How Do You Choose an SEO Company for Your Law Firm?

Short answer: choose an SEO company for your law firm by checking four things: that it covers the whole job (website, Business Profile, reviews and AI search, not just blog posts), that the person doing the work knows your practice area and will show you real results with dates, that it reports on calls and consultations rather than impressions, and that your firm owns its accounts and knows in writing who owns the website. Walk away from anyone who guarantees rankings.

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, and I'm a former SEO Manager at Doctor Rank. I run an agency for law firms only, so I'm one of the companies you might be comparing. I'll answer my own questions at the end, and you can hold me to the same standard as everyone else.

What should a law firm SEO company actually do?

Before comparing companies, know what the job is. For a law firm, it covers:

• The website: speed, indexing, a page for each case type, lawyer pages, internal links and the titles and descriptions people see in search.
• The Google Business Profile: categories, services, photos, reviews and the details that decide the map pack, which is where many legal clients choose a firm.
• Reviews and reputation: a steady way to ask for reviews, and getting rule-breaking reviews reported and removed.
• Directory listings: the same firm details on Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, Martindale, your bar or law society listing and the rest.
• AI search: making the firm readable, checkable and quotable for ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Copilot and Google's AI Overviews.
• Measurement: calls, form submissions and consultations, tied back to the work.

A company that only offers one of these, usually blog posts or links, isn't necessarily bad, but you'll need someone else for the rest, and the pieces rarely work well when nobody owns the whole picture.

What questions should a law firm ask an SEO company before hiring?

Google's own page on hiring an SEO suggests asking for examples of previous work, whether the company follows Google Search Essentials, what results to expect and in what timeframe, how success is measured and what experience it has in your industry and area. For a law firm, I'd add these:

• Who will actually do the work on my account, and can I speak to them before I sign?
• Can you show me results for a firm in my practice area, with the dates on the dashboards?
• What makes my practice area different from the others you serve?
• Who writes the content, and does a lawyer at my firm approve every page before it goes live?
• What do you do about the Business Profile, reviews, directories and AI search?
• What will you build in the first three months?
• What does the monthly report count: calls and consultations, or only rankings and impressions?
• Do you work with other firms in my practice area and city?
• How long is the contract, and what do I keep if I leave?

Pay attention to how the answers come. Specific, unhurried answers with examples are a good sign. Vague answers and a push to sign this week are not.

What are the red flags when hiring a law firm SEO company?

Guaranteed rankings

Google states plainly that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and warns against companies that claim a special relationship with Google or priority submission. A guarantee usually means the company plans to target phrases nobody searches, so the report looks good while the phone stays quiet.

Template pages with the city swapped

If your car accident page reads the same as a firm's car accident page several states away, with only the city name changed, it won't rank well and gives AI engines nothing worth quoting. Ask to see pages the company wrote for a firm in your practice area and read them as a lawyer would.

AI-written or machine-translated pages nobody reviewed

AI writing tools and translation tools are fine as a starting point. Pages published under your firm's name without a person who knows the subject reading them are not. They read badly, can misuse legal terms and make the firm look careless to clients and search engines alike.

Reports full of impressions

Impressions and rankings for obscure phrases are easy to inflate. A report that never mentions calls, form submissions or consultations is telling you something.

Selling the same package to your competitor

Companies with a template product often sell it to several firms in the same practice area and city. Ask directly.

Marketing that looks like paying for referrals

Some lead programs present your firm to consumers as the recommended lawyer for their case. Paying for advertising and paying for a recommendation are treated differently by the professional conduct rules that apply to lawyers, so if a program's pitch to consumers sounds like a referral, check it against your bar or law society's rules before you sign.

Who should own a law firm's website and marketing accounts?

Some accounts should always be in the firm's name from the first day, whoever you hire: the domain, the Google Business Profile, Google Search Console, Google Analytics, the Google Ads account and the directory listings. The company should be added as a user, not set up as the owner. If an agency registered your domain or created your profile under its own login, ask for ownership to be transferred now, not when you leave.

The website itself can be arranged several ways, and what matters is that it's written down. Here's how mine works, as an example. A website a firm buys on its own goes on the firm's hosting, and the code is the firm's from the first day. The free website that comes with six months of my SEO plan runs on my account, connected to the firm's domain, until month six; after that, every file is the firm's to take anywhere. Whatever arrangement you're offered, it should be that clear.

Should a law firm hire an SEO agency, a freelancer or an in-house SEO?

• In-house: someone who knows your firm well and is there every day. In the US, an SEO specialist's base pay runs roughly $71,000 a year on Indeed's 2026 figures and about $86,000 on Glassdoor's, before benefits and the tools they'll need. One person rarely covers technical SEO, content, the Business Profile and AI search equally well, and a small firm seldom has a full-time job's worth of SEO.
• Agency: more people and more capacity. GoodFirms found 48% of SEO agencies charge $1,500 to $5,000 a month and 43.3% charge less. At larger agencies the person who sells you the service is often not the person who does it, and the day-to-day work can sit with junior staff.
• Freelancer: often the best value and the most direct relationship, but quality varies widely and everything rests on one person. Ahrefs' survey of 439 SEO providers found an average hourly rate of $111.

For most firms with one or two offices, the sensible choice is a specialist who does the work personally and covers the whole job, with enough capacity that your account isn't an afterthought. Large multi-office firms in big cities often need an in-house lead plus outside help for content and outreach.

How do you know an SEO company is working in the first 90 days?

• Within two weeks: an audit of your site, Business Profile and listings, with a written list of what will change first and why.
• Within the first month: the technical problems fixed, including indexing, speed and the Business Profile categories, with before and after evidence.
• By month three: new or rewritten case-type pages live, review requests running, directory details consistent and a report that shows calls and consultations next to rankings.
• Throughout: answers to your questions within a working day, from the person doing the work.

Rankings and calls usually take four to six months to show a clear trend. What you can judge in the first 90 days is whether the work is happening, whether it's the right work and whether you can see it.

How does Proximity Ranker answer these questions?

• Who does the work: I do, from the audit to the monthly report. I keep the number of firms I take small so that stays true.
• Practice area experience: law firms only, across personal injury, immigration, family and criminal defense.
• Results: 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; a Queens injury firm's profile brought in 70 calls in June 2026, 25% more than a year earlier. The dashboards are on my case studies page, client names withheld.
• Content: written for your clients, and approved by a lawyer at your firm before anything goes live. Nothing I write is legal advice.
• Scope: website, Business Profile, reviews, directories and AI search in one plan.
• Reporting: Search Console, the Business Profile's calls and directions, and AI citation numbers from Bing Webmaster Tools, every month.
• Contract: month to month at $799 a month, with a six-month commitment only if you take the free website.
• Prices: published on the pricing page, including the audit at $350 for one office or $550 for two, a website from $799, review removal at $199 per removed review and Google Ads management at $499 a month. On the plan, the audit, review removal and Ads management are free, and the website is free with six months.

If you're weighing up costs as well, how much SEO costs for a law firm breaks down market prices and what each level of spend should buy.

What else do law firm owners ask?