| Updated: February 19, 2025
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The ultimate goal of hiring an SEO marketing agency and investing thousands of dollars is to rank higher on Google. However, achieving higher rankings for law firms has become increasingly challenging due to intense competition and dominance by large law firms.
As a law firm owner or a lawyer looking forward to starting a law firm, you should understand the key ranking factors that Google uses to evaluate your website and determine whether it qualifies to replace competitors in the top 10 SERPs.
This guide will explain the most important search engine ranking factors for law firms, how lawyers can assess them, and how to implement them correctly for better rankings.
Google Ranking Factors is a system designed to rank the best and most relevant results for users. Google’s algorithm automatically crawls websites and pages, evaluating their suitability for SERPs and determining their ranking position.
In 2010, Search Engine Land published an article claiming that Google used over 10,000 ranking signals to evaluate webpages for rankings. However, this myth was debunked in 2016, when Google officially announced its three main ranking factors: content, links, and RankBrain, along with other contributing factors.
Some SEO experts suggest that Google utilizes over 200 ranking factors and 1,000 signals to assess a webpage. These assumptions are based on historical data and insights shared by Google over the years. However, Google has now explicitly identified the key ranking factors it uses to evaluate websites and pages.
You can see that the previously mentioned ranking factors—content, links, and RankBrain—are interconnected with the newly announced factors.
Let me simplify this for lawyers who want to understand Google’s ranking factors and learn how to add them to their law firm marketing plan.
Google has become smart enough to understand the words you type into search, even if your query contains spelling mistakes or jargon.
For example, a person searching for the divorce process might use different phrasing or misspell words. Google’s AI system analyzes the intent behind the query and delivers the most relevant results.
Even with errors or complex terms, Google ensures users receive accurate and helpful information to satisfy their search.
This feature of search determines the context of your search query with keywords, language, location, etc.
The RankBrain or Google AI system is designed to display the most relevant and helpful websites in SERPs. In 2022, Google’s Helpful Content Update removed low-quality pages and rewarded meaningful, user-focused content.
Google determines relevance by multiple factors, including keywords in titles and headings. However, these are not the only factors determining relevance of a page. Google’s AI prioritizes user intent to deliver the best results by matching user search intent with pages & websites.
For example, a search for “divorce process in Chicago” will return law blogs, forums, and government websites, as the intent is informational—the user seeks guidance.
In contrast, searching for “best divorce attorney in Chicago” shifts the intent to hiring a lawyer. Here, only well-optimized, SEO-friendly law firm websites will rank in the top 10 search results. This is how Google’s AI ranks law firms, considering relevance, intent, and ranking factors.
After relevance, the quality of a webpage in SERPs is determined by the number and quality of backlinks. Backlinks play a crucial role in SEO for law firms and are considered one of the most important Google ranking factors.
When two pages have similar-quality content, they compete for the top position based on the authority of their backlinks. A webpage with high-quality links from authoritative websites will be favored by Google and rank higher.
Core Web Vitals, or the usability of a page, play a crucial role in ranking, especially when content and backlinks are equal. Google has explicitly mentioned Core Web Vitals in its Webmaster Guidelines as a key ranking factor for evaluating web pages.
The final and most crucial factor in ranking is the search context. Google’s AI system has evolved to understand search intent by analyzing contextual factors such as location, search history, and personalized settings to deliver the most relevant results.
For example, a person searching for a ‘family attorney’ in Las Vegas will primarily see Las Vegas-based law firms. If the same search is performed from a different city, the results will be tailored to that specific location.
A lawyer’s E-E-A-T (expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness) strengthens their website’s credibility, making it more likely to appear in search results compared to a law firm website with weak E-E-A-T.
I’ve explained how Google’s AI system interprets search queries to deliver the most relevant and helpful results. But how can you optimize your law firm’s website to align with Google’s top ranking factors and secure a spot in the top 10 results?
Here are the most important ranking factors essential for law firm SEO marketing:
The best content marketing strategy for a law firm combines the right keywords with helpful and valuable content. Use SEO tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush to identify relevant keywords and optimize your content accordingly.
Avoid over-optimizing your blogs and landing pages with excessive keywords, as this can reduce their value and may be flagged as content spam. Here’s a complete guide on how to conduct keyword research for law firms in 2025.
Distribute your content generation into three stages: Informational, Consideration, and Conversion.
By structuring your content strategy this way, you ensure that your law firm’s website attracts, informs, and converts potential clients effectively.
Additionally, when visitors engage with your web pages—whether by clicking, reading, or interacting—it sends a positive ranking signal to Google. This increased engagement helps boost your brand’s visibility and improves your search rankings.
The information you provide on your law firm website, such as legal advice or guides related to your practice area, is considered sensitive by Google. This is because it can directly impact the lives of people seeking legal guidance through search queries.
Google categorizes this type of content under YMYL (Your Money, Your Life) and scrutinizes websites before ranking them in top search results. Other YMYL categories include health, medicine, finance, safety, and overall well-being.
Incorrect legal advice can affect a person’s safety and happiness, which is why Google has special rules for reading and ranking YMYL content which can affect the lives of the readers. It looks out for the best websites offering YMYL content with expertise, authority, and experience.
A person seeking legal help for divorce, criminal issues, or personal injury could face serious consequences if a search engine provides incorrect or misleading information. Google treats these search queries differently, prioritizing accurate, trustworthy, and authoritative results to help users rather than mislead or harm them.
You must establish expertise and authority in your legal practice area to rank in the legal space. Here are the things Google considers to rank legal websites:
This brings us to E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness)—a key factor introduced by Google to filter out low-quality content and reward legitimate, high-quality websites with better rankings.
In December 2022, Google added another ‘E’ to its ranking system, making it E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness). The added ‘E’ evaluates the experience of the content source and has been an integral part of RankBrain/Google AI’s ranking system ever since.
With this addition, the dynamics of content marketing have shifted, especially in the legal niche. Now, ranking priority is given to websites and pages that meet E-E-A-T standards and provide helpful, authoritative, and trustworthy content
Ensuring your law firm website meets Google’s E-E-A-T standards requires specific SEO activities, including both on-page and off-page SEO.
To establish expertise and authority in your legal practice area, focus on:
By implementing these strategies, you can strengthen your website’s credibility and improve its search rankings in the legal space.
Backlinks act as votes of confidence for your website in the eyes of search engines. They play a crucial role in establishing the authority and expertise of your law firm’s website.
However, quality matters more than quantity in SEO. The more authoritative and relevant backlinks your law firm website has, the more “link juice” it receives, improving its visibility on Google
Always prioritize quality over quantity. Here are a few key factors that define a high-quality backlink:
By focusing on acquiring high-quality backlinks for your law firm website, you can establish expertise and trustworthiness, ultimately improving your EEAT & Google rankings.
Technical SEO is essential for any website aiming to rank on Google and attract potential clients. However, many websites suffer from common issues such as missing SSL certificates, HTTP errors, and indexing problems.
Unfortunately, many law firm owners overlook these issues simply because they are unaware of the negative impact on their rankings and website performance.
We offer a free website SEO audit to identify factors affecting your rankings, crawling, and indexing. Simply fill out the form with your name and contact details to receive a detailed audit of your law firm’s website, along with actionable improvement suggestions.
To make your website technically sound for search engines optimize content with proper structure with title, headings, meta tags, alt text for images, internal and external links, etc. Your website should be fast and rendered on multiple devices.
After Google’s Page Experience Update in 2021, user experience (UX) has become a core ranking factor. UX refers to how visitors interact with your pages and whether they can easily find the information they need.
Google rewards pages with positive user signals by ranking them higher in search results. To ensure your law firm website is user-friendly, focus on these key factors:
By improving these elements, your website will not only rank better but also attract and retain more potential clients.
Local SEO is a crucial foundation of any long-term SEO plan for law firms. User intent heavily influences search results, and if you ignore local SEO, you risk losing a large number of potential local clients.
The best SEO strategy for a law firm is to prioritize local SEO, even if you serve specific cities or regions. Many nationwide law firms use market research to identify high-demand locations and optimize their pages accordingly.
Regardless of your firm’s size, improving your local Google ranking should be a core part of your SEO and content strategy. Local SEO is one of Google’s key ranking factors and can help you attract and convert qualified leads.
Here are the SEO activities to increase your local presence and optimize your law firm for local visibility:
More than 80% of web traffic now comes from mobile devices, which is why Google has shifted to mobile-first indexing. Instead of prioritizing the desktop version, Google renders and ranks your website based on its mobile version.
Ensuring your law firm’s website is fully optimized for mobile is crucial for better rankings and user experience. If your website is not mobile-optimized, you may see a negative impact on your Google rankings.
To ensure your law firm’s website is mobile-friendly, you can test it using Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool here: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
Making your website mobile-friendly is crucial for ranking on Google and improving organic visibility. Here are a few key steps to ensure your law firm website is optimized for mobile users:
Keeping your website optimized for mobile, desktop, and tablet is the best approach for law firms. Google and Bing both prioritize the mobile version of your website for rendering and crawling. Therefore, focusing on mobile optimization is essential for better rankings and user experience.
I have highlighted the most crucial ranking factors for law firms and lawyers on Google and other search engines. Read each section carefully to understand their importance, and feel free to contact me for a free SEO audit and a strategy to improve your law firm’s search rankings.
While Google considers many ranking factors before indexing and ranking a webpage, focusing on the key elements outlined in this article will set your website up for success and improve its visibility in search results.
By implementing these strategies, your law firm’s website will not only rank higher in search results but also attract more potential clients and establish trust and authority in your legal niche.
I’m Micheal Clark, an experienced SEO consultant specializing in law firms and attorneys. With over seven years in SEO, I help legal professionals rank higher on Google, attract clients, and grow their practice. From technical SEO to local optimization and content strategy, I provide tailored solutions to dominate competitive legal searches.
