SEO services for law firm buyers, on evidence

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How to buy legal SEO safely

1. Pick the practice areas before the provider. Personal injury, family, immigration and business law are separate search markets with separate competitors and costs. A proposal covering all of them equally is covering none of them well. Name the two or three areas that must produce cases and let that decide the shortlist.
2. Check the provider has read your state's rules. Attorney advertising rules vary by state and your bar's version controls. Rules modeled on Model Rule 7.2, such as North Carolina's, allow paying the reasonable costs of advertising but bar giving anything of value for recommending a lawyer's services. Ask the provider which rule set it works to.
3. Read the content and link plan in writing. Google's spam policies prohibit buying or selling links for ranking purposes and name scaled content abuse and doorway pages. Ask precisely where links will come from and how content is produced, before signing, because the firm carries the consequence and the agency does not.
4. Agree the metric and the ownership. Signed matters, not sessions, and rankings reported per practice area rather than in aggregate. Settle who owns the site, the content, the analytics and any call tracking numbers at the end of the term while you are still an attractive prospect.

The compliance layer a generalist vendor may never have read

A law firm website is a communication about a lawyer's services, which puts it inside the professional conduct rules rather than inside general advertising law alone. Rules modeled on Model Rule 7.2, including North Carolina's version, permit a lawyer to pay the reasonable costs of advertisements and to compensate employees and vendors providing marketing services, while prohibiting compensating, giving or promising anything of value to a person for recommending the lawyer's services, subject to narrow exceptions such as the usual charges of a qualifying intermediary organization. The same rule requires that any communication made under it includes the name and contact information of at least one lawyer or law firm responsible for its content.

The practical consequence for an SEO engagement is that lead-generation arrangements, directory placements, referral fee structures and review solicitation all need checking against the version of the rules your state has adopted. Rules vary by state and this is general information rather than legal advice; your bar's rules and your own ethics counsel govern. An agency that cannot name the rule it is working to is not carrying that risk with you.

What the work should actually contain

Three layers do the work. Technical work makes the site crawlable, fast and secure. Content work builds pages that answer the questions prospective clients type, practice area by practice area, with enough depth that a reader in trouble gets a real answer. Authority work earns links and citations from sources that already carry weight, such as legal publications, local press and legitimate directories. Google's starter guide notes that creating content people find compelling and useful will likely influence a site's presence in results more than any other suggestion it makes.

The tactics to refuse are named in Google's own spam policies. Buying or selling links for ranking purposes is prohibited, including exchanging goods or services for links. Scaled content abuse covers many pages generated primarily to manipulate rankings rather than help users, which is what a thousand-page city and practice matrix becomes when produced at speed. Doorway abuse covers near-identical pages created to rank for similar queries that funnel users to one destination. Google states that sites which violate the policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all, and the firm, not the vendor, lives with that.

Judging proposals and prices

Legal SEO is quoted higher than almost any other vertical, which makes the comparison harder rather than easier. Reduce every proposal to the same columns: pages produced per month and by whom, technical work included, link acquisition method, reporting cadence, and the metric the agency is accountable for. Then ask each finalist to position its retainer against the published prices of the agencies that print them, which this index records where they exist.

On timelines, Google's guidance is the honest reference: some changes might take effect in a few hours while others could take several months, and it suggests waiting a few weeks before assessing whether work had a beneficial effect. Google also states that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, so a guaranteed position or a guaranteed case count is a reason to stop the conversation rather than to negotiate.

Questions people actually ask

Do attorney advertising rules apply to SEO work?

They apply to the firm's communications, which includes its website and much of what an SEO vendor produces. Rules modeled on Rule 7.2 restrict giving anything of value for recommending a lawyer's services and require a responsible lawyer's name and contact information on the communication. Rules vary by state; this is general information, not legal advice.

Can an agency guarantee my firm cases from SEO?

No. Google states that no one can guarantee a #1 ranking, and case volume also depends on intake, practice area and competition. A credible agency commits to a defined scope, a reporting standard and a metric such as signed matters rather than to a number of cases.

Are legal directories and lead services allowed?

It depends on the structure and on your state. Rules modeled on Rule 7.2 permit paying the usual charges of a qualifying intermediary organization while prohibiting payment for a recommendation, so the arrangement's shape matters. Check your own bar's adopted rules with your ethics counsel before signing.

How much should a law firm spend on SEO?

More than most verticals, because the competition is funded by high case values. The useful anchor is the published pricing of agencies that print it; ask every finalist where its retainer sits relative to those figures and what the first ninety days produce.

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