A law firm SEO audit is a structured pass through your website, your Google Business Profile and your Search Console data to find out why rankings and consultations are not where they should be.

The order below runs the cheap checks before the expensive ones, because rewriting a page Google cannot see is wasted money.

It is one piece of law firm SEO; this page covers only the diagnosis.

The audit order

Work down the list in order, because a fix upstream changes what the downstream checks find.

1. Indexation

Open Search Console and confirm Google indexes every page that matters: each practice-area page, each office page, the homepage.

2. The Google Business Profile

Check that the profile is claimed, verified and complete, with a name that matches the firm's real-world name.

3. Architecture

Map the site: one page per practice area per office, with internal links pointing at those pages from the homepage, the blog and each other.

Missing pages are findings, and overlapping pages split the same signal across URLs.

4. Content

Judge each practice-area page against the searches it targets, and against whether a real firm is visible behind it.

5. Speed, schema, AI eligibility

Run the speed thresholds, check the structured data type, and confirm the pages are indexed and eligible to show with a snippet for AI features.

6. The fix list

Write up findings ranked by expected consultations, not by how easy they are to do.

The law firm SEO checklist

A lawyer SEO checklist is this same list under another name, so it is the version to keep open while you work.

  • Indexation: every page you want ranking is in Google's index and eligible to show with a snippet.
  • Profile: claimed, verified, complete, name matching the firm's real-world name, fewest and most specific categories.
  • Architecture: one page per practice area per office, with internal links pointing at it.
  • Content depth: pages that answer the searches they target, with the firm and its lawyers visible on them.
  • Speed: the three Core Web Vitals inside Google's good thresholds, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.
  • Structured data: the LegalService type, or the most specific LocalBusiness subtype that fits, never the deprecated Attorney type.
  • AI eligibility: indexed and snippet-eligible; Google Search requires no llms.txt file, chunked content or special schema.
  • Spam policies: no batches of city-swapped, auto-generated or value-free pages.

Content checks: quality, raters, scaled pages

Google's guidance on helpful content says E-E-A-T, its shorthand for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust, is not itself a ranking factor, that trust matters most, and that its systems give even more weight to strong E-E-A-T on topics that could significantly affect people's health, financial stability or safety.

The audit question it leaves you with: does each practice-area page show a real firm and real lawyers, or template text with the practice area swapped in.

Google uses search quality raters to check whether its algorithms work, and says that rater data is not used directly in the ranking algorithms, so a report graded against the rater guidelines is grading against a yardstick Google says it does not use directly to rank pages.

Google's spam policies name the failure scaled content abuse: generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, no matter how it is created, with generative AI pages that add no value for users among the examples.

The audit version of that check is the city page test: if three location pages differ only in the city name, they are one page published three times.

The page-level detail is in law firm practice area pages.

Profile checks

Google says local results are based mainly on relevance, distance and prominence, and that prominence draws on signals like how many websites link to the business and how many reviews it has.

For local searches the map pack sits above the web results, which is why a profile problem can look like an SEO problem.

The full map-pack work is in local SEO for law firms and the guide to ranking a law firm on Google Maps.

Website checks: speed, schema, AI eligibility

These three are the checks specific to a law firm website SEO audit, each with a published source to measure against.

Google's Web Vitals documentation sets the good-experience thresholds at Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint of 200 milliseconds or less and Cumulative Layout Shift of 0.1 or less, measured at the 75th percentile of page loads.

Those are experience thresholds, not a ranking or conversion promise, so the finding is in or out, and the fixes are in the law firm website speed guide.

On structured data, Schema.org defines LegalService as a business that provides legally-oriented services, advice and representation, e.g. law firms, and marks the Attorney type deprecated, while Google's local-business documentation says to use the most specific LocalBusiness subtype.

Schema markup does not guarantee a rich result and Google publishes no lawyer-specific rich result, so the check is that the markup describes the firm correctly, not that it buys display extras; the type-by-type detail is in law firm schema markup.

FAQ markup has a date on it: Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search from May 7, 2026 and removed the documentation in June 2026, so an audit that still bills for FAQ markup to win rich results is out of date, while FAQ content itself can still help readers.

For AI features, Google says there are no extra requirements or special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode: to be a supporting link, a page must be indexed and eligible to show in Search with a snippet, per guidance last updated in December 2025.

Google's optimization guide for generative AI, added in May 2026 and last updated in July 2026, says optimizing for its generative AI search is still SEO, that Search ignores llms.txt files, does not need content chunked and requires no special schema.org markup, and it warns that chasing inauthentic mentions is not as helpful as it seems.

Google's changelog added in May 2026 that the spam policies also apply to generative AI responses, so the scaled-content check covers AI-generated batches too.

To see your own data, Google points site owners to Search Console's Generative AI performance report, which covers how content performs in generative AI features on Search and Discover.

All of this is Google describing Google; ChatGPT and Perplexity run their own systems, covered in the AI search for law firms guide.

Red flags the audit should surface

Some findings end the conversation rather than start a fix list.

Google says it never accepts money to include or rank sites in organic results, and its advice if an SEO guarantees first place is to find someone else.

If someone else runs the audit for you, Google suggests giving read access to Search Console only, and it notes that Google does not endorse third-party SEO tools.

A guarantee dressed up as an audit finding is still a guarantee, which the law firm SEO guarantee guide takes apart.

Fix first

  • Pages that left the index or return errors to Google.
  • A profile with missing categories, hours or services.
  • Practice-area pages thinner than the firms ranking above them.
  • Load times outside Google's good thresholds.

Skip, or refuse to pay for

  • llms.txt files and "chunked" content, sold as preparation for Google's AI search.
  • Special schema bought for visibility in Google's AI features.
  • FAQ markup bought for rich results that ended in May 2026.
  • Any audit that arrives with a guaranteed rank attached.

Law firm SEO tips the audit usually ends with

  • Fix what Google cannot see before rewriting what it can.
  • One strong page per practice area per office beats ten thin ones.
  • Judge the fixes by consultations booked, not by traffic, because rankings are the means and signed cases are the point.

Run the checklist against your own site and you end with a short, ranked list: the useful output of any audit.

If you would rather have it run for you, the free law firm marketing audit returns a findings doc within 3 business days, no call required.

Frequently asked questions

What does a law firm SEO audit include?

Indexation and Search Console data, the Google Business Profile, site architecture, practice-area content depth, speed against Google's Core Web Vitals thresholds, structured data, and whether anything on the site trips a spam policy.

How much does a law firm SEO audit cost?

There is no standard published price, because scope drives the work. The audit here is free and the findings doc arrives within 3 business days, and a guaranteed ranking attached to any audit fee is a walk-away.

How often should a law firm run an SEO audit?

No published standard sets a cadence. A full pass after a redesign or an unexplained ranking drop, plus a re-check of the quick items whenever Search Console shows pages leaving the index, is a workable rhythm.

Do law firm pages still need FAQ schema?

Google stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search from May 7, 2026 and removed the documentation in June 2026, so the markup no longer buys the display. FAQ content itself can still help readers.

Why did my law firm's rankings drop?

An audit answers it in order: pages that left the index, a redesign that dropped or merged pages, content that got thinner, or a profile problem. The order on this page finds which one it is.