SEO for law firms

Your Google Business Profile decides the map, and your website decides the regular results.

Google ranks the map mainly on relevance, distance and prominence (Google Business Profile help). For a firm that means a primary category that matches your main practice, such as Personal injury attorney or Family law attorney, every practice area in your services, accurate hours, real photos of your office and your lawyers, and reviews that keep coming. People search for the problem, not the profession, so "DUI lawyer" or "immigration attorney near me" is what you want to show up for.

Each practice-area page should answer the questions people ask before they call: what kinds of cases you take, what the first consultation looks like, what to bring and how fees are discussed. Lawyer pages with real bios, bar admissions and photos help people trust a name before they meet the person. Google mainly uses the phone version of a site for ranking (Google Search Central, mobile-first indexing), so check every page on a phone first. If many of the people you serve speak Spanish, offer the site in Spanish too, written by people, not a translate button. Say who at the firm speaks Spanish; the rules section below explains why.

In California they're in Chapter 7 of the Rules of Professional Conduct, and they apply to your website, your Google profile, your ads and your social media.

Five points come up most in marketing. Don't guarantee results: the comments to Rule 7.1 treat a guarantee of the outcome of a matter as false or misleading. Be careful with testimonials, which the same comments say can mislead when they create an unjustified expectation. Include the name and address of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for the ad (Rule 7.2(c)). Don't say you're a certified specialist unless you're currently certified and the certifying organization is named (Rule 7.4(a)). And if you advertise in Spanish, say who speaks it: claiming legal services in another language is misleading unless a lawyer can provide them in that language, or the ad states, in that same language, the job title of the person who speaks it (Rule 7.1, Comment [5]). Other states follow their own versions of these rules, so check your state bar's. We write with these rules in mind, and your firm stays responsible for what it publishes, so review everything before it runs.

A lead is a call or message from someone about a practice area you chose.

Google verifies the law license of every lawyer who shows under the Google Screened badge (Local Services Ads help). Once the ads run, how quickly you respond and your reviews affect where they show (Local Services Ads help), so a missed call costs you the client and your place in the ads. For practice areas Local Services Ads don't cover where you are, Google Ads let you choose the searches and send people to the matching practice-area page. We set up the accounts in your firm's name, and you pay Google directly.

Marketing that brings in calls you can't answer pays for them to find someone else.

Calls come at night and on weekends: after an arrest, an accident or a letter from immigration. Victoria, our AI receptionist, answers those calls 24/7 in English or Spanish, takes the intake questions your firm sets, books the consultation on your calendar and sends you a summary. She never gives legal advice and doesn't decide whether you take a case; your firm does. Urgent calls go through to whoever you choose.

Your Google Business Profile gives you that link to share (Google Business Profile help).

Follow Google's rules: don't pay or offer anything for reviews, and don't ask only the clients you expect to be happy (Google's policy on reviews). When you reply, keep it general: thank the person and never confirm that they were your client or mention their matter, since your duty of confidentiality still applies online. If you text clients later for marketing, get written permission first: marketing texts sent with automated systems need the person's prior express written consent under federal law (the Telephone Consumer Protection Act).