Law firm SEO experts: five questions that test the claim

Expertise here is testable in five questions. A legal SEO knows the publication requirement, knows why section 56 rules out per-matter pricing, reads practice-area intent rather than volume, knows what a fee page must contain, and has a process for the week your fees change.

Last updated: 5 August 2026

What does expertise in law firm SEO actually consist of?

Five pieces of knowledge that a competent general SEO would have no reason to hold, all of them detectable in a first conversation.

The word expert is unregulated and anyone may print it. What distinguishes a supplier is whether they know things about this jurisdiction that nobody working on plumbers or dentists would ever learn. There are five, and each has a question attached that takes under a minute to ask.

A damaging admission before the detail: none of these five tells you whether a supplier can write. They screen out the ones who will get the jurisdiction wrong, which is a narrower thing than competence and is all this page claims to do.

Does the supplier know the publication requirement exists?

The right answer to the question is a refusal to answer it.

The SRA Transparency Rules have been in force since 6 December 2018 and require price and service information for specified work types. A supplier who knows this will say that the scope question belongs to the firm and its COLP, and offer to build whatever the firm specifies.

A supplier who does not know the rule exists will talk about content strategy. A supplier who half-knows it is more dangerous than either, because they will produce a confident list of your in-scope work, and a firm that acts on that list has taken a regulatory view from its marketing supplier.

We build the pages the rule asks for. We do not judge whether a firm meets it, and no supplier can.

Does the supplier know why it cannot be paid per matter?

Ask how they would like to be paid, and listen for a model priced by outcome.

LASPO 2012 section 56 prohibits referral fees in prescribed legal business, which includes personal injury, and the restriction binds the firm paying as well as the party being paid. A supplier proposing that model has told you they do not know the statute, and the firm accepting it is not insulated by the fact that somebody else suggested it.

It is the fastest test here, and the one piece of knowledge whose consequence lands on the firm rather than on the supplier.

Our own pricing is fixed and by scope, including for work the restriction does not reach, because a pricing model that has to be switched off for one practice area is not a pricing model.

Does the supplier read practice-area intent, or only volume?

Ask which of your areas of work they would start with, and why. The failing answer is "the largest".

Volume and value come apart in this market, sharply. In Glasgow, employment work runs 720 searches a month at around £8.98 a click, while in Reading the same work runs 10 searches at £29.11 — measured 3 August 2026. The Glasgow number looks like the opportunity and the Reading number is what Google's own auction says a click is worth.

Intent differs too, and it is not a subtlety. Someone searching for probate has had a bereavement and is looking for a process. Someone searching for criminal defence work is often looking at hours rather than days. Those two readers want different pages, different first paragraphs and different contact routes, and a supplier who describes both as traffic will build the same page twice.

The right answer names the work the firm wants more of, not the work with the biggest number beside it.

Does the supplier know what a fee page has to contain?

Ask to see one they have written. The page is the artefact this whole speciality turns on.

A fee page that satisfies the disclosure and also earns the click carries the figure, what is and is not included, the disbursements, an indication of timescale, and who does the work along with their qualifications. A practice-area page describing the service with no figures on it is not the same document, and the difference is visible in ten seconds.

The commercial reason to care is that these are the highest-intent pages a firm has. 15 of the 62 questions buyers ask on these searches are price questions, measured 3 August 2026 across the same benchmark — and among the suppliers selling to firms, 12 of 40 published a price at all and 5 of those showed only a range. A market this reluctant to answer the price question is not a market with deep experience of writing price pages.

Does the supplier have a process for the week your fees change?

Fees change. The question detects whether the supplier has ever lived with a published one.

A supplier who has maintained fee pages answers immediately: who tells us, how quickly the page changes, whether the old figure is dated and kept, and who signs the new one off. A supplier who has only built pages goes quiet, or starts describing a change request and a rate.

This is the question we would most want asked of us, because it is the one that separates a build from a relationship. It is also the reason our retainers carry no minimum term — a firm that finds the maintenance is not working should be able to stop in the month it decides that, and of the 40 suppliers read on 3 August 2026, one offered work on that basis.

Which of these names appear on this search, and what are they?

Three, and only one of them sells this service.

All three published a price, which puts them in the 12 of 40 that do. Only the first is a supplier a firm would instruct for search work. The second ranks because it publishes substantial material about running a firm, and the third because the rule this page keeps returning to is its actual subject.

⚠ 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.

When is a general SEO the better choice?

Twice, and both are common.

When the firm already has advisers on the rule and wants technical work done cheaply. If the scope question is settled internally and somebody in the firm will write the figures, four of the five tests above stop mattering. A good general SEO with an hourly rate is then the better value, and paying a premium for jurisdiction knowledge the firm already holds is waste.

When the firm needs instructions this quarter. Nothing described here works that fast. We do not manage ad spend, so the honest answer is a paid specialist and we would rather say it than sell something slower.

And where a firm is unsure of its own position under the rule, the first call is to somebody who advises on obligations rather than to anybody on this page, including us.

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?

If one adviser would suit better than a supplier who also executes: law firm seo consultant.

If the decision is really about which organisation: marketing agency for law firm and law firm marketing company.

If the answer is to hire rather than to buy: law firm marketing positions.

On a channel where the tests are different: law firm marketing social media.

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