An SEO audit for law firms has to answer a narrower question than a generic site check: when someone with a specific legal problem searches, does your firm show up with the right page, and does that page give them enough reason to call? I run each SEO audit for a legal practice around that question, from the practice-area structure down to how individual lawyers are presented.
Why legal sites fail audits in their own particular way
Most firm websites were built to look like a brochure for the partners rather than an answer to a client’s problem. The home page talks about heritage and values, while the pages that should rank (for example “contested will solicitor” or “unfair dismissal claim”) are a single paragraph under a menu item called “Services”. Google treats legal topics as Your Money or Your Life content, so it looks hard for evidence of who wrote a page and whether they are qualified. A thin practice page with no named author is about the weakest thing you can put in front of that kind of scrutiny.
The other pattern I see on legal sites is drift. Firms add a new department, hire a lateral partner, open a second office, and each change bolts on pages without anyone checking how they overlap. Two years later there are three pages competing for the same family law query and none of them is clearly the best.
The seven areas I examine on a firm’s site
- Practice-area architecture. I map every practice and sub-practice to the queries clients actually use. Personal injury, for example, usually needs separate pages for road traffic, workplace and clinical negligence matters, because the searcher, the evidence and the questions differ. I flag where one page tries to cover five matters and where five pages cannibalise one.
- Lawyer and partner profiles. These are trust pages, not staff lists. I check whether each profile states admission, specialisms, notable matter types (described within your professional conduct rules), publications and speaking, and whether practice pages link to the people who do that work.
- Office and jurisdiction signals. Legal work is bounded by jurisdiction. I check that each office has its own page with consistent name, address and phone details, that the Google Business Profile for each office points to the right page, and that the site does not imply you can act in places you cannot.
- Legal structured data. I review whether you use LegalService (or the more specific schema type that fits), Attorney or Person markup for profiles, and FAQPage only where the content genuinely qualifies, and whether that markup matches what is visible on the page.
- Enquiry path and tracking. Many firms lose enquiries in a contact form that asks for too much, or never record phone calls as conversions. I check whether calls, forms and chat are tracked so you can see which practice pages generate instructions.
- Technical health. Indexing, crawl errors, redirect chains left by past rebrands or mergers, page speed on mobile, and duplicate content from printer-friendly or PDF versions of guides.
- Content accuracy and age. Legal content goes stale when legislation, thresholds or court procedure changes. I list guides that carry no review date or describe a superseded position. I do not judge the law itself; I flag pages for your fee earners to check.
How I rank what the audit finds
A firm cannot fix two hundred issues at once, and partners rarely have patience for a spreadsheet of warnings. I group findings by their likely effect on enquiries, not by how alarming the tool output looks.
| Priority | Typical legal-site example | Why it sits here |
|---|---|---|
| Fix first | Key practice pages blocked from indexing, or redirected to the home page after a merger | The firm is invisible for work it wants |
| Fix this quarter | Overlapping pages for the same matter type; profiles with no credentials | Splits ranking signals and weakens trust on YMYL queries |
| Plan in | Missing legal schema; office pages with inconsistent details | Helps rich results and local visibility, less urgent than indexing |
| Housekeeping | Old news items, duplicate PDF guides, minor speed issues | Worth doing, unlikely to change enquiries alone |
Where compliance and SEO meet
Law firms work under professional advertising and conduct rules that vary by jurisdiction and regulator. Some regulators restrict how you describe specialisms, how you present past results, or whether you can use client testimonials in certain forms. An audit that recommends “add more case results and reviews” without that context is careless.
So when I suggest trust content, I frame it as options for your compliance partner or risk team to approve, not copy to publish. I will tell you, for example, that a profile would be stronger with a description of the kinds of matters a lawyer handles, and leave the wording and limits to the people responsible for regulatory compliance. Nothing in my audit is legal advice, and I keep it that way on purpose.
Local search for firms with more than one office
A lot of legal enquiries start with a location: “employment lawyer near me”, “conveyancing solicitor” plus a town. For multi-office firms this is where I usually find the most fixable problems. Common ones include a single contact page for every office, Google Business Profiles linked to the home page instead of the office page, practice areas listed on profiles that the office does not actually handle, and the same review responses copied across branches. I also look at citations on legal directories and professional bodies that are relevant in your jurisdiction, and whether the details there match the site.
What you receive at the end
- A written report in plain English, with each issue explained in terms of enquiries rather than jargon.
- A practice-area map showing which matter types have a strong page, a weak page, or no page at all.
- A profile checklist for each fee earner, so marketing can collect the missing information in one pass.
- Technical fixes written for your developer, with the specific URLs affected.
- A call to walk partners or the marketing lead through the priorities.
If you want to see how I write up findings for other sectors, my case studies show the format and level of detail.
Questions law firm partners and marketing managers ask
Will the audit tell us which practice areas to focus on?
It will show where you already have visibility, where competitors clearly outrank you, and where demand exists but you have no suitable page. Which practices to grow is a business decision for the partners; the audit gives you the search side of that picture.
Do you need access to our case management system?
No. I work from the public website, Google Search Console, Google Analytics and your Business Profiles. I never need client files or matter data, which keeps confidentiality simple.
Can you audit a site that sits on our network’s shared platform?
Yes. Firms on franchise or network platforms often have limited control over templates, so I separate the issues you can fix yourselves from those that need to go to the platform provider.
How long does a law firm audit take?
For a single-office firm it is usually a couple of weeks from access to report. Larger firms with many offices and hundreds of guides take longer, and I will give you a date before starting.
If your firm’s site has grown by accretion and you are not sure which pages are pulling their weight, I can start with a free review of your top practice areas. Get in touch and tell me which matters you most want to be found for.