Lawyers
Something has gone badly wrong and they are looking for help at 2am.
Legal searches are urgent, private and researched. People read a great deal before they ever pick up the phone.
What you are up against
Directories own the first page and the large firms own the second.
Avvo, FindLaw, Justia and the rest were built to rank for exactly the searches your clients make, and the firms with in-house marketing departments hold what is left. A small practice competes on specificity: a named attorney, a defined practice area, and a real answer to the question somebody actually typed.
How search works here
Three things specific to law firms.
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People self-educate before they call
Legal searches run long and detailed. The firm that answers the question properly earns the call, because by then the reader already trusts the source.
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Practice areas are separate businesses
Family, criminal, personal injury and estate work are different searches, different clients and different values. A firm listing all of them on one page ranks for none of them.
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Advertising rules apply to everything you publish
State bar rules on claims, results and testimonials cover your website. Content has to be written to convert and to comply, which rules out most of what generic marketing advice suggests.
Work it out
How many jobs would it have to bring in?
Set what one is worth to you, pick what you would actually buy, and it tells you the number the spend has to beat.
Where I would start
In this order, and for this reason.
- A page per practice area, since they are effectively separate businesses
- Profile and reviews, within what your bar rules permit
- Content answering the questions people research before calling
- Local signals, because most legal searches carry a place with them
Which rung that starts on depends on your market rather than your trade. Profile work runs $250/mo, and Local SEO starts at $500/mo. The full ladder is published.
Questions
The ones law firms ask.
Can you work within bar advertising rules?
Yes, and it constrains the copy more than the strategy. No claims about outcomes, no testimonials implying results, disclaimers where they are required. You review anything published before it goes live, which is the right arrangement when your license is what is at stake.
Should I try to rank for every practice area?
No. Pick the one that pays best and win it first. Spreading effort across five areas produces five pages that lose, and it is the most common reason a firm concludes that search does not work for them.
Free audit
Start with where you stand.
Your site's performance, your Google Business Profile, and whether AI can find you. It runs automatically and lands in your inbox in about three minutes.
You get the findings whether or not you hire me, and it is what decides which of the steps above is worth doing first.