Why Law Firms Can’t Afford to Ignore SEO

Legal services is one of the most expensive and competitive verticals in Google search. A single click on a “personal injury lawyer Calgary” Google Ad can cost $50 to $150. Criminal defence, family law, and immigration keywords aren’t far behind. For firms running paid campaigns, the monthly ad spend required to generate meaningful lead volume can be staggering.

SEO provides the same visibility — Map Pack placement, page-one organic rankings — without per-click costs. Once your firm ranks for “divorce lawyer Calgary” or “immigration lawyer near me,” every click is free. Over time, the cost per lead from organic search drops to a fraction of what paid advertising delivers. For most Calgary law firms, SEO is the highest-ROI marketing investment available.

96% of people seeking legal advice use a search engine. If your firm isn’t visible when someone in Calgary searches for the legal help you provide, you’re handing those clients — and their retainers — directly to competitors who are.

But legal SEO is fundamentally different from SEO in other industries. Google classifies legal content as YMYL (Your Money or Your Life), meaning it applies significantly higher quality standards. Generic SEO tactics that work for restaurants or retail will fail in legal search. Your firm needs an approach built for the specific demands of this vertical.

E-E-A-T: The Foundation of Legal SEO

Google’s quality guidelines emphasize Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — and nowhere is this more aggressively enforced than in legal search. Google needs to verify that the content on your website comes from qualified legal professionals, not content mills.

Our legal SEO strategies address E-E-A-T at every level. Attorney bio pages are optimized to demonstrate credentials, bar admissions, years of practice, published work, and case experience. Practice area content is written with the depth and accuracy that signals genuine legal expertise. The firm’s overall authority is strengthened through links from legal directories, bar associations, and relevant publications. And trust signals — client reviews, professional recognitions, community involvement — are systematically built and showcased.

Practice Area Landing Pages

Each practice area your firm offers needs a dedicated, comprehensive landing page. A single “areas of practice” page listing everything you do guarantees you rank for nothing. Google rewards pages that deeply address a single topic — “personal injury lawyer Calgary” and “immigration lawyer Calgary” are entirely different search intents that require entirely different content.

We build practice area pages that target specific keyword clusters, explain your approach to that area of law, address the questions potential clients actually ask, and include clear calls to action. For firms with multiple practice areas, this often means creating 5 to 15 dedicated pages, each optimized for a distinct set of search queries.

Within each practice area, sub-service pages add depth. A personal injury firm shouldn’t have one page — it should have pages for car accidents, slip and fall, medical malpractice, wrongful death, and workplace injuries. A family law firm needs separate pages for divorce, custody, child support, spousal support, and property division. This topical depth is what builds the authority that Google rewards with rankings.

Attorney Bio Pages That Rank and Convert

When potential clients research lawyers, they search for both practice areas (“criminal defence lawyer Calgary”) and individual attorneys by name. Your bio pages need to serve both purposes — ranking for name searches while demonstrating the expertise that converts visitors into consultations.

We optimize attorney bios with proper Person schema markup, structured credentials, practice area focus, professional associations, published articles, speaking engagements, and education. For multi-lawyer firms, each attorney’s page should target their specific specializations, creating additional ranking opportunities across the firm’s practice areas.

Google Business Profile for Law Firms

The Map Pack is where many legal clients make their first contact. When someone searches “family lawyer near me” in Calgary, the three firms that appear in the Map Pack with strong ratings and complete profiles capture the majority of calls.

We optimize your firm’s Google Business Profile with precise practice area categories, comprehensive service descriptions, professional office photos, attorney headshots, weekly posts highlighting legal insights or firm news, and a systematic approach to review acquisition and response. For firms with multiple locations, we configure and optimize each location profile independently.

Legal Content Marketing

Content is the engine of legal SEO. Potential clients search for answers to their legal questions before they search for a lawyer. “What happens if I’m at fault in a car accident in Alberta?” “How long does a custody case take in Calgary?” “Can I be deported if my work permit expires?” These informational searches represent the top of your client acquisition funnel.

We build content strategies around the questions your potential clients actually ask — organized in topical clusters that build practice-area authority. A personal injury content cluster might include a pillar page on car accident claims in Alberta, supported by content on comparative fault, soft tissue injuries, insurance settlements, and limitation periods. This architecture signals to Google that your firm is the definitive authority on personal injury law in Calgary.

All legal content is developed with ethical compliance in mind. No guaranteed outcomes, no misleading claims, no client-identifying details without proper consent. Our content builds authority while fully respecting the Law Society of Alberta’s advertising and marketing rules.

Review Strategy for Law Firms

Reviews are a critical ranking factor and arguably the most important trust signal for potential legal clients. The stakes of hiring a lawyer are high, and people rely heavily on peer reviews to evaluate their options.

We build ethical review generation systems for law firms — direct review links sent at appropriate timing (post-resolution, not mid-case), professional response templates for both positive and negative reviews, and monitoring across Google, Avvo, and other legal review platforms. Consistent review velocity over time matters more than occasional bursts.

Technical SEO and Schema Markup

Law firm websites frequently have technical issues that suppress rankings — slow load times from oversized header images, poor mobile usability, missing structured data, and bloated page builders. Our technical audits identify and prioritize these issues.

We implement Attorney schema, LegalService schema, and FAQPage schema markup to help Google understand your firm’s entity, each lawyer’s credentials, and the practice areas you serve. Proper structured data is a significant competitive advantage in legal search — most law firms have none.

Practice Areas We Serve

We work with Calgary law firms across all major practice areas: personal injury, family law, immigration, criminal defence, corporate and commercial law, real estate law, employment and labour law, estate planning, and administrative law. Each practice area has distinct search patterns, competition levels, and content requirements — and our strategies are specifically tailored to the competitive dynamics within each area.

Law Firm SEO Pricing

SEO campaigns for Calgary law firms start at $1,500 per month for firms targeting a single practice area in moderately competitive verticals. Multi-practice firms and those competing in high-competition categories like personal injury or criminal defence typically require $2,500 to $5,000 per month. Every proposal is customized based on your practice areas, competitive landscape, current website condition, and growth objectives.

We also offer one-time SEO audits for law firms that want a professional assessment of their current search visibility before committing to monthly services.

No long-term contracts. We earn your business every month.

Ready to stop paying $100+ per click and build sustainable client acquisition? Contact us or call 403-386-7427 for a free law firm SEO audit.