Law Firm SEO Audit: DIY Guide

What is An SEO Audit?

An SEO audit for a law firm looks at the website and online presence to improve search rankings and bring in more clients. It checks the website’s performance, use of keywords, content quality, and backlinks.

The goal is to find and fix problems that lower search visibility and to make a plan to strengthen online authority, making SEO for attorneys more effective and less prone to errors.

Collaborating with On The Map Marketing SEO Director, Victor Perez, I created this guide on how to effectively implement an SEO audit for your law firm.

Why Should Lawyers Do SEO Audit?

Lawyers should conduct an SEO audit to ensure that no technical or content-related problems affect their online visibility.

For instance, an SEO audit can boost a law firm’s website ranking by finding and fixing broken internal links. Tools scan the site to detect 404 errors. Repairing these links helps search engines navigate and index all pages. This shows Google that the site is well-maintained and enhances user experience, leading to higher search rankings.

How Often Should Law Firms Conduct An SEO Audit?

Our SEO experts recommend doing an SEO audit monthly. Tools like Ahrefs can make this process easier and provide a comprehensive report on everything you need to fix on your law firm’s website.

Focus on checking all backlinks, including new ones as well as those that are tagged as possible spam or bad links.

Also, it’s important to check if any of your pages moved up (or down) the Search and Maps ranking so you can take the necessary action and adjust your strategy.

In addition to monthly audits, you should also check for SEO errors when:

• Your website developer made changes to the site
• New content is published

How Should Law Firms Conduct An SEO Audit?

Ahrefs is one of the most used tools to do an SEO audit easily. It gives an overview of your site’s overall health score, domain rating, backlinks, and ranking keywords.

Ahref’s free Webmaster Tools gives a useful overview of your site’s SEO health, including:

• Health score – The percentage of internal URLs on your site without errors
• Issues distribution – Critical SEO issues categorized by severity (Errors – Red; Warnings – Yellow; Notices – Blue)
• Crawled URLs distribution – Total number of crawled URLs in your site categorized by:
  • Resource URLs – Files like images, CSS stylesheets, JavaScript, and other assets
  • Internal URLs – Links that point from one page to another on your website
• Crawled status of links found – Total number of links crawled vs. uncrawled

Below this section is the Top Issues tab, where you’ll find the most critical SEO issues found on your site.

Note that this data should be checked with your first-party data in Google Analytics.

Content and On-Page SEO Audits

• Evaluate the quality of existing content

Part of an SEO audit is looking at current content and understanding what works and what doesn’t. Use tools like Ahrefs and Google Search Console (GSC) to find ways to improve your page’s visibility and get more traffic.

Here’s how to do it:

Identify High and Low-Performing Keywords

In the example below, the keyword list shows which ones are ranking well, as shown in the Position column.

Start by using Ahrefs and Google Search Console to see which keywords your page is already ranking well for. This helps you understand its strong points.

Then, look at keywords that aren’t doing well. These are the ones to focus on for optimization.

Track Keyword Performance Over Time with GSC

In Google Search Console, check how specific keywords for your page have performed over several months. This data helps you spot trends.

Sort your data by clicks to quickly find keywords that are losing performance, as well as those that have always performed poorly.

Create an Optimization List

As you find underperforming or promising keywords, add them to a list. This list will be your plan for making on-page changes.

Once you have your list, you can assign these changes to your team. This helps the page rank for more relevant keywords.

Next, compare the traffic your page gets to that of a similar page from another law firm. Your goal is to rank and get more traffic than your competitors, which builds your online authority and reach.

• Audit content types: Service pages vs. blog posts
  
  A strong online presence needs a clear content plan. This includes service pages and blog posts. Making both match your area is important for SEO success.

Here’s what to check when auditing your law firm’s content for SEO:

• Service pages – These pages are the heart of your online presence. They clearly explain the legal services you offer, such as personal injury or family law. Personal injury law firm Farah & Farah makes their service and location pages easily accessible on their website’s home page.
  
  
• Local pages: For each type of case, make sure your law firm has a service page for every area where you are licensed and active.

For example, if your firm handles personal injury cases in Los Angeles and San Francisco, have specific pages for each city. This helps search engines match you with local clients.

• Blog Posts – Blog posts answer important questions that potential clients have, like what to do after a car accident or understanding child custody laws. They build trust, educate readers, and attract new visitors. Use local examples in your blog posts to better connect with your target audience, like this one from a California-based family law firm, Wade Litigation.
  
  
• Creating quality content that contains original research (not AI)
  
  Creating strong SEO content depends on one key thing: quality. Some law firms take a shortcut but miss the mark by using AI or writers who aren’t experts.

This often means the content lacks legal details or solid facts. It ends up being generic and repeats what others have said.

To stand out, your content needs fresh insights. Focus your keyword research to come up with relevant, unique content that helps establish authority and trust with your audience.

This blog post from the New York personal injury law firm, Salenger, Sack, Kimmel & Bavaro, LLP, is a catchy topic.

Technical and Local SEO Audits

SEO audits also look into other technical issues with a website. Here are some common problems:

• Unnecessary plugins
  
  Check if you’re using too many plugins for main site functions. Plugins are easy to use, but they can cause security problems, slow down the site, and not work well with other parts of the site.
• Avoid automation in creating pages or translations
  
  It’s also best not to use automated language translations or quick, automatic page creation. These shortcuts often lead to broken features or poor-quality content. When search engines find these problems, it can stop them from properly indexing the site, making all SEO work ineffective. Quality and accuracy are more important than automation when building a strong online presence.
• Analyze local SEO performance using Ahrefs and TrackRight
  
  Evaluating a law firm’s local SEO performance requires several steps to ensure everything is covered.

Here’s how a comprehensive audit is typically conducted:

• Ranking analysis – Look at the pages of your site that rank on page 1 of Google for specific case types. Compare this to other law firms that serve the same case types and geographic areas, and identify gaps that you can close to keep your site one step ahead.
• Local visibility – Utilize geogrids to visualize your firm’s search rankings across specific localized areas. Tools like TrackRight are invaluable for checking overall search ranks and identifying competitive gaps.
  
  
• Relevant metrics – It’s essential to get detailed information on leads generated and, more importantly, leads closed. This data allows for directly comparing SEO success against the monthly marketing spend.
• Cost per case closed – A key metric for determining success is the cost of each case closed that originated from SEO efforts. You can use this metric as a benchmark against other law firms or compare it to the cost-effectiveness of other marketing methods you might be using.

What Are The Most Common SEO Pitfalls for Law Firms?

• Basic blog posting rather than comprehensive campaigns. Some law firms hire content providers that deliver articles by the piece. This doesn’t contribute to a holistic content marketing strategy and can have underwhelming results.
• Hiring an agency that outsources its SEO. This can happen without law firms realizing it, and can lead to poor quality control and inconsistent progress. The agency working with the law firm often doesn’t know what the outsourced provider is doing, which is never an ideal setup.
• Lack of a comprehensive strategy for link building and PR. Not having a clear plan for link building and public relations is a big problem. In big, competitive cities, making real progress without a strong team working on getting good online mentions is challenging. PR and links help a lot with building authority and being seen. Without actively working to get these valuable endorsements, a firm’s online presence will have trouble standing out. This effort is needed to build the domain authority required to rank for high-competition keywords.

What Are The Most Impactful SEO Audit Findings?

Here are some valuable insights gathered from doing SEO audits for our law firm clients:

• Prioritize Detailed Content Research. Don’t use generic blog post ideas. Researching specific topics helps your content meet client needs and beat competitors.
• Invest in Strategic Link Building. High-quality backlinks are like votes from trusted sites. They increase your firm’s authority and improve search rankings.
• Avoid Cheap Citation Services. Low-cost citations may seem appealing, but they often don’t help in the long run and can damage your local SEO. Use accurate, high-quality directory listings for better results.
• Embrace a Comprehensive Website Optimization. Adding a few blog posts isn’t enough. You need a complete strategy to optimize your entire website for effective SEO.
• Cater to Non-English Speaking Users. Ignoring multilingual clients means missing out on a large part of your potential audience. Expanding your language options can help you grow.
• Choose Professional Website Development. DIY website builders often lack the SEO features and customization needed for a competitive legal market. A professionally built site gives you a solid foundation.
• Differentiate Your Local SEO Strategy. Copying your competitors’ local SEO tactics can lead to no progress. Find unique ways or focus on specific areas to stand out.

Make Your SEO Audits Work for You

To truly enhance a law firm’s online presence, SEO audits must be thorough, leading to a strong strategy for improved performance. These audits reveal critical issues that, when addressed, can significantly affect a firm’s visibility and client acquisition.

Don’t settle for basic SEO efforts that yield minimal results. Instead, collaborate with experts to unlock your firm’s full potential. Hire On The Map Marketing today for a customized SEO audit and let us resolve your SEO issues to drive substantial growth for your law firm.

Contact us for a professional law firm SEO audit—let’s get your site ranking where it belongs.