Law firm SEO is the work of getting a firm found, on Google’s map and in its ordinary results, by people searching for the kind of legal help the firm gives, in the places where it gives it. Lawyer SEO is the same work under another name. What sets it apart from SEO for other businesses is that every page, profile and ad a firm publishes is a communication about a lawyer’s services, and the conduct rules of the firm’s state apply to each one.
We are a marketing agency, not a law firm, and nothing on this page is legal advice. Advernation was started in Queens in 2007 by Christopher Maddaloni, a former electrician, and works from 1115 Broadway in Manhattan. We write for law firms in plain words, we promise no outcome on a firm’s behalf, and a lawyer at the firm approves everything before it is published.
Tell us your practice areas and the counties you take matters in. We will show you which firms hold those searches today and what it would take to appear beside them.
Who this page is for
This page is for a firm of any practice that wants more of the right inquiries from search: family, criminal defense, immigration, estates, real estate, bankruptcy, employment, business and the rest. Injury firms have rules and a market of their own, so they have their own page: SEO for personal injury lawyers.
How people search for a lawyer
People search for a lawyer by the problem, and the problem decides how fast they act. Google’s pay-per-lead program sorts lawyers by kind, from bankruptcy and business law to tax and traffic, and those names are a fair map of the searches. They fall into three groups.
- Urgent matters. An arrest, a DUI charge, an eviction notice, a deadline in immigration court. The search is short, made on a phone, often at night, and the person calls the first firm that looks able to help. The map results and a phone that is answered decide these.
- Considered matters. A divorce, a will or a trust, a house closing, a bankruptcy. The person reads for days, compares two or three firms and looks each one up by name. Clear practice pages and attorney pages decide these.
- Business matters. A contract, a lease, a trademark, an employment dispute. The buyer is an owner or an in-house lawyer, at a desk, and usually arrives with a name from a referral. What they find when they search that name either confirms the referral or ends it.
The keyword research starts by sorting the firm’s practices into these groups, because each needs different pages.
The conduct rules, in short
In New York the rules on lawyer communications were amended effective June 1, 2026, and the standard is now one sentence long. Rule 7.1 says a lawyer shall not make a false or misleading communication about the lawyer or the lawyer’s services, and that a lawyer may communicate information regarding those services through any media. The rules that weigh most on injury firms, on solicitation and on paying for clients, are set out on our personal injury page and are not repeated here. Four other points shape the everyday work for any firm.
- Past results. The State Bar’s comment to Rule 7.1 says a truthful report of a lawyer’s achievements may still mislead if it leads a reasonable person to expect the same result in their own matter. We write about what the firm does, not what a client will get.
- Fields of practice. Rule 7.1(c) bars stating or implying that a lawyer is certified as a specialist unless an approved or accredited organization granted the certification and the communication names it. The comment says a lawyer is generally permitted to say that he or she concentrates in a field, subject to the same false-or-misleading standard. We use the wording the firm’s lawyers choose.
- Names and domains. Rule 7.5 says a firm shall not practice under a false, deceptive or misleading trade name or domain name. The comment allows a descriptive trade name or domain that is accurate, and gives the example of a name built from a city and a practice for a firm that practices that law in that city.
- Contact information. Rule 7.1(d) requires the name and contact information of at least one responsible lawyer or firm on any communication. The comment says that should always include a telephone number or a physical office address.
The comments are the State Bar’s and were not adopted by the courts, so we treat them as guidance and the firm’s lawyers have the last word. Other states have their own rules. We work to the rules of the state where the firm practices and ask the firm to confirm our reading of them.
Local SEO for law firms and the map
For a search with a place in it, Google shows three firms on a map before anything else. It says it chooses them mainly by relevance, distance and prominence, and prominence counts reviews and links from other websites. Google also says a better local ranking cannot be requested or bought.
Two of Google’s own rules matter more for lawyers than for most businesses. The first is the name. A profile must carry the firm’s real-world name, and adding unnecessary information to it is not permitted, so a practice word or a city goes in the name only if it is truly part of the name on the door. That fits Rule 7.5: an accurate trade name the firm really practices under can be the profile’s name, and an invented one cannot.
The second is the lawyers themselves. Google counts lawyers among individual practitioners, who may each have a profile of their own if they are public-facing and can be reached directly at the verified location during stated hours. The firm keeps a separate profile, and a practitioner’s profile carries only the practitioner’s name. A lawyer should not hold several profiles to cover several specializations. A practitioner profile can also compete with the firm’s own listing, so we decide lawyer by lawyer with the firm.
The website and its pages
A law firm’s site needs one full page for each practice it wants found, and inside the larger practices, one for each matter type. “Family law” is a practice. Uncontested divorce, custody and orders of protection are the searches. Each page says, in the client’s words, what the firm does in that matter, what the first conversation covers, what it costs to have that conversation and what to bring. It names the lawyer responsible and links to that lawyer’s page.
Attorney pages carry more weight for a law firm than staff pages do anywhere else, because the client is hiring a person. Each states where the lawyer is admitted, what they handle and their experience, accurately and without adjectives.
Location pages are written only for places where the firm has something true to say: an office, the courts it appears in, the agencies it deals with. Google’s spam policies call the other kind doorway abuse, pages made to rank for similar searches that all funnel the visitor to one place.
Intake is part of the website. New York’s Rule 1.18 protects what a prospective client tells a lawyer in a consultation, with exceptions the firm’s lawyers know better than we do. We treat every form entry, call recording and chat transcript as if it were covered: we set up tracking so that the content of an inquiry is not sent to ad platforms or analytics, and we ask the firm to name who may see it.
Reviews for a law firm
Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help a local ranking, requires that reviews reflect a genuine experience, and treats an incentive offered in exchange for a review as prohibited. Within that, a firm may ask clients for a review with a link when a matter closes. Clients in some practices, criminal defense and family law among them, would rather not be named in public, and we plan for fewer reviews there.
Replies need more care than requests. Rule 1.6 says a lawyer shall not knowingly reveal confidential information, and a reply that corrects a reviewer’s account of a matter can do exactly that. We draft replies that thank the reviewer or invite a call and say nothing about the matter, and the firm approves each one.
Law firm marketing beyond SEO
Law firm marketing is everything that brings a prospective client from a search to a signed engagement, and SEO is one part of it. Paid search comes first for urgent practices: Google’s pay-per-lead ads charge for a lead instead of a click, and Google requires a state bar license check for each lawyer of that kind in the firm before the ads run. Their order comes from an auction that weighs the bid, the rating, the number of reviews and response time. Search ads cover what those miss. Both are run under our Google Ads management.
The website is the second part. If the present one is slow, hard to read on a phone or built so that a page cannot be corrected the day a lawyer asks, we rebuild it under web design. The third is how the firm appears when someone asks an AI assistant instead of typing a search. Google says its AI features need no special optimization, only pages that are indexed and can be shown with a snippet. See AI search optimization. Social media is the smallest part, and whatever we post through social media marketing is approved first.
The SEO, marketing and paid search work on this page is done for a set fee, and the calls it produces come to the firm’s own number. We take no share of a legal fee.
What we do, month by month
| When | What we do | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Month one | Audit of the site and the profiles, with a read for statements the conduct rules would not allow. The firm’s practices sorted into urgent, considered and business searches, with the firms ranking for each. Tracking for calls and forms into intake. | The plan, the list of searches, and the wording that has to be corrected. |
| Months two and three | Practice and matter pages and attorney pages drafted, sent to the firm’s lawyer, corrected and published. Firm and practitioner profiles set up within Google’s rules. Listings made consistent. Review requests, if the firm wants them. | Approved pages live and inquiries logged by practice and by source. |
| Months four to six | Client questions answered on the site under a lawyer’s review. Pages for real locations. Links from bar, community and press sources. Ads for the urgent practices, if wanted. | Positions moving on the searches chosen, with intake numbers beside them. |
| Every month after | New pages and articles, review replies for approval, corrections when the rules, the firm or its lawyers change. | One report: inquiries, calls, positions, traffic. |
What law firm SEO costs and how to judge a quote
Judge a quote by signed matters. A firm knows roughly how many inquiries it takes to open one matter in each practice and what that matter is worth to it on average. A year’s fees divided by that average is the number of additional matters the work must bring in a year. If nobody can tell you how matters will be counted, the quote cannot be judged.
We quote monthly SEO plans for law firms after the free audit, with no contract. Get a quote.
The SEO audit is free. Google Ads management is from $500 per cycle, where a cycle is one test of a campaign and the firm sets its length: a day, a week or a month. Re-targeting is from $400. The pricing page keeps these together.
What we need from the firm
We need access to the website, the Business Profiles and any ad account. We need one lawyer who approves content promptly. We need the practices and counties the firm wants and those it does not, the state or states whose rules govern its communications, and a monthly count of inquiries that became clients.
What we can and cannot show
The one law firm result we publish is this pair of map grids. It comes from an injury search, the client is not named, and we will not name a firm until it agrees. We have published nothing for other practices, so for a family, criminal or business firm we show the method and the audit instead. We will not promise a position, since Google says no one can guarantee a first place ranking, and we will not promise clients.
Related pages: local SEO services for the map, the New York SEO company page for firms in the city, and the other industries we work with. Other fields where the advertising itself is regulated have pages too: healthcare marketing, real estate marketing and dispensary marketing.
Ask for the free audit of your firm’s site and profile, or call us and tell us which practice you want to grow.
Questions people ask
What is law firm SEO?
It is the work of ranking a firm in Google’s map results and ordinary results for searches by practice and place, and of making sure that what people find when they look the firm up by name is accurate. It is also called lawyer SEO or attorney SEO.
What does a law firm marketing agency do?
It runs the parts that bring a prospective client from a search to the firm’s intake: SEO, the Business Profile and reviews, the website, paid search and a careful presence on social media. For a law firm all of it has to follow the conduct rules, so a lawyer at the firm approves each piece.
Is law firm marketing allowed under the ethics rules?
Yes. New York’s Rule 7.1 says a lawyer may communicate information regarding the lawyer’s services through any media. What it prohibits is a false or misleading communication.
How long does lawyer SEO take?
Plan on three to six months before the first clear movement in the ordinary results and about a year to judge it. Changes to a Business Profile show sooner. Google’s guidance is that some changes take effect in a few hours and others take several months.
Should each lawyer have a Google Business Profile?
Sometimes. Google allows a public-facing lawyer who can be reached directly at the office during stated hours to have a profile, separate from the firm’s. We decide it lawyer by lawyer with the firm.
Do you sell leads to law firms?
No. We do the SEO, the Business Profile and the ads for a set fee, and the calls come to the firm’s own number. We take no share of a legal fee and no payment tied to how a matter ends.
Do you work with firms outside New York?
Yes, on one condition: the firm tells us which state’s rules govern its communications and confirms our reading of them. Advertising rules for lawyers differ from state to state.