How Do You Tell If Your Law Firm's SEO Company Is Working?

Short answer: your law firm's SEO company is working if, after the first four to six months, more people are finding your site in Google Search Console, more calls and form fills are coming from search, and the agency can show you, page by page, what it changed to get there. If all you get is a list of keywords with green arrows, while calls stay flat and you can't log in to your own accounts, it isn't working, whatever the report says.

I'm Ashikur Rahman, founder of Proximity Ranker. I have a law degree and a master's in law (LL.B, LL.M), I've worked in SEO since 2017, and I was SEO Manager at Doctor Rank before I started my own agency. A lot of my first calls with firm owners are about another agency's work, so I've read a lot of agency reports. The numbers I trust come straight from Google's own tools. For one personal injury firm, Search Console shows 23,300 clicks and 3.55 million impressions in six months of my work. That's the kind of number you should be able to see for yourself, without asking anyone. My work is search marketing, so none of this is legal advice.

On Reddit's law firm forums, this question shows up again and again in different words. Should I fire my SEO team? Am I wasting my money when I can't get past page ten? Is SEO fake? How do I check what my agency is actually doing? This is the checklist I'd use if I were in your seat.

Which accounts should a law firm own, not the SEO company?

Start here, because everything else depends on it. You can't check work you can't see, and an agency that holds the keys makes it painful to leave. Your firm should be the owner of each of these, with the agency added as a user:

• Google Search Console: the only place that shows which searches your site appeared for, how often and how many people clicked.
• Google Analytics (GA4): where your visitors came from and what they did, including calls and form fills if tracking is set up.
• Google Business Profile: your map listing, its calls, direction requests and website clicks.
• Your domain name and hosting: the address of your website and the server it lives on.
• Any call tracking numbers: so the call history stays with you if you leave.

Ask for owner access in writing. A good agency says yes the same day. If they say the accounts belong to them, or that access is a premium feature, that tells you how the relationship will end. The one exception you might meet is a website the agency hosts on its own account as part of a deal; in that case the contract should say exactly when the files become yours.

What numbers prove SEO is working for a law firm?

Read them in this order, from the money back to the rankings. The higher up the list a number is, the more it tells you.

• Signed cases from search. Ask intake to note how every new client found you. This is the number that pays the invoice.
• Calls and forms from organic search and the map. GA4 key events (usually set up through Google Tag Manager), a call tracking tool such as CallRail and the Business Profile performance screen all show this.
• Clicks and impressions in Search Console, by page. Impressions show you're being seen; clicks show people chose you. Look at your practice area pages, not just the homepage.
• Which searches you appear for. In Search Console, filter the queries for your case types. You want real phrases clients type, like car accident lawyer near me or how much does a divorce lawyer cost.
• Average position, last. It's an average across every search, so it moves for reasons that don't matter. Use it to spot trends, not to celebrate.

Compare the same months year on year where you can, since many practice areas have seasons. And look at the pages, not just the total. A site can grow in impressions from blog posts that never bring a client, while the pages that should bring cases stay still.

How long should law firm SEO take to show results?

Google's own page for business owners thinking of hiring an SEO says that, in most cases, it takes four months to a year to put improvements in place and then see a benefit. That's a fair range, and it's the one I give owners. Where a firm lands in it depends on how competitive the practice area is, how much was broken on the site to begin with and how many pages need writing.

• Months one and two: an audit, a list of fixes and the first fixes done, from pages Google can't index to slow phone loading and Core Web Vitals. You should be able to see the list and tick things off.
• Months three and four: pages indexed, impressions starting to rise in Search Console and the Business Profile filled in properly.
• Months five to nine: clicks rising on practice area pages, more calls from search and the map, and the first cases you can trace to search.
• After a year: a clear trend you can put a number on. If there's no movement at all by then, something is wrong with the plan, the work or both.

Impressions usually come first. A new law firm website I worked on picked up 104,000 impressions in its first three months, but only 132 clicks, because it was still ranking on page one or two for most of those searches. That's normal. What isn't normal is month eight with flat impressions and no list of what was done.

What are the red flags that your SEO company isn't doing the work?

• They guarantee rankings. Google's own guidance for hiring an SEO says no one can guarantee a number one ranking, and warns about anyone who claims a special relationship with Google.
• The monthly report has no list of work. You should see which pages were written or changed, what was fixed and which listings were updated.
• The keywords in the report are phrases nobody searches, or include your firm's name. Ranking first for your own name proves nothing.
• You can't log in to Search Console, Analytics or your Business Profile, or they're owned by the agency.
• New pages are the same text with the city or case type swapped. Google treats mass-produced pages as spam, and readers notice too.
• Your rankings are checked from their office, not where your clients search. Map rankings change a few blocks away, which is why a geo-grid scan (tools like Local Falcon check your rank point by point across your area) tells you more.
• Links come from a network of sites the agency controls, or from sites with nothing to do with law. Ask for ten recent links they built for you and how each one was earned. Google's spam policies treat bought links and link networks as link spam, and the damage often shows up months later.
• Pages carry no named lawyer, no credentials and no real experience. Google's quality guidelines call this E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust), and legal topics are held to the highest standard.
• There's a long contract with a big fee to leave, and no clear reason for it.

One test I'd run tomorrow: ask your agency to name three things they changed on your website last month, and to show you each one. A team doing the work can answer in a single email. A team that can't is answering the question for you.

Should you fire your SEO company or give it more time?

Give it more time if you're under six months in, you can see the work list growing and impressions are rising, even if calls haven't followed yet. Have a direct talk, not a resignation letter, if you're past six months and the numbers are flat but the agency is open with you. Ask what they think is holding the site back and what they'll change in the next 90 days, and write that down.

Leave if you're past nine to twelve months with no growth in calls from search, no list of work, no access to your own accounts, or a report that changes the subject every month. Before you go, make sure you hold every login listed above, download the reports you've paid for and get a copy of the website files if they built it. My guide on how to choose an SEO company for a law firm covers what to ask the next one before you sign.

Price isn't the test either way. An Ahrefs survey of 439 SEO providers found the average monthly cost of SEO was $2,917, and I've seen firms paying that and getting nothing, and firms paying far less and growing. What you pay for is the work and the openness about it. The full breakdown of what firms pay is in how much SEO costs for a law firm.

What should a monthly SEO report for a law firm show?

One or two pages is enough, as long as it has the right things on it. This is what I send my own clients every month:

• Search Console clicks and impressions for the month, compared with the month before and the same month last year, with the practice area pages broken out.
• Business Profile calls, direction requests and website clicks.
• Calls and forms from organic search, from GA4 and call tracking.
• AI search: where the firm is cited by Google's AI answers, ChatGPT and other assistants, with the number of citations where the tools report it.
• The work done: pages written, pages changed, fixes made, listings updated and reviews answered.
• The plan for next month, in plain sentences.

If you'd like to see what those numbers look like on a real account, my case studies show the dashboards themselves, with the dates.

What does it cost to check or replace your SEO company?

If you want an outside check of your current agency's work, my SEO audit costs $350 for one office or $550 for two, and you get a written report within seven days. It's free if you go on to take the SEO plan. That plan is $799 a month, month to month, with no exit fee, and it covers local and on-page SEO, your Business Profile, AI search and the monthly report above.

Review removal and Google Ads management are included on the plan too. Bought on their own, they're $199 for each review Google removes and $499 a month. A website redesign is free when a firm commits to six months, or from $799 on its own. The full list is on the pricing page, and how I run the work is on the SEO for lawyers page.

What else do law firm owners ask?