Short answer: most small and mid-size law firms are quoted between $1,500 and $5,000 a month for SEO, and big multi-office personal injury firms often pay well into five figures. Where your firm lands depends on your practice area, how many case types and offices need covering and how competitive your city is. My own plan is $799 a month, month to month, with AI search optimization, Google Business Profile work and a monthly report included, and all of my prices are on my pricing page.
I'm Ashikur Rahman, founder of Proximity Ranker. I'm an SEO and AI search specialist with legal training (an LL.B and an LL.M), I've been in SEO since 2017, I'm a former SEO Manager at Doctor Rank, and Proximity Ranker works only with law firms. I publish my prices because most firms I talk to have been quoted three very different numbers for what sounds like the same service and can't tell why. This guide explains what the money buys, so you can compare any quote, including mine.
How much do law firms pay for SEO per month?
Two surveys give a fair picture of the market. GoodFirms surveyed more than 300 SEO agencies and found that 48% charge between $1,500 and $5,000 a month, with another 43.3% charging less than $1,500. Ahrefs polled 439 SEO providers of every kind and found that 78.2% bill by monthly retainer, the average monthly cost of SEO is $2,917, and agency retainers average more than freelancers' ($3,209 against $1,349). Neither survey is limited to law firms, but legal SEO quotes I see sit in the same range, with personal injury at the top.
- Freelancers and small shops: often under $1,500 a month, sometimes for a narrow piece of the work such as blog posts or links only.
- Mid-size agencies serving small and mid-size firms: usually $1,500 to $5,000 a month, often with a six or twelve month contract.
- Large legal marketing agencies working with multi-office injury firms: $10,000 a month and up, with content teams, link building and PR.
Hourly pricing exists too. Ahrefs put the average hourly SEO rate at $111. For a law firm, a monthly plan is usually easier to budget and compare, as long as you know what it includes.
What decides the price of SEO for a law firm?
Your practice area
Personal injury is the most contested corner of legal search, because one signed case can be worth a great deal and every firm in the city knows it. Criminal defense and family law are usually less crowded, apart from DUI and divorce in big cities. Immigration sits in between. The hours cost the same, but an injury firm in a large metro needs far more of them than a family law firm in a mid-size city.
How many case types and offices you cover
A firm that takes only car accidents needs a handful of strong pages. A firm that also takes truck accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice and wrongful death needs a real page for each, written for very different readers. Family, criminal and immigration practices are the same. Every office adds a Business Profile to manage and a location page to write.
How many languages your clients search in
If many of your clients search in Spanish or another language, the pages they need have to exist in that language, as real pages Google can index and a bilingual reviewer has checked. Each language adds a share of the content work. I cover it in multilingual SEO for law firms.
How crowded your city is
Getting into the map pack for car accident lawyer in a city with hundreds of injury firms takes more work, and more months, than in a town with six. It's the same kind of work, just more of it.
Where your site and profile are starting from
A firm with a fast site, the right Business Profile categories and a steady flow of reviews needs less groundwork. A firm with unindexed pages, the wrong primary category and old addresses scattered across directories needs a heavier first few months before the ongoing work pays off. The audit is how you find out which one you are.
Is $5,000 a month too much for law firm SEO?
Not if it buys work you can see. For a personal injury firm with several offices in a big city, $5,000 a month can be a fair price for page building across many case types, real link and PR work, Business Profile management for each office and a monthly report tied to calls. For a single-office family or criminal defense firm in a mid-size market, it's often more than the work requires.
The test is simple: ask for a list of what gets built in the first three months and who builds it. If a large part of the fee pays for an account manager who passes messages to a team you never meet, bulk blog posts nobody at your firm reads before they go live and a report that counts impressions instead of calls, it's too much at any price.
What does cheap law firm SEO usually look like?
At the low end the pattern repeats: blog posts bought in bulk or generated by AI and published without a lawyer reading them, a practice area page sold to every firm in the area with the city name swapped, and links from sites no real person visits. It fills a monthly report. It rarely fills a consultation calendar.
It also hurts you in AI search. ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews quote pages that answer a question specifically and come from a firm they can verify. Templated pages that say the same thing as fifty other firms give them nothing to quote. I explain how those engines choose in how law firms show up in Google AI Overviews.
How does the cost of SEO compare with Google Ads for a law firm?
WordStream's 2026 benchmark puts the average cost per click for attorneys and legal services at $9.87, the highest of the 23 industries it tracks, with an average cost per lead of $131.63. That average blends every practice area and market; competitive injury keywords in big cities cost far more per click, and immigration and family law clicks usually far less. Either way, ad traffic stops the day the budget does.
SEO costs the same each month whether a hundred people find you or a thousand, and the pages keep working after they're built. It's slower: most firms need four to six months before the trend is clear. Plenty of firms run both, with ads covering the months while SEO builds. The full comparison is in SEO vs Google Ads for lawyers.
What does Proximity Ranker charge for law firm SEO?
The SEO plan is $799 a month, month to month. Here's what that covers:
- Local and on-page SEO: pages for your case types, fixes to speed, indexing and site structure, internal links and the titles and descriptions searchers see.
- Google Business Profile optimization: categories, services, photos, posts, review requests and the details that decide the map pack.
- AI search optimization: making your firm a source ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews can read, check and cite.
- A monthly report from the real dashboards: Search Console, your Business Profile's calls and directions, and the AI citation numbers from Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Included at no extra cost: the visibility audit, negative review removal and Google Ads management (your ad spend is paid to Google separately).
- A new website free with a six-month commitment. If you leave before month six, the website is billed at its normal price for its size, from $799.
Each service can also be bought on its own. The audit is $350 for one office or $550 for two, delivered in seven days as a detailed PDF of every finding and its fix. A law firm website starts at $799, half before work starts and half at launch. Negative review removal is $199 for each review Google actually removes, and nothing for the ones it doesn't. Google Ads management is $499 a month.
Billing is in US dollars, paid at the start of each month by bank transfer invoice. On ownership: a website bought on its own goes on your hosting and the code is yours from the first day. The free website runs on my account, connected to your domain, until month six, and after that every file is yours to take anywhere. Your domain and your Business Profile stay in your name throughout.
How is Proximity Ranker different from a typical law firm SEO agency?
I'd rather show you the differences than claim to be better, so here they are, side by side with what firms usually tell me they were offered elsewhere.
- The price: published on the site, $799 a month for the full plan. Elsewhere it's often a quote after a sales call, commonly $1,500 to $5,000 a month for a firm of the same size.
- The contract: month to month, with a six-month commitment only if you take the free website. Six or twelve month minimums are common at agencies.
- Who does the work: I do, from the audit to the monthly report. There's no account manager in between, and I keep my client list small so that stays true.
- AI search: part of the plan, not a separate AEO or GEO package priced on top.
- What's bundled: the audit, review removal and Ads management come free on the plan, and the website is free with six months. Elsewhere each is usually its own invoice.
- Legal training: two law degrees, so I read your pages the way your clients and the search engines both read them. Your lawyers still approve everything, and nothing I write is legal advice.
- The proof: real dashboards with dates, not handpicked ranking screenshots.
On that last point, here is what the work has produced for law firms. One personal injury firm earned 23,300 clicks and 3.55 million impressions from Google in six months. Another was cited 208,400 times by Microsoft's AI assistants in three months, with 131 of its pages cited on average. A Queens injury firm's Business Profile brought in 70 calls in June 2026, 25% more than in June 2025. And a brand new New York firm site reached 104,000 impressions in its first three months. Each dashboard is on my case studies page, with client names withheld.
Who is the $799 plan not the right fit for?
Being clear about this saves both of us time. My plan isn't the right fit if you want a team publishing several blog posts a week, if you're a large multi-office injury firm in a top metro that needs a full PR and link-building department behind it, or if you want someone to guarantee a first-place ranking. Nobody can honestly promise that, and I won't. For most single and two-office firms that want to show up on Google, in the map pack and in AI answers without a long contract, it fits well.
What should you ask before you sign with any law firm SEO company?
- Which pages will you build in the first three months, and for which case types?
- Have you worked in my practice area, and what makes it different from the others you serve?
- Who writes the content, and does a lawyer at my firm approve it before it goes live?
- What do you do about the Google Business Profile, reviews and AI search, not only the website?
- What does the monthly report count: calls and consultation requests, or only impressions and rankings?
- How long is the contract, and what do I keep if I leave?
Vague answers usually mean vague work. If a company won't say who actually does the work, it's usually not the person you're talking to. My guide on how to choose an SEO company for your law firm covers the red flags in more detail.
Want to know what your site needs before anyone quotes you a number?
Get the auditWhat else do law firm owners ask?
01Why are Proximity Ranker's prices published when most agencies quote after a call?
Because a firm owner should be able to compare quotes without sitting through a sales call first. My pricing page lists every service, what the monthly plan includes and what each item costs on its own. If your firm needs something unusual, such as several offices or a second language, I'll tell you after the audit whether the standard plan covers it.
02Is $799 a month enough for a personal injury firm in a big city?
For a single or two-office firm, it covers the core work: case-type pages, the Business Profile, AI search and the monthly report. What it doesn't include is a large outreach and PR operation, which the biggest metro injury firms often add. The audit shows how far ahead the firms in your map pack are, so you know before you start whether the plan is enough to close the gap.
03How long does law firm SEO take to show results?
Most firms see the trend within four to six months. Fixes to indexing and page structure can show up within weeks, while reviews, links and AI citations build over months. The new New York firm site in my case studies reached 104,000 impressions in its first three months, but that started from a fresh build in a market with room to grow.
04Can I cancel the $799 plan at any time?
Yes. The plan is month to month and you pay at the start of each month, so you can stop at the end of any month. The one exception is the free website: if you take it, you commit to six months, and leaving earlier means paying the website's normal price for its size, from $799.
05Do you work with law firms outside the United States?
Yes. I work with firms in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, among others. Prices are in US dollars. The work is the same everywhere: pages that answer clients' questions, a Business Profile that wins the map pack and a firm the AI engines can verify, written to fit the advertising rules of your bar or law society.
