SEO for lawyers, written for readers who check before they call

The reader has already heard of you, or has not

A law firm has two kinds of visitor. The first has never heard of you. They have a problem, they type it into Google, and they open a few of the results. The second was told to call you. A neighbour, a real estate agent or another lawyer gave them your name, and they look you up before they dial.

Both end up on your site. The first needs a page that matches the problem they searched. The second needs to find the lawyer by name, see where the office is and feel that the firm is real. A site that serves only one of them loses the other.

Pages for each area of practice

A single page that lists every area the firm covers cannot rank well for any of them. A page about a particular matter can. We plan the site around the work you want more of, then build one page for each matter, written for someone who is still working out what is happening to them.

That page says what the matter is, what the usual steps are, who will deal with it and how to start. It does not give advice and it does not promise a result. It gives the reader enough to decide to call, which is all a website needs to do for a law firm.

The practice area pages differ a great deal in how they are read. We have written separately about SEO for criminal lawyers, family lawyers and conveyancers, because the way people search for each is so different.

A page for each lawyer and each office

Referred clients look up a person. A page for each lawyer, with their areas of work, their admissions and a direct way to make contact, gives that search somewhere to land. It also gives Google a clear link between the person and the firm.

Offices work the same way. If the firm has two, each gets its own page with an address, a map, opening hours and the lawyers who work there. We built the site we run for Karnib and Co on this pattern. Each office has its own page, and for criminal lawyer searches in both of its cities the site now sits on page one on average.

Written with the rules in mind

Advertising by solicitors is regulated. Rule 36 of the Australian Solicitors' Conduct Rules, as the Law Society of NSW publishes it, says advertising must not be false, misleading, deceptive, offensive or prohibited by law. It also covers claims of specialist expertise and reserves the words accredited specialist for solicitors who hold that accreditation. Details differ across states and professions, so we treat the rules as a floor and leave the final call to you.

In practice, that means plain pages. No promised outcomes, no ranking of your firm against others, no borrowed superlatives. Every page goes to a lawyer at the firm for approval before it is published. We can write and structure, but only you can say what the firm is willing to stand behind.

Your Google Business Profile

For searches that include a town, Google shows a map with a short list of firms. Each office needs its own profile, with the correct category, the real address and the hours the phone is answered. We set these up and keep them accurate.

Reviews are partly in your hands. Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a local ranking, but the way a firm asks, and what it can say in reply, is a matter for its own professional guidance. We never write reviews and we never suggest paying for them.

A site that is quick on a phone

A person who has just been given bad news does not wait for a heavy page to load. We build firm sites as plain, fast pages with a phone number that dials on a tap and a short contact form. The form asks for a name, a phone number or email, and a short note. That is all. Anything more is a reason to leave.

Each enquiry from a call tap or a form is recorded, so you can see which pages the enquiries came from.

What you get each month

You get a short report with the pages we changed or added, the searches the site was shown for, and the enquiries recorded. If something did not move, the report says so. The work is month to month.