SEO agency · Law firms
SEO for law firms. Found by people who describe their problem.
Your future client doesn’t think in areas of law. They type “my partner wants to leave the business” or “shareholder agreement lawyer Laval”. A law firm’s SEO means answering those searches, practice area by practice area, with pages signed by your lawyers and a Google Business Profile for the firm and for each lawyer. All while taking into account the Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers, which governs your advertising.
- Your accounts and your content in your name
- Visits and inquiries measured, not just rankings
- One team for SEO and Google Ads
Our SEO experience goes back to 2013: more than 300 SEO campaigns (content, pages, link profile), including law firms. What an engagement covers, from technical work to links, is explained by our small business SEO agency. A law firm adds a constraint other small businesses don’t have: every page is an advertisement, within the meaning of your Code.
How do your future clients look for a lawyer?
Often, they describe a situation, not an area of law. A business owner searches “buy out a business partner”, an employer “fire an employee for serious misconduct”, a couple “shared custody and child support”. Our Google Ads benchmarks for Quebec give an example: “médiation familiale” (family mediation), which describes a process rather than a lawyer, is searched 1,300 times a month in the province. People who already know the vocabulary often add the city: “commercial litigation lawyer Longueuil”. A good practice area page answers both.
There’s also your name. A client referred by an accountant or a friend may type the lawyer’s name before calling. What they find then (your Google Business Profile, your profile page, a directory listing) confirms the referral, or weakens it.
So we build one page for each practice area you want to grow: how a matter unfolds, the documents to prepare, the questions to ask yourself before the consultation. General information, never legal advice, but enough to show you know the problem. The same page works when the question is put to an AI rather than to Google: a clear explanation of how a matter unfolds, signed by a lawyer, is the kind of source an assistant can draw on.
What they actually type
- buy out a business partner
- fire an employee for serious misconduct
- shared custody and child support
- commercial litigation lawyer Longueuil
Why does Google ask a legal website for more proof?
Google says it gives even more weight to the experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness of content when the topic could significantly impact people’s health, financial stability or safety. A lawsuit, a separation or the sale of a business directly affects your clients’ financial stability.
In practice, every article carries the name of the lawyer who knows the subject, with a profile page: practice areas, year of call to the Bar, background. Google also encourages making it clear who wrote a piece of content. We write, and you choose your role: review and approve each text before it goes live, which we recommend for a law firm, or hand us the work from start to finish.
Source: Google Search Central, creating helpful, reliable, people-first content
What do lawyers’ advertising rules change for your SEO?
Your website, your articles and your profile serve to make you known. So we treat them with the same care as your advertising, and we invite you to check doubtful cases with the Barreau du Québec.
| Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers | What it changes for your SEO |
|---|---|
| No endorsement or statement of gratitude concerning you in your advertising, whether you use it or allow it to be used (s. 145). | No reviews section, no star widget on the site, no Google reviews reused in your pages. |
| Advertised fees: nature and extent of the services, with disbursements and taxes specified; specific rules for lump-sum fees (ss. 146 and 147). | A “fixed-price incorporation” page spells out what is included and what isn’t, in terms a non-lawyer understands. |
| A complete copy of every advertisement kept for 12 months after it last ran (s. 149). | A site that’s updated every month for SEO must be able to retrieve every version of its pages. We archive every version of the pages we change during the engagement. |
| A lawyer who knows or should know that their firm’s advertising violates these rules takes the necessary measures to put an end to it (s. 150). | What your agency publishes commits you. Hence the value of reviewing pages before they go live. |
One Google Business Profile for the firm, or one per lawyer?
Often both. Google treats lawyers as individual practitioners. A lawyer who serves the public and can be reached at the firm during the stated hours should have their own profile. When several lawyers practise at the same location, the firm has its own separate profile, and the title of each lawyer’s profile contains only their name, with their professional title if they wish (“Me” in Quebec). A lawyer shouldn’t create a separate profile for each of their practice areas.
So a firm of five lawyers can have six profiles. They need to say the same thing: same address, same hours, accurate categories, a link to the right page of the site. We put them in order, starting with duplicates and with the profiles of lawyers who have left the firm. Our guide to local SEO and your Google Business Profile covers the settings in detail.
Source: Google Business Profile Help, individual practitioners
Your Google Business Profile
Which mistakes should you check first on a law firm’s website?
These four points take a few minutes to check. What we run into most often, across every industry, looks like the second one: content published for the sake of publishing, which gives the reader nothing.
- A single “Practice areas” page for every area. Google doesn’t know what to show you for, and the client doesn’t find the answer to their situation.
- Articles that mostly attract students and the curious, counted as a success because traffic is going up.
- Texts with no author or date, or signed “The team”.
- A French-only site when part of your clientele searches in English, or an English version that only translates the home page.
What should you measure when a single inquiry can become a major mandate?
Not traffic. We track consultation requests, practice area by practice area: Search Console shows the searches that lead to each page, Google Analytics the forms submitted and the calls where they can be tracked. The firm keeps ownership. Your team completes the picture by noting which consultations became mandates.
Legal demand follows events in the lives of your clients and their businesses more than the calendar. So judge the work over several months, practice by practice, rather than from one month to the next.
Need consultations faster in a specific area? A campaign can help while your SEO is being built: see Google Ads for business law firms and Google Ads for family law firms.
What you see every month
- Search Consolethe searches that lead to your pages
- Google Analyticsvisits, forms and tracked calls
- Your teamthe inquiries that became contracts
Lawyers
Frequently asked questions.
What an engagement costs, its minimum term, who owns the accounts: the FAQ of our SEO agency answers these questions.
Can we display our Google reviews on the firm’s website?
The Code of Professional Conduct of Lawyers prohibits using, or allowing to be used, in your advertising an endorsement or statement of gratitude concerning you (s. 145). So we add no reviews or stars to your site. For the reviews clients leave on your Google Business Profile, and for any request for reviews, first check with the Barreau du Québec how the rule applies to your situation.
Do we need a page for each practice area?
For each area you want to grow, yes. A page per area tells Google and the client clearly what you do. There’s no need, however, to create one for every subtopic: a well-made article on a specific question, linked to the area’s page, does the job better.
Should our lawyers sign the articles?
Yes. Google recommends making it clear who wrote a piece of content, and it looks more closely at expertise when the topic touches people’s financial stability. A byline and a profile page give the text a credibility that an article signed “The team” doesn’t have.
Does our website need to be bilingual?
If some of your clients search in English, yes, with complete pages in each language. Google advises indicating the language versions of the same page, so it can show each person the right one. An English version limited to the home page won’t get you found in English searches.
Why doesn’t our firm show up on the map when someone searches “lawyer”?
According to Google, local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence. For a search that broad, the distance between the person searching and your firm counts for a lot, and it isn’t something you can work on. Searches that name a practice area are more useful to target: they’re the ones your future clients make.
Let’s start with your firm
Let’s talk about the mandates you want to receive.
Before the call, François looks at your firm’s Google Business Profile, your lawyers’ profiles and your practice pages. During the conversation, describe your clientele and the mandates you want to grow: you’ll know which pages to build first and which profiles to put in order. If SEO isn’t the right approach for your firm, he’ll tell you. The first conversation comes with no commitment.
