SEO for Lawyers That Gets You Into the Map Pack and on Page One

Most agencies quote a law firm somewhere between $1,500 and $5,000 a month, and often that covers SEO alone, with the website, the Business Profile and any AI search work billed on top. My price is published: $799 a month for SEO, the Business Profile and AI search, with the audit, review removal and Google Ads management included, and a new website free if you stay six months. Month to month, no lock-in.

Business Profile and map pack improvements often move within the first month or two, and smaller cities and less crowded practice areas respond early. The crowded searches every competitor chases, especially personal injury in big metros, usually take four to six months before the trend is clear. Anyone promising page one in thirty days is targeting searches nobody types or is not being straight with you.

It is almost never effort. Firms complete the profile, gather reviews and still sit outside the top three, because the map pack depends on things they rarely adjust: the right primary category, a profile that matches the website exactly, one consistent name and address across the directories, and reviews that keep arriving. Google says it ranks local results on relevance, distance and prominence. I work out which of those is costing you and fix them in order.

Yes. Local SEO gets a firm with an office into the map pack and the local results: the Business Profile, reviews, a consistent name and address across the web, and city pages. Regular SEO is the website side: technical health, content and links. Every firm needs both, because the map pack brings the ready-now calls and the website brings the client who is still researching. I run both as one program.

Ask who will do the work on your account and whether you can talk to them. Ask what they will build in the first ninety days, in plain words. Ask whether the report counts calls and cases or impressions and keyword positions. Ask what happens if you leave. A good answer to all four is specific. A bad answer is a deck. With me the person you talk to is the person doing the work, and you can leave any month.

No, and nobody honest does. Google's own guide says no one can guarantee a number one ranking on Google, and tells businesses to beware of any SEO that claims to. What I can promise is the work: the audit, the fixes, the pages, the reporting, and a plain answer every month about what moved and what did not. The month-to-month contract is the real guarantee. If the work is not bringing clients, you leave.

I draft it with the lawyer who handles that work, and your firm approves every word before it publishes, because the professional judgment has to be yours. My degrees are in law, an LL.B and an LL.M in International Law, which helps me read the rules a page is built on. I write as an SEO specialist, not as counsel, so none of it is legal advice.

Immigration, personal injury, family law and criminal defense first, each with its own page on this site, and other consumer-facing practices such as estate planning, employment and workers' compensation on request. Most of my experience is in legal and medical search, where content has to hold up to a professional's review and the rules on what you can claim are strict. I work with firms in the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and other countries. If your practice is not listed, ask on the call and I will tell you plainly whether I am the right fit.

Ads bring calls this week and stop the day you stop paying. SEO is slower and keeps working. For most firms the answer is both, in order: ads to cover the gap while the SEO builds, then a smaller ad budget aimed at the searches organic cannot win. Ads management is free on the SEO plan, so the two are planned together instead of competing for one budget.

Only for as long as you want the work to continue, and the work compounds, so stopping is not a cliff. The profile, the pages and the technical fixes are yours and keep working. What stops is the review flow, the new pages, the monitoring and the response when a competitor moves or Google changes something.

No. The plan runs month to month and you can leave at any time. I would rather earn next month than hold you for a year, and a firm that stays because clients are calling is worth more to me than one kept by a contract.

Where you rank now, the traffic reaching the site, the technical faults in the way, which searches you are missing, what ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews say about your firm today, and a full list of fixes ordered by what moves first. It takes seven days, costs $350 for one office or $550 for two, and nothing on the SEO plan.