The Law Firm SEO Pricing Framework That Helps You Compare Apples to Apples

Law firm SEO pricing isn't arbitrary. The three variables that move the number most are practice area competitiveness, geographic market size, and the scope of work required to close the gap between where you rank now and where you need to rank to attract clients.

A family law firm in a mid-size metro competing for "divorce attorney [city]" faces a meaningfully different landscape than a personal injury firm targeting "car accident lawyer Los Angeles" — and the monthly investment reflects that gap.

Beyond market difficulty, deliverable scope drives cost. A campaign that includes technical SEO, content production (two to four practice area pages per month), local citation building, and active link acquisition costs more than a campaign that checks rankings and sends a monthly report. Both might be called "SEO retainers" — but they are not the same product.

The primary cost variables to ask about before comparing quotes:

• Content volume: How many new pages or blog posts per month, and who writes them?
• Link building: Is it included, and what methods are used?
• Technical work: Is site architecture, page speed, and schema markup in scope?
• GBP management: Is Google Business Profile optimization included or billed separately?
• Reporting depth: Are you getting rank tracking only, or visibility into traffic, leads, and conversion attribution?

Once you know what each proposal actually includes, comparing vendors becomes straightforward. Without that breakdown, you're comparing monthly invoice totals — not comparable services.

The ranges below are drawn from industry benchmarks and our experience working with law firms across practice areas. They are starting-point estimates — actual investment varies by market, starting authority, and campaign goals.

By Firm Size

• Solo practitioner or boutique firm (1–3 attorneys): $1,500–$3,000/month. Typically focused on local SEO, GBP optimization, and a modest content program. Competitive markets push this toward the upper end.
• Mid-size firm (4–15 attorneys): $3,000–$6,000/month. Broader keyword targets, multi-practice-area content, link acquisition, and technical SEO maintenance.
• Large or multi-location firm (15+ attorneys): $6,000–$15,000+/month. Multi-location local SEO, high-volume content production, aggressive link campaigns, and conversion rate work.

By Practice Area (Competitiveness Tier)

• High competition — personal injury, criminal defense, DUI: $4,000–$10,000+/month in major markets. These keywords carry some of the highest paid-search CPCs in any industry, which inflates organic competition proportionally.
• Moderate competition — family law, estate planning, immigration: $2,500–$6,000/month. Still competitive in metros, but typically attainable with a well-structured 6–12 month campaign.
• Lower competition — elder law, niche business litigation, appellate: $1,500–$4,000/month. Smaller search volume, but intent is often higher and competition thinner.

One-Time Projects

• Technical SEO audit: $1,000–$3,500
• Website migration SEO: $2,000–$5,000+
• Content strategy and keyword map: $1,500–$4,000

These benchmarks are directional. A firm entering a new practice area or a new market may need to invest above the midpoint of their tier to close the authority gap quickly.

Law firms are frequently pitched three different engagement structures. Each has a legitimate use case — and each carries trade-offs worth understanding before signing.

Monthly Retainer

The most common model for sustained SEO growth. You pay a fixed monthly fee for an agreed scope of work: content production, technical maintenance, link building, and reporting. Results compound over time. The risk is paying for 6–12 months before seeing significant organic traffic lift — this is expected behavior, not a sign of failure. Most firms working with a competent SEO partner begin to see measurable organic growth in months 4–6, with competitive markets taking longer.

Project-Based Engagement

A defined scope with a fixed fee — audits, content strategy, site launches. Useful for firms that have in-house marketing staff who can execute, but need outside expertise for a specific gap. Not a substitute for ongoing SEO if you want to rank competitively; Google rewards sustained activity, not one-time work.

Pay-Per-Lead

You pay only when a lead is delivered. Sounds low-risk, but the trade-offs are significant: lead quality varies, exclusivity is rarely designed to, and you build no owned authority or long-term asset. Many law firms use pay-per-lead as a short-term volume play while their SEO campaign matures — not as a replacement for it.

For most firms, the right structure is a monthly retainer with clearly defined deliverables and quarterly performance reviews. Project work makes sense for diagnostics or site launches. Pay-per-lead can supplement during the ramp period but rarely delivers the cost-per-case economics that owned organic search does over time.

Retainers priced below $800–$1,000 per month exist in the market. It's worth being direct about what that price point typically funds.

At that level, a vendor can afford to spend roughly 4–6 hours per month on your account. That covers basic rank tracking, occasional minor edits, and perhaps one templated blog post. It does not cover active link acquisition, meaningful content production, technical remediation, or the kind of strategic review that adjusts the campaign when it's not working.

This matters in legal SEO specifically because the competition is not passive. Personal injury and criminal defense firms in most metros are spending aggressively on content and links. A low-volume campaign in that environment produces near-zero results — not slow results, just no results.

The pattern in our experience: firms that start with a low-cost retainer, see no movement after 6–9 months, cancel, and conclude "SEO doesn't work for law firms." The variable wasn't SEO — it was the resource level relative to the competitive environment.

A more useful framing: ask any vendor you're evaluating to show you the deliverable breakdown for their proposed retainer. Ask specifically:

• How many content pieces per month and at what word count?
• How many links are typically built per month, and from what types of sources?
• How many hours per month are allocated to the account?
• Who on their team actually does the work — a senior strategist or a junior coordinator?

Vendors who can answer those questions in writing, specifically, are worth a deeper conversation. Vendors who respond with vague assurances about "comprehensive strategies" are signaling something.

The right budget for your firm isn't a number pulled from a pricing page — it's the output of a simple calculation: what is a new client worth, and how many would you need from organic search to justify the investment?

A personal injury firm with an average case value of $25,000 needs one additional client per quarter from organic search to cover a $2,000/month SEO retainer at a positive ROI. An estate planning firm with average engagements of $3,500 needs more volume to reach the same threshold — which affects how aggressively they should invest early.

A practical budgeting framework:

1. Calculate your client lifetime value — average fee for your primary practice area, factoring in repeat business and referrals where applicable.
2. Set a target cost-per-case — most firms find $300–$1,500 per organic case to be acceptable, though this varies significantly by practice area.
3. Back into monthly investment — if you need 10 cases per month from organic at a $500 cost-per-case ceiling, you're targeting $5,000/month in SEO spend at maturity.
4. Adjust for ramp time — budget for 6–12 months before that run rate is achieved. Early months fund foundation-building, not immediate case volume.

One budget allocation note: firms often underinvest in SEO relative to paid search because PPC delivers faster attribution. But in competitive legal markets, organic placement typically delivers a lower cost-per-case at scale than paid, with compounding returns over time. The calculus favors building both — not choosing one.

If your current budget only supports one channel, the right choice depends on your time horizon. PPC if you need cases in the next 90 days. SEO if you're building for the next 18–36 months.

Attorneys evaluating SEO vendors tend to raise similar concerns. These deserve direct responses, not sales deflection.

"I tried SEO before and it didn't work."

This is one of the most common objections, and it's almost always a resource or execution problem, not an SEO problem. The questions worth asking: What was the monthly investment? What deliverables were actually completed? How competitive is the practice area? A campaign that stalled at $800/month in a personal injury market didn't fail because SEO doesn't work for law firms — it failed because the resource level couldn't compete.

"I can hire an in-house person for the same money."

At the $2,000–$4,000/month budget level, an in-house hire gets you one generalist with limited SEO specialization and no network for link acquisition. A specialized agency at that same budget brings a team with a content writer, technical SEO capability, and established link-building relationships. Above $7,000–$8,000/month, the in-house calculus starts to shift — this is where a comparison page becomes useful reading.

"How do I know it'll work for my market?"

You don't — and any vendor who guarantees specific rankings is misrepresenting how Google works. What a credible partner can do: show you the current keyword landscape for your practice area and city, benchmark your site's current authority against competitors, and give you an honest assessment of how long movement typically takes in that environment. That's the basis for a decision — not a ranking guarantee.

"Can't I just do this myself?"

Some of it, yes. GBP optimization, review generation, and basic on-page edits are learnable. Consistent content production, technical auditing, and link acquisition at competitive volume are time-intensive enough that most attorneys find the opportunity cost — time not spent on billable work — exceeds the cost of outsourcing.