10 Things to Consider Before Hiring an SEO Company for Your Law Firm
Choosing the right SEO partner can be one of the
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Choosing the right SEO partner can be one of the most important decisions a law firm makes. The right agency can help your firm dominate competitive markets, attract high-value cases, and build long-term brand authority. The wrong one can cost you thousands and leave you with little to show for it.
Below are the 10 most important things to consider before hiring a law firm SEO company, including what matters today across Google, Bing, and the growing influence of large language models such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini.
Law is different. Competition is higher, keywords are more expensive, and the strategies required to rank in personal injury, employment law, family law, criminal defense law, and mass torts demand deeper, more specialized execution.
Before hiring an SEO company for your law firm, look for proven rankings in competitive markets such as:
• Personal injury lawyer Los Angeles
• Car accident lawyer Atlanta
• Divorce attorney Houston
• Employment lawyer NYC
Most agencies can show easy wins for restaurants and e-commerce. Law requires a different level of expertise, and a company that has ranked lawyers in highly competitive metros will always outperform a generalist.
Attorney Marketing Network has ranked firms across PI, mass torts, criminal, immigration, family, bankruptcy, and employment law in some of the toughest markets in the country.
One of the biggest mistakes firms make is assuming SEO is one thing. It is actually two separate, essential channels.
This covers Google Business Profile, Maps rankings, local pack visibility, reviews, NAP consistency, and location authority.
Local SEO captures people who have immediate legal needs, including emergency PI calls, criminal defense situations, and family law emergencies.
This includes long-form content, backlinks, practice area pages, authority building, and national rankings.
Organic SEO builds long-term authority and drives sustained traffic.
You need both to compete.
You hire an SEO company because ranking a law firm requires:
• Legal content expertise
• Competitor analysis
• Technical SEO audits
• Schema
• Link building
• Call tracking
• Conversion optimization
• Google Business optimization
• Consistency month after month
In-house teams rarely have the full skill set or the time required to compete at a high level.
Hiring a dedicated law firm SEO agency gives you a full team, established processes, and proven legal experience at a much more efficient cost.
Some firms consider doing SEO in-house, but the cost and workload add up quickly.
• A writer
• A technical SEO specialist
• A strategist
• A designer
• A developer
• A link-building resource
• A reporting analyst
This often adds up to two hundred and fifty thousand to four hundred thousand dollars per year.
• Significantly lower cost
• Proven legal industry performance
• Immediate execution
• No training or hiring
• Full team included
• Established processes
• Scalable growth
Most firms end up switching to AMN after realizing how difficult and expensive it is to run SEO internally.
SEO is the only channel that becomes more profitable over time. Benefits include:
• Lower cost per case compared to PPC
• Long-term lead generation
• Increased brand authority
• More calls from Google Business Profile
• Stronger client trust
• Higher conversion rates
• Compounding traffic
• Protection from competitors
SEO is the foundation of long-term growth.
Search has evolved. Clients now use tools like:
• ChatGPT
• Perplexity
• Google AI Overviews
• Google Gemini
• Bing AI
• Grok
• Claude
• Apple Intelligence
People use these tools to research legal topics, compare attorneys, and seek quick summaries. These models rely on authority signals, press mentions, structured data, and trusted sources.
The SEO you do today directly influences how LLMs view your law firm.
Right now:
• Less than one percent of website traffic comes from LLM search
• Usage is increasing faster than any other search technology
• Ninety-five percent of AI users still use Google
• Users who adopt ChatGPT actually increase their Google searches
• LLM searches are more research driven than intent driven
The key point is this:
You must have strong SEO to appear in LLM results.
If you do not rank in Google and Bing, LLMs often do not see your content at all.
Realistically, in competitive practice areas, no.
Even if you write good content, you still need:
• Internal linking
• Schema markup
• Backlinks
• Site speed optimization
• E E A T signals
• Local citations
• Optimized GBP
• Mobile speed
• Authority signals
It is also important to note that LLMs mostly crawl what already ranks. If you are not on page one, most AI models will not index or surface your firm.
Traditional SEO is still required to get into the ecosystem that powers AI search.
Even if your clients do not use Bing directly, the AI tools they rely on absolutely do.
Reasons Bing is important now:
• ChatGPT uses Bing for real time search
• OpenAI indexes Bing data
• Bing feeds information into CoPilot
• Multiple AI tools pull from Bing’s index
• Bing is gaining fast in AI related search traffic
Ranking on Bing increases your visibility across ChatGPT, CoPilot, and other tools.
Modern SEO goes far beyond keywords.
LLMs look for:
• Brand mentions
• Directory citations
• Press features
• Backlinks from trusted sites
• Structured data
• Long-form legal content
• Reviews
• Consistency across the web
These factors determine whether an LLM considers your firm authoritative or safe to recommend.
Generic agencies do not understand legal authority. A specialized team does.
Google pulls from:
• Authoritative websites
• Structured data
• Depth of topic coverage
• E E A T
• Backlinks
• Internal linking
ChatGPT favors:
• Legal citations
• Structured content
• Authority signals
• Bing indexability
• Reputable sources
Perplexity uses:
• Citations
• Press Features
• Structured Data
• Content Clarity
• Freshness
Gemini favors:
• Comprehensive long-form content
• Content clusters
• Structured data
• Legal explanations
• Well-organized websites
Bing relies on:
• Entity recognition
• Authority signals
• Reviews
• Citations
• Backlinks
The fundamentals still matter.
• You cannot appear in LLM search unless you appear in traditional search.
• You cannot dominate Google unless your local and organic SEO are strong.
• You cannot build authority without structured content and citations.
Hiring a legal focused SEO team is a requirement for competing today and in the future.
Attorney Marketing Network offers:
• Over 15 years of legal marketing experience
• Proven rankings in competitive metros
• Full-service local and organic SEO
• Content written by legal specialists
• A strategy designed to generate signed cases
• Optimization for Google, Bing, and LLM discovery
• Transparent reporting and real data
• Long-term, compounding SEO growth
We understand the legal landscape, the competitive markets, and the new AI driven search ecosystem. We know exactly what it takes to win today and what it will take to win moving forward.
Scaling the Digital Reach of David Resnick & Associates, P.C. for Business Growth
