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Law Firm SEO: The Ultimate Guide

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    At Majux, we prioritize strategies that generate a volume of qualified leads at the lowest cost-per-acquisition possible. Over the course of our 15+ years working with firms of all sizes and structures, we have found that organic SEO and content consistency produce the best cost-per-acquisition for signed cases.

    Is SEO a Good Investment for Law Firms?

    In terms of advertising dollars spent, Yes, search engine optimization is still a good investment for attorneys. The ROI from organic SEO remains lower than other advertising or marketing channels. Take motor vehicle accident cases, a single click on a Google Ad can cost between $120-$700 depending on the geography, term, and whether you are optimizing for phone calls. It’s common for a signed MVA case to cost between $1,500-$4,000 in acquisition from paid channels such as Google Ads. This is why many lead generation companies sell MVA leads for a price within that price range.

    When evaluating a ROI for organic SEO strategy vs. paid channels or lead gen, there is a longer lead time required, but you’re paying someone to build an asset that you own and builds on itself over time. After the initial investment, your monthly SEO fees don’t change, but the volume of leads trends upwards. Once the SEO and content visibility gains traction, the actual cost-per-acquisition per signed case is much less expensive (typically anywhere from 50-90% less) than the acquisition costs from paid channels.

    How Much Should SEO Cost for a Law Firm Website?

    The answer is that the pricing is variable based on the agency’s model, your practice area, and geographic footprint. There are two common ways in which SEO agencies offer full-service pricing.

    The first is a fixed-rate billing model, where the agency charges the same price for services for any clients. Think of this like a national restaurant franchise that offers a menu where the pricing is the same in all markets and your total cost for a meal is based on what you order.

    The other common pricing structure uses a value-based pricing model. In this structure, the pricing is more bespoke and based on the provider’s ability and the amount of work required to produce results for an individual client. Standardized, fixed-rate pricing is typically offered by agencies that offer one-size-fits-all (or standardized), services, where value-based pricing is typically offered by specialized agencies that offer services specialized to the client’s needs.

    There are alternative pricing models that are less common for full-service engagements in the legal industry. These include project billing, hourly billing, and performance billing. Project and hourly billing are common for one-time projects such as a website redesign or dev work related to IT. Performance billing is more common for agencies that operate primarily in paid advertising channels for non-legal clients. An example of an industry where this would be more common is for agencies that specialize in Amazon advertising for eCommerce clients.

    Pricing for Law Firm SEO

    So what does this translate into the cost for a law firm to hire an SEO agency?

    Using a flat-rate pricing model, a law firm can generally expect to pay a monthly cost of anywhere from $1,000-$5,000, depending on what services are included.

    In a value-based model, a law firm can usually expect to pay anywhere from $2,500-unlimited per month for an all-in engagement.

    The variables in price take into account how good the agency is, how competitive the practice area/geo is, and the types and volume of work involved.  There are pros and cons to each pricing model, which are outlined below:

     

    Flat-Fee Pricing Value-Based Pricing
    Pricing Pro: Typically Less Expensive Con: Can Be More Expensive
    Skill Con: Often Offered by Less-Experienced or Younger Agencies Pro: Typically Offered by Better-Performing and/or Busy Agencies
    Service Offering Con: Services Can Be Standardized/Cookie-Cutter Pro: Services Are Individualized/Bespoke
    Customization Con: Typically Less Flexible Pro: Very Flexible
    Strategy Con: Stereotypically, These Agencies Apply a Similar Strategy to Their Entire Client Base Pro: Because the Relationship is Based on Outcome, the Agency is Incentivized to Adjust Strategy to Initiatives that Demonstrate Results
    Incentive Alignment Con: The Agency May Be More Incentivized to Offer the Highest-Margin Products and Demonstrate Work Product Rather Than Demonstrating Results Quickly Pro: The Agency’s Value is Based on Providing Results as Quickly as Possible and Doing Whatever is Required to Achieve This
    Onboarding Pro: Becasue the Services are Standardized, New Client Onboarding is Quick and Requires Less Client Input Con: New Client Onboarding Can Take Longer and Require More Client Input
    Efficiency Con: You May End Up Paying for Services Not Needed (Think Social Media) Pro: Can Be Customized to Your Exact Needs So You Get More of What is Needed
    Flexibility Con: These Engagements Are More Rigid and Tied to the Statement of Work in the Original Engagement Pro: These Types of Engagements Often Can Be Adjusted or Evolve Based on What is Needed
    Speed Pro: Agency Staff is Incetivized to Complete Tasks Quickly and Efficiently Con: Because More Data Measurement and Strategy Consideration is Required, This Can Add Time to Implementation
    Staffing Mixed: These Agencies Typically Have a Few Very Knowledgable Owners and a Large Staff of Relationship Managers Mixed: Higher Engagement Sizes Allow These Agencies to Hire and Retain a Deeper Bench of Experienced Staff., However the Agency May Staff Less Relationship Managers and More Specialists
    Work Product Con: Agency Staff is Incentivized to Complete Only the Tasks Required and Some Work Product Might Be Outsourced to Keep Operation Costs Down Pro: Agency Staff is Typically Tasked With Producing What is Needed to Demonstrate Performance Instead of a Set Number of Deliverables. Most or All of the Work is Performed In-House
    Scope Con: These Agencies Have Capped Deliverables, So Agency Staff is Motivated to Deliver Set Outputs Rather Than What Might Be Needed Pro: These Agencies Will Often Deliver More if That is What it Takes to Produce Results For the Client
    Scalability Con: Because Deliverables Are Capped and Less Flexible, Scaling or Expanding Requires Additional Spend and May Still Include Un-Needed Deliverables Pro: Scalability is Often the Goal of a Value-Based Relationship
    Data Requirements Mixed: Because Evaluation is Based on Deliverables, Data Collection and Measurement is Less Important and Often Requires Less Client Involvement Mixed: Measuring Performance and Demonstrating Value Requires Deep and Accurate Data Measurement and Can Require More Client Involvement
    Contract Term Pro: These Agencies Often Offer No-Notice or Short-Term Notice Because They Are Charging for Deliverables Con: These Agencies Can Offer Longer Termination Notice or Fixed-Term Engagements Because of the Integration Requirements and Staffing Burdens
    Client Retention Con: A More Rigid Strategy Does Not Always Work for Different or Evolving Structures, Practice Areas, Geographies. As a Result, These Relationships Tend to Be Shorter-Term Pro: Because the Strategy is Flexible and the Evaluation is Base on Results, it is More Adaptable to Whatever is Needed to Produce. This Tends to Make the Relationship More of a Partnership and Longer-Term

    Why a Hybrid Agency Pricing Model Makes the Most Sense

    Many of the best agencies (Majux included) offer a blend of the two engagements outlined above.  Think of a single column where only the green “pro” attribute is listed.  This allows the client to get the best of both worlds in that the agency is incentivized to produce results as quickly as necessary, while also controlling the cost to the client.

    Everything a Lawyer Needs to Know About Law Firm SEO

    SEO has changed dramatically in the past 2-3 years. Massive algorithm updates have promoted discussion forums like Reddit, gave AI-generated search results more presence, and shuffled the number of featured snippets visible in the SERPs. Google continues to push Gemini Results, Sponsored Results, and Local Service Ads (LSAs) as the first results a user will see. This means that there are more firms competing for fewer lucrative organic spots. We stay ahead of these changes daily and would be happy to share our insights with you.

    This is a phenomenon we refer to as “web inflation.” Every day, another law firm launches a website or starts an SEO campaign. In short, the volume of content and websites online exponentially grows every day, and it takes progressively longer to cut through that noise. The longer you wait to attack it properly, the more of an uphill climb it will be to attract cases through organic search.

    Glossary of Jargon/Industry Terms Used in this Article

    • 404 – An error where a URL is not found and does not load
    • CPA – Cost-Per-Acquisition (the actual cost of signing a case)
    • Featured Snippets – The separated bit of content/information that Google displays at the top or side of a search result page
    • Image ALT Text – The descriptive text attached to each image on your website
    • Intent – What Google thinks a user is actually searching for as opposed to what they typed into the search field
    • Lead Gen – A model of company that sells raw leads to law firms
    • Link Building – The process by which third-party websites link out to your website from their site
    • Map Pack – The three search results that appear above Google’s organic search results and correspond to a GBP/Google Maps profile
    • Metas – The title and description that you give a piece of content for Google’s sake
    • MVA – Motor Vehicle Accident
    • Paid Channels – Advertising channels where there is a cost to participate
    • PPC – Pay-Per-Click (an advertising channel where you pay a network based on clicks, not impressions)
    • Redirect Chain – A website error where there are a string of url redirects that often end in a dead url or with another url in the chain
    • Research-Based Queries – Search terms that are often full questions or sentences about a process – example: “What is an actionable breach of contract event in New York”
    • SERPs – The actual Google search results page
    • UX – User experience, i.e., how good the experience is for visitors who are using your website

    What are Google’s Ranking Factors for Law Firm Websites?

    Google’s algorithm (rather, algorithms), use various signals to determine how a website will rank. MUM is an algorithm that deciphers semantic meanings of different wording combinations, freshness algorithms determine what topics should be updated often, RankBrain was the original AI search algorithm, and so forth. You can read more about those on Google’s developer blog, but for our purposes in this article, it’s more important to discuss what should actually be done on your website.

    lawyer seo

    Content Strategy

    You need to have a content strategy that satisfies the search intent of Google’s users for queries related to your practice. You will need to choose the right topic, write it authoritatively, and ‘optimize’ it for Google.

    Service Pages for Each Practice Area and Location

    Firstly, you will need content for each practice area and location. For instance, “Denver Car Accident Lawyer,” or “Phoenix Attorney for Blind Trusts.” These pages will most likely need to be over 2,000 words long, cite data, contain information about the process, reference state-specific statutes, and/or include other material that will make the page authoritative to both readers and Google.

    Blog Posts Targeting Research-Based Intent/Queries

    Secondly, you will want to stock your website with blog posts. These should answer specific questions, like:

    • What is the statute of limitations for a work injury lawsuit in Boston?
    • What’s the Penalty for a Second DUI in Chicago?
    • Other specific and personalized legal questions that your potential clients may be asking

    These blogs should be specifically written for your state. Many firms make the mistake of not expressly stating the state that their content is relevant to. This can have the negative effect of attracting visitors from outside your service area and potentially wasting a lot of your time.

    Chat GPT is Not Good Enough to Write Your Content (at Least Not Yet)

    We’ve been asked many times if current AI platforms are good enough to contribute to a law firm SEO strategy. The answer is no. It can work nicely for certain business verticals, but the legal space is not one of them. We have tested this many different ways and can definitively say that any content that fails AI detection tests (even if written by a human), will not rank as well as content written by a human with expertise on the subject and then put through an editorial process.

    Google considers law firm websites to be what they call “Your Money or Your Life (YMYL)” sites. Health, finance, law, and government topics fall under this category. As such, law firm websites need to present content that is well-written, has a good user experience, cites and references authoritative sources when necessary, and generally demonstrates experience and expertise in the field. You can do this by prompting Chat GPT and editing the content heavily, but you will get better results by working with a writer who is an attorney. Wink wink, the editorial team at Majux are all writers who have at least their JD, many are admitted to practice.

    Links to Your Website

    Google will rank your website higher in the SERPs if your website receives links from other websites to your own. This has been well documented for many years and is known as ‘link building‘. Over the years, there have been many strategies that have tried to game the system is terms of how links are built. As a result, Google has tightened its algorithm to place more emphasis on inbound links that:

    1. Come from authoritative and established websites (such as news websites)
    2. Come from high-authority ‘listicles” such as “The 10 Best [Practice Area] Attorneys in [Geography]”
    3. Come from topically-related websites and directories (American Bar Association, AVVO, abogado.com, etc.)
    4. Have context and have seemingly been placed at an editor’s discretion within the body of a page – not in a footer, sidebar, or something similar

    You can still get value from other sources, but the types of third-party links listed above will move the needle. We are able to accomplish this via three primary means:

    First, we nuture direct connections or will directly reach out to journalists, publishers, bloggers, or other website editors. From time to time, we have the opportunity to pitch an article topic or quote, often linking back to a client’s website in the process.

    Secondly, we use software and tools to connect with writers. Some journalists will publish a question or request for interviews on one of these tools. We read the question, write an in-depth pitch or response, get our client’s sign-off, and send it to the journalist. This can result in a link.

    Thirdly, we sometimes publish what we refer to as “link honeypot content.” These are typically blog posts that highlight interesting data that may be used by others as a research tool. For instance, we wrote a blog post entitled, “State By State Guide To Moped Laws” for one of our clients. The post gets over a thousand hits each month, and it has attracted multiple backlinks from blogs and other publishers. It doesn’t generate leads, but that’s perfectly fine.

    Technical SEO and On-Site Signals

    Your website must be free of technical errors and send Google the right signals. Here are the most important components, although this could be expanded into a long, exhaustive list.

    Internal Link Structure and URL Hierarchy

    Links from one page of your website to another are called “internal” links. These are useful for a few reasons:

    • They pass URL authority from one page of your website to another (albeit in increasingly diluted amounts)
    • They help Google’s crawlers reach and discover deeper portions of your website
    • They provide a good user experience
    • They provide Google with contextual information about a page through the use of keyword-rich anchor text

    You can use internal links to create a hierarchy of pages on your site, or to create silos of content. For instance, you may have a top-level page entitled, “Workers’ Compensation Lawyer in Chicago.” You will then want to have a network of workers’ comp-related blog posts that all link to the top-level workers’ comp page using targeted anchor text.

    Cleaning Up Technical Errors Like 404s, Indexing Issues, and Redirect Chains

    In a competitive vertical like law, technical issues could be preventing your site from ranking on Google. Use a tool like Screaming Frog to identify and fix 404 errors, check canonical tags to make sure you don’t have any errors. Another common issue, at least on bilingual websites, is the incorrect use of hreflang tags for language identification.

    Broken, redirected, or orphaned internal urls can affect your site’s crawlability and cause your content to be less visible.

    You also need to continuously check for what Google considers ‘low quality’ pages on your website. Using scraping or auditing software, we can identify pages that have cannibalized intent, misaligned intent, low word count, or low-quality information, and then do one of the following:

    • Beef a Page Up into a More Authoritative Source
    • Rewrite a Page to Reduce Duplicative Copy
    • Combine Pages and Redirect the Lower-Authority URL
    • Rewrite Pages that Google Might Think Were Written by AI
    • Add a no-index tag so Google does not add them to the search results

    There are dozens of technical issues to look for on a website. Any number of them could be hurting your rankings.

    Positive User Experience (UX) and Core Web Vitals

    Google has stated that Core Web Vitals are used to determine if a page includes “helpful content” or not.

    Your developer or attorney SEO agency will need to check on the following metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID – now called NIP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).

    Google evaluates these metrics to assess:

    1. How long it takes for the largest image or content blog to load in the user’s view
    2. How long it takes your site to respond when a visitor clicks on a button or engages with another element
    3. Whether or not the visible elements on your website shift significantly as your page loads

    In short, keep your website user-friendly and lighting fast. That’s easier said than done, but if you do that, you should perform well in regards to Core Web Vitals metrics.

    Writing Metas and Image ALT Text

    Each page or blog post needs to have a unique meta title tag that includes your target keywords in a readable way that will encourage web searchers to click on your result in the SERP. The same applies to meta descriptions, even though the actual text in your meta description is not a ranking factor.

    Alt text, the descriptive text attached to each image on your website, is meant to help visually impaired web users ascertain the content of the image. Adding keywords to this description will give you a slight edge in the search results.

    Local SEO for Attorneys: Map Pack Rankings

    The ‘map pack‘, which appears above the traditional organic results, is an amazing source of leads. We discuss map pack visibility in greater detail on a different page of our website, but here’s a quick overview.

    The first step is to create a high quality Google Business Profile. Write a meaningful description, add as many images of your office, storefront, partners, and other elements of the firm as you can, add “products” for your different practice areas, and fill out the FAQ section.

    Most importantly, get as many reviews as you possibly can. This is a ranking factor, and it may be the most important ranking factor. Make sure they are real and legitimate, but stay on top of previous clients until they leave you a review.

    We also build a number of citations for our clients. These are instances of your business name, phone number, and address across the web. This “NAP” information needs to be consistent for Google to reward you with better rankings. We build citations on your social media profiles, in the footer of your website, on law firm directories, on your local chamber of commerce website, and so forth.

    Generating Clients Through SEO is Only the Start

    It ‘s important to remember that generating leads is only the first step toward signing more clients. Considerations such as conversion optimization, data measurement, and intake optimization are the next important efforts that can move the needle toward building a health new client pipeline.

    How We Generate Cases for Our Clients

    Deep Experience in the Legal Industry

    Our strategies and services are rooted in deep industry expertise. Majux’s Founder spent a decade in legal marketing and operations for law firm prior to launching this agency. Our editorial staff is full of folks who have passed the bar exam and/or admitted attorneys. We understand the ethical considerations specific to legal advertising, as well as the specific pain points that small firms and solo practitioners face.

    Proven Content Strategies

    Google will never release an algorithm update that dislikes high quality content that satisfies what its users are searching for. That’s why our clients are generally immune from the wild fluctuations of Google’s algorithm updates. We perform deep keyword research, analyze the search results of each new market we enter, and enact our proprietary approach to content strategy.

    We also know intake – for almost every client that we start working with, we will get involved in (and even design) their new client intake process. We have hooked lead tracking up to every case management and CRM software there is. We bring more than 10 years of experience in how to convert more leads into high-quality cases.

    We Carefully Measure and Report on Leads Generated and Cases Signed

    We use call tracking, Google’s tools, and other measurement tools to measure the exact source, volume and quality of the leads that we are generating for you. Of course, we also send reports on metrics such as traffic and rankings, but we always tie the work back to leads and revenue generated. We can get as accurate as your practice allows in terms of the determination of true ROI of your SEO and content campaigns. Example – if your firm uses case management software or a CRM tracking system, we can hook lead sources up to your software and then track backwards to calculate the actual real-word value and CPA of each case.

    This is just a high-level overview of the strategies involved in generating clients online. To learn more or schedule an introductory call with our team, call (215) 309-1631.

    Industry Recognition We’ve Earned Along the Way

    While we’re proud of the results we deliver for our clients, we’re not the only ones who have taken notice. Over the years, a variety of respected industry publications, directories, and independent review organizations have recognized Majux among their top SEO and digital marketing agencies. Below are some of the organizations that have featured Majux in their rankings and roundups of leading marketing providers.

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