We analyzed 63 different websites built with Clio Grow in order to give you a thorough assessment of its capabilities, value, and likelihood of generating traffic from Google. Our findings are below. Many of our clients have used Findlaw websites, LawLytics, Clio and other tools, and we try to keep up with legal industry trends when possible.
Should you launch your law firm website on Clio Grow? More importantly – can you rank on Google with a Clio Grow website? We’ll cover these questions. For questions about your website or web presence, send us a note.
Should You Launch Your Law Firm Website With Clio Grow?
Speaking from an SEO/visibility-perspective, we would not recommend that you use Clio Grow for your website if you want to get traffic from Google Search. The platform will not let you publish the right type of content and website structure required to rank on Google for competitive law firm search queries.
You Can’t Publish Necessary Pages for Search
To rank on Google, a law firm should have one page, per service, per geographic region. For example, an injury firm in Chicago would need pages for:
- Chicago Personal Injury Lawyer
- Chicago Car Accident Lawyer
- Naperville Personal Injury Lawyer
- Etc.
On Clio Grow websites, you cannot publish individual pages with all of the necessary content. Here is another example of a Clio website: https://rileyplc.com/. You will notice that when you click on “practice areas” in the main menu, it uses a hash (#) link to scroll the user down to a different section of the homepage. Then, they list a few practice areas:
- Family law
- Child custody
- Etc.
On a good law firm website set up to generate organic leads, each of those practice areas would have a dedicated page optimized for a specific geographic area.
It’s Fine If You Only Use Non-Organic Marketing Channels
Presumably, many of the 63 law firms we reviewed do not rely on Google search for leads. Perhaps they have a good Facebook ad campaign running, maybe they have too much word of mouth business already, or maybe they have some other channel that works for them. If you don’t need traffic and leads from Google, then Clio Grow websites are perfectly fine – they look professional, have built-in form and phone functionality, and are cheap.
We Reviewed 63 Clio Grow Websites. Here’s What We Found
61 of the 63 Did Not Rank for a Single Keyword
As part of our research, we spot-checked every single Clio Grow website on our list for meaningful keyword rankings. We searched directly on Google and used Ahrefs.com to track down historical rankings. Only two of the 63 sites had any kind of keyword rankings for non-branded terms. These were the two sites that had hints of visibility on Google:
- A family law firm in Southwest Michigan ranks #27 on Google for “family law firm Kalamazoo”
- An immigration firm in MS ranks #20 on Google for the phrase, “abogados de inmigración en Mississippi”
In short, of the websites we audited, two of them have any non-branded rankings whatsoever. And they were poor rankings for obscure keywords.
The Sad Tale of 3 Law Firm Websites
Three of the websites we reviewed had previously ranked on Google, then lost those rankings when they launched a Clio Grow website. Our methodology for finding this information:
- We used Ahrefs to view traffic and ranking trends over the past 12+ months
- We used the Internet Archive Wayback Machine to see what their web presence looked like over time
Example 1: Woznicki Law PLC
At the end of 2023, this law firm had an old Lawlytics site, which you can see on this web archive capture. The site was not good. But it did have practice area pages and a decent structure with ranking potential. By February 22, 2024, they had switched to the new site. Here is what the drop in visibility looked like during that time, according to Ahrefs:
Example 2: Law Offices of Robert F. Kramer, Ltd.
This firm, Robertkramerlaw.com, previously had a Findlaw website. You should not use Findlaw for your law firm website either! But again, at least the old website had practice area pages.
View the previous version of robertkramerlaw.com on the web archive here. You can see that they had unique pages for each service they office. Again, the site was very poor, and the content was low quality. But at least they had the start of an infrastructure that could earn traffic on Google.
Then sometime around Jan. 1, 2024, they switched to a Clio law firm website, and according to Ahrefs, their organic impressions tanked:
Quick Overview: How Clio Grow Websites Work
The Subscription
If you pay on a monthly basis, Clio Grow costs $159/mo, per user. Paid annually, the monthly average is $139. This level of subscription entitles you to:
- The Clio Grow website builder (the subject of this blog)
- Automated Local Service Ads for your law firm (this is too insignificant for us to spend time on it here)
- The real Clio tools, like client intake, scheduling, billing etc.
If you already use Clio Grow, this is basically a free website – so cost is no concern.
The Nuts and Bolts of a Clio Grow Website
You get to choose from three templates, a few colors, and few layout options. You just need to click a few buttons to get a website online. There is no design phase, you will just select one of the Clio Grow templates and launch it.
Next, you will either purchase a website domain using Clio’s tool, or connect a domain you own in GoDaddy, Dreamhost, Namecheap etc (we recommend importing from your own registrar).
You can then fill out sections like the home page, practice areas, team members, and a contact section with your own content. These websites are mostly one-pagers, and users are directed to various sections via internal hash links (/#about-us for example).
Here is a live example: https://pedramilawfirm.com/
If You Want Leads From Google, Get a WordPress Website that You Own
You do not need to spend $20K to get a high quality law firm website that you can edit, customize, add content to, and rank on Google. You also don’t need to settle for a poor product like a Clio website, Findlaw website, Lawlytics site, or other captive site that you technically don’t even own.
As a leading law firm SEO agency in the US, we’ve looked at thousands of attorney websites. Some were good, some were bad. If you have any questions about your law firm website, how to start building a digital presence for your firm, intake optimization, or anything else, send us a note.
