Law firm SEO companies: running a shortlist properly

Comparing 4 companies at once is a different exercise from assessing one. Send every company the same one-page brief, then read the differences in what comes back. Price, scope, who writes, and what each says it will not do vary far more than the marketing does.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

Why does comparing several at once change the answer?

Because a single proposal has nothing to be measured against, and this market varies more than it appears to.

Read one proposal and you are judging it against your own expectations, which were probably set by the proposal itself. Read four written to the same brief and the differences become measurements. The one that will not state a price is now visibly the outlier rather than the norm. The one that answered a question the others ignored is doing something the others cannot.

The variance is real and we have counted part of it. Of 40 legal-marketing suppliers we read in full on 3 August 2026, 12 published a price at all, 5 of those showed only a range, 8 claimed a guarantee of some kind, and 1 offered work with no minimum term. Those four numbers describe a market where the same question gets four genuinely different answers, which is precisely the condition in which a parallel comparison pays.

A damaging admission first. Running this properly is real work — four briefs written, four replies read, and a comparison somebody inside the firm has to sit down with. We would rather say that than describe it as effortless, and a firm unwilling to do it should shorten the list rather than skip the brief.

What should you send every company, identically?

One page, the same document to each, with four things on it.

The second item does more work than the rest combined. In Birmingham, divorce work runs 780 searches a month at around £30.05 a click, while immigration runs 880 at £9.28 — measured 3 August 2026. Put those two lines in the brief and the replies stop being generic, because the supplier now has to say which of the two they would start with and why.

Then ask all four the same three questions in the same words: what is the price, what is the minimum term, and what will you not do. Identical wording matters. A question rephrased for each supplier produces answers that cannot be laid side by side.

How long should the shortlist be, and how do you build it?

Four is enough. Page one of a search is not the source you think it is.

Two of the names below are not marketing companies at all, and that is the normal condition of this search rather than an oddity.

A page-one listing is a statement about who publishes well, not a ranking of competence at the service. A legal publisher ranks here because it writes substantially about running a firm. Two of the three agencies above did not publish a price on the day we read them, which puts them with the majority of the 40.

⚠ We record whether a price appeared on the page, not what it was. The figures our tooling collected mixed genuine fees with case values and fragments, so attributing a number to a named business would publish something unverified about a competitor.

Beyond four, the exercise stops paying. Each additional reply adds reading time and rarely adds a new position, because the range of positions available is narrower than the number of suppliers offering them.

How do you read the differences in what comes back?

Five differences carry information. Each one means something specific.

The price gap. If one figure is half another, the two are almost never quoting the same work. Before concluding anything about value, put both scopes side by side and count the pages each includes. A cheap quote for four pages and an expensive quote for fourteen is not a price difference.

The minimum term. A twelve-month commitment and no commitment at all are different products regardless of the monthly figure. One supplier in the 40 we read offered work with no minimum term, so a shortlist where two of four impose one is a normal shortlist.

Who does the writing. Ask whether the person taking the briefing is the person writing the price pages. The answer varies enormously between suppliers of similar size and it is rarely volunteered.

What each says it will not do. The most revealing line in any reply, and the one most often missing. A supplier who cannot complete that sentence has not defined the engagement. Compare the four answers directly: they are usually more different from each other than the pricing is.

Whether they answered the question you asked. Four identical briefs, four replies. The one that addressed your two named areas of work in your named city is doing something the others chose not to do, and it costs nothing to notice.

Which differences are only noise?

Three, and firms weigh all of them too heavily.

The look of the document. A well-designed proposal indicates a designer, which is not the service being bought.

Speed of reply. A same-day response reflects who is between projects. It says nothing about the standard of the work and can indicate the opposite.

The size of the team. Headcount on a slide is not the number of people on your account. The useful version of this question is who specifically writes and who specifically approves, which belongs in the reply rather than in a team page.

One more thing to discount: the guarantee. Eight of the 40 suppliers read on 3 August 2026 claimed one, and nobody controls Google's results. A guarantee is a reason to read the wording closely, not a differentiator to score.

Where would we come off worst in this comparison?

Two places, and both are structural rather than bad luck.

On any criterion that rewards a named client result. We publish no case studies, because no client on our books has agreed to have its search data published. A firm scoring proposals on referenceable results will mark us down and should.

On price, when price is scored alone. Ours is published — £890 for the Price Transparency Pack over ten working days, £2,400 for a Firm Site, £4,200 for Firm Site+, £6,900 for the Authority Build, and retainers at £600, £1,200 or £2,400 a month with no minimum term, with £700 off a build taken with six months of retainer. A published figure is easy to eliminate against a supplier who will not state one until a call, which is part of why 28 of the 40 do not.

We also do not manage ad spend, and a firm needing instructions this quarter should shortlist paid specialists instead. Nothing here is charged per enquiry or per matter: LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business including personal injury, and it binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid.

Before you shortlist anyone

We read 40 legal-marketing suppliers in full in August 2026 — including several on this page. Twelve published a price. One offered work with no minimum term.

The free report gives you the full count, named, so you can repeat it rather than take ours. It also shows how many people search for your practice areas in your town, and what those clicks cost to buy at Google's own prices.

Get the report — five questions, about two minutes →

No call required. Our own prices are on that page.

Where should I read next?

To test what any one of them claims about past results, which is a separate exercise: law firm seo agency.

If the shortlist is really about producing work rather than rankings: lead generation for law firm.

If you are on the other side of this — selling to firms rather than buying: marketing to solicitors.

Shorter answers to adjacent questions: Does SEO work for law firms?, What are the ranks in a law firm? and How to get ranked in Legal 500?.

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