Local SEO for lawyers: be found where you practise

How local results are chosen

Search engines describe three factors for local results. Relevance is how well the firm matches what was searched. Distance is how near the firm is to the searcher or the place named. Prominence is how well known the firm is, judged from reviews, links, mentions and its website.

You cannot change distance. You can improve relevance and prominence, and the steps below are how.

Complete your business profile

Claim the firm’s business profile with the search engine and verify it. Then fill in everything: the exact firm name, the most specific category available, address, phone, website, hours, services and a description written for clients.

Add real photographs of the office and the lawyers. Keep hours accurate, including holidays. A complete and current profile is the largest single factor a firm controls.

Use the firm’s real name. Adding keywords or a city to the name breaks the platform’s rules and can lead to suspension.

Make your details match everywhere

The firm’s name, address and phone number should be identical on its website, its business profile, its legal network profiles, bar listings and anywhere else it appears. Search engines compare these sources, and disagreement lowers their confidence.

Check the old ones too: a former address, a number that has been disconnected, a lawyer who has left. Correct them or ask for them to be removed.

Earn reviews within your rules

Reviews affect both whether the firm appears and whether it is chosen. First check what your bar or law society permits, because the rules on soliciting and publishing client feedback differ between jurisdictions.

Where reviews are permitted, ask at the close of a matter, send a direct link, and leave it there. Never offer payment or a discount, never ask only the clients you expect to be generous, and never write a review on a client’s behalf.

Reply to every review, briefly and professionally. Do not confirm that the reviewer was a client if that is confidential, and never argue the facts of a matter in public.

Give each office and practice a real page

Each office should have its own page with its address, phone number, a map, directions, the lawyers based there and the work done there. That page is what the business profile for that office should link to.

Practice pages should say where the firm does the work, in natural language. A family law page for a firm in one city should say so in its title and opening.

Do not create pages for places where the firm has no office and does no work. Thin pages that differ only by city name are easy to detect and harm the whole site.

Mark up the firm’s details

Structured data is a short block of code that states the firm’s name, address, phone, hours and type of service in a form machines can read. It removes doubt about who and where you are.

It is invisible to visitors and takes a developer little time. Check it with the search engines’ own testing tools after it is added.

Be present in the legal sources

Mentions and links from sources specific to the profession carry weight: your bar or law society listing, legal networks, local business associations, and the press.

Complete your profile on Global Law Lists, where firms are listed by country, city and practice area. Take part locally too. Speaking at a chamber of commerce or sponsoring a community event earns the kind of mention that cannot be bought.

Keep the profile alive

Local search rewards upkeep. Add a photograph now and then, post a short update when the firm publishes a guide, answer the questions people leave on the profile, and correct details the same week they change.

What to avoid

• Keywords or city names added to the firm’s name on the profile.
• Virtual offices listed as staffed locations.
• Invented, exchanged or rewarded reviews.
• Dozens of near-identical city pages.
• Several profiles for one office.

A short checklist

• Business profile claimed, verified and complete.
• Name, address and phone identical everywhere.
• A compliant review request sent at the close of each matter.
• One real page for each office.
• Structured data added and tested.
• Bar listing and legal network profiles complete.