Your law firm's website might be losing potential clients right now—and you don't even know it. A comprehensive law firm SEO audit reveals the hidden issues preventing your practice from ranking where it should.
Whether you're a solo practitioner or managing partner at a large firm, understanding what's broken in your SEO is the first step to fixing it. Generic SEO audits miss critical legal-specific issues that could be costing you cases.
What Is a Law Firm SEO Audit?
A law firm SEO audit is a comprehensive analysis of your legal website's search engine optimization. It examines everything from technical infrastructure to content quality to backlink profiles—all through the lens of what matters for legal marketing.
Why Generic SEO Audits Miss Legal-Specific Issues
Standard SEO audits don't account for the unique challenges law firms face:
E-E-A-T Requirements: Google holds legal content to higher standards. Your Money Your Life (YMYL) content about legal matters requires demonstrated expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
Local Competition: Legal searches are inherently local. "Personal injury lawyer" means something different in Houston than in rural Vermont. Generic audits miss local ranking factors critical for law firms.
Practice Area Silos: A family law page shouldn't compete with your personal injury content. Legal websites need proper content architecture that generic audits don't evaluate.
Bar Association Compliance: Legal advertising rules vary by state. An audit needs to flag potential compliance issues alongside SEO problems.
When Your Law Firm Needs an Audit
Consider a law firm SEO audit if you're experiencing:
- Declining organic traffic over the past 6+ months
- Competitors consistently outranking you for key terms
- Website redesign within the last year (migrations often break SEO)
- New practice areas you want to rank for
- Switching from another SEO vendor
- No meaningful organic leads despite having a website for years
Technical SEO Audit for Law Firms
Technical SEO is the foundation. If search engines can't properly crawl and index your site, nothing else matters.
Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
Google's Core Web Vitals measure user experience through three metrics:
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): How fast your main content loads. Target: under 2.5 seconds. Law firm sites often fail here due to large hero images and unoptimized attorney photos.
First Input Delay (FID): How quickly your site responds to interactions. Heavy chat widgets and third-party scripts (common on legal sites) often cause issues.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): Visual stability as the page loads. Those "Schedule a Consultation" pop-ups can wreck your CLS score.
Use Google's PageSpeed Insights to test your key pages: homepage, main practice area pages, and contact page.
Mobile Usability for Legal Sites
Over 60% of legal searches happen on mobile devices. Yet many law firm websites were designed desktop-first and hastily adapted for mobile.
Common mobile issues on legal sites:
- Phone numbers not clickable (tap-to-call)
- Forms too small or complex for mobile completion
- Attorney bio pages with tiny, unreadable text
- Navigation menus that don't work on touchscreens
- Chat widgets covering critical content
Schema Markup for Attorneys
Schema markup helps search engines understand your content. For law firms, implement:
LocalBusiness Schema: Include your firm name, address, phone, hours, and service areas.
Attorney Schema: Mark up individual attorney pages with credentials, bar admissions, and areas of practice.
FAQ Schema: If you have FAQ sections on practice area pages, mark them up for potential featured snippets.
Review Schema: Display star ratings in search results (when you have reviews to show).
Local SEO Audit for Law Firms
For most law firms, local SEO is where cases come from. A client searching "divorce attorney near me" has high intent and immediate need.
Google Business Profile Completeness Check
Your Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) audit should verify:
Basic Information: Correct NAP (Name, Address, Phone), website URL, and hours. Inconsistencies hurt rankings.
Categories: Primary category should be specific (e.g., "Personal Injury Attorney" not just "Lawyer"). Add relevant secondary categories.
Services: List all practice areas with descriptions. Google uses this for matching searches.
Photos: Office exterior, interior, team photos, and attorney headshots. Profiles with photos get 42% more direction requests.
Posts: Regular GBP posts signal an active business. Share case results (anonymized), legal tips, and firm news.
Q&A: Seed your own questions and provide authoritative answers about your practice.
Citation Consistency Across Legal Directories
Citations are mentions of your firm's NAP across the web. Inconsistencies confuse search engines and hurt local rankings.
Priority legal directories to audit:
- Avvo
- FindLaw
- Justia
- Martindale-Hubbell
- Super Lawyers
- Lawyers.com
- State and local bar association directories
- Yelp (yes, people find lawyers on Yelp)
Check each listing for exact NAP match with your Google Business Profile. Even small differences ("Street" vs "St.") can cause issues.
Local Keyword Rankings by Practice Area
Track rankings for location-modified keywords in each practice area:
- "[Practice area] lawyer [city]"
- "[Practice area] attorney near me"
- "Best [practice area] lawyer in [city]"
- "[City] [practice area] law firm"
Use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, or BrightLocal to track these over time. Rankings fluctuate, so monthly tracking reveals trends.
Content Audit for Legal Websites
Content drives organic traffic. A content audit identifies what's working, what's thin, and what's missing entirely.
Practice Area Page Evaluation
Each practice area page should be evaluated for:
Depth: Can a potential client understand your approach and expertise? Thin 300-word pages don't rank. Comprehensive pages (1,500+ words) covering the topic thoroughly perform better.
Structure: Proper heading hierarchy (H1, H2, H3) helps both users and search engines understand your content.
Internal Links: Practice area pages should link to related blog posts, sub-practice pages, and relevant attorney bios.
Calls to Action: Clear next steps for potential clients. Phone number, contact form, chat option.
E-E-A-T Signals: Author bylines, attorney credentials, case results, client testimonials.
Blog Content: What's Working, What's Thin
Analyze your blog posts by:
Traffic: Which posts actually bring in organic visitors? Double down on those topics.
Conversions: Traffic without conversions is vanity. Which posts lead to contact form submissions?
Word Count: Posts under 500 words rarely rank for competitive legal terms. Consider consolidating thin posts into comprehensive guides.
Freshness: Legal information changes. Posts about "2019 Personal Injury Laws" need updating or removing.
Duplicate Content Issues in Multi-Location Firms
Multi-location law firms often create duplicate content problems by:
- Copying practice area content across location pages
- Using the same attorney bios on multiple office pages
- Creating thin location pages that differ only in city name
Each location page needs unique, locally-relevant content. Mention local courts, judges (carefully), community involvement, and location-specific case results.
Backlink Profile Audit for Lawyers
Backlinks remain a top ranking factor. For law firms, link quality matters far more than quantity.
Identifying Toxic Links from Old SEO Vendors
Many law firms worked with questionable SEO vendors in the past who built spammy links. These can actively hurt your rankings.
Red flags to look for:
- Links from unrelated foreign websites
- Exact-match anchor text spam ("best personal injury lawyer Houston" repeated dozens of times)
- Links from obvious link farms or private blog networks
- Directory links from sites that no longer exist or look abandoned
- Comment spam links
Use Google's Disavow Tool to distance yourself from toxic links, but use it carefully—disavowing good links hurts you.
Competitor Backlink Gap Analysis
Understanding where competitors get links reveals opportunities for your firm.
Common law firm link sources to evaluate:
- Legal directory profiles
- Local business associations
- Bar association pages
- Alumni associations
- Speaking engagements and conferences
- Local news coverage
- Guest posts on legal blogs
- Sponsorships of local events or charities
If a competitor has links you don't, those represent obtainable opportunities.
DIY Law Firm SEO Audit Checklist
You can conduct a basic audit yourself using free tools. Here's where to start:
Free Tools You Can Use Today
Google Search Console: Free data directly from Google. Check for crawl errors, indexing issues, and keyword rankings.
Google PageSpeed Insights: Test page speed and Core Web Vitals for any URL.
Google's Mobile-Friendly Test: Verify mobile usability issues.
Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs): Crawl your site to find broken links, missing meta tags, and duplicate content.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Free backlink data and site health checks.
Google Business Profile Insights: See how people find and interact with your GBP listing.
When to Bring in a Professional
DIY audits have limits. Consider professional help when:
- You've done basic fixes but rankings aren't improving
- Competitors with seemingly worse websites outrank you
- You've been hit by a Google penalty (manual action in Search Console)
- Your site has technical complexity (multiple locations, practice management integrations)
- You don't have time to implement fixes yourself
A professional law firm SEO audit goes deeper than free tools allow and provides actionable recommendations specific to legal marketing.
The legal industry is competitive online. Firms that understand and fix their SEO issues capture the clients that others miss. Whether you DIY your audit or bring in experts, the important thing is to start—because your competitors already have.
Related Reading:
SEO for Personal Injury Lawyers: The Complete Guide
Family Law Digital Marketing Strategies
Law Firm SEO Services
