SEO for solicitors: what to do yourself and what to pay for

This guide is for partners and practice managers at small SRA-regulated firms in England and Wales deciding whether to hire an SEO agency, or checking what one has promised. It covers what SEO involves and which parts you can do in-house. It also covers which are worth paying for, and what the last three months looked like on our own site, with the real numbers.

How does SEO work for an SRA-regulated firm?

Legal sector SEO is the same work as SEO for any local business, with the SRA rules on top. Google usually shows the page for the service searched, so that is where the work starts.

Google matches a search to the page that fits the words most closely. So the firm that has a clear, accurate page for each service people search for can be shown. The rest is trust: links, reviews and a site that works on a phone.

People search for it in several ways. The table shows UK monthly searches for the main phrasings, so you can see the size of the topic.

These are small numbers. The searches your own clients type matter more than these ones, as in the local SEO guide for conveyancing solicitors.

Google says it "primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled".^[1] That's why a page that nothing links to may never be found, however good it is.

What do the SRA rules mean for your SEO?

Your firm answers for its publicity, including anything an agency writes or posts for you. Paragraph 8.8 of the SRA Code of Conduct for Solicitors says you ensure publicity is "accurate and not misleading".^[2]

The SRA's warning notice on marketing adds that this "also includes any marketing material used by third parties that you work with".^[3] So read what your SEO provider publishes in your name, and have your COLP (compliance officer for legal practice) sign it off.

Price pages are an SEO job and a compliance job at once. The SRA Transparency Rules say cost information "must be clear and accessible and in a prominent place on your website".^[4] Our SRA Transparency Rules checklist lists what to put on them.

Is AI search replacing SEO for solicitors?

No. Google says "the best practices for SEO remain relevant for AI features in Google Search".^[11] It adds that there are "no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode".^[12]

So the basics below also help you be named in AI answers. Pages that say plainly what you do, where and for whom are the ones an AI tool can quote. Our free AI visibility checker shows whether ChatGPT and Perplexity name your firm today.

What can a solicitors firm do for its own SEO?

Most of the basics, and Google agrees. Its guide on whether you need an SEO says, "If you run a small local business, you can probably do much of the work yourself."^[5] This is the list we would start with.

1. Give each service its own page. One page for residential conveyancing, one for probate, one for each service you want enquiries for. Say what you do, where and who does it.
2. Write a page title that fits the page. Google describes a good title as one that is "unique to the page, clear and concise, and accurately describes the contents of the page".^[6]
3. Publish your prices and process. The SRA Transparency Rules require it for some services, and it answers what clients search for.
4. Claim and complete your Google Business Profile. Use your real firm name and a real office. Our guide to local SEO for conveyancing solicitors has the rules.
5. Ask every client for a review. Do it at the same point in the matter, not only for the ones you expect to be happy. Don't offer anything in return, and reply to each one. Don't hide the bad ones.
6. Link your pages to each other. A new page needs at least one link from a page already on your site.
7. Own your accounts. The domain, the Profile and Search Console should be in your firm's name, not an agency's.

None of this needs a tool you don't already have. Search Console is free, and it's the one place that shows what Google actually shows for your site.

What does a 90-day SEO plan for a solicitors firm look like?

Spend month one on your service pages and month two on your Google profile and reviews. Use month three to check what Google shows and decide what to pay for. This is a suggested order for a firm doing the work itself, not a promise of results.

For the AI test, our free AI visibility checker asks ChatGPT and Perplexity about your firm and shows what they say.

Before month 1 ends, check where your SRA number and badge sit beside your logo. Our guide to where those items go on your pages shows the placement.

What is worth paying for?

Pay for work that takes skill or hours your team doesn't have. Don't pay for promises. The table splits the common jobs.

Google's advice on hiring is blunt: be wary of any SEO who promises a ranking.^[7] Our guide to choosing a legal marketing agency has the questions to ask before you sign.

If you would rather have it done, our law firm SEO service covers local search, reviews and AI answers. You get a monthly report of calls, forms and Google profile actions. For the content side, see our guide to content marketing for law firms.

What do agencies charge?

Published prices vary a lot. Clear Click, a UK SEO agency, says "In the UK a senior-led programme starts from about £1,700 a month plus VAT".^[8] That's one agency's price list, not a market average.

We don't publish our own price here. It depends on the channels and the hours of call cover you want.

How long does SEO take?

Clear Click, the same UK SEO agency, gives two timescales.

1. Two to three months"Technical fixes and Business Profile work can move enquiries within two to three months".^[9]
2. Six to twelve months"New practice-area pages usually take six to twelve months to reach the positions that bring steady enquiries".^[10]

Our own site is too new to test that. If you need enquiries this quarter, Google Ads can fill the gap while SEO builds. Our PPC management for solicitors page says how we run it.

Some conveyancing firms buy leads instead of waiting for search. Our guide to conveyancing leads and panels shows what they cost and what sellers don't always say.

Early sign from a client: for a conveyancing firm we work with, clicks from searches without its name went from 25 to 132. That compares the 14 days from 25 August 2026 with the 14 days to 22 October. It's one firm over two months, and results vary by firm, area and market. The case study has the detail.

What did the last three months look like on our own site?

Slow, and mostly invisible. Searchers in the UK saw naelar.com 165 times on Google in the three months to 18 October 2026, with an average position of about 65. That is page seven. Bing showed none for the UK.

Most of it came in one week. Only 22 impressions appeared before 12 October. New pages start slowly. The four clicks don't show against any listed search, because Google hides rare ones, and we can't rule out that some were our own visits.

The highest positions were for AI search questions. One search about AI visibility for SRA-regulated firms showed at about position 16. Another, asking which UK agency can help a firm appear in AI search results, showed at position 8.

Each had one or two impressions. That's too few to call a result.

What did the conveyancing page teach us?

Google shows the page it thinks fits, not the page you meant. Our conveyancing page had the most UK impressions of any page, 78 at position 73. But 72 of them were for "legal marketing services", and only 6 were for "conveyancing leads".

These are the searches that showed our pages, with no clicks on any of them (Google Search Console, naelar.com, United Kingdom, 19 July to 18 October 2026):

• Conveyancing page, "legal marketing services": 72 impressions, average position 72.
• Conveyancing page, "conveyancing leads": 6 impressions, average position 83.
• Law firm SEO page, "ai visibility for sra regulated firms": 2 impressions, average position 16.

No page on our UK site was written for "legal marketing services", so Google picked the nearest one. A page that mentions a broad term can get shown for it, but at position 72 few people will see it.

The fix is one page per job. The law firm marketing page should answer the broad search. The conveyancing page should answer conveyancing ones.

Your firm can run the same check in ten minutes with no agency. It shows which of your pages Google mixes up. The steps are below.