-optimising your content.
Many legal marketers forget to optimise images too.
Images should be optimised with descriptive file names and alt text, improving accessibility and search engine indexing
Law firm SEO and user experience
This took me 12 years to learn and it could save your law firm thousands.
Legal marketing SEO is not something you do once you’ve developed your website.
It should be embedded during the design phase.
Get this:
User experience is SEO.
The longer people engage with your content, the more likely Google will deem it as helpful.
So optimising your content for user experience is crucial.
There will always be fee earners who are intoxicated by their own verbiage.
However, in light of Google’s algorithm update on 12th December 2025, including question-based H2 headings and short, simple answers is key.
Google further emphasises creating content that satisfies user intent rather than optimising solely for search engines. User engagement and satisfaction signals are integral to rankings.
Google may be ranking some of your pages lower because they don't fully satisfy user intent for both structure and high-value keywords.
We’ve conducted numerous experiments and analyses. When optimising your service pages, the key to winning SEO in 2025 is to understand the difference between Awareness- and Consideration-stage keywords and how they affect the user journey and structure of your pages:
- Awareness stage: Users are broadly exploring a problem. Users are trying to understand the issue and are not yet looking for a solicitor. In the context of forklift accidents, for example, this could be “most common forklift accidents” or “What to do after a forklift accident”.
- Decision stage: In the Consideration stage, users are actively researching solutions. For forklift accidents, this includes keywords like "forklift accident claims" or "forklift accident lawyers". They are now seeking guidance, legal advice, or actionable steps.
After plugging hundreds of Awarnees and Consideration stage keywords into Google and analysing the top 3 results for each, we found:
- 64% of the top 3 Google organic results for Awareness-stage keywords were advice articles, and 9% were service pages.
- 97% of the top 3 Google organic results for Consideration-stage keywords were service pages.
The lowdown?
Prioritise optimising your service page for Decision-stage keywords and generating Advice articles for Awareness-stage keywords.
But it doesn’t stop there…
…it’s also about the user journey on your service pages.
Based on our analysis of top-ranking service pages for hundreds of Decision-stage keywords, we found a common page structure and content hierarchy:
- H1 title: Use H1s targeting specific consideration-stage keywords. (e.g., "Forklift Truck Accident Compensation Claims" or “Will & probate services”).
- Specific questions: Directly answer questions that your prospective client will be asking if they are considering using your services. In the example of forklift accident claims, these might be "Can I make a forklift accident claim?" and "What are the claim time limits’).
- Reasons to Choose You: Now highlight your expertise and lawyers (e.g., "Why choose [company name]?").
- Process & Practicalities: Explain the process and practicalities of working with you. In the forklift claims example, this could be "How long will my claim take?" or "How do I make a claim?". Outlining the process reduces uncertainty and instils confidence.
- Case Studies & Testimonials: If they haven’t converted yet, it means they still don't quite trust you or have unanswered questions. Build trust with client stories and social proof.
- FAQs: Address remaining questions to convert prospects.
Each section should include a clear Call to Action at the end (such as “Request a free callback” or “Start my claim”).
If you can get your user journey and order of keyword-optimised H2 and H3 subheadings correct, Google will reward you for it in 2025.
And don’t forget this:
Google AI Overviews can’t be ignored. Because Google wants clear and concise answers, under your question-based H2 headers, answer the question directly within 1-2 sentences. Then, expand on your answer if needed.
This will provide the short snippets required to be featured in AI Overviews while giving the content depth needed to satisfy user intent.
Finally, let’s talk about the page experience.
However, utilising short, simple sentences wherever possible, enhances flow and readability, particularly for mobile devices.
Ensure your page header font sizes lend themselves to long-tail keyword optimisation – nobody wants to read a heading that spans 10 lines on mobile.
Use an intuitive page layout with content blocks to break up long sections and potentially a jump-to menu for easier navigation of long-form content.
50-50 fixed-image columns can also help break up text-heavy sections, enabling you to include as much copy as required without it looking cluttered.
Additionally, optimise your page load speed to ensure users can quickly access the information they’re looking for, reducing bounce rates – which can hinder SEO performance.
Finally, structured data should be implemented to help search engines better understand and display your content.
For example, author schema markup on advice articles or FAQ schema markup on FAQ sections.
Content creation.
I've heard horror stories of law firm’s rankings plummeting recently.
Legal marketers should listen up.
Google rolled out its March 2024 core update.
In a nutshell, it penalises poor quality and spammy AI-generated content.
Google's August 2024 update further highlights that experience and expertise are key trust signals for higher rankings.
The bottom line?
Producing high-quality, relevant content is essential for your law firm’s SEO and user engagement.
While AI can help with brainstorming and content creation, Google ultimately prioritises accurate and authentic content.
With that in mind, there are a few trust signals you can use to show your content is your own, produced by people who have expertise in their field.
Create a solicitor bio for every member of your legal team and ensure any content they produce links back to their bio.
It should include a photo, bio and accreditations.
Implement author schema on your advice pages to validate authenticity and send trust signals to Google. For WordPress sites, this is usually done using the Yoast plugin.
On Drupal, a schema module can be set up during the build of your blog or advice pages.
As well as individual author pages, your law firm should have a main About page.
Link to this from your content pages for added trust signals, typically by including a brief company description in italics at the end of each article.
For further trust signals, leverage your team's sector experience in your content.
AI can't replicate personal experiences, so use this to highlight authenticity and strengthen credibility.
All these factors can be neatly summed up in the ‘who, why, and how’ Google looks for.
The “who” is covered by your author pages.
The “how” explains the basis of the information and where it comes from. For example ‘20 years of experience’, ‘a recent survey analysis’, or ‘recent data’.
And the “why” should clarify the purpose of the content. For example, to outline prospective clients’ rights, breakdown processes, or summarise key points.
Meet all these criteria and Google will instantly elevate your content above any AI-generated dross.
Harsh SEO truth
Here’s a sobering fact.
Rank 1 on Google, and you have a 1 in 3 chance of someone clicking through to your site.
Rank 2, and it's 1 in 6.
Rank 3, and it's 1 in 10.
Outside the top 10, your chances drop to less than 1 in 100.
Legal marketing SEO takes time to build authority and steadily climb search engine rankings (we’re talking years to really drive significant traffic).
And, for a long time, it can feel like you’re not getting anywhere. According to research by Ahrefs, the average Top 10 ranking page is over 2 years old, with #1 ranking pages nearly 3 years old (on average). Only 22% of Top 10 pages are less than a year old.
Therefore, we strongly recommend running digital ads in the meantime to help drive intakes.
However, hold tight and think strategically as you grow your rankings.
If certain keywords are centred around a topic and are breaking into the top 5 on SERPS, double down on that topic to try and hit the top spot.
That’s where the traffic will come. With traffic comes intakes. And with intakes comes matters and cases.
Keep producing excellent thought leadership and I promise the fruits of your labour will eventually pay off.
Local SEO.
It’s only natural for a significant portion of your prospective clients to be located in close proximity to where you’re based.
This makes local SEO for law firms crucial. Google reports that 76% of people visit a business within a day after a nearby smartphone search.
Create location-specific service pages on your site with local keywords like “Work injury lawyer in [your city].”
On these pages, implement LocalBusiness schema and embed a Google Map so prospective clients can easily find you.
Manage your Google Business Profile to further bulletproof your local SEO.
The Google My Business app is no longer available, but you can manage your profile on the Google Maps app.
This includes updating business info, adding photos, responding to reviews, and using the Profile Strength Indicator to improve your profile.
An up-to-date profile encourages positive client reviews, strengthening your local reputation and improving search rankings.
Local citations – mentions of your business across various platforms, including legal directories and social media – must also be consistent to avoid harming your local rankings or confusing potential clients.
Additionally, engage with your local community by promoting events, sponsorships, or partnerships on your site and social media. This not only boosts local presence but also fosters community trust.
[Insert Hudgells case study here]
Technical SEO & fixes.
Technical SEO is crucial for law firm rankings.
Search engines prioritise sites with optimal performance, including speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawlability.
Improving site speed enhances user experience and reduces bounce rates, signalling to search engines that your site content is useful.
Technical SEO also involves fixing broken links, duplicate content, and improper redirects.
However, Technical SEO is a dark art. This complex field requires advanced SEO knowledge and coding skills.
Heads up:
Don’t forgo technical SEO.
One unidentified issue with your site can lead to big drops in your rankings – an issue that would have been spotted by a monthly audit and fixed by a keen technical SEO developer.
For best results, outsource to a specialist technical SEO agency like Contra to ensure your site performs optimally to achieve top rankings.
Schema markup.
Schema markup is code that helps search engines understand and display website content more effectively in search results.
More specifically, it’s a type of microdata that you can add to the HTML of your website.
It helps search engines like Google understand the content on your pages more accurately, allowing them to display richer, more informative search results, often called ‘rich snippets’.
Here are some useful schemas to add to your law firm’s website:
- Local pages – LocalBusiness schema, including subtypes like LegalService for specifying legal services.
- Advice articles – Author schema, which can be used to send trust signals to Google that your content is written by a fee earner rather than AI. Also, don’t forget the headline and date published.
- Solicitor bios – Person schema, including subtypes such as name, email, job title, and expertise.
- Service pages – Service schema to highlight different areas of practice.
- FAQ sections – FAQ schema to enhance the visibility of FAQs in search results.
- Contact Page – Contact page schema to help users easily find contact information.
- Reviews – Adding Review schema helps a review snippet appear in search results. A review snippet is a brief excerpt or rating from a review site, typically reflecting the average of multiple reviewers' scores.
- Firm – Organisation schema, including, name, logo, image, address, and VAT number.
Link building.
Building trust and having a strong reputation are essential when offering legal services.
This makes link-building a vital element of law firm SEO.
Backlinks from reputable sources to your website act as endorsements for your business, helping to build authority and signal to Google your content is trustworthy.
A Backlinko 2024 study found that the number of linking domains had the strongest correlation with high Google rankings.
The more high-quality backlinks you can acquire, the more likely you are to appear high up on SERPs.
This makes it easier for people to find your website, potentially leading to more clients.
But what makes a quality backlink?
Well, it’s any highly reputable, trusted source related to your industry.
If you can’t secure these backlinks, then it isn’t necessarily beneficial to settle for links from any old site.
Bad links from spammy sites with negative reputations can actually harm your ranking, so don’t try to cut corners.
Link building is a complex, time-consuming process which requires a strategic approach and insights from SEO backlinking tools.
Therefore, it’s often best to outsource to an agency specialising in SEO that offers a dedicated link-building service.
Mobile SEO.
We’ve already touched on the importance of mobile optimisation for law firm SEO.
Mobile accounts for 73.25% of all Google visitors, so you must offer your mobile users the best experience possible.
Achieving this involves several aspects.
Responsive design is undoubtedly the main aspect of mobile optimisation.
Your site needs to seamlessly adjust to different screen sizes, ensuring it looks great and all elements remain easily accessible to provide a consistent experience.
Navigation should be simple, with menus, buttons, and links all being easily clickable, enabling users to move smoothly from page to page.
All text should be readable without needing to zoom in. Ensure colours are clearly contrasting and keep sentences short to avoid large text blocks.
If you’re asking users to submit information, minimise the effort required by designing forms which are easy to fill out on mobile.
If it’s too complicated or buggy then users will quickly give up or even leave your site entirely, which can harm your SEO ranking.
Similarly, apply technical best practices to ensure your website loads quickly on mobile. Again, this can help reduce your bounce rate and enhance SEO.
Improving page speed involves optimising typically large files like images and videos.
You need to find the right balance of having content that looks good without slowing down your website too much.
Analytics and reporting.
With so much effort going into your legal marketing and SEO, you’ll want to know that it’s producing results.
Tools such as Google Analytics and Google Search Console allow you to easily monitor SEO performance.
As an experienced law firm marketing agency, we highly recommend integrating Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with your website and setting up conversion events.
Conversions events are key user actions, such as form submissions or calls, which are vital to generating revenue for your business.
Integrating GA4 and your SEO tracking tools with Google Looker Studio also enables you to keep a close eye on other key metrics using custom, visual dashboards.
For law firms, we track the following metrics, including both year-on-year and month-on-month comparison dashboards:
- YoY Summary and Previous Period summary (reporting on both ‘all users’ and specifically ‘organic users’)
- Active users
- New users
- Total conversions
- Conversion event breakdown
- User conversion rate
- Percentage of engaged users
- Average engagement time
- Service rankings (e.g. Personal Injury)
- Subservice rankings (e.g. Accidents at Work)
- Rankings distribution
- Benchmark rankings vs current rankings
- Sources and engagement
- Best and worst
- Rankers
- Climbers
- Performing pages (traffic, conversions, engagement time)
Rather than just analysing current data, it’s beneficial to monitor change over time.
Comparing month-over-month and year-over-year helps you identify trends and understand how and why your client intake has grown.
Produce SEO reports each month to understand how your SEO activity is driving organic growth.
Using your tools to regularly monitor data gives you the opportunity to make informed decisions, allowing you to refine your strategy, increase traffic, and optimise conversions.
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