Law firm SEO audit: a 14-check list you can run yourself

This guide is for a partner, solo or marketing lead at a US firm whose website seems stuck, or who was offered a "free SEO audit." We wrote it with personal injury, immigration, family and criminal defense firms in mind.

For a first pass, use Search Console for indexing, a phone speed test, your Business Profile for calls, and a few AI questions. Rishabh spent four years running intake, marketing and systems inside law firms before Naelar. The order of checks is our judgment from that work, and the pass tests come from Google's own documentation.

What is a law firm SEO audit, and what should it give you?

A good audit gives you three things, which matches Google's own description of one:^[1]

• What is broken.
• In what order to fix it.
• How much work each fix is.

A report that is only a score, or a long list with no order, has not done the job.

Many "free audit" offers are how an agency starts a sales conversation about a paid plan. That is fine, but you can run the same first pass yourself in an afternoon.

Google gives one warning about access. If you do let a company audit you, "only grant read access to Search Console (at this stage, don't grant them write access)."^[1] Our guide on how to choose a law firm SEO company covers the rest of that choice.

One check comes before all the others: who holds the logins. Your Business Profile, Search Console, analytics and website should be in the firm's name, and the firm should own them. If an old agency or a former employee holds them, fix that first.

How do I score my own firm?

Score each check as a pass or "not yet," then fix the areas in the order of the tables below, starting with the first "not yet." There are five areas and 14 checks. Your score is the number of passes. It is our simple count, with no weights and no points for rank.

Can Google find your pages, and do they say what they are? (checks 1 to 6)

Is the site fast, and are your profile and AI search ready? (checks 7 to 11)

Are your calls and forms counted? (checks 12 to 14)

The areas run in a deliberate order. A page Google has not indexed cannot be helped by a better title, so the first group comes first. The rest of this guide takes each area in turn.

Can Google find and index my pages?

Check the status first, then the reason. Google's Page indexing report "shows how many URLs on your site have been crawled and indexed by Google."^[2] Start with a quick search: type site: and your domain into Google. Google's starter guide says "If you see results pointing to your site, you're in the index."^[3]

Then check your five main service pages one at a time. Type each address into the search bar at the top of Search Console, which opens URL Inspection.^[12] The Page indexing report gives the totals but cannot look up one page.^[2] If a page is not indexed, URL Inspection gives the reason, in the same names the Page indexing report uses.

A page can be missing for a deliberate reason, so check the cause before you change anything. Follow the order below.

1. Inspect the pageType its address into the search bar at the top of Search Console.
2. Does it say "URL is on Google"?
   • YesThe page is found. Go to the page and speed checks.
   • NoRead the reason Google gives under the result.
3. Was it left out on purpose?A noindex rule makes Google "drop that page entirely from Google Search results, regardless of whether other sites link to it."^[4]
4. Fix, then inspect againAsk your web developer for the change, then re-check the page in URL Inspection.

One trap is a robots.txt file that blocks a page. That is not the same as noindex. Google says a blocked page "can still appear in search results, for example if other pages link to it."^[4] To keep a page out, use noindex and do not block it in robots.txt.

On sitemaps, Google says you may not need one if your site is small ("about 500 pages or fewer") and "comprehensively linked internally."^[5] A typical firm site is well under that size.

A worked example from our own site

This is our own data, not a client result. In checks made between October 20 and October 29, 2026, 82 of the 85 naelar.com pages we track showed as indexed in Google Search Console's URL Inspection.^[10] That is a count from our index tracker, not a measure of how many visitors we get.

The three that were not indexed, as last checked on October 20, show three different cases:

• One guide was crawled but not indexed.
• One page was not yet known to Google.
• One UK contact page was a duplicate, where Google chose a different canonical.

Each needs a different fix, which is why the status name matters more than the count.

Do my pages say what they are?

Yes, if each page does one job and its title says so. Google's starter guide says "a good title is unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page."^[3] Run these checks on your five main service pages:

• The page covers one service, in one place. A single "practice areas" page does not count.
• The title is not repeated on any other page of the site.
• The description is, in Google's words, "short, unique to one particular page, and includes the most relevant points of the page."^[3]
• Images have alt text. It is "a short, but descriptive piece of text that explains the relationship between the image and your content."^[3]
• Your firm name, address and phone read the same on the site and on your Business Profile.

What about links from other sites?

Links from other sites are not in our score, because they are not something a firm fixes in an afternoon. You can see a sample in Search Console's Links report, under "Top linking sites." Google notes the report "isn't a comprehensive list of every link on your site."^[13]

If any of those links were bought, Google's spam policies list "Buying or selling links for ranking purposes" as link spam.^[14]

For what a service page needs, by practice area, see:

• Map results: the website section of our local SEO guide for lawyers.
• Injury and immigration: our personal injury law firm SEO guide and immigration lawyer SEO guide.
• Family and criminal defense: SEO for divorce and family law firms and SEO for criminal defense attorneys.

Is the site fast and usable on a phone?

It is if it meets three numbers on a phone. Google's Core Web Vitals set the limits, shown below.

Test your home page and main service page in PageSpeed Insights, which Google says "reports on the user experience of a page on both mobile and desktop devices."^[9] Read the mobile result. If a small site has too few visitors, there may be no field data. Google then says the tool "will be unable to show any real-user experience data," and you read the lab result instead.^[9]

Speed matters, but less than indexing. Google says Core Web Vitals, along with other page experience aspects, "aligns with what our core ranking systems seek to reward."^[6] It does not call them a direct ranking factor. We treat speed as a fix after indexing and page content, not before.

Does Google Business Profile bring calls, and does AI search name us?

Read the profile's own numbers, then ask the AI tools directly. The profile's performance report counts "the number of times a customer clicked on the call button on your Business Profile."^[8] That is button clicks, not answered calls. Google also says "performance data is available only for verified Business Profiles."^[8]

Our guide to setting up a lawyer's Google Business Profile covers the setup. For the audit, write down last month's call-button clicks and keep them next to your real call count from check 12.

Now AI search. There are two checks.

Can your pages appear? For AI Overviews and AI Mode, a page must be "indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet." Google adds "There are no additional technical requirements," and "You don't need to create new machine readable files, AI text files, or markup to appear in these features."^[7] So this is the same indexing check as before.

Does it name you? Use our free AI visibility checker, or ask ChatGPT and Perplexity three questions a client would ask. Write down the date, who was named and which pages were cited.

We did the same for ourselves. On October 17, 2026 Naelar ran 18 non-brand questions through the APIs behind ChatGPT (gpt-5.4-mini with web search), Perplexity (sonar-pro) and Google AI Overviews, one run each.^[11] None of the answers named Naelar. This is a one-time snapshot, and the API models are close stand-ins for the apps, not the apps themselves.

Are my calls and forms counted?

If you cannot count them, you cannot tell which fix worked. Three counts do it:

• Calls from search: Business Profile call clicks plus a tracked number or your phone system log.
• A source field on every contact form, copied into your CRM.
• A monthly count of signed cases by source.

A form can look fine and still lose inquiries. In September 2026, on Naelar's own lead routing, an ad platform's test button reached our server while real leads from the ads never arrived. The test only proved the connection. So test the real path.

Call your own firm after hours. Fill in your own forms the way a new client would, and write down what happens. We start there with any new firm. Our cost per signed case guide shows what to do with the counts once you have them.

What do I fix first?

Fix indexing first, then pages, then speed, then the profile, then counting. This order is our judgment: a page Google cannot index gains nothing from any later fix. It is a suggested order of work for your firm, and we make no promise about any result by any date.

1. Any service page that is not indexed, or has noindex by mistake (checks 1 to 4).
2. Pages that share a title or do two jobs (checks 5 and 6).
3. Any speed number over its limit on a phone (check 7).
4. An unverified or half-filled Business Profile, and AI answers that never name you (checks 8 to 11).
5. Calls and forms nobody counts (checks 12 to 14).

Here is what one filled-in row can look like. It is made up to show the format and is not a client.

When should I hire someone?

Hire help when the checks show a problem you cannot fix, or you do not have the hours. Do not hire for a ranking promise. Google says if you run a small local business, you "can probably do much of the work yourself."^[1]

This guide is not for you if you need inquiries this month: start with ads instead, and see lead generation. If you do want local SEO and AI search help, that is our local SEO and AI search service. We are not a law firm. The firm owns its accounts, and nothing is built or published without the firm's sign-off.

Questions people ask