A Step-by-Step SEO Audit Framework You Can Run on Your Solicitor Website This Week

This guide is written for solicitors and practice managers who want to understand why their website is not generating enquiries from Google — and what to do about it. It is also useful for marketing staff at law firms who have inherited an existing site and need a structured way to assess its current state.

You do not need technical SEO expertise to complete most of this audit. A few steps use free or low-cost tools, which are listed in the tool recommendations section below. Where a step requires interpretation, this guide explains what you are looking for and why it matters.

This audit is diagnostic, not prescriptive. It will tell you where the problems are. What you do with that information — fix it in-house, hire an agency, or bring in a specialist — depends on your firm's capacity and growth goals.

If you complete this audit and find multiple serious issues across more than two or three categories, that is a signal worth taking seriously. Firms that find widespread problems typically see faster results by working with someone who audits solicitor sites regularly, rather than addressing issues one by one without a prioritised plan.

Note: References to SRA Transparency Rules in this guide are for educational purposes. Always verify current regulatory requirements directly with the SRA or your compliance officer, as rules are subject to change.

Technical SEO is the foundation. If Google cannot crawl and index your pages correctly, the quality of your content is largely irrelevant. Start here before touching anything else.

What to check

• Crawl errors: Use Google Search Console (free) to identify pages returning 404 errors or blocked by robots.txt. Any important page that cannot be crawled will not rank.
• Page speed: Run your site through Google PageSpeed Insights. Solicitor sites built on older CMS platforms or with heavy imagery frequently score poorly on mobile. Google uses mobile-first indexing, so mobile speed matters most.
• HTTPS: Confirm every page on your site loads over HTTPS. Mixed-content warnings — where some assets load over HTTP — can suppress trust signals.
• Duplicate content: Check whether your site has multiple URLs serving the same content (e.g., with and without trailing slashes, or HTTP vs HTTPS versions not redirecting). This dilutes ranking signals across competing pages.
• Indexation: Search site:yourdomain.co.uk in Google. The number of pages indexed should roughly match the number of pages you expect to have. Significant over-indexation (e.g., tag pages, filter URLs) or under-indexation both indicate problems.
• Structured data: Check whether your site uses LocalBusiness or LegalService schema markup. Schema helps Google understand your firm's name, address, phone number, and practice areas — particularly important for local search.

Flag every issue you find and note whether it affects a handful of pages or the entire site. Sitewide technical problems almost always take priority over content improvements.

Practice area pages are your primary commercial landing pages. Each one should target a specific legal service in a specific location, be written with enough depth to demonstrate expertise, and be structured so both Google and a prospective client can quickly understand what you offer and who you serve.

Common problems on solicitor practice area pages

• Bundled services: A single page titled 'Family Law' that covers divorce, child arrangements, financial settlements, and cohabitation disputes will rarely rank well for any of them. Each substantive practice area typically warrants its own page.
• Thin content: Pages under 300-400 words rarely provide enough depth to compete for commercially valuable terms. In our experience, practice area pages on solicitor sites that rank on page one tend to be more thorough — covering process, timescales, costs (where SRA rules apply), and FAQs.
• Missing location signals: A page about conveyancing that never mentions the town or region your firm serves is competing nationally against thousands of other firms. Location-qualified pages perform materially better in local search.
• Weak title tags and meta descriptions: Check each page's title tag in Search Console or a crawl tool. It should include the service name, location, and ideally a trust signal (e.g., 'Divorce Solicitors in Manchester | [Firm Name]').
• No internal linking: Practice area pages should link to related services and to your contact or enquiry page. Orphaned pages — those with no internal links pointing to them — receive little crawl priority.

Score each practice area page against these five criteria. Pages that fail three or more criteria are candidates for either a rewrite or consolidation.

For most solicitor firms, local search — specifically the Google Map Pack — is the highest-value SEO channel. A firm that appears in the Map Pack for 'employment solicitor [city]' captures a disproportionate share of local enquiries without additional advertising spend.

Map Pack ranking depends on three factors: relevance (does your profile match the search?), distance (is your office near the searcher?), and prominence (does Google trust your firm's online presence?). Citation accuracy directly affects prominence.

What to audit

• Google Business Profile: Log into your GBP and check that your firm name, address, phone number, and website URL exactly match what appears on your website and other directories. Even minor inconsistencies — abbreviating 'Street' to 'St' in one place — can suppress rankings.
• Category selection: Your primary GBP category should be 'Law Firm' or the most specific applicable category (e.g., 'Family Law Attorney'). Many firms leave secondary categories unused, missing ranking opportunities for additional practice areas.
• Citation consistency: Search your firm name on Google and check the top directory listings (Yell, Thomson Local, The Law Society directory, Yelp, Bing Places). Name, address, and phone number should be identical across all of them. Use a tool like BrightLocal or Whitespark to run a broader citation audit if you have multiple office locations.
• Review volume and recency: Google uses review signals as a prominence indicator. Note how many reviews your GBP has, when the most recent one was posted, and how your volume compares to the top two or three competitors in your area.

Local citation issues are among the most straightforward SEO problems to fix — and among the most commonly overlooked on solicitor sites. Correcting NAP inconsistencies typically produces visible Map Pack movement within six to ten weeks, though results vary by market competition.

For detailed GBP optimisation steps, see our Google Business Profile guide for solicitors.

A gap analysis answers one question: which keywords are your competitors ranking for that you are not? The answer almost always reveals practice area pages you are missing, locations you have not targeted, or content depth you have not matched.

How to run a basic gap analysis

1. Identify two or three competitors: Search Google for your two or three most valuable service terms (e.g., 'personal injury solicitor [city]', 'employment law solicitor [city]'). The firms consistently appearing on page one are your benchmarks — not necessarily the largest firms in your region.
2. Crawl their practice area pages: Use a free tool like Screaming Frog (up to 500 URLs free) or Sitebulb to crawl a competitor's site. Compare their page structure against yours. Are they targeting sub-practice areas you have not covered? Do they have separate location pages for nearby towns?
3. Use a keyword gap tool: Tools like Semrush or Ahrefs have dedicated gap analysis features. Enter your domain and a competitor's domain to surface keywords they rank for in positions one to twenty that you do not appear for at all. Even the free versions of these tools offer limited gap data that is often enough to identify the highest-priority opportunities.
4. Prioritise by volume and intent: Not every gap is worth closing. Focus on keywords with clear commercial intent (searches from people likely to instruct a solicitor) over informational terms that attract researchers rather than clients.

In our experience working with solicitor firms, competitor gap analysis typically surfaces between five and fifteen actionable page opportunities within a first audit. These are not always large projects — sometimes a single practice area page, properly written and internally linked, is enough to close a meaningful gap.

This section covers a compliance check that is unique to solicitor websites. The SRA Transparency Rules (in force since 2018, with ongoing updates) require solicitor firms to publish specific information about their services, pricing, and complaints process. Failure to comply carries regulatory risk — and because these rules affect page content directly, they also have SEO implications.

This is educational information only, not legal or regulatory advice. Always verify current SRA requirements with your compliance officer or directly with the SRA, as rules are subject to change.

What to check on your site

• Price transparency: For regulated services — currently including residential conveyancing, probate, motoring offences, employment tribunals (for employees), and immigration (excluding asylum) — you are required to publish pricing information or indicative costs. Check whether your relevant practice area pages include this information.
• Service information: Each regulated service page should describe what is and is not included, the key stages of the matter, and typical timescales.
• Complaints procedure: A clear complaints procedure, including reference to the Legal Ombudsman and the SRA, should be accessible from your site — typically in the footer or on a dedicated page.
• Regulatory information: Your SRA number and a link to the SRA website should appear on your site. Check that these are present and accurate.

From an SEO perspective, transparent pricing pages often outperform vague 'contact us for a quote' pages in search results — particularly for high-intent queries like 'conveyancing solicitor fees [city]'. Compliance and SEO are aligned here, not in tension.

For a full regulatory content checklist, see our SRA Compliance guide for solicitor websites and our Solicitor Advertising Rules page.

Once you have completed all five steps, use this simple scoring approach to prioritise your next actions.

Scoring your audit

• Technical health: 0-2 issues = pass / 3-5 = needs attention / 6+ = critical
• Practice area pages: Score each page out of five criteria. Pages scoring 2 or below need rewriting or restructuring.
• Local presence: Any NAP inconsistency = fix immediately. GBP category gaps = medium priority. Review volume gap vs competitors = ongoing.
• local presence, [market competitor gaps](/industry/fitness/spa), and regulatory compliance: List the top five keyword gaps by search intent. Assign each a page that either needs to be created or improved.
• SRA compliance: Any missing required element = fix before any other content work. Compliance gaps carry regulatory risk independent of SEO value.

What to do with your results

If your audit surfaces one or two isolated issues, these are likely manageable in-house with some focused time. If you find problems across three or more categories — especially if [Technical health](/resources/accountant/accounting-firm-seo-audit) is a baseline; slow load times, crawl errors, duplicate content are sitewide — the effort required to fix, sequence, and track improvements is typically more than a busy solicitor or practice manager can absorb alongside day-to-day work.

In that situation, working with someone who specialises in SEO for solicitor firms tends to produce faster, more reliable results than a piecemeal internal approach. The compounding nature of SEO means that delays in fixing foundational issues extend the time before you see meaningful ranking improvements.

If you would like a professional assessment rather than a self-administered audit, you can request a professional solicitor SEO audit and we will walk through your site systematically and return a prioritised action plan.