SEO For Solicitors & Law Firms – The Complete Guide For 2025

If you are a solicitor who wants to stay competitive in today’s digital world, you know how important it is to rank high in search engines when potential clients need your services.

After all, if your website doesn’t appear on Google’s first page, you are losing clients to your competitors.

I wrote this guide to share valuable insights based on research and experience so you can understand what it takes to appear in search engine results pages and get actionable tips that you can use today to prepare your law firm’s website for 2025.

I’ve also added a step-by-step SEO strategy for solicitors and law firms at the end of this article, so you’ll be ready to use it after you’ve learned about the different aspects of SEO. Let’s dive in.

What is SEO for Solicitors, and why is it important in 2025?

SEO for solicitors is getting your website pages to rank higher in search results and generate more leads. In other words, when potential clients search for terms like “family law solicitors” or “immigration solicitors near me”, your web page stands out from the rest of your competitors, increasing visibility, web traffic and revenue.

According to growlawfirm.com, 50% of law firms and solicitors already use SEO as a primary marketing channel. This means 2 things for you:

1. There are a lot of untapped opportunities for solicitors and law firms to win higher rankings on search engines.
   
2. Some of your competitors already know that SEO is crucial in 2025, and they are actively working on it to win the race to the top 5 positions on Google.

If your law firm does not rank well on search engines like Google or Bing, it’s time to consider investing 8-10 hours of your time every week to improve that. Alternatively, if you need help with SEO for your legal practice, you can learn more about our SEO services here.

Key Benefits of SEO for Law Firms and Solicitors

Law firms and solicitors need SEO to remain competitive in 2025. Having a tailored SEO strategy will boost your chances of getting top search results from Google and reap the rewards. The main benefits for solicitors are:

• Increased Visibility: A well-optimised website ensures your law firm appears on the first page of search results when potential clients are searching for legal services. Even better, when your website has been nurtured correctly, over time your pages will rank between positions 1 and 5, which results in more eyeballs for your business.
  
  
• Targeted Traffic: By using relevant keywords, you can attract potential clients who need your services in specific practice areas. Another big benefit is that you can target specifically people who are ready to call you right now, meaning if you rank in the top positions for those keywords, your phone will be ringing non-stop.
  
  
• Cost-Effective Marketing Strategy: Compared to paid ads, good SEO provides long-term results and sustainable growth over time. With that said, you can rank organically for keywords that cost £15+ per click, meaning you will be getting that traffic for free.
  
  
• Builds Trust and Credibility: When your website ranks high in search results, people tend to trust you more. Especially if you rank for specific questions like “Do I need a divorce solicitor, or can I handle my divorce without one?”, or “How can a divorce solicitor help with child custody and financial settlements?“.
  
  The more people rely on your free advice online, the more likely they are to call you when they need legal help.
  

How Long Does It Take For Solicitors and Law Firms to See Results From SEO?

This is a common concern among law firm owners and solicitors. Typically, it takes 4 to 12 months to see results from an SEO campaign. However, this timeline isn’t guaranteed, as the outcome depends on factors such as the type of law you practice, your location, competition, website size, and the general condition of your site. Here’s what you can expect during the process:

• Stage1: The initial goal is to establish strong SEO fundamentals. This includes developing a solid strategy, indexing all existing pages on Google, and ensuring your site is technically sound.
  
• Stage 2: At this stage, success is defined by achieving higher rankings, increasing impressions, and indexing additional pages.
  
• Stage 3: This is where you begin attracting visitors to your website. At this point, you’ll analyse visitor behaviour and see whether they are requesting quotes or calling your office. If not, you can identify obstacles and further optimise your pages for conversions.
  

As I mentioned earlier, reaching Stage 3 can take anywhere from 4 to 12 months. However, once you reach this point, your SEO strategy is well-established. You’ll have built strong topical authority, generated quality backlinks, and identified what works best for your customers. From here, you can expect a consistent flow of leads as your online presence continues to grow.

Keyword Research For Solicitors: Finding The Terms Your Clients Search

Important part of optimising your law firm’s website to rank is understanding the keywords your potential clients are using to search for legal services. Keyword research helps you identify search terms like “divorce solicitor in London” or “personal injury lawyer.”

How To Find The Right Keywords

• Use SEO Tools: Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush can help you with every aspect of your SEO including keyword research. You can run a competitor analysis to find out what search terms other law firms use and discover easy-to-rank terms that have low KD (keyword difficulty) and 40+ monthly searches. This is a great starting point.
  
  
• Focus on Practice Areas: Target specific terms, such as “immigration solicitors” or “family law expert”.
  
  
• Consider Local Keywords: Add location-based phrases like “criminal solicitor Manchester” to attract local clients.
  
  
• Use Long-Tail Keywords: These keywords are often easier to rank for and have a reasonable amount of search volume. An example of a long-tail keyword is “cost of immigration solicitor advice“. In comparison, a short keyword would be “immigration solicitor“.

By including targeted keywords across your website, you can optimise it to attract relevant traffic that is interested in your legal advice and ready to contact you. It’s important to add a mix of all types of search terms (location-based, service-based, informational/legal advice) and create associated pages to give your site a structure. 

Let me now take you through the On-page optimisation insights.

On-Page SEO: Optimising Your Law Firm Website

On-page SEO is the practice of improving individual pages and the entire website structure to make it easier for visitors to navigate and make it simple for Google to understand your content. Now let’s break down each aspect.

Optimise Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

Write clear, keyword-optimised meta titles and meta descriptions that describe your services and encourage users to click. It’s important to add your target keyword into both sections to make it easier for Google to understand how your page relates to it.

Create Service-Specific Pages

Ensure each service page focuses on specific legal services, like “personal injury law” or “public liability accident claims”. Ideally, only your “Home Page” should have all of the different services you provide, or you can create another page like “Our Services“.

Use Heading Tags

Use H1, H2, H3 and H4 headings to structure content and improve readability. My advice is to keep your content concise, without too much fluff and keep the heading structure up to H4. In rare cases, you need to go up to H6, but don’t forget, the more headings you add, the better you need to plan the page structure because Google might not understand it if it’s too complex.

Create Location-Specific Pages

Create informative pages about each location you directly serve with keywords like “family law solicitor in Birmingham” or “personal injury solicitors in Manchester”. I recommend creating location-specific pages based on the information you’ve provided in your Google Business Profile. It helps Google’s crawler relate and verify the information on your website.

Develop a Clear Site Structure

Think of your website as a pyramid. On the top is your “Home Page” and then gradually expand into more pages. For example your “Home Page” links directly to the “Personal Injury” page, then your “Personal Injury” page links to “Road Traffic Accident Claims” and “Industrial Disease Claims“. 

This helps with building topical authority, which is a very important ranking factor in SEO for law firms.

Let’s now look at the technical aspect of your SEO.

Technical SEO: Ensuring Your Law Firm’s Website Runs Smoothly

Technical SEO ensures that search engines can crawl, index, and rank your website efficiently. Key technical SEO tips for solicitors include:

• Website Speed: Optimise your law firm’s website to load quickly, as slow sites harm user experience and rankings. Google and your potential clients prefer sites that load faster than 3 seconds on desktop and mobile. If it takes longer, the chance of losing the person who clicked on your site grows by 20% every other second.
  
  
• Mobile Optimisation: Ensure your site works perfectly on mobile devices, as Google prioritises mobile-friendly websites. This includes, but is not limited to, the size of your text (is it easy to read, or do people have to pinch the screen to zoom in) and the distance between clickable elements such as CTAs or social media buttons.
  
  
• Fix Broken Links: Check for broken links or outdated pages that could harm SEO performance and user experience. You might say, “Well, if it’s a broken link, people will reach the 404 page and go back to the home page.” No, that’s not right. Your visitor will be gone from your website.
  
  There a plugins on WordPress like AIOSEO (All in one SEO) that can help you discover broken links or you can manually click on every clickable element on your page and see whether it ends up found or at a 404.
  
  
• Schema Markup: Use structured data to help search engines understand your legal services, enhancing your visibility. Creating a schema markup is a bit more technical and there are different schema markups of the specific type of page. You can read more about how to create a schema markup on schema.org.

My recommendation is that you run a complete site audit before you start any on-page optimisations or keyword research and find all technical errors. Once you’ve fixed the most critical ones, you can leave the rest and fix them as you go.

Best Approach to Local SEO for Lawyers and Solicitors

Local SEO is critical for solicitors, as most clients look for legal help within their geographical area. Searches like “divorce solicitors near me” are considered local searches. Here are some tips that will help you boost your local rankings:

• Create a Google Business Profile (formerly GMB): Create and optimise your free Google Business Profile. When you access your account, you need to complete all information about your business including name, phone, address, service areas, and types of services and images. You should have a 100% completed profile to compete with others.
  
  My advice is, if you are a solicitor based in London and you practice immigration law, to include both in your profile name. For example “Immigration Solicitor in London” or “Immigration Solicitor/Lawyer in London – [Name of law firm]“.
  
  
• Build Pages For Specific Locations: I’ve already mentioned the importance of location-specific pages in the On-page SEO section above, but this is a crucial factor for local SEO for solicitors and I’m mentioning it again. Create pages targeting locations, such as “solicitors in Birmingham” or “legal services in Manchester”. This works very well with your GBP.
  
  
• Use Local Directories: List your firm or practice in as many local directories as possible and ensure that your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) information is the same, without compromise. This sends strong signals to Google that you are a legitimate business. Also, list your business at Law Society, Yell, or Thomson Local.
  
  
• Ask Customers For Reviews: Even if you’ve nailed the rest of the local SEO factors for solicitors, you’ll still struggle to rank in the top positions if you lack reviews. Always ask happy customers to leave reviews and don’t get discouraged when you see your competitors have 1000+ reviews. They’ve been in the SEO space for 10+ years.

My advice is to start from your Google Business Profile and once you’ve optimised that, keep a record of your NAP file handy and start listing your site on local directories. You need 30-50 listings and then you can move on with your additional pages and partnership strategies.

If you struggle with local SEO and need support, we’ll be more than happy to help!

SEO Content For Law Firms: What Should You Write About?

High-quality law firm SEO content helps boost rankings and attract potential clients. The more original and personal your content is, the more people will appreciate it and trust you. Here’s what you should focus on:

• Service Pages: Create pages for every legal service you specialise in, for example, “Family and Divorce“, “Employment“, etc. These pages will often be your money-makers, so ensure the content is detailed and concise. Use trust-building techniques like adding reviews and trust badges.
  
  
• Blog Posts: Write informative articles answering common legal questions, such as “How to file for divorce in the UK.”  If you create an Evergreen article, and rank it in the top position of Google, this will turn into a gold mine.
  
  How do I know? I wrote an article 12 months ago, and it ranks number 1 in Google search for 2 specific keywords. This brings 20-30 leads for my client every month.
  
  
• FAQs: Address frequently asked questions clients may have about your services. This can either be added to each service page or you can create a page specifically answering common questions. Not only does this help with trust-building but also helps with objection handling before the actual phone call.

Publishing valuable SEO content positions your law firm as an authority while improving rankings on search engines. If you want to give value through your content and write SEO articles and guides that are also engaging and make people read avoid using AI-generated text.

Link Building: Why Backlinks Matter for Solicitors?

Link building involves acquiring high-quality backlinks from other websites. Providing advice as a Solicitor online can have a direct impact on people’s lives. Here’s why, Google don’t trust every other website that’s called “Best Solicitors in the UK“. Google needs to trust you first before boosting your content.

Backlinks act as votes of confidence that improve your SEO rankings. In simple terms, a backlink is a link to your website from another site.

Link-Building Strategies for Solicitors

1. Get Links From Directories: Often they provide “do-follow” links, but mainly “no-follow”. However, you need to have a mix of both. Only “do-follow” links would look spammy and Google might penalise your website in the long run.
   
   
2. Write Guest Posts: Write articles for legal or business websites. This ensures that other sites related to your industry that are highly relevant link back to yours. Also, it allows you to write your articles and include your links within the right context.
   
   
3. Utilise Digital PR: Write press releases about your firm so media outlets like Forbes can link back to your website. You can also build relationships with journalists and bloggers. Here’s a helpful guide about Digital PR if you want to learn more.
   
   
4. Buy Backlinks: You can pay to get quality backlinks to your site. I don’t personally recommend that unless you acquire them from an authoritative site that’s related to your industry. Otherwise, it could hurt your rankings in the long run.

Quality backlinks signal to search engines that your law firm website is credible and deserves a high ranking. On the flip side, bad-quality ones signal that your site is not trustworthy. Focus on quality first, quantity will come after.

SEO Audit: A Site Health Check for Solicitors and Law Firms

An SEO audit is essential for identifying areas of improvement. An example is a client of mine who asked me to identify the reason why his rankings dropped suddenly and some pages were not indexed on Google. I did a thorough SEO audit and found that the last SEO agency that was hired by my client intentionally added a code to block the website from indexing on Google. 

To avoid similar problems, here’s how to evaluate your law firm’s SEO performance:

1. Site Health Check: Use tools like SEMrush to check for technical issues. The report will highlight all critical errors that are directly impacting your SEO performance.
   
   
2. Crawlability and Indexability: Find out if Google is allowed to crawl your website. If that’s not the case, Google will never be able to index your website.
   
   
3. Content Analysis: Ensure your pages are optimised with relevant keywords.
   
   
4. Backlink Review: Evaluate your current backlinks and identify growth opportunities.

My recommendation is to run comprehensive SEO audits every 3 months. It does take time, probably around 2-5 hours to ensure that you look at every single aspect and analyse it, but it’s good to have peace of mind, knowing your site is sound.

SEO Strategy for Solicitors and Law Firms in 2025

FAQs