The Family Law Firms Winning Divorce & Custody Searches All Do These Three Things

When someone decides they need a divorce attorney or a custody lawyer, they don't browse national directories and compare credentials across states. They open Google and type something like 'divorce lawyer near me' or 'child custody attorney [their city]'. The search is local by instinct, and the decision to call is usually made within minutes of those results appearing.

This matters structurally for how you approach marketing. Family law is not a service people research for weeks. The emotional urgency — a separation, a custody dispute, a protective order — compresses the decision cycle dramatically. By the time someone is searching, they are often ready to book a consultation. That means the firm that appears first, with a credible profile and recent reviews, gets the call.

Google's local results surface in two formats that matter most here:

• The Map Pack — three listings shown above organic results, driven primarily by your Google Business Profile and proximity signals
• Organic local results — traditional blue-link results where location-specific pages on your website compete

Winning both requires different tactics, but they reinforce each other. A strong Google Business Profile improves your Map Pack visibility; well-optimized local pages on your site build the domain authority that supports both organic rankings and the trust signals Google's local algorithm evaluates.

Industry benchmarks suggest that Map Pack listings receive a disproportionate share of clicks for local service searches — meaning a firm sitting in positions four through ten in organic results, but absent from the Map Pack, will see far fewer inbound inquiries than its ranking position implies. For family law specifically, where the search-to-call timeline is short, Map Pack presence is not optional — it is the primary battleground.

Your Google Business Profile (GBP) is the most direct lever you control for Map Pack ranking. Many family law firms have a GBP listing but treat it as a static directory entry — name, address, phone, done. That approach leaves significant ground uncovered.

Here is what actually moves the needle on GBP for family lawyers:

Primary Category Selection

Your primary category should be 'Family Law Attorney' in most cases. Secondary categories can include 'Divorce Lawyer,' 'Legal Services,' or other relevant options Google makes available. Category selection signals to Google which searches your profile is eligible to appear for — getting this wrong means competing for the wrong queries or missing the right ones entirely.

Services Section

Google allows you to list individual services within your profile. Use this to enumerate your practice areas specifically: divorce, child custody, child support, spousal support, adoption, domestic violence protective orders, property division. Each entry is an additional relevance signal for related searches.

Review Velocity and Recency

In our experience working with law firms, review recency matters as much as total count. A firm with 40 reviews, the most recent from 14 months ago, often ranks below a firm with 22 reviews where three arrived last month. Google's local algorithm treats ongoing review activity as a signal of an active, trusted business. Build a consistent process for requesting reviews from satisfied clients — but ensure that process complies with your state bar's advertising and solicitation rules before launching. (This is general guidance; verify requirements with your state's bar association.)

Posts, Q&A, and Photos

GBP Posts allow you to publish practice area updates, general legal information, or office announcements. Q&A lets you seed common questions and answers directly on your profile. Photos — of your office, your team — increase engagement signals. None of these are transformative individually, but collectively they signal an active, engaged firm to both Google and prospective clients reviewing your profile before calling.

Your Google Business Profile handles the Map Pack. Your website handles the organic local results below it. The bridge between them is a set of well-built, location-specific pages that target the city-level and county-level searches your prospective clients run.

The most common missed opportunity in family law websites is relying on a single generic 'Family Law' practice area page to rank for every city in a firm's service area. That page might rank reasonably for branded queries or broad informational searches, but it will consistently underperform for searches like 'custody attorney [specific city]' or 'divorce lawyer [county]'.

What a Strong Location Page Includes

• Location-specific H1 and title tag — e.g., 'Divorce Attorney in [City], [State]'
• Content that references local context — the relevant courthouse, local court procedures where applicable, and the communities served
• Clear service list for that location, with internal links to practice area detail pages
• Attorney information tied to that office or service area, including bar admission details
• Embedded Google Map and complete NAP (Name, Address, Phone) matching your GBP exactly
• Schema markup — LocalBusiness or LegalService schema helps Google parse your page's local relevance

One Page Per Location, Not One Page for All

If your firm serves three cities from one office, or operates two office locations, each deserves its own page. Combining them ('We serve [City A], [City B], and [City C]') dilutes the relevance signal for each individual location. Separate pages allow Google to surface the right page for the right city-level search.

Thin location pages — pages with minimal unique content that exist only to target a keyword — tend to underperform and can create quality signal problems for your site. Each location page should have enough genuine, useful content to serve a prospective client who lands on it, not just enough to satisfy a keyword count.

Local citations are mentions of your firm's Name, Address, and Phone number (NAP) across directories, legal platforms, and data aggregators. They are not a primary ranking factor in the way they were a decade ago, but they remain a foundational trust signal — and inconsistencies actively create problems.

When Google sees your firm listed as 'Smith Family Law LLC' on your website, 'Smith Family Law' on Avvo, and 'Smith & Associates Family Law' on Yelp, with different phone numbers following an office move, it cannot confidently determine which entity is authoritative. That uncertainty depresses local rankings.

The Citations That Matter Most for Family Lawyers

• Legal directories: Avvo, FindLaw, Justia, Martindale-Hubbell, Lawyers.com
• General directories: Yelp, Better Business Bureau, Apple Maps, Bing Places
• Data aggregators: Data Axle, Neustar Localeze, Foursquare — these feed hundreds of downstream directories
• State bar directory: Your state bar's attorney search listing should match your GBP exactly

When to Audit Your Citations

Run a citation audit whenever your firm changes its name, moves offices, changes its primary phone number, or adds a new location. Waiting until rankings drop to investigate NAP consistency is a slower path than proactive cleanup. Tools exist to automate citation scanning, but a manual check of your top ten citation sources is a reasonable starting point for most firms.

Building new citations on high-authority legal directories — especially those with editorial review processes — carries more weight than bulk submissions to low-quality directories. Focus on the legal-specific platforms first, then the general business directories with genuine traffic and domain authority.

Not every family law firm has a traditional office where clients visit. Some operate virtually or travel to clients and courthouses across a region. Google Business Profile accommodates this through the Service Area setting, but it requires careful configuration.

Service Area vs. Storefront Listings

If your firm has a physical office where clients are received, you should list your address and may additionally define a service area radius or set of cities. If you operate without a client-facing office, Google allows you to hide your address and define service areas only — but this typically reduces Map Pack visibility compared to firms with verified physical addresses in those same cities.

For firms without a local address in a city they want to rank in, the honest answer is that Map Pack visibility in that city is limited. The appropriate response is to invest in organic local page authority for that location rather than expecting GBP to carry the work. A well-optimized location page can still rank organically for city-level searches even without a GBP presence in that city.

Multi-Location Firms

Firms with multiple physical offices should maintain a separate, verified GBP listing for each office location. Each listing should have its own set of reviews, its own category configuration, and its own service entries. Linking a single GBP to multiple addresses is not supported and will create verification problems.

Multi-location firms also benefit from a clear internal linking structure on their website — a main 'Locations' hub page linking to each individual location page, with each location page linking back to relevant practice area pages. This structure helps Google understand the geographic scope of the firm and distributes link equity efficiently across location pages.

As your firm grows into new markets, treat each new location as its own local SEO project: GBP verification, location page build-out, citation seeding, and a review generation process specific to that office's clients.