A Step-by-Step Framework for Auditing Your Family Law Firm's SEO — Before You Fix Anything

An SEO audit isn't a single report — it's a structured review across four distinct layers, each of which can fail independently. Family law firms often receive audits that focus only on technical issues or only on content, missing the full picture. Here's how the four layers break down:

• Technical health: Can Google crawl and index your site correctly? This includes checking for crawl errors, duplicate content, broken internal links, page speed issues, and mobile usability failures.
• On-page content: Does your site have dedicated, substantive pages for each service you offer — divorce, child custody, asset division, spousal support, adoption? Are those pages targeting the specific search terms your prospective clients actually use?
• Local SEO and Google Business Profile: Is your GBP listing claimed, fully completed, and actively managed? Are your name, address, and phone number consistent across legal directories like Avvo, Justia, and FindLaw?
• Backlink authority: Are authoritative external websites linking to your firm? In family law, domain authority tends to be lower than in personal injury, which means even modest link-building creates measurable impact.

Each layer gets scored independently in this audit framework. The point isn't to generate a number — it's to identify which layer is the primary bottleneck for your firm's current rankings. In our experience working with family law practices, most firms have one or two critical failures, not uniform weakness across all four areas.

Important: This guide is educational content. It does not constitute legal, compliance, or professional SEO advice. Any changes to your attorney website should be reviewed against your state bar's advertising regulations before publication.

Technical issues sit beneath everything else. If Google can't crawl your pages reliably, content improvements won't move rankings. Before you evaluate a single keyword or rewrite a single page, run through this checklist:

1. Crawl your site with a free tool (Screaming Frog's free tier covers up to 500 URLs, which is sufficient for most family law firms). Look for 4xx errors, redirect chains, and orphaned pages that have no internal links pointing to them.
2. Check Google Search Console for coverage errors. A page listed as "Discovered — currently not indexed" or "Crawled — currently not indexed" is invisible to search regardless of its content quality.
3. Evaluate Core Web Vitals. Google's PageSpeed Insights will show you Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) scores. Family law sites built on heavy page-builder themes often fail LCP benchmarks.
4. Check for duplicate content. Many attorney websites have near-identical service pages or location pages that compete with each other. Use a canonical tag audit to confirm each URL is treated as authoritative.
5. Confirm mobile usability. Most family law searches happen on mobile. Google's Mobile-Friendly Test is a quick starting point; Google Search Console's mobile usability report gives more complete data.

Score this section: if you have more than two unresolved technical issues affecting indexed pages, technical debt should be your first priority before any content investment.

If Screaming Frog or Search Console returns errors you can't interpret, that's a signal that professional technical review is warranted — guessing at fixes can create new problems.

Content is where most family law firms lose rankings they should own. The two most common failure patterns we see are thin practice area pages and misdirected keyword targeting.

Thin Practice Area Pages

A thin page is not just a short page — it's a page that doesn't answer the questions a prospective client is actually asking. A 200-word "Divorce" page that describes what divorce is, without addressing contested vs. uncontested divorce, asset division in your state, or what the process looks like for someone with children, isn't going to rank for high-intent searches. Google evaluates whether a page genuinely serves the searcher's intent.

For each core practice area your firm handles, ask: does this page address the specific questions someone in your city would search before calling an attorney? If not, it needs to be expanded — not stuffed with keywords, but genuinely deepened with useful, state-specific information.

Misdirected Keyword Targeting

Many family law sites optimize for terms like "family attorney" when their prospective clients are searching for "divorce lawyer in [city]" or "how to file for custody in [state]." Pull your Google Search Console Performance report and look at the queries actually driving impressions. If your highest-impression queries aren't the ones you're targeting, your content strategy is misaligned.

Duplicate Location Pages

If your firm created separate pages for every suburb or county you serve but gave each page identical content, those pages are competing with each other and diluting authority. Either consolidate them or differentiate them meaningfully with location-specific content.

Score this section: if more than half your core service pages are under 600 words or are not targeting specific city-level keywords, content is a primary bottleneck.

For most family law firms serving a single metro area, the Google Map Pack drives more qualified traffic than organic rankings. A prospective client searching "divorce attorney near me" at 9pm on their phone is making a short-list decision — Map Pack visibility puts your firm in front of that decision.

Google Business Profile Checklist

• Is your GBP claimed and verified?
• Is your primary category set to "Family Law Attorney" (not just "Lawyer" or "Law Firm")?
• Is your description using relevant service and location terms without reading like keyword stuffing?
• Are your hours, phone number, and website URL accurate and consistent with your website?
• Have you uploaded recent photos of your office and team?
• Are you actively posting to GBP at least twice per month?
• Are you responding to all reviews — positive and negative?

Each unchecked item above is a ranking signal you're leaving unused.

Citation Consistency

Pull your firm's listing from Avvo, Justia, FindLaw, Super Lawyers, and your state bar's attorney directory. Compare the name, address, and phone number on each against your website's contact page. Inconsistencies — even minor variations like "St." vs. "Street" — can suppress local rankings. Tools like Moz Local or BrightLocal can automate this scan.

Review Velocity and Volume

Industry benchmarks suggest that firms in competitive metro markets typically need 30+ Google reviews with a 4.5+ average to compete for Map Pack placement, though this varies significantly by market. More importantly, recent reviews (within the last 90 days) signal to Google that your firm is actively serving clients. A firm with 50 reviews, all from 2021, may rank below a competitor with 20 reviews from the past six months.

Note: Review solicitation must comply with your state bar's advertising rules and Rule 1.6 confidentiality obligations. Never ask clients to disclose the nature of their legal matter in a public review.

Backlinks — links from other websites pointing to yours — are a core ranking signal. For family law firms, the goal isn't acquiring hundreds of links; it's acquiring relevant, authoritative ones. A link from your local bar association's website, a regional news outlet, or a university law school's resource page carries more weight than fifty low-quality directory links.

How to Assess Your Current Backlink Profile

Use Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker, Moz Link Explorer, or Google Search Console's Links report to see what's currently linking to your site. Evaluate the following:

• Total referring domains: How many unique websites link to you? In family law, many firms start with fewer than 30 referring domains. Competitors in the Map Pack or page-one organic rankings typically have more — but quality matters more than quantity.
• Relevance: Are your links coming from legal, local, or community-relevant sources? Links from unrelated industries add minimal authority.
• Anchor text distribution: If the majority of your backlinks use exact-match anchor text like "divorce lawyer Chicago," that's a red flag for over-optimization. Natural profiles have varied anchors including your firm name, URL, and generic phrases.
• Toxic links: Links from link farms, foreign gambling sites, or spammy directories can be disavowed via Google Search Console if they're dragging down your site's authority.

Family law is a less competitive vertical than personal injury for link acquisition, which works in your favor. A focused effort to earn two or three strong local links per month — through bar association membership, community sponsorships, or local press mentions — compounds meaningfully over a 6-12 month timeline.

If your profile has fewer than 20 referring domains and your competitors have 50+, authority is likely a primary ranking gap, and content improvements alone won't close it.

Once you've worked through all four audit layers, score each area using this simple rubric:

• Green (no immediate action): No significant issues found. Monitor quarterly.
• Yellow (improvement opportunity): Issues exist but aren't blocking rankings. Address in 30-60 days.
• Red (active ranking blocker): Problems here are suppressing visibility now. Fix before other investments.

Your priority order should follow this logic: Technical Red issues first, because no other investment compounds until crawl and indexing are clean. Local Red issues second, because GBP visibility is typically the fastest path to new client inquiries for local family law firms. Content Yellow/Red issues third, because expanding thin practice area pages builds long-term organic authority. Authority gaps last, because link-building is a sustained effort, not a one-time fix.

When to Handle This Yourself vs. Hire a Specialist

Self-auditing is useful for identifying where problems exist. Resolving them is a different scope of work. Technical issues involving schema markup, Core Web Vitals optimization, or crawl budget problems typically require developer involvement. Content strategy — deciding which pages to prioritize, how to target intent correctly, and how to structure service pages — benefits from someone who has worked specifically in legal SEO, not just general content writing.

If your audit surfaces more than two Red-category issues, or if you've already made fixes that haven't improved rankings after 90+ days, that's a reasonable point to bring in outside expertise. An agency engagement starts by validating your audit findings — so the work you've done here directly reduces time-to-action.

If you'd like a professional review of your audit findings, we offer a structured family law SEO diagnostic that covers all four layers with specific recommendations tied to your market and competitive set.