Law Firm SEO: Experience, Case Results and Plain Answers

Key takeaways

Legal topics are YMYL: Google's raters hold them to the highest trust standard.
Attorney bios should prove experience with facts: admissions, years, practice focus, notable work.
Case results need context and disclaimers to stay within ABA Model Rule 7.1.
Write answers the way a lawyer explains things to a worried client: short, plain and specific to the state.

Why is legal content held to a higher standard?

Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines treat topics that can affect someone's finances, safety or welfare as Your Money or Your Life. Legal advice fits that description, so raters look hard for experience, expertise, authority and above all trust. Thin pages written by anonymous authors struggle, however well they are optimized.

The rater guidelines put it plainly: trust is the most important part of E-E-A-T, because untrustworthy pages have low E-E-A-T however expert they look. For a law firm, trust is built with names, credentials, dates and honest limits.

What makes an attorney bio rank and convert?

Specific, checkable facts. Bar admissions and the year, courts admitted to, practice areas and how long the lawyer has handled them, languages, publications and speaking, and the kinds of matters they handle most. Add a real photo and a short note in the lawyer's own voice about how they work with clients.

Link every article to the attorney who wrote or reviewed it, and link the bio back. A reader, and a search engine, should be able to see who stands behind each answer.

Case results and prior work within the rules

Results are persuasive, which is exactly why bar rules watch them. ABA Model Rule 7.1 prohibits false or misleading communications, including true statements that create unjustified expectations. Model Rule 7.2 restricts paying for recommendations and claiming to be a certified specialist unless the certifying body is approved and clearly named. States adopt their own versions, so the firm's rules always win.

Describe the facts and the outcome, not just the dollar figure.
Add the firm's standard disclaimer that past results do not guarantee future outcomes.
Get the client's consent and the firm's sign-off before publishing any matter.
Never write "specialist" or "expert" unless the firm confirms it is allowed in that state.

How should conversational legal content be written?

Write each page around one real question a client asks, in the words they use, and answer it in the first two sentences. Then explain the steps, deadlines and exceptions for that state, and say clearly when someone should talk to a lawyer. Plain language and a direct answer help readers and make the text easy to quote.

Good sources of questions: intake call notes, the questions paralegals hear every week and the firm's own email inbox. "Do I need a lawyer for a minor car accident in Texas?" is a better page than "Car Accident Lawyer Services." These answers are also what AI search tools quote, which we cover in how AI Overviews affect clients.

What about reviews and citations?

Ask happy clients for reviews honestly and never pay for them or offer discounts in exchange. Google's Maps policy bans paid and incentivized reviews, and the FTC rule on consumer reviews bans fake reviews and review suppression. Keep the firm's name, address and phone identical on every directory and legal listing.

See Google's Maps content policy and the FTC's 16 CFR Part 465. Mark up the firm with LegalService; Schema.org has deprecated the older Attorney type in its favor.

Delivering it white label

We write and review legal content inside your agency's process, with attorney approval before anything goes live. The full program is on white label law firm SEO, and our E-E-A-T content brief shows what we ask the firm for. It is all part of our white label SEO services.

Frequently asked questions

Can a law firm publish case results?

Usually yes, with context, client consent and a disclaimer, and only in the way the firm's state bar rules allow.

Who should write legal content?

A writer can draft it, but an attorney at the firm should review and approve every page and be named on it.

Is the Attorney schema type still valid?

Schema.org marks Attorney as deprecated and recommends LegalService, which is more inclusive.

Can a law firm offer a gift for reviews?

No. Google's Maps policy bans incentives for reviews, and bar rules on paying for recommendations may also apply.

How long should a legal answer page be?

Long enough to answer the question fully for that state, with the direct answer in the first two sentences.

About the author

Juan José Giraldo is a senior SEO specialist with 5+ years of experience. He works on technical and local SEO for 600+ US car dealerships and supervises the SEO of 18 US e-commerce stores. He runs White Label SEO LATAM from Medellín, Colombia, and delivers white label SEO for agencies in the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Read more · LinkedIn.

Law firm SEO built on trust: experience, results and plain answers.