Top 10 steps for lawyers and law firms to boost local SEO strategy

Local SEO (search engine optimization) can greatly increase the number of people who are looking for what you do in your area.

According to the 2024 Consumer Legal Needs Survey, 31% of people with a legal need searched for information online about their legal need. Furthermore, 99% of the same people who searched for information online about their legal needs used search engines. The chart below shows other top sources used, such as social media, law firm websites, legal information websites/attorney directories/legal DIY website, and GenAI.

The survey also found that attorneys being based in the local community, not more than 26 miles away, is important (very/somewhat) for three-quarters of those who hired an attorney.

As a small law firm or solo attorney, chances are that most of your current and future clients are local to your area.

It's also likely your leads will come through word-of-mouth referrals or a genuine, face-to-face interaction. By definition, that would be truly organic. However, you're here because you're wondering about those "organic interactions" occurring online in search engines and GenAI search tools. This is where local SEO comes into play.

In this guide, we'll synthesize the most salient local SEO topics by only providing the top 10 steps to take starting today. You should gain enough clarity after some basic education, no matter how familiar you might be with SEO.

Jump to:  

1. Define your goals with local SEO and your legal client

2. Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile

3. Google's Local Services Ads

4. Identify and target legal needs in your area

5. Make your writing skills useful (besides drafting contracts)

6. Join an online legal directory

7. Obtain backlinks

8. Configure local schema

9. Mobile optimization 

10. Tracking

Step 1: Define your goals with local SEO and your legal client

From a business standpoint, the first step is crucial and may not always be the same - understand what you want to achieve and then decide if local SEO can help you reach it. Some firms seek to grow clientele quickly and scale. Others prefer slower and sustainable growth as a solo or small law firm.

Obtaining a deep understanding of the clients you want to attract is another aspect within this step. No SEO strategy will be successful without understanding both the organic marketing channel (Organic traffic from search engines and AI platforms) and your audience.

So what is SEO in general and how does it differ from local SEO? SEO is the process of optimizing website content to rank higher in search engines and AI search tools for specific queries.

Local SEO is the process of optimizing a website and its content to rank higher in search results that are tailored to an individual's location and query relevance. Think about jurisdiction in law — falling outside the appropriate jurisdiction would render your legal matter irrelevant. Similarly, if your firm focused on legal matters that local people don't search online in your area, then your local SEO strategy would be irrelevant.

Now that you know what local SEO is for your law practice, it's time to decide if more consistent search traffic fits with your goals. If so, we hope the following steps provide practical help to start optimizing your content for local clients.

Step 2: Set up and optimize your Google Business Profile

Conduct a quick Google search on "family attorney in dallas" and you'll find a mix of sponsored ads, organic search results, and mayb even an AI overview. You'll also notice the latest version of a Google Business Profile (GBP) shown in conjunction with other profiles and Google Maps. Together, these make up a local map pack, which is information Google gathers about local places and services.

A Google Business Profile is a free tool provided by Google that enables businesses to manage their online presence across Google Search and Maps. It is crucial for businesses to regularly update and manage their GBP in order to rank higher in local search results and attract potential clients. Setting up a GBP is probably the single most important step in the right direction toward local optimization.

Why is a GBP so important? After verifying your GBP, customers can easily find and interact with your business. When they search for your service or its category on Google Maps or Search, your profile appears, displaying your:

• Firm name
• Website
• Phone number
• Hours
• Reviews
• Services
• and more

This gives searchers accurate information about your firm and can also help you stand out among similar businesses in your area.

This may seem like a technical challenge for some attorneys, but this is a non-negotiable if you want any chance of appearing in local search results.

How to set up a Google Business Profile

1. Create a Google Account if you don't already have one
2. Set up a Google Business Profile, or if someone else, including Google, already created one using information found online, you can request ownership of the business profile
3. Select your business type:
   1. Choose whether you have a location clients can actually visit
      1. Click "Yes" if you have a staffed law firm or office. You may need to enter your firm's address or position a marker on a map.
      2. Click "No" if you don't have a physical location. Enter your service area (up to 20 areas, ideally within a 2-hour drive).
   2. Enter a phone number and website URL.
4. Verify your profile by:
   1. Verifying now: At the top, find the red banner and click Verify now.
   2. Verifying later: Click Verify later and then Later.
   3. If you can't manage the Business Profile, find someone in your organization who can and continue with them.
   4. Note: You will have to verify your law firm by recording a single and continuous video
5. Add your legal services offered using the suggested services, or simply add custom services that call out your expertise and practice areas
6. Add business hours
7. Turn on messages
8. Add ample description
9. Add photos to tell a more compelling and full story of your firm

Your firm can appear as part of local search results based on relevance, distance, and prominence. The best advice is to go beyond simply checking off these steps as a list of to-dos.

For example, put yourself in the client's shoes and go through this process yourself by looking at Google search results and Google Maps for a specific legal need in your area.

Next, ask yourself this: "What would I want or need to see along this process?" It could mean more photos that feature your firm's community involvement, fewer or more legal services. Or maybe it's fitting to use a unique style and tone of voice for the description appearing in the about section.

Manage Google reviews

Besides relevance, distance, prominence, and verifying your firm's GBP, reviews may be one of the most important factors for ranking.
Manage your GBP well by first soliciting reviews from your clients, monitoring, and replying to reviews. Although many attorneys hesitate to ask for reviews and assume clients feel inconvenienced, it's not always the case. In fact, you might be pleasantly surprised at how willing people are to leave an honest review whether it's positive or negative.

You can always delegate a receptionist or another person to monitor reviews, ensure accurate public information, and provide regular updates such as relevant news or events.

Step 3: Google's Local Services Ads

Local Services Ads are not SEO, but they are one more important part of search results before we talk about traditional blue link search results.
Once your Google Business Profile is setup, we recommend starting Local Services Ads to help initiate and attract leads at the top of search results. This way you can jumpstart your business while you ramp up other content to appear in the organic rankings below.

Important distinction: Google Search Ads are pay-per-click search ads, whereas with Local Services Ads you only pay when a customer gets in touch with you.

Related blog Law firm paid search guide   Read blog →

Searchers will see two types of Local Services Ads

1. Google Screened Ads
2. Google Guaranteed Ads

Google Screened is a search result feature that helps professionals like you build trusted reputations by listing a green Google Screened icon next to your firm.

Google Guarantee is another reputation-building feature that uses a green Google Guarantee icon next to your firm.

Local Services ensures that all lawyers with the Google Screened badge have active, verified law licenses. Google notes that a separate background check is not conducted by Local Services since each U.S. state already mandates a background check for lawyers to obtain their license to practice.

You can learn more about how to qualify for Local Services Ads as different types of lawyers.

Step 4: Identify and target legal needs in your area

First, shop around for research and analytics tools for SEO. SEMrush provides insight into local area search results, but other tools may have similar capabilities.

Assuming you are just starting out, we recommend the following: Definitely get #1 in addition to any options #2-5:

1. Google Search Console - the most accurate Google search data for your own website
2. SEMrush - for keyword rank tracking with local area results
3. seoClarity - featuring an SEO AI assistant
4. Ahrefs - great for competitor research
5. Clearscope - SEO content optimization using information gain

Select topics and figure out search intent

Once you have the essential tools to optimize for local search, the following is a quick crash course on how to identify and optimize search queries and topics using any tools listed above or other preferred options.

In many ways, good SEO is all about clean organization of topics. A good legal dictionary or online legal glossary is well-organized and optimizes usability and accessibility for researchers.

While alphabetical order is a given for online dictionaries and encyclopedias, your firm's site should group broad legal categories together. What would be even better is a topical hierarchy with different fields of law; Corporate law > securities law > transactional law > etc.

Related blog SEO for lawyers complete guide   Read blog →

Your law firm's site should identify and target a list of legal topics much in the same way. For example, start creating a library of topically related content instead of approaching your blog as a daily, weekly, or monthly editorial calendars with interesting legal topics. Those ideas might be great, but they need to be organized and published in a cohesive manner. In the end, a client wants useful information that helps them move along their legal journey. There aren't many ways to make a creative campaign or to make a serious legal matter entertaining, but in the least they will find your content to be clear and practical.

Let's move on to search intent. Search intent is the desired action behind a search query.

Typically, a potential client on Google has one of three main objectives:

1. Gather information
2. Contact someone
3. Make a transaction

Simple, right? The desired action behind any search is to gather information, contact someone, or make a transaction. At least for people with legal needs.

If we take personal injury as an example, a matrix of searches and intent might be something like this:

Step 5: Make your writing skills useful (besides drafting contracts)

As a lawyer, your writing skills don't have to be confined to drafting contracts and briefs. Put them to use by creating engaging, informative blog content that potential clients will find helpful.

Again, put yourself in their shoes and use your legal expertise to break down complex concepts, address real concerns, and showcase your firm's value. By shifting your writing focus from legalese to accessible insights, you'll build trust with your audience. The more helpful and accurate your content is, the more people will interact with it. This means more clicks, more content consumption, and more time spent on your site.

That level of site engagement can boost your organic search rankings even beyond local search results. It's what SEO professionals call ranking signals, or at least represent some of the more important signals which influence Google's ranking system.

Content-writing options

What if you'd rather not write? Get help in-house from your team, use GenAI to assist your writing process, hire freelance writers, or use any combination of these methods. The key is to consistently produce high-quality content that is relevant and valuable to your ideal clientele. How you do it will depend on your availability and resources, but someone needs to do it in order to establish your law firm's brand as an authority in your industry.

Step 6: Join an online legal directory

Online legal directories can have an indirect influence on local SEO, even though it doesn't involve changing or optimizing your own site. However, your investment in legal directories can help your visibility in local search.

Benefits of directory listings

When you list your firm on reputable legal directories, you increase your visibility in local search results. This not only helps potential clients find you more easily but also signals to search engines that your firm is a trusted and relevant source in your area. Additionally, positive reviews and ratings on these directories can significantly boost your credibility and brand name awareness in other channels such as search results for legal topics.

Tips for optimizing Directory Profiles

To maximize the impact of your directory profiles, ensure they are complete and up-to-date. Include accurate contact information, a detailed description of your services, and high-quality images. Regularly update your profiles with new content, such as blog posts or case studies, to keep them fresh and engaging. Lastly, consider sponsoring your profiles to gain more prominent placement and reach a wider audience.

Step 7: Obtain backlinks through local business engagement

As mentioned in the introduction, your clientele will likely come from trusted referrals. A potential client will reach out via email, phone, or a knock on your office door. Each of these actions is a strong signal that they are serious about seeking your legal assistance.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links to your site with similar signals of trust. Each link on the internet that points to your homepage, blog, or service page is someone's vote that says that your content can be helpful.

So, for example, a backlink for your law firm might come from your local state or city bar association. Their blog might feature your insights into legal matters, and link to your about page. Sometimes this is through a planned partnership, but it can come through unsolicited and natural links because someone found your article useful.

How to acquire backlinks

This is where you put your lawyer hat on to help develop a strong backlinking strategy.

You will be limited, of course, and cannot control the outcome of acquiring backlinks. However, what you can do is genuinely care and invest in your local community. Although a local news agency featuring your firm with a link would be ideal, it's important to also focus on building relationships and your network.

As you know by now, trust is an important signal. Relationships in the local community can translate into expansive online networks because it's a testament to strong ties to the community.

People tend to link to content they agree with, or want to prove a relevant point according to the topic at hand. Google deserves credit and recognizes this is human nature. As a result, they have designed algorithms for backlinks since the story behind each one likely paints a meaningful connection.

Academics and professionals like you probably understand this best. Citations in a legal document or case law serve as references to previous cases, laws, and legal theories that support the argument being made. Citations are not only important for giving credit to the original source, but they also provide evidence for the validity and credibility of the argument being presented.

Moreover, just as a legal citation provides context and further support for the argument being made, backlinks can provide additional information and perspectives on a particular topic. You want your website to be offering just that kind of information and perspective for clients.

Step 8: Local schema

Aside from setting up a Google Business Profile, local schema might be the most technical step. However, it is by no means too complicated.

Local schema, also known as schema markup, is a code that is added to a website's HTML to provide search engines with specific information about the business and its location.

We won't get into the details in this post, but utilizing the markup available on schema.org allows a landing page to qualify for rich results. Rich results are any extra pieces of information that appear in search results other than the blue title tag and meta description. Examples include local context to your URL shown to searchers, review stars, and rating values listed under meta descriptions, etc.

If you're a solo attorney, use this schema for attorneys:

https://schema.org/Attorney

Otherwise, as a small, mid, or large law firm, it might make more sense to use the local business schema:

https://schema.org/LocalBusiness

Step 9: Mobile optimization and impact on local SEO

Someone with a legal need is likely to start on a mobile device to research, then save findings for later browsing on a laptop or desktop at home. If that is true, your mobile site will look different from a desktop or tablet view.

Mobile optimization enhances and streamlines the mobile version of your site. For example, the focus might be the tap and call/email function, or even that chat with a live agent feature that is becoming more popular.

Truthfully, this step gets even more advanced and may be best to leave the job for a professional web developer or website manager. However, at least considering some of the basic elements of mobile optimization can greatly improve the user experience and ultimately lead to higher conversion rates.

• Test your site on mobile by going to each page to diagnose issues like distorted image sizes, text layout shift, and more
• Is the font size suitable on mobile? The typical minimum font size recommendation for mobile is a 16-pixel font
• Most importantly, can visitors tap your phone number and email address to automatically call or open their email app?

Step 10: Set up tracking and monitoring process

Following the previous nine steps consistently and continuously will improve your local SEO rahnkings. Yet, outside of new clients, there is no success without defined marketing goals and metrics. One obvious metric to measure is your organic ranking in the local context, but how exactly is that done?

Tools such as SEMrush can give you an estimated data based on various sources from Google and other algorithms that predict ranking values.

Those SEO tools will help streamline your website's ranking along with many other metrics that inform your level of success.

Further help

Clearly, implementing these local SEO practices is crucial for law firms looking to stand out in their local market. However, navigating the complexities of SEO can be quite draining and unsustainable, which is why Findlaw offers professional local SEO services tailored specifically for law firms.

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