The law firm SEO pricing varies based on your goals, market, and competition. Understanding SEO pricing lets you make informed decisions about your budget and maximize your return on investment.
When you’re looking to hire an SEO expert, you’ll see a pretty wide range of attorney SEO rates. Some options start at around $1,000 a month, while others can go over $20,000. So, what should your firm expect to pay? This guide is here to give you some clarity.
- SEO prices for mid-sized law firms vary from $5,000 to over $9,500 a month.
- You’ll pay more if your practice area is competitive and you have a complex website with multiple pages.
- The location of your SEO partner and how experienced they are also make a big difference in price.
- Working with the right agency means you won’t need to pay for expensive tools that can cost hundreds of dollars each month.
- Effective SEO can bring a 526% ROI on average.
SEO Services Rate Options
Most digital marketing agencies offer several payment structures to fit different budgets and SEO objectives. Here are the main options available:
- Hourly rates: SEO professionals often charge by the hour. Rates typically range from $75 to $200. This model is suitable when you just need help with a specific task.
- Monthly retainers: This is the most common pricing model for many law firms. You pay a set fee every month, usually between $1,000 and $5,000. The monthly cost of services with comprehensive management and advanced strategies could be $10,000 or more.
- Package deals: Each package lists exactly what you get. For instance, four blog posts, ten backlinks, and weekly reports. The price is fixed, and so are the deliverables.
- One-time services: Sometimes, you just want to hire an expert for a single task — for example, a full website audit. Once it’s done, it’s done, no extra fees.
When considering law firm SEO cost, avoid pay-for-performance SEO. In this model, the payment is tied to results. Such providers may promise increased rankings by taking risky shortcuts and eventually achieve this faster.
Yet, Google can detect manipulative tactics and penalize your site, which can be much more costly in the long run. Similarly, cheap SEO for law firms often leads to poor results and potential penalties from Google.
What Influences the Price?
Several factors influence what SEO service costs a law firm. Let’s take a look at them.
Competition in Your Legal Field
Some areas of law are more difficult to rank in than others, and if you have a competitive market, it’s harder to get noticed. SEO companies might charge more because they have to invest more time and resources into advanced strategies to set you apart from numerous competitors.
Market Size
The bigger the target market, the bigger the SEO agency cost for lawyers will be. Ranking in New York City costs more than ranking in a small town. The reason is that large markets have more searchers and, thus, more lawyers aiming for these clicks.
Your Website Scope
The SEO pricing for attorneys is also impacted by your website. A simple website for a solo lawyer usually costs less to optimize than a large firm with many practice areas and locations. Each new practice or location area adds keywords to target and content to develop.
Location of the SEO Provider
Where your expert is based can impact their rates, too. Agencies in Los Angeles or New York tend to charge more because their overhead law firm SEO cost is higher. Some lawyers find it cost-effective to hire experts from other countries where SEO costs are lower, but quality remains good.
Expertise Level
Highly experienced SEO professionals usually charge more because they know what works, have a proven track record, and can deliver results faster. Newer agencies or less experienced providers might offer lower prices to build their portfolios.
SEO Strategy Scope
The cost of SEO for law firms also depends on your strategy. If you only require a few basic tasks, this will cost less than running a full, comprehensive campaign. The more extensive and ambitious your plans, like ranking high nationally, the more you’ll need to invest.
Should Law Firms Invest in SEO?
Given how high the SEO cost for law firms can be, you may wonder if SEO for lawyers is worth it, and maybe other marketing channels could be more effective. That’s a good question. After all, this investment should bring enough new visitors and client bookings to justify the cost. Here are the main reasons search engine optimization should be top of mind for lawyers who want to improve their online presence:
- People search online: Today, the internet is the first place many turn to for legal advice. A recent survey reveals that about 17% of people in the US start their search for legal information online. That’s more than those who ask family (13%) or friends (11%). Plus, organic search brings in as much as 66% of call conversions in the legal field.
- Local searches drive ready-to-hire clients: When someone types “lawyer near me,” it usually means they’re actively looking for legal help. Many of these searchers are ready to take the next step. Search engine optimization with the right target keywords can help your firm show up exactly at this moment.
- SEO helps build credibility before the first call: Your law firm website often forms the first impression potential clients have of you. A well-written guide can make a positive impression even before they reach out.
- The cost per client goes down over time: Unlike paid ads, which stop working once you stop paying, SEO offers lasting value. Once your website ranks well, you’ll keep getting clients as a lawyer month after month. The longer your SEO efforts continue, the cheaper each new client becomes.
- Your competitors are present in search engine results: Do a quick search for legal terms in your city. You’ll notice some firms consistently rank at the top. Without SEO, your online visibility might fade as competitors promote their legal services online. But with legal SEO, you’ll remain visible in highly competitive markets.
How Much Do Law Firms Spend on SEO?
Small practices tend to invest modestly to maintain local visibility, while lead generation for law firms aiming to dominate competitive national keywords requires a bigger investment. Let’s explore the actual price range for law firm SEO:
|
Firm Size |
Monthly Investment |
Annual Law Firm SEO Budget |
| Solo practice | $1,000 – $3,500 | $12,000 – $42,000 |
| Small firm (2-5 attorneys) | $2,500 – $5,000 | $30,000 – $60,000 |
| Mid-size firm (6-20 attorneys) | $5,000 – $9,500 | $60,000 – $114,000 |
| Large firm (21+ attorneys) | $10,000 – $20,000+ | $120,000 – $240,000+ |
| National firm (50+ attorneys) | $20,000 – $50,000+ | $240,000 – $600,000+ |
What Is Included in the Law Firm SEO Expert Cost?
Now that we’ve established how much law firm SEO services cost, let’s break down what’s included. When you invest in SEO for your law firm, you pay for a complex mix of services.
Core SEO Tasks
Different providers package their services differently, but any quality SEO campaign for attorneys should include these core elements:
- Website technical audit: This is a checkup of your website. The expert identifies problems that hurt your search engine rankings. These might include slow loading times or pages that don’t work well on phones.
- Keyword research: This is about finding out what your potential clients are typing into search engines so that you can offer them exactly the solution they’re looking for.
- On-page SEO: This means improving individual pages on your website to make them rank better. Your SEO specialists update page titles to include key terms, add proper headings, improve image descriptions, and more.
- Off-page SEO: These techniques focus on building your firm’s reputation outside your website and include link building, citation building in legal publications, and more.
- Local SEO campaigns: The goal of local SEO for law firms is to make you appear when a potential client searches for “divorce lawyer in Boston” on Google or Google Maps. It involves creating a Google Business listing, getting listed in local directories, adding your city name to your website, and gathering reviews. Master local SEO and optimize your Google Business Profile, and you’ll be able to appear in local search results and even pop up in the local pack, like in the screenshot below:
Content Writing
Every new article you publish gives you another opportunity to appear in search results and bring clients your way. Otherwise, Google won’t have enough information to match you with your leads.
For those ready to hire, you’ll need to show how you work and share your recent successful settlements:
For people who aren’t sure if they need a lawyer yet, you also need to post helpful articles that answer common questions. For instance:
To publish truly helpful and professional content, it’s necessary to hire content writers who have experience in the legal field. A seasoned legal copywriter typically charges $150-300 per article. The rates depend on expertise level and topic complexity. Some agencies include content creation in their services, and this can be more convenient as they take over the process of finding a specialist.
Link Building
Anyone can claim to be the best attorney in town, but not everyone can get respected legal websites to point to them. Link building for law firms can. Google tends to rank sites with strong backlink profiles higher in search results. And a picture below proves this. The top-ranking websites with high domain authority often have a solid profile of backlinks:
Link builders can help you get listed in legal directories, quoted as an expert in news articles, or featured on respected legal blogs, while content writers might also create useful resources that naturally generate links and increase your site’s authority.
SEO Tools
If you decide to do SEO on your own, you’ll have to fully pay for professional SEO tools. These specialized platforms are critical for good SEO performance, but their prices can catch beginners off guard.
Often, working with an SEO agency turns out to be more cost-effective in terms of SEO tools since they include these tools in their service fee. Plus, the agency spreads the cost of the tools across many clients, making it more affordable than buying them all yourself.
For example, a single SEO tool subscription can range from about $99 to $500 a month. The cost of larger business-level platforms can go over $1,500 a month. And that’s before you even started the actual SEO work.
Some of the most widely used SEO tools are:
- Ahrefs: This tool helps you track your search rankings, compare your SEO performance with competitors, find the right keywords, and see who links to your website. Subscription plans range from $129 to $1,499 per month.
- Semrush: This is another comprehensive platform for keyword research, fixing technical SEO issues on your site, generating content ideas, and analyzing your rivals’ successful tactics. The subscription costs from $139.95 to $499.95.
- Screaming Frog: This software crawls every page of your website to find hidden problems like broken links or missing titles. The price of the full license is $259 per year.
- Google Search Console: A free Google tool that shows how your site appears in search results and points out important issues. It’s definitely useful, but it has fewer features than paid options.
Some agencies, like SeoProfy, also have their own exclusive tools. This can give your law firm an advantage in the legal landscape because you’ll be using special technology that your competitors don’t have access to.
How to Evaluate the ROI of Law Firm SEO
Law firms that invest in good SEO typically see an impressive return. The average return on investment for legal search engine optimization services can reach around 526%.
One of the first things to do when working with an SEO agency is to agree on what success looks like for your firm. Without clear goals, it’s hard to define if your investment is paying off.
The real value SEO brings isn’t just about rankings. The best law firm SEO agency will aim for improvements in three areas: search positions, website visitors, and actual client inquiries. Rankings on their own mean little if they don’t bring qualified traffic, and organic traffic doesn’t matter if visitors don’t contact you.
Once you have the right numbers, the ROI of SEO can be easily calculated:
- Track new cases from SEO: Use phone tracking numbers or intake forms that ask how clients found you. Count only the clients who came through organic search queries.
- Calculate case value: Determine your average fee per case type. For example, if your car accident cases average $3,500 in costs and personal injury cases average $15,000, track them separately.
- Multiply cases by value: If SEO brought you three car accident cases and two personal injury cases in a month, that’s (3 × $3,500) + (2 × $15,000) = $40,500 in potential revenue.
- Subtract your law firm marketing SEO cost: If your monthly bill is $6,500, then your net profit is $40,500 – $6,500, which equals $34,000.
- Calculate ROI percentage: Divide your net gain by your investment and multiply by 100: ($34,000 ÷ $6,500) × 100 = 523% ROI.
Wrapping Up
So, how much should SEO service cost a law firm? The average price, which includes keyword research, on-page optimization, high-quality content, solid link building, and premium tools, typically ranges from $5,000 to $10,000 per month. However, who you choose to work with is just as important as the price itself.
When you select a partner, also focus on their expertise, particularly in the legal sector and make sure they understand the challenges attorneys face when they need to attract potential clients.
SeoProfy, a professional SEO agency, does. Before we start any project, we thoroughly assess our client’s current situation, their competition, and growth potential. Our content team includes writers with knowledge of the legal industry, and our link builders work only with credible websites.
Let’s discuss your firm’s needs! Schedule a free consultation today, and we’ll share our SEO case studies and explain what we can do for your practice to increase rankings, website traffic, and conversions.
Andrew is the Head of SEO at SeoProfy, leading a team of more than 20 experienced SEO specialists. He has been involved in search engine optimization and digital marketing since 2016, gaining hands-on experience across various niches and regions. Andrew possesses strong analytical and strategic skills, particularly in planning SEO strategies for highly competitive projects.
